music education

 Recently, I decided to try to get E. listening to more music, in an effort to help her improve her speech. So I pulled up some children's music on YouTube and tried listening to it with her. After a few songs, I went back to the computer and switched to a channel of Broadway songs. Much better. But it got me thinking.

I was a 90's kid, but I know next to nothing about the music of 80's and 90's. My family listened to NPR and to a collection of records, tapes, and CDs that, while diverse, skewed heavily towards classical, folk, and Broadway music. I could blame my lack of knowledge about pop music on my parents (Mom always said she needed to give me something to talk to my therapist about), but that's not really fair. They love music and listen to a lot of different things, but they also have well-formed opinions about what they want to listen to, and well, a lot of pop stuff isn't really on that list. We did listen to a number of Christian artists, but all of them were more musically interesting than a lot of the popular worship songs today seem to be (at least as far as I remember; I've been in the Anglican world of hymns for the last couple years and completely out of touch with what's in with the rest of the North American church right now).

I was content to listen to what we had available at home for a long time and didn't start seeking other genres out until I was nearly out of high school, and even then I limited myself mostly to Christian pop music because that's what a lot of my friends listened to and I wanted to know what they were talking about. And it seemed safer; like I was exploring something that was off-limits but wouldn't actually get me in trouble. My teenage rebellion was very reserved in that way (my really big rebellion was going to a play audition without permission and then I felt horrible about it and cried for hours).

These days I'm thinking about how I knew most of the words to all the songs in The Secret Garden and Les Miserables but had only the faintest idea of who Madonna was. Angsty teenage me wasn't listening to Ani diFranco but to Simon and Garfunkel. I was busy memorizing lyrics to traditional British folk songs while some kids I went to school with were starting a metal band. Picking up a few CDs of Christian rock music when I was about sixteen seemed edgy in a weird way. It wasn't what my family listened to, and Avalon and the Newsboys were out of place in my collection that included the cast recordings of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and Wicked and the second CD by Nickel Creek. I was still the geeky teenager blasting PDQ Bach's "1712 Overture" out the windows as I drove to community college. But I listened to my new music religiously (hah) and sang along when I was alone in the car and then when I went off to university, I got another music education from my peers.

My roommate introduced me to a few other Christian bands whose music I still actually enjoy sometimes and my boyfriend made me listen to The Arrogant Worms. I listened to more Celtic music and cemented my love of it and then borrowed my brother's Celtic CDs whenever I was home from school. I got more daring in the music I listened to - I learned that I really did enjoy rock music and sometimes found it excellent for studying. Another friend was playing Regina Spektor once and I found myself hunting through the CD section at the store for one of her albums.

Later my knowledge of music broadened as I listened to podcasts and then more as I watched the first seasons of Glee and got my first real exposure to pop music. I swear, I don't think I'd ever really heard any of Brittany Spear's music until the episode featuring her songs. I admittedly don't like all pop music but I do enjoy some of what's out there. I sometimes pick up other songs that I like from music used on television shows that I enjoy. I found a couple of artists I really enjoyed from watching Castle, for example.

These days, our go-to car music is CBC Radio 2. E. is growing up listening to the variety of music they have on offer there, paired with whatever my current obsession is. Last winter it was most of the songs in Rent. Right now it's a mix of folk and indie music, and occasionally Broadway songs and a lot of Great Big Sea. I'm sprinkling in some children's music, too, just so she has stuff with vocabulary that she can follow more easily. There was a mix of children's music I picked up at the library recently that's performed by a variety of different artists and I liked most of that.

The appreciation of music I gained from my parents' choices in music has made me want to impart that to my own child. My parents didn't censor our music - I learned about prostitution and suicide from Les Mis and adultery from Into the Woods, and realized after a while that one of the really lovely songs from Once on This Island was basically about the main characters having sex with each other (also learned quite a bit about racism from that musical). Our family typically didn't listen to things with profanity in them (other than Paul Simon's The Capeman but my mom usually skipped the songs with swear words or very explicit lyrics in them when we kids were in the room), but otherwise didn't fuss so much about the content of the songs. I don't object to the occasional swear word, so there are a few songs that I will listen to around my child that other parents would probably skip over (though there are some that I still object to, like Book of Mormon's "Hasa Diga Eebawai" because holy profanity, Batman! That one goes way too far for me - there's judicious, thoughtful use of profanity and then there's that).

I'm still searching out more children's music that we can all enjoy. I can listen to Raffi and Fred Penner without the songs driving me nuts, but there's a lot of really mediocre children's music out there. To be fair, there's just a lot of mediocre music out there in general. If that means we're listening to Candide instead of whatever's in for E.'s generation, well, she can always catch up later, like I did. And then she can complain about how we deprived her of the music her peers liked to her therapist when she grows up.

I mostly keep starting posts and then not finishing them lately, which is why I haven't been blogging. The brain, it doesn't always concentrate the way I want it to. Some of that is the process of trial and error involved in finding the right combination of anti-depressant/anti-anxiety meds, and some of that is just me being scatterbrained (I doubt I'm officially ADD, but there are some tendencies. Plus, I live with a man who actually does have ADD, so I'm sure some of that just gets absorbed due to living together).

So, updates: Ley Lines is still in progress. It looks like my cover artist won't be done with the new cover by my initial planned release date, but the bonus of doing this myself (and of having such a minimal following at this point) is that I can reschedule things without a hassle. So we're bumping Ley Lines to a November 30, 2015 release date, contingent on my cover artist getting the cover completed and me getting my act together and finishing stuff. Which means, of course, that I won't even be attempting NaNoWriMo this year (it's a fun idea, though, so I'm going to give it a go another time).

I haven't been blogging in part because I have been feeling unmotivated about writing for no specific reason, and I've been reading a lot more than I've been writing. The reading is good, don't get me wrong, but it does distract from the writing. Add a sometimes grouchy and always bouncy two-year-old, the aforementioned anxiety and depression, the migraines that have been showing up lately, the attempt to knit more socks to replace the ones that are falling apart, and my recent interest in Criminal Minds, and you have a world-class set of distractions. (I mean, Spencer Reid and Penelope Garcia? So distracting. I've been forced to wait for Season 2 to show up on the hold shelf at the library for me, and now I get to go pick it up tomorrow. But I will make myself do some writing before I'm allowed to watch "Fisher King, Part 2" and find out what happens).

This weekend is Thanksgiving, and as we have the largest space and the most place settings, we're hosting again. Cooking a turkey grows less frightening every year. So, on Saturday, my sisters-in-law and their partners and my mother-in-law and possibly my aunt-in-law are descending on us. I've committed to doing the pie and the cranberry sauce, J. is doing the potatoes, and we're doing the turkey together. (Wait, that looks dirtier than I thought it would...). The others are bringing assorted vegetable and side dishes and booze. And I have to make sure to have some kid juice for E. so she won't get too grumpy about not being allowed to share.

My anxieties about E.'s language development are slowly disappearing, as it seems like she adds new words all the time, and is putting them together more frequently. Her first sentence using the first person pronoun was "I poop." It's hard to express just how excited I was about that. Now I mostly get to worry about the way she climbs things. The other day, we were in the kid's section at the library, and I was reading a book. Suddenly one of the librarians calls, "Ma'am, that's dangerous!" I turn to see E. dancing on top of a table. I wasn't terribly worried, since it wasn't a high table and she does this all the time, but rules are rules, especially at the library. If there's one place I never want to get banned from, it 's the library.

So, time for me to go make a grocery list and think about getting the chutney started tomorrow. At least chutney's an easy one to make. And I have a sock toe to finish tonight, and edits to incorporate into a short story so I can actually send it out again. Time to try being productive!

Recent Discoveries

Recently I learned...

Washing cotton batting to pre-shrink it is a bad idea. It looks sturdy, but it does not like the washing machine. I now have less useable cotton batting than I had before, and more stuffing material.

We have close to a thousand books in our collection. I haven't finished cataloguing all the children's books, so my numbers aren't exact yet, but the unscientific estimate is "a lot." That number won't be dwindling anytime soon, either. The beautiful pine bookcase I bought for myself when I was a kid, that once housed my entire personal library, is now too small for our non-fiction collection. J.'s science reference books will be staying boxed up for a while after we move, just to make sure we have some shelf space.

Babies are very contrary creatures. When they are able to walk, they walk up to you and then insist that you need to pick them up and carry them.

Pretty much all of our wall decorations fit into one box. It's a good-sized box, to be sure, but it's just one. Whew.

I don't like summer. I knew this already, but I re-learned it again, like I do every year when the temperature soars.

Nutella goes well with apple slices.

You cannot buy crickets or any other type of insect at the local gourmet food store.

And lastly, cleaning the oven is far more annoying than vacuuming.

A Follow-Up to the Story on FFF

My breastfeeding/formula feeding story is over at Fearless Formula Feeder today. Suzanne Barston's book, Bottled Up, was something I stumbled across during early pregnancy and read. The resources she offers on formula feeding were invaluable as we made the transition from breastmilk to formula, and I was much less distraught about the choice because I'd read a more thorough discussion of some of the studies on breastfeeding vs. formula feeding. My submission to FFF ends shortly after we made the switch to formula and saw the drastic difference 2-3 bottles a day had made in our child. Here's where we are now:

E. is nine months old. Several days ago, she took her first, unaided, unsupported steps. She still definitely prefers help when walking, but she's not far from taking off running on her own. She's still a tiny child, but she was less than six pounds when she popped out, so that's not suprising. She's about fifteen pounds now, and on track to triple her birthweight over the next few months, just like the books say she should.

She loves food. Yesterday she tried eggplant for the first time and was pretty interested in it. The list of solid foods she can eat is growing, and so far, she has no food allergies. We've tried her on a number of the major potential allergens and nothing's been a problem yet.

We're down to one breastfeed a day. Back in February, I learned that I had gallstones and would require surgery to have my gallbladder removed. I started slowly dropping our daytime breastfeeds because I knew it would be easier afterwards if she wasn't as dependent on the breast by then. The "morning snack" feed went easily, but the afternoon one, the one she relied on to propel her into her afternoon nap, took more convincing. In the process, she discovered soothers (Canadian word for pacifiers, for any Americans reading), and now uses those to get to sleep, rather than nursing or a bottle. Once we were down to breastfeeding only in the evenings, night, and early morning, I called it good for the moment. Then she dropped her middle-of-the-night breastfeed, followed by the early morning one. The evening breastfeed is the only one left. She seems to want to make sure the breasts are still there, but isn't as into it as she used to be. The feeds don't last long, and she keeps getting distracted. She isn't quite ready to stop, but I don't yet know how much longer it will be.

My surgery was just over a week ago. The first three evenings after, I didn't nurse E. Between the incisions on my abdomen and the codeine in my pain medication, it just didn't seem like a good idea. Once I'd switched over to normal Tylenol, I put her back on the breast. I'm still making milk, which sort of surprised me. We'll see how much longer she keeps going with it. I don't want to nurse past a year, but I'm willing to keep going until then.

She's pretty happy about formula. She can hold a bottle on her own now, and often, after she finishes it, she lies back on her pillow (handy use for a breastfeeding pillow, by the way), and sings to the empty bottle. She gets grouchy when she sees me mixing it up and she's not getting it fast enough, or when it's too cold for her taste.

We've ended up with the Costco brand of formula. If you just need regular formula, or even sensitive formula, this is definitely a great way to go, pricewise. The stuff they sell at the Costcos here in Canada appears to be fairly similar to Similac, which was the one E. responded to best. Our go with the Nestle samples was not encouraging--she didn't like it and the formula made her extremely gassy. The one time we tried the Costco formula from the States, we discovered it was weirdly frothy and came in smaller canisters than the kind here in Canada (other than that, it was fine).

Formula's been a good fit for us. E. rarely gets sick, and is gaining weight normally. She often ends up being a little skinny around the middle because she'll have a growth spurt and get taller, but her arms and legs have an appropriate amount of baby chubbiness. She's finally willing to sleep most of the night on her own in the crib, though we're still convincing her it's safe to fall asleep on her own. My worries now mostly revolve around whether or not she'll find something on the floor I've missed and eat it or whether she's going to start climbing soon, not about whether or not she's starving.

Our Milk Saga? Not really so much of a saga anymore. Drama gone. Baby happy. Parents sane. Life is good. 

A response to Mother's Day

I'm dreading Mother's Day.

A year ago, I was pregnant and sick. I'd just been diagnosed with gestational diabetes and was having a hard time dealing with my body's inability to handle food normally while I was pregnant. I felt like a crap mother. And suddenly everyone was wishing me happy Mother's Day. The words made me flinch. I wanted to punch the next person who said them to me. I wanted to burst into tears. I didn't want to be reminded of what a terrible mother I was.

Photo credit: http://www2.uncp.edu/ip/images/Coffee&News.jpg

Mother's Day is something that my mum has never particularly liked celebrating. As she said one year, all she wanted was for us to let her read the Sunday paper and drink her coffee in peace. She didn't want gifts or flowers or breakfast in bed, just some time to herself. And she didn't want to make a big deal out of it, or guilt-trip us into celebrating the holiday. So it was far from a significant holiday for us, and the only reason it might be emotionally fraught was that she didn't like it.

As an adult, my experience with this particular greeting-card holiday has involved whatever my church happened to be doing on the day. The sermon varies, depending on which pastor is preaching. And the youth group hands out flowers to the mothers in the congregation. Usually I ended up with a leftover flower, with one of the older members of the congregation saying cheerfully that I was a "future mother." I didn't mind the flower, but I did mind the assumption that I would have a child at some point. During those years, I was wildly ambivalent about the idea of having children and half-way convinced that, given how many people seemed to have trouble having children, we would too.

This year is different, of course. My daughter is nearly nine months old, almost walking, babbling away with an assortment of sounds, and curious about everything. I am a mother, though I prefer the words "parent" or "mum." And I am a good parent. Not perfect, naturally, but I've managed to keep her alive, healthy, and happy. I think that means we're doing okay.

And yet, I can't forget the woman last year who wasn't sure whether she would need to hide in the bathroom during the sermon to avoid an overenthusiastic endorsement of mothers and a litany of how great they were. I can't forget her, how she flinched away from a friend who tried to wish her a happy Mother's Day, accompanied by a pat on her pregnant stomach, how she turned away, but couldn't bear to explain why she was hurrying away. I can't forget how she gripped the rose she was handed and how part of her wished it still had its thorns. I can't forget how she cried and cried that weekend. I can't forget, because she is me.

Photo credit: gamespe.com

So I'm dreading Mother's Day. I cringe when I see my favourite sewing blogs talking about gift projects for mums. That video about motherhood being the toughest job ever just made me want to shout at its producers. I'm grateful that my daughter wants to get up and move around during church, because it means that I can hide in the nursery with her if the sermon ends up extolling the virtues of motherhood. All Mother's Day is doing is making me relive the overwhelming guilt and misery I experienced last year. It's soon for me to have let go of it completely, and the fact that it's tied in with being a mum just makes it that much more powerful, and harder to ignore.

I love my daughter. But I can't appreciate this holiday.

book musings: French Kids Eat Everything

I encountered the book, French Kids Eat Everything, by Karen Le Billon, when reading some of the blog posts for the Carnival of Evidence-Based Parenting on food and eating habits over the summer. One of the bloggers referenced Le Billon's book, so I looked it up, discovered that the author lives in Vancouver (local writer!), and got the book at the library. Now I'm finally getting around to writing up my reaction.

I've read bits of it out loud to J., who asked, "Why is it always the people from Vancouver who do an interesting life experiment and then write about it?" (Earlier that year, I read him The 100 Mile Diet, written by a pair of Vancouverites). I don't know what it is about the air or water or landscape that drives us to do this,but the results are interesting. French Kids Eat Everything is certainly a useful read, given that our child is starting to eat solids now.. Not all the principles that I lokked will be applicable right away, but once we started introduce solid food, there were some ideas that I found very helpful.

For example, it's apparently typical for French parents to have their children try many different foods many times. They don't worry if the child doesn't like it right away. They just introduce the food again at a later date. They don't assume that the first exposure to something new will "take." This reflects my own experience with food as a child. For a long time, I disliked mushrooms and wasn't terribly fond of onions. I wasn't too keen on cooked spinach, either. When our exchange students from Taiwan made us seaweed soup when I was five, I was not enthused. This has changed. Drastically.

There were, of course, things I didn't like. The general French approach to parenting and food is far more rigid than what I would prefer. Here doctors recommend feeding on demand with infants, but in France, they're on a schedule quite early. I do a bit better with the North American version, since having to adhere to a strict schedule doesn't always work for me (with some things, it's great, but if my child is hungry and screaming, I'll feel a lot better about feeding her rather than waiting until the clock says it's time). We have a rough schedule for E., but I don't want her to be so dependent on the routine that a change in it throws her off.

However, the emphasis on the variety of foods, limited snacking (something I need to implement more in my own life), and insisting that your child tries foods regardless of whether or not they like them on the first try, are principles that I appreciate.

From the beginning, E. has been given a variety of foods. On the list on the side of the fridge of things she can eat are the usual bananas and rice cereal, but we've also given her tofu and asparagus. Recently, we checked off most of the major allergens (just nuts, peanuts, and shellfish to go!). Since she's only about 8 months old, she tends to make a face at new flavours and then try them anyway. She is, I must say, far more interested in what we're eating than in what she has. She dumped her snack on the floor the other day and crawled over to demand my eggs and toast. Last week we were able to give her a meal that was basically what we were eating, except her fish was cooked separately and unseasoned. It's nice to finally be able to do that, though we're still figuring out what works and doesn't work for her food-wise. It looks like strawberries may be a problem (but the problem could also be our laundry soap or several other things, so we're still trying to figure out what's making her look like she has acne). We still can't feed her exactly what we're eating yet, but it'll be nice when we can. Next on the list is probably broccoli. Steamed. 

Milk: Letting Go

"You should try this," the clerk at the health store says, unprompted, holding up a box of mother's milk tea.

"No thanks," I reply, arms tightening slightly around my daughter. "None of those supplements really worked for me."

"Maybe you didn't try the right one," she pushes.

"We tried a lot of things," I say, then change the subject. "Do you sell honey?"

***

E. is nearly seven months old now. She's still small, but she's gaining weight at a normal rate and is busy crawling, sitting, and working on walking. She has yet to get sick with anything more than a slightly runny nose. We've introduced solid foods and moved her into her own bedroom. I'm still breastfeeding, but I've recently reduced our daytime feeds so that I'm only breastfeeding at night. I have to have surgery sometime in the next couple months and won't be able to lift E. very easily for a couple weeks afterwards. I'm cutting down on breastfeeding a bit sooner than planned so my recovery won't be as much of a hassle. It was easier than I thought it would be. It only took a day or two for my body to adjust with each one, and while E. was not happy about switching her afternoon breastfeed for formula, since she usually uses the breastfeed to get herself to sleep (which is why we're also in the process of teaching her to fall asleep on her own), it only took a day or two for her to be okay with it.

My feelings about breastfeeding are so mixed up that I didn't expect to be sad about reducing feeds. I hadn't realized how much the bonding part of it had affected me. In those first weeks, it didn't feel like bonding. It just felt miserable. I started counting down to when we could introduce solids. I don't know when it became something more emotionally positive, but it did, to an extent. 

My original goal was to breastfeed exclusively for six months. When that was derailed, I decided I would continue breastfeeding, along with the formula, for the six months, and see where it went from there. By the time we hit six months, I felt ready to quit most days, but E. didn't seem ready for it. Once I knew having surgery was a certainty, rather than a possibility, I decided it was time to cut down. And it felt stranger than expected.

Breastfeeding less has made me enjoy feeding her in the evenings more. It's easier to deal with her biting me with her brand-new teeth occasionally because it's not a constant battle. I don't get irritated from wearing uncomfortable nursing bras during the day (one gave me a bruise at one point because of the fit), my complexion is finally starting to clear up, and oddly, I feel more comfortable in my body. More like myself again. But once in a while, something reminds me of the hell of those first weeks of parenthood, and those emotions come rushing back.

I hate that incidents like the one above still make me feel bad. I know the clerk was just trying to sell me something and she took a look at me and decided that since I look like a crunchy mom, I'd obviously be exclusively breastfeeding. She didn't know my story. She just assumed. And it hurt. Enough that, while she and someone else in the store were chatting about natural vs. refined sugars, I pointed out that agave is pretty dang refined. I wasn't very catty about it, and it's true, but I said it out of my irritation more than anything else, and that wasn't right. 

I still want to slap the people who come up with the really sappy sayings about parenthood. I enjoy being a mum, and my daughter is very important to me, but this is not the be-all and end-all (I remember saying something similar about sex once). Parenthood does not always bring out the best in me. Sometimes it brings out the worst. Sometimes I am frustrated and unhappy about it, and sometimes I am extremely content. Some days letting go of the grief that I have about parts of is harder. Today is a more difficult day, solely due to that conversation at the store, but as always, I'll find an equilibrium again and be okay.

Expectations and Babies

As there have been zero comments regarding my last post about what linguistic or cultural things people might like me to try to dissect (pretty sure comments are enabled), I'm just going to see where the wind takes me. Today we're going with the schema involved when people respond to seeing babies (because this has puzzled me lately), thereby combining some semantics with this whole parenthood adventure I'm on. This will be a really casual discussion of the topic, and won't be terribly academic in style. You have been warned.

People sometimes say really moronic things when they see babies.

Well, at least, that's been my experience.

It started when E. was a newborn. She was too small for a baby carrier or the stroller, and if we were just walking to the grocery store, we didn't want to lug the carseat with us. So we'd bundle her up in a blanket and one of us would carry her. Inevitably, we would be asked, "Is that a baby?"

J.'s standard response became, "No, it's a bomb, that looks like a baby."

Mine was, "No, it's a turtle." Or a burrito, or anything along those lines. Apparently it messes with people's expectations when you're carrying a baby around without a stroller or a carseat.

Schema for baby includes: carseat and/or stroller.

The next weird comment I've gotten was when she got big enough for the baby carrier. It was amazing. I finally got to have my hands free when we went for a walk. And then someone said, "That's a baby? I thought you were carrying a dog in there!"

People actually do that? I've yet to see one of those, but I have seen people with dogs in strollers, so I suppose it's possible.

Schema for baby may not include soft fabric baby wraps/slings/carriers. At a guess, this may happen because we're in a suburb-y area with fewer people practicing more crunchy types of parenting.

The latest one is the assumption that my child is an inanimate object. I constantly get the comment that she's like a little doll (not sure why, since most dolls don't puke down the front of your shirt or bite), but the other day, someone seriously thought I was carrying around a doll in a baby carrier until E. moved. She said it was because E. was front-facing in the carrier. That might be a feasible assumption if I was eight, but last time I checked, I was in my late twenties. If I was carrying a doll around like that, I'd be a bit concerned about what was going on in my head.

Schema for baby does not include: front-facing carriers?
Additionally, schema for parent requires added height to suggest age? Or perhaps schema for parent requires said parent to be visibly in their thirties?
Drawing from above responses, my child's diminuitive size may be affecting people's responses, too. So:
Schema for baby includes an infant weighing more than 6 pounds as a newborn, otherwise, child may be mistaken for toy?

Judging from the few things I've extrapolated here, my own schema for baby doesn't match up to the ones these people have had. I'm finding it a little disturbing, to be honest, that the guy in the second instance was more primed to see soft carrier=dog than soft carrier=baby. The same thing goes for the people who think my daughter is a doll rather than a person. I've never seen an adult, or even a teenager, toting a doll around like it's a baby, so it's not part of the expectations I have when I see a person carrying a baby in a baby carrier.

A brief look at this topic tells me that I have a long way to go before I manage to put together a coherent cultural schema for "baby."

No Touchy

 
This is my latest source of irritation. It's happened numerous times now, and I'm never sure how to handle it. Does this happen to you? Do complete strangers walk up to you on the street and touch your kid?

As I don't have this impulse (my impulse when seeing babies and small children is to smile at them and maybe make a face), I can't sympathize with them. I just want to shout, or run, or do something that goes against the ingrained politeness. I usually settle for awkwardly backing away, but at some point, I'm going to really lose it. Especially when awkwardly backing away means that they follow me.

In what universe is it okay to walk up to a woman you don't know and poke at her baby without so much as asking permission? I'm pretty sure that if she was older, people wouldn't be doing that (I hope), so why does being a baby mean that she's immune to those rules?

Seriously. There's the germs thing. There's the fact that my child sticks everything in her mouth these days, so if they stick a finger towards her face, she will try to grab it and stuff it in her mouth. There's also the "you are touching a complete stranger without their permission" thing. Not okay.

What also bothers me is that it happens mostly when she's in the baby carrier, so not only are they touching her, they're getting awfully close to me. This means that they are breaking some of the unspoken rules about how close to get to someone in this culture. It takes invading my personal space to invade my child's personal space.

I've had a few suggestions from friends. One said, riffing on the "telling people your baby bites" idea, to say that she's a vampire and she bites. I'm tempted. I could just poke the person back and say, "Oh, sorry, I thought it was try to touch a complete stranger bingo," but I'm not sure I'm bold enough for that.

In the meantime, it's enough to make me want to put this on a onesie. 

Why I Am Not an AP Parent

We feed on demand. We cloth diaper. We don't plan to spank our child. I wander around with a baby in one of those wrap carriers when I go out. As a current stay-at-home mum, my daughter is constantly around me, and if she's not with me, she's usually with J. I don't believe that babies are out to manipulate their parents or that holding them frequently spoils them, like some parenting methods say. I think those ideas are rubbish, actually.

On the surface, our parenting style often resembles the one advocated by attachment parenting (AP). But.

We aren't an AP family.

We don't practice exclusive breast-feeding, as I've written before. Combo-feeding is enough to get me kicked out of the hard-core AP groups, and enough for milder AP parents to look slightly askance at me. I get a pass because I'm still breast-feeding and my kid wasn't gaining weight normally on exclusive breast-feeding, but it's still one of those things that makes us really not fit.

I don't like co-sleeping--it never feels very safe and I think it interrupts my sleep and hers more than it does when she sleeps on her own. That said, there have been times when that was the only way all three of us could get enough sleep to be functional the next day. I still prefer it when she sleeps in her crib and doesn't require holding all night.

Unlike several of the AP families we know, we vaccinate. I could rant about this, since not vaccinating makes me extremely angry, but it's not really the topic of this post. I know that not vaccinating isn't a tenet of AP, but it seems to coincide a lot with AP families.

I don't call it baby-wearing. The term pisses me off. My daughter is a person, not a fashion accessory, and I do not "wear" her. I put her in the baby wrap and carry her. When invited to join a baby-wearing facebook group by a complete stranger, I just smiled, nodded, said I'd think about it, and then never bothered to check out the group. I also have no problems setting her down. Time to do the laundry? She hangs out in her crib or on the floor with some toys.

The thing is, while some of the stuff about AP I agree with (being physically and emotionally present for your child whenever possible, some of the alternative methods of discipline), I really don't like the culture that surrounds it, and the science of it is a tad dubious (from what little I've read, some of it is based on studies that aren't entirely compatible with the assertions that are then spun out from them; not that this form of parenting is bad--I just would like to see a little more research on what happens when a family actually practices this style of parenting).

I just feel uncomfortable in the AP culture. Yes, the spinning, knitting, sewing woman who makes her own vanilla extract and lip balm is uncomfortable in the "granola" culture of AP. It feels too faddish. Though I, like many, am prone to fads, I'm more prone to researching the heck out of them. I've avoided researching too much about AP because, like lactivist literature, it just makes me upset when it tends towards extremes. Unfortunately, this phenomenon isn't limited to AP parenting sites, because discussions about parenting become polarized so quickly. And ultimately, that's my biggest problem with any parenting style. I'm doing my best with my child, trying to respond in the way that seems to work best for her, and I'm sort of practicing a couple parenting styles, in moderation. I'm a moderate with many things, and in a world of extremes (at least on parenting forums), I don't fit.

Christmas Eve

It's Christmas Eve already, which feels strange. This time last year, I was feeling nauseous and we'd only told a select handful of people that I was pregnant because it was still quite early on. It was actually even earlier than we thought it was at the time--we thought I was around 8 or 9 weeks along when we found out the week before Christmas, and it turns out I was closer to 4 or 5. My body's first response was, "Hey, you're pregnant. Go throw up."

I'm mostly feeling far better this year than I did last year, though my digestive system is a touch moody after all that throwing up and being progressively more squished by a baby over nine months. Too much sugar and I get nauseous, and if I skip a meal or eat later than usual, my stomach launches a vociferous protest. J. and I are getting more sleep right now, in part because we're visiting my family so E. has two grandparents and three uncles who are willing to entertain her, and in part because she's suddenly started sleeping better at night. I don't know how long this will last, but I'm taking advantage while it does.

We've done the big get-together with many people, both family and friends (all on one day), so most of our visit is relaxing, hanging out, and doing stuff around Portland. We spent a while wandering around Saturday Market yesterday, admiring all the pretty breakable things that we should not buy right now. We're doing Powell's on Friday, and I think I'm making the pilgrimage to Mill End and Pendleton Woollen Mills on Saturday. Also on the list is a trip to my favourite tea shop in the world, the Tao of Tea, for a date and to stock up on pu'er, followed by The Hobbit at the Baghdad Theater (pizza, beer, and a movie with Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch? Sounds like a good day to me).

Today's been pleasantly quiet. We're off to the Christmas Eve service in a couple hours, and dinner's after that. Then I think my mum and I may finish watching David Tennant's Hamlet (we left off during a conversation with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern last night after E. fell asleep) while J. plays board games with my brothers and my dad goes to bed early.

I'm knitting a bit here and there. I have my first Moebius cowl on the needles, and it's just a ribbed pattern, so it's very easy. And fast, since it's worsted weight on 6 mm needles. I just have a few more inches to go before I start the edging. I think I want to make another one in stockinette and then do a garter stitch lace edging. I'll have to play around with that. It might make a good pattern to stick up on Ravelry.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Enjoy the snow, rain, fog, sunshine...whatever it's like where you are.

many things

We're in the last few days before we pick up and head out to visit my parents for Christmas. It's been years since we spent Christmas at their home (years since we've been down to visit at all, actually), and we're very much looking forward to it. We'll be surrounded by people who will be delighted to take a turn entertaining E. so J. and I can get so much needed sleep.

I feel like my brain isn't working so well. E. and I arrived home from the store today, delighted to have finished the Christmas shopping. While I was wrapping presents this evening, I suddenly remembered two gifts I'd forgotten. One was for my grandmother.

J. got his Christmas present, a new computer, yesterday, and is still tinkering with it to get it working. It's not behaving properly and he may need to run back to the store one of these evenings before we take off.

My Christmas present is a trip to the bookstore and fabric store in my parents' town. I'm pretty excited about that. I've been working on sewing in small increments here and there. E.'s Christmas dress is almost done. If it ends up looking wretched once it's all together, we won't bring it, but at least the bodice fits right now. She's been growing by leaps and bounds. She's grown an inch and a half in the last few weeks, so suddenly pants that were far too long actually fit. She's still in the 0-3 months clothing (at 4 months old), but she's out of the newborn-sized clothing, for the most part. I got all teary-eyed when we put the newborn-sized diapers away on Sunday.

I've also been making her a Christmas stocking. I got the pattern here. I've skipped the applique in favour of embroidering her name on it. I've wanted to get better at embroidery, so I tackled stem stitch, split stitch, and French knots. Being geeks, we named our daughter after one of Tolkien's minor characters, so the cuff has her name in Sindarin embroidered on it with stem stitch and French knots, and the stocking leg has her name in English using split stitch. I'll stick up a picture once we have a good quality one.

In the meantime, E.'s finally dozed off. Time to see if she'll let me set her down in the crib so I, too, may sleep.

Breastfeeding and Feelings

I have a love-hate relationship with breastfeeding. That's no secret. It still surprises me sometimes, how difficult I've found it, in so many little ways. And yet there are the moments when I love it, love being able to do this.

We're firmly set in the combo-feeding camp now. E.'s been good with all three of the formulas we've tried her on, and she's happy with a couple different bottle and nipple types. And I'm still breastfeeding her. She loves it. She gets a lot of breastfeeding in during the late evening and in the mornings, and then lunchtime, dinnertime, and one nighttime feed are usually formula. There's also a late-afternoon breastfeeding period. I tend to get a chunk of time in the early afternoon when she isn't eating and isn't sleeping, in which we can go for walks and run errands without it being a hassle.

The times when I struggle with breastfeeding are when my nipples are sore, again. Even when she's properly latched, there can be some discomfort, though it's not the pain I experienced when we had thrush, so it's easier to deal with.

There are days when I long for the times when my breasts were not used for feeding a tiny wiggly child who wants to look around while eating.

There are days when I wish I wasn't so casual about pulling my shirt up or down and unsnapping my bra. I'm not an exhibitionist, and yet I've become extremely comfortable with breastfeeding in front of other people (though when in public, I do use the cover--it's just easier). I have to wear layers that allow me to stay warm while feeding her, so sometimes I look a little unfortunate. And when I do get a break that will keep me from feeding her for more than a couple hours, I have to plan for my breasts to get a little uncomfortably full. I don't get terribly engorged, but it's another source of discomfort. We're going to a Christmas party tomorrow night and leaving E. with some friends for the evening, and I have to make sure that what I'm wearing will withstand a little growth, and that I can fit breast pads in there, in case of leaks.

I'm tired of sharing my body with my child--it's like an extension of pregnancy, though it feels totally different, and for an introvert like me, it becomes very wearing.

And yet there are times when I appreciate it. It's convenient. It makes E. happy. When she's upset, it's often a great way to soothe her. Breastfeeding was very helpful during her first round of immunizations the other week.

I suppose there's something to this bonding and breastfeeding thing. I still don't get the rush of promised happy hormones when I feed her, though.

And I'm glad that my body works well enough that I can breastfeed her, even if she still needs the formula in order to gain weight.

But that doesn't stop me from feeling ambivalent. Is this the way it is for everyone?

What's in a Christmas?

I live with the juxtaposition of being both rather cynical about Christmas and a bit of a sap about it. I went through an "I hate Christmas" phase in high school, after Christmas had lost its ineffable zing (I think that was once I really started noticing and disliking the materialism of the holiday), but some of that wonder and fascination has seeped back over the years.

I love the music and films that evoke a sense of wonder and family. There's a great deal of humour in the holiday as well as pathos, which is probably why Love Actually and The Family Stone are among my favourite Christmas films. I also have a fondness for Elf, because my husband and I watched that together one night shortly before we admitted that we were turning into a couple and decided to make that transformation deliberate, rather than accidental. I suppose that means I should also really love Back to the Future, since a Back to the Future marathon sparked the incident which forced us to talk about our relationship, but since we were watching that with a group of friends, and it was just us watching Elf, I tend to have fuzzier feelings about that one. The traditional movies, like White Christmas are great, too, and I usually end up watching those at some point during the holidays.

E. and I were out for a walk the other week while people who work for the city were putting lights in the trees. It hit me that we get to experience Christmas with her from now on. This year she'll probably be fascinated with the lights, and next year, well, I'll have to make sure our tiny tree is out of her reach, since she'll be about 16 months old then and probably into everything. We took her for a walk in the evening so she could see the lights and the sparkly Christmas trees in the shop windows, and she found them captivating. True, sometimes she finds the wall captivating, but I think this time it was the sparklies that were so interesting.

We don't intend to do Santa with E. It wasn't something that my family really did; I don't remember ever believing in Santa Claus, though I did believe in fairies. Neither of us is particularly enthused by the idea of waiting in line at the mall with a bunch of screaming children so we can plop our child onto a stranger's lap and then pay an exorbitant amount for a picture. And I don't want her to have the expectation that Christmas is about the presents, and that if you're good enough, Santa will bring you anything you want.

J. and I like giving and receiving gifts, but we're not particularly gift-oriented. If you're looking at the "love languages" thing that was so popular a few years ago, gift-giving is at the bottom of the list for us. So we don't want Christmas to be all about the presents, fun as they are.

I try to live through the Christmas season focusing on Advent (originally a time of fasting prior to Christmas), to live in expectation, rather than getting caught up in the more hectic aspects of the season. It doesn't always work, but sometimes, I stumble across serenity.

I found myself rather more literally living in expectation last Advent, when we found out E. was on her way a week and a half before Christmas. The Christmas Eve service that year resonated more deeply than usual. This year, with a new little person in our lives, I wonder what Christmas has in store for us?

sleep with a side of Thanksgiving

I keep trying to start posts and then something (usually E.) highjacks them. Since we got the munchkin actually gaining weight, we've had Thanksgiving (Canadian Thanksgiving is awesome because we get eggnog in the grocery store earlier than the Americans do), gone to the Cranberry Festival, and successfully navigated the passport office.

Thanksgiving: My in-laws came down (they live up north, so it's down-ish to get here), and took E. for a couple hours Saturday morning so J. and I could go to the Cranberry Festival without her. It was lovely to have a date and some time for just the two of us, but it did feel a bit like we'd forgotten something. We had Thanksgiving dinner in the evening. J. and I got an organic turkey and brined it, and my brother-in-law made some of his fabulous side dishes--sprouts with bacon and bleu cheese, something with sweet potatoes that was amazing, and cranberry chutney. E. was pretty happy over the weekend, despite all the craziness, and even slept for 5-6 hours several days in a row. Then, of course, she changed her mind and I didn't get much sleep Tuesday night.

But last night...ah, last night was amazing. She fell asleep around 9:30 in the evening, and woke up at 5:30 in the morning. We also went to bed at 9:30, since she was asleep, so I think I got about 7 hours last night. I still woke up a few times at night to make sure she was still breathing, and I don't really expect her to repeat the feat tonight, but it was pretty incredible. I think we're in the middle of a growth spurt--she ate extra yesterday and then slept most of the day today when she wasn't eating.

Her deciding that sleep was a great idea came at the perfect time, since we were headed into the passport office this morning. She slept on the bus on the way there, she slept in the passport office and completely ignored the enormity of me applying for her to get her very own passport (so we can take her to the States for Christmas to visit my family). Then she slept through the visit to TNT to get pork buns, woke up long enough to eat, then dozed off again during lunch and on the bus ride home. It was lovely being the mum with the sleeping baby in a stroller, rather than the screaming baby.

Now she seems to be dozing off on me, so I'm going to hand her off to J. to see if he can convince her to stay asleep for a bit since it's night now.

Milk: The Saga Continues

The trying-to-feed-my-child saga has come to another turn. Last Monday, my doctor gave me a prescription for Domperidone, to help boost my milk supply, but told me that I might need to supplement. J. and I decided we'd give it a few days to see if the medication would make a difference, and then if it didn't, we would start supplementing. I'd weighed E. on Monday, so I went back to the public health unit on Friday to weigh her again. She was pretty furious about the whole scale thing as usual, and when the numbers settled, I knew what we'd be doing that evening. Over five days, she had gained one ounce.

That is not normal weight gain for a baby at all. The most she's gained in a week so far has been three ounces, and that's with spending most of the day attached to my chest. No wonder she's been so fussy. This week, she decided that me setting her down constituted horrible torture that required much screaming. I couldn't even get a glass of water without her screaming at me.

Fortunately, we had bottles on hand (since I'd had ambitions of expressing enough milk for a whole bottle), and we have half a dozen cans of formula that our doctor offered me (I think he was tired of them cluttering up his counter and he doesn't have a lot of really young patients in his practice right now), so I didn't have to go to the store and stare helplessly at all the choices. When J. got home from work, we mixed up a bottle and he gave it to her. She was pretty happy about it. She was also pretty happy about breastfeeding again at her next feed, and has remained happy about either option (unless she's grumpy, in which case, breastfeeding makes her happier. Actually, she's just happier in general. She's not always too excited about diaper changes, or about the part of baths where we wash her hair, but she's not screaming about being hungry anymore, and she's sleeping more because she doesn't have to eat quite as constantly.

I'm still breastfeeding her as much as I can, but there are times when she's getting next to nothing out of there, is really hungry, and starts getting extremely upset. Those are the times when she's been breastfeeding for something like an hour, and then downs 4 ounces of formula in less than ten minutes when we offer her a bottle, and drops off to the sleep.

And the difference, other than her moods and her sleep schedule?

I weighed her this afternoon. She'd gained about seven ounces since the last time I'd weighed her. She's finally over the six pound mark. Finally.

the complexities of milk

This breast-feeding thing has gotten more complicated in the last few weeks. I have to admit that I'm getting tired of my relationship with my daughter centering around food. Admittedly, her needs right now involve being fed, changed, and kept warm, so that's inescapable to a certain extent, but this is getting frustrating.

It started with my milk taking a little longer to come in than normal, or at least, coming in but there not being that much of it at first. Then my supply went up a bit, then went down, and we got to experience a screaming child who was being fed every two hours at a minimum but was still hungry and was gaining weight at a rate of at least 2 ounces less per week than the low range of normal. Then I got thrush, which is now improving, but the visit to the doctor to find out what I needed to do for the thrush resulted in him saying that I might have a low milk supply.

Off we went to the public health unit to weigh her before and after a feed and to talk with one of the nurses. Naturally, we hit the fussy point of the afternoon, so the visit consisted of the nurse and me trying to calm E. down enough to eat so we could see how much she got in. After she ingested a staggering 5 grams of milk, she calmed down and fell asleep. The nurse and I talked through what we could do to up my milk supply. I'd already started downing more water, and now I'm doing breast compressions while feeding and trying to make the time to do some hand-expressing in-between feedings. The look on her face when we started syringe-feeding her some expressed milk was priceless. Milk had never come out of a finger before and we definitely messed with her paradigm for how the world works. Cup feeding elicited similar expressions.

This got us to the point where E. is sleeping better, screaming less, and seems much happier when she's awake, but not to the point where she's gaining weight faster. My tiny child and I went back to the doctor yesterday and I'm now on medication to help boost my milk supply, and we've got a couple tins of formula in reserve in case that isn't enough.

Every medical professional I've talked with so far has been very encouraging and fairly helpful (the doctor from our practice that I spoke to yesterday was more in favour of supplementing than the one I spoke with last week, but they all still want me to keep breastfeeding as much as possible and want to make that happen). It's frustrating that everything else is fine with her except for her weight gain. She's growing bigger, she's alert, she's wetting the requisite number of diapers, she's getting better at holding her head up, and she can even roll over sometimes and she's not quite six weeks old. If the medication and possible supplementing don't do the trick within the next month, we get to visit a paediatrician to see if there's something else going on that's affecting her weight gain.

I'm not as stressed about all of this as I would expect to be, but I think I'm too tired to worry much. Whatever happens, we'll do what we need to in order to get her fed. I'm giving the medication a week or so after it kicks in to see if it's making a difference with her weight gain, and if not, then we'll add in a bottle or two of formula per day to round things out. I really wanted to get to the six months of exclusive breast-feeding, but making sure my child is getting enough food is more important. Now if you'll excuse me, she's dozed off so it's time to try expressing some extra milk. Sigh.

8 Things They Don't Tell You About Breastfeeding

While I was pregnant, I read a lot of books about breastfeeding, and we went to the breastfeeding class offered by the public health unit. Although I'd been a little leery of breastfeeding prior to getting pregnant, I came around to the idea pretty quickly once I knew a baby was on the way. It would mean that we wouldn't have to buy formula, and there are all those health benefits to it. I read a lot of women's stories about the difficulties they experienced while breastfeeding, and mentally prepared accordingly. I told myself that if we needed to supplement, I wouldn't feel guilty about it, since the important thing is to make sure your child has food.

So far, the whole breastfeeding thing hasn't been too difficult, which is the opposite of what I'd anticipated. E.'s not gaining weight as quickly as I would like, but she is gaining, and she's going through what the books and handouts tell me is the appropriate amount of diapers, so I know she's getting enough. My milk supply is still sorting itself out, so if she sleeps for a few hours, my breasts get a bit engorged, but that hasn't been too bad. My milk took a few days to come in properly, and my nipples are still sore, but for the most part, it's going a lot more smoothly than I'd expected, given all the stories I'd heard about potential problems. At the same time, there are also feelings and experiences I hadn't expected.

1. They'll tell you in the books and in the classes that if the baby's latched on properly, breastfeeding shouldn't hurt. What they don't tell you is that, even with a proper latch, breastfeeding will hurt for the first minute or so and then that pain just turns into discomfort. I had this confirmed as normal when I went to talk to one of the nurses at the public health unit and she told me that E.'s latch was great, and the discomfort was expected. Notice that I was only told this after I'd started breastfeeding.

2. Posture's really important. I finished feeding E. a few nights ago and handed her over to J. so he could convince her to sleep and, instead of going to sleep myself, I found myself experiencing very painful spasms in my upper back. I had to take Tylenol and then hop in the shower for a while before curling up with a hot water bottle. It's harder to achieve good posture while breastfeeding when you're out and about--chairs without arms and the lack of available pillows mean that there is less support for holding the baby up, so it's easier to hunch over and not think about the consequences until later.

3. Lanolin cream is your friend. Really. They'll mention it in the classes, but it's a very good idea to use it frequently. It's soothing and it helps toughen the nipples up. Those first few days are especially painful, so it helps to have anything that makes your skin feel better. Wet tea bags are also helpful, because of the tannins, although E. didn't quite like the taste they left behind.

4. Breastfeeding releases oxytocin, which is supposed to make you feel good. You know what else it does? It causes the uterus to contract. This is fantastic for recovery after birth, but especially in the first couple of days, it's painful--just like menstrual cramps or mild labour pains. So not only are you extremely sore from giving birth, with very sore nipples, you're also getting contractions every time you feed your baby. These lighten up, but I'm still getting occasional twinges at nearly every feeding. I'm not really noticing the alleged happy effects of the oxytocin, and am starting to wonder if that's actually true.

5. Breastfeeding can be exhausting. You're tethered to a tiny human being who doesn't care about your needs at all and wants to eat all the time. When a growth spurts hit, your child will want to eat even more frequently, so it will feel like your entire life is about feeding the baby. And right now, yes, it is. You don't get privacy or time just for you--the baby needs to eat. For an introvert like me, this can be really difficult.

6. Breastfeeding is also boring. You can only stare at your child for so long before you get tired of watching them eat and start counting the number of blotches on their skin from baby acne. Yes, you can do stuff around the baby, but it takes practice to learn that. I can now type and knit around E., but it took me a while, and I still have to be careful because if she gets dislodged slightly, she ends up yanking on my nipple. Let's just say that I'm very happy that we have Netflix (even if Canadian Netflix has a lot of inexplicable gaps--they have filmed Supernatural not three blocks from here and I can't get it on Netflix or at the library).

7. You will be told that you need to eat a healthy, balanced diet to keep up your milk supply and to provide proper nourishment for your child. You will not be told how to achieve this when your partner goes back to work and your baby starts cluster-feeding, thereby anchoring you to the couch with no one to cook for you. I doubt that coffee and Goldfish crackers constitute a balanced diet, so I'm hoping that the vitamins I'm taking will help mitigate things a bit. This may get better when I can put her down between feedings without her waking up or screaming her head off. Yesterday, I cooked breakfast at about 10:30 in the morning, even though I'd been up since 4, and she cried through most of it, while I tried to tell her that I really, really needed to eat and that I'd be feeding her again in just a few minutes.

8. You're also encouraged to breastfeed because it helps with bonding. I assume that this is true, since it's hard not to bond somehow with a person that's connected to you physically for so many hours in the day, but it doesn't feel as wonderful and magical as so many lactivist blogs say it is. It probably is for some people, but not for me. That may change once E. is doing more than eating, sleeping, and pooping, but at this stage, I don't feel an overwhelming rush of joy when she starts eating. I'm glad she's eating, and I'm glad this is working, but I'm sure I'd be just as paranoid about whether or not she's still breathing if we were bottle-feeding. I doubt that I'm alone in this. My mother says that it seems like some people turn breastfeeding into a religion, and I am apparently not one of them. Maybe I'll feel differently once E. starts smiling deliberately.

If I didn't think that it was important to breastfeed, and if we had the money for formula, I might very well not be breastfeeding, or be doing mixed feeding. I don't particularly enjoy having someone so dependent on me 24/7 and I'm very much looking forward to when we can introduce solid food in late February. It's not really easy right now. The first day of cluster-feeding made me feel really helpless and isolated, and I started sobbing the moment J. got home from work, because she hadn't slept for more than a hour at a time all day and had eaten constantly, so I didn't get anything done and hadn't gotten any sleep. It's a relief to hand her off to him and watch him play with her, because right now, her automatic response to me is, "Mommy=food." Even if I've just fed her, if I'm holding her and she's awake, she starts rooting.

However, my frustration and ambivalence do not mean I'm going to stop breastfeeding. I'm determined to hit the 6 months of exclusive breastfeeding mark if it's at all possible, though I'm less excited about the idea of breastfeeding her past a year. That part we'll play by ear. Somehow, the thought of breastfeeding someone who can walk and talk doesn't appeal to me that much right now, but we'll see how we all feel once we get there. In the meantime, five months and one week to go before we can add in solid foods. And one week before I can start pumping and introduce occasional bottle-feeding.