It's the first beautiful spring day

...and my whole house smells like vinegar and dog farts. My life is so luxurious.

Sick Mama

I am sick and handling it poorly. It hit me out of nowhere yesterday with fever, sore throat, and body aches. I bundled up, drank water like a boss, and ate raw garlic and OJ. My fever broke over night but I am nowhere near 100%.  On such a night, I can't help but be thankful for cosleeping and dream feeding. My sweet daughter is in the middle of teething and nurses through the night. I can't imagine getting up and visiting a crib every hour or, worse, letting her cry.

She was especially needy last night and woke up at 4:30 full of energy. Her father and I played a game I'll call eyes closed chicken. The first one to acknowledge her yelling and hair grabbing loses and has to deal with it. It's much different from her waking to eat - basically, she wants to play. Daddy earned big brownie points by taking her to the basement toys, playing with her for an hour, and then bringing her back ready to crash out. It's 7:45 a.m. as I type this and she is sleeping soundly beside me. Dad also fed the dogs and the cats, brewed coffee and brought me a cup.

We are living paycheck to paycheck right now. Our home is nice and many of our things are too. We were comfortable back when we had two incomes and no babies. This means that for now, we get no new anything. Clothes, haircuts, vacations, makeup, and nights out are a thing of the past for a while. I get jealous of my friends vacations and my sister-in-law's new car but I never wish I had made the choice to go back to work. Everything we have changed is worth it. Nothing feels better than drinking coffee with my husband in bed and watching our little flower baby sleep. Even with a wicked sore throat.

Five Pets

The whole time that I was pregnant, I was certain that I'd love my pets just as much as ever once the baby was born. I'd love both dogs and all three cats not quite as much as the baby but certainly nearly as much. I judged people who got rid of their pets after a baby. They were heartless assholes. Now that the baby is here, I understand the impulse. I believe pets are a lifetime commitment so I will never get rid of mine. I will continue to feed, shelter, and mindlessly pet them. At the same time, they are so annoying. My pet love was quickly replaced by frustration at their constant whining and unending needs. I once thought they were cute and clever when they demanded constant love and bathroom breaks. Now all I hear is loud dog nails on the hardwood floor as the baby drifts off to sleep. All I see is a film of cat fur covering our whole house and sticking to my daughter's sweet face. In the words of my usually quiet husband, "Maybe we shouldn't have tried to fill the hole in our heart with so many damn animals."

Baby Food

So, my flower baby quickly decided we would be using Baby Led Weaning (BLW). The term comes from Britain where the word wean has a slightly different meaning than here in the US. They use wean to mean the addition of table foods to supplement/replace breastmilk or formula whereas we usually us wean to mean the ending of breastfeeding.

It's the easiest concept  in the world. Give babies real food. Set it out and let them play, chew, smear, or swallow it. No purees and no spoon feeding.

I was wary but interested and had read about it during pregnancy. Babies will gag as they learn to chew and eat. It's scary to see and makes you wish you were using a jar of 'safe and easy' baby food.

I started feeding food at six months. I tried a bit of everything. She ate puree off a spoon for a couple days then stopped. She couldn't pick up the teeny tiny pieces I offered on her high chair tray. I thought I was stuck but I decided to do the scariest thing. I gave her big chunks of food, a whole spear of broccoli and a quarter of an apple. She was in heaven. She can hold it and control it and gnaw off whatever she wants. She is empowered at the table and I can already tell she's motivated to do things herself.

Tonight, at seven months and just one month into eating food, she ate eggs cooked with shredded carrot, corn tortilla, and avocado. Everything was cut into fingers or little nuggets. She will shove egg in as fast as she can grab it and eats almost a whole egg. It's amazing to see her pick up smaller and smaller bits. She'll have her pincher grip soon and be able to eat very  small pieces all alone. She will try more and more foods like red meat, diary, nuts, seafood.

The recommendation is changing on when to introduce allergic foods. They recommend earlier introduction and I was told to try things whenever I felt comfortable. I still won't be feeding her peanut butter anytime soon but it's neat to know I can try beef or blueberries or yogurt soon.

So all my plans of making her baby food are coming true but in a different way than I imagined. No airplane spoons at out house.

You Should Have a Baby

In my thirty-two years, no one has ever said to me, "You should have a baby," in those exact words. What they have said is,"When are you going to start a family?" and "When do you think you'll have kids?"

Like lots of other demands, our culture phrases it in the form of a question but it's still an expectation. "How many children would you like?" doesn't really allow for an answer of zero.  I am one of those women who has always wanted to have children. I have always wanted a daughter. I have always wanted to adopt. I have all sorts of ideas in my head about what I want. In my deluded fantasy of life, I ordered two blond and blue-eyed daughters, the first to be born nine months after the wedding. 

I am also one of the lucky women who didn't get what I wanted when I wanted it. It took two years, a miscarriage, and a couple hiccups in order to get our beautiful flower baby. I could not be happier in retrospect. I learned a few lessons along the way about shutting the hell up. 

When the topic turns to babies in any company that isn't my very best friends, I shut the hell up. When someone tells me, "I don't want kids," you know what I do? I tell them that's fine. Or I smile. Or I shrug. I have seem older women try to hard sell babies on young women with a fervor that could impress a cult leader. Perhaps they aren't aware that there are seven billion people and human race is doing alright in the reproduction department. Perhaps they haven't seen the heartbreak of a disinterested or negligent parent or worse.

Probably they haven't been miscarrying into an industrial pad while well meaning old ladies ask, "When do you plan to have a baby?" as if the planning makes it so. Even in my darkest time of wanting a baby so badly, I always felt that wanting and not getting is still preferable to not wanting and getting. A bad parent is heartbreak for the child and society. My short experience with infertility has made me an unusual ally of the child-free by choice and has only strengthened my belief in reproductive choice. 

Having a baby was the best thing I have ever done. I am pretty sure that my cousin who lives in Central America and is finishing her dissertation will say the same about her doctorate when she gets it this spring. I am very glad that she has never tried to guilt me into getting an advanced degree. She has expressed to me that she doesn't want to have children. So what? That's her life. The only thing you have to do in your life is pay taxes and follow laws. The rest is is a choose your own adventure and just like those books, things don't always turn out the way you plan. 

The baby is seven months old now.

The baby is seven months old now. She is, in the words of my mother, glowingly beautiful from the tips of her toes to the bottom of her drooly double chin. She is plump but not fat, long, sandy blond and hazel eyed. She has a sweet little voice that is instantly recognizable as a baby girl's. She is docile and attentive until very tired or hungry. Strangers ask me if she's always this quiet. She just watches the world from Mama's carrier or her stroller. She talks to anyone who enters her zone but just watches the world the rest of the time.

She sleeps mostly through the night with me in our bed. Her crib is attached to our bed with the side removed. In theory, she's in her crib for some of the night but she isn't. She's snuggled in my armpit. 

She nurses every two to three hours. My pediatrician, who I don't like, tells me to stretch it out. I ask why and he gives me circular answers without facts. It boils down to being easier on the mom if the baby goes longer and I balk at that. I just ignore him, as I do with all his other parenting advice. I listen for medical advice and ignore the rest. 

She eats food now. Lots of different things. She didn't care for purees at all and pushed them out of her mouth on every bite. When I started giving her things to chew on, she immediately started eating. Broccoli spears get mowed down quickly. Lightly steamed carrots get chippered. Sweet potato sticks get gummed til they're nothing. The only things I can feed her on a utensil are the things she really likes, avocado and meat. That's my girl!