June 15, 2015
I can take on any dog or cat and trim their nails but holy shekels, trimming LB’s nails is … a nail biter.
***
I didn’t know it was normal for babies to hate tummy time. LB spent a lot of time faceplanting for most of the first few days, crying angrily.
We don’t seem to have growth spurts at regular intervals. We have five days on and two days off, if we’re lucky, from the things that seem to indicate growth spurt: increased appetite, intermittent wakefulness through the night. Makes for interesting sleeplessness on the part of hir hapless parents but also incredibly interesting development. We could see hir cognition becoming sharper and more focused one day to the next, adding deliberate interaction and movement to the mix.
One day, ze held my hand and selectively chewed on one finger at a time, clearly testing and rejecting on the search for the perfect finger. The next day ze picked up hir pacifier and tried to put it in hir mouth.
Out of the blue, ze decided that ze was going to turn over on hir belly from hir back. I couldn’t tell you what brought this on. Over 6 days, ze started the attempts. One every other day. On the last of the 6 days, on hir third actual attempt, ze made it. Angry and crying the whole time. Once accomplished, it seemed forgotten but really ze was just gearing up for five more days of seeing what else ze could do with this skill.
***
Some day, ze will sleep in hir crib for daytime naps, right? RIGHT? Please say yes.
***
The answer IS yes! We had to break all the rules but since ze is so strong, I’m not so worried anymore. Ze always rolls over onto hir face now that ze has mastered the art, so over the course of a few weeks, we added blankets and pillows and bumpers to the crib, experimenting with what seemed most comfortable.
Ze gets stuck on hir belly because apparently rolling from the back is easy but rolling from the belly is not. My child, ze is backwards. But in the process, ze often gets a limb stuck in the prison bars, so bumpers were much safer. It’s helped a lot, and once a week, ze might even sleep more than 6 hours at a stretch! And the cozier (blankes and pillows) the bed, the longer ze might sleep.
***
The moment LB actually looked at us, not through us, or past us, or around us, but actually directly at us was pretty cool. But far better was the moment that ze progressed from smiles to little gurgles to full blown belly chortles. It’s intoxicating! Hir eyes just about disappear into the creased chubby cheeks, hir mouth opens wide and curves into a huge toothless grin, the laugh wells up from hir toes. Hir whole body shakes with each outburst of glee. Needless to say, once I discovered that kissing hir cheeks or tickling hir cheek with my hair accidentally produced that chortle, I did that forever. Or at least until my face hurt from laughing.
***
Lots of “holy crap, this is OUR child” moments.
Ze rides in the stroller the way I ride in cars, feet kicked up, slumping down into the seat;
Crinkles hir face like I do;
Has some of PiC’s facial features;
and some of mine.
Weird.
June 8, 2015
I’m not asking for much, I swear.
We just want someone polite and competent to help me with LB during my work day. If we’re all lucky, ze will even sleep for half that time so the nanny can do whatever she wants, within reason. But we’ve been striking out left and right.
Our latest bomb candidate was a real doozy. I spent 18 hours working with her, willing to compromise on most things if her care was good, only to have her really drop the ball at the last hour. She was an older woman from my homeland, and that could have made it easier. Obviously, in this case: NOT ONE BIT.
The laundry list of objections felt endless. She would interrupt every time I gave her instructions, refuse to take no for an answer, take every conversation as an opportunity to persuade me that I should hire her, argue that we really didn’t need 2 or 3 trial days despite having agreed to work them, felt that “but I’m healthy” was an appropriate response to the requirement that she be vaccinated, insist on doing the opposite of what I asked her to do, and bother Seamus.
Seriously, if I say that the kid isn’t to watch tv so don’t point it out to hir, the first thing you do after that should NOT be turn the kid toward the tv and say Hey Look!
If I say that the dog is forbidden to have people food, it’s not funny to wave your lunch in his face and pull it away laughing. Baiting a dog you don’t know? That’s stupid, rude, and just highlights the inanity of your repetitious “will he bite me?” No, but I’m about to.
LB would dive for the diaper box and I’d set it aside saying, no, diapers are not for eating. The nanny would grab a diaper and toss it to hir during a change saying, here play with that. Um, “play” for LB means EAT. So you’re giving hir a diaper to eat. Thanks.
She probably could have been broken of all those habits, like a poorly trained horse, over time.
It wouldn’t have been easy for me because correcting an adult, in our culture, is Just Not Done. And if they’re ridiculously nosy, asking “how much did you pay for X? What’s your rent? Are your utilities included in the rent? What does Y cost?” you can’t directly tell them to buzz off. Thankfully, I’ve learned some acceptable defensive conversational judo in the past several years and stopped myself from getting sucked into the subordinate’s vortex of compelled and regretted answers.
The death knell was this: we have one of those cheapish electric chair swings, a lightly used hand me down. We use it once in a while but only with supervision because LB cannot be trusted. Ze is the squirreliest, wiggliest, contrariest kiddo I’ve ever cared. Strap hir into that chair and ze will have contorted in some unimaginable fashion trying to vault out of it two seconds later. So I tell the nanny that ze cannot be left alone, asleep or awake, in that thing. Ze may look conked out but ze wakes up at the drop of a pin and the very second ze realizes that ze is unwatched? FLIP!
Worried that it was actually me being unreasonably picky, I even invited a friend to come observe the nanny. We didn’t end up having her back for that observation but this very honest friend came prepared to tell me that I needed to compromise only to find that it’s not me! I’m reasonable, thank you very much.
I was working away, trying to decipher some weird work problem, when I heard the bathroom door click behind me. My brain turned over and I popped around the corner to find that Nanny-No-More had left LB alone in the chair, asleep, unsecured by the safety belt, with the rocker wheek-whacking away on High.
!!!!!
Now I GET that kids get injured on their own. I know that kids – hell, I was one of them – can be beyond accident prone. I don’t plan to wrap hir in a bubble suit. With me as a mom, ze is genetically coded for klutz. Kids don’t need our help or to be set up for more injury!
Just as egregiously, why is she incapable of doing as I ask? It’s almost as though I’m not paying for her services, so have no reason to expect compliance. Oh, WAIT.
Obviously, that was the end of that run. *sigh* We were so hopeful.
May 13, 2015
I’m revising a friend’s advice on parenting for our family.
1. Don’t have more kids than you have hands
Don’t have more kids than you have adult bodies. Ages ago, as a child-free professional auntie, I liked a 4-1 ratio of kids to adults. I stand by that number.
2. Fight only the important battles
Also the ones about socks. Cold feeted babies are angry angry babies.
3. Always have fun
Laugh at everything that would otherwise make you angry. Bitterly, hysterically, whatever, just go with it. You’re both sleep mad.
We’re keeping hir turned away from the television but like an owl, hir head swivels around until it’s just about 180 degrees looking back to continue looking at it. The lights and movement draw hir eyes right now but it’s far too early for hir to develop a tv habit! I’m considering being a heartless mom and moving the one tv into our room when ze gets older. For now I think it’s true that ze is just looking at the lights and movements.
The growth and development ze experienced coming into hir third month was astounding. In the space of four days, ze started paying attention to mobile toys, music, rattles, and trying to intentionally use hir hands as hands a couple times:
Ze very deliberately played a game with me and hir bottle one night: open mouth, clamp down on the nipple, spit it out, grin, repeat. Ze did this four or five times, each time sipping a few drops and grinning as ze spit out the bottle. Then finally, ze was done playing so ze grabbed my hand that was holding the bottle and very firmly moved it towards hir mouth and started drinking normally.
In hir little playmat with mobile things, ze had been swinging at the hanging objects aimlessly. One day, ze reached up with a fist, punching the air and then paused. Ze gently waved it at a ring. And again. Then started whacking the ring like a piñata!
Ze isn’t breaking any records but hir pediatrician is pleased with growth and ze made it through the first round of vaccines with about the expected level of rage, followed by a good long sleep. Weirdly, ze was more infuriated by the attempt to Baby Tylenol hir later that evening.
The search for a nanny had become a bit desperate. We hadn’t found anyone that really suits. The first mother’s helper we tried seemed alright at first but her competence seemed to taper off. By the fourth day, I was still repeating basic care instructions and it was driving me nuts. [When baby cries, check hir diaper. Why does that have to be repeated??] Then it was ok. Then it was not.
Ze has opinions and is very vocal about them. Yep, that means All The Crying. But also that the chirps and squeaks that impressed me so earlier turned into full near-words and now ze will lay around talking at you for minutes at a time. You don’t even have to be in front of hir, as long as ze can hear you respond.
Ze has more patience now. Before, the very second ze was GOING to have a dirty diaper we were in hot water. Totally not fair, btw. With the graduation to size 1 diapers, ze is also a bit more mature and patient about waiting a minute for a change.
Ze hasn’t quite doubled birth weight but ze is HUGE compared to birth size. Looking at pictures from the first week is a startling contrast. Luckily I am an obsessive photographer so we have chronicled the whole way here.
May 12, 2015
Well, that didn’t last long.*
We are cautiously optimistic.
After some real stink bomb interviews, we found someone who was a great deal more “home style” than the others. Ella didn’t have a professional looking resume, her English wasn’t enough to get by so she needed a translator. But. Her meeting with LB was the best of all, she immediately (with permission) picked up LB and had a whole conversation with hir. Ze was grinning and responding with coos and cackles.
We decided to have her start a few days a week to rescue me and see if our read on her and our instincts were right. I’d be right here to assess the situation so we both felt like it was the only way to really get a feel for how well we’d work together.
We mostly spoke Spanish. Well, she spoke and I limped along painfully translating each word and eventually responding about two sentences behind in every conversation. It wasn’t awful but it sure was a workout for my brain and hearing me butcher her native language couldn’t have been easy on the ears.
What stood out from this trial period?
She brought a translator to confirm details with me each of the first few weeks, having estimated rather accurately how much we were clearly communicating. She could have just let us struggle along and figure it out slowly but instead she made sure we were on the same page. She even asked, “Is there anything I want her to differently?”
She paid attention, took initiative and took direction well. When I spoke directly to LB, suggesting it was time for exercises or to play for ten more minutes before eating, Ella was ready to execute without my having to translate or repeat myself. This wasn’t a test, I was willing to repeat myself for her when necessary but she paid attention so that I wouldn’t have to.
When LB was upset, she quickly cycled through the troubleshooting as I suggested things. She knew what to try but also took suggestions readily. She didn’t have to be told that as LB’s mother, I’m going to know what’s changed and what’s working right now. Sometimes I don’t know but when I do, Ella is receptive. We’ve disagreed about things on occasion but it’s not become an issue.
A couple of our interviewees were pretty condescending and the gall of that in the face of not being able to hold the baby!
Life is looking up
It took a few weeks, and I had to repeatedly tell myself to step back and let her do the job because it’s darn hard letting a stranger care for LB, but I’m feeling a lot better.
Physically, “just” working the desk job again instead of hefting LB’s ever-increasing weight for 8-12 hours a day makes such a big difference. I’m tired enough from the broken sleep at night, adding the full day workout was too much. Now I can recover a little and just have two jobs: make the “bread” and make the milk.
I can think! We’re not running out of diapers or wipes or whatever because I’m not too tired to think ahead to when we need more.
This place is cleaner. When I’m stuck on a work problem, I clean to think. Since LB is hanging out with Ella during the day, I can do the dishes, wipe down a counter, or sort the pile-up on the table.
Hell, we’re cleaner! Never in our lives has the opportunity to brush our teeth and shower been so precious.
I finally finally got to cook again. It was just a crockpot meal but that represented a milestone.
I still wish that we could handle childcare on our own, or that Mom was here to mind her grandchild like she always always wanted even if it meant she teaches the kid even more mischief, but what’s the use of wishing for things that can’t be?
Like I said, cautiously optimistic because sharing my work and home space is weird but so far, so good!
*And after a miscommunication, Ella quit. Rather than seek clarification, or accept my clarifications when I realized that she had misunderstood, she stopped showing up. So that sucks. And we’re back to square one. But I guess I can enjoy this time of not getting dressed every day while we search for a replacement? Bright side? Anyone? Bueller?
May 6, 2015
We tried to be really careful about how much stuff we bought for the baby, and mostly did well, but babies still need a fair amount of maintenance related things and parents definitely need some stuff for sanity’s sake.
On review, I think we have a good idea of how well we did for this fourth-trimester phase.
We should have bought/stocked up on…
Diapers and wipes. Duh. (preferences below)
The First Years Deluxe Nail Clipper
Things we wanted more of…
Evenflo Classic Glass Nurser 8 oz
Hospital blankets and swaddle blankets
We love…
Our Chicco Car seat & stroller set
LB hated the car seat at first but came around after a few weeks. The stroller is awesome. It took months but we found the perfect lightweight, one hand collapsible, complete overhead canopy coverage stroller that we can both use. Ze loves staring at the sky when we’re out for a walk and conks out for naps in it.
aden + anais Swaddle Blankets
Amazon Elements Baby Wipes, Sensitive, Flip-Top, 80 Count (Pack of 6)
Baby bouncer kinda like this. Ours was a hand me down, and too big for LB as a newborn but ze has grown into it and figured out that kicking really hard makes it rock. We can actually put hir down to hang out while we eat sometimes. Ze is still insistent on being held a lot more than we’d like but this gives us the occasional break.
Boppy pillows. We used this ourselves as pillows when cuddling, to prop hir up when nursing or bottle feeding, as an arm rest when bottle feeding.
We hated…
Huggies One and Done Refreshing Baby Wipes, Cucumber and Green Tea
Too wet. Soggy, even.
Pampers wipes, Sensitive
Too dry! And too thin. These are two of the three Bears of baby wipes, for us.
Not worth it…
We got an adorable cradle hand-me-down and it was in great shape. Sadly, LB wasn’t having any of that putting hir down business when ze was small enough to use it, and when ze finally was ok with laying around to play or maaaaaybe nap, hir wingspan was just too wide. And what child sleeps with hir arms flung wide to either side? MINE. Of course.
I still have a box of 100 Lansinoh disposable nursing pads. They were highly recommended and I’m sure they’re great but I can never remember to use them, and generally I’m pumping or nursing frequently enough not to need them. *shrug* There is a point to ordering things online with free returns, I don’t have to leave the house to get my money back.
April 13, 2015
Is it ironic to anyone else that one of the first things you have to look for when you’re expecting, assuming you haven’t decided that one of you will stay home with the kid(s), is childcare? I mean, you’re going through all that trouble to bake and birth the child and then we have to farm out their care to some degree.
I say this with absolutely no judgment at all, I have never wanted to give up my professional career to stay at home with the kids a day in my life so I know it’s part of the cost of my choice but it sure does feel counterintuitive. I enthusiastically support the idea of Doting Dad PiC staying home if we could swing it but since we’re not quite there yet, sitters and daycare are part of our reality.
Sidebar: I have had friends who chose to stay home after looking over the finances, not because they wanted to do that more, and also SAHP friends who did want to. We have all sorts in our cohort and I respect all those choices equally. /sidebar
The minimum for your bog standard daycare here is a shade under $2000/month for full time, five days a week, maybe including a snack but usually not. They don’t come standard with: diapers and wipes, hot or full meals or snacks, or video monitoring.
You might think I’m nuts expecting that last but it is becoming more common in the LA area and that’s one thing they may be doing right. For my money and sanity, I’m not leaving my kid with strangers without some kind of oversight – I’ve read too many (horror) news stories about abuse. Just the other day there was a 2 month old killed by her sitter’s 11 year old kid. ELEVEN. I nearly threw up reading that and don’t tell me that hormones have anything to do with that reaction other than the hormone of their world will BURN if someone tries to abuse my Little Bean.
Right. Back to the point.
In the Bay Area, full time daycare is bogglingly expensive.
Our mornings are hard enough that I hate the idea and the logistics of dropping LB off at some location with strangers and no video surveillance for the day. This is further reinforced by an unexpectedly strong sense of not wanting to let hir out of my sight. We need other options at least for the first few months that I’m back to work.
We do have some flexibility here in that I can work remotely for a period of time. I initially wanted to hire a couple mother’s helpers but they’re charging nearly or just as much as experienced nannies in this area for very little experience. I’m talking about $18-25/hour for 0-2 years of experience, and $20-45/hour for 10-30 years of experience.
Indeed.com shows that full time nannies in the SF area are typically charging 35% more than the rest of the country’s average and run about $30-40K per year. Obviously, we do not have that kind of Silicon Valley/SF dot com money.
We had a frustrating trial with a mother’s helper who came highly recommended. She’s great with toddlers but had to be told four times in the same day to check LB’s diaper when ze cries on waking from a nap – my patience doesn’t extend to repeating basic instructions several times a day. In the end, we decided that it’d be worth it to try and find someone with more extensive experience. We scoured care.com, urbansitter.com, and sittercity.com for both, and they were all three kind of a crapshoot.
After we interviewed a handful of providers it appears that the people posting profiles use the listed rate ranges like a weird kind of target practice.
You’d see:
* Will take up to 3 kids
* Comfortable with pets/dogs
* Will take care of sick children
* XX years of experience
* Will drive kids to and from school and activities
* Will cook and clean, do laundry
* $15-20/hour
I’d expect that $20/hr would be for more than one kid, with lots of other work thrown in, and $15/hr would be for much less work, which is what we’re looking for. 1 kid, very minimal clean-up, feeding, diapering, and putting down to sleep.
Instead, all were charging $20/hr minimum, with paid sick leave, holidays and 2 weeks of vacation, and are horrified by Seamus. Oh and are utter Awkward Aardvarks with the baby.
If you’ve never seen someone hold a floppy necked infant for the first or second time, it goes something like this:
Here’s the baby!
*ginger or wary acceptance* They sort of stick the baby into one side with one arm, bracing as if for impact, while most of the baby remains free. Baby wiggles. Switch to the other side. Then back again. They grimace and adjust their hold. Baby, slipping, flails an arm or a leg. They adjust again. Baby squeaks and writhes indignantly. They start. Baby looks up at them, and their head suddenly flops forward. *thunk* Eyes wide, they return the baby.
It wasn’t quite that bad with the people we met but it was close.
The one touting 30+ years of experience with newborns kept asking us to show her how we hold the baby, adjusting her from one floppy position to another, insisting that my (already incredibly opportunistic) child was unhappy because ze “wants to be held the way hir parents hold hir.” The picture of grace, I managed not to laugh in her face. Yes, of course, ze knows how hir parents hold hir. That’s why ze just rejected me in favor of Grammy who cuddled, rocked AND cooed at hir for a weekend. Don’t tell me what my baby prefers. Ze’ll take the best offer going. And the best offer was NOT that nanny.
One didn’t come near the baby and told me that vitamins are a lie that doctors tell us to make them hyper. The origins or the why of this theory, we’ll never know.
I was starting to think we’d never find anyone but we took a shot with someone who looked less qualified on paper and it was well worth it. She actually holds the baby like she’s met one before and had that parentese down pat. LB was cooing at her in 90 seconds or less. It remains to be seen how well it works out on an ongoing basis but we’re doing a trial with her.
At full time employment, this carer’s rate will run just a touch below our previously very-(un)precisely budgeted allocation for childcare.
April 8, 2015
Sleep: the old saw “sleep when the baby sleeps” rarely applies here. Either I couldn’t fall asleep or the sleep cycles were so short I only had time to drop into sleep before being shaken awake by the need to change a diaper or feed hir. Naps felt amazing though, and for a few weeks, every 30 mins of sleep felt like half a night’s rest. After that, it just felt like punishment.
There are moments when ze has been nursing for more than an hour and I haven’t slept in weeks, and my body is beyond the point of crying out in fatigue because it’s too tired to do that even. I look down at hir and ze is just … cute. This is what keeps infants alive, I’m convinced of it.
Babywearing is great. Not for my back but definitely for morale when a distraught LB just needs to be held and my arms simply cannot anymore or I desperately need arms free to do things. It’s strangely comforting and I like being the Kanga to my now detachable Roo. Name change? LB–> Roo?
My first moments of despair thanks to pain and fatigue preventing me from picking up Little Bean struck in week 3, but the second month is when it really came home. I dodged the expected baby blues, but fear of a crippled future just around the corner instead of on the horizon was cause for some serious introspection and a few frustrated tears. PiC and I stayed up a few late nights talking through my worries and his reassurances meant the world to me. It also made me wish even harder that I’d figured out a way we could afford for him to stay home with us on just my earnings because he’s an amazing hands-on dad and genuinely enjoys taking care of LB morning, noon and night.
Ze started smiling at us this month. Ze wasn’t interested in making eye contact with anyone except PiC before. Now, ze will look around, see me, and grin. It’s awesome. Also ze smirks in hir sleep and I love it. It’s like there are good dreams going on in that bitty human brain. Sometimes it’s just because ze just had a great poo though.
Also awesome: baby babble. Ze isn’t forming sounds that are remotely like words but ze is making sounds on purpose and the range has increased to include a variety of tones, volume and interest. We started doing call and response. I leave hir laying on a playmat and holler random noises as I dash around the house trying to wash a bottle or get the laundry going or grab some food. The ones that please hir best get a delighted squeal, the OK sounds get a chirp. After a week of this, ze moved on to just babbling away on hir own at the ceiling, the window or the TV. We do lots of wide range vocabulary talking to hir regularly but when ze is participating, ze is most responsive to fun combinations of sounds so we go with it. Plenty of time to learn words and languages and all that.