bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • New baby’s resolution two: Simplifying the list of things that there are “times” for.

    Part of a series that starts here.

    + + +

    Last time I wrote about my post-baby resolutions, I said that I'd identified some intentions that wouldn't become part of a "schedule," but would rather be things I would try to keep in mind all the time.

    Essential ingredients for every time-block.

    These were:

    • Serving God in everything
    • Showing each other LOVE, INTEREST, & DELIGHT in one another
    • Anticipating/resolving conflict by modeling KINDNESS, GENEROSITY, & REASON
    • Helping each other work by teaching DILIGENCE

    You may have noticed that these don't correspond quite exactly to any of the "essentials" that I identified in my first post. They are distilled from some of those "essentials" in order to get their total number down.

    One thing is for certain, we'll never get anything done if we are running in too many directions at once.

    + + +

    So of those essentials, what remains?

    • Connecting with God.
    • Resting.
    • Showing love to, and taking delight in, each other.
    • Connecting with people outside our family.
    • Resolving conflict and encouraging generosity, particularly among the children.
    • Helping each other work, and learn to work, with diligence.
    • Caring for our bodies (and that extension of our bodies, our clothing and appearance).
    • Meals.
    • Physical activity.
    • Order in our environment.
    • Learning.
    • Creative work.
    • Work that serves others.

    And can these things that remain — the things that "there are times for" — be simplified even further?

    + + +

    Our days and weeks must have "times" for

    • rest and sleep
    • meals (planning, shopping, preparing, eating, cleaning up)
    • health (physical activity, hygiene, medical care)
    • clothing care and dressing ourselves and grooming (purchasing, laundry, haircuts, etc.)
    • maintaining an orderly environment

    • intellectual development (teaching, school planning, curriculum, chosen hobbies and such)
    • connecting with the outside world (volunteer work, seeing friends, paid work)

    But that's a lot of different stuff.

    Far too overwhelming to make anything even approximating a daily or weekly routine.

    And some of the categories are nebulous.

    "Physical Activity, Hygiene, Medical Care" only go together in an abstract way as "healthy" things to do. They are not anything like one another in a practical sense. They're not done at the same frequencies or at the same times of day or in the same places. They can't be substituted for one another: one hour in the bathtub, one three-mile walk, and one doctor's appointment don't have the same effect on my overall health.

    Better to re-formulate the categories and condense them, without micromanaging the details. Mother Teresa's rule for her sisters famously included time blocks that were simply labeled things like "Work for the poor." It wasn't subdivided into individual tasks. I need the same generality categories, because in this season of life, I need to stay flexible. At a particular time in the afternoon, I may need to spend some time homemaking, but I don't want to say "laundry at this time, bed-making at this other time, return phone calls from then until the next time." I need the flexibility to do whatever household task is most important and then let the rest of the to-do list go when I have to move on to some other activity.

    So what I came up with was this list:

    Things we make "times" for

    • Rest
    • Taking care of body and clothing
    • Meals
    • Learning time
    • Work
    • "Activities"

    Much simpler, isn't it?

     

    I got away with so few categories by making several of them broader. For example, "rest" includes naps, quiet recreation (such as reading for pleasure or surfing the web in bed), and sleep. By thinking about clothing as an extension of the body, I was able to collapse the whole of the processes of getting up in the morning and getting ready for bed, encompassing dressing, bathing, dealing with hair, and even putting clothes away. "Meals" includes the necessary clean-up afterwards.

     

    "Work" encompasses several kinds of work, some enjoyable, some not my favorite. I guess now that I look at it, "work" is anything that I tend to procrastinate. It includes work for the family (a.k.a. homemaking), work for the kids' schooling, creative work (aka hobbies), paid work, and service. This category probably needs to be subdivided some, however, so that none of the kinds of work gets short changed; but maybe on a weekly rotation.

     

    "Learning time" is not called "school" because I need to separate it from the "school work" I have to do every day, week, and year: curriculum purchasing, planning, grading, and record keeping, not to mention maintaining our materials and space. Rather, "learning time" needs its own turn at the top of my priorities. By "learning time" I mean the time that the kids spend directly engaging with their schoolwork and that I spend teaching them or keeping them on task. I am always tempted to wander off and get something else done the instant that everyone appears to be working independently; but what they really need (especially the younger ones) is for me to stay focused and present to them for a good-sized block of time.

     

    "Activities" sounds pretty nebulous, but in our family it is immediately obvious what this word means. It's the stuff we do after dinner and on the weekends. Family gym night; swimming lessons; Wednesday night religious education; going to Mass on Sundays and holy days; Scouts and AHG; shows at the Children's Theatre; the occasional outing for bowling or a movie; potluck and board game night with friends. Nearly all of it optional, and none of it has to be "made up" if it's missed for reason of illness or crisis.

     

    Now I have gone and expanded them, but remember that it all collapses into just six categories.

     

    Rest, meals, learning, work, self-care, activities. To everything there is a time. And each of these to be met, all the time: in a spirit of service, loving one another, peacefully, diligently.

     

    More details in the next resolution.

     

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    7 comments on New baby’s resolution two: Simplifying the list of things that there are “times” for.

  • New baby’s resolution one: What there’s no “time” for.

    In the last post I wrote about how having a new baby in the house is a good time to re-evaluate priorities and make new resolutions.

     

    "Resolution zero" was, so that we could use our time well, to acknowledge and honor our priorities:

    • Connecting with God.
    • Resting.
    • Showing love to, and taking delight in, each other.
    • Connecting with people outside our family.
    • Resolving conflict and encouraging generosity, particularly among the children.
    • Helping each other work, and learn to work, with diligence.
    • Caring for our bodies (and that extension of our bodies, our clothing).
    • Meals.
    • Physical activity.
    • Order in our environment.
    • Learning.
    • Creative work.
    • Work that serves others.

    As I contemplated these essentials and thought about trying to schedule time for all, it occurred to me that they fall, for us into two categories.

    One category: priorities that we can have "times" for. There are times for rest and sleep, for example, and mealtimes. We can set aside time in our days and weeks for schooling and for chores and for getting to the gym.

    But there is another category of priorities that need to be practiced, bluntly, "all the time." There is no "time" that we block out for, for instance, showing interest in our children, or resolving conflicts between them. We have robe ready to do that at any moment that it may be called for.

    Does that mean we parents have to be ON all the time? Sort of. I can reasonably anticipate some down time, after the kids are in bed, or when I go for a run, or during the after-lunch break when I send them all away for me for a while. But we are pretty much always on call, and always called to love.

    I drew a vertical line down a sheet of paper. To the right I made a list of the things "There's A Time For." Meals and chores and the like, a rough schedule marked out by hours.

    But to the left, outside of the schedule, I made a list of things to strive for "All The Time:"

    • Serving God in everything
    • Showing each other LOVE, INTEREST, & DELIGHT in one another
    • Anticipating/resolving conflict by modeling KINDNESS, GENEROSITY, & REASON
    • Helping each other work by teaching DILIGENCE

    + + +

    These all have to do with keeping a certain intentional attitude while taking care of all the busy-ness of the day.

    Resolution one is to keep these in mind as all-the-time intentions, and find ways to do each thing — to spend each "time" — that honors these priorities all day long.

     

    ___

    note:  I slightly edited the first, "Serving God in everything," a few hours after posting it.  No reason, I thought it was a little more precise than the first version, "Doing everything for love of God."

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  • New baby’s resolutions: Resolution zero.

    New Year’s resolutions are so passé.

    Especially in February, she said. But I digress.

    If you have messed up your New Year’s resolutions already, you could wait till Lent starts, of course. Lots of people try new things then. I do think Lent can be a good time to try new self-disciplines, so to speak, though unfortunately many of us attempt to turn it into a diet plan. That can be counter-productive, when you consider the reason for the season.

    I am now thinking that a really great time for a resolution — a shaking up of the old routines and a turning over of a new leaf — is several weeks after the birth of a new baby.

    Because you know what?

    There’s no going back to the way things were before.

    I might as well formalize it.

    + + +

    Even before we decided to invite a new little one into our lives, I knew I didn’t really have room for one more along with everything else I do. I knew, I really did, that something was going to have to give.

    That didn’t stop me from trying to hang onto everything, even as I struggled to stay awake through the first trimester and to keep up with everyone during the second and the third. It didn’t stop me from trying to keep up what I had been doing and hang on to all my commitments, and that is probably good because I really have to try and FAIL before I am okay with giving up.

    Early on, I figured out that I wasn’t going to be able to keep up with school by advance-planning everything on the weekends (including copying and printing, getting books to and from the library, writing new worksheets, composing emails with instructions to my “independent” students, and writing answer keys) and then sticking to my preplanned work on weekdays, keeping careful records of what everyone accomplished each day.

    Up till this last year, that has worked pretty well. It isn’t going to work anymore. I have now hit the point where if everything were going to be preplanned and prepared by me to my own exacting standards, I would have to spend my Entire Weekend on that work. And this is not good for my family, even if — maybe BECAUSE — I kind of enjoy holing up in a locked room with a computer and a curriculum catalog and no human interaction for 12 hours at a time.

    Something has to give.

    And that is just one area of my life where I was overindulging in productivity. We haven’t even talked about things like housekeeping, or dinner, or the few volunteer commitments that one or the other of us has made.

    It’s the same way there. Something has to give.

    I warned my partner in co-schooling, H., before I warned anyone else, not long after I found out I was pregnant, that my standards were about to slip, and I didn’t think it would improve matters by trying to plan out exactly how they would slip, so I was just going to LET them slip and see what happened.

    + + +

    H. didn’t really have a chance to give me much feedback before she found out she was pregnant too, and then that she was going to have twins, so, you know, any plans we had for the year were going to go out the window anyway and be replaced by … Something.

    + + +

    So what are the new baby’s resolutions? I think I am going to spread this post out over several days because I still have to process some of them, and I have been having a damnably hard time blogging for the last few months.

    Which might have something to do with my foggy brain. Though the causality could really be going either way.

    But the first resolution… No, wait. The zeroth resolution, really, since it has to underlie all the others… Is to recognize that I have priorities. Priorities with names. Values.

    It’s like this. We need these things in our lives (no particular order here):

    • Connecting with God.
    • Resting.
    • Showing love to, and taking delight in, each other.
    • Connecting with people outside our family.
    • Resolving conflict and encouraging generosity, particularly among the children.
    • Helping each other work, and learn to work, with diligence.
    • Caring for our bodies (and that extension of our bodies, our clothing).
    • Meals.
    • Physical activity.
    • Order in our environment.
    • Learning.
    • Creative work.
    • Work that serves others.

    Resolution zero is to recognize and honor these priorities so that I can somehow use my time (and help the rest of the family use their time) in a way that gives each of these their due.

     

    + + +

     

    So much for new directions. I only know one way to start anything, and that is by making a list. I have written and rewritten and re-rewritten the list over and over for a week, moving the bits around, and yet nothing has changed yet.

     

    Sooner or later I will have to put down the pen and get out of my chair.

     

    But not yet.

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  • Plans.

    Still working on that birth story, I promise. Where did all the time go?

    + + +

    Now that our baby has reached 6 weeks without problem or incident, our family feels a little freer to make plans. It’s always hard for me to do so when I am pregnant. You just never know what is going to happen, you know?

    But we have been kicking around a particular idea for several years — one that was put on hold a year or so when we decided to have another baby, one for which we have been setting aside money for a while now. It’s time for us to think seriously about it.

    And that would be, taking the kids on a significant trip.

    I am not sure exactly when we might go yet, but we are making calls. We do think we know where we want to go. It seems funny, but the only places on our tentative itinerary are cities and towns that Mark and I have already visited (albeit separately).

    In a way this is characteristic of me. I am a little intimidated by taking my five children anywhere new; I like to try out even a restaurant before I haul them all in for dinner. What is on the menu? How much background noise is there? Are there TVs on the walls? Do other families bring children? How close are the tables? Do the tables have glass tops (DANGER DANGER DANGER) and is the only table that’s big enough for us a giant round one in the middle of the room? When is happy hour, and does it include half price nachos and $3 taps?

    So.

    I told Mark when we first started discussing this that I didn’t want to go trucking all over the continent with little kids. A baby is okay; they are very portable. Teens are okay too. But I will have three kids in the middle, elevenish, eight, and four-point-five. We need to stay put for a while. At least a week at a time. Have a home base, with 3 separate bedrooms and a kitchen. A place where we can get to know the neighborhood, venture out to see stuff when we have energy, come back in the afternoon to rest.

    And where can we go that we won’t exhaust the possibilities in 2 weeks?

    Rome, of course. I have three kids learning Latin and I haven’t gotten around to the cultural bits yet. I have a history-buff teen and an army-guy-doodling tween and a young daughter who loves beautiful things. All three think it would be super cool to go to a Wednesday papal audience in St. Peter’s square. The baby will be portable and, I hope, cute. The only big question mark is the four-year-old, but there’s one of him and two of us and there will be a lot of gelato around with which to bribe him and soothe the rest of us.

    But we do want to go one other place, one a bit calmer (in some ways) than the Eternal City. One that is beautiful, one with challenging things to do outdoors, one that suits both Mark and me. It’s okay if it is a tourist spot, since we plan to go in the off season.

    So: Chamonix, in the French Alps. Birthplace of l’alpinisme. First host of the Winter Olympics. World class rock climbing and alpine touring and mucking about on glaciers (something Mark has done before). Téléphériques that whisk you up the mountain so you can take hikes among the rocky peaks (something I have done before — it is the most beautiful place I have ever been). Cragging sites great for kids, all the wat from five-one to five-twelve, that you can walk to from the centre-ville to set up your own top ropes. Overnight huts in the mountains that feed you dinner after you straggle in and breakfast before you saunter out. Also a bunch of stuff that caters to families on vacation, because it is a tourist spot for sure: alpine slides, shops that will pack you a pique-nique basket, gigantic gear rental places, and a year-round population of mountain guides.

    A week or two there, with my own kitchen, sounds just wonderful. (Hilly hiking is my favorite outdoor physical activity, and it is hard to think of a better place to find some.)

    + + +

    Here’s the thing: I don’t really want to try this with a 1-to-3-year-old, so it is this year or four years from now. And four years from now my oldest will be grown. So this is the year.

    Bring on the language tapes and tack the maps to the wall. It’s time for a reeeeally long unit study.

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  • Four years ago…

    Still working on that birth story.  It's about half done.

    + + +

    It has been four years (exactly!  today is a birthday!) since I last had a newborn baby, and I have been rather amazed at how much I seem to have forgotten.  I feel very clumsy.

    And sometimes I even forget that the baby is even born.  I am walking around with laundry, or trying to teach math, and I look down and I realize — hey!  he's here!  

    That part that I was so worried about — the going into labor and giving birth thing?  I don't have to worry about it anymore, because it already happened.  It's done!  We are safe, home free.

    And then sometimes I think:

    Now all I have to do is NEVER HAVE SEX AGAIN.

    I will probably get over that thought.

    + + + 

    I got over it four years ago, after all.  

    It helped that the newborn in question grew into a wonderful little boy whose first complete sentence was "Ank'oo make a dinner, mama."  

    Who skipped right over the so-called terrible twos and also the usually-more-deserving-of-the-word-terrible threes.

     Who likes to randomly compliment strangers in the grocery store on their pretty earrings.  

    Who has latched on to the fact that his first name means "lion" and who with his dad likes to play "daddy lion and baby lion."  Then he is a baby lion who can only meow for help.  But who, other times, likes to roar.

    (And scratch with his Sharp Claws.  Only in fun, but those claws can hurt.)

    Who idolizes his big brothers, and who willingly rescues his princess big sister from dragons, and who, we are pleased to discover, is thrilled to have a new baby brother that he can "kiss on the nosey."

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    Who loves going out in the snow with his dad even if it is -17 F and dark.

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    It's a good day for a birthday.  Especially since it's grocery-shopping day, which means I can outsource the cake. 

    Wonder if the grocery store will have a lion cake.  I will figure something out.

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  • Walking outdoors.

    Today after lunch the temperature hit 40 degrees F. Instead of driving to the gym, I laced up my hiking boots, dropped 3-week-old Simon lightly dressed and behatted into my new front carrier (a Boba, astutely recommended by ChristyP), put a coat over all, and tromped out into the snowy streets.

    After a stop in the library to return some books that were already overdue while I was still pregnant, I pulled on gloves and came out briskly walking. The trees dripped softly in the sun, and running water burbled in the gutters, carving tiny canyons down into the layer of ice. I went west, counting city blocks; there are sixteen to the mile. At the end of each I had to clamber over a berm of snow left by the plow, unless some kind resident had shoveled a cut in it.

    It feels good to get outside, especially in the sunshine. Soon we are going to get another blast of arctic air, and spend a week well below zero; today I could almost pretend it was the start of a spring melt, something I never appreciated until I moved to Minnesota. I remember last March we had a few days’ thaw, and I went for a run around the still-frozen lake on a path that was completely clean and dry, and watched paraboarders taking off with their giant rainbow kites from the frozen, snowy lake surface. That time it got cold again later, too, but I remember the delicious sensation of wearing a light jacket, and mesh running shoes instead of boots, and thinking of green grass and flowering trees.

    Simon slept soundly with his face up against my neck. I swung my arms, glad that I had chosen a two-shouldered carrier; I am not as young as I once was, and the soft asymmetrical slings hurt my upper back after a while. I passed from the residential area, crossed the highway, and entered the business district. Stopped to take a shop-window selfie on the way:

    Then I headed south for two blocks before walking back east to home. I thought about stopping to buy a cup of coffee and nurse the baby , but the thought of lying down for a nap with him in my own bed drew me more strongly.

    I am trying not to get too worked up about the extra 30 lbs I am now carrying around, and am starting with the most basic of habits: taking a long walk three times a week, drinking lots of water, and eating frequent small meals (from PLATES, yo) to keep my blood sugar from yawing wildly while I attempt to nourish another human being at random intervals.

    Something about getting out in the sunshine makes all the things I have to do seem much more achievable. Even paying down those library fines.

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  • Aw, man….

    The Blogsy app for iPad ate my birth story. I generally like the various composition apps that one can get for iOS; but a pervasive design flaw is that it is alarmingly easy to accidentally select all the text in your document, putting yourself one fat-fingered touch-tap away from overwriting everything.

    I think this might be a blessing in disguise, because as I noted in the last post, I wasn’t too happy with how the story was coming out anyway. Perhaps if I start over, and just plow through, it will work better.

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  • Two weeks old quick takes.

    Photo on 1-13-14 at 8.03 PM

    Five children.  I've unlocked a new level:  Grand Multipara.  

    I thought I might feel overwhelmed.  I don't.  There are challenges ahead.  It feels… Exhiliarating.  Bracing.  All in a good way. 

    + + +

    I'm working on the birth story.  It is not flowing out very easily this time.  I'm trying to write about the week before the birth.  I can't seem to find the words for it.  

    I wept a great deal that week, and worried, and kept it away from most people except a very few.  I was so afraid, and yet in retrospect it seems almost as if it was inevitable that everything would all turn out right in the end, so that I should not have been afraid at all, and so that when I try to write honestly about my fears they seem very silly.  And so none of it seems to be coming out in a way that really tells the story.  

    The short of it:  my water broke just before I reached 36 weeks, and then labor didn't start for a week after that.  It scared me.  I didn't know how long I should let it go on, the leaking, before the responsible thing to do would be to go into the hospital and do the medical thing; and I didn't want to go in too early, either, not knowing whether the baby would be ready.  I worried for a week.  And then I did go into labor spontaneously at home and gave birth pretty darn fast, not quite two hours after we called the midwives.  And then everything was okay so why was I so scared and worried?

    + + +

    I don't understand why I'm quite so tired.  

    I mean, I do get it:  One is supposed to be tired when one has a brand new baby.  But somehow the math doesn't seem to be working out quite right.   I'm getting enough sleep now, now that he has learned how to nurse in the side-lying position and I'm not having to sit up with a pile of pillows and the football hold every two hours.  I'm eating plenty of good food.  I'm spending a lot of time sitting in a chair or lying in a bed.  I'm not teaching right now or even planning.  I'm doing very little housework.  And yet, I'm yawning all day long, and dozing off in the chair.

    Maybe it's residual, from being scared and worried.

    + + +

    So:  Nursing.  We are doing so much better in the last couple of days.

    I've been nursing nearly continuously for more than thirteen years.  (My current three-year-old is the only one of my children to wean while I was pregnant with the next sibling.)  And I still needed considerable help and advice with this guy, as I mentioned before.  

    Just now it is starting not to hurt when he latches on, and just now I'm starting to have a real MER (aka letdown).  I can tell he's been getting plenty of milk all along, from the diapers and such, and also I think I can see some fat on him now.  We'll see the pediatrician this week and find out if I'm imagining it.

    When my milk went away during the pregnancy and my three-year-old first missed it, I told him that the new baby would bring more milk and he could have some then.  I didn't expect him to wean entirely, because none of the other kids had; two lasted past their fourth birthday, and one I had to wean a few months after the sibling was born. But this little guy did wean, and it's been several months since he tried to nurse.  

    Still, he remembered that I had promised him milk when the baby came, so about a week after the baby was born, when I was finishing up nursing the baby, he came up to me and asked:  "Can I have some breast time now, mama?"

    I said, "Sure, you can give it a try… if you remember how.  Do you think you remember how?"

    "Yes," he said confidently.  I opened my arms to him and he snuggled up against me and put his face to my breast.  Then he sat back and asked shyly:  "How do I do it?"

    "You forgot how, didn't you?"

    He nodded, with big eyes.

    "Well… I guess you sort of… push with your jaw?" I tried.

    He put his face to my breast again and… blew a big raspberry.  PBLTTTTT!  Then he sat back and we both laughed.  His eyes were a little sad.  I suppose mine were too.

    + + +

    A few hours later when I found myself somewhat engorged, I really wished he had remembered.  But it all has to come to an end sometime, of course, and now is as good a time as any, when I have another little one to hold in my arms.

    + + + 

    This baby has a funny quirk:  He will not latch on until after  the milk lets down.  He can be rooting like crazy, sucking on his fingers, bobbing his head and searching with a little-bird-open-mouth against my chin and chest.  I put him to the breast and… he starts to talk to it.  Very earnestly.  Snuffles and grunts and growls and chuckles, all while sort of nibbling and almost latching on.  I keep trying to stuff my nipple in his mouth and it doesn't help.  Sometimes he lets out little cries as if he is starting to get angry, and I'm saying to him, "Here it is!  It's right here!  What are you talking about?!? What's your problem?!?"  

    Eventually the snuffling and rooting and crying gets through to my autonomic system, or whatever is in charge of this sort of thing, and the deep familiar twinge clenches tightly, and I start to drip milk all over the place, and as soon as that happens and my shirt starts to get all wet, then he latches on.  Clearly this is just the way he likes to do it.  Not going to waste a minute actually suckling if he can use a voice command.

    + + +

    The other thing this kid does is make little tiny poops and little tiny pees all day long, so that we blow through almost our entire collection of newborn cloth diapers (3 dozen or so) by the end of every single day.  At least it won't take long to teach him to pee on cue, when I get around to leaving the diapers off and paying attention to him.  We had too much trouble nursing for me to bother with that in the very beginning.

    + + +

    Today I filled two laundry baskets and two cardboard boxes with clothes that currently do not fit me, and I hung a much reduced collection in the closet.

     I hope I get to dip back into the laundry baskets eventually, but it's going to have to wait about thirty pounds. 

    Deep sigh.  We all know it's normal, but it feels daunting anyway.

    I cheered myself up with some new nursing tops from Japanese Weekend.  My old ones are looking a bit dowdy and dated.  

    + + + 

    I'm living on one-handed food:  clementine sections, string cheese, bits of deli meat.   The first time Mark went to the grocery store after the baby was born, he brought back a feast of snacks:  aged gouda, mixed olives, runny Brie, fancy crackers, lox, proscuitto, sopressata.  We had it for dinner one night, with good IPA for Mark and me and sparkling juice for the kids, and pretended it was New Year's Eve (which had passed without a party since we had a three-day-old baby at the time).  Then the rest of it went into the fridge, to emerge as tidbits on the plates of snacks at my elbow next to my nursing chair.

    + + +

    What to give a nursing mother to drink so she won't crave Gatorade and fountain Coke all day:

    In one quart glass jar, put the juice of half a lemon or half a lime; one tablespoon honey; and one-half to one teaspoon sea salt.   Fill with cold filtered water and add a little ice.  Stir well.  Replenish when empty.

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    Or you could pour me a Guinness, from the widget can.  That works too.  Someone told me once it was a galactagogue, and I'd rather not stop believing that, so I haven't googled it.  If you know better, please keep it to yourself.

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    7 comments on Two weeks old quick takes.

  • Single fathers: “Image is everything.”

    One of the themes of motherhood that I often muse on is the utility of image: what version of yourself to project? is it a substitute for authenticity, or a means of moving towards a different, also authentic,but chosen, self? how does it affect your kids’ view of themselves and of their parents? how does our choice of images to project affect our confidence moving in the world? how does it affect discourse and the self-images of others who encounter it?

    I suspect that the severe case of imposter syndrome that I contracted in graduate school, and that I think largely immunized me against Good Mother Imposter Syndrome, is the origin of this interest in image.

    But I have not spent much time thinking about image and fathers. Today Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit posted an excerpt from a reader email that I thought was worth reposting in its entirety.

    I have noticed your attention paid to the trials and tribulations of the single father. I am currently in the process of divorce and have been separated for more than a year. I have four daughters – ages 6 through 15. I have a great relationship with all of them. My wife is currently prohibited from having possession of them by court order – so I have them full time. Here are some tips for your single father readership:

    1) be pro-active in setting up play dates and activities. Yes- this means making calls to other parents.

    2) when dropping off kids at parties or play dates, go to the door and meet the other parents. When parents are dropping off their kids to you, go out to the car and say hello. Invite them inside.

    3) take every opportunity to show people you are an involved father who pays attention and cares. This doesn’t mean one should become a phony and a “daddy bragger”, but it does mean you have to make sure people are aware you are a good person and a good dad. The single father image to some is not positive. Additionally, the ex-wife (and her friends and family) has possibly (definitely) been trashing you at every turn.

    4) as part of your own positive image campaign, you need to bring up “domestic” type stuff when speaking to other parents. For example, I like to cook – so when a daughter has a friend over, I will tell the other parents not only what I made, but how I made it – and why I chose that meal. Also, conversations about new carpets or flooring etc can show you are not the single father Neanderthal walking around the house in a “beater T” and boxers.

    5) don’t hesitate to tell other parents about your activities with your own children. I have enrolled all my daughters in kick boxing classes – and I encourage them to bring their friends for the free-trial classes. Part of this process involves explaining to the other parent what the class entails. I show videos of my kids riding unicycles.

    6) when meeting other parents, get their cell numbers and emphasize that parents need to be in communication, as kids are prone to “mislead” parents on what the “real” plans are

    Bottom line is that the image of absentee single father with empty pizza boxes strewn about and bimbos coming and going needs to be reversed. No one needs to be a phony, but image is everything – and the average single father is usually starting at a deficit. If you are doing good things as a father, people need to know about it. I am mostly introverted, but realized if I wanted my daughters to have a good home life with friends being allowed to come over – and stay over – that I had to get the underlying reality out there. I had to become a part-time extrovert.

    Lastly, if other parents don’t allow the sleepover at your house (especially with daughters), don’t take it personally. While this can be annoying and upsetting, I don’t consider it a terrible outlook by the other parent. Having four daughters, I have the same concerns other parents would. That said, the further I get my story out there, the less I run into this issue…to the point that I have not come across this issue in months.

    Anyway, I didn’t want to take up all your time on an isolated topic, but felt my experience was worth mentioning.

    Food for discussion, no? Thoughts?

     

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    4 comments on Single fathers: “Image is everything.”

  • Symmetry.

    Big brother, little brother:

    This is the second pair of brothers in our family.

    It’s true that I hoped along the way for my daughter to have a sister. Now, I am also pleased by the shape we have: two sons, one daughter, then two more sons. I enjoyed having a pair of little boys the first time around, and I am looking forward to having it again.

    I find myself flashing back to two little boys in the sand at the playground, two little boys at the table during the older’s first school lessons, two little boys eating ice cream at bedtime, two little boys cuddled on the couch watching cartoons. Even now, I can look around and see two big boys jockeying for keyboard space to play Minecraft, two big boys unloading the dishwasher (not without some argument), two big boys running from the minivan into the church to serve Mass, two big boys riding the ski lift up the local hill under the winter evening floodlights.

    It won’t look the same this time around. I’m so eager to see it develop.

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  • The miracle of birth (repost).

    This post originally appeared in a slightly different form in August 2006, a couple of weeks after my third child was born.

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    An item at the Minnesota State Fair: There’s a new, expanded “Miracle of Birth Center.” This is the barn full of hugely pregnant and/or lactating livestock, also incubating poultry eggs. It’s always packed full of people hoping they’ll be there at the very moment that some lamb or piglet or calf will emerge from its mother. Just in case you aren’t that lucky, there are televisions suspended from the ceiling everywhere, endlessly replaying videos of “pre-recorded live births.” (Live in the sense of being filmed while it was actually happening, as opposed to watching a video of a video? Or live in the sense that the animal being born isn’t already dead?)

    Watching people struggle through the hot, crowded barn, jostling their strollers around each other and lifting small children up to see the baby aminals, I was really, really, really glad that I am no longer pregnant. Getting a glance at the animals themselves: I was even more glad that I am not, say, a sow. You think a hospital bed is a bad place to give birth? Try a farrowing pen.

    This “miracle of birth” thing is hard to wrap my mind around. Many of the people at the fair (not, I admit, myself) are farming families. I doubt that a litter of piglets really seems like a “miracle” to a family who’s raised pigs for four or five generations. What do the farm families think of the city kids, four years old and still pushed around in their strollers, being lifted up by Dad to ooh and aah at the miracle of chickens hatching just as chickens have hatched ever since there were, well, chickens? Couldn’t they have called it “The perfectly ordinary natural everyday event of birth?”

    And yet… A familiar sensation got my attention. “I need to nurse the baby,” I shouted at Mark over the din, and pointing; “I’ll be out there.” I pushed my way out into a light drizzle and found a spot on a wet picnic bench. I dug down into my raincoat and extracted a red and bunched-up baby girl from the sling and tickled her ear to wake her up. She made a face and immediately began to root, searching with wide-open mouth and her squeezed-shut eyes. Her latch is much smoother now, and I had no trouble getting her started.

    I’m about to engage in a maternal cliche, here, so bear with me.

    It does seem miraculous when it’s a little person. And yet it is ordinary. (For those of us who conceive and birth without much trouble or fanfare, anyway.) I marvel at her eyes, simply at how they are put together, their pure white moistness, their dark blue irises, their inky pupils, their smooth orbits, the folded fleshiness of their lids and creases, their nearly invisible lashes. This grew in my body, all by itself? This perfection? And not just eyes but all the other parts. Her tiny breasts exuded a few drops of milk last week: a common postnatal event, a hormonal residue of her time in the womb with me. But in twenty or thirty years, maybe less, maybe more, perhaps she will make milk again, for someone else. Her powers are dormant, but their promise is already here.

    This meta-miracle, this miracle that is even more miraculous because it happens every day — its awe and wonder comes because we humans are really some kind of amphibian, neither angels nor beasts, fully at home neither in the world or in the spirit. How absurd it seems that a little soul could come to life within my body and be forced forth in blood and water. How bizarre.

    Even though it is completely normal, it never fails to surprise us. I used to think that the surprise came from our cultural tendency to keep birth hidden away in hospitals, controlled by drugs and machines, and all that. But I’ve never given birth in a hospital, three times [five by now!] I’ve done it at home; and my surprise at the incongruity hasn’t lessened, but has increased. The more I see it and feel it and live it, the more of a surprise it is. All of which convinces me more and more that this failure to comprehend, this mystery, is not cultural, but something inherent in our nature. We are more than beasts, and that is why it seems strange that we are born like them.

    [That full term baby girl, seven and a half years ago, much chubbier than her youngest brother:]

     

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    5 comments on The miracle of birth (repost).

  • Day 3.

    I find myself with surprisingly little free time to type postpartum updates. Young Simon has proved to be a high-maintenance individual compared to his siblings, not without a taste for drama.

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    Breastfeeding him has been a bumpy road so far, thanks to what one of my breastfeeding counselor friends (not ChristyP, the other one) tentatively diagnosed over Facebook chat as, technically speaking, “wee baby, ginormous boobie” syndrome. In size he isn’t all that wee — 7 lbs is fairly average — but he is smaller than any baby I have ever nursed, and he is young for his age and (to my eyes) frail and fragile, though the midwives pronounced him healthy and strong considering that he came so early. I feel as though I could break him when I lift him under his arms: he is so light, like a bird.

    Anyway, though I have triple-checked for frenulum and tongue placement issues, and can’t see anything specifically wrong with his latch, it hurts. I don’t think he can get his mouth quite wide enough. We are working on it, pretty intensively, and I have been told to prepare for the possibility that I will just have to manage pain and scrupulously monitor my nipple health until he gets a bit bigger and stronger.

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    Also, he has been producing copious amounts of meconium at random intervals, necessitating many blanket changes. I will probably switch from blanket wrapping to diapers today, not my preferred choice so early (I like to be free to do lots of skin-to-skin and get an early start on teaching a cue sound for peeing), n but I just need to reduce the complexity of the system here.

    The meconium has just now changed over to yellow, so: milk is on the way.

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    In further news: postpartum sushi, delivered, gets five stars.

     

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    10 comments on Day 3.

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