So I never expected how freaking difficult it would be to call folks in California on the phone once baby arrived. I've been wanting to call Avram for days now, and I keep getting stymied. Here's how it goes:

8:00: Wake up, feed baby. Baby is happy, but it's five a.m. California time.

9:30-11:00 a.m.: Baby is napping. Great opportunity to make a phone call, but at the latest it's 8:00 a.m., and that's too early for Avram. And most people who don't have babies.

11:00-1:30: Baby is awake and demanding my full attention like the little field marshal general he is.

1:30-4:00: Baby is napping. Call Avram! His line is busy.

And from 4:00 on it's all cocked up, because we need to eat dinner and feed baby every 20 minutes and then there's the hour that we try to put baby to bed and invariably fail at that so Monstro has to take baby for a drive in the car and by the time Monstro and sleeping!baby are back home, we're exhausted and too scared to wake baby to talk to each other, let alone make a phone call.

So, sorry Avram. We'll try again tomorrow.

Yup, you read that right. Baby and I are doing OK with the thrush — Ibuprofen helps me, Infant Tylenol helps him, and we're both on a drug that's classified as an “anti-fungal,” lovely — so once Monstro came home from his nightly “drive around until baby falls asleep and then bring him upstairs in his carseat” trip, Alexander stayed asleep until quarter of three in the morning. I changed him, dosed him, and fed him (the nursing went fine), and then he went back to sleep until quarter of seven. I kept him quiet until 7:15, at which point Monstro (my hero) got up with him, and I slept until the screaming baby woke me at 9:30, so we nursed again and fell asleep. We woke up a few times, looked at each other, and immediately went back to sleep. This went on until NOON. Ahhh, bliss.

And no, I didn't have to go to the health center yesterday, which was fortuitous because the midwife suggested I leave the flaps of my nursing bra down all day, so I took down the Christmas tree and did other household duties with the help of my doula, while all the while wrapped in a clothespin-secured beach towel, which looked like a dollar-store serape and I'm certain was oh-so-attractive, to say nothing about my crazy-bird-lady hair, which nowadays doesn't look brushed even when it has been, which, granted, isn't that often. Really, I'm amazed that Monstro isn't repulsed by me sometimes. Motherhood is not great for one's level of personal respectability.

Alexander is seven weeks old today, and I'm really happy that K sent the 0-3 month sleep-and-play outfit when she did, because he wore it today, and now it will be washed and most likely added to the pile of clothes we're sending to cousin Mike and his darling wife Joy, who is due to have a baby boy in March, because by the time Alexander is ready to wear it again, it will no longer fit.

I swear, Joy won't have to buy a single piece of infant clothing. This of course has mostly been made possible by Anne, Marcy, and Julie, all of whom have sent enormous box(es) of hand-me-downs for our baby. I told them that from now on, I'll be happy to reimburse their shipping fees. Hell, it's the least I can do for what has amounted to hundreds of dollars of free baby clothes. Between the free clothes, formula samples, shower gifts, and kick-ass UMass-Amherst health insurance, this baby has yet to be a major investment. Knock wood.

Of course, there is college to think of… but maybe by the time he's ready for advanced education, Monstro, Driv, Avram, and I will have started our own college. Homeschool University. We'll see…

Well, I have thrush, and baby has thrush. We have been set upon by the evil yeast monsters. Which is amusing, because yeast HATES me. I can't even get a loaf of bread to rise. And now it has set upon us, like a plague. Perhaps this is why baby has screamed in the past when we try to get him to eat?

Midwife has prescribed Diflucan, and I have a call in to the pediatrician for an anti-fungal for baby. If she wants us to come in, it will be the third time this week (actually, the third time in as many days) that I've gone to the health center. And the doula is supposed to be here at 1:30 to watch baby so I can take down the Christmas decorations. Maybe if we're gone, she'll take down the Christmas decorations for me.

It feels like the Izzs are stabbing me in the breast with searing-hot paper clips. And this is pissing me off, because I've been tingling for days, and when I brought it up to the midwife on January 3rd, she pooh-poohed my suggestion that I had thrush, because it didn't hurt enough. Well, now it hurts, and will hurt for three more days once I start taking the Diflucan. Fuck.

While Monstro was at the eye doctor today, I took Alexander down the hall to have his weight checked. His first few weeks of life he didn't gain any weight, and then began putting it on at the rate of a little more than an ounce a day (an ounce a day is the recommended benchmark). Anyway, it's something I'm keeping an eye on.

Becky (Sarah Vowell's Goth name of choice), our favorite nurse, was available so we went into the little pre-examination room and I got baby all undressed and put him on the scale.

Mind you, on December 21 he weighed 10 pounds, 11.8 ounces. Today, the scale registered 12 pounds, 12.8 ounces.

The kid's gaining 2 ounces a day. No wonder my nipples are ready for a retread. Becky took pity on me and gave me not one, but two sample cans of soy formula. Alexander's taking one to two bottles a day. There's only so much this mother can do!

Alexander's bottle of Johnson's Baby Wash has a clear warning to “Keep Out of Reach of Children.”

So much for having a nice clean baby…

Ahhh, 2006 is coming in much better than 2005 went out. Baby is much more mellow today, and nursed beautifully from 3 a.m. until 5:00 p.m, at which point he decided he was having none of it. So we're learning a pattern, and I'm getting an electric pump tomorrow for free from a lovely NohoFreecycler, whose karma in 2006 is assured.

So, our nursing days are not over, and it's not all the doom and gloom I thought it would be.

And, after we finally got baby to bed last night, we watched “Murderball,” which is as compelling a documentary as I've ever seen.

And then we switched over to watch Dick Clark drop the Times Square New Year's ball, which made me both happy and sad, but mostly happy.

Baby is *refusing* to breastfeed, preferring instead to smack down formula to the tune of six ounces at a time. Attempts to put my nipple in his mouth results in screaming the likes of which haven't been heard since those U.S.-founded secret Eastern European prisons were still secret. K sent me a lovely nursing shirt today, and I don't know that I'll ever be able to use it to it's proper ability. Alexander is six weeks old today, which means that he might be almost over his growth spurt and will calm down enough to nurse again, or it could mean that we're stuck offering offerings to the formula devils.

Rhetorical question for the New Year: What do you do when your baby's being an asshole?

I didn't want to go to Mommy and Me today, but Alexander did, so I bundled him up in his “Another Dissatisfied Customer of the United States of America” t-shirt (thanks Avram) and arrived a fashionable 20 minutes late. The class is held every Thursday at the hospital where I gave birth. It was standing room only today — more like sitting-room, as they make us women who have recently pushed babies through our sit-areas repose on the floor — so I stuck myself in the corner, saving the leader from having to do it.

The leader recognized me as the woman who runs her bathtub to calm down her baby (works great, so long as you don't pay for water). I chimed in when a woman voiced her concerns about not making enough milk. And then Alexander woke up from an hour-long nap, which is pretty much the longest he's slept in the past 24 hours, so I attempted to nurse him, then gave up when he lost interest and played with him instead. And we kept that up until a woman who'd been in my childbirth class mentioned that she'd parked her son in front of “Sesame Street” that morning, and he'd had an absolute ball.

From the reaction she got, you'd think she'd parked her son in front of a crack pipe and a copy of Screw.

The facilitator sprang into action, warning us against the devil box, which mesmerizes babies and lobotmizes their parents. A grandma visiting from out of town told us that her tv-free grandchildren play imaginative games with three sticks. Someone else told us that there are schools in the area that ban families from having TV in their homes.

This went on for half an hour. I shit you not. I held my tongue for as long as I could — longer than usual, perhaps, as I'm exhausted from baby's lack of sleep and the wall I was leaning against might as well have been made of goosedown — but predictably piped up as devil's advocate.

“I don't want to be devil's advocate,” I lied, “but I'm a big fan of TV. Big Bird taught me how to read when I was two.” Letting that one sink in, I continued, “I lived without TV for three years, and you know what? People who never watch TV are physically unable to take their eyes away when they are in the same room as one.”The leader concurred that “everything in moderation…” Score one, team Johnson!

I guess I should have left it at that, but at the end of the session I brought up the topic that's been weighing most heavily on my mind:

“I hate breastfeeding.”

I'm pretty sure I said it that way, rather than “I fucking hate breastfeeding,” but you couldn't tell from the looks on the faces of the breastfeeding moms. It was like I'd stolen the crack pipe from the Sesame Street-watching baby and plugged it into my own fat yap. Their scorn immediately turned to pity, though, and they offered pithy advice to call a $90 lactation consultant who “works wonders.” I was beginning to feel like the only non-Stepford mommy until a woman two babies down from me admitted, “my sister keeps going on about how special the mother-baby breastfeeding time is. I tell her, 'you know, for me, it's not.'” I smiled at her, delighted to learn that she lives in my town. There's hope for us yet in this leftist community.

On her way out of the conference room, the leader looked down at my again sleeping Alexander and said I was doing a good job.

I'd be doing a better job if maybe I could start my own Mommy and Me class, to be held at the Beer Can Museum and Tavern, where we could check our babies with the parking valet and sip champagne while bitching that this motherhood thing is the hardest job on the planet, for which no compensation is offered, and made no easier by those with impossible standards and the endless patience for infinte rounds of peekaboo.

Or maybe I just need a little more sleep. That's probably it. Because I woke up at three this morning and the baby was asleep on top of me and I had no memory of how he got there. But that's better than a one-night stand, I guess. At least, I bet my husband thinks so.

T'was two days after Christmas

And all through the house,

not a creature was stirring,

except baby Alexander,

and, by extension, his mother,

whose nipples have had more of a workout these past five weeks

than they ever did in college.

Ahhhh, parenthood.

They don't tell you about breastfeeding when you're pregnant. Well, they tell you how to do it, and that you should do it for at least a year, and that it “doesn't hurt,” and all that, but they don't tell you that where doggy and kitty mommies have successfully been offering the teat for thousands of years, human mommies sometimes have issues, wherein they must consult “lactation consultants,” which would be a great job for someone with a bit o' the letch to 'em, as it requires looking at boobies and the aforementioned nipples all day.

( Driv? )

Beyond breastfeeding (sounds like a support group, no?), motherhood is pretty OK. Alexander was sleeping five hours at a clip at night, but that's been supplanted by two/three hours at a clip. I think he's growing, which is a good thing. His first two weeks he did a lot of screaming, basically because he wasn't getting enough to eat. Irony alert (OK, more like strange coincidence alert): Massachusetts is outlawing the distriubution of formula-company diaper bags to new mothers checking out of the hospital. They think it hinders the breastfeeding process. But the formula-company diaper bag I received contained the most helpful breastfeeding information I'd found anywhere (including La Leche League). Wish I'd read it the first two weeks, so that I could learn that “mothers who recieve an excess of IV fluids during labor often experience a delay in having their milk come in.” Sure could have used THAT information back then. Oh well. Now Alexander is gobbling boob and soy formula every few hours, in grossly exaggerated quantities, and his weight gain, which was slim to none his first few weeks, is skyrocketing. He was up to 10 pounds, 11.2 ounces at his one-month checkup, up from an all-time low of 8 pounds, four ounces (he dropped a pound after birth).

Here's how it played out:

Day(s) of labor and birth: Nope, can't tell you that, because pregnant women read this blog. Suffice it to say that nothing on my birth plan happened the way I'd hoped, and Spiritual Midwifery has been refiled to “fiction” in our home library. What a load of crap.

Week One: Home from the hospital on Nov. 20, after Katie comes by and grants him three wishes (we settle on: a keen wit with a gentle side, the ability to see the humor in everything, and a capacity for great joy). Dad and his fiancee arrive Nov. 22. My birthday Nov. 23. Thanksgiving Nov. 24 (Dad springs for the pre-cooked dinner from Whole Foods Market and it's great!).

Week Two: My mom leaves (having extended her visit by two weeks — what a Godsend). Baby is screaming — turns out for more food, though we think it's gas so I cut dairy from my diet, quelle horror! Baby isn't gaining weight. Baby goes to Bible Study and has his first BM in 10 days. We figure he was just moved by the spirit.

Week Three: Supplmenting with soy formula, after getting over the idea that I'm failing him as a mother. Left nipple is bleeding after bad advice from my postpartum nurse (you are NOT supposed to hold down the top of your breast so baby can breathe. This will screw up the baby's latch and make your nipples bleed. Trust me on this.). Clogged milk duct in left breast as a result, try pumping but it's like getting blood from a stone, so instead I nurse with him and it hurts so much I cry. Go to the herbalist for fenugreek, to stimulate my milk supply. It works. Use warm, moist heat to clear the clogged duct and it works! Take Alexander to see Santa in the mall — we arrive just as he's gone on break, so I nurse baby in the food court, which causes him to sleep through the entire Santa experience. The coordinator of my hospital's birth center calls me to tell me that she's filed a complaint on my behalf, having heard of my experience with the dumb-ass anesthesiologist. NOTE TO BIRTH PARTNERS: Before allowing the mommy-to-be to have an epidural, find out which doctor on call has the most experience, and DO NOT SETTLE FOR ANYONE LESS.

Week Four: Nipple is starting to heal, baby has finally started to gain weight, and is no longer screaming with hunger. I go back on dairy and enjoy copious quantities of eggnog. Monstro's folks arrive for Christmas and talk our ears off the first few days, but then settle down and are fabulous. Baby is smiling for real now, and cooing up a storm. He seems to know when to interject comments into conversation. Great fun.

Week Five: Starting to get into a routine — it's less about survival mode at this point. Still haven't written all my thank-you notes for baby gifts. Am considering waiting until Alexander is old enough to write them himself. Still having epidural flashbacks and am considering seeing a mental health professional to deal with it.

Fortunately, baby is completely adorable (a bit of acne aside), and we are very very glad he's here. And I can hardly remember what I used to do when I had free time. Oh yeah: update my blog. 🙂