Too Much Blue Sky

	Monday, August 29, 2005

Stages

It was an odd weekend. Oliver slept - especially on Sunday - prodigiously. He took at least two long (two hour) naps during the day. He also made great leaps in his development. He tries to sit up now, when before he just lay on his Boppy or on a lap. He's also able to grasp things now - we've got pictures of him with his fingers clenched around his soft rattle or a toy. (We're still giddy enough that we take pictures of every little thing that he does. We're taking an average of 100 photos a month.) Before, he would bat at things or occasionally clench them against his chest with both arms, the way schoolgirls would carry their books before backpacks with wheels were invented.

The experts say that babies often sleep deeply and become fussy before leaping a developmental stage. It's exhausting to learn new skills, so they rest as much as possible when they're not practicing. (Sorry, I can't find a link to an expert. Just trust me.)

He's sleeping again, by the way. He usually takes a nap, but he slept for hours and hours last night, woke up completely, let his mother feed him, and collapsed into sleep again.

When he was awake, we were very impressed at his ability to grab. I told him there's probably a career ahead of him with that skill, but the only career I can think of that requires grabbing skills is shoplifting.

8:05:01 AM

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	Sunday, August 28, 2005

Baby Revolution

Our little boy has just started throwing one, or two, fists in the air. It's pretty cute. He might just be testing out his hand to see what it can do. On the other hand, he could be expressing baby solidarity with his parents.

And, of course, he could be warning us that the baby revolution is coming before we know it. It's hard to know - he still doesn't talk. He is an enigma to us.

5:34:39 PM

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	Friday, August 26, 2005

Cried Out

Well, it's Friday. As countless rock dj's have said, thank God.

Wednesday wasn't a bad day, baby-wise. He was cute, and sweet, and we went down to visit Mom at her school for the first time. It was a little odd to change suddenly from primary care provider - superdaddy! - to "oh, this is my husband." My wife was great, and introduced me to everybody. And they promptly shook my hand and then ignored me completely. That was fine - they know R, not me - but what bugged me was when I would start talking about little O, and they would literally cut me off to keep talking to R about how cute he was. I apparently had nothing to say about the baby. I was just the driver.

Work-wise, Wednesday was frustrating. I had a perfect at home assignment - preparing hundreds of envelopes for a big mailing. The envelopes were stuffed, stamped, labeled, and all ready to go when my boss remembered that I was supposed to put in a cover letter. So I had to rip open hundreds of manila envelopes, stuff the envelopes in, and reseal them with tape. They were Frankenstein's-monster ugly, and looked ridiculous. I had to spend an hour of my time with Oliver working on envelopes instead, trying desperately to keep him entertained on his playmat while furiously stuffing and taping. Then R came home and helped me out as long as she could, until O woke up.

Wednesday night was rought for Mrs. B. He either was eating or sleeping practically from the minute she came home - no playtime, no smiles, nothing.

I noticed the tears and asked what was wrong. She choked out, "I miss my baby." She wanted to actually see him with his eyes open, not just feeding or sleeping. And it was worse - she was starting to feel like she was losing him, like I was having a better time with him and growing closer to him than she was. After only three days, she felt like she was losing him.

Thursday morning she went to work with tears streaming down her face, and I cried after she left. She was inconsolable. My wife was crushed emotionally, and I could do nothing to help her, it seemed.

So yesterday was a good day - he ate, he slept, he played. We went to University Village to visit my brother, who must have been a little bemused at how I had suddenly turned into someone who can't think of anything to say that didn't involve "Oliver" or "he started smiling" or rattles or toys or other babyness. He was a good little passenger, bouncing around in his Bjorn and looking adorable, until he decided to spit up all over the front of it near the end.

I picked up a book for Mom: "How She Really Does It: Secrets of Successful Stay-at-Work Moms" by Wendy Sachs. (It seems to be helping.)

Thursday night was pretty tough for a while - I did some work and plugged in headphones so I could concentrate. (ADD.) By the time I was done, it was 8:30, baby was nearly asleep, and Mom was in tears again on the bed. After she was done and nearly asleep, I suddenly started sobbing, and suddenly she was trying to console me, and that's when we really started talking.

As it turns out, I had given her the impression that we were having nothing but perfect, blissful days with Oliver. So she was convinced that I had some magic touch, and that she was somehow a bad parent because she didn't have the same kind of perfect, serene times with him.

What was really happening was that I was only telling her about the good stuff, and the things that needed to be reported. I would tell him about smiles, and laughter, and when he ate and when he slept. I wouldn't tell her about the crying jags, or the squirming in my lap, or the times when I would try to get him to smile and he would start screaming instead. So last night, we talked about all of that. I told her all of the bad stuff. And then I explained that I never told her about it because I didn't want to be the "hapless dad." I wanted her to know that I was good with him, and that things were working well. And instead, she thought that I was Superdad, and that he only loved me.

I think we cleared up a lot last night. Mom's still going to have anxiety and insecure moments. I think it helped to tell her that I had my own anxiety and insecurity all day long. Neither one of us is perfect at this, but we're learning, and we're going to get through it.

7:38:33 AM

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	Tuesday, August 23, 2005

A New Day

It was better today.

Of course it was better. I knew it would be better. It was like this ten days ago, when Oliver wouldn't take a bottle from me and I thought everything was hopeless. We thought, we relaxed, and we got better. Me and Oliver both needed a day to recoup.

This morning, I waited around an hour after Mom left before he got his first bottle. He was a little persnickety, but he drank an ounce of milk, more than he did all yesterday morning.

I remembered all the secrets. I remembered not to feed him when he was too hungry, so I got him soon after his last feeding. I remembered not to feed him when he was angry - if he refused the bottle. we'd take a break for a minute or two and then try again. No forcing - I'm afraid that was part of the problem yesterday. And I remembered to relax. My tension only makes him worse, so I was calm and patient, and he was perfect.

Ninety minutes later, he drank three ounces. And slept a little.

Ninety minutes later, he took another bottle. By then, I was feeling pretty good, so I popped him into the Björn and we walked to the store. The trip went beautifully, except for the small matter of him spitting up on the front of the Bjorn. He was facing out, so I didn't really see until I peeked at the front before I walked into the store. I hurriedly grabbed some napkins (forgot to bring a spitup cloth), dabbed off the worst of it, and went into the men's room to get the rest wiped off. Thankfully, his mood didn't dampen.

He took five bottles today. He would have had a sixth feeding, but as I write this, he's out cold in his swing.

Phew.

4:17:53 PM

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The Best is Yet to Come

When I was an organizer, there was a common understanding about your first event (press conference, rally, protest, whatever). If it went badly (as it almost always did), it was a relief, beause now you knew that every event that followed would go better.

If it went well, on the other hand, you were fucked. If it went especially well - if your turnout was over predictions, or the speakers were perfect - then you were really doomed, because your expectations for events were now set so high that every subsequent event would look like a failure.

I had a good day yesterday, by that accounting.

It was my complete nightmare of the first day. Mrs. B went to work, and she was beside herself with pain and sadness. She went uncontrollably. I was in tears - I have never seen my wife as upset as she was yesterday. The only one who managed to keep his composure was Oliver - at one point, R started crying while holding him, and he started laughing.

So she went to work. Oliver and I hung out and played for a little bit, and then I realized it had been about two hours since he last fed. Time to try the first bottle of the day.

He started shrieking. He didn't want it. We struggled for a while, he screamed some more, and finally he fell asleep out of frustration and exhaustion.

For the next three and a half hours, we tried the same dance - try to feed the baby, baby refuses, with louder and louder screaming and crying, he falls asleep for a few minutes, he wakes up, try to feed the baby... Nothing. He didn't eat for five and a half hours.

The real tears that I noticed before are really coming down now. His eyelashes and his cheeks were soaked with tears. It was all too much for him. Mom wasn't home during the day, I was trying - badly - to push a bottle on him. Mom called around 10:30, and I was nearly in tears as I told her the news.

She came home for lunch to feed our emaciated baby. He ate ravenously, like a starving man at a buffet. I sat on the couch and wept, convinced I was a complete failure. R tried to console me (nice role reversal there) that it wasn't my fault he wasn't eating. He was reverse cycling. He was too shaken up by the new circumstances. It wasn't my fault.

(By the way, I'm not serious about the starving. Babies often don't eat much during the day, and they know when they really need to eat. So I wouldn't really starve unless it went on for a day or two. That doesn't make it feel any better, though.)

We decided I would try to feed him earlier. Again, never wait until a baby's too hungry to feed him. (I think I waited too early in the morning. He moved beyond hunger into total freak-out.) Thank goodness - he fed once at 2:30 and again at 4:00. I felt like I knew what I was doing again. We even played a little. (That's how badly the morning went - I didn't even try to play with him because I was so freaked about him not eating.)

Mom came home and fed him for the rest of the night. I felt like I had been on a roller coaster without a seat belt. It could not go like this every day - I refuse to allow it. I'll watch him more, feed him earlier and more often. But day 1 is in the books. It's over. It's history. This was my big learning day. Hopefully today goes better.

P.S. My boss apparently thinks that even though they gave me a contract for 120 hours over six weeks - 20 hours per week - I only should really have eight hours of work to do this week. I received a fairly obnoxious email that said that I should notify her if I was going to work significantly more than 8 hours this week. I don't know if she's trying to save hours for later projects, or if she's trying to micromanage my workload, or if she's trying to save money. But I don't like it. We'll see how this goes, but I hope it's not going to be a recurring issue.

7:11:18 AM

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	Sunday, August 21, 2005

In Pieces

Well, they threw one last curveball at me. My job decided that, rather than keep me as a 15-hour-a-week employee, they wanted to make me a contract employee. Oh, yes, and raise my hours to 20 hours a week.

Now, coincidentally, you are only paid benefits at this particular business if you work 20 hours a week or more (50% benefits). But of course, as a contract employee, I don't get any benefits at all. I'm trying to pretend that it's merely a coincidence, and not a sneaky way to save the company $200 in health care benefits each month, plus sick days, etc.

They didn't really save money, anyway. By "terminating" me, they had to pay me two weeks' worth of vacation days. It's a fair trade.

I literally left the fourth floor in shambles. As it happens, the whole office is being moved two floors down to make room for some big employer who wants to lease the whole floor. So they're demolishing walls, offices, doorways, and anything else that needs wrecking. The whole floor is a mass of dust, splinters, and exposed wires and pipes, and feels like a construction site, complete with sweaty men in dirty t-shirts walking up and down the floor.

I'm sorta grateful to be home now, because the dust and noise is only going to get worse. I'll have quite enough chaos on the home front without having to worry about breathing pulverized drywall dust.

So tomorrow everything changes. Tomorrow Mrs. Radiant Bluesky goes back to work at her school, and I become a stay-and-work-at-home dad. I'll learn how to feed the kid 3-4 times a day, and how to settle him down when he starts screaming. Somehow, I'll also have to squeeze in three or four hours of work every day. I expect most of my work is going to be late at night and over the weekends.

It's hard for me to feel untempered joy at the transition, because I'm watching R. go through the emotional trauma of going back to work. This will be the first time she's left her boy for an entire day, the first time she's spent more than three hours separated from him since he was born. There have been lots of tears, and there's just nothing I can do to console her. We just have to start the process and hope that the pain recedes somehow. As I told her earlier, I don't want it get better. I just want it to start hurting less. Right now, she's n complete agony. She told me that she's afraid she's going to start crying at work, in the middle of her all-day meeting. I'm sure it's going to happen.

The next few weeks are going to be a strain on all of us, and I know all three of us are going to shed some tears. (And yes, Oliver's got actual tears coming out of his eyes now. It's the most heartbreaking thing you can imaging, watching a baby cry real tears for the first time.) I just keep saying to myself, "this is the best we can do."

It doesn't really help R. to try and rationalize things, by saying that at least I'm taking care of him instead of daycare. I mean, it helps that I'm doing it. And she feels much more confident with me caring for him than complete strangers. But she still has to leave him behind all day, while she goes to work. I told her we'd come to visit her at least once a week. But I know it'll hurt every time she breaks out the breast pump and has to look at a picture of her baby instead of the real thing. I know that hearing Oliver on the phone instead of in person is going to break her heart. I know all of this, and I'm crying for her, too.

This is the best we can do.

This is the best we can do.

10:05:36 PM

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	Monday, August 15, 2005

Back on the Bottle

This weekend was a learning experience.

I tried to feed the kiddo Friday afternoon, only to be greeted by more screaming and wild thrashing of limbs. Mom was trying to take a nap, but ended up feeding him instead while I stewed in self-doubt and worry. Suddenly the idea of little O starving for eight hours until Mom came home seemed like a real possibility.

So I did what any smart parent would. I hit the Internet. I needed to know these things:

1. That I wasn't alone.
2. Why he wasn't feeding (and how to correct the problem)
3. That he wouldn't actually starve himself - in other words, that he would really eat when he needed food and wouldn't just hold out because he didn't like me, or the way I was holding the bottle, or because he didn't like me.

So we studied, and studied, and studied some more. Mom found websites and passed them to me. And we learned lots. Here's a few nice nuggets of wisdom.

Don't feed a baby when they're ravenously hungry. This does not mean that you should starve the baby. Rather, try to catch them before it gets to this point. A starving baby doesn't want to mess around with bottles - he wants the breast.
Milk changes when it's stored. It gets odors. It can get slightly sour from being frozen and thawed. Try to use the fresh stuff. To wit...
If your baby doesn't take a refrigerated bottle of milk, try the fresh stuff. Try having Mom pump and leave it out. (Breast milk at room temperature can last as long as 10 hours.) That way, the baby's got the closest thing to actual mother's milk from mom.
Try different positions. Cradling the baby, rocking, swaying back and forth, even laying down can sometimes work as feeding positions. Apparently, sometimes babies will only eat when walking, or rocking. Who knew?
Make sure mom's out of range - sight and smell. I think when the kid woke up on Thursday night, he smelled his mother and got all excited for milk. When you're trying to bottle-feed a baby and he smells mom, it's all over, because they will always prefer the real thing.
Babies react to stress. If you're tense, they're tense. Even if you can't imagine how, relax. It helps.

So we tried again Friday night. Mom pumped some fresh milk and left it out. I had an ounce of milk in a bottle and another 1 1/2 ounces in a second bottle. We waited. I cradled him and tried to coax him to sleep, not really believing that he would. (He didn't.) Around 8:45, I got my bottles and brought them over to the rocking chair, casually putting them in his line of sight without making a big deal about it.

Around 9:00, he started idly sucking on his fingers, the first sign of hunger. So I brought the bottle up casually, let him look at it for a second, and gently offered it to him.

And whattaya know? He ate!

He ate an ounce. I tried to give him more, and then he got a little irritated. But he ate. Woo-hoo!

The next night, we tried the same formula - fresh milk, relaxed dad, get him before he's starving. He ate 2 ounces.

The big test was Sunday. Mom was exhausted - an early morning and a long day. I offered to watch the kid for a while. She pumped a prodigious amount of milk - 4 1/2 ounces, in two bottles. (It was 5:30 - much earlier than our usual time together.) Ollie slept for about thirty minutes in his glorious swing, and then popped his eyes open. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say I swooped down upon him.

Within sixty seconds, he was in my lap, and snacking away like a champ. He devoured the first two ounces, and so I added another ounce. Gone. I added the rest, and he dutifully inhaled the rest. 4 1/2 ounces, just like that, and he was happy and well-fed.

Success!

The lesson for today: if it doesn't work once, don't panic. Try it again. Think about what you're trying to do. Consult the experts. And ferchrisake, relax. I think my two biggest mistakes were trying to feed him when he was crazy hungry, and I was tensed up.

By the way, success will help you relax. And you have to relax to be successful. It's a vicious circle. Welcome to the big bad world of parenting.

7:31:21 PM

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	Friday, August 12, 2005

A Rough Night

He fell asleep on his mom's lap (or more precisely, on his mother's Boppy.)   I thought, this'll be easy. All I have to do is cradle a sleeping baby for a little bit and then lay him in bed. No problem.

I tried to lay him in bed with his mother and was convinced he was out cold. I went into the living room to browse websites in quiet. It's 9:00, too early to sleep.

"Oh, husband!" my wife calls from the bedroom. He's awake. Apparently he woke up the minute I left the room.

Oh well, I'll just hold onto him until he settles down. Except he doesn't. Slowly, he goes from awake-and-drowsy to awake-and-not-happy. Then he started crying. This took maybe twenty or thirty minutes.

I keep trying to do what had worked before. I try my hold, my own "magic hold," which is holding him under his armpits while his legs dangle over my forearm. Shake, shake, shake - gentle bouncing motions up and down that barely move him. (Not the dangerous type of baby-shaking - it's when you shake him back and forth and his head is flailing about that the damage happens.)   This is the way I hold him, and it almost always works after a while. It's now 9:30 or so.

Uh oh. He's crying now. Not full-bore crying, but whimpering and thrashing around in my arms. The sitcoms never show babies thrashing around like this - because it's almost impossible to hold onto them when they're doing it. His arms and legs are getting strong enough that they're destabilizing my hands, and he weighs almost 14 pounds now.

I can't get him to sleep.   I try the rocking chair. I try swaying back and forth. I try to swaddle him, but I can't find the official velcro-reinforced swaddling blanket. I try one of our normal receiving blankets, but it's too short. I see another larger blanket, and decide to try that one. I'm a little rough tearing the first blanket off him. I'm starting to get angry.

Swaddling doesn't help. The blanket just feels like a big stupid lump of cloth wrapped around his legs. I'm holding him, again in the "magic hold" that isn't working like magic. I suddenly realize that I've only got one way to hold him, and only a few tricks to get him to sleep, and none of them are working.

I try to give him a bottle, and that's when he loses it. The bottle is the last thing in the world he wants right now, and now he's really crying - red-faced, lip quivering, yelping cries. I blew it. I try to hold him, desperately trying to calm him down, but it's too late and he's too angry and I'm too tired...

My hand finds his arm. It's still bucking like crazy, but my hand envelops his entire forearm. I squeeze it tight.

There is a door that opens in parents that hurt their children, I'm convinced. They forget that their kids are so fragile. They stop caring. The door opens, and they go in, and in that moment the most important thing becomes the parent's peace and quiet. The baby has to be forced to be quiet, any way possible. And that's when the babies get shaken, and the bruises start showing up, and the arms get mysteriously broken, and the excuses - "he fell down the stairs" - start.

I'm holding his arm and if I applied the right pressure, it would snap like a twig. In my mind, I can hear the crying, the inconsolable stunned crying that has no end, that would come from this. If I slipped and hurt this boy, I would never forgive myself. I let go of his arm, and start talking to him. I tell him everything. I tell him how excited I was to have a baby, but now that I've got one I'm a little scared of all the responsibility. I tell him that I'm afraid that he won't take bottles when we're home alone, and that he'll just starve himself during the day until his mother comes home. I tell him that, now that I'm about to start full-time baby care, I'm afraid of what the hell I've gotten myself into. I tell him that his mother called me a "natural dad," but the truth is that I'm not sure if I'm really going to be up for this.

I tell him that whatever happens, I will never ever let himself hurt this little boy. I promise him. I say it again four or five times, a ritual for my reassurance more than his.

And suddenly he's asleep in my arms. And we sit down . I watch a few minutes of "Six Feet Under" and then I decide that he's finally asleep. I try to take him back to bed. It's 10:45.

He wakes up instantly.

"Honey?" I say to my slumbering wife. "I need some help." I'm underplaying it to her. I'm a little punchy right now, and a little delirious. I think I'm overtired. I tell her that he won't sleep and he won't eat, and I think I sound pathetic as I'm relaying the details.

"Okay. Let me see if I can feed him." He feeds for five minutes and falls asleep at the breast.

8:06:29 AM

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	Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Rationing Music

EMusic, as mentioned before, has a dazzling array of children's music. After Neal Pollack's blistering breakdown of the choices available, I've been trying a few different choices (read: songs not by Dan Zanes.) Then suddenly I realized I was getting lots and lots of children's music and no music for grown-ups. I gotta save some downloads for me, too.

Downloaded this month:

Laura Cantrell - Humming by the Flowered Vine
Zuco 103 - Whaa!
Jason Ringenberg - A Day at the Farm with Farmer Jason
Matthew Shipp - Matthew Shipp's New Orbit
Woody Guthrie - Nursery Days (selected songs)

The best (or most intriguing) albums on EMusic that I haven't gotten yet:

Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs
M. Ward - Transistor Radio
Death from Above 1979 - You're a Woman, I'm a Machine
Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
Picaresque - the Decemberists
(I can't make up my mind about these guys. Can someone please tell me what is the deal with the Decemberists? Are they good? Are they cloying? Will I love them, or want to throw myself out a window?)
Brian Eno-Another Day on Earth
Bob Mould - Body of Song (and "The Last Dog and Pony Show" and "Bob Mould," not to mention all those Sugar albums)
The Mountain Goats - the Sunset Tree
Xiu Xiu - La Foret

I might have to do one of those booster packs, just to snatch these up before they disappear. EMusic has been known to get deals with labels only to lose them (example: Six Degrees.) I don't want to miss out of any of these.

Note: EMusic also just got a deal with Smithsonian Folkways. It seems like it's new, anyway. So they just took a big bag filled with Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Big Bill Broonzy, and other American legends, and dumped it out all over the website. Woo-hoo!

6:30:52 AM

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