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.

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?