Wednesday, January 18, 2012

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.

4 comments:

  1. Oh, Don't worry about all of that. It's really stuff that the "specialists" make up anyway. In my mothers words, "Caveman survived and they didn't worry about all that stuff. What was the right thing to do when I was raising your siblings was all wrong by the time I had you. And the way I raised you will be all wrong by the time you have little ones. God gave mommies instincts. As long as you follow those God given instincts everything else will fall into place." I happen to be one of those kinds of people who studied to be a "specialists" and I realize that we really have no idea what's going on. Each child is different and therefore one size fits all advice makes no since. You are the specialist for your child and no amount of stressing out about what you are doing wrong is going to help. Just do what comes naturally and you will be doing great.

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  2. good lord. all that stuff is made up. don't worry about it. they grow up. they walk. they eat stuff. they crap in the toilet. they move away to college.

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  3. Oh geez .... all that crap is ridiculous ... the docs will make you CRAZY - I swear. You are doing a FABULOUS job Sarah ... and really I breast fed - no one ever told me to give all 3 of my kids Vitamin E - what the F*ck?

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