E One

So tonight I hooked up my old E-one machine. Remember that one? Probably not.

I found a lot of old writings. The bad news was that I was terribly lonely and deeply depressed. I was in my late teens/early 20s. Could there be a silver lining to that?

OMG yes! The fiction I wrote back then – holy moly! I had no idea I could write like that. It was beautiful, reflective, thoughtful. I felt like I was reading someone else’s writing. If the content wasn’t so personal maybe I would have thought it was.

Obviously I don’t want to go back to that place, and I’ve done so much work on myself I hopefully couldn’t anyway. That was 15 years or so ago. How do I get that back?

I suppose it’s time to practice.

Weekend Warriors

Beauty and the Bumble

I’m taking a blogging course currently, and today’s topic is Absolute Beauty.  The prompt is as follows:

“We’ve all heard that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Do you agree? is all beauty contingent on a subjective point of view?”

Since I am juggling  this blogging course with my own personal blog, I am using the prompt for today’s inspiration.  This will be happening quite frequently throughout the class.  Just an advanced warning.

Beauty and the Bumble.  What does that mean?  Well by now I hope you’ve figured out that Bumbles are babies.  Bumble is my particular baby in this blog.  Since we are on the topic of subjective beauty, I thought I would approach it in accordance with this.

We all have an ideal of what our baby is going to look like.  We imagine the perfect little mini-me or mini-spouse or ideal adopted baby.  In the adoption cases, you may even be able to pick out your baby or child before the adoption takes place.  For other circumstances and for those having a surrogate or their own, this is not the case.

I, for example, thought my baby was going to be a boy.  By week 20 we were certain she was not.  I also pictured a blonde headed, brown eyed, well, mini-me!  In reality, Bumble is pretty much mini-spouse.  She has dark hair that turns into tight curls when wet.  (Mama rushes to brush them straight before they dry lest they look like a baby-fro!)  She has light blue eyes that are in no rush of changing color.  Her eyebrows are darkening, and she is loooong.  Those of you who know me know what I mean when I say she is the opposite.

I do, however, see my face shape.  I see my cheekbones.  I see my family nose.  In certain angles she is unmistakably from my mother’s side.

My mother in law commented just last night that she favors my husband.

Do we see our own families in our children?  Do we make it a point to look for these similarities?  Does it make us connect to them better to see them that way?  I have a feeling if there are studies done on this, they would all say yes.

Next time you are talking about a baby, listen to what people say.  How many times do you hear, oh so-and-so looks just like so-and-so!  He/she has his/her nose!  Mouth!  Chin!  You get the picture.

So what happens if you don’t see those similarities?  Are you less connected to your child?  Is it true that children are created in our own likeness? (And yes, I get the science behind it and the genetics; this is a more philosophical question.) It is shown that attractiveness aids in development because of the attention given to the individual.  Is this the first case of that?

I also wonder is that what makes us think an ugly baby is ugly?  For instance, since the baby bears no resemblance to us our our families, do we think the baby is ugly?

Either way, it’s all subjective.  Beauty is for sure in the eye of the beholder.  And when the beholder is a parent, there is no shortage of adoration.

Beer!

One thing I really missed when I was pregnant was beer.  Before I got pregnant, I had just started venturing outside of my Miller Lite box and into the delicious world of ales and pilsners.  I like my wine dry and oaky, I like my beer hoppy!  We had gone to a beer festival and I got to try some of the best hoppy IPAs and couldn’t wait to sample more.  What made it even better was that my husband brewed beer, so I would get to explore my palate even more.

Obviously when I got pregnant I had to give that up, and it was easy.  I had no resentment or problem.  I did miss the social aspect of it, and at first friends wondered why I wasn’t joining in on nights out.  The hubs brewed a special ale for the baby shower.  Everyone kept saying how great his beers were, and luckily he saved me some.

Then I started finding out about breastfeeding and I found out that I couldn’t have a celebratory glass of champagne in the hospital like my mom wanted to do.  The Bumble would be eating so frequently and alcohol passes so freely in your system that it was not feasible.  Oh well, I figured.  I can wait.

Well she is almost 3 months old now and going about 6 hours between feedings at night.  According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, alcohol is considered a safe consumable; with limitations of course.  Alcohol should not exceed one drink per day, and breastfeeding should wait until at least 2 hours after consumption to give the body time to get rid of the alcohol.  The pump and dump method is a farce; milk contains alcohol just as the blood does.  Pumping and dumping does nothing.

So last night I decided to take the plunge!  My husband bought me a Founder’s Pale Ale, and poured it for me after her last feeding of the night.  I drank it within an hour, along with water.  Bumble did not want to eat for another 4 hours, so I felt good about that.  Although I did worry in the morning, I kept remembering that it was one drink and I had continued to drink water all night long.

I decided that I will let myself have a beer on Friday and Saturday nights only right now.  This will give me something to look forward to and a chance to ease into it.  Also I just don’t have the urge to drink much.  It is nice to relax with a beer, but it’s even nicer to cuddle with my little baby.  🙂

If you are a mom, do you have an occasional drink?  If you aren’t a mom, do you think you would?  I’m interested to hear since this seems to be a hot topic!

Leapfrog

Bumble has been strong since birth.  She, like all babies, was able to lift her head to breathe.  I believe this is called the Moro reflex.  But as time went on, her head control and strength just kept growing.  At a month old, she could hold up her head for a good amount of time if she was leaning her body on yours.  On the floor she used her back to hold up her head as she built up her arm strength.

My husband and I are very happy that she asks for tummy time.  We will be cuddling or something and she will start kicking her legs and getting fidgety.  We learned very fast that this was her way of saying, let me try to crawl!  And try to crawl she does.  We put our hands against the soles of her feet and she pushes off.  She does her pushups, building up her upper body strength.  We also let her use her legs independently.

When she uses her legs by herself, they usually are in the air, kicking.  She is trying to make contact with the floor, but her body makes almost a C shape as she arches to lift her head up as well.  Last Friday, the 5th, she did it.  She made contact!

There were a lot of grunts.  There was more arching and kicking.  Then her foot made contact with the floor while kicking and pushing up on her arms.  Boom!  She moved forward – On Her Own.  What?  I ran and got my phone to take video.  She did it again!

This type of move is apparently called the Leapfrog.  Look it up if you don’t know.  I didn’t.  It is a type of crawl and my 2 month old did it! Today is the 11th and we finally got a repeat.  I didn’t get video this time, but a repeat is good news!  This means that it will hopefully become more frequent and lead to other things.  Other things that make us baby proof the whole house and chase her.  Bittersweet.  🙂

Progress!

Woohoo!

Bumble is officially over 6 lbs!

She weighed 5lbs 14oz at birth, and went down to 5lbs 4oz by the time we left the hospital.  My milk had just come in, so when we went to the pediatrician the next day, she weighed in at 5lbs 6oz.  Our next appointment was a week later, and she was 5lbs. 9oz.  The pediatrician was not entirely happy with that weight, and we talked about breastfeeding and she asked us to come back in a few days later for a weight check.  The next check was 5lbs. 12oz.  Better!

That was this past Monday.  Today is Saturday.  Upon weighing her every few days, I noticed she wasn’t gaining, even though I was breastfeeding as the doctor said to.  So I went to good ol’ Google and did some research.  After days of basically non stop feeding, I tiptoed into the bathroom this morning to weigh her.  (Bobby does not like me being obsessed about weighing her.  Also, I feel it’s important to mention that I am using our bathroom scale.  This isn’t a smart move usually, but I know that it lines up with the pediatrician because I weighed her before our visit last time and both came out the same.)

Sometimes I have premonitions.  At least, I like to think I do.  🙂  When I was on my way to the bathroom, I thought of 6.2 for some reason.  When I weighed her, guess what the number was?  That’s right – 6.2lbs!  I looked up the conversion and that comes out to 6lbs. 3oz.  Once again…Woohoo!!

My advice to anyone trying to breastfeed is don’t give up!  And educate yourself.  Once I learned about what was probably going on with our situation, I took steps to remedy.  It hasn’t been long enough to say it has made a difference, but I think it has just going by the weight gain.  There are so many resources on the web, at the hospital, or even people that you know.  Pick their brains, try things out.  It’s so worth it!