Baby loves to Dance!

X loves music. One of his many great aunts (he has five on Em's side and two on mine) gave him a collection of baby classical music CDs that her girls had outgrown (generations are fun in Em's family) and every time he listens to Tchaikovsky he relaxes and smiles.

Uncle is a professional dancer and this holiday season he is performing in a show that plays a great deal of Tchaikovsky and has bright shiny lights and colorful costumes. So our two month old baby went to the ballet today. Granted it was a matinee, but I was still impressed at his ability to cope. He smiled and cooed and stood up and swung his hands around and didn't have to be removed once from the theater. I strongly suspect that X will like dancing when he is old enough. That or he will want to play music.

Amazing Child

I am constantly looking at X and thinking, "I did that." I grew this child and brought him into this world (and let me tell you, he fought that arrival kicking and screaming, Mr. Sunnyside up, neck flexed, hand trying to come through my cervix at the same time as his head, so stuck the suction cup came off his head twice). He weighs 11 pounds now and is 23 inches long. He is over four pounds heavier and 3.5 inches longer than when he arrived and he is amazing.

The Confession

So I disappeared for most of my pregnancy. I kept meaning to post but it never quite happened. Emily gamely attempted to keep the blog alive but I was so tired and strangely, I found that having posted constantly about trying to get pregnant, having achieved that state, I didn't know what to say. And every day that I didn't blog, I added a little more guilt to the pile and a little more reason to not get to it the next day.

It's January 1st and I am declaring an amnesty for myself and starting again. I've cheated a bit and back dated X's birth announcement and the first of the monthly reviews that I am hoping to write for him. We'll have to see if this amnesty works. I hope so.

Happy New Year to you all.

2 months old

Dear X,

Today you turned 2 months old. I can hardly believe you have been our outdoor baby for two whole months. At the same time, it seems as if you've been with us forever; I can't imagine my life without you. Your mommy and I have been so busy with you and our crazy lives that I missed writing down details of your first month, so this note will have to serve for the first two months of your life. Since your birth, you have changed so much I'm not sure where to begin. Perhaps I'll just mention all the amazing things you can now do, with notes about when you started doing them if I can remember.

At two months old, you are working very hard on figuring out how to roll over. You lie down on your tummy on Clancy mat and think really hard for a few minutes and then push really hard and try to make it, but you aren't quite there yet. At about six weeks old, you finally got chubby enough to be able to wear your cloth diapers, which you look really cute in! In the last two weeks, you've starting smiling at us and are now spending parts of each day practicing your winning grin out on all your family. Today, when Aunt C, Uncle D and Cousin S were kissing you goodbye as they begin their trip to their new home across the country, you smiled sweetly at each of them, making them feel loved as they started a difficult new journey.

You are such a sweet, easy child, but you are starting to show us that you have a stubborn streak. You have needs and you want us to know about them right now! You've gotten more talkative in general, and your favorite sounds seem to be "nguu," "kkkk," "aaaaa," and "maaa." In the past week, you've started opening your hands and holding on to things if we give them to you. You particularly like touching your black Sheepie from your Aunt E because it is so soft. You really enjoy standing up when we hold you and push really hard with your legs and lock your knees. Your favorite toy, from what Mommy and I can guess, seems to be Clancy, your stuffed lion that hangs from your play gym. You like it so much that we bought you Baby Clancy, so that you can have a Clancy to take on trips with you.

In your first two months, you have already become a frequent traveler. We went to Washington, DC with Uncle when you were 5 weeks old, and you got to see Mommy give a conference paper at an academic conference. We went to our hometown for Thanksgiving and stayed with your Nana and had Thanksgiving dinner with Nana, Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle T. This past weekend, we went back to the town where your Mommy and I grew up and you had your theatrical debut as the Baby Jesus in the Christmas Pagent at the meeting that I grew up in. You did a wonderful job, no crying at all.

We take you around NYC all the time and you are already used to taking the subway and buses. You went to your first movie in a movie theater last week when Mommy and I took you to my work's Holiday staff gathering. You are charming with all the new people you meet and don't seem to worry about other people holding you. Everyone who meets you can't stop talking about what a lovely baby you are.

Many more thoughts to come next month,
Much Love,
Mama

Good Morning, Son

Input:

Thirty-six hours of labor after rupture of membranes
One round of Stadol
Twenty hours of Pitocin
One epidural
Three hours of pushing
Three applications of the vacuum extractor
One hour of post-birth suturing
No cesaerian section

Output:

X
Born 10/22/2008, 4:42 AM
Six Pounds, Ten Ounces
Nineteen and a Half Inches Long





X was born at 4:42 AM, after 36 hours of serious, hardcore labor. He had been presenting funny, which made the labor very difficult. In part because of the difficulty and length of the labor, he had to go down to the neonatal intensive care unit for a while. This photo was taken right before he and I left Kate to get stitched up.

X was on CPAP (not a ventilator, but lung support) for a while.

Then they moved him from a warmer to an incubator, and took out all his tubes but the IV. (He eventually took out his own IV, because he is a badass little baby.) He got transferred to our room late last night, and we were all discharged this afternoon.

Market Failure

We got a bunch of baby clothes at X's second shower last weekend.  In fact, we've totally avoided buying clothes, since we knew people would buy them for him, and we're saving our money for things that people won't think of.  (Although now Kate's aunt and uncle are buying us a breast pump.  Who knew people were that awesome?)

There have been several failures in this process.

The first is that we've gotten a lot of clothes that scream OH HAI I'M A BOY.  Now, that we got a lot of blue is not a problem.  Frankly, we would have picked out a lot of blue clothes ourselves.  Puppies?  Totally fine.  Trucks?  Um.  OK.  He can like trucks if he wants.  Athletics?  They do realize that he's more likely to be a ballet dancer than a football player, given his family conditioning, right?  A full-scale cowboy outfit, complete with matching hat and boots?

Well, OK.  That one's a little awesome.

In any case, we got clothes that came from the boy side of the store.  Now, I object pretty much on principle to having a boy side of the store, and to the assumptions made in how clothes get assigned to that side.  But, we'll live.  

But there's another thing.

X has a onesie that says "Mommy loves me."  Actually, I think he has two.  And he's got a third that says "Favorite things: Mommy.  Hugs.  Kisses."  They are tremendously cute.  I love them.

Of course I do.  I'm Mommy.  

In most families, these outfits are countered with "My dad is my hero."  (Yes, I saw that one at Babies R Us today.  Seriously.)  "I love my daddy."  "Daddy's little man."  (I may be making that one up.)  But we don't have a Daddy. We have a Mommy and a Mama and an Uncle, and only one of us is getting served by the onesie industry here.

I almost want to write on the "Mommy loves me" onesie with a Sharpie: "Mama, on the other hand, is a little sick of me by this point."  

Uncle's vote is that we're shopping at mainstream/white stores; white people say Mommy, while black and Latino people say Mama, so if we headed out of the mainstream and into stores particularly targeting communities of color, we might be able to find Mama-themed attire.  Or, at least, Mamá.  He might be right; I'll start digging.

But, in a quest to fix things, I went on makeaonesie.com today and ordered these:

(Extra points if you get why the butterflies on the Uncle one are funny.)

I know there are much bigger lacks we'll be experiencing as queer parents.  But this is the sort of silly little area where accommodation of different family styles could be useful.  Not all mothers are Mommy.  And if someone wrote that on a fucking onesie, I'd buy it.

Dana Scully Never Took Newborn Care Class...

Incidentally, the title of this post should be said to the rhythm of "Hitler never played Risk as a kid" from this clip.

Dana. Can I call you Dana? Apparently everyone else in Season 9 gets to, including Mulder for fuck's sake, and since I am suffering through these episodes, I think I'd like to claim that right.

So anyway. Dana. I know your baby, who you are unable to remember to call by his name, apparently, is in terrible risk from Teh Evilz, in whatever form Teh Evilz are taking at this point in the conspiracy, which I realize none of us know or will ever understand.

But I'm a little more worried about you killing your baby at this point. Honestly, woman, have you read nothing on infant safety, SIDS prevention, and newborn development?

Let's start with this:


Notice how William's face is turned into the blankets? This is prime territory for rebreathing, which eventually causes suffocation. Soft bedding in the bassinet is a definite no-no.

Even though he appears to survive it.

Your mother has the right idea; she's clearly attempting a swaddle here. However, her technique is off; with his arms free to wave around, and the blankets behind his head, he could very quickly undo the swaddle and, again, get into smothering territory. In addition, the looseness of this swaddle doesn't provide the psychological comfort factor that swaddling should provide. So, good attempt from Maggie Scully, but it simply does not pass muster.

Plus: when the hell is this kid born that he needs to have so many blankets on him? Not that time seems to travel at the same pace in the X-Files 'verse as the rest of the universe, but it was not the dead of winter when he was born, which was apparently 48 hours ago; Xena D'Anna Shannon McMahon wore a cute slutty dress in a convertible and didn't appear to be freezing in the teaser. Overheating is another prime SIDS risk factor. Get the kid some of those cute bag things, already.

Hmph. By the internal timeline, William is...four to five days old here, depending on how many days elapse during the events of Nothing Important Happened Today I and II. Pacifiers are not recommended until two months of age because 1) newborns will try to nurse the pacifier and drop it 2) if newborns want to suck they need to be eating, due to their extremely small stomach size 3) nipple confusion and problems establishing breastfeeding if pacifiers are used too early.

None of this is to mention the fact that you gave birth less than a week ago and you are running around looking fabulous and fighting Evilz. You have brushed, washed hair, a shirt without milk stains on it, and literally the hottest coat you have ever worn in the entire series. AND, your whoever-he-is just departed for points unknown, so you are a single parent for the moment. WHY ARE YOU NOT HAVING A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN? Are you superhuman? (Oh. Possibly you are.)

So anyway, Dana, I know things are very stressful. I feel you, I really do. But can I put together a reading list for you? Sit down and have a little talk about baby safety? Please? For William's sake? That is his name, right?

(Screencaps from Chris Nu's site.)

(This nitpicking brought to you by Realbirth's class package: take 5 childbirth classes, and add breastfeeding class and newborn care class for SuperCheap! They're actually really great, NYC-ers; we highly recommend them, especially Erica Lyon, the founder who taught one of our childbirth classes and our newborn care class, and Jeremi, our teacher for regular class.)

(Also brought to you by my lovely wife's screaming at the TV last night, obviously.)