July 27, 2015

One more for the Annals of Unsolicited Advice

What is it with people who feel like their sole purpose is to educate on the Right Way to Mother?  Not Parent, because I notice these folks don’t ever lecture PiC on parenting, just Mothering. I’ve asked him, he’s puzzled that this keeps happening.

Some people think that because I’m a first time mom, everything I do or worry about is because I’m a first time mom and scoff at my decisions as that of a rank amateur. My life experience, my values, and my ability to evaluate a situation and make a decision were evidently all switched off once a child passed through the birth canal. Nope, it’s all new-mom nerves now! I’m a trembling, jello-jiggly wreck of an excuse for an adult now. Be forewarned!

Other people think that just because they now have experience with their first child, everything that happened to them is absolutely canon and will happen to me.

The latest round was a first time father who thinks, nay, insists! that we must get our wee Bean into a daycare or professional care as soon as possible because, as he puts it, the “separation anxiety will only get worse”. He lectured me soundly on how he’s speaking from experience, and that what he hears from me about finding a suitable carer, it’s “already a problem” because “no one is good enough.”

Mind, he didn’t bother to listen to what constitutes a suitable care provider. He just assumed that because this is our first go-round, we’re incapable – or rather, I’m incapable – of allowing an experienced person take care of our progeny.  It’s clearly because I’m a first time mom that I object to bad judgment and blatant negligence or unreliable people. If I had another, I wouldn’t be so foolish as to insist on someone who can care for LB safely and reliably.

Be proud of me for not rolling my eyes so hard they could have doubled for gyroscopes.

Instead of nodding and smiling, which might have shut him up but I doubt it, I mildly noted that I don’t, in fact, have issues with relying on people to help with LB. I could see that he was ratherput out by my inability to just take his well meaning but totally unwelcome and misplaced advice.

Certainly people and children have separation anxiety but I’ll not be railroaded into believing that we’re fated to endure weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth if I don’t give LB the boot now.

LB gets on well with new people, with or without me and PiC in the immediate vicinity. We make it a point to take hir and Seamus out to meet people so that ze can enjoy new faces and new voices. Ze loves the sound of new languages and enjoys a good “flying LB” no matter who administers it.

Sure, we’ll get some things wrong. But you know what? Every parent does. This is the first time we’re raising this child, and we’re doing our best for our child. People who think that we (I) don’t know what we’re doing because this is our first time at this rodeo can get stuffed.

As any parent worth their salt will tell you: every child is different. You learn more techniques that might work with each new one but that doesn’t mean you’ve unlocked the secrets to all children, forever.

If any parent shares their stories with me, I’m happy to hear them. I’m happy to extract useful techniques from those stories. Moralizing at me and outright telling me that my knowledge, skills, and life experience are worthless next to your one experience with your own child and family, though, that just gets my goat. It reminds me of that uncle who spent half my grandmother’s funeral lecturing me on the importance of getting into a good college. I was 24, graduated already, and had been supporting my family for oh, 5 -7 years by then. We don’t speak anymore.

Seems to me that people are all eager to proclaim their right to their own values, morals, or beliefs but completely fail to recognize that they ought to then respect the rights of others to think for themselves.

Though, if people quit annoying me, whatever would I write about?  😉

:: Surely, I’m not the only one blitzed with unsolicited fodder, am I?

:: EDIT: I should note, in both instances, the well-meaning father and the uncle, I wasn’t asking for help or advice or even talking about the subject they brought up. They cornered me, said hello, and then started lecturing. In the parenting case, he basically told me that I was doing it wrong (though he didn’t know how I was doing it) and that his way is the only way. That’s the thing that puts my back up.

When I post here, I welcome your thoughts and comments whether it be advice or something else!

July 24, 2015

How did we save on baby expenses?

Short story: “Sorta.”

As not the most helpful PF blogger ever, I took a most laissez-faire approach to saving on newborn and infant expenses. I set up Amazon Prime/Subscribe & Save orders for diapers after price comparing the Swaddlers we use to Target prices.

PiC won’t let me switch because he insists he needs the yellow/blue stripe and I’m not gonna argue with the guy who always says it’s his turn to get up with the baby tonight. We might save a hundred bucks or so over several months of diapers but that wouldn’t buy me sleep.

We happen to love the Amazon branded wipes and they’re the same cost as the best bulk price at 2¢/wipe. Fine. We save on having it shipped free so we’re not wasting time and gas.

Sticking to breast milk as much as possible.
LB eats like a fiend, anywhere between 20-30 ounces a day, and I can provide from 50-90% of that depending on the day’s yield. Formula costs nearly $1/oz so we can see that I’m saving us an average of $20/day. This is a lucky choice: not everyone can breastfeed and I choose to because I can.

We did buy a handful of bottle brushes at $2.50/each. It’s necessary to keep the bottles and nipples clean and sterile.

Almost everything else is optional or preloved.
We have some baby soap and ze is bathed about twice a week to fend off that old shoe funk.

Almost all hir clothes, towels, cloths, gear and toys are hand me downs. Ze has a lovely pile of books to look at (and try to eat) and a couple sets of blocks to play with when ze gets older.

Of four hand me down baby carriers, we picked out the two that fit us each best and didn’t splurge on the lovely $200 wrap sling thing that I yearned for.

We don’t do baby swings but we have a reclining chair that was handed down. The wipes warmer was a luxury concession on baby real estate and also a hand me down. We don’t use it anymore since ze has gotten old enough not to have five changes in the middle of the night.

Everyone kept insisting the Diaper Genie was a Must Have. We just used the plastic bags that the diapers came in, still smelling faintly fresh, as a trash bag and take it out daily. One benefit of living where we are, the dumpster is easily accessible and doesn’t stink up the place.

We’re staying within our allotted cash flow pretty well, only dipping dangerously low in the checking account once or twice when I pulled a large sum out for retirement contributions.

July 20, 2015

The 9-month Myth

Here’s a thing that irked me. I took high school biology. I took AP Biology. I took even more biology in college. And I learned the following timelines for gestation:

Mice, 20 days
Humans, 9 months
Elephants, 640-645 days

I can do math, too: 9 months x 4 weeks = 36 weeks.

So imagine my surprise when sometime last year, I learned that “carrying to term”, you know, to completion, was actually 40 weeks. That’s 10 months, folks. That’s not 9 months – what are we doing to our youth telling them that a full human pregnancy is only 9, when it’s actually 10??  [Ok, my outrage is just on my own behalf.]

Experienced parents may ask, to paraphrase one of my favorite shows, “what’s really the difference between 9 months and 10 months?”
To which I paraphrase-answer: it’s a WHOLE OTHER MONTH!

It makes a difference!

At 35 weeks:

I’d be one week away from being done.
I was remarkably unwieldy but every time I think “nearly there!” someone moves the goal posts. First it’s “LB could come at 36 weeks, no problem!” Then it’s “It’d really be better if LB came no earlier than 37 weeks!” Then, “38 weeks is really better …” This was extra time for me to get even more clumsy, folks, which I didn’t think was possible! (update: more unwieldy? Yes. More clumsy? Actually not possible.)

Under the new system, I had five weeks left.

The WHOLE 5 weeks remain fraught because it could still happen at any minute. I was surrounded by “oh I delivered at 33 weeks. I delivered at 35 weeks. I delivered 4 weeks early and had nothing ready!”

At 38 weeks, I see that we’re still working on some pretty important stuff that maybe should have been taken care of earlier:
“His lungs continue to mature and produce more and more surfactant, a substance that prevents the air sacs in his lungs from sticking to one another once he starts to breathe. Most other changes this week are small but important: He’s continuing to add fat and fine-tuning his brain and nervous system (so he can deal with all the stimulation that awaits him once he makes his entrance into the world).”

Sigh.

We were not concerned about physical-things readiness. LB had a place to sleep, a box of diapers, a stack of clothing and a car seat. Those are pretty much the things you need to bring the newborn home. Also a name would be good. But if LB arrived Week 35, it wouldn’t be a big deal in terms of stuff.

It’s just that for our peace of mind, in the disaster zone of Craigslist-bound stuff and all the donations and crap that our place had become, this stuff needed to begone before LB arrived lest we go right off the deep end.

One, I can’t stand being surrounded by so much stuff. Two, cleaning is going to be the last thing on our minds with a (potentially squalling) infant to tend to, ’round the clock.

I don’t know why we keep saying pregnancy is 9 months but here’s my plea: stop!

Update: I’m laughing at having written this months ago when still pregnant and never re-editing it after. Note to self, mathing is different when your brain is extremely preoccupied with creating a new creature.