Baby Travels, and That Instant Baby Charm

Lauren with her Easter booty. Happy Easter, everyone!

Before I had my own child, it was hard for me to hear children crying in public places. When I take Lauren out in public, I cringe when she fusses or decides to babble on at an inconvenient time; I’m sure I’ll offend someone. But every time this happens, people smile back, or tell me “What a cute baby,” or, this weekend at Easter mass (after she fussed through the first half and slept through the second), Nick and I got “You two are such a good mommy and daddy for that little one!” I was definitely too sensitive in my former life.

Lauren’s been to her Aunt Kayla’s midwinter concert and hardly made a peep, and church every week, where she does “peep” but no one seems to mind. One night when Nick was working the weekend and I just had to get out, I feed her and then took her to the 9:00 movie, where she slept the whole time. A friend invited me to a free South Indian cooking demo at the library, and the stranger in front of me at the lecture reached back and rocked Lauren’s carseat when she fussed a little (a little invasive, but I went with it). When she naps from 5-6 p.m. she has no problem with Mom having a little treadmill time. She’s made the trip to Illinois for a family funeral and does well traveling to Grandma and Grandpa’s three hours away. I’m curious to see how she’ll do in the airport. I know someday she’ll be the active toddler that runs away from me, but right now, we are really enjoying her portability!

Daycare: My Memories, Lauren’s Experience

My mother brought me to an in-home daycare after taking a year off from teaching to care for me. I distinctly remember one car trip in on one of those mornings (I must have been 3 or 4, before preschool) when I was upset I couldn’t stay home with her. She distracted me by telling me stories and we made them up together. I’ll never know if she was hurt by that. I wish now I could tell her I respected her decision.

From my last entry, you can tell I have inner conflict about sending Lauren to daycare, but it’s only the “Am-I-being-a-good-mom?” guilt. We are SO incredibly fortunate to have Lauren spend her day with someone who sings and reads to her, gives her tummy time, respects that she takes breastmilk, and makes sure the other girls are gentle with her.

Nick and I started researching daycare when I was four months pregnant. First, we looked at the centers. The first one didn’t have any locks on the doors and had other problems. I actually tried not to cry in front of the director. The second center DID have locks, but a newspaper report from two years previous noted a child had escaped and no one noticed until hours later. The third center cost $1,200 a month and required you to remove your shoes and sanitize your hands before entering. Um, no thanks. The fourth one was actually somewhere we would want, but the price tag (still $70 more per week than the average in-home provider) regulated it to the back-up list.

Of the two in-home day care providers we interviewed, we liked them both, but chose the one located closer to our house (she also had more experience). For all the research we did, Kaye was recommended to us by word-of-mouth. Best of all, she’s willing to work with Lauren on potty-training and preschool preparation, so she’s with us for the long haul. I love how the other girls and Kaye chat with her and Lauren looks at them; I secretly hope she grows up a chatty extrovert!

Someday in the future, Lauren might turn to me and ask me the same question I asked my mother so long ago. I’ll have a story all ready for you, Lor.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Lauren and Mommy after the Shamrock Shuffle 5K. (Mommy’s hair is too gross to show!)

Nick and I ran the annual St. Pat’s race, Nick finishing in 28 minutes, and I finished in 31. Whole family was there for the run & parade.

How Come I Can’t Do All This?

Lesson learned: We are all human and need balance.

When I was 21, I was going to school full-time and had three part-time jobs: one as the music director for my college radio station, one as an copyeditor and columnist for the college paper, and one as a cashier at a local restaurant. This was the beginning of my adreneline-charged multi-tasking routine, and throughout the years, I worked full-time and volunteered on the side, or worked full-time and attended classes. No more. Guilt has set in, and I’ve quit everything except my full-time job and my family, and it’s STILL too much. Add to the balance that Nick is working crazy hours. Add the ever-present back-and-forth argument that working moms are bad/good/evil/realistic/guilty of abandonment. Add to the balance that no one’s perfect, even though I idolize them in my mind, and some of the working, writer-moms that I respect most have families that have fallen apart.

Two people in my life have recently made job transitions. One is a working mom, and one is not but is finally going after her dream. And even though things are great for me, there’s always “What else is out there?” And since it’s an election year, what can our candidates do for working moms? These are the thoughts that keep me awake at night!

Gorgeous Lauren is my saving grace. That smile can keep even the looniest woman going. Our good girl is getting better at holding her head up and I swear her legs are growing longer! More pictures soon.  

Our First Days as Parents

Lauren was born at 10:14 p.m. By the time we were both cleaned up after the birth, it was 1 a.m., and the nurses told me that since she was early, she was classified as a “near-term” baby, which is the category between “premie” and “full-term”. (Full-term begins at 38 weeks gestation, and Lauren was 36 weeks and four days.) As a result, we had to move from the fourth floor of the hospital to the sixth, where we’d get more monitoring.

Nick and I were given a pamphlet about near-term baby behavior, which, in a nutshell, meant Lauren would sleep deeper than usual and it would be dangerous if she lost weight, so we needed to feed her no less than every three hours. I learned how to breastfeed at 2 a.m. from a nurse who wasn’t the most patient teacher at that hour. And it was a process: I fed Lauren, then I had to supplement with formula, then I had to pump the remaining and give it to her at her next feeding. The good practice with the breastpump came in handy when it came time to go back to work. Once my milk came in, Lauren became a good eater.

We were in love. I couldn’t sleep. Even though we kept Lauren in the room in the hospital’s plastic bassinette, I’d get up to check her breathing. Sometimes I’d pull her into bed with me and just look at her. On the night before our discharge, the nurse told me they had to do a car seat test on Lauren that would take two hours. My first case of separation anxiety!

Visitors came, bearing pink gifts! Nick and I ordered meals off the room service menu, and they were actually quite good. We rented a movie that we were too tired to watch. And we were more than ready to come home on Tuesday, December 11. Nick took the rest of the week off for paternity leave, and it was great to have the time together.

On Wednesday, December 12, Lauren had her first visit to the pediatrician. She’d lost only six ounces, which was OK, but she had a touch of jaundice. For the next five days, we fed her like crazy, tried to expose her to sunlight in the darkest month of the year, and brought her back to the pediatrician for a blood sample drawn from her heel.

Our cat, Franklin, camped out under the Christmas tree until we took it down in January. He’s since accepted Lauren!

Lauren Enters the World!

Lauren resting after her measurements

On Friday, December 7, Nick and I attended a wedding in Milwaukee. We decided to travel because the wedding was a short evening reception with no dance, we weren’t planning to stay overnight, and the couple’s union was a can’t-miss (they are perfect for each other). We chatted with the bride and groom’s relatives, and everyone was surprised we were there. “The due date’s three weeks away,” we repeated, grinning. We were home in Madison by nine and asleep by ten.

At six on Saturday morning, December 8, 2007, I awoke in a puddle of cold water. Embarrassed, I thought I’d wet my pants. A trip to the bathroom later, I knew it had to be the water breaking.

I called the hospital, and they told me to come in. I woke up Nick. My bags were packed the previous weekend, so he threw together some clothes and we were ready. The hospital was about 30 minutes away, and I thanked God that we were not travelling during the city’s weekday rush hour and it was not snowing. At the hospital, they administered a test to make sure my water had broken (it had) and assigned us to a room. I knew from class that the baby would have to be born within 24 hours to avoid infection, and I prayed labor would progress naturally.

Hooked up to an IV with medicine to encourage contractions by 10 a.m., I spent the next few hours watching Friends episodes on DVD and calling my boss and co-worker to rearrange projects. We hadn’t decided on a pediatrician so Nick made some calls. Since we never found out the baby’s sex, we still needed a boy name to go with the two girls’ names we liked. A nurse retreived a name book for us. Contractions started, and they did go on for a full minute each as promised.

By 4 p.m., I was four centimeters dilated and ready for an epidural. The IV hadn’t gone so smoothly in my arm, and I was scared. The anesthesiologist brought a med student with her to implant the epidural in my back. I tried to stay calm. Nick had to sit down. By 5 p.m. the medicine was flowing smoothly and I tried to relax. I could see the contractions on the monitor but could barely feel them. The nurse would look at the monitor and say, “The baby’s sleeping,” or “The baby’s awake again!” I finally asked her how she knew, and she said the heart rate dips when babies sleep.

At 8 p.m. I fell asleep for an hour, and at 9 p.m. I was 1o centimeters dilated and it was time to push. Nick held up one of my legs and the nurse held the other, and I pushed three times for every contraction. It was surprisingly easy with the epidural masking the pain, but I could feel Lauren dropping. She was born at 10:14 p.m., with Nick announcing, “It’s a girl!” and cutting the umbilical cord. I asked them to put her on my chest right away, and she didn’t breathe at first and was still bloody and dark purple. For a split second I thought she didn’t make it. Then Lauren sprung to life, crying and breathing and turning a rosy red, then pink. Oh, life was so good!

All day, Nick and I bantered between the two girls’ names: Lauren and Carissa. Lauren had been my favorite, Carissa his, and we mutually agreed on Isaac for a boy. At 6 p.m. I looked at him. “Carissa?” I said. “No, Lauren,” Nick answered. And with Judith chosen for my late mother, we welcomed Lauren Judith into the world.