Alexander and I have invented a new game. It's called “Kiss the Baby!” Basically, I look him in the face and say “Kiss the Baby!” and then I kiss him. Then he smiles, laughs, or says “gooooo.” Once he does that, I say “Kiss the Baby!” again and kiss him again. This goes on and on until it's time for the lightening round (“I am SO GOOD at lightening rounds!” quick, what's that from?), where I pepper his whole head with kisses and he laughs and laughs and laughs.

We'd just finished playing when Monstro came home last night. Alexander was panting from the exertion of our game. “He looks so happy!” Monstro said, reaching for him.

“Give him a minute,” I suggested.

“To come down from his happy high?” Monstro asked. I laughed.

Katie saw us on Saturday night and sent me an e-mail about how I'm a different mother from what I was last month. It helps that Alexander has shifted into what Katie calls the “candy stage.” He's becoming so sweet I just want to eat him up. But I think DCF would have something to say about that (I've watched a lot of “Judging Amy” since his birth, and have learned about these things), so instead I just look at him hungrily and commence another session of “Kiss the Baby!”

Of course, this is just a placeholder game until baby is big enough to play “Go Get a Hug,” but heck, if you've got to pass some time, this is a great way to do so. Especially since “Lost” was a rerun this week, and the second season of “Project Runway” is over and done.

Yesterday was my second wedding anniversary with Monstro. It will probably be remembered as “remember the wedding anniversary when you nearly burnt down the house cooking Steak Diane?” But that's OK — marriage is all about being able to fondly reminisce about your own screw-ups. And anyway, the house didn't burn down, and it gave us a moment to remember the time that Dusty and Becca nearly burnt down our Chico apartment when they put fireworks on Drivler's birthday cake. This is how Monstro sang Happy Birthday to Drivler that year:

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear Drivler,
Now take that outside.

… which they did, with not so much as a scorch mark on the ceiling to commemorate the event. Very impressive. And that cake tasted almost as good as the Steak Diane I cooked last night. There's just something about flambe that makes food taste that much better. Maybe it has something to do with the engendered adrenalin. I don't know.

For those keeping track, here was last night's menu:

Appetizer: Smoked oysters on baguette slices

Main Course: Steak Diane

Sweet Potatoes Anna (my own creation)

Tomatoes Vinagarette on Boston lettuce

Dessert: Strawberry Souffle

Breastfeeding is consuming. You don't read that a lot of places. The books all talk about how “beautiful” and “natural” it is, like they're describing a noun rather than a verb, some creek in the mountains. They don't tell you how sometimes that creek drowns someone or overruns its bank and every-so-often puts the “natural” in “natural disaster.”

Our first few days of breastfeeding were OK, and then it was hell for three weeks, and then I did a few shots of fenugreek, and then it was better, and then we got thrush, and it wasn't good for another three weeks, and then Monstro, baby, and I got sick (in that order. Still wonder why I haven't blogged for weeks?).

Anyway, the nursing continues to be rocky. Alexander turned 12 weeks yesterday, and he fed off me once. One time in 16 hours. And I started again with the freak-out that my milk's going to run dry, because I've never successfully pumped, ensuring the instant fulfillment of supply and demand.

“Momma would make a substandard dairy cow,” I told him when NIcki and Emily babysat. Nicki, who despite working for Mass Wildlife believed that the average horse weighed “around two, two hundred fifty pounds,” laughed.

Regardless of my own experience, or perhaps because of it, never have I been part of an endeavor where so many unbidden people are so eager to help me succeed. Even before I gave birth, the pastor's wife gave me La Leche League (R) International's The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding. The hospital with the anesthesiaologist of ill repute (at least from me) holds a thrice-weekly drop-in Breastfeeding Clinic, of which I have written in the past. I had to give birth and start nursing to meet an Asian from Palo Alto here. I think it was worth it.

And, having left the hospital the day after Alexander's birth, I had home visits from a visiting nurse and a doula.

The visiting nurse was quite professional, giving me the impression that the time Mom and Monstro spent clearing the coffee table in the living room was not spent in an unfortunate manner. She provided me with a baby-health booklet that ended with a Daily Breastfeeding Log that Tanya, my Palo Altan lactation consultant, eyed hungrily.

“Where did you get that?” she asked. “I've never seen that.”

“Talk to the visiting nurses,” I said.

The log listed every hour of the day, with fill-in-the-blanks for daily number of wet diapers and stools. I diligently circled the hours in which we breastfed, which offered an unexpected sense of accomplishment at the end of the week.

Alexander would screamg from hunger, though, so we started supplementing with soy-based infant formula.

“Why are you doing that?” my midwife asked.

(Others have asked this question, but they usually follow it with “Don't you know that if you want to boost your production, you have to nurse more often?” But my midwife had seen me after 25 hours of labor and frankly, I think she's scared of me a little bit.)

“Because I just can't feed him every time.” I looked her in the eye as I said it.

She started to grouse at me, but then changed her mind and went on with the exam.

Soy formula or no soy formula, my baby is the opposite of wasting away. He weighed 15 pounds on his 10-week birthday. His thigh is bigger around than my forearm. Well, OK: my pre-pregnancy forearm.

Tender infant bonding or no, there are two reasons I stuck with the breastfeeding: it's the best thing for Alexander, and it's great for post-partum weight loss. These days of sick babies and 24-degree temperatures, breastfeeding has become my primary mode of exercise. How many calories am I burning by being consumed? Health professionals say 500. I think it's more.

OK, so my early morning freak-out was mostly unjustified, and we're doing fine, and the winter has been mild and we're hoping it will continue to be, and we even ate sushi tonight. So I can take a deep breath and, with any luck, sleep through the night. Thanks Joan for your kind words, and Julie who sent me an e-mail link to a survey firm that's paying five bucks per completed survey. I have the best friends in the world. Too bad you're all on the other side of the country.

It's quarter to six in the morning and I just finished washing the dishes, which means I'm freaking out about money. I should have realized it sooner; yesterday I washed five loads of laundry, cleaned the bathroom, and washed nearly every dish in the flat, all of which are activities rare enough on their own, but positively spooky-freaky-weird when manifested on the same day.

Cluing in earlier would have maybe saved me some sleep. Instead, I woke up at 4:45 (otherwise known as an hour ago) changed and fed the baby, and then tried going back to sleep. Tossing and turning might not be Olympic-caliber sports, but the way I was doing 'em they were, at least, aerobic.

Some of you might not know that when I was about halfway through my pregnancy, I got fired. Feel free to read coincidence into that statement: my attorney does. And by that point my blood pressure was, for me, through the roof, so I didn't apply for unemployment for a solid month afterward, because you have to be well and healthy and able to work when you're getting unemployment, and after being put through the emotional and pre-natal ringer, I was not, not, and not.

I've been on the dole since August, having previously been the primary wage-earner in the household, and {sarcasm tag on} that's fun {close sarcasm tag}. Now it's five months later and here we are in the middle of our second New England winter, having already burned through $1,500 of heating oil — can't just turn down the thermostat and put on a sweater when you've got a new baby in the house — and if last winter was any indication we'll need to keep the boiler cranked until May.

And I'm pissed off because our nation does nothing to support new mothers, save WIC, which don't count for us because we make, like, three dollars and seventy five cents over the limit, what with my sweet husband working his ass off doing two jobs while, oh yeah, pursuing a Ph.d.

Maybe I'm just cranky because I bought my family's Christmas presents with three-dollar limits on Ebay and at tag sales last year, but this money thing is getting to me and even if I were to magically find a 40 hour/week job (and don't think I haven't tried, but the economy for swell writer types out here is such that they don't even send me a “thank you for applying, but fuck off” letters for my trouble), I'd spend 30 hours just making enough for infant childcare, which I'm leery of anyway having grown up in California back in the day when every day-care operator was molesting her charges, one of whom was in my hometown and went to jail for a long, long time.

And if I hadn't just checked my e-mail and learned that Steve Sloan just blogged me a valentine, I'd probably be on my hands and knees right now, mopping the floor.

Craning neck behind me, evaluating the state of the kitchen floor. Hmmmm. Not such a bad idea, that.

We all slept through the night last night. At least, I'm pretty sure. See, he was in the crib in the nursery for the first night ever, and when I woke up at quarter to seven this morning, the baby monitor was off. Which leads me to believe
that either the traffic noise was too loud, so in my sleep I turned it off, or he started to cry, so in my sleep I turned it off. But his face wasn't tear-streaked and his left eye wasn't goopy (which it invariably is after a cry session), so I THINK
he actually slept through the night. That's my story, anyway, and I'm stickin' to it.

Monstro and I met in Springfield last night and dined at Max's Tavern in the Basketball Hall of Fame. I brought Alexander, nursed him before Monstro arrived, and then we had him in his carseat on the booth banquette next to me. Baby didn't make so much as a PEEP the whole time. Everyone commented on what an angel he was being. Then, of course, he screamed all the way home, meaning I didn't get the Friendly's sundae I was craving, but no matter. To have a lovely (LOVELY — Max's is so beautiful, and the food is so carniverously good) evening out with my husband and son was a joy. The couple in the booth across from us had spent the day watching their granddaughter be born. They asked how old Alexander was and I said, “two months.” They told me that their new granddaughter was “four hours old by now.” I asked if their daughter had had an easy time of it and they said, “after seven and a half years of trying…” and trailed off. Guess after you want something for that long the pain doesn't matter.

All in all, a wonderful evening. AND, once Alexander and I got up, we went to the futon, nursed, and then slept for another two and a half hours.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh.

I am worth $1,906,800 on HumanForSale.com.

Motormouth (whilst watching Firefly for the second time): We have a kid.

Monstro: Yup. And he's quiet right now, so let's be thankful.

Motormouth (getting up to blog): Laughs

Monstro: I don't know what else to say. And on your way back, could you get me a beer?

Before I was pregnant, I was fascinated with pregnancy and childbirth. I remember reading a Sylvia Plath poem as part of AP Engish, a poem which was a riddle about pregnancy, filled with negative imagery. I couldn't figure out that the riddle was actually about pregnancy. “Who wouldn't be happy to be pregnant?” I asked our teacher, who replied, “you'd be surprised.”

In my 20s, I was dying to get pregnant. Bought all the natural childbirth books, too. Kitzinger, Gaskin, I've read 'em all.

And then I got pregnant, and fired from my job for being pregnant. And things weren't quite so rosy. But the third trimester was the best, and I looked forward to giving birth. Took the childbirth class with my darling husband. Read not one, but two different editions of “Spiritual Midwifery.” Sought out non-medicated birth stories on the net. Got Dick-Read's “Childbirth without Fear” from the library, and memorized its mantra of “Fear=Tension=Pain.” Man, I was educated, I was ready, bring on the drug-free childbirth.

And then they induced me, and all my plans to give birth without analgesic pain relief went out the window. Not that I didn't try — I breathed, I got in the tub, I sang, I laughed, we smooched. To no avail. Getting through childbirth drug-free was like getting through college drug-free: a nice idea that didn't happen.

But now, when I meet other women who have had babies, and they ask me if I did “natural” childbirth, and I say no, I had an epidural, they shake their heads and clarify: “I meant, did you give birth vaginally or have a c-section?”

As I mentioned in a previous post, our standby method for getting Alexander to go to sleep at night is to put him in the car and have Monstro drive him around while playing Izzy's “Facing Future” CD. It's restful for baby and cures that exploration bug within my darling husband, who returns each night to tell me of travels to new lands, such as Easthampton, Westhampton, and Williamsburg (not Historic Williamsburg, but another one).

But I'm tired of baby sleeping in his carseat, so tonight, it being Warhammer night and Monstro being out of the house, I tried a new routine.

First, it was a lovely afternoon so we took baby out for an hour-long stroll, wherein we explored Smith College and I got my glasses fogged up in their greenhouse.

Then, by 8:00 tonight, I'd fed baby six ounces of formula (after 10 minutes of nursing) and burped him well. This was followed by a bath for baby in lavender-oil spiked bathwater. Once he was clean and shiny I took him to the nursery, gave him a little infant massage (our post-bath ritual), put him in a fresh diaper and sleeper, swaddled him tightly and brought him into our room.

He seemed to know what was coming because he screamed his head off at me for 10 minutes, while I rocked him and patted him on the back. Once he calmed down a bit, I set him in his bassinet and plugged his pie-hole with a pacifier. Then I stood at the foot of the bassinet, rocking it back and forth while saying “shhhhhhhhhh,” replacing the pacifier to his mouth when necessary. Once he calmed down even more, I moved to the doorway of the bedroom, where I continued saying “shhhh” while also being able to enjoy the last 15 minutes of “Overhaulin.”

Happy Ending: Baby was asleep by 9:00 with the door shut! Damn, I'm good.