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The Nurser

The lactation consultant at the hospital said each mother and child have their own nursing style. I was thinking ours would be mommy bunny and baby snuggle bunny. Did this happen? Hell, no. The real truth is that the baby is 100% in charge of nursing, and because of this our nursing styles are:

Puppy With a Chew Toy, which is self-explanatory, and usually evolves into Sleepy Doberman, when she falls asleep while latched but actually growls when even slightly disturbed.

Lollipop is when she simultaneously sucks super hard, grabs a fistful of boob and pulls the nipple out of her mouth, producing both a loud "pop" sound and pain.

Taking It To Go involves nursing while at the same time trying to roll and/or crawl; The Restaurant Critic takes one or two sips then screams in irritation at some culinary offense, and The Boxer just lays there and whacks at me.

Bits of bits

The very awesome proprietor of themommyhood.com did a little feature on The Baby Sucks! See it at http://themommyhood.com/wordpress/2011/03/25/my-new-favorite-blog-other-than-mine/

ALSO after a bit of over-relaxing, a new drawing will be showing up this Sunday.

Accident (or, Too Much Information)

  

 What happened was I was driving back to Long Island from New Jersey, where I had reluctantly spent the day test driving a delivery van for your uncle the art dealer whose old van had been stolen by idiots who later tried to sell him back the paintings ending in a police shootout and one of the thieves getting his femoral artery ripped by a police dog but later escaping from a jail in a wheelchair.  ANYWAY, I was driving through Brooklyn at night in a rainstorm during the transit strike all pissed because the rush hour traffic sucked and I hadn't eaten all day when I got majorly rear-ended and there was a huge pile-up. We think this wreck jostled some ingredients put in place the previous day by your dad and I. He lived in Seattle at the time but had flown out for the weekend to ask him to marry him and in the festivities we didn't exactly take precautions because I'm 35 and it was his 40th birthday, so we had been figuring for quite a while it'd be pretty hard to get knocked up. But then there was the car accident and that sucked but now we know it was the luckiest day of our lives because that's how we got pregnant with you.

Oh no! You've got MOM HAND

- Baby birthstone ring can't be worn due to rash caused by constant handwashing, though, mysteriously *

- Snot trail. Maybe mine, maybe not. I don't remember.

-* After nine out of ten diaper changes, poop ends up exactly here and is not noticed for hours

- Remnants of indoor play gym hand stamp, a reminder of Saturday when both girls threw a massive screaming fit right in front of the @"&%^! bouncy

- Yogurt. Why does yogurt always end up here?

Favoritism

The right boob has always been the overachiever, and has embraced breastfeeding as a glorious triumph, a sacred destiny. Which seems natural, but the left one strongly disagrees, is offended by the idea of such mammalian disrespect. The right boob has goals and dreams; the left stays up all night watching dating reality shows.

The baby loves the right boob and has a strained relationship with the left, causing the right to swell with pride while the left just shrivels in annoyance. The baby can't be blamed; if the food is exactly the same at two restaurants, who wouldn't choose the one with the most enthusiastic and attentive waitstaff?

But, people are starting to stare, and we're going to a party tonight. At the last minute, teddy-bear augmentation is a lopsided nursing mom's only choice.

Work: Parts of a breast pump

1) Pulsating motor, which the people in the office next door to the "lactating room" will suspect is really a vibrator 

2) How-to-book, which will press against the "on" button when you walk into work, making your coworkers think it's a (see above)

3) Rubbery part attracts cat hair (low nutritive value)

4) Good for a playdough mold

5) Nipple shield, which will warp and be unjustly blamed for a nipple blister

6) Sanitize this before stepping on it

7) THE MILK: a) shake before serving; the nutrients are in the gunk, b) this will never be as much as you want it to be, c) you need to replenish lost calories with ice cream

TIP: Chanting "boob-boob-boob-boob-boob" in time is NOT helpful

TIP: Even if you don't work out of the house, you'll need a pump when your hormone-caused sack-of-marbles gallbladder explodes, so you can pump-n-dump the milk, which is frothing with narcotics (take these)

What's in the garbage today?

- "Taweenie," aka Lightning McQueen, big sister's all-time-favorite toy

-DIAPERS, infinity

- Earrings, pulled out of auntie's delicate ear

- Cutest pants ever, soaked in crap

- Expired motorcycle license

- Something that should be washed, crushed & recycled

- Sex life

-Stickers peeled off new coffee table

- Lots and lots of coffee grounds

- Season ski pass

Literature: A Guide for New Parents

Make your own book! Free!

Cover:
Why is the baby crying?

Page 1:
Q: Why is the baby crying?

Page 2:
A: You are doing something wrong

Back page:
$525 (copay)
www.youmightaswelltakeanap.com

Recreation

The Boston Children's Museum has a gigantic climbing structure that looks like God spilled her whole sack of Fritos and they froze in mid-air. The girls go wild at the mere mention of it.

The only problem is that in a place so full of kids you'd hope to see a bunch of exhausted, disheveled parents exuding a vaguely familiar stink, the kind of parents that could boost a similarly-tired person's self-esteem. But the opposite is true: the place is teeming with ridiculously zesty parents – young, clever, muscle-y, rested like they just got back from a weeklong retreat in Moorea for hot childless people. Could there be a magic beauty compound in the bubble room? We'll never know, because the girls will never climb down from the Frito structure.

The flesh heap

I should have taken a picture of myself naked before I had kids.  Now I have no proof that my stomach hasn't always looked like the underside of a geriatric man's ball sack when I bend over.


Last week during the gallbladder ruckus, the ultrasound tech said, "what's this huge scar on your stomach?" Why, it's the leftover dark line that ran stem to stern during pregnancy, thank you, that should have gone away months ago but now has lingered long enough to threaten permanency.  Then the gall bladder surgeon said, "your belly button is herniated." Why, yes, also thank you, that belly button used to be quite charming but now looks like an flabby eyelid drooped over an empty eye socket.


Maybe the problem is not that my parts have been trashed, but that I'm still holding on to some kind of vanity about them. I need to remind myself that kids or no, at some point in life my bikini days would have been over, though probably not so emphatically, so quickly. All and all, it was more than worth it to give up those few extra years to have those awesome little girls. 


But I still wish I had that naked picture.

I used to think I had a high pain tolerance

Mandie, the anthropology goddess, and my sister-in-law, Tory, both had their babies at home. It's funny how with my first it was really important to me to do it without any drugs*, but by the time #3 Daisy came along I was all, "can I start the epidural if I'm only dilated 3 centimeters?" Each birth was way easier than the last, but I became increasingly a wuss about it. The natural-childbirth God is now punishing me for that by smiting me with a nipple blister, which is unbelievably painful. A nipple blister! Who could even have imagined that such an awful thing even existed? I'll be writhing in pain on the kitchen floor and Jeff will panic and I'll gasp "the ... blister's ... almost ... too ... small ... to ... see ... where's ... that ... %#*&% .. epidural ... doctor?"
(*This attempt was an unqualified failure)

Containment: How Diapers Work

- (back) Poop shoots out the back when she's in her car seat

- (side) Poop trickles out the side when she's wearing brand new jammies (see ... FOOT SAUCE is when the baby is in a carrier while wearing fleece jammies and liquid poop flows down each leg to pool in the foot parts, to be noticed by you only when it drips on your bare legs because you are wearing your husband's boxers, on the 'B' side.

-(front) Pee soaks out the front once she's old enough to sleep on her tummy

A TOTAL BLOWOUT is when, in the 3-minute ride to your work X-Mas party the baby poops so much it soaks through her dress, down the car seat, and onto her backup outfit on the floor.

Pet

Chloe's been asking for a pet lately since she found out her beloved cat actually belongs to the neighbors which explains why we never had to feed it. We feel somewhat guilty for our gleeful perpetuation of that lie, so we are actually considering her request. She wants something that could protect her from the monsters that lurk in her room at night. "What about a goldfish?" she said, "they see in infrared light. What could possibly be cooler than that?" She said she has a much better idea that a stupid old goldfish.

Dr. Mom: Infected Boob

Mastitus, which is Latin for "Massive Tit," is when you are a nursing mom and one of your boobs gets unbelievably huge and hard without the benefit of plastic surgery. Sometimes it gets blotchy and hot, both conditions acerbated by your husband poking at it because he cannot believe the size of that thing.

You could go to a professional and get antibiotics, OR massage it through an entire vampire movie which was really dumb or wear a cabbage leaf in your bra, which can't possibly work unless your husband hates cabbage and will then leave you alone.

In the emergency room

After you've had three kids, getting an ultrasound is boring. No cute little toes. No finding out if we're going to have to buy truck jammies or reuse our mountain of pink ones.  Nothing but blobs and shadows and a menacing-looking gallbladder shaped like a sack of marbles.

About a year and a half ago, I had similar belly pain and Jeff and I went in to get it checked out. Also, then, gallstones. But while we were in that dark room, those glowing stars on the ceiling, Jeff joked to the ultrasound tech, "while we're looking, can you see if she's pregnant?" and the tech said, "Let's see... Yep! You're definitely pregnant!" and we said "WHAT???"

And now, little Daisy, almost ten months. Already a jokester. Or, maybe, still a jokester?

A free Lush ad: Lemslip!

Lemslip! It saved my life!  Kind of!

You know how when you're pregnant and sometimes you get Super Scent, when you can smell anything, like a cucumber three blocks away? Which sounds cool but it's not because everything also smells totally, completely HORRIBLE!

I was sick for months. Until one day ... (knock knock) ... A gift!

Just one sniff - cured!!

Two years later the baby is crazy for the tiniest dab of shimmy shimmy.

(I won a bath bomb with this illustration at the Lincoln Square Mall Lush in Bellevue, Wash. So worth the million hours it took to draw it!)

Baby math II

(I am reposting this because the first one got all funky)

Baby math II:

1) If I gained 50 pounds when pregnant and, after an initial post-birth loss of about 30 pounds, I'm losing about a pound a week, how many assorted coworkers, acquaintances, ex-boyfriends and rivals such as the barista who check out my husband will I avoid OR wear a disguise around until March?

2) If the baby nurses every two hours or so and I say "SHIT! F!@#$CK! F!#$!CK!" every time she latches on, what are the odds those will be her first words?

See Baby Math I

The giggler

The baby laughs a high joyful little girl laugh and when I hear it, it's like going to heaven but better. She laughs and it's my favorite ten Christmas mornings all condensed into that one moment, like I was just elected president, I am the Super Bowl MVP, I sprouted wings and am gliding over the Grand Canyon it feels that good. The world's most beautiful, wealthiest woman could knock on my door and say, "you can trade places with me instantly oh yeah I'm also a mermaid and I have invisibility powers those are included in the deal ... but you could never hear your baby laugh again!" And I would slam the door in her stinky fish face, just for asking.

Baby spider

The girls found a spider in their room at 6 this morning and it might as well have been a rhinoceros, exciting and dangerous and impossibly exotic. Their screeches of delight forced us deeper under the covers, as did the trampling of footsteps to get a flashlight for "spying it," as did the cries of "it jumped on my arm! it wants to pinch me!" You'd think that last one would get us up, but no; the baby was up every two hours all night and we both only half-heard these things, from a dream.


Finally a sound like the roof caving in roused us (and the baby again, of course), a sound caused by Emily thinking the spider had trapped her on the bed and the only solution was to throw a nearby large bucket of plastic dinosaurs in its general direction, which was also the wall shared by our sleeping heads on the other side. 

The spider, of course, turned out to be a vicious beast nearly as large as Chloe's pinkie nail. Upon finding out it was possibly a baby, they immediately decided it was unbearably cute and they named it Pinchy Pinchy and promised to take care of it forever, their whole lives, always, vows which lasted at least until breakfast. Where is the spider now? We don't know - with the baby's diaper and the plastic stegasauruses and the overturned potties we forgot about it, and can only assume it retreated back for its next appearance, at nap time or next week, with babies of its own.

Exercise: Running after childbirth

What's the most interesting new development?

Round 1:
- Chafed nipples the length of mini-carrots vs. flopping water-balloon stomach
- "me time" guilt vs. involuntary rythmic farting
- Napping for 1/2 mile stretches vs. occasional dribbles
- Loaf of breast vs. slippery hip sockets

Final 4!
-  Chafed nipples the length of mini-carrots vs. involuntary rythmic farting
- Napping for 1/2 mile stretches vs. Loaf of breast

Championship round:
- involuntary rythmic farting vs. Loaf of breast

THE WINNER!
involuntary rythmic farting

Quiz: Should you get pregnant? (Part II)

7) I am willing to switch bodies with a total stranger who is clumsy and overweight
- yes   - no   -I hope my boobs get really freaking huge

8) I have a nice ass
- yes   - no    - rack also

9) I would like to set my alarm to go off every three hours for at least six months. Each time the alarm goes off, I will apply battery clamps to my nipples for 1/2 hour. I promise this will make me free profoundly peaceful and happy. I will love the battery clamps with all my heart.
- yes   - no   - I found God

10) In the last year, I have adopted two dogs, one cat, one bird, a turtle, a rabbit and a gerbil.
- yes   - no   - And saltwater aquarium

11) I have no friends or hobbies and I dislike quiet time alone with music, books, or TV. I don't have a computer.
- yes   - no   - not even cable

SCORING: Add up all the "yes" answers, subtract the "no" ones then multiply by the others. Then go ahead and get knocked up because the baby will be SO CUTE.

Quiz: Should you get pregnant?

1) I am willing to go to a hospital, do a truckload of drugs, then wake up the next day feeling like I'd been in an S&M experiment gone seriously awry. OR I am willing to skip the drugs first.
- yes   - no   - like last Friday?

2) My husband doesn't mind if I go insane
- yes   - no   -He's already in Mexico

3) I enjoy it when entire plane loads of people hate me
- yes   - no   - Also restaurant patrons

4) Breasts are sexy
-  yes   - no   - Seriously, no

5) I enjoy sleeping
- yes   - no   - I am an internist

6) Being enormous and barfing is acceptable:
- never   - Two months, max   - I've never felt so beautiful

Part II tomorrow: Your ass, and the final tally

January 1, 2011

Six hours after the plumber got here, he stood up and said, "that's enough!" as if our ancient sewer pipes personally insulted him, called him a name, "shit-head" maybe. Then he and Jeff went into the basement and somehow unleashed an unholy torrent of raw sewage right into our basement, leading to us evacuating the kids at 2 a.m. All I know is when your house is soaked in shit, it's no consolation if it's your own.

Book of mommy firsts

First dried booger kissed 4 times, on purpose: (18 months old) Booger squished into crib sheets, object of extreme adoration and fascination by baby, who kissed it repeatedly before insisting mommy kiss it, too.

First crap-loaded diaper changed in a public eating area when no one was looking: (10 months) After two days of constipation, at an ice cream stand near Boston. Chocolate malt crunch previously ordered left uneaten.

First snot sucked out of sick baby's nose: (3 weeks) This is by far the worse advice Tiffany has ever given me. So gross. Tiffany, you are on the advice black list, seriously.

First fart blamed on baby: (also 10 months) SeaTac airport carousel #6. Exact words: "Oh, sweetie, I'll change your dipey as soon as daddy gets the luggage."

Safety

Lee said baby Simon can shove 5 grapes in his mouth at once then Amy said "grapes are the #1 chokers of kids so be careful." Then we saw on the news how a little boy fell out a screen window and a girl drowned in a flower pot and babies die in their cribs and no one knows why. What the hell? Toilet clamps and drawer locks and socket covers are just little plastic talismans against the real world of drunk drivers and angry dogs and just plain bad luck. We are, terrifyingly, powerless.

Money

In that picture of Alexander Hamilton, the one on the $10 bill, he's super hot. How could I have not noticed that before?

From the archive: Ninja

Jeff wants me to sell my motorcycle because I'm likely to get killed on it and he's shy so finding another girlfriend as cool as me would be almost impossible and also a total pain in the ass.

My argument is that I should keep it because the open road calls my name, plus it's the only occasion I have to wear leather pants and stompy pink boots.

Today the Alaska viaduct was closed for hours. Traffic was backed up to yesterday. When we got to work at the newspaper we learned there had been an accident, a motorcycle vs. SUV fatality so bad even the people in the SUV had serious injuries.

We were talking about the sadness of this when Heidi the reporter yelled across the newsroom "hey Heather! Remember a couple months ago when that semi blew through the red light and almost smashed you on your motorcycle right outside the building? That was SO CLOSE!"

Jeff said, "I didn't know that."

"Um, I forgot to tell you," I said.

Right then I knew I lost the motorcycle argument, for good.

The House at Poo Corner update

We evacuated the house at 2 a.m. and have not returned. Meanwhile, an army of adjusters, professional crap-cleaners, dump haulers, backhoe drivers, pipe-camera operators, and assorted money grubbers have been there 24 hours a day enjoying the glory that is our absurdly sewage-soaked basement.

Of course, an illustration is in the works, made easier if I could find my #$@)*#% favorite pens.

What's your sign? I'm a feces

Jeff is in the basement with the plumber and they just opened the main sewage line, opened it right into the basement and I can hear splashing and Jeff going "ARRRGGH" and this horrid smell washed upstairs, all over the house, a smell so bad that changing the diapers of three babies for four years has not prepared me for this in the least. It's ungodly awful. I think Jeff just barfed. The plumber has tried many things, for hours, and now this. It was the last option.

Does your basement flooding with sewage on January 1 mean the whole year will be filled with terrible luck, or should we be happy that things can only improve from here on? At least the girls will be delighted; they spend half their day devising ways to say "poop" or things that rhyme with "poop" so they don't get in trouble for potty talk; in the face of this, worrying about if a 4-year-old says poop seems like a total waste of parenting energy. Because now it seems the entire house is coated in shit, old shit, decayed shit, the shit of demons and dragons and Boston drivers and all the most evil foul creatures real or imagined.

The plumber thinks the main line is broken. We are so screwed.