Who knew sleeping babies were so complicated??

As the mom of a seven-week old, I’m suddenly remembering and finding new meaning in a line from Olivemom’s “About the Author” blurb for this blog:

It took all of a week and a half of my newborn’s life for me to conclude that the powers that be are conspiring to take all of the simple, organic fun out of raising a baby. Pay attention to this! Keep track of that! Worry and fret about every little blip that falls somewhere outside the norm OR ELSE!

Oh do I ever understand this now! It’s kind of alarming how much time I spend fretting over this or that, and if I dare to indulge with some reading of baby books or internet-meanderings, then we are in serious trouble. This is often made worse if I’ve recently caught any episodes of Supernanny.

Other than my paralyzing obsession with SIDS risk factors, I think the worst thing so far is the damn sleep books. As I face down the last weeks of maternity leave and ponder what life will be like when I am once again expected to bathe and dress myself and perform job-like duties on a daily basis, I started to get a bit anxious about schedules and sleeping through the night and so decided to take a peek at a few of the hand-me-down baby sleep books we had. Bad idea!

While there are occasional useful nuggets in them, from what I can tell, the main points from all of them could be summed up in maybe five universal bullet points. But instead each one is like 250 pages of “omg you’re doing everything wrong and are headed for complete and total disaster!” And “the only way your baby will ever sleep through the night is if you do this long, confusing list of things exactly right, and if you haven’t started doing them by now, you are in DEEP SHIZZLE, out of which you will never be able to dig yourself and which will not end until your child is 15.”

Oh, and they often disagree with each other, so not only is there this endless overwhelming flood of instructions coming at you, it’s an endless overwhelming flood of contradictory instructions. Awesome! And everyone you see is also asking if he is sleeping through the night, thus forcing you to say NO while feeling like clearly he SHOULD be if everyone is ASKING about it, sheesh.

With my highly limited seven weeks of experience, here’s the list of things I’ve been able to suss out as being for reals (much influenced by Olivemom’s sensitive talking-me-down from baby-sleep-book-induced-franticness):

1. All babies are different, so any of what’s in any baby book or milestone schedule may or may not exactly apply to your baby.
2. For most babies, it’s pretty hard to screw things up SO badly that you really have an irreversible sleep monster on your hands.

I’ll be intrigued to come back to these thoughts six months from now. We’ll see if I’m staggering into the nursery ten times a night to feed him/put his pacifier back in his mouth/rock him to sleep/sing him to sleep, or God knows what other potentially terrible habits we may currently be instilling. In the meantime, I plan to take some lessons from my husband’s laid-back “eh, chill out, he’s happy, we’re happy, it’ll be fine” attitude and try to keep doing what is making sense for us, in our family. Fingers crossed!

In honor of Larms and her nearly-here bundle of joy!

That’s right. In about 48 hours give or take (I’ll cross my fingers for take!), the more accurate title of this website will be “Our Simple Green Babies”. Go, go Larms!

I thought it only appropriate, then, that we spend a moment reflecting solemnly on what is completely backasswards about giving birth in the grand ol’ U.S. of A.

As usual, this was picked up by Larms, who never met an informational link she could resist clicking, and is no doubt reading and re-reading it right now (Step away from the computer, woman! Find your happy place!!), and fuming on behalf of all moms-to-be who are not served well by our current, broken-from-start-to-finish system.

Apologies for the vomit-induced vacation…

We’ve been a little…under the weather the last few days around here. It has hit each and every family member one by one (a precise little virus–27.5 hours exactly between each person’s first desperate dash to the bathroom, or in the babe’s case, her first waking up doused head to toe in vomit).

I think we’re on the mend, but this is my first experience with having to recover from a violent illness while caring for a dependent who is also recovering from a violent illness, and wow, the process is a lot more…painstaking…this way.

So I’ll still be trying to nap when she naps for the next day or two and be getting to bed on the early side. We’ll be back with a vengeance soon enough, though!

Baby Gear Avalanche!

First of all, hello! I’m (Kinda)Rural(Almost)Mom to Olivemom’s UrbanMom. And might be breezing through now and again with a post or two!

We’re expecting baby #1 in early April and currently experiencing the special, joyful time experienced by all new parents: when your home is overtaken by a nonstop flood of gigantic plastic baby items, cardboard, packaging, and general crap. We have two extra bedrooms with huge closets and a two-car garage for storage and still feel like we are swimming in baby stuff! I started shopping several months ago so it’s been a pretty slow, steady stream – I can’t imagine how drowning it must feel to folks who get all of it all at once, all new, fairly late in pregnancy.

Being close to Olivemom, it was great to be able to observe her going through this whole process a year in advance to brace myself. And she instilled in me the (very accurate, I believe) knowledge that a huge percentage of all this baby stuff is 1) not necessary; 2) wildly overpriced; and 3) not all that hard to find in high-quality used form. Yes, there’s plenty of crusty used baby gear out there. There’s also lots of high-quality, practically new stuff!

While I did not have the fortitude or technological aptitude to make an online registry of needed baby items and request that folks looking to give us gifts give us used things (a la Olivemom), I did still want to follow her lead and buy some used baby gear. Why? Well, for starters, I am selectively cheap. A giant hunk of brand-new brightly colored plastic for $80? No way. Expensive once-a-year pedicure? Yes please! And I enjoy the thrill of the hunt for a bargain.

I never used craigslist before starting to search for baby things, so I’m certainly no expert. But it’s been a fun exercise, less time-consuming than I thought, and definitely confirmed for me that not everything for baby needs to be brand-spanking-new – especially when you consider that many of the bigger, more expensive items only get used for a very short time! So, should you decide that you don’t really need a $150 brand-new pack’n'play or $90 exersaucer or jumper, here are some reflections on consignment-store and craigslist shopping from my limited newbie experience:

• Watch postings for awhile to get a sense for typical prices on items, condition, etc. – I checked listings every day for weeks before I was ready to buy stuff, and also shopped a fair bit online to get a sense of what retail was (and sale prices) on most items so I had a frame of reference for deals. This really doesn’t take that long!
• Stop at your local consignment stores whenever you get the chance. Again, to check out prices in addition to looking for finds. Pricing can be a bit unpredictable – some things may seem overpriced for their desirability/condition but you might also find the occasional fantastic steal.
• Shop where you know there are high concentrations of middle/higher-income suburban families, both consignment stores and keep an eye out for these towns/areas on craigslist. Yes, I know this is being stereotypical. But every now and then some poor fool will post a string of ten barely-used things they surely paid full retail for all at once for dirt cheap. That is always a beautiful, beautiful day!

Asking prices on Craigslist can also be a bit all over the place. There’s the folks who just want to get rid of something and way underprice it, and there are those who think that 90% of the Babies R Us retail price is a completely legitimate asking price for their five-year old stained pack’n'play. This is why it’s so important to get a sense for typical retail and used prices. I probably paid a bit more for a swing than I should have in those heady early days! For the most part, I expect a price on craigslist to be a bit less than the typical consignment-store price, since they’re not taking a cut. At least in my local stores, the bigger gear items always seemed a bit overpriced and often not in great condition.

Depending on the time of year, you can also add to my meek craigslist/consignment store shopping strategies with yard sales and big organized children’s consignment sales (which frequently advertise on craigslist) – I’m sure further into spring and summer would be great times to get lots of bargains at these spots too.

Sadly, there were several things I had hoped to find but just didn’t seem to be very common in my area (Arm’s Reach cosleeper, for example – I’ve been watching my local craigslist like a hawk for probably four months and have only ever seen ONE.). And while I was committed to finding things used, I was pretty picky about what exactly I was looking for – neutral colors, specific brands – which limited the field a bit. Even though a Maclaren stroller was on my list of “snap up if I find one!” items, I just couldn’t quite bring myself to buy a completely hot pink stroller for our baby boy. Even if it was a steal!

All that aside, I’ve still been able to save a good bit of money and avoid personally adding to the volume of baby-gear plastic in the world, at least a little bit, without all that much effort and without turning myself into a standing-outside-at-sunrise-waiting-for-yard-sales-to-open or spending-hours-combing-the-classifieds type. If you’ve got a baby on the way and are needing some of these things, maybe think about shopping used!

But, um, be prepared for your mother and friends to maybe yell at you a bit if you get overexcited about it and don’t leave any big items for your baby shower.

Baby Glutton…harmless toy or CULTURAL TERROR?

Sometimes an issue arises that just perfectly encapsulates what is SO UTTERLY MESSED UP about American culture. This apparently controversial doll from Spain (Bebe Gloton–the doll who breastfeeds) is just that issue. See Fox “News” coverage here, where, not surprisingly, they had a quote or two about how breastfeeding is good and healthy, but then made sure to bring it home in that old “family values” way by quoting this gem of a paragraph comparing teaching girls about breastfeeding to teaching them about alcoholism, erectile dysfunction, and going to jail:

“What’s next?” wrote Eric Ruhalter, a parenting columnist for New Jersey’s Star Ledger. “Bebe Sot — the doll who has a problem with a different kind of bottle, and loses his family, job and feelings of self-worth? Bebe Limp — the male doll who experiences erectile dysfunction? Bebe Cell Mate — a weak, unimposing doll that experiences all the indignation and humiliation of life in prison?

Really, there are just no words. Although apparently this guy describes himself as an off-the-cuff parenting blogger, NOT a parenting columnist as Fox would have it, and he did post an apology not long after that article. And really, it’s not his fault that aside from the relatively small and vocal breastfeeding activist community, probably a large chunk of America feels the way he does (or did, until he was firmly reprimanded by some of those ladies at La Leche-DO NOT MESS WITH THEM!) about this toy. The following are all actual quotes I heard around my otherwise forward-thinking workplace when the issue first started buzzing about: “Ew!” “That’s disgusting!” “That’s so inappropriate.” “That toy should be banned.”

Why do so many people have such a visceral, negative reaction to this toy? Let’s take a step back for just a minute and UNPACK this issue, shall we?

The main arguments I’ve heard against this doll so far are that it’s developmentally inappropriate because of the “sexual” nature of breastfeeding, and that encouraging girls to play with this doll will give them too-early maternal urges and turn them into unwed teenage mothers. (I know, the latter seems laughable, but I’ll address it as if it’s serious in a minute.)

To the first argument: Sometimes I think other people have a really weird and incongruent sense of what is appropriate/inappropriate. For instance, it is likely that many of the same people who told me that the doll was disgusting would think these bikini-cut undies for 5 year olds are “SO CUTE” and that this video is “ADORABLE”. (For the record, I also think the video is adorable, just really, really disturbing at the same time.) To me there is such a disconnect here–it’s okay to “sexualize” girls at a very young age in the “I’m so cute and sexy” sense, but it’s disgusting and sick to “sexualize” them in the “Here’s the biology behind how you will someday feed your child” sense?

To the second argument: If you really, honestly believe that THIS doll will encourage girls to have babies too soon, then you must also be in favor of not letting them play with ANY dolls, since little girls (and boys–omg, can you IMAGINE what Fox would do if they got their hands on a picture of a little boy playing with the breastfeeding doll?!) are already spending large quantities of time playing house, changing diapers, and otherwise caring for imaginary children–even, dare I say it–PRETENDING TO BREASTFEED THEM. I fail to see what the developmental difference is between a baby doll marketed to “drink” from a bottle by moving her mouth and a baby doll marketed to “drink” from a flower-petal breast. In fact, the only real difference is that one of those dolls sends a message to our girls that there is an ideal and completely UNshameful way to nourish a baby that we hope they choose if circumstances allow someday.

What are ignored in any of the discussions I’ve seen so far are the consequences of our misogynistic over-sexualizing of boobies in the “men want to grab them” sense and our prudish under-sexualizing of boobies in the “babies should be allowed to suck them” sense. When it was finally time for me to try my hand at the breastfeeding thing, I was struck by the fact that I was thirty years old and fairly well educated, yet one of the most complicated but necessary bodily functions women have was a complete mystery to me. Because breastfeeding is a hidden, taboo topic, individual women are left to figure it out on their own, for the first time ever, IN THE MOMENT while they are completely exhausted/overwhelmed by the new little creatures that have suddenly popped into and forever changed their lives–new little creature who are chomping their nipples to bloody bits on an hourly basis. Unless they have the wherewithal to reach out to somewhat intimidating strangers for help, many of them are going it ALONE (or worse, going it with an older female relative saying, “You’re not still trying to do THAT, are you?”). No wonder more women than we’d like give up or are too scared to try at all!

Imagine instead a society where young girls routinely watched their mothers and relatives and friends breastfeed as they grew up. Where they discussed the ins and outs of what could go wrong. Where they saw women openly supporting and encouraging each other through the process. Where they *gasp* had seen lots of different kinds of boobies and lots of different kinds of babies drinking from them. Where they already had a meaningful vocabulary of technical terms that they had heard used and seen applied in their daily lives. Where they understood a breast’s primary purpose to be what it actually is–an everyday tool for nourishing their children, rather than what we’ve allowed it to become–a “naughty” toy for fulfilling men’s sexual desires.

When it came time to breastfeed their own children, it would be like second nature. No big whoop. How is that a bad thing?

Breaking the formula seal-Part 2

There is no worse feeling than standing in the baby aisle of your local urban-gentrified Whole Foods, holding a canister of formula in your sweaty, shaking palms and feeling the eyes of all the earthy, wholesome, would-never-contaminate-their-child-with-processed-soy-proteins moms who just came out of mama-baby yoga down the street and are now not only freshly bonded with their children, but they also clearly love them more than you do because they aren’t standing here holding a canister of formula thinking very, very seriously about not just buying it, but also feeding it to their children.

But something had to give. And this, I knew, was it. I was pushed to my limit and I knew that a tiny bit–a tiny bit!!–of formula was going to be my savior. I mean, as far as formula goes, Earth’s Best was at least a feel-good choice, right? They use a soothing “chalkboard” font, people! And at least theirs isn’t packed with sugar like the major brands. How bad can they be? Although, AWESOME, I just was doing some last-minute poking about on the interwebs to make sure they weren’t actually TOO bad–do you love how I checked before posting about it but not before feeding it to the babe?–and stumbled across the DHA explosive diarrhea controversy. Sweet.

But I digress. Where was I? Ah, yes, standing in the Whole Foods aisle, pitifully reassuring myself that I could, in fact, take this canister of baby-poison to the register and check out without first putting a paper bag over my head. So right, caving in and cheating with just a wee bit of formula when your baby is 4.5 months old is not the worst a working mom on the brink of late-onset postpartum depression could do, right?

And it turns out, 3 months later and healthy, happy baby in hand, I don’t think it was. She drank it without batting an eyelash, and I saw no change whatsoever in general happiness or poop-consistency/force of emission (thank god!). And just that tiny amount of relieved stress/anxiety on Mom’s part (and pumping-relief for the over-taxed boobs!) really did make life around here a lot more simple, balanced and healthy for everyone–tot included.

I guess the moral of my story is just that, sometimes we can let ourselves get SO worked up/pressured about what the “good” moms do that even though we know something might be the best choice for our family, it’s hard to let go and make that choice.

And also, if you’re wondering how to get your bundle of love over that last hurdle of sleeping 11-12 hours/night instead of 8-9, try giving her a few extra ounces of formula after her last breastfeed of the evening. I’m not saying…I’m just saying…

Breaking the formula seal (cringe!)-Part 1

About a year ago, I was one of THOSE moms-to-be. You know who I’m talking about. The one who received the Similac and Enfamil samples in the mail with complete disgust and revulsion (“OMG! These companies are so insidious and evil!!”). The one who thought that obviously, it would be NO PROBLEM to pump/store daily milk by the gallon-full for her daughter and make a whole bunch of extras for the freezer so that nothing, NOTHING “unnatural” would have to pass through the babe’s innocent lips before she was ready. The one who thought that once the girl was ready for solids, she would make it all from scratch using only the organic, seasonal, locally-grown veggies from her farm share (HA! And more on that delusion another time).

Fast-forward to June of this year when the little lady hit the four month mark and Mom (that’s me) was a) sick and tired of having to pump not once, but TWO times every day at work–such a brutal and inefficient grind!, b) in a battle of wills with the pediatrician over whether or not the kiddo was gaining enough weight, c) slowly losing her mind as she faced a ridiculously travel-packed and exhausting summer (in preparation for which she was utterly failing at freezing anywhere close to enough milk), and d) growing more vocally bitter by the day about her new role in life as a two-legged dairy cow who now couldn’t even READ A MAGAZINE while her daughter nursed because it was too “distracting” for her highness.

Enter sweet husband who said, “Maybe we could start giving her a little bit of formula.”

Excuse me for a second.

ARE YOU INSANE????? AND LOSE ALL THE PURITY I’VE BEEN WORKING SO HARD FOR ALL THESE MONTHS???? NFW!!!!

After calming down and talking it over, however, I came to see it in a different light. Switching to a system where she drank even just ONE bottle of formula per day at the sitter’s could be an answer to all of the above problems at once. I could drop down to one pumping session at work. I could stop falsely inflating my milk supply in an effort to get extra frozen milk which I’m pretty sure was causing my daughter to get too much foremilk and not enough hindmilk and thus likely inhibiting her growth (oops!). I could stop fretting over whether or not we’d be able to make it to our best friends’ wedding because I might not have enough milk saved up for a weekend away from the boobs. AND I could make the hubby take on a feeding responsibility here and there without having to turn around and waste the saved time with yet another irritating pumping session–omg, I could READ my MAGAZINE.

On second thought, sweet husband, WHY THE FRICK DIDN’T YOU SUGGEST THIS EARLIER????

Keep it simple, stupid!

I am a simple lady. Although in recent years I have given in and started paying more than $10 for my haircuts, and I have tried to invest more time in accessorizing according to the Friday night admonishments I receive from Stacy and Clinton (my kicky Kate Spade purse has pink lining, people!), I still can be found without makeup many days of the week and I can’t ever seem to keep more than one pair of jeans in the house that I actually feel comfortable wearing in public.

I tell you this so that you have some context when I try to explain how woefully unprepared I was three years ago when I passed from the uncomplicated, carefree bliss of single womanhood into the mystical, surprisingly intractable social construct that is WEDDING PLANNING. When I had bothered to envision this momentous step of my life at all, I assumed it would go like most things in my world. My husband-to-be and I would keep it simple, map out some general plans, make a few phone calls, and make it happen. Little did I know that weddings are this living, breathing entity with a mind of their own, and that if you are ill-prepared or not paying attention (or are an overwhelmed and exhausted inner-city teacher), your low-key celebration can turn into a recipe for bridezilla mania!

This is not to say that I don’t now appreciate having a Kitchen-Aid handy and all, it’s just that if I could have a do-over, I would have invested more time and vigilance into ensuring that the festivities bucked more of the typical “wedding” stereotypes and reflected more clearly a few of my own core values. But you can’t have a do-over (well, not if you’re really into your current husband, which I am). What I realized I DID have, however, was another chance with the next BIG event in the average woman’s life—the arrival of the first baby.

This time I would be prepared! I would take charge and preemptively simplify at every step possible. I started by trading my high-stress 60-hour-per-week teaching job for some low-stress part-time desk-work (like, is this even WORK?). Then I decided the next step would be avoiding at all costs having a baby shower that would drown me and my growing belly in the tell-tale piles of boxes, bows and ribbons that to me scream, “AMERICAN BABIES MUST HAVE ONE OF EVERYTHING IN THE BABIES-R-US STORE IF THEY ARE TO SURVIVE IN A WORLD OF UNCERTAINTY! WE WILL SHIELD THEM FROM THE CHAOS BY MAKING SURE THEY ARE SURROUNDED BY AS MANY TOP-OF-THE-LINE PLASTIC PRODUCTS AS POSSIBLE!”

Thus it was that when I became pregnant, I began announcing EARLY and OFTEN to anyone who was listening or just had the unfortunate luck to be within earshot that I would only be accepting reused and recycled items as baby gifts. To ensure that my wishes were actually followed and that my friends and family didn’t think I was just making idle threats, I made a website explaining as much that could also double as a bootleg “registry” for said used items.

Nearly ten months later, and with everything ready for the new baby, I can proudly say the sum total of “brand new” supplies in my house would probably fit inside two grocery bags. Absolutely everything else has been handed-down, re-gifted, bought at a thrift or consignment store, or lent to us by friends who jumped at the chance to free up storage in their house until their next newborn comes along.

But gathering supplies was just the beginning! Now I’ve got a living, breathing, pooping-machine whose sole purpose on this earth right now seems to be generating dirty clothes and diapers faster than I can even get them off her little body. (Question: how can something so tiny emit so many fluids simultaneously out of so many orifices?!)

So, welcome to my blog, a chronicle of a first-time mom’s part-time pursuit to find cheap, simple ways to lighten her adorable offspring’s imprint on the world.