I just reviewed the 4 minutes of video I have taken of Eric. The birds get upset when they hear themselves in the background of the tape, and even though I have tried to keep my shots relatively short, I think it would be dull for most people. I got some great action footage of Eric spitting up today, though. I am no award-winning videographer, that much is clear.
I had trouble last night deciding whether to attend my Mothers & More meeting. Finally decided against it, and good thing. The cold I have been coming down with hit me hard around 8:00 last night. David is a day or two ahead of me; it doesn't seem to be too bad. I have been a little fuzzy-headed and tired from it today. We are waiting to see whether Eric catches it; a big surprise if he doesn't. I told David we should take a culture and save it in Eric's scrapbook: First Viral Infection. Then, some years from now, when we're home-schooling, we could grow the culture and demonstrate how all of us are immune to it because we had it before.
And then we could demonstrate how people who haven't had it before are still susceptible, by infecting Uncle Scott, who is in San Francisco until Monday.
Eric has had a very busy day so far. He's been playing like crazy. He loves the playgym Adrianne sent us. He plays with the hanging toys, and also rolls on his side, grabs onto the gym's leg with both hands, and chews on it. Very silly. He vocalizes a lot, and is exploring the quality of Loudness. It was a bit alarming until I got used to it.
In the waiting room at the chiropractor this morning, the mother of a nine-month-old girl asked whether I am nursing Eric. Why is that everyone's third question to me, after "Boy or girl?" and "How old?" When I said no, I had been unable to breastfeed, she launched right into, "Oh, you're better off..." followed by her particular complaint about breastfeeding. (In this case, it was "baby never took a bottle so I haven't ever been away from her for more than 4 hours"; sore nipples runs a close second after complaints about the time commitment.) At first, comments like that did not piss me off, but they are beginning to, to the point that the next breastfeeding mother who tells me I'm lucky I couldn't breastfeed may get smacked. First, they're obviously lying: if they really believed bottle-feeding mothers were better off, they'd be bottle-feeding, right? Second, they're just rude. What is the appropriate response to bad news? "I'm sorry to hear it," but not one person has spontaneously said that to me. Even my (non-o.b.) doctor said yesterday, when I told her I hadn't been able to breastfeed Eric, "It's OK," and only retracted when I burst into tears. She meant to reassure me that it was fine to feed Eric formula (and I believe that), but it would be nice if someone would just say, sometime, "I'm sorry to hear it."
Miss Manners says that people say dumb things because they don't know what to say, and she recommends remembering that "I'm sorry," "Congratulations," "Thank you," and "You're welcome" are multi-purpose, always appropriate, and completely inoffensive. I offer up a little mental thanks to Miss Manners whenever that little bit of advice sees me through. For instance, this morning when the chiropractor told me that her office would be closed until Wednesday because her father-in-law died last night and apologized for the inconvenience, I assured her that no apology was necessary and said, "I am sorry for your family's loss." Thank you, Miss Manners. I might otherwise have said, "Oh, you're better off. My father-in-law is nothing but a pain in the ass."
I suppose it's hard for people, too, because having to bottle-feed just doesn't seem that bad in the grand scheme of things (and it may seem like even less of a big deal to women who have successfully breastfed). And I'm aware of that. If I had to pick one bad thing from a list of all the bad things that can happen to new mothers and their babies, I can hardly think of anything less bad than having to bottle-feed. But subjectively it is the worst thing that has ever happened to me.
Eric is shaping my behavior through a subtle and extremely effective reward system. I think I told you about the "Are you a cat?" game. Well, he now has me talking Baby Speak most of the time. If I talk to him in a normal voice, he smiles at me. But if I talk Baby Speak ("Hiiii Eric! Who's the good baby? Are Yooooo the good baby? Yeeessss, Eric's the goooood baby. Good Baaay-by" and so on) he grins and wiggles in delight, and sometimes even laughs. Which would you choose? A friendly, "Hello, son," rewarded with a smile, or thirty seconds of abject humiliation compensated by a grin-and-wiggle? Trust me, once you're a parent, you'll do anything for the grin-and-wiggle.
Eric turned 4 months old yesterday (and a year old, counting from conception, 8 days ago). It's David's fault you haven't seen recent pictures; he's had "scan and post new photos" on his to-do list for so long that I've gone through a whole new roll of film and dropped it off to be developed. When you do see pictures, you will see that Eric is a charming and good-looking little guy.
When I brought Eric into bed with me at 4 a.m. the other night, he slept peacefully, without his usual dawn-time restlessness, until 7:30 or so. I wondered if that might be because he hadn't slept as well in his crib and was tired. But last night he slept beside me from 10 until 7:30 with no dawn-time restlessness, so maybe he's giving up kick-boxing in his sleep. My kidneys hope so--as does my hair, which he grabs and pulls when he's restless at night. It's bad enough I'm losing it in the comb and on my pillow--I don't need Junior yanking it out by the handful.
That's nice, but, on the other hand, he has recently doubled his poop production. He has added a mid-afternoon poop as well as his usual morning poop. This afternoon, while changing the afternoon poopy diaper, I told him that his one-a-day poop schedule had created in me the reasonable expectation of only having to change one poopy diaper per day, thus constituting a de facto contractual agreement, and that it was a violation of our contract for him to start pooping twice a day (I've been watching lawyer shows). He just laughed.
He always laughs on the changing table. He loves having his diaper changed, and also enjoys being undressed and dressed. I told David it's probably evolutionary: babies that laugh while having their poopy butts wiped are more likely to survive infancy than babies that don't (see above: "once you're a parent, you'll do anything for the grin-and-wiggle").
Posted by Su Penn at December 7, 2003 05:41 PM | TrackBack