Thank God for the internet! What did moms do in the 20th century to diagnose all their babies' maladies? Rely on doctors? Pshht. I've now been able to attribute Noah's whimpering to GERD, silent acid reflux, tracheamalacia and laryngomalacia. His baby acne and cradle cap may now be a sign of serious eczema. He may need twenty nine prescriptions and years of therapy. Of course, I may need to run this all by my doctor first just to make sure she concurs. But I feel like the Babycenter.com blogs have given me all the answers I need.
Well, that was until my sitter came over. She's in her 50's and has been a nanny for many years. And she's becoming a doula, so she offered up her services to me for free for a couple of mornings. She fed Noah and I said "See, you hear that!! His windpipes are rattling!" And she looked at me strangely and said, no, I think that's pretty normal. It's called 'breathing.' "But he hasn't pooped in, like, a day!" And she said, poops change. No need to worry. "But he spits up sometimes, and gets cranky, and, well, he has GAS!" Yes, she said. What you've just described is a newborn.
"But...but...." Val, she said, you need to relax. He seems really happy and healthy to me.
Sigh.
Being a new mom is really hard. (I can hear all you seasoned pros rolling your eyes right now.) But when you haven't spent much time around babies, having a new one suddenly pop into your life - I'm HEEERE! DO something with me! - can be challenging. I have no point of reference by which to compare all of Noah's behaviors. In fact, I was going to call them 'quirks' just now, but I have no flippin clue if they are even quirks!
I feel really helpless and clueless right now. Couple that with lack of sleep, I've become a desperate neurotic. I've changed his formula 5 times now. (Side note - I'm not breastfeeding, to my despair and heartbreak. Remember when I was complaining during pregnancy that my boobs weren't getting any bigger? Seems that was a sign I should've brought to the attention of my caregivers. After I delivered, boobs still didn't get bigger. No milk for Noah, which I didn't realize until 3 days into his life (did I say 'clueless?') when he became extremely dehydrated and we had to rush him to the doctor and start him on formula. Big sigh. ) I give him Mylicon and Gripe Water every time he toots. I've physically examined his poop with my fingers and then compared it to photos I found online.
He doesn't sleep enough, except on the days when I think he may be sick because he's sleeping too long. He likes his pacifier, except 50% of the time when he acts like I dipped it in acid before insertion. He grunts, he groans, he strains, he kicks. He poops three times in one day and then none the next. He can eat 8 oz in feeding after feeding and then not eat for 7 hours straight.
I need some sanity!
Yes, it's been a challenging week. It actually started with an innocent trip to Costco. Mat, Katya, Noah and I all pile into the car to hit the megastore on Sunday. Big mistake, because unless you have been living under a rock you know that Sunday is Sample Day! There are about one million people at Costco. And their germs. All crowding around the ends of the rows to wait for twenty minutes to get a teaspoon of tapioca pudding. Katya can't sit still so she is running around, in front of and into other people's carts. She finally decides to crawl under the cart to ride on the flat part beneath the basket. This is a bad idea, as you can imagine, and I express as much to Mat who says, 'well, if she gets hurt it's her own damn fault,' because we've told her several times not to do it.
Do you ever watch Tosh.0 and his "Guess What Happens Next!" segments? Let's play that.
Guess what happens next? That's right, Katya gets hurt. Her hair, while dragging on the ground, gets caught underneath a wheel of the shopping cart. She starts screaming, which is not a balm on my nerves if you can believe it. She ends up fine, scared but not scarred, and we finally finish up the harrowing journey with our pack of 147 razors and 55 cans of shaving cream. Which were well worth it.
Oh, and the day gets even better.
We head home and start unloading groceries. Mat's got his hands full as he walks in the door, and he sees our cat, Butter, do just what you'd expect any sane cat to do after having been sequestered in a house with Coco. Butter bolts for the door. Now, Butter's done this a million times, and though he goes Mach 10 getting out the door, he doesn't actually go anywhere. He sits on the front porch and pretends he's an alleycat. But even though we know this, we always try to keep him away from the door because we are scared that one day he might find out that life is better on the outside.
So anyway, as Mat sees Butter bolt for the door....Guess what happens next?
That's right. Mat slams the door hard with his foot to keep Butter inside. However, all Mat managed to do was to keep half of Butter's tail inside. Mat drops all the groceries and yells and I come running. Remnants of Butter stick to the door and frame. As you can imagine, his tail is pretty beat up - not severed but nearly. Mat runs him to the vet - remember of course that this is a Sunday and the normal (i.e. less expensive) vet is closed so he has to go to the emergency 24-hour (i.e. mortgage your home to pay for) vet. Four hours later he trudges back and informs the family that Butter will be returning to us minus an appendage, and Mat will be returning minus $1500.
Then we had our rough week at home. Fussy, fussy, fussy, cry, cry cry, etc of which I've explained above and in our last post.
The week ended with a barbeque and corn on the cob, the latter which dislodged Katya's first baby tooth. She was so excited, she's been talking for months about how all the kids in her class have been losing teeth and peer pressuring her to lose hers. So yay!! The Tooth Fairy is coming!!
Except....well, Guess what happened next?
That's right. The Tooth Fairy, in his exhausted state, fell asleep and forgot to visit Katya's pillow. And I thought Noah's crying was unbearable. Katya's up at 5:30 am and bawling in our bedroom. "The tooth fairy never came! And now I lost my tooth and she's never coming!" Seems in her state of distress she grabbed the tooth from under her pillow but then dropped it somewhere on the floor and couldn't find it. Cue Daddy. I send him up with a dollar bill (what's the going rate for baby teeth anyway?) and we concoct a devious plan to try to save this child from a traumatic memory.
Mat sees his chance when Katya goes to the bathroom. He can't find her tooth anywhere either, so the Tooth Fairy quickly places the dollar under a stray pillow and hatches his plot. Katya comes back in and he tells her to keep looking under her pillows. Yay! The Tooth Fairy must have come while she was in the bathroom!! (And then, "Is that all?" she says looking at the dollar bill.) She runs downstairs reenergized. And we all now can carry on with our day.
The thought never crossed Katya's mind, of course, that there may be a correllation between Mat's appearance in her bedroom and the 'Tooth Fairy' miraculously visiting at the same time. Kids - you can tell 'em anything!
