It's 4:45 p.m. and I just managed to finish reading the comics in this morning's paper. Eric has been quietly needy all day--I haven't been able to put him down to sleep. Yesterday we were visiting my friend Sarah, and Sarah was holding Eric while he slept. After awhile, she asked, "Can I put him down beside me, or will it disturb him?" I said, "Check his arm. If you can pick it up and let it go, and it drops limply with no resistance, you can put him down. But if there's any resistance at all, he's not deeply enough asleep and will wake up if you move him." Eric has not passed the arm test all day today. Even now, when he's been sleeping in the sling for 40 minutes, he still has a stiff arm. I'm not sure why; just a clingy day for the little guy, I guess.
I ended up watching a video while I held him this afternoon. That's not too bad a way to pass the time.
The latest baby book I"m reading is The Baby Book by William and Martha Sears, gurus of attachment parenting. I browsed through it yesterday afternoon, and it's the only one I've read that mentions the arm test for knowing when your baby is really deeply asleep and ready to be put down (they call it the "limp-limb test"). I feel clever that I figured it out for myself.
I had a cavity filled without anesthesia this morning. No, it was not a triumph of hypnosis--the dentist just promised me it was so small I wouldn't need novocaine. I insisted on nitrous oxide, however. I had been thinking of trying hypnosis to get me through the novocaine shot (the thing I most need gas for is that horrible needle), but when I found out there would be no novocaine, I decided not to be a hero. And as it turned out, I needed both hypnosis and nitrous oxide to stay calm. The drilling didn't hurt but I was constantly afraid it was about to. Fortunately, the whole thing was very quick, and I've been glad not to have novocaine-face today. The dentist said, "Next time you'll trust me!" Maybe. Maybe not.
Eric and I got home about 11:30 a.m., he ate a hefty meal (all his meals are hefty these day), and then he stayed awake for almost three hours playing. At just about noon, I had him in my lap and was talking to him and he made a little happy face. I said to him, "You almost smiled at me!" and gave him a big grin--and he smiled back. It was fleeting and engaged only the left side of his mouth, but it was unmistakable. Now I'm waiting even more anxiously for the next one, and for the full gummy smile.
We moved up a diaper size, and have been testing different brands. We had a package of one kind that we just hated, but, being me, I insisted on using them up. I finally took the last one off him a couple of hours ago, and good riddance. I don't know if the diapers just really suck, or if I'm a big feeb at putting them on (I can hear Scott saying, "of course, those two things are not mutually exclusive"), but five or six of them in a row leaked. It's been the Baby Eric Fashion Show around here--he's had a new outfit every two hours.
He's like a horse being saddled, I sometimes think. He puffs his stomach out when you are trying to close the diaper, so it seems nice and snug but gets loose as soon as he starts breathing normally again.
At the doctor's office on Monday, I read in Child magazine that a 25-year study has shown that children who grow up in clean homes are more successful and make more money as adults. I told Eric, "You're doomed, kid." Scott asked me, "How much more money?" I said, "$3100 per year." So now we have to decide how much housework we're willing to do to ensure Eric's success as an adult.
Of course, the article pointed out that cleanliness of the home was correlated with higher educational levels and higher socioeconomic status in parents, so I suspect what the study really showed was the kids of highly-educated, financially well-off people are more likely to be highly-educated and financially well-off. Color me surprised.
I skimmed through some of these entries and discovered that they're all about diapers, how much Eric eats, and how much he sleeps. Which are pretty much the primary concerns of my life right now.
Speaking of how much he sleeps, night before last he went seven hours between feedings. Last night, he went back on the 10-3-6 plan, which is a good schedule except that he had raised the bar on Monday by sleeping from 9 to 4. It's amazing how quickly one develops new expectations.
David and I were talking about that in reference to our new car. Remember how excited we were to have a 3-disk CD Changer? We hadn't even considered a CD player an essential feature, so the 3-disk changer was just terrific. Except that we have both independently come to the conclusion now that it is inadequate for our needs. You'd be surprised how quickly you exhaust three CDs just doing ordinary errands around town, and you'd be surprised what a pain it is to change the disks. Next thing you know we'll have a 200-CD changer installed in the trunk. And next thing you know after that, we'll discover that even a 200-disk changer is not good enough.
I am happy to say we passed our car seat inspection with flying colors, except they made me take out the little head-support thing we had put in to keep Eric's head from flopping to one side and snapping his neck. Apparently, you're not supposed to have anything that goes behind the baby in the car seat, in case it interferes with the seat's ability to restrain him. I don't know; I can't believe a single layer of fabric is that big a liability. We'll probably take his life in our hands and put it back in.
The other night I was web-surfing and went to the U of Minnesota English Department web page. We are still thinking of moving to Minneapolis, with next year as a strong possibility, so I have been thinking of applying to the Ph.D. program there. Their website is great, much better than MSU's, with tons of good info. But, like the department at MSU, they have recently refurbished their program to be more in keeping with contemporary scholarship, and it sound hideous. Here are some snips (which I snagged from the page's source code, which I knew how to do because I saw David do something like that once):
The department has embraced the expansion of what is read, studied, and discussed, so that a wide range of written texts is brought into creative tension with the traditional canon, and with extra-literary discourses such as popular culture, film, electronic media, legal documents, and the visual and musical arts.The department has also explored and opened up different approaches to those texts and discourses. Contemporary theories and fresh views of traditional rhetoric and criticism provide dynamic ways to read and interpret, as do the lenses which emerge from cultural, social, political, and economic contexts. Needless to say, the result is not a uniform or monolithic consensus on what to study or how to study it.
Who should apply? Our graduate students typically arrive with a good general reading background and a willingness to deal with difficult texts of all sorts--experimental fiction, epic poems, web sites, post-anything theory.
I find "post-anything theory" particularly frightening. Of course, I should look at the actual course offerings. If Minnesota is anything like MSU, the program looks much more Po-Mo on paper than it is in practice. I just can't believe anyone really takes this stuff seriously, though, really believes they've discovered some important interdisciplinary way of doing scholarship instead of just a ridiculous trend that will embarrass us all horribly twenty years from now, like photos of my cousin's wedding in the late 70s in which all the men are wearing powder blue tuxedos with inch-wide white piping on the lapels. Did I tell you about someone I know who's doing an article on bathrooms in Ally McBeal and Virginia Woolf? That's going to be cringe-worthy on a c.v. in ten years, I think. Heck, in five years--what's the cultural life expectancy of Ally McBeal?
One of the things I liked about Dr. Arch, my Colonial Lit prof, is that in the introduction of his latest book, he said in so many words, "I'm not post-anything, trans-anything, or inter-anything." He was lying, though. After all, in his colonial lit class we read not only captivity narratives, religious autobiography, and novels (the classics of colonial literature) but scientific writings; the Federalist Papers, which are traditionally read as political theory instead of literature; and the Declaration of Independence.
Right now, I don't really see myself getting a Ph.D. anyway. But we'll see. I had been planning to apply to MSU, U of Minn, and maybe another place or two just to keep my options open. It would be hard for me to write a statement of purpose about what draws me to Minnesota's program without lying through my teeth, though, which is against my religion. But I don't think, "I want to come to your school because my partner wants to live in Minneapolis and I can't think of anything better to do with my life " is exactly compelling to admissions committees, even if "can't think of anything better to do with my life" probably accounts for 70% of new grad students.
Another thing that was in the Child magazine was an article about doulas, who are professional labor-support people. They also offer support after the birth, and this article said [I'm paraphrasing], "you should think about hiring one to come to your home. They're trained to support mothers, and in that way are unlike all your friends and relations whose offers of help will amount to coming over and holding the baby, freeing you up to do pleasant tasks like clean your toilet." I had to laugh guiltily, because I did a lot of that last year with Noah, taking care of him so that Adrianne and/or Carla were free to, for instance, pack for the move ot Montana. What a pal!
Last night after the 2:30 feeding, I put a limp-limbed Eric down to sleep in the middle of the bed. When I woke up at 6, I was clinging to the edge of the bed and he was stuck to my back like a suction-cup octopus. I am happy to say that Dr. and Mrs. Sears affirm my belief that my tiny baby is capable of moving himself into proximity with me; they say some of their kids were like heat-seeking missiles. I had been questioning whether developmentally he was really capable of it, or if he was just, I don't know, rolling in my direction as I depressed the bed. If we hadn't seen a video in our breastfeeding class that showed newborns crawling up their mothers' abdomens to get to the breatst, I wouldn't have believed it at all.
In Sears and Sears, we encounter once again the three kinds of babies (the good, the bad, and the ugly). They call an "easy baby" an "easy baby," but they call a "difficult baby" a "high-needs baby with good attachment-promoting skills," by which they mean the baby needs a lot and lets the parents know it by crying, fussing, and so on--be demanding that its needs be met. They call the "slow-to-warm-up baby" a "high-needs baby with poor attachment-promoting skills," by which they mean that this baby also needs a lot but doesn't demand what it needs and is therefore likely to miss out; these babies are also often not very cuddly and so they don't reward their parents for picking them up and giving them attention. "These babies may appear to be easy babies, but in reality they are high-need babies in disguise." I find the various guises under which the three types of baby (only three?) show up in the literature interesting.
I am down to just skimming baby-care books for anything new they might suggest. I think it's worth hearing from two or three experts, because they disagree with each other, one might offer a helpful tip another one doesn't, and they're all guaranteed to be wrong about something. But I think I'm done reading baby-care books.
For the record, I've really only read four--it just sounds like more because I also read magazines and websites. That shows how post-modern I am. If only I had also read some experimental fiction, epic poetry, and legal documents on the subject, I would be ready to write a dissertation at the University of Minnesota.
If you were interested in attachment parenting, the Sears book is OK. Much less ideologically pure than the other one I read, and it includes actual practical tips as well as gossamer-cloud fantasies of how perfect everything will be with your breastfed, co-sleeping, worn-in-a-sling-all-day baby. The Searses acknowledge, for instance, that co-sleeping doesn't work for every baby or every parent, and point out that the system has drawbacks even when it works well.
I make fun of attachment parenting, but I suppose I am an attachment parent. I am, after all, engaged in two out of three of the essential attachment-parenting practices, sleeping with my baby and wearing him around in a sling. And lord knows I would be breastfeeding if I could. I also believe in the other two attachment parenting principles, "Connect with your baby" and "Read and respond to your baby's cues," although I'm not always so good at the latter.
Of course, who's going to admit to being a detachment parent? Even if they are.
Mr. Fussy needs a bottle; more later.
Fake out. He's working on waking up but it's a gradual process, and he tends to drop back off when I get up--walking always puts him right out. That was the third time since I started writing that I got up with a fussy, rooting baby and reached the refrigerator with a peacefully sleeping one.
I call him "Mr." everything: Mr. Fussy, Mr. Hungry, Mr. Sleepy, Mr. Happy, Mr. Poopy Boy, Mr. Pudgy Turtle Face. I wonder what I would call a girl baby? Certainly not "Miss."
Here's a Happy Adventures in Mothering story. On Monday, my doctor appointment ran late (my post-partum checkup; all is well), so I called David from my cellphone and we agreed to meet for dinner at a burger joint. On the way there, Eric got hungry and started crying, and he was pretty worked up by the time we arrived. I grabbed a table, shook up a bottle, and started feeding him. Two minutes in, I suddenly felt a warm wetness spreading across his back. Leaky diaper. I decided to change him before continuing to feed him, so off we headed to the bathroom, diaper bag in hand. Bathroom: no changing station, no countertop. So I changed his diaper (both wet and very poopy; no wonder it leaked, no wonder he cried) kneeling on the floor of a public restroom. He was on a changing pad, of course, but it wasn't big enough for both of us. Thank goodness the floor was neither wet not especially filthy, but neither was it especially clean. When we finished, I got up and was unable to wash my hands because there was no soap, even if I had been able to figure out what to do with the baby while I washed up (fortunately disposable diaper wipes work pretty well for handwashing). And then, on the way back to the table, he spit up on the shoulder of my black dress. Good thing I have a sense of humor.
When Scott and David arrived, Eric and I were sitting at the table and baby paraphernalia, including the bottle, the cap of the bottle, a burp cloth, a blanket, and a pacifier, as well as my cellphone, my sunglasses, my keys, and my hat, was strewn everywhere. As if we had been camping there for a week, or were planning to. I'm just glad that, as Eric has grown, he actually weighs more now than the diaper bag. I think. Perhaps I'll put the diaper bag on the baby scale, just to be sure.
Posted by Su Penn at July 18, 2003 08:08 AM | TrackBack