Robin is six months old today! We took a long walk this afternoon, enjoying the sunshine. Robin doesn’t tend to attract quite as much attention in the stroller as he did when he was in the sling, but still there were three separate people who stopped to tell me what a handsome baby I have.
His next doctor’s visit is scheduled for Thursday, so I’ll post then with all his updated vitals.
Robin’s been able to flip himself from front to back for a while now, but yesterday I saw him roll from back to front for the first time!
In other news, our rainy season has ended, or at least paused: we’ve been having gorgeous warm sunny weather, and I’ve been feeling really chipper. I don’t know how much those two things have to do with each other, but they are probably not unrelated.
So, this is going to be another one of those not-all-sunshine-and-roses posts.
It’s true that caring for the baby has mostly gotten easier, that we’ve found a workable routine, that his smiles in the morning are pretty much the best thing ever. Some days, most days, I feel incredibly lucky to have my life.
Other days I feel so pathetically sorry for myself. Tired, isolated, incredibly irritable, yearning for adult interaction or maybe just something to punch. I feel jealous of Sam for sleeping through the night, for working with grown-ups who use language, and for getting an hour to himself on the train every morning and evening. Some part of my brain knows that going to work and having a long commute are not really things to be envied, but when I’m sunk in self-pity it’s awfully hard to hold that in mind. I’m having a hard time feeling the partnership right now: Sam kind of blindsided me with something bad the other day, and despite his demonstrations of love and best efforts to make it right, I’m still feeling very fragile and mistrustful. But at the same time I’m disgusted with myself for playing the suspicious, bitter, nagging, resentful wife.
I feel like there’s something I need, but I don’t know what it is or how to get it.
I’m not looking for advice or pity. In fact in my state of mind right now I’d bridle at either. I love my baby, I love my husband, I’m very happy most of the time: I’m only posting this because I kind of promised myself I’d be honest about recording my experience, and it’s been a pretty tough week.
So I’ve had a chance to do the exercise DVDs I mentioned in my last post a few times each, and while I’m not blown away, I don’t want my money back either. “Dance Baby Dance” is the cardio routine, “Baby Reps” the strength training one. It probably says something about my lifestyle that I found the first one quite easy and the second one pretty hard. I do get a fair amount of light exercise every day just from walking around the hills of San Francisco with the baby: we don’t have a car, so I make a trip to the grocery store almost every day. This is probably why my blood pressure and cholesterol have remained very good even as my butt has steadily expanded. But I’ve never done strength training.
“Dance Baby Dance” is definitely the best one for bonding with your baby. You basically just bob around to some catchy tunes while holding your infant. Robin likes it a lot; I suspect almost all babies would enjoy it. I like the music—a lot of it is sort of rockabilly—and the instructors with their kids are of course very cute, although my liberal weenie self is bothered by how whitebread they all are. There’s one (my favorite, incidentally) who might be of Latina origin, but all the others are very very white, and the filming is done in their perfectly decorated nurseries or on the patios of their McMansions. This causes some cognitive dissonance when one is dancing to, say, the bluesy “Railroad Man.” But the video succeeds at providing a very gentle workout that’s fun for the baby.
“Baby Reps” is a little misleading, because the majority of the exercises don’t actually incorporate the baby. They’re broken out into three groups: prone, supine, sitting & standing exercises. The prone ones and most of the supine ones you do while your baby lies nearby—your basic crunches and push-ups and so forth. I’m dismal at some of these. The sitting & standing are the fun ones where you’re lifting the baby into the air, and again, Robin does seem to like this.
I’m going to keep doing these programs, but also look for other exercise options: I think I’ll want a more challenging cardio program pretty soon.
Me and the baby have fallen into a pretty good routine. Here’s what it looks like:
6:00 AM: Baby wakes up, but falls asleep again right after nursing and a diaper change. Sam generally gets up at 6:30, so we mumble our benedictions as I’m climbing back into bed and he’s climbing out of it.
9:00 AM: Baby wakes up for realz. He’s generally all smiles in the morning, so even if I start by moaning “ten more minutes, Baby,” we’re generally both in a good mood shortly after I fully open my eyes. It’s hard to be grumpy when you’ve got a smiling baby cooing at you.
9:00-10:00 AM: After changing him and nursing him I usually put him down on his playmat for a bit, while I fix myself a cup of coffee and check my e-mail.
10:00-11:00 AM: We chill. Usually this time is spent with Robin on my lap while I surf Teh Intarwebs.
11:00-11:30 AM: Robin lets me know when it’s time for him to be changed and nursed again. Sometimes he goes right to sleep after this nursing, and sometimes he’ll stay up for a while after, but he gets progressively fussier until it becomes clear that it’s time for his morning nap.
12:00-1:00 PM: While Robin’s sleeping, I have lunch, get dressed, and pick the house up a bit. This is also my best opportunity to get some writing done.
1:00-2:00 PM: As soon as he wakes up from his nap, Robin gets changed and nursed. The after-nap window is also a good time for doing tasks with the baby, like giving him a bath. Today I’m going to try the new exercise video I bought, Dance Baby Dance! The idea is that it’s all cardio exercises you can do while holding your baby. Supposedly they really enjoy it, and the clever thing about it is that if you stick with it, your exercise routine gradually gets more challenging as your baby gets heavier. I got the strength-training “Baby Reps” video too. I’ll report back here after I try them out.
2:00-4:00 PM: Errand time. I figure out what’s for dinner, and put the baby in his sling for a trip to the grocery store. We also swing by the bank/post office/etc. as needed. The baby really likes walking around in his sling; in fact, he gets cranky on the days he doesn’t get to go out. Invariably at least three people stop me on the street to make a fuss over him. It’s really nice. I feel a little bit like a queen, benevolently receiving the adulation of strangers. I don’t know if this happens to all new moms, or if it’s just that there are so few babies in San Francisco?
4:00-4:30 PM: Back from the store, Robin gets changed and nursed again.
4:30-6:00 PM: Robin hangs out in his chair (actually the car seat, but it makes a good baby-carrier too) while I make dinner. Generally he gets fed up with the chair after about twenty minutes, so the next hour is spent alternating between meal-prep work and soothing-the-cranky-baby work.
6:00-9:00 PM: Somewhere in here there will be another changing and nursing period, the exact timing of which is dictated by Robin. He usually also takes an evening nap for about an hour. I generally spend this time in front of the computer, moving the baby around from my lap to the playmat to the chair in an effort to keep him amused and happy. I usually also read to him from at least one of his baby board books, because they say it’s never too early.
9:15 PM: Daddy’s home! We are all very excited. Generally I hold on to Robin while Sam has a chance to settle in and eat his dinner, and then he’ll take over the baby-minding so I can goof off for a bit.
10:00-12:00 PM: Often we’ll watch a video before bed. Robin usually drops off for the night around ten-thirty, after another changing and feeding.
1:30 AM: Robin almost always wakes up sometime in the middle of the night to be fed and changed, but occasionally he’ll sleep through this one.
I’m writing this during Robin’s morning nap, which according to the schedule will soon be over, so. That’s what an average day looks like—not too strenuous, really. If I could get better about using the nap times to get some writing done, I’d be completely happy with myself.
National Coming Out Day is October 11, so it’s come and gone for 2007 and it’s a long way away for 2008. It’s been a while since I felt any need to mark this holiday. But I recently got into a conversation about gay marriage on a mailing list I frequent, and I realized: for a lot of people, I’m in the closet. I’m a wife and mother, and some people—the people I’ve met recently, including my husband’s wonderful family—wouldn’t have any reason to realize that I’m queer.
So here we go. I’m a bi woman. I’m one hundred percent monogamous and one hundred percent devoted to my husband, but in the past I’ve had girlfriends as well as boyfriends. Not at the same time—that’s called being polyamorous, and it’s a different thing from being bi—I’m bi and I’m monogamous. But I’ve had girlfriends, at least one who I deeply loved, and she’s still important to me. I would never repudiate that part of who I am.
The way the dice fell for me, my soulmate is a man, and so I could marry him. But they might have fallen another way. I could have ended up in love, forever, with a woman. That’s why the issue of gay marriage is so very important to me. And also, of course, some of my dearest friends are gay, and I witness the very real and ongoing harm that our country’s unjust laws are wreaking.
I get a ton of legal benefits from being in a heterosexual marriage. That’s actually why I don’t talk more about being bi. It seems presumptive to claim a queer identity when I’m enjoying so much heterosexual status and privilege. But I came out to my friends and family a long time ago, and I’m not willing to go back into the closet.
Hearts and minds are changed when people realize that “gay” isn’t some scary person they see on TV, it’s a real person they know and love. I’m a faithful wife and a loving mother, and I’m bisexual. If you didn’t already know that about me, surprise! Maybe it won’t make a difference to you and maybe it will, but it’s something I want everybody to know. Happy Coming Out Day, late or early, and God bless us every one.
To my dear friend Madeline, on the birth of her daughter Charlotte. May your family continue to be blessed.
Robin turned three months old earlier this week, and, as everyone predicted, caring for him has gotten easier. He sleeps through the night more often than not, and his crankiness has abated: he smiles easily and often, and I even heard him laugh once. He can amuse himself for fairly long stretches of time (up to twenty minutes) just sitting in his chair, or lying on the playset his Auntie Nina bought him.
He’s become quite “talkative,” and will look me earnestly in the eyes while delivering himself of various hoots and syllabic fragments. He’s also really wiggly and is on the verge of being able to roll over—he can get from his back to his side, but he’s yet to do a full 180. He’s got good neck control and can “track” a moving person with his eyes. He’s also able to stuff his hand in his mouth pretty reliably, although he still ends up smacking himself in the face sometimes. This cracks his daddy up.
The really charming thing is that he’s especially happy when he first wakes up. I can only guess at what’s going through his head, but I imagine it’s something like “Oh yes, I remember this place—’the world,’ they call it. I like it here! Hooray!”
One thing people say to you a lot when you’ve had a new baby is: “Enjoy your baby!” The baby books say it. The nurses say it when you’re leaving the hospital. Random people on the street say it. It’s nice, it’s fine, except: when I first brought my baby home, it seemed like the weirdest thing to say. Because the first few weeks were anything but enjoyable.
In the movies, when they put the baby in the actress’ arms, she gets a beatific look on her face and she says: “Oh. OH.” I was braced for my “Oh. OH” moment but it never came. Yes, tears sprang in my eyes when I heard my baby cry for the first time—the thought hit me that, after almost a year housing this little critter in my belly and thinking about him every day, I was finally going to get to meet him. And that was pretty overwhelming.
But I didn’t get to meet him then. Sam saw him, but I didn’t: the doctors whisked him away, for bathing and testing and medicating, and it was probably a half an hour before he was laid in my arms. And then I was worried about breastfeeding, because, you know, they say breastfeeding is more successful if it’s initiated within an hour of birth—and so our first interaction together was laden with stress and fear of failure.
I don’t know how much I loved him right away. Certainly not as much as I love him now. The thing is, I very much wanted him to thrive. I wanted to give him everything he needed, and I knew he needed love, so to a certain extent I loved him: but almost grudgingly, the same way I grudgingly got up when he cried in the middle of the night. He needed love, so I provided love, but it did not come in joyful abundance.
Now, two months later, I love him. When I see his face in the morning I feel delight. At first I felt only resignation: Oh no. Another day’s work starts now.
I might have been really at sea if I hadn’t known to expect this. It’s a very common experience for new moms, though it plunges some of them into depression, because they don’t feel the way they think they ought to feel. A new baby isn’t a bundle of joy. It’s a bundle of terror. It’s a completely helpless and vulnerable little organism that you must keep alive, you must teach and nurture and sustain, you must do everything for, and if you fail in the slightest instance it makes you a bad person even though you’ve probably never done anything like this before. My primary chemical response to my newborn was adrenalin. Those first days, I was pretty much running on fumes.
But over and under the stress, the fear, the need to succeed, other chemicals were working in my brain. Primarily oxytocin, the wonder drug. It’s really interesting to read about the chemistry of parent-child bonding. Oxytocin induces labor (pitocin, the drug they give you to induce labor, is an artificial form of oxytocin) and also causes lactation. These are broad-brush, unsubtle physical effects. But oxytocin also seems to play a key role in romantic pair bonding, and in parent-child bonding, and these alterations to brain chemistry are experienced more subtly. It’s something that builds up day to day, just a little dose every time you see your loved one’s face, until you’re addicted to the drug and can’t imagine living without the one you’re bonded to. People who lose a partner or child, in addition to the terrible emotional grief, are experiencing full-blown chemical withdrawal, comparable to what a heroin addict might go through without their fix.
I can feel it. I feel the rush when I look at my baby’s face for the first time every morning. And every day it gets a little stronger. I don’t know when it will stop. Maybe never, maybe it’ll just keep building up. I used to ask myself, looking down at the little guy as he sucked at my breast: would I die for him? And honestly, at first, the answer was probably not. Now, yeah, I’d stand between him and an onrushing bear. Definitely.
I don’t know that this story has a moral. If there are new mothers reading this, ‘what others say I say too’: it’s okay if you feel like you don’t love your newborn enough. It’s okay if enjoyment is not what you feel. You will. It might not come to you in an “Oh, OH” moment. It might come over days or weeks or even a couple of months. But the love comes, and it comes in joyful abundance.
We’ve settled into what feels like a workable routine, so I don’t really have any news. I thought instead I’d update y’all on a few of the issues I wrote about earlier:
I'm a writer and mom living in Oakland. This is my personal blog; I write about parenting, cooking, local issues, books, and anything else that's rattling around inside my head.
I am the author of The Millennial Sword, an urban fantasy novel set in San Francisco, and two read-aloud picture books for kids, The Big Booger Bubble and Gail Murphy and the Piskies.
