Anxiety

Apparently, there is a term for what I'm currently experiencing - post-partum anxiety. At least, that's what they called it in some random mother's magazine I thumbed through while waiting for my mom at the dentist yesterday. The writer was hilarious, though, and admitted to checking her infants temperature with a rectal thermometer so often that she was surprised someone hadn't called child services. This hit home, since I'd done that twice that morning while home alone with a slightly abnormally-crying Jeanne (her cries were "more plaintive" than normal, I thought...)

So. We're going to try to relax a bit.

Here is Jeanne hanging out in her temporary bassinet (laundry basket). She hardly fits in it, length-wise!

Resting - ish

I'm now NOT blogging from the 28 degree weather in Ithaca, I'm in Half Moon Bay watching the sun rise with my baby in a laundry basket next to me. Hubby is downstairs sleeping a bit more before he has to go to a morning meeting, and my parents are getting ready to go to work.

Yesterday I didn't get much done in the way of work, in part because I was doing a lot of chauffeuring and took one opportunity to walk the baby around Target and a mall to see if we could do that sort of thing without screaming - it went well! And then when I was home for 2 hours or so in between, we just fed and cuddled.

Ooh! A hummingbird just went to the window feeder - it was silhouetted against the gray morning sky, very cool. And impressive, since I think that it's in the 40's here right now. Go to sleep, hummingbird!

Now I'm going to try to get some busy-work done before it's time to get back in the car. If I'm REALLY lucky, I can do some work on my paper today. It is so close to finished that I can taste it. Even over the honey nut Cheerios that I just ate.

Sleepy.

We splurged and bought an Ergo baby carrier, albeit one of the patterns that was "on sale". It's a toned down Hawaiian print, which doesn't bode that well for coordinating with things I was planning on wearing to the conference next week, but it is pretty and will hide stains well. And who doesn't love a Hawaiian print? The black one that I would have bought otherwise would have shown spitup stains much more clearly. Both hubby and I tried it on in the store, and little Jeanne actually settled down and didn't cry when we put her in it! It has wide, backpacker-style padding on the hip belt and is very comfy.

I'm hitting my 3pm sleep zombie phase. Will take a nap after I feed the baby.

Failed.

My "I'm free" lunch with the faculty lasted about 5 minutes before we were joined by another faculty member who wrecked my lunch. I left after about 10 minutes of the ranting (directed at me, although I have nothing to do with the issue that was being discussed, except that I seem to bring loads of disapproval on my head whenever I don't VERY actively agree with her) and came back to the department, my tail between my legs. Sigh. Next time I will just do something else with my brief interludes out of the building.

Husband has the baby

I'm free!! I'm free!!! I get to leave the building and go to lunch with the other faculty members!!!

Don't drown the baby!!!

That's the lesson learned yesterday at the lactation consultant. Apparently, I was all but choking the baby with milk by nursing in the position I was using for her. By leaning back 45 degrees so that she was more on top of me, she instantly turned into super-nurser baby and we had far fewer troubles.

We've also been trying out a homemade Moby-wrap (just 5 yards of stretchy fabric, cut to be about 30" wide). Sorry about the hair, I'd just gotten out of the shower...




Closeup!!



The most fun has been carrying her like this at work (I can type! My hands are free! Woohoo!) and then turning around when people come to the door and watching them double take when they see the baby strapped to my stomach. I'm thrilled about how this is working, since she has fussed a lot at every other baby carrier that I've tried. This way I can walk around at AGU and see posters, at least!!!

Only problem is that she is really warm and my belly gets all sweaty after a while. We may just have to experiment with some looser wraps. We probably still have to buy a normal carrier, since I don't see Matt fooling with this thing. Works for me, though!

Lessons learned-

Lesson from yesterday: Do NOT underfeed the baby twice in a row by trying to feed her at too short of an interval (she won't be interested), followed by pumping to "make sure I keep up my milk". This will GUARANTEE that in an hour she will be famished and angry for the entire hour or so that it takes to get your milk kind of sort of available for her. And then it still won't be enough, and hubby will have to stay up half the night trying to get her to calm down.

She's still cute, though. I got some great fake smiles after the 5am feeding. I can't wait until we get our first real one!

Main nursing issue at this point: The flailing upper arm. If Jeanne is left unswaddled (or even if she is swaddled, usually), the upper arm swings around and pushes against me or covers her mouth, even when she obviously wants to eat. I need a third arm to hold it back. She gets so mad! She's trying to reach the milk, but there is this stupid arm pushing her head backwards! Why, why????