Crouching Tiger; Hidden Dragon....

Sleeping baby. Today Sadie fell as asleep while I was putzing around the house. It was sublime to have such effortless time with her. I am falling hard for this kid.

One MONTH

Jeff did his one-month photo shoot of Sadie yesterday on her official one-month birthday. Mommy had a tough day yesterday. I woke up feeling pretty good, but then I turned a dark corner and decided I was fed up with being fat and ugly and out of control every second of every day. And then my uterus starting hurting again and I just kind of lost my ability to comprehend that all of this is temporary and could change as early as sundown. I wanted to snap out of it and enjoy the beautiful day with Sadie and Jeff, but my perspective was hopelessly lost in a way that I could not regain it until I had either had a weekend at Canyon Ranch or at least 7 hours of sleep.

I rallied in the afternoon when a colleague from work and her husband brought us hamburgers with brie and truffle oil, along with homemade guacamole and salsa. We felt so cared for and so understood when they swooped in and had all the fixings for a feast. And, brilliantly, they brought six of everything so that we could all share the meal and there would be leftovers for me and Jeff. They had a very smooth routine, which they learned from having their own little boy about 4.5 months ago. I am so enternally grateful for their generosity and for the chance to compare joys, questions, and frustrations with another set of new parents. I look forward to paying that kindess forward someday.

And Sadie. Then, there's Sadie. My therapist asked me today how I feel when I am with Sadie and I was totally taken aback by the question. I feel everything when I am with Sadie. When she is nursing and we are staring at each other I feel happy and joyful and still. On the occasions when my nipple is sore the nursing sometimes feels like torture, but it never feels like Sadie is torturing me. If I nurse her right before a nap and she gets really tired on my breast sometimes she'll snuggle up and fall asleep right on my neck. That's my favorite. That's exactly the feeling of closeness and tenderness and quiet I used to chase in numerous cartons of ice cream or from any number of "bad boy" boyfriends. When I feel her sigh and relax into me with her face buried in my body, I feel something more sacred and less trite than joy. Joy is only three letters and is sort of simple sounding for something as complex as feeling my baby daughter start to trust me and relax into me for a long nap. I think of joy as a loud and boisterous emotion-- it reminds me of Christmas carols sung with full choirs and bells gonging for accent ("Joy to the world, the Lord has come.") This is more subtle, more enduring. This is more like a acapella duet sung by me and Sadie with our spirits. If I ever end up in prison in Texas and on death row, I don't give a hooey about any last meal. What I want is that feeling with Sadie at 4 weeks and 4 days old full of my milk and drowsy on my shoulder with nothing to fear in me, her little sigh saying "I know you love me and I know you'll take care of me and now, completely defenseless, I will sleep."

So, I love those moments.

This afternoon after her 4-hour nap (and my 45 minute nap in a chair) I tried to snuggle with her every which way. Finally, I laid her down on the ottoman beside my chair and she was so happy she lit up like a Christmas tree. Snuggling = mama's agenda and chilling in her own space = Sadie's agenda. I like that she's got a huge range of moods and preferences. I feel pride that she seems very clear and pretty damn direct about what she wants, especially for someone with no language skills yet. When I feel us learning something new about each other, I feel happy and relieved and joyful about our unfolding relationship. I told my friend Camille, a veteran mother of a 2 year old and an 4-month old, that when I am away from Sadie, I sometimes feel a longing for her that borders on urgency. She said, "you're falling in love; of course it feels urgent sometimes."

And, I am. I am falling in love.

When she's in distress and really worked up crying like her beloved pet has just been run over I feel a deep sadness about not being able to comfort her. I keep reading about letting babies have their feelings and the wisdom that makes sense to me on the subject is that babies feel as intensely as we do (God, help her if she's as intense as I am) so we should be with them when they have their feelings and not be so concerned with trying to STOP it or CONTROL it. I have been practicing that all day. I feel more centered and more capable of supporting her crying when I sit with her without the goal of trying to make it stop. Besides, I have already learned that doesn't work. I feel sad and anxious when she seems to be in pain and I also sometimes feel lonely when she sleeps for a long time.

And like any real relationship sometimes I feel angry. I feel angry when she gets really spazzy on my breast and starts head butting my nipple with a really angry look on her face as if I suddenly filled my breast with castor oil just to fuck with her. I feel frustrated when she won't go to sleep at 3:00 a.m. Frustrated is another word for angry. I sometimes feel despair at the relentlessness of this: Will we ever understand what the hell she needs before she has to pitch a fit for 10 minutes? Will she ever understand the difference between night and day? Will she ever sit up and watch Mad Men with us and scream at Pete Campbell with me? Will she ever join me in my dignified and righteous road rage?

Of course she will, but there is a lot to do between here and there. The real goal of all this is to be present for all of it and savor it like the lifesavers I suck on hoping they will last my whole train ride to work. They will never last if I bite them and chew them into tiny pieces. One second at a time, one stop at a time, I concentrate on NOT biting and enjoying the flavor-- on past Damen and Chicago and Grand... this chewer and devourer of all things practices sucking the candy so she can emerge from the darkness with a little bit of sweetness on her tongue.

My relationship with Sadie is very real and full of every emotion, not just the blissed out and starry-eyed goo-goo-ga-ga I thought it would be. I sometimes want to hold her and she wants her own space. Sometimes she wants to be held and I want to go to sleep. My breasts may be leaking like a geyser, but she may be sleeping for another 3 hours. I am no more in contol here than in any other relationship. I feel a lot of love for Sadie. When I come home and find her in her swing after a few hours apart I feel like I could stare at her forever and kiss her face a million times. In those moments I feel the joy of loving my baby and also actually liking her, which is not always easy.

I am glad I was asked the question and will keep thinking on it as our relationship deepens.

The Stare

Right before Sadie takes a nap, she gets really fussy. I mean fussy at the breast, at my jokes, at my singing-- all of it. She just won't settle or be still. That's when we give her the ultimate treatment: We swaddle her with two blankets that we *may* have stolen from the hospital and bounce her around until she finally lets her eye lids droop so she can sleep.

When she's in her last few moments of pre-sleep, she stares off her right shoulder and there is no distracting her. I could sing Broadway tunes at the top of my lungs, but she wouldn't look away for a nanosecond. It almost seems like she's meditating and in the most peaceful place in her little mind. Then, in the next moment, her eyes are closed and we have to do without her pleasant company for a few hours. It's always bittersweet because when she sleeps I miss her, but it's a chance to take care of business around the house or join her in sweet slumber.

THAT Mom, an explanation

I got interrupted during my last post before I could get to the part about my being "that" mom. I was referring to the fact that I went through an entire (week) day without taking a shower. That felt like crossing a certain threshold. I can remember hearing my mom friends say, through the years, that they had days where they didn't take showers, but I thought that was like a myth. You know, like Big Foot or straight male hair dressers.

It's no myth. It's actually really easy to just pick something else to do besides shower. The obvious choice is to sleep. I used to be unable to sleep if I was not clean and smelling good, but now I just rub some of Sadie's spit up on my face and snuggle under the covers for any shred of shut eye. It's so totally insane how much I covet sleep. There must be a better way to do this. I keep meaning to look up what anthropologists or Biblical scholars say about why the sleep piece is so difficult with a human newborn baby. When the baby wakes after 1.5 hours in the middle of the night and I am in my darling toile rocker wondering how a baby can eat through two breasts at 3:00 a.m. AND at 4:30 a.m., my mind goes to strange places. Some of them are dark. I wish I had religion in those dark and desperate hours. Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions, the journal of her son's first year, is like a Bible of sorts to me these days. I envy her deep religious beliefs, which led her to think about Jesus' compassion on those long colicky nights with her son. I mostly just think that I am going to go insane from the strange burden of being on call all night long with my breasts exposed and my baby daughter crying out for reasons that are more mysterious than whatever reasons made my ex-boyfriends date me when so many of them were clearly gay. (They had to be or why would they break up with me.)

So, I look for religion. Then I think bitter and vengeful thoughts about people whose children sleep through the night. Out of my reverie Sadie may made a heartbreakingly vulnerable sound that reminds me why I am sitting on a toile chair with a burp cloth on my shoulder. Sadie. Oh, you're still here. I like to ask her in a sing-song voice -- since babies allegedly love the sing-song voice-- what it feels like to have a self-obsessed martyr for a mother. Then I tell her that I will work as many jobs as I need to in order to be sure that she can have a great education, go to summer camp, and have as much therapy as she wants. It's the least I could do.

Last night, my entire world tilted when Jeff suggested that I sleep for the night on our first floor and let him handle the night feedings with Sadie. I was just ragged and twitchy enough to take him up on it. I figured it might feel far away to be two floors from my family for the night, but it would be closer than the psych ward, which was my next stop. I fed Sadie at 10ish and then she and Jeff said goodbye and left me in the quiet darkness surrounded by nothing but pillows and my own thoughts. Luckily, I fell asleep right away. I slept from 10 until 4, when I could hear Sadie crying upstairs. I tried to pretend I didn't hear it so I could keep sleeping, but I am pretty sure that biology is rigged so that a mother can't "forget" her baby crying once she hears it. I went upstairs to visit Jeff who was giving Sadie a bottle. I am pretty sure Jeff hadn't slept much at all since we parted at 10, but he was sitting up looking competent and happy anyway. That's the good thing about parenting with someone who used to do M&A work for a large law firm-- he's used to no sleep for days on end. God bless him for being able to run on no sleep and still be nice. The first time I worked an all nighter at work I wanted to quit. Not just the job, but the whole human race. I am not cut out for work that happens after the sun goes down.

And then I became a mom.

After our 4 am visit, I ended up downstairs again sleeping until 6:45 a.m. So, today was a very blessed day. The sharpest edgy desperation lifted with that spell of more sleep than I have had since Sadie was born. I felt lighter and more positive about everything. When I relieved Jeff at 6:45 a.m. I felt so happy to hang out with Sadie. We had a great morning-- I took 400 pictures of her, 3 of which are actually in focus. For the first time ever, I laid Sadie on the bed and she just laid there turning her head toward the night. No crying or fussing. Just hanging out. I never thought we'd be able to do that. At one point I picked her up so that she would know that I was game for doing the whole cuddling thing, but she didn't want to cuddle with me. She wanted to lay on the bed while I folded the clothes and sang old New Order songs to her. It was simple and it was a blast. Moments like that will go a long way on the road to having a normal schedule and having her sleep 7 hours at a time.

I also did a little fashion show for her. I showed her how my pre-pregnancy jeans do not yet fit me, which wasn't a huge surprise. It's only been 4 weeks. I do wish the swelling would go down so I could wear my engagement and wedding rings. I think it's been long enough and I am ready to get my bling back on. Other than that, I am happy to run around town in Old Navy jersey skirts and flowy dresses. Jeff says that my swelling will go down when I get to exercise. Judging by how much my uterus still hurts, it's going to be a while before I can really do any cardioo exercise. Right now, walking to the train and getting to therapy is about as ambitious as my fitness plan gets.

Oh, and speaking of therapy, whose idea was it for my therapist to be out of the office for THREE (3) weeks in September? That person needs to be booked on one of those flights that sits on the runway for 9 hours, in a seat next to a toilet that overflows. It's a bad idea. What if I develop serious post-partum depression? I am an overwhelmed, overtired new mom and now my therapist is leaving for three weeks. As the kids say, WTF. In all fairness to him, he is having surgery, so it's not like he's taking the money I give him and going to Bermuda, but hearing he's having surger is not exactly comforting, especially when I have a tendency to think about the worst case scenarios. There are moments in my toile chair when I think about him being in hospice and my having to look for a new therapist with all the other things on my plate. It's not like I imagine him having hair plugs or his appendix taken out. Behind my jokes that he's getting his nose done is a vibrant hum of neurotic fear that he'll die on the table, which would be terribly inconvenient for me and probably not good for Sadie either.

So glad our work on my extreme thinking and my flair for making everything about me is paying off.

Am I THAT Mom?

Don't be deceived by how my arm looks in this picture. I am getting some serious guns from bouncing Sadie in her preferred style: bouncing in my arms up in the air. When the lactic acid builds up and I start to see stars, I sometimes try to "cheat" by putting her on my knee and bouncing her from there to give my arms a break, but she catches on in about 3 bounces and starts crying, so back up we go. I didn't know that having a baby would be the route to my Linda Hamilton biceps. Having a child is a full body experience and I am not just talking about the breast feeding.

Speaking of breastfeeding-- what a difficult and complex thing it is. Holy milk maids, it's really hard. At three weeks, I almost gave up because the pain in my right breast (that, incidentally we named Fred Couples after the famously down to earth golfer). Then, just like the nausea of the first trimester, it became bearable. Now, I almost can't tell the difference between Fred Couples and my left breast, which bears the name George Hincapie, after the hot cyclist. If someone asked me for advice on breastfeeding, I would say two things: 1. Get as much support as you can to hang in there because there may be a magic moment when the pain lightens and 2. Name your breasts after famous sports legends because it might just be ludicrious enough to help you shift into a more pleasant phase of a really difficult part of early motherhood.

Is it any wonder so few people ask me for advice?

Right now I am flush from victory. I have spend a great part of the day with Sadie, culminating in a new high: I comforted her to the music of my choosing (Michael Jackson's Man in the Mirror (or Baby in the Mirror at my house)) and she is now swinging peacefully in the swing while adult music is playing. What's this emphasis on adult music? Usually, when Sadie is around we listen to her CD. Her CD is a 5-track musical abomination-- it's actually "white noise," such as rain falling or a blow dryer. It's supposed to soothe Sadie by reminding her of the sounds she heard in the womb. All I know is that we have a copy of Sadie's Soundtrack in our house and in our car. Nothing like cruising down North Avenue to the rousing tunes of the blow dryer hoping that Sadie will STOP melting down long enough to catch her breath before I crash the car into the Hollywood Diner.

So, it's a big deal that I made an executive decision to sing actual music to Sadie and if she knew what was good for her she would surrender to sleep because I was going to just keep singing in her ear. My Michael Jackson falsetto impression isn't pretty. And, Sadie is smart so she surrendered quicker than ever to the sleep that she earned by listening to me sing. It's funny-- the books say that babies like to hear sing-song voices at this stage. I keep trying to think of songs to sing her her, but the only songs I know all the words to are just plain inappropriate. There are some Bible songs, but I feel guilty singing those to her since I can't say exactly where I stand on the Bible and then there's the whole "Sadie, your dad's Jewish," which would only further muddy the waters. Then, today this song from local band Moonshine Willy popped into my head. It's beyond inappropriate because it's about a woman who buried her baby alive. Um, nice, Christie. I tell myself it's ok because look at all those old fashioned lullabyes-- they are all about harm befalling little ones. "Rockabye baby in the tree tops, when the bough breaks the cradle will rock." That's really nice. Hey, everyone, let's sing songs about babies falling out of treetops. And then there's Ring Around the Rosie, which is a celebration of the plague, which basically oblitered the population of Europe. Looks like I am not the only one who has struggled with ambivalent feelings toward my offspring. I am in good company....with all of Western Civilization.

So, Sadie is sleeping away. We had a nice morning at the Green City market, which was so pleasant and happy and kid-friendly it almost broke my heart to be there. I felt so lucky to be sitting in the shade with a sleeping Sadie, hanging out with a good friend, surrounded by all manner of organic food stuffs, watching dozens of kids run around in the cool breezes. How could I improve on that in any way?

She's doing great taking the bottle and we can spend more time with her where she's just hanging out with us. Every now and then it looks like we get a smile from her. Usually she smiles when she's sitting on the changing table, which may be because she associates that with having her diaper changed and being warm and cozy. I love just hanging out with her and the times when she's crying are getting easier to handle. When I start to get edgy and desperate with a desire for her to STOP. CRYING. RIGHT. NOW. I visualize her working out some emotion or energy that is really none of my business. I can picture her and her Higher Power deciding that crying and screaming is the next right thing for her and my job is to let go-- once I am sure she is safe, fed, burped, comforted, and I have made my presence known, my job is to back off. Her spells of discomfort seem to pass more quickly when I keep my cool and trust her little process. Easier during the day than at 4:00 a.m., but I am working on finding my mama zen place at any hour of the day.

YaYa and Pops Visit

Sadie had her first visitors from the southside of the Mason Dixon line. My parents, YaYa and Popps, came to fawn over their newest grandchild. Grandparents sure have a way with grandchildren, and Sadie is loving the new attention and the new tricks my parents have brought. Their skills have been honed by Preston, Patrick, and Lucy, my siblings' kids who were kind enough to break everyone in before little Sadie arrived with her cry that could clear a crowded auditorium!
The consensus is that Sadie has my hair line and my pouty style when she's about to start wailing. She's been a real trouper-- having her first restaurant meal at Wishbone and her second at Bongo Room. She's a big fan of a brunch menu. Speaking of menus, Jeff and I had our first post-Sadie's-birth date last night. We went to dinner at Buona Terra in Logan Square while my parents babysat Sadie for us. We were gone about 1.25 hours and the report is that Sadie slept the whole time. Jeff and I toyed with the idea of going out again tonight, but I confessed last night that I am too plum tired to go out again. I really just want to hang out and have someone cook for me so I can eat it on the couch in my milk-stained clothes with my disheveled hair thrown in a pony tail. Ah, the magic of asking for what you want and throwing in a little something about your recent "major abdominal surgery"-- it really opens doors.
It was great to see my parents with my daughter. And don't think that my bawling my eyes out every night is a sign it didn't go well. It did. Something about being the middle part of three generations just really gets me. Then, my mom brought a DVD she made last fall for my father's 65th birthday, which showcases all of the parts of my dad's life, complete with 800 pictures from his rural Texas roots, through Vietnam, the early family years, and through the current time. I cried from the minute it started. We watched it twice through and I cried all the way both times. I am not sure what's up with the waterworks but there is something about family and connection and healing and hope and, as always, the sheer exhaustion which has always been a stimulus for my tears.

My parents stayed at a cute little B&B in Wicker Park and made themselves available to whatever we wanted or needed the whole time they were here. I really appreciated it and while it was hard not to play hostess or have a bunch of stuff planned for all of us, I was grateful they were cognizant of my somewhat diminished physical capacity and were happy to sit and hold Sadie for hours at a time.

There's way more feeling stored up about all of this, but my bed is calling and Sadie has grown fond of waking up at about 4:45 p.m. I have to get my beauty rest. Sadie also slept for 6 hours yesterday and that was a revelation to me. She then followed that up with 2 stretches of 3 hour sleep. If I seem like I am obsessed with sleep, I am. Good catch!

Multi-tasking

Moms are famous for multi-tasking; it's practically a cliche. I think I am being initiated into the art of multi-tasking, and to brag for a moment, I am getting good at it. Yesterday, I was able to walk around with Sadie while breastfeeding. Yes, nursing my 3-week old daughter while moving both of us from the first floor to the second floor. All me. Kind of creepy, but when time and expediency matters, I let myself be as creepy as I need to be.

And, right now. Sadie is sprawled out on my lap and I am typing away. I can Facebook and mother at the same time. I can take a phone call while nursing. It's the little things in life.

Today is Sadie's three-week birthday. Three weeks ago today I was itching like a flea-infested dog because the post-op drugs had the side effect of making every inch of my swollen body tingle and demand a good old fashioned scratching. How lucky for my hospital visitors to see that show! I believe the last of our visitors were leaving right about this time and Jeff and I were settling in to our first night with Sadie. How how good you have it when you are in the hospital with 24-hour care! I can hardly believe that was only three weeks ago! Sadie's little cheeks are getting fuller and she can sleep for pretty long stretches of time, which makes everyone very happy. My nerves still jangle when she's crying and I can't tell why. I feel guilty for wanting it to stop, but it would be sort of cruel if I wanted my baby to cry all day, so I guess it's natural that I want my baby not to cry.

My favorite thing she does is wake up from her long stretches of sleep. She has a fairly elaborate method of waking up, that includes stretching out her arms and her legs over and over again. She makes the same faces each time: first she starts with a general yawn, and then she makes different faces with her lips, including this one face where her lips form a perfect little "O" as if she is trying to blow smoke rings. I am so in love with those little lips I can hardly keep myself from gobbling her up when I see her little O rings!

We have done a little research on babies and discovered some interesting information about how they process information that comes at them all day long. Turns out that babies are quite sensitive to emotional energy around them because they do not yet filter any information out. Because they lack filters, they absorb or take in everything going on at once. As adults, we can screen, filter, or ignore certain dynamics or people or energy fields. Babies can't. I think of the prospect of NOT being able to filter out certain aspects of the environment and I get overwhelmed and want to shut down and cry too. Poor little thing. Makes me think twice about where I will take her in the upcoming days and how I will respond to her reactions.

We also learned that when babies get overstimulated they cry in order to protect themselves and reduce the interactions. I do notice that when Sadie is crying heartily there is not much I can do to "reach" her-- the research I read said that's the point: She's trying to make herself unavailable until she can get comfortable or reduce the stimulus coming at her. Well, that's one possible explanation so long as I also rule out a loaded diaper or the ubiquitous gassy stomach possibility.

I find all the information about babies very fascinating. I mostly wonder how the hell anyone purports to know what is going on in babies' minds. I sure can't read Sadie's mind, though it's not for lack of trying. I like the explanations I have heard and they engender more compassion and empathy for the experience of being new on the planet, so there is no harm in just embracing it for now. I also wish I had gotten a Ph.D in early childhood development before having a child so that I would have more knowlege about what is happening. And, as always, I think that having more knowledge would give me more control. You would think that having an newbornn would disabuse me of that fallacy once and for all, but I cling tenaciously to the idea that if only I knew more, I could control this.

Sadie will have the last laugh-- there's no doubt about that!