11 Weeks

Gunter is still a sweet, smiley little angel. No complaints there. He deserves a good start and I hope I can give it to him. I really have to start being more disciplined and implement a schedule for out days. I go to bed late every night and am in no shape to get up when he wakes upfo rthe day at 8:00 am. I lie down, prop him up next to me and pop my boob in his mouth hoping that'll buy me time for a few more Zs, but in vain. He putters around next to me, cooing and flailing his little limbs around, ticking me. The other day this caused me to have a dream that They ( you know, the famous They) somehow put him back inside me and I was going around desperate  to find a way to get him back out. All of you in your ninth month or just back from the postpartum unit can surely imagine why this was bordering on being a nightmare.

I joined a Mom & Baby class, partly because I was hoping to make friends with some new moms who live around here, but so far I haven't hit it off with anyone. It's a bit depressing cause I don't know anyone who has kids and lives around here. Maybe I look like I don't have my shit together because I always come in late, after another night of staying up late on the laptop and then waking up soon after going to sleep to do the 4:00am feeding

Breast milk production is up, way up but not high enough to eliminate the supplements. I just added another Domperidone pill, which makes 11 so I'm nearly at the maximum dose. I was ecstatic when I pumped a whole 2 oz in half an hour last week, which is a lot compared to the 5ml I used to get before I started the meds. It took only one (well-intentioned) comment from Pamela in the Mom & Baby class, who mentioned that she gets 10 oz in 7 minutes, to send me crashing back down to earth. Ever since then, whenever I pump I hear a little voice pipe up in my head, '10 oz in 7 minutes!'. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the Devil himself .

Post Scriptum:

A few days after I wrote this entry, my sleep deprivation came to a climax that sent me off into the twilight zone. As usual, I had put the baby to bed around nince and I was staying up messing around on the computer way past my own bedtime. Finally, when I could no longer keep my eyes open, I turned off the lights and lay down. Around 3:30 am, just a couple of hours after I had fallen asleep, I heard Arron calling Cougar outside. I had never heard his voice sound so anguished. He was calling the dog's name, nearly crying, his voice almost breaking. I thought 'Oh my God! Something has happened to Cougar!' The way that old dog is always trailing far behind, I had been sure for some time that one of these days he would get lost or hit by a car. The former had already happened a few times, resulting in cougar being delivered to Arron's door by concerned neighboors, who all know whose dog he is. I went to the balcony and felt a pang in my chest as I thought I was about to see Cougar's limp body lying in the street.

The night was still, the streets empty but for the usual junkies begging change of the few stragglers making their way home after a night of clubbing. There was no dead dog lying in the road, just the shadows of the trees sweeping over the sidewalks in the night breeze. Under the large maple at the edge of the building, I made out the silhouette of Arron with Piggy attached to his chair. Alarmed, I gathered up the baby and brought him downstairs in the carriage. As the elevator arrived at the ground floor, I heard the clanking of Arron's chains agains his chair and the voices of Arron and another man getting into the second elevator. When I got off on the ground floor, there was a piece of duct tape in front of the elevator. Now I was sure Cougar had been hit by a car: someone must have been helping Arron bring him upstairs. I went to Arron's apartment but it was dark and empty. The dogs didn't run out to greet me and there was no injured Cougar anywhere to be seen. I was puzzled, but figured that Cougar must have been lost, not killed, and that Arron must have gone back out to look for him.

I pushed the carriage down Tupper street searching for my boy and his dogs. On my way, I ran into some of the neighborhood crackheads and told them Arron had lost his dog. Everyone knows Arron and his dogs, so I knew I could ask the crackheads about it. And besides, they look up to Arron for some reason, and are always trying to do things for him, give him useless stuff and otherwise show their admiration. So all the crackheads, junkies, panhandlers and drunken Inuits that I ran into that night showed a lot of concern and were very willing to help keep an eye out for cougar.

I returned home after about half an hour. I stopped by Arron's place, but the lights were still out and there was no sign of anyone being home. I fed the baby, put him in the sling and went back out. This time, I went all the way to Atwater and walked right around Cabot Square, still looking for Cougar, the whole time trying repeatedly to reach Arron on the phone.

Exhausted at 5:00 am, I finally decided to give up and headed back home. I stopped by Arron's place one more time. This time, I turned on a light and went into his bedroom. To my astonishment, there he was in bed with both dogs lying across his feet! I shook him awake.
"Arron. Arron, what's going on??"
" What are you doing?" he said drowsly.
" What am I doing? WHat are you  doing? I've been out looking for you and Cougar for nearly two hours!'
" You what?'
So I told him all about what had happened, about hearing him calling Cougar, and about seeing him and PIggy under the tree downstairs, and hearing him get in the elevator, and coming to his place twice to find it dark and empty, and about roaming the neigborhood with the baby looking for him and Cougar. He looked totally perplexed and said,
"I've bee right here, sleeping"

And suddenly, I realized what had happened. I had never heard him calling Cougar. I had, in my exhausted, half-asleep state, heard someone calling something.  I hadn't actually seen him with Piggy downstairs, I had seen a what looked like their outlines in the shadows cast by the foliage of the tree. When I later went back to my balcony to see how I could have made this mistake, I saw the pattern in the shadows that looked like Arron's chair with piggy in front of it, as seen from above.. None of this had happened: Cougar was sleeping safely at Arron's feet the whole time.

I guess tomorrow all the bums and crackheads will be asking Arron if he found his dog. I hope he at least goes along with it and doest tell everyone, 'Nah, my wife was just hallucinating, the dog is fine' or next thing you know those people will be asking me if I can get them some of whatever I'm on! 

This baby is unbelievable. He is all smiles, so easy-going. When he fusses, he just makes little 'ack!' sounds, unless I really delay attenting to him, which doesn't happen much. He's still really like a little angel from heaven, so innocent and sweet and content all the time.

He started to smile just before he hit 1 month old. I am waiting for the day I hear him laugh out loud, which should be hilarious.

He's not doing anything extraordinarily precocious, but he's on target and he  coos a lot. It sounds like he's talking to us, warbling away like a little baby bird.

Breastfeeding is still hard. He latches on okay but my milk supply is still not full even though I am taking 100 mg of Domperidone, which gives me headaches and stomach cramps. My right breast is still sensitive and having him feed off it is irritating so I sometimes use the pump instead, although I only get maximum 1-1/2 to 2 oz from the both breasts combined, and sometimes less than that, and it takes over 30 minutes to accomplish that. I thought I was doing pretty well, compared to before anyway, until a woman in my Mom & Tot class said she gets 10 oz in about 7 minutes. I instantly felt I was really falling short more than I had even realized. Anyway, I'm still stubbornly trying to increase my milk production, punping all the time.

I'm insanely tired all the time. Unless I force myself to get up around 9:00 or 10:00, I could easily hang aroun in bed until 2:00pm. When I get up, my knees, ankles and feet are stiff and sore and I walk like a gandma more than a new mom until they loosen up after a few minutes. I don't know if this is from the pills, or a side-effect of having had a baby, or if I'm getting arthritis or what. It could even be an autoimmune response to my implants, which have been in place for about 12 years. I'd have them out, except it costs about $10 000, which I definitely don't have. They took so much tissue out when they gave me my reduction that they left my nipples lying on the upper, completely flat part of my breasts. I got the implants a couple years later to round out that part so they wouldn't look so unnatural and deflated. There aren't too many people looking at my boobs these days, so I suppose I could live without the padding, but I just don't have the money for the procedure anyway.

So I'm insanely tired and sore, as I was saying, and I'm convinced that it's best to have babies when you're young and fit and full of energy. I wouldn't recommend waiting like I did. I get up in the morning, feed Lil' G, set him up first in his electronic swing, then in his activity center, and then for the rest of the day I potter around and clean-up, do paperwork, run errands, etc between feedings and pumpings, and before I know it it's time to make dinner again, feed baby, use the pump one more time and go back to bed.

How will I ever get  anything done in this state? I don't think it's because of Gunter, since he's pretty lo-maintenance for a baby, but more because I am suddenly getting old and tired and stiff and sore. I wish I still had my acupuncturist, but he died of cancer last year.

A couple of days ago, I went up to the IVF clinic where Gunter was conceived and saw the Drs and nurses who made it happen. They were really happy to see us. Dr Ezgi, especially, was thrilled.  She looked older and more tired than when I last saw her, like she had been working too hard. I was happy to be able to show her at least one wonderful fruit of her hard work. I wanted to make sure she knew how much she had done for me, that she had been a part of something that changed my life from one of bitterness and broken-hreatedness to blessing and fulfillment in the baby dept.

If there is such as thing as the perfect baby, Gunter is it.

At 6 weeks old, he is as easy-going and sweet as ever. He sleeps from 10:00 pm right through to 5:30 am, cries only when he's hungry or needs something, and beams his adorable smile at everyone who coos over him. The parenting books warn about how your pink-and-blue perfect baby dreams are likely to be blown to smithereens by the realities of colic, night waking, and other less-than-rosy scenarios, but my baby has so far well exceeded my ante-partum fantasies. He does have 'fussy time' for the last couple of hours before bedtime, when he just needs a little extra cuddling and attention, but he's so calm the rest of the time that everyone just marvels at it and tells me how lucky I am before launching into tales of their own parenting trials and tribulations.

Again, I did nothing to deserve this: I'm just damn lucky so far (knock wood).

He learned to smile at about 4 weeks and now does so spontaneously as well as in response to other people's grins. He has a way of smiling at me at the times when I am most in need of a prod to snap out of a  cranky mood.  In the morning, when I am in a funky fog and the last thing I want to do is have a human suction cup latched onto my sore boob, he lights up his whole little face up with a charming smile that at once melts my heart and makes me feel like a jerk for being in a bad mood when this innocent little bundle of love is so happy to see me, to be alive, and to be about to have breakfast.

And to think, my mother kept telling me that once you have kids your life is over, your freedom is lost forever, and you become a slave for the next 18 years. I feel like, on the contrary, my life has just begun. Yes, my son is the center of my world and I couldn't care less about travelling, buying expensive things for myself, or leading a glamorous life of travel and adventure. And I'm perfectly happy with that.