Take a Walk on the Child Side

I had a conversation tonight with someone who made me think about what happens when you become a parent... where does your old life go?  Does it die and go to heaven? Get lost in the ether? Perhaps it's just taking a break in the Bahamas.  Well, I can't really answer that question because all the things that make me ME are still there... I'm still an indie-rock-loving vegan who often forgets to brush her hair that has an incredible soft spot for hand-knit scarves and cheap red wine. But it is also true that I haven't been on a date with my husband in over eight months, haven't been to a happy hour in over a year, and can no longer fit my boobs in to any of my old bras.  You would at least think that last one would be a perk, no pun intended, but my boobs aren't so much bigger as they are just shaped differently. Sigh.
But those things pale in comparison to the joy my son brings.  Now, I'm not the mom who sugar coats my reality in the defense of motherhood perfection... yes, I would love an excuse to actually put on makeup & there are times where I am ready to throw up the white flag, but motherhood is complicated. It's frustrating & dirty & tiring. But it's also humbling & hilarious & sincere.
Not only does your life change, but the world itself changes.  Once you put on those mommy glasses, everything grows fangs and claws... the world becomes seemingly dangerous.  Before my son's birth, I had not one maternal bone in my body.  I would have rather swallowed diaper pins than spend an afternoon with someone who couldn't use toilet paper, let alone "use their words".  But once I saw my son for the first time, I immediately felt an intense, primal instinct to protect him.  I still do, and I find myself getting offended when people talk about children as if they were cockroaches.  I had someone who always said to me, "You don't have kids, so you don't understand." That would irritate me to the moon and back... of COURSE I didn't understand! How could I have? So I try to extend a courtesy to people that they really DON'T get it and not fault them for something they haven't experienced.  But when I see snarky things online about kids at the pool or babies chewing on merchandise at stores my inner mama bear starts to stir.  I've been on both sides of the equation, and personally, I like being on this one.  The moments of pure & innocent joy from a child more than make up for the moments of dirty diapers and lost sleep.

Nothing will teach you to live in the moment like having a baby, because that's all a baby has-- the present.  One minute you are living on sunshine & unicorns... and then you pull your head out of the rainbow because your sweet little angel has morphed into an inconsolable gremlin who wants nothing to do with you and all you want is a cocktail but you can't have one because it's only 3 o'clock in the afternoon and good mommies read to their children instead of making gin and tonics so you rock your gremlin side to side and get a bottle thrown in your face while singing Yellow Submarine because let's face it you're no John or Paul or George or Ringo and your gremlin KNOWS it because otherwise if you were he wouldn't be screaming because all John was saying was give peace a god damn chance and now all you can do is cry with your gremlin because you're exhausted and that's when you realize... you're gremlin is no longer crying... he is fast asleep in your arms. So you put him in his crib, look down at that sleeping baby and say to yourself, "what an angel".  And that's only something a mother could understand.

On your stretch mark, get set, go!

Each week during my pregnancy my husband photographed my ever-expanding belly.  I loved comparing the weekly silhouettes and mentally documenting their differences.  Until some time in the third trimester.  That's when I noticed the tattoo on my hip (or at least where my hip used to be) was looking less like an ohm and more like a blown out tire.  I thought I had narrowly escaped the wrath of rapidly stretching skin, but it turns out they were there all along, hidden beneath my range of vision. As any mama knows, with a growing belly comes the disappearance of any body part below the belly button.  This can lead to some hairy situations (pun DEFINITELY intended).
For a while I suffered from SSMD--Serious Stretch Mark Denial, and by this point, my favorite sentence was "Hun, can I have another brownie?"  And so it went, and 37 pounds later I was teetering dangerously close to the 200 mark on the scale.  But I didn't care, because I was making a human!  And we all know that takes a LOT of chocolate.  Besides, slap a little cocoa butter on that belly and those stretch marks will disappear faster than your post pardum sex life.
Seven  months later and I am still the proud owner of those little (big) red lines, happy reminders that my body is actually pretty extraordinary. Besides, scars are poetic, so why should stretch marks be any different?  If you got 'em, rock 'em.

Oh, go suck a nipple!

So today I woke up a bit early to do my morning routine sans baby... pour a cup of coffee, kiss the husband goodbye, and log onto cafemom and check out "the stir" (it's like huffpost for mamas). Lately though, the site has been irritating the crap out of me because it has become extremely conservative, and, well, I'm not.  My problem here isn't the columnists' opinions necessarily, but their inability to see things from another perspective.  For instance, this morning I came across THIS little gem of an article...

http://thestir.cafemom.com/baby/123763/pumping_moms_face_risks_we

This made my blood boil.  I think it's deplorable that the topic has been raised, especially with such negative connotation.  If breast pumping was being studied to give other pumping women support, fantastic, because holy shit is pumping difficult. But this is just another way to make women feel guilty for not breastfeeding... and it's still breast milk!! Yes, we all know that breast is best, but what about the moms who can't do it, or choose not to?  There is a multitude of reasons, and each mama is different, and each baby is different.  So if a woman is committed to pumping, she should be praised for all her efforts, not made to feel scared about "hidden dangers" or guilty about improper use of oxytocin output.

Some mothers don't have a choice, especially if they go back to work.  And maybe they do have to pump in bathrooms... that doesn't mean each mother is an idiot who is gonna stick the bottle in the toilet before expressing milk! And have you ever tried to cuddle a baby while pumping to obtain maximum bonding experience? If you consider cuddling doing a balancing act like something out of cirque du soleil, sure then. In all seriousness, I am tired of hearing other mothers try to one-up each other on the breast feeding front.  Why must we try to validate ourselves in this manner?  It doesn't make us better mamas, and it certainly doesn't make us better girlfriends. 

Clearly I had trouble breast feeding.  It started about 15 minutes after my son's birth... when he stopped breathing.  This was the most horrifying moment of my life, as any mother can imagine, but after bagging him and giving him some air he was breathing again.  But because of this episode, he was whisked off to the nursery for a battery of tests, leaving me with no baby.  Needless to say, I didn't have the opportunity to try to breastfeed after birth.  Once I could walk and visit him in the nursery, I tried my first go at breast feeding... not successful.  Apparently, the pregnancy had caused my left nipple to invert, so I was instructed to get nipple shells to try to pop that sucker out again.  This made me look like I was walking around with golf balls in my bra, but the maternity ward is no place for vanity, so I just kept on truckin'.  I repeatedly tried breastfeeding at the hospital, but Holden was NOT having it, and the nurses were not helpful.  On my last day at the hospital, I finally got the lactation consultant I had been needing.  When she saw Holden push me away and scream when I tried to feed him, she introduced me to the SNS (supplemental nursing system).  This was a little device used to finger feed babies who have latching issues.  Once we got home, I desperately tried to continue breastfeeding. No luck.  The next morning however, I woke up to Nature's boob job, and I ran around the house topless for about an hour because for the first time in my life I had boobs!  But this was short lived, because I was severely engorged and my breasts felt like they were in vice grips. I was advised to put cabbage leaves on them to help the swelling go down, so now I ran around the house looking more like a salad. In the meantime, I was pumping every two hours.  This became MORE than a full time job, especially since all I had was a single pump.  So, I would pump one boob for 20 mins, then pump the other for 20 mins.  Then I would assemble the SNS & feed my son. This was a painfully slow process, as the SNS was difficult for Holden to master. After feeding the baby, I had to wash the SNS, put the nipple shells back on, and clean the pump.  After the entire process was finished, it was basically time to do it again. My life was set on repeat, and I was exhausted. 

Shortly after the baby was born, my in-laws flew to California to come see their Grandson.  Lucky for me, my mother-in-law was an OB nurse for 40 years, and volunteered to help me feed the baby.  I figured she would have me well versed in the art of breast feeding in no time.  After multiple attempts, we weren't getting anywhere... Holden was just one of those babies that absolutely refused to latch on, so I just kept pumping.  And pumping.  And pumping.  Somewhere in week two of my son's life,  I started popping capillaries in my left breast, causing me to pump blood.  This was my breaking point.  All I wanted to do was give my baby what nature had intended and my body was not cooperating.  Thank goodness my husband was so incredibly supportive, because I was seriously about to jump off of the Manhattan Beach Pier and plummet into the depths of the Pacific Ocean.  Shortly thereafter, I noticed my supply was not where it should be, and I was no longer able to produce enough milk to keep up with my son's needs.  I started taking fennugreek & blessed thistle from the health food store & drank a special tea.  I also had to buy a natural nipple cream because all the pumping had left my nips sore, cracked, scabbed, and bleeding.  Despite all this, I continued to pump.  I pumped around the clock every day for four months straight, until I dried up. 

The inability to breastfeed my child in no way compromised our bonding experience.  We started out cuddling skin-to-skin, and continue to bond in other ways such as story time and physical therapy.  Holden has torticollis, which may actually explain why he couldn't latch on... it may have just been too painful for him to turn his little head.  But now everyday we work on it and I encourage him & celebrate his progress, no matter how slight.  Also, bottle feeding our son has meant that Dad gets to join in too, so he gets to bond with his baby in that manner & I can take a quick shower or finish the dishes!

Thankfully I had an amazing team of cheerleaders in my corner... my husband, my mother-in-law, and my girlfriend Jordan (aforementioned milf in previous post). Without them I don't think I could have carried on for as long as I did.  Which brings me back to my original point... we should be encouraging & praising women for pumping--it's a lot of work!! Even if a mother chooses to formula feed her baby from birth, we should be supportive of her, not critical.  Giving birth and raising a child is hard enough, so let's do ourselves and mommies everywhere a favor... don't be such a boob.

Hunny, does this haircut make me look fat?

So, I'm a mom (as you may have noticed), but does that mean I have to look like a mom?  Don't get me wrong here, I wear my spit-up-and-mashed-banana badges (and of course, the stretch marks) proudly, but there are some things that are just not up for debate.  I have already sacrificed my waist and thighs, what else is there??

I admit it... I am guilty of wearing my gauchos more than I should and my hair looks like it's trying to eat itself, but hey, I'm trying.  It's not easy making time for yourself when you're a mom, especially when your clothes dryer is a string between two wooden poles and your dishwasher needs a manicure. I have no clue how the moms-of-yore did it. I complain about the A/C not being high enough, and they were having babies in fields and then plowing those fields ten minutes later.  All the while I am sure they didn't give a damn about what their hair looked like.  Well, I do, and in one of those "I have to get out of the freaking house NOW or I'm gonna go POSTAL!" moments, I handed off my screeching bundle of joy to the husband and decided to treat myself to a haircut. Apparently, it's been so long since I have had a conversation with someone who doesn't raspberry me in response that I have simply forgotten how to communicate.  I may as well have sent a feral cat to explain how I wanted my hair to look, because next thing I knew, my previously boob length hair is up to my shoulders. WTF?! I said I DIDN’T want mom hair! My hair is now so sad that it needs Zoloft. I guess that’s what I get for leaving the kitchen. Sigh.

Well, I may be rocking the mom-do (until it grows out or I dye it purple), but you sure as hell won’t see me driving a minivan… that’s where I draw the line.  Yeah they’re practical for carpooling and hauling kids to soccer practice, but they are just so un-cool.  Although I do have a girlfriend who drives one, but she doesn’t count because she’s a total MILF who would look hot in a potato sack (I know… if I didn’t love her, I’d kill her).  So I guess I will just have to go to play dates & listen to Nirvana lullabies in my Subaru. 

At least that’s one thing I can handle, because this “mom” thing is no joke.  I started this blog three days ago, and after every few words I type somebody needs something.  The dogs need to go out, the baby needs a diaper change, or my husband needs to poop, therefore rendering him useless to baby-tending.  My life revolves around everyone’s bathroom schedule.  At least it no longer revolves around the laundry/weather schedule.  When I started this blog, I was still line drying my laundry.  At first I was doing it for environmental reasons, as I consider us a pretty eco-friendly home, and then one day it rained.  And it rained the next day.  And the next. And the next.  I checked weather.com and the 10 day forecast was scattered t-storms every. damn. day. Considering we use cloth diapers, my job as Mommy just got even harder.  Our bathroom & kitchen had been converted into a full scale drying operation, with bibs & undies hanging from every knob, hook, and bar.  My home was starting to look like a frat house.  After a month of drying my laundry in this manner, my husband noticed that half of my mom-hair was now gray, and finally got me a new (used) dryer from craigslist.  And let me tell you, you know you are getting old when getting a household appliance is better than smoking a cigarette after sex. 

Anyways, the next morning my husband hooked up the new (used) dryer, and there was so much excitement in the air that HE did the first load of laundry!  And again, let me tell you, you know you’re old and married when your husband doing laundry is the sexiest thing you’ve seen in a while.  Moving on.  With this new found freedom from line drying, I managed to save all sorts of time. I tried to incorporate this idea by multi-tasking as many things as possible, so when my husband announced that he was taking a shower, I made him take the kid in there with him.  Of course, right after I put shampoo on my son’s head (because obviously the husband needed help), the water shuts off.  What the…??   Turns out a wasp family decided to build its nest in MY water pump, blowing the motor. Clearly, no eco-deed goes unpunished, and now I can’t even wash the damn laundry. Or flush the toilet. Or rinse the shampoo off my kid’s head. But I did learn a valuable lesson… when life hands you soapy babies, call the repair guy.

Let's do the time warp again.

Things have been a little bit crazy lately (in-laws, weddings, indigestion), so I haven't had the time to post any new tales from the Deviant.  Let's be honest, I don't even have time to shower.  Ew.  With that being said, I'd like to share a pregnancy flashback.  It's kinda like an acid flashback... except the only drug you're on is prenatals. Enjoy.

October 25, 2010
The day otherwise known as "The day I find out I gained 19 pounds & have a cavity." Ugh.
Today is my Glucose test.  Just another one of those things you don't find out about until you are actually pregnant.  Per Doc's orders, I down the sugary syrup in under five minutes, pretending once again that I am a college freshman & this crap I have to drink is an ice cold brew.  Now I get to be poked with more needles.  Hooray.
After waiting at the OB's office for about 37 years, we finally get called to a room.  This, of course, after having peed all over my hand during a routine urine sampling, and also after being weighed (Wait, what? I'm sorry, your scale is broken, I don't recognize those numbers).

While sitting in the tiny room, I look at Ben-- I think about things like how truly lucky I am to have him in my life... He's going to be such an awesome dad... how it must look good to everyone in the doctor's office that he comes to each & every appointment with me.  We are a loving, mature couple totally ready to start a family.  It's right about now that he gets up from his chair & starts playing with the Nuva Ring samples & taking pictures of the STD poster on the wall... "EW! Scabies!" Sigh.
After a few minutes of Ben educating me on the wonders of pubic lice, I become very cranky due to my sugar crash.  I am beginning to think a cyanide test would have been more appropriate.  Rapidly approaching a ten on the crank-o-meter, Ben tries to divert my attention by grabbing the light on the table. You know, the one they use to actually look into your vagina.  Turns out this light can be used for more than just vaginal spelunking: it is perfect for casting shadow puppets on the wall across from the STD poster. 
It was that day that I discovered my husband's hidden talent for shadow animals.  It was also that same day that my OB, too, discovered Ben's hidden talent, since she opened the door mid-flying bat.

The Anti-Rhyme

So you've just had a baby... congrats!  You've weathered the morning sickness and the episiotomy ("You want to cut me WHERE?!") and now it's time to bring that little pooping and burping bundle of joy home.  You swaddle her tight, sink into your rocker (Ouch! Damn stitches!), and... now what?  The panic sets in.  You have no flipping clue how to entertain this thing.  You quickly comb through what's left of your brain cells and it hits you--Sing! Good mommies SING to their babies!  Only one problem... is mama supposed to buy you a mockingbird, or a Dyson? Crap.  Through all the panting and pushing, the little file where you kept nursery rhymes fell out when your water broke.  But fear not, this is where your inner Deviant enters the scene with the Anti-Rhyme. 

Just rewrite any of your favorite tunes using words like "poop" and you're golden... like that diaper you just changed. Or, if new mommyhood has claimed the last of your brain cells, feel free to borrow some of my own masterpieces. Keep in mind, this tactic is good across all genres of music, so the possibilities are endless.

Genre 1: Bad 80's hair bands

sung to the tune of "Cherry Pie" by Warrant: "Heeeee's myyyy punkin pie/little bitty guy with a stork bite eye!"  

Hey man, it doesn't have to be genius... as long as the kid smiles or is momentarily distracted from ripping out the dog's fur again, your job is done.

Genre 2: 90's sock-over-the-peener alterna-rock bands

sung to the tune of "Love Roller Coaster" by RHCP: "Your mama's got/a dirty dipey in her hand!/oh yes she does!" (change dipey) "your mama's got/a clean dipey in her hand!/oh yes she does!"

Genre 3: Oldies but Goodies

sung to the tune of "Hanky Panky" by Tommy James & the Shondells: "My baby's got a dirty dipey!/oh yeah, my baby's got a dirty dipey!" (repeat like, a billion times) "I saw him walkin' on down the line, yeah/his dipey's dirty for the very first time, yeah/he said hey ma what's in my pants?/oh hey mama I just don't understand/cause my baby's got a dirty dipey (insert whammy bar guitar sounds)"

Genre 4: Classic/Psychedelic/This-light-show-is-gonna-blow-your-mind Rock

sung to the tune of "Another Brick in the Wall" by Pink Floyd: "We don't need no dirty dipeys/we don't need no poop patrol/no dirty dipeys on your booty/Hey! (insert child's name here)! Leave them dipes alone!"

Before you know it, the whole fam will be joining you on your quest to find the perfect Anti-Rhyme... I've caught my husband singing "Ticket to Ride" by The Beatles using the words "My baby's got hair".  See?  You can do it.  But as for those brain cells coming back, you're own your own there.

Oh the joys of having a boy...

I've known for months now that my boy was, well, a boy.  He on the other hand, hasn't... until recently.  Every time the diaper comes off, it's a race to the nether-regions.  I honestly didn't expect to deal with this for another decade or so, and what started out as a harmless game of hide-and-seek has turned into full scale weenie-warfare.

Exhibit A, changing a pee-dipe: "OMG! Doesn't that HURT him?! He's damaging my future grandchildren!!"

but this is small potatoes (no pun intended) compared to exhibit B...

Exhibit B, changing a poo-dipe: "Oh man, what did you eat kid? No Holden! Don't touch that!!"

Now begins the following sequence... Poop in dipe.  Poop on peener.  Boy grabs peener.  Poop on hand.   Grab hand, grab wipe.  Boy kicks diaper.  Poop on foot.  Grab feet.  Hand now in mouth.  Grab hand again.  Wipe hand, wipe mouth.  Grab another wipe.  Boy grabs feet.  Poop on hand, again.  Wipe feet.  Poop on legs... really??  Grab another wipe.  Boy grabs overly expensive, embroidered teddy bear from Nannie & Papa.  Poop on bear.  Wipe hands, wipe bear.  Somewhere in there wipe peener & bottom.  Say screw it and put boy in bath.  Boy grabs peener. *Sigh*