Birth Story, Part IV: Oh, you guys know each other? WELL I’M HAVING A F*CKING BABY.
Continued from these posts…
The shitty thing about the whole birth experience is that you truly do forget. I could give you a minute-by-minute narrative a few weeks after Henry’s birth, but now? Did I really go through that? You could tell me that I just watched an episode of “A Baby Story” and Henry was delivered by a stork, and I just might believe you. The whole experience seems so foggy. Faraway. Like a childhood memory you have discovered is less an actual memory and more a cobbled-together-narrative based on a parent or sibling’s account.
All that said, I’m sure I will overload the rest of the story with details and analyses and digressions and whatnot and you will want to call bullshit on everything I just said about not remembering so well. I suppose I remember but at this point I almost don’t believe it really happened.
Oh, I know. It’s not very me of me to write a Thanksgiving-thankful-theme-post, but it wasn’t very me of me to follow a pregnancy to term and end up a mother either. So here we go.
Because of the holiday I’m missing many work days. When childcare is closed I am the one to stay home with the tot. Yes, it’s pretty typical, yes there is likely a sizable dose of blatant-gender-stereotyping in the cocktail of reasons why I am the one to stay home and not Baby Daddy. But anyway, BDis a chef. And who is going to run the restaurant and cook the food and do the ordering and blah blah whatever it is he does all day if he’s not there? Nobody. He has a salary but his crew is hourly–if he calls in sick, the restaurant pays twice. Doesn’t work out so well. We’re lucky he managed to work out a paternity leave of sorts when Hank was born. Anyway, if BD stays home from work, the restaurant is in chaos. Or, rather, the option of BD staying home from work just isn’t there. If I’m not at work (on the days where work=my dissertation, not tutoring or teaching), the consequences are less tangible. But I do run the risk, for every day of writing I miss, of falling further and further behind, of getting more and more discouraged, and, I suppose, at the outside, of getting kicked out of graduate school.
So BD knows how shitty it is that I’m the one who stays home with the kiddo when childcare is closed. And so even though he was going to be cooking the entire feast today for myself and my Sin-Laws, he offered to take Henry over to his mother’s (at 9 am, when he would need to start cooking) so I could stay home and work and/or nap until it was time for the meal.
I didn’t take him up on it, though. Because I wanted my full day with him.
So why didn’t anyone tell me that these babies actually can kind-of-sort-of-maybe, like, understand you? This morning I told Henry to go get his Baby Faces book and. he. did.
As in, he looked around, spotted it in a pile of other books (amongst the exploded unicorn of bright-baby-shit that is our living room now that he’s discovered how to up-end, unpack, or otherwise dismantle any and all of our storage solutions), crawled over to the pile speedily and picked out, amongst the choices, the book I was talking about.
I didn’t point at it. I barely even enunciated (see earlier posts and tweets about the nightmare that was last night’s attempt at slumber). We hadn’t even read the book yet that day. Indeed, it is Hank’s favorite thing in the entire world (seriously, get thee to a bookstore and buy Baby Faces*) so it gets talked about a lot/read a lot; it’s not exactly a huge surprise.
EXCEPT IT WAS. Not because I don’t talk to him, which I do, all day, even to the point of people giving me weird looks (partially because while I do employ the “exaggerated -baby-voice,” I sometimes just use my normal tone, so you might find me addressing the baby with a matter-of-fact “Well I guess we’ll head home, then” or “Check out that regrettably decal-ed PT Cruiser, bud!” and it’s assumed I’m talking to myself, or perhaps, you, the on-listener). And I read to him loads, and his childcare situation is Waldorfian and excellent.** But it still absolutely, positively SHOCKED me that he (presumably) understood me.
Based on my reputable, uber-scientific, double-blind, mixed-methods, fully replicable study (asking him to do it again a bunch of times but waiting, like, 10 minutes and doing many activities in between) he seems to understand me. At least, he understood that one command/object name.
He’s almost 9 months old, so maybe this is entirely appropriate, maybe it’s even late. Maybe it’s not at all developmentally appropriate and I’m seeing things where they are not (again, I barely did something resembling sleeping last night). The point of this post is not to say Hank is a genius, or to brag, or even to mark a milestone. Rather, I think I should take a moment and own up to a few things:
1. I really don’t know anything about babies. Except what I have learned so far, by observing and taking basic care of Hank.
2. Yes, I am a google scholar, thankyouverymuch, but I’m usually googling rashes and such. Things after they happen. It didn’t really occur to me to, you know, read ahead.
3. I actually think that’s best, mostly, as it really chaps my hide when people obsessively ask about whether Hank does this or this or that yet, as if he should be following some kind of script. Crawling, eating solid food, sure, that’s fine to ask about, but just STOP it already with the waving bye-bye thing. I guarantee you, grocery store clerk/bank teller/kindly vagrant, that by the time he’s five years old, he will wave bye-bye. Right now, I’m not particularly concerned with his rude lack of valedictions when I drop him off at childcare, as I’m usually trying to sneak out before he realizes I’m gone.
4. Which isn’t to say I haven’t read any books about babies. I just have spent all of my time alloted baby-related reading time reading every book on the subject of How to Ever Get a Child to Sleep, Ever, and have not had any time for the Your Baby Month to Month (sounds like a payment plan) set. Oh, and you know, sundry blogs but we all know Mommy Blogs are about drinking, not infant development.
5. I tend to underestimate Hank’s abilities due to my lack of knowledge about infants and general bad-mother-ness.
But seriously–it was shocking. While I am aware that I am fostering a mini-human with a spongey brain who is learning every day, I was not prepared for how weird it would be when I detected a moment of true, somewhat complex, communication. He’s been communicating with me all this time–crying, vocalizing, reaching, indicating, etc. But the communication has been focused on his needs. He communicates, I respond. Of course I’ve been “communicating” back by seeing to his needs, demonstrating to him that his needs will be met, that this particular giant can be trusted, building routines, etc. He’s learned plenty of things like drinking from a straw, tipping a cup to drink, using the potty, a combination of the two, getting down from a chair, couch or bed by going backwards, various eating-related skills, etc. But these are all entirely different from my saying “do this” and him ohmygodactually.DOING.IT.
/shocked rant.
* Yes, a bookstore, though I provide you with a link to Amazon for illustration, please do your Christmas shopping locally this year. Are you the problem, or ARE YOU THE SOLUTION?
**While its focus on being out of doors and learning/playing with nature isn’t particularly language-learny, he’s not sitting in a bouncer in room full of other infants watching Baby Einsteins. Instead he kicks it in the woods with a bunch of toddlers, so lots of opportunities for sponging up some language skills.
Seriously, seriously? Baby Daddy’s snoring is so loud and of such a duration that I can’t tell if the baby is crying. We live in a very small house. I’m still downstairs. Baby Daddy is still upstairs (as is the baby–the point is they are equidistant from where I am). This is not good, this is not good at all.
There is so much I could say about this issue; I could write an entire blog dedicated to the plight (mine) that is Baby Daddy’s snoring. But I’ll just give you a quick anecdote. Remember how Hank growls on command/in response to the growling of others? (See the third video in this post for a demonstration) Well sometime last week, during the multiple night waking issues that haven’t completely cleared up but have improved mildly, I had Hank in bed with us hoping that maybe, just maybe, we could nurse and just cosleep. And then Baby Daddy started up one of his epic snorefests. I didn’t want to say anything or wake BD up for fear of stimulating Henry in any way as he is so easy to set off, my hyperactive baby, so I suffered in silence. But then Henry started pausing in nursing to GROWL after every snore of Baby Daddy’s. So here I am, between the Scylla and FUCKING Charybdis of sleep prevention, my snoring partner and growling baby, who seems to think he and his father are communicating in some way, resulting in a call and response fuckfest of annoyance (to me). That was a long night.
It is about to get repeated.
So it’s 11:35 pm, and I’ve just got back from work. I’ve written about the suckitude that is Tuesdays before. Not a lot of wiggle room, Tuesdays. Especially this Tuesday, when I had to fit in Thanksgiving planning and shopping (between finishing one job, picking up kid from childcare, and bringing him home for dinner and bedtime, before heading off to the other job). I’m running up against it being Wednesday, already, gah. I have to pump and eat my dinner (yay! I haven’t eaten anything other than a slice of bread since 8:45 am! I suck at time management/nutrition!). And go to bed (it would appear that Baby Daddy is already there, as I can hear him snoring. from downstairs. which fills me with dread). So, a random smattering of things:
1. In conference with a student this evening I referred to the report as the “bastard cousin” of the academic research paper. In my head I quickly justified (thankfully, only in my head, as I certainly didn’t need to be more inappropriate): “It’s okay for me to say that, I’m an unwed mother.”
And…that’s it. A smattering of Thing. And not a good thing. But something.
I have to go to bed, I don’t make any fucking sense.
Remember this post on Totally Bizarre Baby Clothes? Well, I have found another item that truly belongs amongst their ranks. Check out these rad dinosaur pajamas from the Dollar Store (I’m pretty sure they are 175% flammable). First, an action shot. Hank wearing them while hunting for some unlistenable jazz:
And here’s a closer look at just the print:
The PJs feature three pieces of text: “T-Rex,” “Bronto,” and “Dino.”
Yeah…
One of these things is not like the other.
Two of these things just really belong. To that other thing.
Possibly what is most excellent about this print, though, is that despite there being no “Stego” represented in the text, nearly every dinosaur featured has Stego-spikes (the exception is the aptly named and depicted Brontosaurus, to be fair). There is the upright tiny-headed clearly NOT a T-Rex T-Rex with Stego-spikes, and the weird, dragony-looking Pterodactyl with Stego-spikes, and, you know, the fucking Stegosaurus with Stego-spikes. Though there is not a T-Rex among them, all of these bizarre chimeras are, indeed, Dinos, so I can’t knock them too much.
And why would I want to? They are FABULOUS. I hope Henry never outgrows them.
Baby Daddy left the house at 6 this morning to take a chartered bus to Greenbay for the day and see the Packer game. A birthday present from his wonderful, loving Baby Mamma. He was so thankful that he made sure to accidentally wake the baby up right as he was leaving the house. Hank took one thirty minute nap at 2 pm. Other than that it has been GO GO GO all day today and I’m just beat.
So suck it, NaBloPoMo. I used to have energy. Then I had a baby.
Remember this? And this? Well, the memory of these old posts gave me pause at the Target rack recently, and I was compelled to purchase this (the shirt, not the baby, who spends his whole day standing up next to furniture, but refuses to stand if you are holding on to his arms):
The faint black eye gives this that “high concept” touch.
Hank’s features are starting to get a little more defined, a little less generic-Gerber-baby. His nose and chin have popped out a bit. He hasn’t gained weight in months; he’s just getting taller. The roundness is diminishing. These photos are from the beginning of October, so out-of-date in terms of the rapid changes an infant goes through. But looking around for a photo to post today, I was struck by how some of the photos from this set, taken within moments of each other, seem to be from altogether different months of Hank’s little life.
From one angle, the pudgy, round-cheeked, doe-eyed infant Stellar. My son, as he was.
From another, Hank, the tank, the brawny babe. My son, as he is.
And from another, a child I don’t entirely recognize. Who looks strangely like my brother, the uncle Hank will never know. My son, as he will be. Henry: The Boy.
Dear Henry Stellar,
You’ve gone from waking up once to waking up three times a night, and have been doing so for the past…two weeks? Longer?
Except that one night you inexplicably slept from 7pm-6am, and then, on a lark, I put you back to bed and didn’t hear from you again until your father and I woke up in a fit of “whattimeisit!? wheresthebaby!? whattimeisit?!” at…NINE-Oh-Holy-Cats-A.M.
What were you doing from 6 to 9? Were you sleeping? Playing? When I rushed into your room convinced you were DEAD you were sitting in your crib holding each of your socks in each of your hands and giggling. And instead of thinking “Gee thanks, Universe! I really needed that extra sleep!” I thought “You did this to show me how neglectful and awful I am, Universe. Touché.”
But that isn’t the point. The point is this, Henry:
LISTEN: go ahead and continue to rob me of my sleep. That’s what you do. And sometimes, sometimes I even enjoy, perhaps a bit sadistically, a middle of the night wake-up. I do remember that it won’t always be like this (please, please, tell me it won’t always be like this) and that our nursing relationship will eventually end, and I won’t be able to hold you in my lap (I’m already having difficulty cramming the two of us in the rocking chair, hence all the nursing you in bed) forever. I do not agree, ultimately, with all those lame message board ladies who tell women asking innocent questions about night weaning to “cherish this time when they are little–those moments are too precious!” blah blah blah you should love sleeping in 2 hour increments and stop complaining, etc. But I can kinda-sorta-maybe-if-I’m-being-very-generous see where they are coming from. I do, I can, sometimes, like getting up with you in the dark, wee hours.
I do not, however, enjoy getting up with you mere hours after I’ve put you down for the night. I somehow mind less the midnight waking, when I have often only been asleep an hour, or sometimes I have juuuuust drifted off to be painfully pulled back. On Tuesdays, “sucky Tuesdays” we call them around my inner-monologue, I usually get home just in time for that midnight waking and don’t mind further putting off my bedtime.
But the 9:30 bullshit MUST. END.
Please, please, drop the 9:30 waking. Just, seriously: stop waking up before I go to bed. Because you know what kid? That’s MY TIME. I like to forget you even EXIST during that time, okay? I’m usually working during that time, grading, taking care of businessy tasks, sometimes writing. Sometimes I’m busy laundering your diapers and washing your bottles. Sometimes I’m in the middle of pumping milk for future you. Often I have JUST finished preparing myself a hot meal, or–worse–am halfway through boiling pasta or some such highly ruinable task not amenable to a quick pop up to your room for 30 minutes of nursing you back to sleep.
And though your father comes home from work and annoyingly whines about how he wishes he could see you and you’re always in bed, I DO NOT SHARE THESE SENTIMENTS. I have had enough of you by that point, usually. Does he love you more? If love is measured in no-real-sense-of-the-consequences-whining, then yes, I suppose he does.
Xo,
Your Mother.
