when september ends

i can't believe it's been so long since i've blogged. the computer repair didn't pan out, and now we have to send it off, and it will take f-o-r-e-v-e-r, so i'm still confined to the occasional trip to the library, and it's all so annoying. in two weeks, my mom will be here, and we can plug in her computer at home, and in three and a half weeks, i'll be back at work and can squeeze in a look every once in a while, but until then i'm stuck waiting my turn behind the woman old enough to know better who's registering online to try out for the pussycat dolls while ducking the dvds flying out of the rack being spun by someone's unmonitored child. good times.

young milo, i'm happy to report, is completely fabulous. mostly. he is beginning to assert the less fabulous aspects of his personality: namely, the need to grunt and paw at my shirt whenever he's within a three-foot radius of me as well as the tendency to scream like his hair is on fire when he is not being held. he also has figured out how to hold out the neck of my shirt so he can vomit into my bra. but otherwise, really, he's fabulous.

already, he's becoming such a big boy. he smiles and dances with his head and arms when he lays on the floor under his kick piano, and he has figured out that kicking the toys that dangle from it produces yet another tinkly song. he has slept 6+ hours for three fabulous nights in a row. i'm so happy i can hardly stand it. it's still not long enough for me to sleep, and when he wakes up at 5:40 am he is ready to get up and stay up, but to have 6 consecutive hours of sleep feels like some kind of nirvana. and he no longer cries in the bath but instead tries to scoot down low enough to lap at the water with his tongue. he handles shampooing and rinsing like a pro. the only crying now at bathtime is when we lift him out of the warm happiness of the tub.

me, on the other hand - i could be a little better. i could use more sleep. and the anxiety has eaten at me until the gastric-thingy that causes my insides to burn within 30 seconds of swallowing anything has become intolerable. and i could use some social interaction, which has been badly thwarted by my closest girlfriend and her family moving away and by my lack of computer access. but i'm getting more sleep than i was, and i'm on medicine for the stomach and awaiting the results of tests being run to rule out anything else, and as for the social - well, at least the having of the sex has finally resumed, and that does make things better.

now, milo has awakened from his snugli-induced slumber, and notice must be paid. until next time-

eight weeks

computer still busted, sleep still in short supply, and i've got something gastricky going on and making me puke my guts out, but otherwise, hey - life is swell. milo: he rules the universe. he has started to make the connection between kicking his feet and the commencement of music that makes mommy dance for him when lying under his kick piano (there's a better name for it, but i don't have time to look it up at the freaking library, people). another advance: for the third time (although not consecutively), he has slept for five hours straight. i have hope for the future.

i'm headed to the doctor thursday to get my stomach checked. prilosec isn't taming the horrific burn every time i eat, and i'm tired of it. i'm tired of the hospital, too, but i'm desperate enough to go. i was back there last week to get my iud inserted, and i have to say it hurt much more than seems reasonable or necessary, but it's better now, although i'm still bleeding from it six days later, which just adds to the fun in my midsection. may i have some relief now? please???

what to read the first year

back at the library, between the elderly woman in yankees cap and white goatee and the 13-year-old girl writing her class president campaign speech with the unfortunate help of a friend whose suggestions consist of lewd lyrics from rap songs - our computer appears to be beyond repair, or at least extremely expensive repair. i suppose it's good for me - i'm limited to 30-60 minutes, every other day, and therefore cannot lose hours of my life to the computer. but it's not like i was spending hours online since the arrival of young milo, and the downside is that when i have concerns - which, let's be honest, is pretty much hourly - i can't just go look them up and put my mind at ease.

instead, i'm trying to rely on books: "heading home with your newborn," "what to expect the first year" and "your baby's first year week by week," the last one being particularly heinous with its out-of-date suggestions and condescending tone. "heading home" was good but we're past that point. the "what to expect" book is fine, but what is missing from these books (and all the others i've perused and rejected) is how to parent a subsequent baby when you're paranoid 24 hours a day that said subsequent baby has gone the way of his older brother. will there be a day when i can be alone with milo in the car for more than 10 minutes without having to pull over to make sure he's breathing? he must be tired of me reaching back to rub his head to make him wake up enough to fuss.

on a happier note, milo granted me with his first responsive smile, wednesday evening, at caffe roma, while we waited for our friends to meet us for dessert. is there anything better, ever, in the history of the universe? i think not. this morning he was reclining on my raised thighs while i entertained him with the soft yellow lamb my dad gave him, whom i call "lammy davis junior" and for which i talk in a voice disturbingly like al jolson. luckily, milo doesn't have enough of a frame of reference yet to realize how cheesy i am; he just thinks it's funny. bless his heart.

do not pass go

a quick post from an outpost - i'm using the computer at one of our favorite neighborhood coffee joints, and time is limited, plus i already used up 40 minutes just reading and replying to my email, so i continue to get further behind on news of my fellow bloggers, but we hope to have our computer back soon (it's being examined, perhaps even as i write) and then to have the leisure to keep up with events in bloglandia. milo is great (and i'll update his picture page as soon as we get our computer back), and the half boobie/half bottle routine is working pretty well. he's more expressive every day - we get upturned mouth corners that are almost smiles when he's alert and outright grins and giggles when he's asleep - and if he were one iota cuter, i would explode from it.

but more and more, i'm thinking of hans. the specter of him haunted my weekend in florida, when i spent more one-on-one with hans's cousin-twin, my nephew, who is the same age hans would be. while it was completely enchanting to watch him warm up to milo, and push his soothie pacificer back in milo's mouth for him when it started to dangle, and bring him age-inappropriate toys for his amusement, it also hammered home how hans might be interacting with milo now, and how there was a big gaping hole in my mom's living room floor where he should have been, fighting with his cousin for possession of the playskool donut stacker thingy.

for the first time in months, i find myself having flashbacks of the horrible moment when hans's death was confirmed, and of the weeks afterward when we holed up in hotel rooms and friends' guestrooms, trying to get numb. milo is so magical that he highlights the magic we missed with hans. i know this conundrum is an old one, and too common - would milo be with us now if hans had lived. the honest answer is almost certainly not, and i cannot imagine dealing with milo (who slept four hours in one stretch last night, for the first time ever, to which i say, hallelujah!) and a toddler at the same time without losing the last fringes of my sanity, and a world without milo is unimaginable - too horrible a thought to even contemplate. but i do miss hans, and i grieve anew for us and all we lost along with hans.

time is up, even though i have more about which i want to write, like that i chickened out of outright sterilization in favor of the mirena, but it will have to wait. our laptop cannot be repaired and back in my arms soon enough...

ta-da! the surpassment of the birth weight

let me hear a big "woohoo!" for young milo, who has gained A POUND IN A WEEK!!!!! actually, since we started supplementing, when combined with an increase in my supply, we've been making him an involuntary bulimic - he's been spitting up like vesuvius because he's been fed enough for ten babies. okay, maybe not ten. more like two. or one and a half. but too much. so now that we're figuring it all out, he probably will not grow at the same absurd rate, but he'll be growing, and not spitting up so much. the world is feeling a little less wobbly.

we figured out yesterday that the problem with the computer is with the computer itself, so until we either shell out the bucks to get it majorly repaired or for a new one, our appearances on line will be limited. i'm writing super-fast from the library today, while justin takes milo z for a walk (he seems to be an outdoorsy kinda guy), and the babe and i are headed for my mom's tomorrow for a few days, but when we get back, we gotta do something. i'll still have five and a half more weeks at home, and the propsect of no access while justin is working double shifts is almost as daunting as the whole feeding fiasco of last week.

before i go, i need to note a couple of things: that milo is so amazing, so cute-beyond-measure, so completely lovely, that i am bowled over, mostly by the intensity of my feelings for him. despite all my reading, i didn't understand how hard it would be to care for him, but i also didn't understand how much i would love him, and how quickly. the other thing: my feelings about hans have re-intensified, feelings of loss, but also guilt. if he were here, let's be honest: milo almost certainly wouldn't be. the prospect of a world without milo is so horrific i can't even allow myself to imagine what it would be like. and even if i had both my boys, how could i care for milo without shortchanging hans right now? of course, hans isn't here, so it's not like i have to choose, or balance my attention between them, and as justin wisely pointed out this morning, when we lost hans, the world as we knew it changed completely; all bets were off, all plans out the window. suddenly, the world opened up for milo. i hope, someday, when he thinks about it all, he's okay with it all, and how he came to be. if he does have any bad moments with it, i hope they're washed away by the knowledge that we can't help that the situation exists - it is what it is - but that his father and i love him so completely, and that we wanted him, and want him now, more than anything else in the world.

the return of lefty and leaky

to everyone who has offered their support and the fruit of their nursing experiences - a big ol' thank you. everyone's experience is different, but to know that nearly everyone experiences some kind of difficulty with feeding their child is a huge anxiety reducer for me.

i've been taking the fenugreek like a fiend, and i did have a single beer - whether one or both of those things are what made the difference, or it was the decrease in anxiety [due to (a) blogalicious support, (b) the beer, (c) letting go of the idiotic supplementary system and/or pumping, or (d) the fact that young milo gained 4 ounces in just 2 days!!!], yesterday morning between 6 and 7 am, my milk came back with a bang. a big, cement-y, bargain basement porn star boob job-looking bang. holy cow.

so the present state of things is that i'm nursing milo every 2-3 hours instead of every 30-60 minutes, and he's getting almost all he can eat from me, and in between we're supplementing with formula, and we've switched from dairy to soy formula, and i'm laying off the dairy myself, and we're only using bottles and not the fake-boob contraption, and we got some slower-flow nipples, and i've packed away the pump - and milo is filling out hourly. i kid you not. if i wasn't sure he was the same kid we put in our bassinet last night and fed in the dark throughout the night, i wouldn't have recognized him when i picked him up in daylight this morning. he's still spitting up, but we're getting used to it, and his spine and shoulder blades are no longer in such sharp relief, and he's getting back that lovely plump-cheeked look with which he was born. we're taking him back to the doctor tuesday, then milo and i are going back to florida for a few days, and i'm going to request another weight check for a week from wednesday, when i have my six-week checkup - and i suspect by that time we will have met and maybe even exceeded his birthweight.

the other big thing helping our household happiness is that justin is taking the week off (his work week is friday-monday) to deal with milo together, and then i'm going to my mom's for her to help us out for a few days, too. i was never completely alone with milo until a week ago friday, and to be alone all day, while justin worked double shifts, and while i was terrified about milo's lack of growth, and while i was dealing with all this artificial feeding paraphenalia - it was all too much. we are taking it easy, watching movies, having lunch with friends nearly every day, and sharing both the load and the enjoyment of milo. i feel like i can breathe.

so while i can breathe for a few minutes before milo starts calling for his friends lefty and leaky, i should note a few things:

• milo was a whole month old yesterday. i thought his birth would never come, and now a month of his life has gone by at the speed of lightning. if life was fair, pregnancy would go quickly and parenting would go slowly, but no one asked me for my input when arrangements were being made. milo spends much of his alert-but-not-hungry time looking intently into our faces, which is heaven, and he is beginning to focus a bit on his toys when we present them and to turn towards the sounds of our voices and of water. on wednesday, when i hugged him he pressed back against me - without rooting for milk! - and i got the biggest rush. i think he's figuring out the difference between his hand and my nipple, too, which is helpful, since the hand produces even less milk than i do, but old habits die hard, and he still seems to believe that everything goes better with a side of hand.
• the first trip to florida went well. milo traveled like a champ (much to the delight and amazement of our wary seatmates on the planes) and was adored by all, especially his grandad. in addition to meeting much of his family for the first time, milo had his first trip to the library, his first trip on public transportation, and his first trip to the beach, where he was enthralled by the sound of the ocean waves. back at home, he has been to the movies not once ("world trade center" - to which i say, meh) but twice ("little miss sunshine" - which i heartily recommend), and he has behaved flawlessly both times. may we always be so lucky.
• the culmination of my mother's career turmoil has resulted in her decision to move here. she will stay with us until she has a new job and has bought a new place, which will be lovely for milo, who is soothed by her when no one else meets his standards.

i still need to write about milo's birth, before it gets any hazier, and my thoughts about the romanticization of the whole birthing process, before i get any more worked up about it, but those will have to wait for another day. both the power cord and the battery of our laptop have become uncooperative, and i am posting today from the library, where time is limited, but one of these days...