Cries(is) of Confidence

So my candidate for most gut-wrenching new mother experience is my all-too-slowly developing ability to read Freya's cries correctly. Is there anything worse than seeing your baby in apparent agony and not being able to figure out how to make it better? Half the time I end up crying right along with her...

"Eh-la", usually delivered in a vaguely mournful, and increasingly more urgent cadence, is Freya's cry for food. It stops the second I put her in ready position, which constitutes our first proper conversation: signal and response :-)

Then there is the sudden screech, after waking from a nap: sometimes that means she is too hot, especially after having slept against my skin in the triple-digit heat we have been "enjoying" in California. Another good candidate for what's wrong is a full diaper, and those cries have taken on an indignant character now that we have switched to cloth diapers during the day. If it's neither of those two, we just wing it and try various diversions.

Her hiccups sound bad, and look even worse, what with the inch-deep indentation of her diaphragm, but don't seem to bother her, thank goodness.

Not so the high-pitch scream/desperate gulp combo that we first encountered the second night at home -- when Freya was hungry and my milk not yet in -- and again the other afternoon with what appeared to have been her first bout with colic. Hour after hour of pitiful, inconsolable crying like that, with Freya turning lobster red all over and writhing in apparent pain, wore me down. In German we call this cry "zum Steinerweichen", meaning the ability to melt rocks -- needless to say I was reduced to a puddle after the first hour. Eventually my mother managed to soothe her, and we later figured out that it must have been something I ate. We modified my diet, and so far, no further colicky episodes.

Anyway, it's been an instructive four weeks. I used to consider myself a fast learner, but not nearly fast enough to make things right by Freya in time every time. I also have my first pet peeve of new motherhood: The Secrets of the Baby Whisperer book, which makes it sound as if it should be easy and straightforward to read your baby's body language, and made me feel like a dolt for about half an afternoon, after which I threw the book in a corner to be burned along with my maternity pants.

Got Milk?

As it turns out, one of the most important skills of motherhood is also one of the simplest. Unlike learning to ride a bike, running a marathon, or getting and advanced degree, producing breast milk required no practice, training or coursework. It just showed up, about 12 hours later than Freya would have liked, judging from the intensity of her crying one night last week, but show up it did. With a vengeance. Turns out these breasts are not just for decoration. And while we haven't perfected the art of night-time nursing without groping for my glasses and turning on the light yet, Freya's eating like a champ and I get to enjoy an entirely gratuitous sense of accomplishment.

The best laid plans...

... went haywire and got us our beautiful daughter two weeks early!

On July 31 Lufthansa went on strike, delaying my mother's arrival in Portland by two days.

Later that afternoon, my water broker while at the midwife's for a routine visit. She discovered that OHSU Labor and Delivery was "on divert", meaning that there would be no room at the inn (and, more importantly) the water tub if I showed up there too soon. So she sent me home and told me to come back when the contractions are at 3-5 minutes.

I called Steve, who was at that moment in Spokane on a college tour with Beau -- they started the trek home immediately, getting back to Portland by midnight. A big thank you to our friends Jennifer and Marcus who sat with me, watching stupid movies and chatting as my contractions slowly built.

It's true, you really can sleep through the early part of labor, or at least in between contractions. Steve not so much, he was busy timing them all night... Contractions were down to 5 minutes by Friday morning, which saw me in a frenzy of work triage, essentially designating a number of pinch hitters for some rather hairy deadlines.

We went to the hospital, where they indeed did not turn us away, but we had to wait for a couple of hours until a birth suite became available.

Naturally, the water tub was in use -- but OHSU was prepared for this contingency, and we became the inaugural users of their new inflatable back-up tub.

I'll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that labor progressed in predictable fashion, and I was able to see it through unmedicated and mostly in good humor; at least until those famous last three pushes. Yowza.

And then: There she was!!!

Freya Rosa Cowan joined us at 9:15 p.m. on Friday, August 1st, weighing in at 8 lbs 3 oz, and 21.5 inches long.

We are smitten, and of course she is the most beautiful baby in the world .

The most and least useful baby items

So here they are, the results of our survey! Thanks to the 42 people who responded. Some of the highlights:


10 useless things you only thought you needed:

1. Baby monitor
2. Baby room
3. Baby wipe warmer
4. Boppy pillow
5. Bottles (and formula)
6. Changing table
7. Clothes, especially impractical/fancy/newborn
8. Crib
9. Diaper pail/Diaper Genie
10. Toys
    

10 things you never knew you'd need but that ended up being useful:

1. BioKleen Bac-Out Stain and Odor Eliminator
2. Boudreaux’s Butt Paste
3. Changing table light
4. Colic tablets
5. Emergency baby kit in car
6. Mother's group
7. Nipple cream
8. Rocking chair
9. Sleep - for you and baby
10. Swaddling blankets

And finally, the top 10 things all new parents should have:

1. Baby carrier and/or sling
2. Babysitter (or grandparent)
3. Bouncy chair - table top type
4. Breast pump
5. Confidence
6. Diaper service
7. Earplugs
8. Meals - 2 week's worth of oven-ready frozen meals
9. Sound Machine
10. Stroller – lightweight and basic

We also asked a number of either/or questions, and here are the scores. Apparently we are having a boy who will be breastfed, carried around in a sling, and looked after by granny, only to then eventually go off to Berkeley. Go Bears! Interestingly people were pretty evenly divided between disposable and cloth diapers, and between crib and co-sleeping.

(click on picture to see a bigger graph!)

Naturally, our friends being our friends, there were some pretty strong opinions about most of these topics. Here are a few anonymous excerpts, the first from a couple of wildlife biologists:

We defaulted to childrearing that was in line with other mammals, what humans have done for millions of years, was intuitive, and most importantly easy and a good fit for us and the child. We don’t know any mammals that construct seperate sleep quarters for their young, subscribe to rigid clock based sleeping and feeding schedules, and let their young cry it out .... but to each their own.

And this one from a British friend:

We swaddled both our kids for at least six months, every nap, every night, I think this makes an enormous difference in their quality of sleep and sense of security, many people end up giving up on swaddling because "my baby didn't "like it" - fine, good luck with the part when they don't "like" getting dressed too!

So, off we go to implement the collective wisdom! We'll keep you posted on how it goes...

A blogger, moi?!

Maybe this is the form nesting takes with me, but here I am, starting a blog.

Actually, what prompted it is the response I've been getting to the survey my friend Sarah created to help Steve and me navigate the landscape of baby stuff -- his last child was born almost 18 years ago, in what now seems like the dark ages of the waning 20th century. There wasn't nearly as much "stuff" around that you could get, or had to think about, it seems.

Anyway, we figured we'd get some advice from our larger circle of friends, family and acquaintances on what was useful, turned out to be essential, or was just redundant gear. Then others asked to see the results, and I figured once the little bundle of joy arrives it'll be easier to update one central place rather than trying to figure out people's emails.

So, here is the link to the survey, which will stay around at least until mid-July.

I'll post the results here once we have analyzed them :-)