We’re in between childcare helpers, still, so these days my schedule is a really weird non-routine routine. It’s not terrible, but it’s a really incredibly full day. I still log at least 8 hours of work, not continuously, but thank goodness my work allows this kind of flexibility.
If we’re really lucky, LB actually stays asleep after we put hir down at least til 8 hours later. Someday, I dream of this someday, maybe ze will even sleep 10 or 12 hours. In the meantime, every weekday is looking something like this:
Between 4-4:30am: get up, change diaper, feed, PiC gets up and tries to get hir back down to sleep, while I collapse in bed. Between 7-7:30am: If I’m lucky, ze did got to sleep and is still sleeping which means I have time to brush my teeth and get to work. If not, ze probably got me up again and PiC is too beat so it’s my turn to play with hir for a couple hours til the next nap because ze is up for good. Between 8-9am: Zip through some work before PiC leaves for the day. PiC makes me breakfast, I absentmindedly scarf that down with one hand, the other hand still working. LB lands in my lap to “help” for a while. If ze’s cooperative, ze will play with toys. If less so, ze will attempt to take over typing. 10-12pm: Try to get LB down for a nap. Wash dishes, wash bottles. Work like the wind while ze is sleeping.
If I get a 3rd hour of nap, I can do some household stuff: Pay bills, update tax filing info for 2014, get the laundry going, put food in the crockpot, follow up on weird things with billers. 1-3:30pm: feeding/diapering, play with a very awake Wiggle Worm. Read books, dangle toys. Take hir and Seamus out for a walk. Let hir “crawl” on the floor while I catch any easy to answer emails. 3:30-4pm: feeding, convince The Angry Inchworm to take another nap if ze is tired. Sometimes it’s a 30-45 minute third nap, sometimes this is the second nap of the day and lasts an hour or two. Seamus will start angling for his medications because after he takes them, he gets dinner. Whip through any dishes, knock out some more work. Between 5:30-6:30 pm: LB will be up and at it again so I’m all hirs. Feeding, diapering, and playing again. Feed Seamus. PiC gets home at some point and takes over for an hour of daddy+baby time. Sometimes they go out for a walk with Seamus. 7 pm: I start gathering a change of clothes and we’re blasting some tunes for hir bath. We’ve got this down to a science, now. Ze was terrified by the big bathtub but with music, toys, and a super efficient routine, ze’s cool with it now. 7:30-8 pm: If we’re in good odor with the baby gods, ze is finishing up the bedtime bottle and nodding off. If not, ze demands another bottle and is wide awake. 9 pm: Adult people dinner. Talk through anything we need to discuss, if we still have brainpower. Sometimes PiC can get in a workout before dinner. Sometimes we BOTH get to take showers. Sometimes I’m still catching up on work. Other times, I’m trying to arrange travel or figure out what’s up with our commitments. 11 pm: Remember that thing called sleep and stumble to bed wondering why the hell we didn’t do this earlier.
I have a half dozen friends who were onlies and happy about it. Half a dozen others who wish they were onlies, and dozens more who are glad they had siblings.
PiC always wanted a crowd. I wanted none. Or rather, I was open to the idea of raising kids generally but never felt the urge to procreate. Adoption always seemed like a better way to go but, either way, having a family of humans wasn’t imperative.
It’s decidedly disconcerting to be pondering this mere months after having LB but it started as a practical question. We do have to figure out what to do with the pregnancy clothes and new baby accoutrements and with very little storage space, the question becomes even more pressing.
Now that we’re on the other side of a somewhat difficult pregnancy and survived a few months of a baby that hated sleeping, neither of us are under any illusion that having a baby is fun. There are rewarding moments, absolutely, and it is true that the first time (and pretty much all subsequent times) your child sees you and is so pleased ze grins like a loon is something else. It’s pretty awesome figuring out how to extract baby giggles, too.
But the survival of all involved is no mean feat either.
The physical demands: We’re not young anymore. All nighters were terrible when youth was on my side, they’re far worse now. The emotional demands: We solely existed as parents in these months, there’s no time or energy to be partners and adult individuals. And that’s exhausting in a whole other way. The first time ze went to sleep and stayed asleep even after being put in bed, we had no idea what to do with ourselves. (We ended up having dinner and a conversation.) Financially, good grief. Diapers, and wipes, and hiring help. Breastfeeding was a must for LB’s health and saving money but despite having it really easy compared to some, it was chemically difficult. When I was tired (All The Times) feeding or pumping triggered a serious dopamine drop and a wave of depression overtook me. I had to talk myself off a ledge every time. I even started a Twitter hashtag to distract myself from the awful feelings. Still I provided the bulk of hir nutrition because formula is so expensive.
This may sound coldhearted but on the point of sheer exhaustion alone, before we consider how hard the pregnancy was the first time, neither of us are inclined to do this again.
And yet, strange twist. Despite my own life experience, despite always ranking sibling fighting alongside death and taxes (all are certain, all suck), there is a part of me that wants LB to have a companion who could, for as long as they’re inclined to be around each other, be there to reminisce about childhood things that they’d not share with anyone else.
I can’t do that now because my sibling is, bluntly, a shit. He almost always has been but in 30+ years, we did have 2-3 years when we got along and shared that bond. This isn’t a glass half full thing, that made his later choices a far worse betrayal, but I can’t deny that I did get to have that relationship for a short time. Later, his mental issues complicated things further. Much like having gotten a couple good years with my parents before life fully hit the skids, it reminds me that though I loved and lost, LB isn’t necessarily doomed to the same fate. Some people do get to enjoy good relationships with their parents. Some people do get to share life with their sibling in a positive way. Knowing that, there’s a small part of me that wonders if I’d be depriving hir of one of the most important relationships ze could have.
Looked at another way: having this sibling was hugely formative. Would I be who I am today if I had had the older brother I yearned for? If he’d been someone who excelled and applied his numerous talents, someone who looked out for me and guided me professionally? Would I be half as strong if I hadn’t had to learn how to act both as my own advocate as well as kick my own butt to forge a road of my own? Life could have been so much easier if he worked alongside me to support our parents but would I have had the same fire and determination to grow my career to this point so that I’d have the freedom to live a real life, the ability to choose to put my family first? Or would the easier road have left me softer, somewhat less ambitious, more willing to accept less because there was a safety net rather than a chasm gaping at my heels?
Maybe I would have. But I suspect that I would be a much different, much less successful, much less driven person.
I was a born follower. I always wanted to follow big brother and so follow him I did, right through a morass of trouble and back to safety and, never incidentally, punishment. Every time. My heart was not adventurous, my dreams were nightmares, and rarely did it occur to me that there was more to life than the books I devoured. I needed someone to follow and, as charisma and vision were his domains, I would have trundled along after him like an ant following a chemical trail. Without his failures, without a big push, I might still just be following.
He always wanted a brother so he did his best to remake me in that image, manipulating me into doing his dirty work like killing the spiders, climbing fences and other stereotypically boy escapades. Scion of a matriarchal family, I was a born scrapper but I learned to throw a real punch fighting with him. And fight we did, physically and emotionally, for nearly all of our lives. Bullies, wanting a bit of superiority marked me, all bookwormy and solitary, as an easy target only to rapidly retreat when I gave as good as I got. In the process of making me his “little brother”, he preyed on my every weakness, teaching me that the very existence of fear was a soft underbelly you never showed people. To this day, I won’t confess aloud that anything scares me because that’s an invitation to be pounced on.
High school was the first time I had to make my own way and my 12-year-old knees trembled at the unfamiliar ahead of me. Mom scraped up the cash to send him to private school, worried that he’d fall in with the wrong crowd at the public school, but as the academic and responsible kid, I was on my own. That was the first time that distinction between us had been made so clearly and that would follow us the rest of our lives. I often wondered how much of the family joke, subverting the usual expectations assigned to birth order that I would be the successful one and he’d depend on me, was a self fulfilling prophecy and how much was merely an accurate read of our characters.
The truth is, in many ways, my sibling’s inability to cast a shadow was as influential in forming the person I am as anything my parents instilled in me. I learned from them: facts, figures, morality. But I became more by pushing away from him, from our friction, in my need to redeem our family reputation.
Many people take comfort in their siblings. I am grateful when an encounter with him doesn’t give me weeks of nightmares. So it’s perhaps strange that I seemingly credit him with some large part of who I am. But it only seems fair to say that adversity tempered me and boy howdy did he throw challenges my way.
It’s not a theorem that can be solved for the best possible outcome. Much as I abhor math, I’d be working those numbers in a heartbeat if it could be done. So many “what ifs” crowd together: What if LB is like my sibling (terrible)? What if a future second kid is that awful person? What if LB would do so much better with a sibling?
All I can do is hope we do a good job with LB and have a LOT of help if we try again.
What say you? If you had them, were your siblings a joy or a bane? If you didn’t, did you wish for them? Or are you glad you dodged a bullet? How does that inform your choice to have or not have kid(s)?
Unlike the slippery slope argument, which is generally fallacious, my problem here is utterly logical.
After not buying clothes for almost a year, focusing solely on feeding the family and paying actually necessary bills, I got an itch to pick up one nice thing. We have a few events coming up and some of them are formal enough that my mom-capris and loose shirts wouldn’t pass muster.
(mom-capris: the same capris I had since before getting pregnant but only buttoning one of the buttons. Doubles as buffet capris.)
Despite my ban on buying any new dresses because how many dresses does a single human need, one dress that actually fits me wouldn’t be a bad idea since it is basically an all in one outfit. If I played my cards right, I could maybe find a dress that will fit me now AND work later if my size changes again. (Side grump: this is not a thing men have to worry about when they talk about growing the family.)
Naturally I still don’t want to actually GO shopping. You know, in a shop. This makes it difficult to figure out what size I am though. Instead I hit the internet and ordered multiple things in different sizes. My home is the most comfortable dressing room.
Having clicked order (twice), you’d think that was the end of Step One. It is, I suppose, as Step Two is trying everything on but there’s a nasty side effect of clicking Order: I got a thing. A thing? Yes, says my brain, a thing! What about these Other Things You Like? Turns into a staring contest.
A nicer lightweight bag.
A hair clip.
Some shirts.
A stand mixer.
A house.
…… No no and no!
Mind, this isn’t just an exercise in self deprivation. Not entirely. Some of these things may yet come home with me. Or that house may probably happen because terrible neighbors are terrible and Seamus would love a yard (think I can teach him to do yardwork?).
But the other stuff? I just know that over the years, I’ve bought my fair share of things that became clutter much more quickly that I anticipated which would then have to be purged and be a net loss. In fairness, I was younger, stupider, and even less stylish. Regardless, I’d rather not do that again and again and again. I’d also rather keep my money and use it on investments to grow our future free from regular jobs future. That is not the same as not wanting anything nice, though, and therein lies the problem. It’s all fine and dandy when I’m not buying anything at all. But once I do, the brain keeps on rolling: why not this? And also… this?
Then I have to burn some willpower telling it to SHUSH and NOPE.
People keep saying that renting is throwing money away and I can’t help but snort in derision when I hear it. If you were literally throwing money at a landlord and NOT living in the lodgings you paid for, sure, but I’m quite sure that no one is talking about that.
Personally, while I do like the idea of home ownership for the financial equity-building aspect under the right circumstances, I’ve always had a soft spot for renting and this weekend was a perfect example of why.
We have a neighbor who insists on scattering seed all over the mutual property, trying to attract the damn pigeons, and he succeeds. He’s now escalated to putting out trays of water and seed for them too, which means there’s seed, shells, and plastic trays littering the neighborhood along with a ridiculous amount of bird poop in a lot of places.
Some of our neighbors have CDs strung down their balconies, others have Fort Knox-like barbed things bristling up from their balcony rails. You can see why, poop streaks down the walls and their rails despite their precautions.
Aside from the poop factor, the litter attracts other vermin and the pigeon feathers are everywhere which is not awesome for allergies and the poop causes long term property damage. All in all, no matter how much I like animals, these critters are not welcomed neighbors.
PiC got into a tiff with the main (and only, I’m sure) culprit this weekend.
He politely asked the man to stop feeding directly on the shared property areas, as it encourages the flock to move closer and closer, they’ve taken to roosting right over our front step now!
The man went off on a frothy-mouthed tirade about how he intends to attract them, that the poor birds are starving with no possible food source, that humans destroy wildlife with their concrete, that we’re horrible selfish destructive people, and on and on.
I’ll note that while he has such contempt for us humans, he’s still living right here amongst us in the reviled concrete based home instead of communing with the nature that he’s advocating for.
I’ll also note that he’s all about having the animals but his plan evidently ends there. I’ve had to stop him feeding my dogs French fries because apparently any food is better than letting a dog go on a walk without five treats.
He doesn’t take good care of his own pets which are adorable but filthy and reek of urine. They urinate and defecate everywhere they go and stink up the joint. I don’t think he should get rid of them, I think he should actually take care of them! Incontinence is treatable and in some cases, leaving it untreated puts them at risk for further medical problems related to that incontinence. He lets them run loose everywhere, one of them was hit by a car because he refused to leash them walking in the dark, right into a driveway where cars pull out.
But no no, let’s lure in every creature you can think of to make up for the depredations of humans, and never mind what shape the poor animals will be in.
Also I’m not cool with the rats and roaches and whatever else that’ll move in with the abundance of extra food bits he keeps tossing out his windows and scattering on the sidewalks.
I stood up for this guy before when other bullying neighbors tried to rally the neighbors against him. I felt bad for him at the time when it was just about his dogs. But now he’s letting in anyone who comes to the locked gate without question, totally disregarding security concerns despite several break-ins made possible by his irresponsible behavior. He was a crank before all this degenerated into him flying into a rage, and he’s just getting worse. Goody.
If we were renters, this wouldn’t bother me quite so much. We could seriously consider moving when the lease was up and the long term property maintenance wouldn’t be my concern. So long as this guy’s living here, he’s going to be a pain.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I’m working away at Swagbucks to earn Amazon money for household, Little Bean, and dog things we need. Feel free to join using my referral link if you like!
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Retirement: I’ve been doing lump sum contributions to my IRA at the end of each tax year, but I should really do it monthly instead. Mostly for superficial reasons: seeing $5500 come out of the savings at once is more painful than ~ $500/month. Plus I can probably cash flow that $500/month if I’m creative, rather than taking it out of savings at all! Or am I getting greedy?
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Update: screw it, I’m cashflowing that sucker. 2014 contribution, done.
2015 contributions, set up as recurring withdrawals.
2016 contributions, will automatically go forth and withdraw.
We recently experienced a little improvement in quality of life, and so decided to take on another challenge.
Since none of my family had met the newbie yet, and his family was ready to take another crack at it, we loaded up a rental and drove down the coast. Here’s how it went….
Night 1: we left an hour and a half behind schedule. I blame Enterprise. They botched pickup, they didn’t have the car at the location even after I confirmed with them two days in advance AND they didn’t have a clean car ready to go when PiC finally arrived at the 2nd location where the cars were allegedly ready. They threw us exactly 1.5 hours behind.
We rented a minivan because STUFF and we wanted to be safer w/Seamus and LB. I hate not being able to crate him for the drive but there is no way to fit a Seamus-sized crate in the car. A truck, sure, but I’m not a fan of popping the dog in the truck bed, exposed to the elements. And LB, of course, requires a car seat and numerous other accoutrements. We tried to minimize as much as possible and consider this a learning experience for future packing.
I haaate running out of diapers and paying full price so I packed nearly 100. For 5.5 days away. It’s called pooperation, alright? I also packed twice as many doggy poo bags as Seamus could use. Very little worse than being stuck in a shitty situation with no clean up available.
Surprise: LB still hates being strapped into the car seat and hates sitting still in the car but loves freeway driving. We prepared our souls for multiple stops and screaming, instead ze slept the whole first 4 hour leg.
Day 2: we made an extra stop on Leg 2, making it 2 of 3 stretches before we made it the Home Base and that 45 minute delay put us in the middle of hellish traffic. 2:30 and like a bloody spider, GPS showed traffic stretched out every direction from the body of LA. Of course. It was a quick tutorial in why we can never move back. Every trip would take at least 45 minutes, if not 2 hours, because our friends and family are scattered everywhere.
LB ran out of “sitting in a car seat, putting up with freeway” steam at the tail end of Leg 3 so we rode the rest of the way serenaded by hir increasingly ragged roars. We slept pretty well that night, when we slept. It was a parody of our routine at home: sleep til ze wakes, one stumbles to get the bottle and the other weaves over to the sofa with hir, both collapse while ze is fed and patted back down. Stay on the sofa the rest of the night.
Day 3: Most of the morning and afternoon was spent recovering from the long drive and then ze finally met part of my family that night. Ze was full of chatter and what we call “crab bubbles” and then crashed hard.
We got to visit with some friends briefly that evening, and wind down almost like regular people, except we had to keep checking on LB since we didn’t bring a monitor.
Day 4 was the most intense day. We had a morning to early afternoon engagement, a small reunion, and ze decided that since we had to be up at 715 anyway, why not get up at 620 and stay up?
Thanks to, again, SoCal traffic, we didn’t get home til after 3, and then it was back out again for a dinner. This dragged on far longer than was civilized for a tiny infant and ze passed out in the car. Blessedly, this was the night of the long sleep. Ze actually stayed asleep for 8 hours. Hadn’t happened before, hasn’t happened since. But boy did we need it.
Day 5 was one last hurrah gathering of family and arguably the best one. LB was whisked away by Grandma, only to be seen again when hungry, then whooshed off to a cuddle and feeding with Grandpa. Aunts and Great Grandma finished up the rounds of baby passing and ze fell asleep in PiC’s arms. I don’t see this branch of the family often enough and boy do I miss them. Ze was also surprised with a handful of amazingly timed baby gifts: all things ze needed and I hadn’t even thought to mention them to anyone. Psychic family, I tell ya.
Logistics!
Packing. We were pretty sure that we overpacked but didn’t want to take the risk that going too minimalist would be to my detriment. I can only handle so much manual stuff, before you factor in the stress of travel, disrupted routines, and the energy drain of socializing.
Turns out we didn’t need: the spare cozy blanket (we brought two heavy/cozy and one light blankets, 2 were used regularly); the baby carriers (we were too tired to wear hir); a picnic blanket. I could also have packed about 10 fewer diapers but let’s never skimp on packing diapers because I don’t want to pay full price or live with regrets.
Feeding the Bean. I planned to do combination pumping and formula for hir feeding so we could be flexible. Turned out we didn’t need most of our handy formula packets. When I didn’t have enough prepumped milk packed, I nursed hir, and most days I was able to get nearly 20 oz in just two pumping sessions. Really quite convenient.
Costs. The car rental was nearly $400, and of course we had to fill up about three times. We stayed at places with breakfast provided and packed enough food and drinks along in our cooler so that we only paid for takeout twice. The convenience of not having to cram everything into our smaller cars and risking things falling over on Seamus or fighting with squeezing stuff into every inch was so worth that outlay.
