the three-month explosion

what is happening to my baby? overnight, he has become HUGE and oh-so-grown-up. we had a little halloween shindig for him saturday night, and he was the life of the party. and then after the party, when i was getting him ready for bed, and he was surely worn out from all his sparkling socializing and the late hour: he rolled over. ta-da. he hesitated when he got on his side; i could see the wheels turning in his little head. "should i go back to my tummy? or should i keep going to my back?" finally, he teetered all the way over. the way i felt, you would think he just decoded the human genome or something.

and then, it seems, he felt obligated to keep right on developing all lickety-split-like. or maybe he's just a recognition 'ho, motivated by my disproportionate response to his first rollover. yesterday, he:

• did a push up in which his arms were completely straight
• pulled hair (both mine and justin's, at different times)
• laughed at a game played with him (bird's nest, eye winker...)
• spotted his kick-piano across the room and yelled at/for it (and then giggled when i put him under it)
• propelled himself across our bed on his tummy in a straight line in about 10 seconds (as opposed to his old method of throwing his head sideways and then wiggling his hips until they caught up, and then repeating this pattern about 20 times, and taking about 10 minutes) to get to his stunned mommy who barely caught him in time before he dove off the bed for the boobie

and then this morning on my way to work, justin called to advise me that he had just found milo, whom i had left on his back a few minutes earlier, on his tummy in the crib. i'm kind of in shock. we've got our hands full with a mobile baby a good two-three months earlier than i expected. holy crap.

i'd think he's been eating his wheaties if it weren't for the fact that he can't actually eat wheaties. we did switch his supplement last week to target's version of enfamil gentle-ease in a final effort to reduce his gas, which is both painful to him (although it makes his hips twitch in a dance that is comical to me) and a potential social problem for him as he gets older (and did i mention target's identical version is $10 cheaper than the original???). it does seem to help a little with the gas, but i don't think target (as much as i love them) can take credit for his developmental spurt.

i have so much on my heart - i want to write about my thoughts about other children, and about problems (maybe) with my iud, and about extended family, and the sometimes eroticism of birth, and about whether i should even be blogging right now, or if i should be doing it in this manner, but i just don't have any damn time.

a post in three parts

just add water
at long last, i have updated milo's picture page. new pics start just past halfway down the page. or, scroll down the page to watch him grow. just like those sea monkeys.

happy, happy birthday
i have just had the best weekend ever. on friday, justin whisked me away to fabulous downtown...cleveland. he got us a deluxe room at the wyndham, in the theater district, and i used two fresh towels per bath, and had fabulous italian food for dinner, and went to see a play, and then my mom brought our lovely son to us, and we all had a lovely night, and then breakfast in bed, a workout and a swim, and then a good greek lunch before we went back home. saturday night, justin and i walked to a trendy/modern mexican place in our neighborhood that we had been saving for a special occasion, and we ate the best guacamole ever in the history of the world (with goat cheese and tomatoes stirred in) on hot tortilla chips adrift in waves of sea salt and lime juice oh my god. then we walked to our neighborhood crepe shop for a grand marnier crepe, and it was so, so nice. yesterday, my mom made a lovely breakfast (including strawberry bruschetta - so fabulous), and i caught up on pictures, and then we went to my mother-in-law's and ate piles of eggplant, and chocolate cake, and milo gave me his present: his handprints in a frame. absolutely perfect.

on a related note, i noticed the other day that milo had green gunk under his tiny little fingernails. at first, i was horrified to think he had some fungus; then i realized it wasn't fungus but about hurt myself trying to figure out what he could have been scratching to get that gunk under his nails. last night, i realized it was green paint from the handprint project. what a relief!

swordfights for grown women
today i pumped away from home for the first time. the good news is, i pumped the most i had ever pumped, and i'm the only person in the building currently using the pumping room, so i get to keep the key. the bad news is, the room is filthy. there was dried milk on the upholstered chairs, the tray tables, the carpet, the walls, the door. who does that? i can see an occasional accident, but milk splattered all over a 10x10 room??? how is it possible? it can only be intentional, right? (and in a related puzzle, why would they put four nursing chairs in the room? were they expecting that women would all sit in there together with their co-workers with their boobs hanging out while staring at each other???) i complained (of course) and by the time i went back for the afternoon pumping, the tray tables had been cleaned and the floor vaccummed, but there had better be some shampooing going on in there, and pronto, or i am going to be one disgruntled employee.

besides the filthy pumping room, coming back to work has been okay. i got a little tearful last night when i was feeding milo before bed, thinking about how he'd probably read "war and peace" today or cure cancer or something, and i'd be missing it. but then he refused to go to sleep until 12:08 am, and then our perfect little sleeper woke up at 2:00 am. and then he woke up again at 4:36 am, demanding to be fed. it made it pretty easy to leave this morning. but i'm looking forward to seeing him now. my mom is on her way home with him from justin's grandmother's, and we'll be reunited in exactly 34 minutes!

ovary tickler

hey, look at me, i'm online, woo-hoo, etc

my mom is moved in, the computer is set up, the cable is reinstalled - and here i am. except i am so tired-to-the-bone, and sick, and mentally fogged over, that all this access is wasted on me. it's a shame. milo is almost over a mild cold, but i have a raging one, and i've spent the day asking, "are you sure?" to every other health professional to whom i've spoken when they told me i could take sudafed while still acting as milo's feed bag(s). so many people are not paying attention to what they do. it sucks. at any rate, i'm taking straight robitussin, and trying to sleep (impossible), and trying to drink (challenging), and holding my head over milo's froggy vaporizer as long as i can stand it, and i think i'm going to live. tomorrow, or the next day, we're going to a hotel, somewhere, maybe here, but i'm going to get a night on fresh white sheets that someone else besides me has to wash, in a room with none of the clutter of my life, and then monday i go back to work. many mixed feelings there, but not the energy or time to explore them tonight. what i have explored thoroughly is the cuteness of babies everywhere, and due to my exhaustive research i can authoritatively inform you that milo is the best and cutest baby i know. seriously. i am a lucky, lucky duck.

quick, quick

milo is now 9 lb 3 oz - a little less than the 10 lbs for which we had hoped, but it's kept him right on the 5th percentile projectory, and as long as he keeps pace with that trajectory, his pediatrician is satisfied. the doc is also pleased with his social development and super-impressed that milo sleeps 6-8 hours a night - apparently we are extra lucky with milo. but then, we already knew that. :)

in addition to his heavenly nighttime sleep habits, he has graduated from the bassinet to his crib, and without batting an eye. one reason may be that we put his aquarium on the crib, which he finds mesmerizing. his first morning in the crib, though, i made the mistake of turning the aquarium on again when i put him back down after his 6 am feeding. apparently, although the aquarium is calming after a busy day, the pulsing lights and sounds are stimulating after a quiet night in the dark. young milo fussed profusely every time it went off, and justin and i kept taking turns getting up to turn it back on (and why doesn't it come with a remote, i'd like to know). finally, i got up and tried to soothe him without turning on the aquarium, which milo found upsetting; he looked up at me and whined, then at the aquarium and whined, then back at me and whined some more. his first direct communication!

now that my mom is here, we have a working computer - but we have no internet access because our provider is out of business. of course. so justin is shopping today for a new provider, and then we can be online more regularly. the next wrinkle (you knew there had to be another wrinkle, right?) is that our camera and my mom's computer are not compatible - so six weeks of fabulous milo-pics are still not available for public viewing. we are seriously technologically challenged at our house.

after the birth (not to be confused with the afterbirth)

after milo was born - i felt airy, feathery. the placenta was delivered, and milo was rubbed down, and then the lights were turned on. the room had been kept dark, except for a spotlight on my hoo-ha, for milo's birth. the lights were also on in the little anteroom with the crib and baby equipment, which felt comforting. i just realized why: when i was little - 3, maybe - i remember my dad getting up early on sunday mornings and using the bathroom across the hall from my room to get cleaned up, and the warmth of the crack of light that came from around the bathroom door made the still-dark morning feeling secure and cozy. i always got the same feeling on occasion when justin would get up while it's still dark to get in the shower in our bathroom; it makes pulling the covers up to my chin feel extra lovely. now, when milo wakes up in the morning at 5 or 6 and justin turns on the bathroom light by which to change him before he brings him to me in bed to nurse, the feeling is a little different. i'm no longer the snug-in-bed child, secure in the knowledge that a grown-up is taking care of things, but i hope it's the beginning of the same lovely feeling for milo.

before he left, my ob got a little choked up, and he said to us, "it's been a long time coming, hasn't it?" any other time, that statement would have stuck in my craw, but i understood his intentions, and at that moment i forgave him for all the times he fought me on delivering milo early. maybe it's also that i pooped on his hand during pushing that made me feel like things were back in balance between us.

the fabulous epidural wore off almost as soon as they removed it from my spine, and feeling came back to my legs so quickly it scared the nurse in charge of cleaning me up. i told her i could get up and go to the bathroom on my own, but they made me wait so two nurses could help me out of bed - and then i walked to the bathroom on my own. after milo and i were both cleaned up, justin's mom came in and we all got to shower milo with adoation. he kept cooing at us, and i thought, what a smart baby, trying to talk to us already. at some point, they gave him to me in bed to try breastfeeding, and it didn't take him long to figure out the joy of latching on, although the nurse with us then kept shoving his head into my breast, which might have depleted his joy a bit, as it did mine.

then, just as justin's extended family started to arrive, they bundled milo and me into a wheelchair in straightjacket fashion...and then left us there for an hour. apparently, justin's co-worker had called her best friend, who works in the postpartum unit, to make sure we got a private room, and one wasn't ready yet, stalling the whole transfer process, which left justin's family stuck crammed into a small space trying to peer around and over each other and into the sheet wrapped around milo in my arms instead of getting to hold him. when they finally moved us, i felt like 50 cent with my entourage following us. now i know what it's like to go everywhere with a posse. the room we went to was a two-person room, and they put us there because the other person was supposed to be leaving momentarily, but there was no room for my peeps, and there was some delay with the other person leaving, so the family went home. of course, as soon as they left, we were moved to a huge, fully-private room.

at the same time, the postpartum nurses noticed his lovely cooing and explained that it was not a sign of advanced intelligence but rather indicative of a breathing problem, and just like that, they took him away. all the anxiety set back in - i was sure that my pushing to deliver him early had resulted in him having some breathing problem because he wasn't mature enough. the thought that we could lose him because i wanted him out a week earlier than my ob wanted ate at my stomach like battery acid all day. in the nursery, he was monitored all day for oxygenation levels (which were good), and about a million vials of blood were drawn from his poor little heel for them to test for every infection known to humankind. justin and i both needed to rest, but it was hard when we didn't know what to think about milo, so we padded down the hall to the nursery every hour to get an update, and to talk to milo, and to whisper encouragement in his ear, and to rub his legs, which were the only stretch of his skin without something taped to them.

justin's aunt and his cousin's wife came to see milo in the afternoon, but they were only allowed to see him through the window of the nursery. the nurse taking care of him was so kind to him and to us all day, and she opened the blinds and held him up for them to see, which kindness milo repaid by pooping all over her hand.

and then finally, the nurse practitioner (who looked and acted like my mom, only with dark brown hair) gave us the good news that milo had breathed for four hours without cooing or his nostrils flaring and that he could come back to our room! she was almost certain that the problem was excess fluid in his lungs, caused by his lungs not getting squeezed enough in labor, because labor went so quickly and he was only in the vaginal canal for an hour or so.

and as soon as our little peanut came back to us, so did he visitors. justin's childhood friend matt came, and then justin's mom, and then all of the sudden the room was packed. catherine and steve and sam came, and it was such a relief to see them, and to be with people who understood more than anyone else what it meant to be in that place. catherine brought a blanket for milo made with the world-traveling froggie fabric she had first gotten for the tadpole and had shown me after travis's funeral, and a mother's bracelet with milo's name which she had stayed home to remake that day (the 1st of august) in august's birthstone instead of july's.

then we were alone, the three of us, and we slept, and listened to more mellow music, and ate (me for milo, apples and dinner rolls pilfered from the refrigerator behind the nurse's station for me and justin), and that was milo's first day.

*****

justin flew to florida yesterday to drive my mother and her car here. i'm not sure what they talked about for 800+ miles, but they arrived at 2:00 this morning and they're still speaking in a friendly manner to each other today, so it must have worked out. it's nice today to see milo in my mom's arms and realize how much he's grown; he takes up much more of her chest than when she was here the week after he was born. tomorrow, he has a belated two month check-up, and while i've been nervous about it, i'm more confident now that he will have grown significantly.

that he's grown while we've been gradually moving back to more breastmilk makes me feel even better. a month ago, he was getting about even amounts of breastmilk and formula, but we're up to 75% breastmilk or better. of course, with that improvement comes the transition from one army-green poop every three days to seedy yellow poops which suddenly increased to five-a-day yesterday. but he's thriving, and his spitup is less scary. here's hoping the doctor agrees.

milo's been in the bassinet in our room while his crib and bedroom sat empty, but today we're moving the crib up to our room to start transitioning him to it and to make more room in his bedroom, in which my mom is staying for the duration. someone has been to see her condo this week, and she got a call today for a second interview for a job she really wants here, so our makeshift arrangements may be for even less time than we all thought. in the mean time, it will be nice to have an extra set of arms for milo in the house. he deserves all the welcoming arms he can get.

birth

posting again from my neighborhood library branch, in the children's section, between tables of fabulous kids from the head start up the street cutting out paper leaves and the couple at the next computer who use more swear words than not. who knew it was possible to construct entire sentences out of nothing but profanities??? the things you learn at the library. knowledge really is power.

my ovaries are twitching today over the fabulousness of milo, a sensation not muted in the least by the prolific vomiting he committed all over my shoulder, back, leg, etc, this morning. i look at him, with his precious-moments-y eyes taking everything in and his left arm pumping up and down, and i think, i want more of him. it's absurd. i mean, i have a hole in my stomach lining from the anxiety it took to produce him and sustain him. i would almost certainly have gestational diabetes again, and it would be unethical for me to knowingly inflict that kind of risk on another child. but he's so fabulous i can hardly take it.

maybe if i had a horrific birth story, it would help quell the insane urge, but it was just so damn easy this time. the amnio was worse than the pushing, if you can believe it, at least as far as i can remember now, nine weeks later. it was sweltering that day, and when my mother-in-law arrived at my house to pick me up, i said, let's just go to the hospital now. i was desperate for some a/c, and when it's that hot outside, our portable a/c just can't keep up.

despite arriving a little early, we were still delayed getting started. in the waiting area by the registrar's desk, a large clan awaited someone else's birth by listening to maury povich at maximum volume while playing with a portable drum machine. i am not making that up. who brings a drum machine to a hospital??? idiots, that's who. the worse part is, the person playing the drums was an adult. the children in the group just ran around unattended and shrieking, while an adult played the drums. badly. very, very badly. rhythm takes a vacation. when they called me back to be admitted, my mother-in-law asked if maybe i needed her to come with me. oh, definitely, i said. as if i would have left her in that hellhole.

inside labor & delivery, we waited some more, but at least in a quieter area. the only noise was another pregnant woman, who was on the phone explaining to someone that she was being induced because she, too, had the gd gd, but she wasn't going to any of her appointments and the ob felt it was safer just to "take the baby" than to let her go on not taking care of herself. it was a lovely moment.

justin arrived just before they finally started monitoring, and then we had an even longer wait, because milo decided to sleep away the day. at last, the peri came in and decided not to worry about trying to get a reactive non-stress test result but to do an ultrasound before the amnio instead. justin and i followed him down the hall to an aqua-colored room with low lights and an actual pillow (!) on the bed. i had forgotten how much an amnio hurt, perhaps because the last one i had involved my mother squeezing my hand so hard that i was distracted. at any rate, the amniotic fluid was on the low side of normal and he had a hard time finding a big enough pocket in which to insert the needle. the amnio was further complicated by milo suddenly springing to life and swinging his arms like muhammad ali into any and all remaining space in my uterus. it took three tries to finally get a draw, during which i kept my cool but felt like hitting someone, but the peri got it. he pronounced the fluid "good-looking" but warned that milo was going to come out with some arm scratches, as if we would care about a little surface scratching if milo was alive and out. ha!

we waited a couple of hours and then a resident came back to start giving us instructions that would only make sense if i were being admitted, and we had a pretty good idea that the results were back and they were good. finally, at about 8 pm, the attending gave us the official good news, and that's when it really hit me, and the joy and relief started to wash over me. the rest was just coasting.

they kept me on a low dose of pitocin for the night, and i dozed off and on. my mother-in-law watched the monitor all night and chatted with the wonderful nurse, who was a bartender before he became a nurse, and it showed. justin went home and got a shower and brought back a cd player, and we kept charlie haden and the rachels and dave brubeck playing through the night while i sucked on popcicles. at one point, a really hot doctor came in to let me know he would be filling in for my ob if anything happened too quickly, and the eye candy helped to make up for the night of waiting. later, a really mellow nurse named jenny came on and saw us through until morning.

at 5:30 am, an intern came in and broke my water, and then everything went lightning-fast. i had the perfect epidural - really, really perfect - and at 7:30 my ob arrived. at 8:00, we started pushing, and it was easy, easy, easy, and then at 8:33 am, justin cut the cord and started to cry, which made the nurses cry, and of course, milo did a bit of crying, too. he was laid across my chest, and he was beautiful, and perfect, and then he peed all over me. really, it doesn't get any better than that.

quick

exactly five minutes left on the library computer to say that my mom will be here a week from today and already has had an excellent job interview, my dad's in the hospital and hanging by a thread, my stomach is finally starting to get better, justin and i both have new glasses (justin's are very eccentric and vaguely tree branchy, while mine are black and white and very superheroish), and milo has begun to scoot himself around. yesterday, he grunted and twitched his way across our bed to get to the milk tap! and today, he laughed (at justin! ha!). we took him to have his picture made yesterday (milo, not justin), in his bumblebee halloween costume, and he was so cute it made my ovaries twitch. i'll post the pics as soon as i can. love to bloggy babes everywhere.