Things I've Learned Along the Way--Information Overload

I struggle with two competing parts of my personality. One part wants to read and learn everything there is in print (on paper and the web) on whatever particular subject is of interest. I am a prolific researcher, and can find and analyze seventeen different viewpoints on a subject in the time it takes me to eat a granola bar. This is the part of me that makes me a great student, and analytic thinker at work, and a well-informed person in general. Then there’s the other part of me that operates on instinct, and feels terrifically conflicted when too many viewpoints come together and contradict one another. In most parts of my life, I can feel my way through these conflicts, and figure out which data works for me, and which is just background noise. But there are times, especially when the stakes are high, that I experience information overload and I have a hard time finding my way through the pile of thoughts, philosophies and statistics, and seeing the way I should take.

Pregnancy, childbirth and parenting information have brought me to that second place. The stakes are so high. Look at the post below… the person in question here is perfect. If I take the wrong advice, do the wrong thing, I could potentially harm that perfect little being. I know that’s an overstatement, but the overwhelming experience of being a first-time parent doesn’t always lead one to understatement.

As I’ve slogged through the last 4.5 months of new-parenthood and the 9 months before it, I’ve alternated between reading everything I can get my hands on, and periods of “data abstinence” brought on so that I don’t lose my mind. I wholeheartedly recommend stepping away from the bookshelf from time to time, and not letting any overzealous authors, bloggers or web-board posters get under your skin.

I have found some books to be helpful to varying degrees, and wanted to post my thoughts on them.

• The ubiquitous What to Expect When You’re Expecting: Yes, I read it, but no I don’t recommend it. But I don’t recommend against it either. There are no secret pearls of wisdom in this book that aren’t available a hundred other places. That said, it is a decent compendium. Maybe if you don’t have internet access at home, it would be good to have a copy for reference.
• Ditto What to Expect the First Year: I actually have two copies of this. Again, no insights that the internet can’t give me. That said, I do keep a copy by the bed and I do refer to it at night, when I need to read something while the kiddo nurses. If you need a copy, let me know and I’ll send you my spare.
• The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy: Again, neither here nor there. There’s nothing new under the sun in this type of pregnancy book. But it did give a frank description of some of the less glamorous aspects of pregnancy and birth that others may gloss over or portray as insignificant. And it occasionally exuded some *mild* attitude that I liked. There are some kick-ass bloggers out there, however, that dish this attitude in spades and in a much funnier and more insightful way. I read a used copy from a garage sale. I think I paid the right amount for this book.
• The Nursing Mother’s Companion: I haven’t read a lot of books about breastfeeding, so I can’t give a comparative review, but this book was my best friend in the first few weeks of Emma’s life. Emma and I have had a fairly uncomplicated nursing relationship (good latch, decent supply), so I haven’t needed the expert knowledge of say, a lactation consultant. But I did have a LOT of questions about whether or not I was “doing it right” (e.g. frequency, duration, amount consumed, sleeping arrangements). I found a lot of very useful information in this book and would wholeheartedly recommend it a first-time mother who wants to nurse. I’ve heard that the follow-up books in this series lean toward the judgey-judgey side, so I can’t speak for them. But this one is on my top three list for sure.
• The Happiest Baby on the Block: It’s important to know what this book is for. It is not the answer to all of your baby’s sleep problems. It will not get your baby to “sleep through the night” if he/she is not inclined to do so already. The book is very narrowly focused at methods to get a newborn calm from crying/fussing. And at that, it is very good. Almost eerily good. If you’re expecting, get this book before the kiddo is born and be prepared. You can and should use the methods it suggests starting on day 1. Now that we’re at 4.5 months with Emma, not all of the remedies work anymore like they did in the earliest days, but some are still effective.
• Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child: Where to begin. I’ll try not to be too snarky. I know a lot of people who think this book is the gospel, but I honestly don’t know if they read it. I mean, really read it. Frankly, I don’t know if an editor read it before publication. Yes, it contains a lot of good scientific data about why good sleep patterns are important for a child. But it does not provide a prescriptive method for achieving said sleep. Basically it says, “some people use this one method and it works, others use this other method and it works, and I have no specific advice about which to try.” Then there’s that thing about it being written really poorly which irked me to no end. I am reading a self-help book about baby sleep because my child will not sleep. Consequently, I am tired. Very tired. As is probably just about everyone else who is reading this book. We should not have to re-read a paragraph two or three times to understand what the author is saying. Nor should we have to re-read the same information two to three times in the different (and sometimes even the same!) chapters because you forgot to edit the book. Often the author forgot to even write the book, and instead just posted his cryptic outlines. Okay, enough about that.
• Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems (aka, the Ferber book): This book is on its way to me from Amazon. As noted above, my child will not sleep. At least not for increments greater than 3 hours. I know this is tied to her development cycles and cannot be changed easily. But I’d like to get away from the every two-three hour night nursing schedule we’re currently on. So I need guidance about how to humanely not address all the crying that happens when Emma wakes up and wants to nurse. I know the Ferber method is contentious, but I’m going to at least read the book before I cast judgment. [For those not in the know, the Ferber method proscribes a method of graduated extinction, letting the baby learn to Cry-It-Out or otherwise self-soothe itself back to sleep. A lot of parenting activists believe this is cruel and unusual punishment. I do not yet know what I think.]
• Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense: Another I haven’t read yet, but one that comes highly recommended about beginning the transition to solid foods. So far, we think we’re going to attempt a system of baby-led weaning at around 6 months, rather than force-feed pureed baby foods. I’ll report back when I read the book and learn more.

No more suspense

Apologies, because these are low-res, and unless I want to spring $100 for the digital rights to them, that's how they'll stay.

Emma was a doll during the photo shoot (March 7) and only after they turned off the lights and we started to pack up did she fuss.  And fuss!  I hadn't taken much stock in getting photos like these done in the past, but given how these turned out, we'll be back!  Next time hopefully I'll be able to drag JMT along and get one of the whole family.

Sneak Peek--Part II

Sneak Peek---The Photoshoot

From the Bureau of Vital Statistics

At four months, Emma is 14 pounds, 2 ounces (64th percentile). She is now tall enough to dispense with the inches measurements, and will henceforth be measured in feet. My daughter is two foot two (97th percentile).

Where Babies Come From---or Sliding Ass Backwards Down that Slippery Slope

For four months now I’ve been mentally processing the story of how Emma came to join us and working through the challenges of that day and making peace with the way that reality didn’t line up with years of daydreams and expectations. I’ve been thinking it important that I write it down soon, before it gets much more blurry around the edges, so that the important parts aren’t forgotten, and so that I can lay the story to rest in my mind. In the end, Emma’s birth was an entirely different experience than I expected—and yet, I can’t really imagine having it be any other way.

It all began with a scheduled induction one week before Emma’s due date. After suffering through ten weeks of Braxton-Hicks contractions (six of which I was on Procardia to keep them from progressing), I was exhausted. I’d had severe edema initially brought on by the Procardia, and was exhausted, uncomfortable, irritable, and LARGE. At my 38 week appointment (a Thursday), my OB asked if I’d like to schedule an induction for the following Tuesday, which was her next day on-call at the hospital. I enthusiastically agreed, happy that I didn’t have to beg, but sad she hadn’t offered to do it that minute. Later on, I had mixed emotions about induction, knowing that it’s often the first step on a very slippery slope of interventions, and I second guessed my decision all weekend.

On Tuesday morning, we arrived at the hospital bright and early at 6:45, after dropping the dogs at doggie day-care, and one last trip through the McDonald’s drive-thru. The hospital was brand-new, having opened only a few months earlier. Within seconds of checking in, we were whisked down to our birth-suite. It was as nice as a hospital room can be—decorated like a swanky hotel, and as spacious as the top floor of our house. The nurse took my vitals, and my blood pressure was through the roof—after remaining very low throughout the pregnancy. I firmly believe that if I had gone to the doctor the day before, and she’d seen my BP, a diagnosis of pre-eclampsia would have been imminent and we would have ended up inducing that day or the next. After we settled in for a few minutes, the nurse came to start the Pitocin drip.

As much as I had read about inductions, I wasn’t prepared for the fact that once the drip was going, I would be tethered to a fetal monitor until the baby came. I couldn’t go more than three feet away from the monitoring machine for more than a few moments at a time—never longer than a quick trip to the bathroom.

The Pitocin started to regulate my erratic (albeit frequent) contractions, and I began to progress very, very slowly. I made the rounds from standing and swaying to birthing ball to a variety of positions in the bed throughout the course of the morning, doing everything I had learned in baby class to help things along. The nurse kept cranking up the Pitocin dose, JMT and I watched some daytime TV (Mythbusters, Dr. Phil, Days) and at one point our friend Jeff stopped by.

Nothing we did got the labor moving along though. So after a few hours, my doctor came by and performed an amniotomy. This was the first drama of the day. First of all, it was quite possibly the most uncomfortable part of the entire experience. I nearly climbed backwards up out of my skin to get away from the doctor. Poor JMT… having to watch that and then watch the chaos that followed. My ginormous belly was apparently chock-full of fluid. The most the poor nurse had ever seen, and according to my doc, close to the most she’d ever seen as well. After the rush of fluid, I zoned out for a few minutes. And it’s good I did, so that I didn’t freak out from the commotion. Once they broke the water, the baby’s heartbeat crashed for a short-period. About five minutes went by before she stabilized and we could breathe easy again.

I’d been hoping that after the amniotomy, the labor would start chugging along, and it did a little, but not enough. I was eventually pressured into receiving an epidural by the nurse after the contractions I was having took over as back labor and I was dilated to about a 3. I maintain that the nurse was too pushy about the epidural, and that I could have and maybe should have lasted a lot longer without it. That said, I was tired and weak, and I didn’t take much convincing. Then came another piece of the puzzle I knew about but wasn’t prepared for—once I had the epidural, they wouldn’t let me out of the bed. So my labor really slowed down.

So now I’m stuck in the bed, and my labor isn’t progressing much, and it’s getting to be about dinner time. JMT went down to the cafeteria and got some spaghetti and I worked on some Jell-O and apple juice. Here’s a question. When they give you Jell-O in the hospital, why is it the sugar-free kind? I needed a little blood-sugar boost, and no amount of the imposter Jell-O would give it to me!

The doc and nursing staff convened and decided to start cranking up my Pitocin drip, and when they would, my contractions would get more regular and start to resemble the little peaks and valleys that they should. Problem was, however, that every time a contraction would start to be productive, little baby Teal would start to crash. Her heart rate would slow during the contraction—which is to be expected. The problem was that it wouldn’t get back to where it was supposed to be before another contraction would come. So over time, she was getting more and more compromised. It got worse as things continued, and we were really beginning to worry about the kiddo. My doctor brought up the possibility of a C-section, and we were not happy about that. We asked that she try any means left to stabilize the baby without resorting to a C.

After she thought about it for a bit, the doctor provided one more chance to avoid a C. She reintroduced fluid in the amniotic sac through something like a reverse catheter in order to relieve the baby’s distress. This worked for a little while, but my labor practically stopped because they had cranked the Pitocin back down to almost nothing in order to alleviate Emma’s distress. So then we were stuck in a holding pattern. We could keep Emma out of distress by not inducing labor further, but the clock was ticking now that my waters had been broken. I was already running a slight fever, so they were starting to worry about infection. We were no longer standing at the top of a slippery slope. We were sliding down it at mach speed, ass-over-teakettle.

By this point, it was about 8:45 pm. We were sapped after a full day of labor and fear about the baby. Our friends Jeff and Christina had been sitting with us for a while, and helped us make peace with what we had gone through. We assented to the C.

Turns out, a C-Section ain’t that bad. At least not for me. After we gave the okay, things happened very, very fast. JMT got suited up in scrub gear, I took off my jewelry and we were whisked down the hall. The part that took the longest was my doctor trying to figure out how to assemble a piece of the operating table that had been removed earlier in the evening in error. By 9:44, our little Emma (who was yet unnamed) was in JMT’s arms. Although I was completely awake for it, the C-Section wasn’t painful. Because of the epidural I could feel pressure and pulling during the procedure, but no pain. JMT sat by my shoulder and looked over the curtain from time to time. He saw my insides. He saw them take Emma from my tummy. Hearing her cry and seeing JMT hold her was the happiest moment of my life. I have never been filled with more joy. I was so proud of the family we’d created.

When the doctor announced that Emma’s umbilical cord had been wrapped twice around her tiny neck, the day’s drama made total sense, and all of a sudden the slippery slope didn’t matter any more. I went through the check-list of decisions I’d second guessed, and realized at almost every step, if I hadn’t taken my chosen path, things may have been worse. Specifically, if I hadn’t intentionally scheduled the induction, I believe my spike in blood pressure would have necessitated it anyways. Also, given the distress Emma encountered after the amniotomy, if I had waited for my water to break naturally, something catastrophic could have happened to her. Also, if I had labored naturally, I still would have likely ended up with a C-section, after the fetal distressed caused by the cord wrapped around Emma’s neck. At least we had the chance to mentally prepare and ask all our questions, instead of being whisked away for an emergency C during a more chaotic time in labor.

So… a long story, and one that I’m okay with now. Having a C-section was not my plan. There’s a lot of radical pregnancy propaganda out there that vilifies the C-section and those who choose it. It’s taken some time and a lot of mental processing to be at peace with the way things turned out. Now that a few months have passed and I’ve started thinking about when we might make another little one (not today, don’t worry) I’ve started thinking about my plan for next time. And rather surprisingly, I’ve willingly and happily accepted the idea of having a scheduled C-section next time instead of trying for a VBAC. I think for me, the drama with Emma’s birth was a result of things spiraling out of my control, not the ultimate means by which she was born.

So next time, a (scheduled C without a million hours of labor preceding it. I’ll be smarter about my recovery (no cooking Thanksgiving dinner two weeks postpartum) and more assertive about my desires (give me the kiddo to nurse and cuddle once before you wheel me away to recover for a couple of hours). I’ll know what to expect to some extent, and be able to enjoy every minute of the baby’s first days because I won’t be so busy beating myself up for the way he or she came into the world. Of course, that’s my Plan A. Goodness only knows what my Plan B will entail!

Somebody Please Explain

How last night, Emma managed to take her pants off inside her Swaddle Me?

(Photo from this morning, after missing pants discovered and changed for daytime)

Whaddya think?

New background. Too much? Just right?

Things I've learned Along the Way--Part I

A good friend of mine from high school told me the other day that she’s pregnant.  I am so excited for her, and I can’t help but think of all the things I’ve learned in the past four months or so that I wish I’d known then.  I’ve been keeping a mental list of things I don’t want to forget for next time around.  So, as time allows, I thought I’d jot them down here for posterity.  Mostly so that the next time I find myself with child, I’ll have a handy reference.  And if I can be helpful to anyone else, all the better.

 

For the hospital stay:

• Don’t worry about packing a small, cute bag.  Pack a bag that’s big enough for everything you think you might want, and has room to spare for the gifts that will likely arrive at the hospital.
• Bring an extra empty tote bag too, just in case you have an overflow situation.
• Bring the Boppy (or other nursing pillow).  It’s hard to position the crappy hospital pillows just right, especially with a C-Section scar.
• Pack at least two pairs of PJs for each day you think you’ll stay there.  Saving room in the bag by not packing enough clothing isn’t a good idea.
• Make sure the clothes you pack are things you don’t ever need to see again, in case lanolin, milk or other stains render them unwearable after the hospital stay.
• Make sure the husband packs enough clothing too.  Maybe he shouldn’t be in charge of packing his own bag.
• Bring snacks or baked goods for the nursing staff. 
• Bring snacks for the husband too.
• Don’t be in a hurry to check out of the hospital.  Taking care of the baby at home is a lot harder than taking care of the baby in the hospital, where you have no other responsibilities besides said baby.  Stay as long as the hospital and your insurance will let you.

 

 

Sweet Sixteen

Emma is sixteen weeks old today, and I thought it important to take stock of where she is these days, since the times, they are a changin'.  And fast.

Right now, Emma's main trick is to smile her drooly, gummy smile at you, and "agah" and "gee" (with a hard G as in goose) at you until melt.  She can change gears so quickly, going from a wail to a gee in the same breath.  She loves her hands, and spends much of the day weaving her fingers together and putting both hands in her mouth.  She has almost entirely given up the pacifier in favor of a finger or a fist, which she sucks on noisily and joyfully.

Emma has terrific head control, and can hang out in a baby push-up position almost indefinitely.  She rolled over a half-dozen times last week, but seems now to have forgotten how.  She also now enjoys the exersaucer (though my design aesthetic does not).  She'll sit in it for about 10 minutes with her tiny mitts on the little book/mirror combo, smiling at the sunshine toy. 

Emma is sleepy in the mornings, and I have to wake her to get dressed and nurse one last time before I take her to daycare.  When I unswaddle her, she stretches and yawns and rubs her eyes, and makes the biggest goofy smiles when I say "Good Morning".  She is an angel in the mornings.

But not so much at night.  Sometime around 6:30 or 7:00 most nights, Emma starts to fall apart and needs constant nursing, jiggling, or cuddling to keep it together.  We are working on establishing our nighttime routine, which normally entails a 7:30 bedtime.   With the time change next week, I know things will be up in the air again, so I'm not holding my breath.

Here's a picture of daddy and baby from last week: