Signs of teething

The main signs of teething in babies are: drooling, biting, irritability, wakefulness, refusal to eat, chin or face rash (from drooling), coughing, diarrhea, low grade fever, ear pulling, cheek rubbing, gum hematoma.

Baby has all the symptoms and has been a major gremlin.

I have the first five. Maybe I am teething?

Meal baby - what a great idea!

When I had mister Matt I was far from being able to receive guests (because of the csection and all) and yet people were showing up, and showing up hungry.

I wish I knew about this web site:

www.mealbaby.com

It's a registry for meals you can bring someone that just had a baby to help the family out in the first few weeks. I think it's genius! You pick a date and a meal you would like to bring. People that live far away can send gift cards for restaurants.

Just wanted to share! :)

Skinny bitch

Omg omg omg! I fit in my pre preggo skinny pants!!!! I thought this day would NEVER come! My scale is still disagreeing, but I think it is possessed, and who cares???

I'm so happy I'm gonna eat a cookie. :oD

CIO from the babies' perspective

I didn't write this, but I wanted to share because I almost peed myself laughing. I have no idea who the author is and am trying to find out.

CIO FROM THE BABY'S PERSPECTIVE

OK, here's my situation. My Mommy has had me for almost 7 months. The first few months were great. I cried, she picked me up and fed me, anytime, day or night. Then something happened. Over the last few weeks, she has been trying to STTN (sleep through the night). At first, I thought it was just a phase, but it is only getting worse. I've talked to other babies, and it seems like its pretty common after Mummies have had us for around 6 months. Here's the thing: these Mummies don't really need to sleep. Its just a habit. Many of them have had some 30 years to sleep and they just don't need it anymore. So I am implementing a plan. I call it the Crybaby Shuffle. It goes like this: Night 1: cry every 3 hours until you get fed. I know, its hard. Its hard to see your Mommy upset over your crying. Just keep reminding yourself, its for her own good. Night 2: cry every 2 hours until you get fed. Night 3: every hour. Most Mummies will start to respond more quickly after about 3 nights. Some Mummies are more alert, and may resist the change longer. These Mummies may stand in your doorway for hours, shhhh-ing. Dont give in. I cannot stress this enough: CONSISTENCY IS KEY!! If you let her STTN (sleep through the night), just once, she will expect it every night. I KNOW ITS HARD! But she really doesnt need the sleep, shes just resisting the change. If you have an especially alert Mommy, you can stop crying for about 10 minutes, just long enough for her to go back to bed and start to fall asleep. Then cry again. It WILL eventually work. My M\ummy once stayed awake for 10 hours straight, so I know she can do it. Last night, I cried every hour. You just have to decide to stick to it and just go for it. BE CONSISTENT! I cried for any reason I could come up with. My sleep sack tickled my foot. I felt a wrinkle under the sheet. My mobile made a shadow on the wall. I burped, and it tasted like pears. I hadnt eaten pears since lunch, whats up with that? The cat said "meow". I should know. My Mummy reminds me of this about 20 times a day. LOL. Once I cried just because I liked how it sounded when it echoed on the monitor in the other room. Too hot, too cold, just right - doesnt matter! Keep crying!! It took awhile, but it worked. She fed me at 4am. Tomorrow night, my goal is 3:30am. You need to slowly shorten the interval between feedings in order to reset your Mummies internal clocks. Sometimes my Mummy will call for reinforcements by sending in Daddy. Dont worry Daddies are not set up for not needing sleep the way Mummies are. They can only handle a few pats and shhing before they declare defeat and send in the Mummy. Also, be wary of the sleep sheep with rain noises. I like to give Mummy false hope that listening to the rain puts me to sleep sometimes I pretend to close my eyes and be asleep and then wait until I know Mummy is settling back to sleep to spring a surprise cry attack. If she doesnt get to me fast enough I follow up with my fake cough and gag noise that always has her running to the crib. At some point I am positive she will start to realise that she really doesnt really need sleep. P.S. Dont let those rubber things fool you, no matter how long you suck on them, no milk will come out. Trust me

Buh bye jeep (for good, this time)

I finally got rid of the wrangler. I thought I'd be sad to see it go, was planning to shed a tear or two, but I couldn't care less, as I pressed all the cool bottoms in the panel of my new mom car. I didn't even see the guy taking off with the jeep. All I wanted was the license plate frame that says "I'd rather be scuba diving," because I often rather.

The car didn't shake, the air conditioner actually has a purpose and I could actually have a conversation. Oh, and I almost gave the trunk space a french kiss.

I held on to jeep as my last piece of me before marriage and baby. On Fridays I would pick up take out while Led Zeppelin blasted on the radio and speeding on speed bumps, but pretending I am off roading while going to get Asian food is not cutting it (plus I probably look either crazy or pathetic).

When DC was hit by the last snowstorm (also known as snomaggedon), and hundreds of cars were stuck and abandoned and the snow fell hard, I wanted to put my head out the window and yell as I drove past them, "suckeeeers!" Then I realized that because I was the only one in the road, I was the only one going to work, while everyone else chilled by their fire place with their cocoa. Who was the sucker then?

So even when jeep is practical, it's not, really. And who needs that much sun, when I am already the color of charcoal from my stroller classes?

As I enter my mom car, I am excited (and surprising myself once more) to embrace this new chapter. Bring on the soccer games!

Silver boobies!!

Woot woot! Never thought I'd make it! Being attached to a breast pump for six months is a game of persistence. I literally give my sweat, blood and tears to give this kid the best nutrition. Phew!

Going for gold now.

Here is what it means, in Internet forum jargon:

Bronze boobies = breast feeding for three months

Silver boobies = breast feeding for six months

Gold boobies = breast feeding for a year

Platinum boobies = breastfeeding for a year and a half (oh, Lordy)

Diamond boobies = breastfeeding for two years (that's more like saggy boobies - really, if the kid can ask for it, maybe it's time to wean?)

To CIO or not to CIO?

CIO, for those not familiar with the acronym is the method behind letting a baby "cry it out" in order to sleep without the aid of parents, such as rocking, walking, co-sleeping, etc.

If you ask a mom that has more than one kid, or very busy parents what they think of the method, they will tell you that kids need to cry to learn the independence of self soothing to sleep. They will tell you that this is for their best. They will also say that their lives became peachy perfect once they mastered this baby torture and the gremlin got tamed into sleepy heaven.

If you ask a first time mom, a person without kids, or tree huggers, they will say the baby will lose trust in his caregiver and the world will become a bleak and dark place to live. They will claim that the kids that shot a bunch of people in the school were children of CIO. They will say that Mary would never let Jesus cry it out (but I wonder if she spared the rod). They will say you're an evil person and deserve to die!

(I wonder if Mary had her days, though, and also ate cookies in frustration while crying by herself)

I'm somewhere in the middle, in that I am a first time mom and I like to hug trees. I want everybody to get along and no one to suffer, but I also like to do other stuff besides holding a baby all day, especially when he is wiggly and will open tiny eyes as soon as I place his sleepy butt in the crib.

This, after 15 minutes of rocking and restarting again, when you need to pee, or are hungry, can get old really fast.

So I tried getting baby to sleep on his own. I rocked him a bit, got him drowsy and placed him in the crib.

Tiny eyes opened wide and crying commenced almost immediately. Usually sucker momma would pick him up again. Tough momma just shushed him this time and walked away. Baby became gremlin. Even though I checked on him every five minutes, he threw up, he rolled over, he screamed, he reached out and punched me on the face.

This went on for thirty minutes, until I started crying. Then, only then, he stopped, gave me that look that said, wtf, mom, I'm the baby, not you.

Once I picked him up he caressed my face and smiled. How can I ever let this baby cry it out again?

We had a glitch in that he did sleep on his own today, but I'm not sure if it was something I did.

Any takers?

On carseat safety

While bringing groceries home the other day, we placed a watermelon next to the baby. For some reason that didn't sit right with me. My ever anxious mind kept picturing that heavy fruit ricocheting in the car and hitting the baby in case of an accident.

Turns out this is one of the many things I did not know about carseat safety: any lose items inside the car could potentially impale the baby.

Apparently it is a law in most, if not all, states in America that a carseat technician checks that the parents have it properly installed in the car before they ever leave the hospital. In my case it seems like they were more concerned about getting me out of the wheelchair and into the car. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I was not aware of most of this.

I was going to blog about it, but this blogger did a much better job than I would have:

11 Deadly mistakes you didn't know you were making

Car seat safety

And here is a picture of how I was doing it all wrong:

The monkey things gotta go, so the chest strap can be, well, on the chest. Wubbanub needs to go. The straps need to start from lower, on his back, etc.

Boys and Skype

A while ago my brother was on his phone, inside an airplane, somewhere in South America, talking with my mom, who was in Brazil, who was talking with me, on Skype, and I live in the west coast of North America. The baby started crying and my brother asked my mom whose baby was that.

I will give you a second to get the picture. Got it?

That's technology for you, and a modern family.

Today my mom had some extra visitors, my nephews, and stepson decided (by a miraculous occurrence) to wake up early. Stepson and nephews know one another, from our wedding, but they don't speak each others languages unless, of course, the subject is farts.

Baby has this thing that when he goes number 2, he makes fart noises with his lips. At first I thought it was a coincidence, but it actually happens more often when his behind needs maintenance. The number of fart noises coming from his little mouth increases exponentially with the amount of maintenance needed.

So baby starts making fart noises, to the delight of all boys involved in the Skype conversation. By the way, all boys are sporting a Justin Bieber hairdo, even though they all say Justin Bieber sucks. They show each other their Xbox and playstation games and ask me in their languages when the other one is coming to visit.

When baby makes his toot soundtrack, everyone quickly decides to convince me that they can do a better, more realistic version of it. For fifteen minutes I endure a boy, two pre-teens and a baby making nonstop flatulence sounds.

I wish I got it on tape, but maybe that would be too much technology. By the time I got the camera they had moved on to burping, anyway. This is what I have to look forward to in a family overtaken by testosterone.

This too

Letters I wish I could have read from my self to myself.

Dear Mariana from January 2010,

In two years you will have a baby. I know, crazy! You don't even like children. You will love your baby more than life itself though and no, that will not make you like other people's children any more.

You look out the window and only see snow and wonder when was the last time you saw palm trees. In two years you will look out the window, see palm trees, and miss the snow.

You are obsessed with making your business grow and spend ungodly amounts of time making sure your website shows up on the first page of google. You work 60 to 70 hours a week and have become a slave to making money.

In two years none of this will have matter because you will close your LLC. I know, crazy!

You will get married to a military man, even though you promised yourself you would never go even on date with a man in an uniform because they move a lot, and you would never change your whole entire life because of a guy. Well, you will.

You never see your friends because you don't have time for them. In two years you will miss them, so enjoy their company while you can.

You wish you could give yourself a break and slow down, but this too shall pass.

Dear seven months pregnant Mariana,

You walked the longest and loneliest walk across a large parking lot of a hospital while having intense contractions and wondered if you would have a premature baby there, with no one around to help. The doctors were finally able to stop it and you are scared that the baby will arrive too soon.

He will have to be induced. You will have a csection and the first months of his life will go by in a blur of pain and all kinds of overwhelmed feelings. You will wonder why you don't feel that elated glow you are supposed to feel. You will mostly feel tired.

You will gain another twenty pounds in these last few weeks. I'm not kidding. You will actually gain ten of those in the hospital AFTER having the baby because of all the fluids in you. No one will warn you of this. Your legs will look like tree trunks.

As a mother you will feel inadequate. You will feel completely lost and tied down. You will cry in the shower, when you do have time to shower, but this too shall pass.

Dear Mariana with a one month old,

Even though you think you love him, that love will multiply as the days go by. Now the only human thing he seems to do is yawning, but in a few more months he will interact with you. He will talk his baby talks. He will grab a spoon from you if you feed him bananas, because he loves them so very much. He will giggle at the sight of you and when you are bored, just pretend you are eating his toes. He will think this is the funniest thing that ever happened to him and you will both laugh your butts off. You will cherish those moments because you know that they too will pass.

Let me introduce you to lipase

I own now over 360oz of breast milk stored. That's 15 hours of extra work besides my usual self hooked up to a machine every three hours, every day, for the last few months.

The little bags of milk take over two thirds of the freezer, which I only open to either store more milk or just to gaze proudly at my cow abilities.

I protect that freezer like that squirrel from Ice Age obsesses over his chestnut. If stepson wans ice cream out of the freezer, he can't have any, because no unnecessary heat can ever hit my precious.

Anywho, baby is eating most of his solids. He is sitting on the big boy part of (my new and fancy) jogging stroller. He goes to sleep easily. Life is finally good. Now all we need to do is slow down with this boob madness by rotating the stored milk with the new one to give momma a break.

Except the milk I defrosted stunk, and it tasted like crap. I threw one bag out, and then another one, until a friend told me that some women just produce too much lipase, which makes the milk get like this.

Lipa-what?

Lipase. It's an enzyme that every breast milk has to facilitate the break down of fat. Otherwise it's too heavy for baby to digest it. Except some women (such as moi) produce it in excess. Once expressed, those boogers start breaking down the fat in the milk and all it's yummy properties into a yucky soapy taste and sour smell.

The best way to fix this problem is to scald the milk before freezing, to kill some of the enzyme (which will also kill other good milk properties, mind you).

Most stories of women that find out they produce too much lipase end unhappily with the baby rejecting the milk and all of months of hard work thrown down the drain. Luckily my tiny takes after his dad and will eat anything. He gulped down yucky milk, making a yucky face.

FYI: most milk banks will take milk with high lipase, so if you happen to have it, don't throw it away. Donate it!