On "Forced" Ultrasounds

I know that this is mainly a blog about teething and tantrums and different types of baby poo, but June is taking an uncharacteristically long nap so I might as well write about what's on my mind. And what's on my mind is the hysteria around the so-called "forced ultrasound bill" in Virginia right now. It's about to get political up in hurrr.  


For friends and family who don't want to get into politics, here's something to occupy you. 

I can't look away. 

One of my friend's twitter profiles states that he "prefers facts, not hysteria." I couldn't agree more. Which is why every time I see a hashtag about "forced ultrasounds," or a status update equating ultrasounds to rape, I'm none too enthused. 


The issue here is a proposed law that mandates an ultrasound before acquiring an abortion. Many pro-choice advocates are skeptical of this bill because they say that the mission of this law is to shame women and guilt them into refusing abortion. Some even say that mandatory trans-vaginal ultrasounds are akin to "forced penetration" -- meaning that your doctor is going to tie you down and force an ultrasound probe inside your vagina. 


Personally, I prefer facts to a lot of unfounded hysteria. The facts are that Planned Parenthood, the nation's biggest abortion provider, already requires an ultrasound to take place before any abortion is performed -- which is the "medical standard," according to Planned Parenthood official Adrienne Schreiber. Additionally, a 2003 study notes that all abortions at surveyed clinics -- even early, non-surgical abortions -- are conditional on a trans-vaginal ultrasound before and after the procedure, to make sure the procedure was a success. And although there are many feminists who are decrying trans-vaginal ultrasounds as "forced penetration," Schrieber says that women always have the option to wait a few weeks until the baby matures and a trans-abdominal ultrasound can be performed (Schreiber makes a good point, though: If you're not comfortable getting an ultrasound, you're probably not going to be comfortable getting an abortion, either). And even with all these mandatory ultrasound policies, no doctor is tying anyone down and forcing anything inside their vagina. Nobody is being forcibly penetrated. Nobody is being forced to do anything. However, for the safety of the patient, in order to obtain an abortion, an ultrasound of some type is non-negotiable. 


So the facts are that ultrasounds are already necessary and commonplace, and a reasonable conjecture is that a trans-vaginal ultrasound is no more invasive than the actual abortion. This is why it irks me to see women complaining of "forced" anything, or protesting riotously outside Virginia's capitol steps. In what world does it make sense to protest against more medical information? How would that benefit a hypothetical patient, or the patient's doctor, for that matter? Retained fetal tissue can result in infection, sepsis, and possibly death, and ultrasounds are the most effective way to make sure nothing is retained. If your concern is truly women's health, then your first priority should be making sure that pre- and post-abortion ultrasounds are sacrosanct. 


(Make no mistake, though: I think abortion is a hideous procedure. When I say that doctors need an ultrasound to "complete the procedure," what I'm really saying is that they need to make sure all parts of the dismembered baby -- like its head or tiny limbs -- have all been evacuated from the uterus. Let's call a spade a spade here: When we use cute euphamisms like "women's health" and "procedure," we're talking about dilating the uterus, dismembering the baby in utero, and aspirating whatever's left. We're talking about injecting a woman's womb with saline solution. In other cases, the doctor crushes the baby's head with scissors. Or, in some cases, we're talking about inducing early labor and just neglecting the baby until it dies on its own. Those are the facts. So, taking these facts into consideration -- yes, I have a moral problem with that. I don't mean to imply that there is no moral component to this procedure, because I think there is. But the issue of providing ultrasounds is not about my morals or anyone else's, for that matter - it is about medical assessment.) 


On a similar note, I think we have to talk about the issue of informed consent here. I'm of the opinion that before you can fully consent to a procedure, you need to know what the procedure is, and how it is being done. In fact, the definition of informed consent according to the American Medical Association means assessing the procedure with the patient, as well as discussing risks and benefits. So working within these parameters, an ultrasound would certainly help the patient properly consent. In the first place, ultrasounds determine what kind of procedure to perform. Based on the gestational age of the baby, doctors can perform D&C abortions, D&X abortions, or more. Upon affirming the gestational age, the benefits and risks of each abortion type can then be discussed. 


When I was in labor with J, and I begged for an epidural, the nurse at my bedside took five minutes (or in other words, a freaking lifetime) to explain to me every single pro and con of having an epidural, how the procedure would take place, how long it would be expected to last, and every conceivable ramification it could possibly have on my laboring. Even though I literally was shouting Don't care! Don't care! Don't care! Not listening, don't care!, it was still her responsibility, as my care provider, to inform me. What I did with the information was my choice. It wasn't a moral judgement. It wasn't an attempt to get me to change my mind. It wasn't about the patriarchy imposing its will on me or my doctor not "trusting women" enough to make my own medical decisions. It was about health, knowledge, and informed consent.    


So next time I see the hashtag #noforcedultrasounds, I'm going to turn into the hulk. And I think you should, too. 

HULK THINK INFORMED CHOICE REASONABLE. HULK APPROVE LAW. 

What I would tell myself

When I first found out I was pregnant, my first reaction was to laugh. My husband was at work. Our NFP charts were showing several days of high temperatures, and I was starting to suspect that something was going on. I took a test and peed all over my hand. When I saw the test, I absolutely was not expecting to see a plus sign – but there it was. Positive. I said, “holy shit,” put my hand over my mouth, and started laughing hysterically.

And then I had a full-blown panic attack.

Let me explain.

In 2009 I was diagnosed with PTSD after a medical incident I had when I was studying abroad. It's a really long, complicated, complex story and one that I don't really like getting into – mostly because it's just so long and, thankfully, I don't really feel the need to talk about it like I once did. What I will say is that for the next three years, anything that my body did was a major PTSD trigger. If I had to pee and couldn't get to the bathroom fast enough, I would have a panic attack. If I suddenly had a cramp or a twinge or a headache of any kind, I would immediately panic and start crying uncontrollably. Any situation where I didn't feel completely in control of myself would send me spiraling into an anxiety attack, and it was a living hell.

I studied Edvard Munch in a college art history class, and when my professor showed us The Scream, I almost had to leave the room. It looks exactly like how an anxiety attack feels -- like you're inside of a nightmare. 

So in October 2010, when I found out I was pregnant, one of the first things I felt was abject terror. Make no mistake, I wanted that baby. Ever since I was a little kid, I've always wanted babies. Lots and lots of them. But for the next four months I lived in this weird space where I very much wanted a baby and, at the same time, desperately did not want to be pregnant. I woke up every morning and felt angry, simply because I was awake and I didn't want to be. Every time I felt that lurch of nausea, I would shake. Forget about the actual birth -- just thinking about birth gave me panic attacks. Any kind of brush with the medical establishment – even if it was a nurse just taking my blood pressure – made me start crying. When I got to 36 weeks pregnant and my OB started doing internal exams, my husband had to leave work early and come to the doctor with me and hold my hand so I wouldn't run out of that office. I'm not exaggerating.

In my weakest moments, when I was desperately sick, when I felt trapped and desperate, I thought of the Planned Parenthood down the street and I mulled over how easy it would be to just make everything go away, in an instant. I hated that I had those thoughts, because I loved that baby, and I fought for her. But I had them anyway. I am anti-abortion, but make no mistake that I understand, first-hand, the appeal of abortion. I understand intimately how it feels to be plagued by mental illness and how someone would want a problem to just disappear. In those weak moments, those moments when I literally could not leave my apartment and failed two of my classes and had panic attacks every day, I would plead heavenward: Please, God, let me love this baby. Please help me to love her. Because I don't feel anything but panic and anger.

There's so much more to this story – all the therapy I had. The medicine. The shame. The hypnobirthing classes I took to calm my ass down. The heroism of my sweet husband, his patience. The times I would sob into his shirt that I hated being pregnant. This is my body, given up for you, indeed.

Giving birth was the culmination of nine months of constant mental anguish. Actual labor was the biggest anxiety trigger of all, since I was vulnerable, isolated, and in a high amount of pain – much like what I experienced when I studied abroad and had the traumatic experience that triggered the PTSD in the first place.

When she came out, I didn't hold her. I had the doctors take her away and give her to my husband, while I laid on my back, in complete exhaustion, and sobbed. Out of terror. And triumph. And relief. This is something that's hard to admit, but I have to keep it real: In that moment – when June was born, when the doctor was holding my red, screaming baby and saying sit up and look what you did!, I was so wrapped up in panic, I didn't react at all to the baby. I lifted my head up, muttered something like great okay and plopped back down again. I remember hearing her cry and -- distantly -- feeling satisfied. She was out. We had done it. We were safe.

Lou brought her to me when she was cleaned and wrapped up and when I held her I felt nothing. Perhaps it was the fentanyl cocktail they had given me, perhaps it was because I had a postpartum hemorrhage and I was a little shaken from it. But I felt numb. Was this love? Was this the instant, animal-attraction I'd been hearing about for nine months? I didn't feel love at all. I felt relief. And abating terror. And a low, feral kind of possessiveness when the nurse stepped in and took the baby out of my arms. I was woozy with fright, but when the nurse took the baby out of my arms, I remember thinking bitch, that's MY baby. How do I know you're not some baby-snatcher, like in that Lifetime movie? You try to snatch my baby, bitch, and I'll come for you. It was love. But it felt like anger. It worried me. I remember thinking, I WORKED for that baby. She's MINE.

I remember pleading in the back of my mind, for what must have been the millionth time since I got pregnant, Please, God, let me love her. Please, please don't let me feel like this forever. 

All this to say that if I could go back in time and tell myself one thing, I would tell myself that you will love her. It will be a purifying, sanctifying love, because you had to walk through hell to earn it. But you will love her.  

And I do. 

Battle Hymn of the Elephant Mother

Things that are new around these here parts:

1.Non-fiction. I'm on a huge non-fiction kick lately, and I'm getting so much reading done ever since I gave up Facebook for Lent. I just read Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and it is intense. It is exactly like this sterotypical Asian meme, except it's written by a woman and these things actually happened in real life.

Amy Chua is seriously scary, and I love it. Her book basically is about the difference between Chinese mothers and American mothers, and how American mothers are soft and permissive, and Chinese mothers produce smart and capable children because they're not afraid to tell it like it is. Chua herself has two exceptional daughters who are musical prodigies and attend Ivy league schools, probably because she would chinese-water-torture them if they didn't practice for hours a day (is that racist?). I'm not going to lie, parts of the book had me cheering for her, and parts of it had me cringing in horror on behalf of her kids. In this one scene her daughters made her homemade birthday cards and Chua tossed the cards back in the girls' faces and told them to get back to her when they had a real present to give her. OWNED! I mean, the girls probably didn't have time to go buy her a present, considering how they were forced to practice violin for six hours every day, but still! You tell 'em, Amy! 

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? CHILD ABUSE

I'm going to write a book called Battle Hymn of the Elephant Mother because I've got 10 pounds of baby weight to lose, and if my kid ever mouthed off to me I'd probably just swat at it with my giant trunk and lumber off in search of food.


2. Whining. June is a delight lately. She's been taking naps like a champion, and is just generally a bright, cheery little girl. Or, you know, whatever is the opposite of that.

Lately, she's turned into a huge whiner. About everything. Whenever she wants to be picked up, she whines. Whenever a toy is not doing what she wants, she whines. And of course, if I'm not near her at all times, or if any one of her zillion toys is obstructing her view of me, she whines. And God help me if I have to leave the room for a split second. Girlfriend is NOT having it.

Her reaction.

At first I was like, you don't own me, baby! Dobby is a free elf! And then I couldn't stand one more second of whining so I picked her up and just did whatever she told me to do. When I have to pee I just take her into the bathroom with me, and she stops whining and just stares at me, and believe it or not, that makes it really hard to go. Awkward!

Oh, but that whine. THAT WHINE. I'll do anything to avoid it. Including pee while she's watching me. Or try to.

Makes me want to go back to the newborn stage.

Almost.


Sickness. June is still sick. I don't know if it's a cold, or allergies, or maybe even teething, but whatever she's got is making her irritable and congested, and she's got this cough that is giving me grey hair.
I phoned the on-call nurse at our Pediatrician's office, and she told me if it was a "barking cough" then they'd need to see the baby right away. Right away? RIGHT AWAY?! You're supposed to laugh me off the phone and tell me what a silly first-time mom I'm being! So, panicked, I had my husband come home early and we took her immediately to the doctor and I had tears in my eyes as I recounted the awful, horrible, probably-pertussis-like barking cough she was emitting the night before.

The exchange with the doctor went like this:

Dr: So you say it's a barking cough?
Me: Yes, it is!
Dr: What kind of bark?
Me: Like...a harsh...like...you know...a bark.
Dr. Like a dog bark? Or a seal bark?
Me: Well, I don't know the animal...it just sounded like a barking noise.
Dr. Well if it's croup or bronchitis it's going to sound like a seal bark. A dog bark just means she has congestion.

My reaction. 

Well, shit. Apparently your run-of-the-mill barking cough isn't dangerous, but a seal barking cough is what you need to look out for. I should have asked him if he meant a wild seal or like a circus seal. A leopard seal or a harbor seal? Surely we can diagnose this if we just pinpoint the right animal.

So anyway, her lungs are "clear" according to the doctor, even though she still has a barking, phlegmy cough and I'm starting to suspect it's allergies. At least it's not pertussis. Probably.


3. Increased Mobility. My tiny little girl has gone from sitting quietly on the floor like this

to now licking things, picking toys up and throwing them, and trying to pull herself up with some disastrous results. And she's starting to get into things now. I looked away for one second yestereay and when I looked back at her she was eating a baby wipe. I probably should have calmly taken it out of her mouth but instead I screeched like she was on fire, tore the wipe out of her hands, and scrubbed out her mouth with the edge of my shirt. The other day she also tried to hoist herself up on a standing toy, and then fell and conked her head when the toy gave out from under her, not unlike Miss Blankenship beefing it on Mad Men:

That was my reaction too, Peggy.

So pretty much at this rate I'm going to have a heart attack, with all the things she's not supposed to be eating and the concussions she's probably getting as she learns how to crawl and stand. Seriously, she falls down and cries at least once a day, and it's starting to fray my nerves.

4. Baby-moon. Despite the whining/crying/teething issue we've got over here, I'm enjoying June so much more than I did when she was a yowling, formless infant. I think I actually like her now. And that's quite a relief because when I had an infant and people would mention the term "baby moon," I had no idea what they were talking about.

Apparently a "babymoon" is the time after birth when you and your husband and your new baby get to know each other and just bask in each other's love or something. I got the impression that it's supposed to be this peaceful, glorious time where you revel in your baby and in each other, a lot like the self-absoprtion you and your spouse would experience during your honeymoon. So evidently, having a new baby is supposed to be like your honeymoon.

Really? Really? Hold on imma let you finish but a "baby-moon" is nothing like a honeymoon. I remember my honeymoon and it didn't involve leaking breast milk onto my adult diapers and crying because I couldn't remember what day it was. So either I didn't have the whole "baby-moon" thing when she was an infant, or I was too exhausted to notice it.

Furthermore, the love you have for your husband (like on your honeymoon) and the love you have for your baby are just two vastly different things. I am in love with my husband. I'm obsessed with my baby. Sometimes I just stare at her. Or I smell her. Yesterday in the car she was starting to fuss because her hat had drifted down over her eyes and she couldn't see, so I reached back with one hand and popped the hat off her head. Without thinking, I put it to my face and inhaled -- like a crack junkie.

I haven't held the baby in ten whole minutes! 

You are consumed by your baby -- so much so that your baby can shoot diarrhea all over you and your only response will be "Oopsie! That's okay!" Which is very unlike "honeymoon love" unless you and your honey are involved in a disturbing level of enmeshment. (I can't say that I love June more than my husband, but I will say that if my husband ever sprayed poop on me I'd throw him under a bus.) You're so obsessed you start missing her when she sleeps -- even if you've been praying for her to sleep for hours. You will sneak in her room to watch her sleep and then the floor creaks and she wakes up but you're not overly upset about it because that means you get to rock her back to sleep and secretly that's what you wanted to do anyway.

What's that, June? You want to wake up and play with mommy?

Now, though, "baby-moon" is a different story. She is hilarious and making all sorts of cute sounds and faces, and now I catch myself sighing and swooning over her. Maybe this is the baby-moon, now that I can finally catch my breath and sleep for more than two hours at a time and I'm able to actually enjoy her.

I'm the baby, gotta love me!

Look at her, can you blame me? How can I not enjoy that face?

Oh, it is love.

Quick Takes

Here's some up-to-date on the baby and our daily lives, if you're into that sort of thing:

1. My house smells like urine. I smell like urine, my baby smells like urine, her bedroom smells like urine. I'm even smelling phantom urine when the baby and her diapers are nowhere near me. I think it's time to strip her cloth diapers -- by which I mean, completely and thoroughly clean them multiple times in extremely hot water so there's no more weird smell. And that's gotta be the cause for the weird smell, right? Because otherwise we're just the Urine Family that smells like Urine and lives in the Urine House and I don't think I can deal with that.

So, I'ma be stripping some diapers today. It has to be done periodically when you're cloth-diapering, I guess. And I'm just gonna go ahead and assume you're supposed to do it way more often than once every seven months, as per the record in the Wisniewski household.

And speaking of cloth, my enthusiasm for this method of diapering has waned considerably since solids entered the picture. Solid poop is vile and my next kid I'm going to just exclusively breastfeed until he turns three and he can be toilet trained. Even if he gets anemia. Worth it. Solid-food poop is too gross. And every single time I change a diaper, with no exaggeration, I send up a silent, thankful prayer to the baby Jesus that I'm not in the first trimester. Last pregnancy, I puked when I tasted the fishy omega-3 acid in my prenatal vitamins. I cannot imagine what I'd do if there was dookie spraying all over my hands. I'd puke enough to cover the world and never stop.

Imma still keep cloth-diapering, because it's still cheaper than buying disposables every three days.

Good idea.

2. We've stopped nursing at night, for the most part. Last week she was getting up once every hour, I kid you not. Sometimes to eat. Sometimes to just yell at me from her crib. Sometimes because she just wanted to be up. I almost lost my damn mind.

So I beat her severely and went back to bed. Just kidding. But seriously, that's what people hear when I tell them what we really did, which was to let her cry it out for one night in a separate room. I don't know what the eff everyone's deal is, but when I tell people we let her cry it out they're like BUT SCIENCE SAYS NOT TO!!! Dude, Science can come to my house and get up with her six times a night for no reason and then entertain her all day. I refuse to believe that letting her cry for fifteen minutes is going to obliterate her trust in me, like the folks on Peaceful Parenting or Mothering.com would have you believe. Nothing against Attachment Parenting, but if I have to read one more article about how babies in "other cultures" don't cry because they're carried all day/co-slept/exclusively breast-fed/whatever, I'm going to 'splode (the implication, of course, is that mothers who don't do these things are harming their babies, either through willful neglect or through their ignorance). First off, that's racist as shit. African babies cry. Babies in every culture cry because that's what babies do. To say that non-western mothers have some innate, intuitive wisdom that western mothers don't have because of their jobs and dirty, dirty technology -- well, that's just racism. It's classism. It's third-world-fetishism. And I don't play that.

Second, the "science" that these websites are presenting are a little self-serving. I'm sure if you let your baby scream for hours every single night for eight months or something, that would be harmful, and there are some studies about maybe not letting babies cry to that extent, or for needlessly prolonged periods of time. But the folks on Peaceful Parenting (for instance) cherry-pick these scientific findings and tout them as the reason why any good mother would never, ever let her baby cry, even for a minute. EVER! Attending to your child's every whim is the gentle choice. The peaceful choice. The natural choice. Oh, and here's some random study I found to validate my prejudice.

Hippy logic.

Guess what, y'all. I'm not an African Mama and I let my baby cry. And by the way, baby is presently jumping around in her bouncer and giggling at herself. I guess she didn't get the memo that she's supposed to be traumatized and withdrawn. She must not have read the SCIENCE.

(And by the way -- did you know that circumcising your baby will turn him into a murderer? It's true, you guys! Because SCIENCE!)

4. June won't wear a bib anymore when I try to feed her solids. This may seem unimportant, but it's not: Whenever I put one on her, she rips it off and tosses it to the side, and WILL NOT EAT until it's off her body and out of her line of vision. Um, what? I try to put it back on several times before actually trying to feed her, and then I give up and pretend we don't even need a bib, because I'm not sure how to deal with this at all. Clothespins? Super-glue?

This has made me realize how little I know about discipline and how to enforce it. I'm not saying one should discipline a seven-month-old for not wearing a bib, but when she turns two and keeps taking off her pants, I'm going to be at a total loss for what to do.

I don't remember being disciplined very much as a kid. Not because my parents didn't discipline me, but because I'm not sure I knew that willfull defiance was even an option. I have a vivid memory of being in first grade and hearing my teacher tell us "You always have a choice." I put my hand up and was like, "UM, TEACHER? What if someone puts a gun to your head and is like, you DON'T have a choice?" She said, "You still have a choice." And then I think my head exploded. That was a totally novel concept. So then I went home and told my mom I had a CHOICE whether or not to clean my room, and she was like LOL FOREVER. "You don't have a choice," my mom said. "Go clean your room." And I said "okay" and cleaned it.

Basically I'm going to be pretty effed when June starts testing me.

This is probably how I'll respond

5. I'm really fat. Last night I watched my baby's baptism video and all I could think about was how fat I looked, how chubby my face was, how bloated my stomach seemed. I am still fifteen pounds heavier than I was pre-baby, and it definitely shows. It doesn't help that I love candy and sugary things and I seriously WROTE THE DATE ON MY CALENDAR for when I get to go pick up my Girl Scout Cookies. The baby made me fat, but I'm keeping myself that way.

Me, every night. IT'S HEALTHY CUZ CALCIUM YOU GUYS!

Ever since having a baby I've vacillated between desperately wanting to lose weight and being like fuck it, give me another cookie. Last night my husband had the AUDACITY to comment on the number of cookies I was eating (the entire box) and I SNAPPED the cookie tin shut and was like, "I guess I'm just TOO FAT to eat these cookies, then! You think I'm fat?! You want me to moo for you, like a cow?! MOO! MOO!"

I DO WHAT I WANT

But seriously, I want to lose 15 pounds. Apparently I lack something called "follow through," whatever that is.

I'll look it up later.







Have a great weekend!

What happened to my sweet DERP

I hate when bloggers apologize for not writing in a while. So I'm not going to. I have a baby. We do things, and I don't write. The end. Right now, for instance, June and I are both watching Natalie Portman dance the shit out of Black Swan. It's probably damaging to her psyche, but whatever.

Lately we've totally regressed on Tummy Time. Chalk it up to one of my many First Time Parenting Mistakes. For those of you who don't have kids, Tummy Time is when you flip them on their stomachs during their awake-time and let them play on the floor. We used to be vigilant about Tummy Time - at least 20 minutes, every day for months, so that she'd learn to lift up her head and roll over -- and it worked! At around four months, June rolled over from her back to her tummy. Great!, I thought. Mission accomplished. No more Tummy Time. Um, actually, as it turns out, you're supposed to keep doing it.

this is the prescription the doctor wrote me

Derp.

So we backslid. I had no idea I was supposed to keep doing this Tummy Time until I went to the pediatrician and she asked how it was going. I was like, "Oh, is that still a thing?" and she looked at me like I was retarded. Seroiusly. For something that was invented like, ten years ago, people sure act weird when they find out you have no clue how it's supposed to work.

Anyway. Now Tummy time is completely futile. In Black Swan terms, she's the Nina of Tummy Time. She's a dud. I'm her crazy mother in the audience who's like WHAT HAPPENED TO MY SWEET GIRL???

Just roll over on your god damn tummy already.

Now we're trying to double up on Tummy Time, which just means she lays there and struggles while I flip picture books frantically in front of her face while shrieking GOOD JOB!! TUMMY TIME IS SO FUN!! SO FUN!!

We also backslid on her Vitamin E drops. Seriously, someone just adopt this baby away from me because you'd think by now I'd have some of this shit figured out. On her very first checkup at four days postpartum, the doctor gave me this vial of Vitamin E drops, since I was exclusively breastfeeding and therefore wouldn't give her sufficient Vitamin E. Or something. I kind of slacked on them and then the minute she started eating solid foods I shoved it in the diaper bag and forgot about it -- two months ago. Last weekend at her well-baby checkup the doctor was like, "You're still giving her vitamin E drops, right?" Ummmmm...

My first instinct was to lie, so that's what I did. Husband, who was also at the pediatrician's office with me, didn't have that instinct. So he was all, Oh yeah, we haven't really been doing it. RARRRRGHHH!! Cover = blown. So now the doctor knows I'm an idiot who's accidentally malnourishing my baby (is that a verb?). If I get a call from CPS in the next couple weeks, that's probably why.

Derp moments.

June is barely six months old, so my parenting mistakes have only just begun. But right now I'd like to share a few "derp" moments. Because we're all learning. And sometimes shit gets real. And maybe my stupid mistakes won't make you feel so bad about your stupid mistakes. So here we go.

First is something that I can't believe I used to do. Yes, I already have one of those. I've been a parent for SIX MONTHS and already I'm "looking back" on myself and saying wow, I can't believe I did that! I was really naive ... a few months ago.

So back when I was a super-duper new parent (five months ago) I held out on buying a swing, which is a first-time parent mistake if I've ever heard one. Swings can get pretty expensive and I wasn't even sure if our baby would like swings, so instead of getting something cool like this or this, I went with the obvious alternative: 

The cold, hard ground.

I just put her down on the floor. Just right on the floor, where people walk and step on shit. Mommy has to go to the bathroom and I don't know where to put you, so ... here's a nice, wooden floor. And then she'd cry and I'd be like I DONT GET IT. You mean babies don't like lying on hard-ass floors where they can be stepped on? They'd rather be on a nice, pillowy apparatus that lulls them to sleep? Finally, one of us wised up and went to Target and got a baby swing.

She actually didn't like the swing at first. But we kept sticking her in there when she got cranky, and soon she realized that, oh yeah, swings are better than the cold, hard ground where mommy used to put me, and she'd go to sleep.

Derp.

DON'T STEP ON THE BABY PLEASE DERRRP

My second Derp Moment is something I said I'd never do and then immediately did it when I became a parent: Co-sleeping.

Before I became a parent, I thought co-sleeping was the dumbest shit in the world.

"Let's go bang in the car." 

You know that scene in Away We Go, where Burt and Verona visit LN Fisher's house and they find out LN, her husband, and their kids "practice family bed"? And Verona is like, "What happens when you guys want to be alone? Do you go out to the car?" And LN gets all self-righteous and goes, "No, Verona. We don't go out to the car." I'm totally Verona in that scene. Pre-baby, when I'd hear that a couple slept with their kids, I'd be like, "Um...so when do you have sex? Never?" I still don't know, but I'm too afraid to ask. What if you're banging and you bang so hard the baby falls off the bed and you don't notice? How do you even explain that to the doctor?

And it's spelled "Ellen," dumb ass.

Lou and I are a prime example of how almost everything you think you are going to do before you become parents becomes irrelevant. We were adamantly against co-sleeping. No way that hippie bullshit was happening in our bed, thankyouverymuch. Unbelieveably, we were schooled on the FIRST NIGHT June came home from the hospital. Our baby would not sleep. She was a champ in the hospital -- we'd change her, she'd eat, Lou would swaddle her back up and she'd be out for at least a few hours. It was great. But for some reason the minute we came home she refused to sleep, even when she was swaddled. She would fall asleep in our arms, but the minute we'd try to put her back in the basinette, she'd wake up and start howling. Um, what?

My husband weathered this patiently at first. He just kept swaddling her and rocking her and burping her. After a while, however, his eyes glazed over and the rocking became more frantic. He told me to scoot over and wedged her in the bed between us. June snuggled in and quieted down.

I was shocked. "What about--?"
"DONT CARE," he said, and turned back over and fell asleep.

She was only three days old, and already we were practicing "family bed."

What I've learned is not necessarily that co-sleeping is awesome or that any family should or should not practice it (we still don't have babies in our bed, and we like it that way). What I've learned is that you're an idiot if you think (like I did) you're going to "make" a newborn do anything. Bitch, that newborn owns you. Before I had a kid I was like, Well, if they want to sleep in our bed, I just won't let them. A THOUSAND LOLS.

The baby is the boss. And she has you in an iron grip.*

THE parenting lesson that I've learned so far? You'll do anything for sleep. Yes, you will. You'll have a lot of nice little ideas about parenting and what you'd like to do with your kids, and maybe you'll do some of those things once you become a parent, and maybe you won't. But if those parenting fantasies get in the way of a good night's sleep, I guarantee you they'll all go flying out the window.

So, these are my derp moments, summed up for your judgment. Please feel free to share some derp moments of your own. And yes, you have some. Maybe not as derpy as mine, but everyone has one or two. And if you don't have kids yet, you too will have some derp moments eventually.

Especially if it gets you more sleep.










*worst photoshop ever

What's new in Baby World

Since I last updated, things are a-happening in baby world (like you care):

1. June had her first Christmas.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. And he lives in a van down by the river. 

I won't lie, we took her to the mall for a Santa photo-op fully expecting she'd be one of those screaming babies on Santa's lap and we'd have a hilarious picture to put in our Christmas cards this year. She's extremely sensitive around anyone who isn't Lou or me (she just now is letting Grandma hold her without instantly screaming), so I thought for sure that sitting on a sketchy, jaundiced mall-Santa would freak her out. It didn't. But whatever, we got a photo for our Christmas card! (And my husband drew our Christmas cards himself, so that made them extra amazing).

Our small family (Lou, June and I) is Catholic, so we celebrate Christmas with an emphasis on Jesus Christ, not presents. At least, that's the goal. It's pretty easy to keep Christmas presents minimal when your baby is six months old and would rather play with the Huggies wipes container than anything else. Regardless, we set a small ($50) limit for gifts and got her this annoying talking soccer ball and a Playskool Purse. I was sort of torn on getting her the purse, actually. I was like, what am I teaching her about gender, by buying this purse? What am I teaching her about what it means to be a female? Why not buy her pretend-books, or a pretend-science kit? And the inclusion of the mirror is troublesome -- am I sending her the right message about character over personal appearance? Why am I buying it for my daughter if I wouldn't buy it for my hypothetical son? But then I saw that it had a tiny set of car keys and a little crinkly dollar, so I got it because that's hilarious.

   Not only does this reinforce gender roles, but that lipstick looks like a dog wiener. 

We also got her a big Sock Monkey, so that my husband and I could live vicariously through her. I always loved the look of a Sock Monkey and I wanted one for myself, but I never had one as a kid for some reason or another. So we bought one for the baby, and she gnaws on it so I consider it a successful purchase. But can someone explain to me what the hell is up with this?:

In case you can't tell from the picture, that's Sock Monkey's big red anus. All sock monkeys have these things, and I never even noticed it until it was time to wrap him up and suddenly his angry red butthole was staring me in the face. So, I'm going to have fun explaining that when she's 3 or 4. How come everyone is up in arms about the Bebe Gloton breastfeeding doll, but nobody seems to care about Sock Monkey's enormous hemorrhoid?

June also attended her first Christmas party, which inevitably lead to #2:

2. Baby's first cold virus.
June caught a cold at the Christmas party from one (or all) of her cousins, and then like the little rhesus monkey in Outbreak, proceeded to spread it to her father and I by sticking her hands directly in our mouths when we weren't paying attention to her.

3. June is learning.
June and I have a new game to play, courtesy of my husband who hung out with her on Saturday morning so I could sleep in. It's called "The Owl Flies and it's Hilarious." True to its name, we have a tiny stuffed owl that came with our baby swing, and I make it fly around June's head and she cackles. She never really cares about the owl unless Lou or I make it fly, and then it's hysterical. This is probably what happens when you're too poor to buy your baby a lot of things.

Right now she's at the age where she's interacting more, laughing more, reaching, exploring, and is generally interested in an array of things, not just Nursing and My Boob and Milk and More Milk. In addition to the owl game, we're playing:

Bumpy or Smooth?
Water is Wet
Puppies are Furry
Hats Go on Heads
This Button Makes A Sound
Where's Mommy? Oh, Behind This Blanket.
This is What Happens When We Don't Nap
If You Bite, Nursing is Over.

She's also sticking her feet in her mouth, laughing whenever her daddy does anything, putting her crinkly dollar up to her ear to hear how it sounds, and leaning forward to give kisses when I pucker up my lips. She's terribly advanced.

(I should probably also add that I am not a natural teacher, I have no idea what I'm doing or if I'm really teaching her anything, and that if she exceeds or meets any kind of developmental standards at all, it has nothing to do with me. Any tips or developmentally-appropriate game suggestions are always welcome. I'm flying by the seat of my pants here, folks.)

4. June is waving. It's like this only way less awesome.

5. June is no longer sleeping through the night.
This one hurts. She was so good at this, for a while. So good, in fact, I started to get cocky when I mentioned it to my pediatrician, like it was some kind of magical power I had that enabled her to sleep through the night, rather than her increasingly-shorter REM cycles and recent foray into solid foods. Last time we were at the doctor I was like, She's so good, she sleeps ALL through the night. I get SO MUCH SLEEP, I don't even know what to do with myself. She sleeps a full twelve hours, sometimes. Aren't I great? 

"I know, I couldn't have done it without her." 

I thought I was pretty awesome for awhile, and then God was like, hey bitch, have some HUMBLE PIE. Now, she wakes at midnight and five and occasionally in-between those hours for a feeding, and I've started taking naps in the middle of the day again.

It tastes pretty bitter at 3 a.m.

Also, my baby of whom I was once so proud, my baby who was once lifting her chest off of the floor during tummy time, has inexplicably regressed. Now she wants nothing to do with tummy time, or with basic motor skills, or with moving any part of her body at all while she's on the floor, in fact. When I lay her down on her stomach she lifts her head for a minute or two, looks around, and then lays her head on the floor, cheek-down, and moans like that lady in the Life Alert commercial until I sit her back up.

Tummy Time in the Wisniewski household. 

And you know the messed up part about this? I feel guilty. Like her being totally lazy as hell is somehow reflective on me as a parent and now she's going to become like this feral child who won't know how to walk until she's twelve and some dog scientist will have to teach her. I seriously feel that in my gut.

So essentially, I'm the most narcissistic mother in the world. Everything my baby does or doesn't do I attribute to my own success or failure, except for her utter adorableness, which I attribute totally to her father. I don't know if every mom does this, or if it's just me, but it's probably not healthy either way.  I need to knock that shit off like now.

And anyway, tummy time hasn't been a total bust. She laid on me during Christmas, and she's starting to like laying on me more and more lately. Don't ask me why. It's nothing I'm doing. Probably.

I like to think of it as one of my Christmas presents.