Peter's Cross Station

Sleep When the Baby Sleeps

It's all well and good with that first baby (and assuming you are not working a full-time, paying job), isn't it? But every mother of more than one knows that usually, when the baby sleeps, someone else (or multiple someone else's) are in desperate need of constant service and attention.

I have achieved that magical goal of overlapping naps, folks! Selina has lately decided that one nap per day is just fine for her, thanks, and believe it or not, this is a great relief to me. Now I can put her down at 11:30, put Nat down at 12 and they both sleep until 1 or 1:30.

This has been going on for three days now.

That means I have had a nap myself (even if it was only ten minutes on the couch) for two days in a row! It's amazing the difference ten minutes makes for an insomniac such as myself. All the difference in the world.

I don't know how long this will last. Nat is well over three now and is bound to give up napping at some point sooner rather than later. But I will enjoy it while I can.

Tired but...

I am really too tired to write much of anything these days.  But I had to stop in and tell you something.  I talked a mom today with a six-week old and a 22-month old and she is ready to kill somebody and certain that she is a failure as a mom and doesn't know why she can't handily parent two kids like she sees so many others doing.

I told her, and I'll tell you:  No, you aren't a failure or crazy it just really is that hard.  It is, it is.  It is totally normal to feel like you want to die, and that you'd perhaps even like to take a little person out with you when you go.

Yes, you should get some help--a friend, a relative, the UPS man, anyone!  Someone who can give you a nap for a hour, or a trip to the store alone or something.  Beg if you have to, pick up the phone and call someone you barely know.  And tell yourself that "this too shall pass" because it shall, it really shall.

Won't it, ya'll?  Tell her about it!

Hands

These are Nat's hands.

But I was noticing Selina this morning and thinking that I really love the stage of babyhood when they are still quite little, but their hands start working properly. Selina is getting increasingly dextrous these days. If she reaches for it, she tends to get it. If she aims for her mouth, she makes it. If she grabs for a crumb fallen from her rice cake, she can pick it up with a perfect "pincer" grasp.

I think it melts my heart to watch because the hands seem so ahead of the rest of the child. She's still more or less a helpless, completely dependent being but her hands are a little window into her future as a competent, independent person.

It's a reminder of the fleeting nature of this time when they so easily love me. Who knows what those hands will get up to when they're attached to a 17-year old?

It's Sunday Morning

Nat and I slept in instead of going to church today. I am hoping to use the time change to bump bedtime back by half an hour and thus hopefully, bump waking time up in turn.

Selina and Nat have been sharing a room for about two weeks now and it's mostly going swell. The careful placement of a screen and the judicious use of white noise have worked to cover each others' comings and goings during incompatible naps. I might be able to slip them onto a same-time nap routine when Selina decides to shift from two to one nap per day, but for now, I am just grateful that at three, Nat still willingly takes an hour+ nap every day. She certainly needs it. She's always been an easy and deep sleeper on a very regular schedule. Selina is a little less so, but not by too much. So hopefully the "sister room" as I'm calling it, will work well for them.

Big Home School post TBA. Watch this space!

To a Googler

The sheer desperation of this all-caps search string compels me to answer.

WHEN DO NEWBORNS GET EASIER

Ah, sweetie! Been there (twice). Babies are all different, but I'd say each of ours really turned the corner to sleeping more (which was the key for us) around 8-12 weeks old. Our first was colicky--crying from about 5pm to about 9pm (give or take) almost daily until five months old. That was tough. Putting her in a sling and walking around or bouncing up and down helped, though it was tiring.

But in general, they get easier and easier exponentially as time passes. Every week down is a week closer to easier. Hang in there!

Baby Sitters

When I was a baby sitter (on and off from age 12 until 34), I always just figured that when parents gushed over how great it was to have me, that this was some kind of blah-blah routine thing parents say to baby sitters.

Ha!

I appreciate me more now.

Nat's most consistent baby sitter (aside from Uncle David, of course) leaves soon for a semester abroad in Spain (I encouraged this crazy idea and am now kicking myself!) and we are all heartbroken. I now know just how fabulous it is when someone loves your kid and your kid loves her and she's someone who you can just totally leave your kid with and trust completely and she even feels a bit like the baby sister you never had to boot (English major!).

To get all those elements to gel is nothing short of a miracle.

Now it seems her best friend would like to step up to the plate and try to fill her shoes. I'm hopeful it will go well. But there's just no such thing as a true replacement for someone like Nat's Sarah.

We will miss her!

Nice While it Lasted

Everyone said Nat would love Selina until Selina got big enough to steal her toys and crawl around in her space. But Selina isn't that big yet and Nat is already taunting her by putting a toy up for Selina to grab, then, if Selina touches it, grabbing it back and saying "No Selina, it's my turn!"

Tonight we were all cozied up in a chair together, watching the news and Selina's foot brushed Nat's leg. "No Selina, that's my leg!" Nat chided her. Then again in reference to her elbow and her arm. I told Nat that if everyone was going to sit on top of Mama Shannon at the same time, some touching would be inevitable.

sigh

But Nat is still sweet with Selina a lot, too. She calls her "Seena Babeena" and "Baby Sister" and "Sister." The other day, Selina was doing a baby stand-up on Cole's lap and holding her head up quite proudly and Nat applauded, "Good job, sister!" When Selina cries, Nat will say "Aww, what the matter, sister?" A few days ago I left the room for about 45 seconds and when I returned, Nat was trying to spoon-feed Selina some cashew butter left over on a plate from Nat's breakfast. I had to deliver a stern reprimand about only grown-ups feeding the baby after rushing Selina to the kitchen to swab out her mouth with wet paper towels and pray she wasn't allergic to cashews (no reaction--not that time, anyway). But I think Nat meant well. I think. While I was busy swabbing, Nat turned her attentions to a doll whose face was covered with cashew butter when I returned.

When Selina came home, I had a chat with Aunt Nancy about how now I would find out more about what "babies" are like, versus what Nat is like. I realize it's kind more that I'm finding out what Nat and Selina are like, but the similarities and differences are still interesting.

So far, Selina, like Nat, loves to be held, slung, wrapped, Bjorned and otherwise carried. Like Nat, she prefers to sleep with people, but unlike Nat, she is not settling happily into sleeping alone in her hammock on a predictable time schedule. By this time, Nat was on a fairly regular sleeping and eating schedule and by six months (Selina is about 4.5) she was on an unshakable one. Nat would eat exactly 4 oz exactly every four hours. She took a 10 am-12 and a 2 pm-4 pm nap every single day without fail. She did that until well after she started solids, until I forcibly night weaned her by refusing the bottle at 2 am when she was ten months old.

Selina is pretty unpredictable. She sometimes eats 4 oz of formula. Sometimes she polishes off a 6.5 oz. bottle and I wonder how much more she would have wanted. I never know how to fill them for her maximum happiness and the least waste. She sometimes naps and sometimes doesn't. That is, of course she sleeps during the day, but often it's in snatches here and there and almost never in her hammock, though I got lucky a couple of days in a row here. Sometimes she wakes to eat at 11 pm or 1 am and sometimes she eats at 7:30 pm, goes to bed and sleeps soundly until 6 am. (That would be a good habit to get into, of course, but she only does it occasionally.) Basically, she's guaranteed to take a good long nap only if I wrap her on me. And then she'll do the two-hour morning nap or the two-hour afternon nap. But in her bouncy seat or the hammock, it's a crap shoot. Nights, if she does wake up in the middle, she's done sleeping on her own. I can fight it and keep getting up every 15-45 minutes to bounce the hammock and stick her binky in her mouth or I can kick Cole onto the couch and put Selina in bed with me and she's happy until 6 or 6:30.

What I like is the "happy until 6 or 6:30" part. I don't like sleeping with her because I just don't sleep well with her in the bed and Cole has to go on the couch because the bed just isn't big enough for me not to lay there all night worrying that we're going to smother her. Fortunately, Selina doesn't insist on sleeping on me. She's happy enough to sleep beside me. But still. I don't sleep so much like this, myself.

But all this is really just to say that as cuddly as Nat was and still is, Selina is, if possible, even cuddlier. I think that's just dumb luck, though. I don't believe all babies are this cuddly. I do think all babies probably prefer to stick as near to people as they can though.

I am starting to think that maybe we will not use a crib for Selina like we did for Nat when she outgrew the hammock. I think I might just get another twin futon and put it on the floor in what will be the girls' shared room. Then they can crawl into bed with each other if they like. As long as Selina is big enough and mobile enough by then to get away from Nat if she wants to, a sibling bed might work well for my cuddly girls. Anyone out there do a sibling bed?

Speaking of crawling, that's another difference. Nat loathed tummy time. She would not tolerate it for 2 seconds and screamed bloody murder the whole time. Selina had 30 minutes (!) of tummy time today, next to me on the floor while I worked on the laptop beside her. She kicks and coos and grins and laughs at the toys hanging just over her head out of reach and tries to move from here to there. Nat never crawled until long after she walked. Until she was eleven months old, I could sit her in the middle of a floor, run to the bathroom and return to find her right where I left her. Selina is going to be a crawler for sure and possibly quite soon. She is itchin' to crawl.

Selina also loves to sing. Nat is just now starting to sing along with me when I do lullabyes at night (or "bedtime songs" as we call them). Selina is already singing along. Her face is all smiles and round little toothless "oh!"s in various musical pitches while I sing "Amazing Grace." It almost doesn't work to put her to sleep because she's so worked up and excited about singing. But I keep doing it anyway, because, duh, how cute!

Last week was the 4 month check up and Selina came in at 13lbs, 14 oz, up to 50th %ile for weight from last month's 12th. She's still low--in the 6th %ile--for height. The doctor told me she would need to catch up in height or we should worry.

"Oh, she's probably just going to be short" I blithely answered.

"Oh no, she can't be this short," the doctor tried again "at this rate, she'd only be about five feet at adulthood." (Mind you, the doctor is only about 5'3" herself.)

"Yes," I said, "her mother told us she was five feet tall, but when I met her I was thinking she was probably closer to 4' 10". And Selina's father is only 5'7".

"Oooooh..." said the doctor making a note (perhaps: "all adopted babies are not completely unknowable biological mysteries from nowhere.").

Ha! My girl is perfectly healthy. If just about perfectly round. She's a little round ball of baby sweet enough to eat up with a spoon!

Atavistic

One of the coolest things to me about babies is how I can look at them and see ancient ancestors. Little Selina clings to me, even when I'm already holding her tight, and if I make a sudden move (or sneeze!), she grabs tighter, as if to insist "don't drop me out of the tree!" I lay her down for thirty seconds on a soft, warm bed and her face scrunches up and she prepares to wail as if she'd been left on a rocky hillside like Baby Oedipus, just waiting to be plucked away and carried off by eagles.

Baby care is such a physical task, whether you gave birth or not; whether you're breastfeeding or not. I'm always hearing biological mothers blithely refer to "hormones" as if that is what drives them to hear phantom cries, or wake when the baby's breathing pattern changes slightly, or to have eyes in the back of their heads. But I have all these things too, so if it's hormones, they must be triggered by motherhood as a state, rather than necessarily pregnancy or nursing per se.

I am convinced that adoption is as "natural" as anything can be said to be.

I used to date an OB/Gyn who had delivered thousands of babies (plus one of her own) and she told me that human beings' tendancy to anthropomorphize everything from goldfish to cars is an evolutionary atavism that reflects our "adoption gene." She said that given the high number of fatalities our ancestors experienced in child birth, the willingness--even desire--to pick up a baby unrelated by blood, to see ourselves in it and care for it as our own was a survival necessity.

Selina is certainly eager for me to pick her up these days. She won't sleep anywhere during her daytime naps but on a human being. At night she is sleepy enough to go down in her hammock, but she is spending about 16 hours of 24 on a person (me, Cole, David, one of a couple of helpful friends) every day lately. She snuggles down, finds a fist of clothing to grab and holds on for dear life and I can hear her little self pleading to be kept close and protected from wolves and it hits me somewhere in my reptilian brain.

I know childhood is culturally constructed and its definition shifts over time, but I can't help but think that when we did live in trees, and of course didn't put the babies down at all, well, that was somehow the essence of true infancy. I know babies can survive and thrive though they are parented in many different ways, but it just kills me to have this back problem that keeps me from being able to just strap Selina on and go about my business. I get stuck in the rocking chair a lot so as to hold her as much as she craves. And when people suggest that I shouldn't hold her so much or even say I'm "spoiling" her, well, the adoption hormones (or whatever they are) almost drive me to growl and snarl like a wolf myself. So clear is it to me that my baby needs to be held.

I did get to start the physical therapy with my chiropractor last Thursday. Here's hoping that by the time we are slogging through multiple airports next week, it will not be completely forbidden for me to wear that baby wrap.

Help?

If you were going to read ONE book about childbirth--not pregnancy, but just childbirth--what would it be?

Mothers

Our meeting with Ivy was lovely except that Ivy was really ill with swollen tonsils. She shouldn't have come at all, she should have stayed in bed, but she told us she didn't want to let us down, since we'd driven so far (3.5 hours ish). So we only chatted for 15 minutes or so before she needed to get home and take her antibiotics and sleep.

We talked about names, we talked about birth She is absolutely certain she absolutely wants us in the delivery room. The very first thing she said to Cole upon shaking her hand was "did she tell you I want you there?" She even wanted to talk logistics--should we come up and stay near her close to her due date? Should she come down and stay near us? Her babies tend to come early and within 4 hours, so if we're going to be there, we need to plan it out. So that is that. These are her strong wishes. I am not interested in condescending to tell her she is wrong about what she thinks she wants. We know that baby isn't ours until the papers are signed and we know that even after (if) papers are signed that baby is still hers. As I told someone else today, I can't change the law, but I can bend over backwards to honor her moral rights. And she has, at this point not only a moral, but a legal right to decide who is allowed at her birth. If she changes her mind between now and then, that's fine. But as long as she feels this way, it's her decision.

Separate from all that, we of course, are delighted to be there, whether the baby comes home with us or not. I have always wanted to attend a birth and have not had the chance yet. It will be an honor to be there for her regardless of our ultimate relationship to the child. And if the baby does come home with us, it will have been a blessing to have all three moms there for its birth.

On "it": Ivy still doesn't know the gender. I think she gets one ultrasound and she says she'll send us copies of the photos and let us know gender if they can tell. So we're still airing both girl and boy names.

Naming.
There's a thorny one. Lots of adoptive parents talk about it.

Cole and I have been talking names for months. We thought we had first names all figured out and would leave a middle name for the first mother. Well, that's not how Ivy sees it. She wants us all to talk names together. So we are back to the drawing board. I want to keep the first names we picked out but move them to middle names and pick new firsts with Ivy. But Ivy is not all that keen on the girl name we picked. So we'll see how it all comes out. I'll have to let you know. I do know that I feel quite differently about this now than I did before I had Nat, which brings me to...

Already Being a Mother while Planning to Adopt.
When we did this with Nat, we had no idea what we were doing. Rose was an abstraction to us. We didn't know her before Nat's birth and after we heard about her on the phone from the social worker, we still didn't feel we knew her. We respected her, we wanted to know all about her, but we didn't know her.

When we met her we loved her instantly. That was because by the time we met her, Nat had been home with us for two days and we loved her instantly, and so we loved Rose, the flesh of her flesh.

But in this case, Ivy is not an abstraction. Even before we met her, she was less an abstraction than Rose had been, because now we are parents and we weren't back then. I know what it feels like to be a mother now in a way that I didn't quite know before (I have parented before, but not with a legal commitment). Now I know how it feels to have someone put a baby in your arms and say, "this is your daughter." In short, it felt to me like "this is my daughter." Done and over and I am a mother unchanging forever and that is that. If, five minutes later, someone said "that's not your child," I would have thrown myself under a car to prove otherwise.

So without knowing what someone else feels per se, I do know that a woman who's grown a baby in her body for nine months is a mother, unchanging forever. And I knew that, intellectually before Nat, but I feel it, viscerally now. And whatever formal, legal power imbalances there might be between us, if we parent Ivy's baby, there are no moral imbalances as I see it. I know that not all adoptive parents would agree with me, but that's how I see it. So Ivy has as much right to name this child as we do. "Saving" the middle name for her is not really equal. It's tossing her a bone. That's how I feel about it. And if it were Nat in question here, I'd want to be an equal part of the process. Not handed some little piece of it that the people with the legal power condescended to give away.

I think Cole is feeling at least this way about it. Maybe even more strongly. So, like I said, we're back to the drawing board and that is why.