Baby V sleep update

Last night I slept on the nursery floor.

That sounds really uncomfortable, but it was a TRIUMPHANT NIGHT, and I have the rug marks on my face to prove it.

She slept in her crib all night long! I flounced into breakfast with Chebbles and Hub-D, screeching, "Hooooooray! I'm alone! The baby is NOT with me!"

Baby V's new feeding routine seems to be normalizing her sleep routine. And the "stretch 'em out" philosophy (detailed, kind of, in the post below) really seems to be working for her in other ways. She has completely stopped spitting up at all. She sleeps much more readily and soundly. She doesn't seem to be plagued by gas, and it could be my imagination, but she just seems more content.

Of course she's not content when I'm working on stretching those feedings. Today we got just two hours between midday feedings (four is the goal), but whatever. I'm not going to withhold food when she's truly hungry.

Anyway, I slept on her floor so that I could replace her pacifier in the middle of the night and comfort her before she got too upset when she woke up in the night. Also, I'd accidentally unplugged the baby monitor, and I thought it was broken, and I had no other option.

So while I curled up on the daisy rug next to her crib, cursing the store in Wyoming where I'd purchased the baby monitor and wondering if there is a troubleshooting guide online for this brand of monitor and who the hell makes such shoddy electronics, Baby V peacefully waited until 5:22am to be fed, just waking up partway a couple of times, going back to sleep without the boob.

So that is a stretch from 10pm until 5:22am, my friends. NOT IN MY BED. And once we get her daytime feeding schedule working a little better, I wonder (somewhat mystically) if longer sleep blocks might someday be possible.

I'm so convinced that the feeding schedule is responsible for this revelation in sleepytime, I want to strap a loudspeaker to the top of my car and drive around the neighborhood espousing this philosophy to all the sleepless moms in the East Bay.

Sleep just might be possible

Holy crap! Baby V is sleeping! WITHOUT ME.

In the past few months, when I've kibbutzed with other new moms, I hear them say things like, "When I went in to get her from the crib..." and I've thought, "What planet does that happen on? Where is it that babies sleep in their own receptacles?"

I know that some of you hippies think this is wrong, my desire to get my baby out of my bed, but I miss my husband terribly. He is too light a sleeper to share a bed with a nursing baby (whine suck burp snore... repeat), and he's been camped out in the guest room, waiting for an invitation back into our bed.

And it is wonderfully cozy, sleeping with my baby. OCCASIONALLY. But usually, it's just a pain in the ass, my friends. I've been contorting myself around her prone body, waking up filled with paranoia several times a night, checking to see if she's breathing and inadvertantly waking her up.

So until she stops waking up every 90 minutes, that is where all the action is: in my big old king sized bed. Me, Baby V, and a cat -- always a cat -- stationed at our feet. There, we can log a few hours of sleep at a time sometimes, or lie together reading "Brain, Child."

Well, today we've shaken up the whole system, due to my reading a book called "Teaching Babies to Sleep 12 Hours by 12 Weeks."

It's hard to get my eyes to focus now, due to the last three months of no sleep. (This kind of sleep deprivation permanently damages your brain, FYI.) But I curled around my honking nurseling and read the first few chapters last night.

If you haven't lived the bleary world of sleep deprivation, you probably don't understand why this book was such a revelation to me, but after reading and re-reading it with my wacky eyes, I understood the premise:

STOP FEEDING YOUR KID ALL OF THE TIME

That's not saying, "Don't feed your kid when she's hungry," but it's saying, "Stop sticking your boob in your kid's mouth to solve every issue." And with Baby V at 14 pounds, she is big enough now to last a few hours between feedings.

I had been feeding Baby V all of the time, not altering my boobage since the day she was born. I just latched her onto the boob whenever she whimpered, because that was the most brilliant solution I could think of. I didn't think, "Oh, maybe she's bored," or "Perhaps she's tired," or "Could it be that we just stepped on her head?"

I just solved every problem with food. What mother doesn't?

But unfortunately, this became an around-the-clock phenomenon. She got used to "snacking" all of the time, and never ate for more than five minutes, and never ate more than one boob. So for her, it was logical to wake up all the time to nurse.

So this morning, I "stretched" her. I fed her at 7:30am, then at 10:20, then at 1pm (it was an unheard of two-boober). The "ideal" in the book is four-hour stretches, but I'm easing into that idea, and I'm not going to implement it if Baby V seems truly hungry in the meantime.

The point of this WHOLE STORY is that she's still sleeping. In her crib. I put her down immediately after the 1pm feeding, and it's almost 4pm. Apparently she responds well to having a full belly!

Hey, I hear her stirring in there. I can't believe she slept this long!

PS: The image at the top of this post is a special little stuffed animal called a Wubbanub, which helps babies keep the pacifier in their mouth without Mama having to go replace it twelve times. The "Baby Coach" who wrote the book recommended that too, so heck YEAH I ordered it.

Baby V's Haircut

We took these pictures when Baby V was seven weeks old, and getting her first haircut. Enjoy!

For those keeping score, Baby V is now 11 weeks old, she's almost 14 pounds, two feet tall and her hair continues to grow at a good... clip.

Monkey Brain

There was a kind of peace to my illness over the last year. I became pregnant, and I was instantly either on bedrest, vomiting my guts out, anemic, contending with premature labor symptoms or marooned by my massiveness. I always had something to think about.

I would lumber through the house during my pregnancy, focused only on getting to the other side of the kitchen counter for my Zofran pills. That's it. Or I'd lie awake at night just thinking about how thirsty I was.

This may not sound peaceful to most people, but for those of us who live on a hyperactive mental treadmill, it was an unexpected pause from all the thinking I've done my whole life.

Today I went to my second yoga class this week. I'm determined to gain some muscle tone back, and to cure my constant back pain, so I've reported back to my yoga gurus for some physical training. And good yoga classes always include a little philosophy to get you through the poses. It was during this yoga class that I realized my "monkey brain" was back.

I started laughing near the end of the class when I realized how out of control my thinking had become. I was standing in the half-moon pose with my leg in the air and my hand on the ground and my knees quaking in their caps, and simulateously planning my WHOLE SUMMER.

So it not just my body that needs better muscle control, but my brain as well. When I was so sick, I truly thought about nothing but my own gut. I was so inwardly focused, I'd just walk by junk on my kitchen floor or smears of fingerpaint on my bedspread, and I'd think, "Huh," then keep on sailing toward the toilet.

But now I need to rein in my brain, who is so excited to be out of the gate and romping around, planning Chebbles' birthday party while adjusting Baby V's sleep schedule and worrying about my grandmother and swooning over Hub-D's haircut. All of these things I didn't think about for the last year are coming back -- all at once.

Oommmm.

Losing FDR

I just learned that FDR died.

She was the director of our Junior Year in Munich program, Frau Doktor Riegler, who was in charge of our program since around the time of the original FDR.

We arrived in Munich in late summer 1991, several dozen American college students who were committed to stay for a year, hone our German skills, attend the University, and continue our crazy college student ways.

Most of us arrived on the same airplane, and we chatted with each other on the trip from JFK airport, excited about the adventure that lay before us. Once we arrived in the Munich Airport, we were greeted by a very unusual woman.

"Is that the school nurse?" asked my new friend M., who had focused on her big white clogs and white polyester stirrup pants.

"Do you know what she's saying?"

She had light grey hair pulled back from her head in an impressive high, conical shape. She was maybe old, maybe not-so-old, but definitely inscrutible.

Maybe she was speaking in German, or maybe her English was just a little hard to understand, but none of us understood a word she said as she greeted us to the city of Munich.

Soon we were curtly informed by her assistant that she was the DIRECTOR of the program and we were to be quiet while she spoke.

The JYM program was on the brink of a lot of change, as was Munich and all of Germany in the summer of 1991. The wall hadn't been down more than two years and the shape of Europe was shifting in many ways. We paid for everything in Deutschmarks that were wired from our parents. There was no e-mail. There were still American military outposts in Munich left over from World War II.

It also seemed that a lot of our academic program was a holdover from the days following WWII as well. We went through an orientation that had been developed for students taking the boat over from New York, not a plane. I was quickly plopped into the lowest language German group, and we called ourselves the "Gemuese," meaning "vegetables." Our fellow students had arrived actually prepared for a year abroad at a foreign university. We Gemuese were flying by the seat of our pants.

But for some reason, despite my bratty attitude and lack of German skills, FDR took a shine to me. I was scared of her. She was mysterious and I never understood more than 25% of what she communicated to me. She had a dog named Poldi, who predeceased her, and out of respect for the dead, I won't tell you what a numbskull this dog was. I'll just say he died from eating an entire bag of dog food at one go.

But FDR seemed to like me, and this surprised my classmates who were just as intimidated by her. When she gave speeches on various topics, she tended to repeat herself over and over, so that I can't remember any of the content of the speeches, but the Leitmotiv is etched into my skull. I think her favorite speech was the "Mauer im Kopf" (Wall in Head) speech. I think it was about how the reunification of Germany was nowhere near complete, but I couldn't tell you. But the expression "Mauer im Kopf" goes through my brain about twice a day. "Mauer im Kopf! MAUER IM KOPF! Maaauuuer immmmm KOPF!"

At Christmastime, she had arranged a party for us with a Munich-based German military group. Why? I don't know, but I recall it being required. She pulled me aside and asked me to be the Christmas angel. I agreed nervously. What was I supposed to do? She was explaining it to me, maybe in German, possibly in English, but I had NO CLUE what she was saying.

She pulled a costume out of a bag in a back room at the party, and plunked it over my head. She put the wings on me (upside-down, but whatever), and a halo on my head. She praised my golden hair as being perfect for the part as she reached into her handbag (white, naturally) and pulled out a tube of lipstick. She uncapped the lipstick and drew massive circles on each of my cheeks and set me loose into the party room.

That's when I was greeted by the Grumpus, who is kind of a Christmas "bad guy" in Germany. As far as I understood it, he was a kind of pervy Grinch with coal marks on his face. And he proceeded to chase me around the room, through all of the tables of the merrymakers -- American students and German soldiers. I was supposed to ring a bell over my head while the Grumpus followed me and tried to molest me.

Maybe that's not a German tradition, now that I think of it, maybe it was just a one-time drunken Grumpus, but it was damn funny anyway. Who knew what cultural tradition we were trying to uphold?

But it made FDR happy, she scolded the Grumpus, but told me she thought I was a PERFECT Christmas angel. So there.

Throughout the year, she chided me for my poor academic performance, but gave me little tasks around the office, such as typing jobs for the old professors who were unaccustomed to life without a secretary. I was allowed to sit in her office, typing away, while she elegantly smoked thin cigarettes and chatted with the teachers.

The JYM program was HARD. It was somewhat arbitrarily so, and FDR kept it that way proudly. Some of the classes would have been effective for me, if I found more time to study, or if I honed my German skills anywhere but the Biergarten. But many of the classes were just... crazy. (If any JYM alumni reads this and doubts me, I refer you to the work of the nutty and flirtatious Herr Doktor Pilz.)

It drove us JYM students BONKERS whenever we met people on any other study abroad program, and we especially reviled the ones who were studying in Spain. Because compared to our academically rigorous program (picture me, eyes crossed with concentration, in a graduate-level Psychology class, trying to take notes and understanding only 10% of what was said, then having to write numerous essays on it, using sources that were only available at the University library, where they had, long ago, destroyed Dewey Decimal and turned him into Sauerbraten), the other students had it incredibly easy. They told us stories of having NO HOMEWORK EVER. And that their classes were "a joke."

Unlike every other study abroad director in Europe, FDR held us to incredibly high or impossible standards. I rarely understood the assignment, let alone the papers I turned in. In order to type out my assignments, I had to rent a laptop and printer from a local computer rental place. Otherwise, it would be handwritten assignments, and I would have had to write and rewrite my 16-page assignments. Hearing the words "Schriftliche Hausarbeit" (homework) now makes me break out in hives.

I hear there have been a lot of changes in the JYM program since the new director took over. I'm going to guess that things are a little more "modernized" and maybe we've finally recovered from our Mauers im Kopf. I hear that their offices are big and airy and do not reek of smoke and dog. I consider this a shame -- students are missing out on all the great character-building traumas we endured and leaving Germany fully unscathed. I hope that someone's still getting chased by the Grumpus.

Upon hearing of her death, I tried to encapsulate who she was, so that I might explain to my husband why I am sad, and why I want to donate yet again to the scholarship fund in her name. She was a... character? No, that's belittling. Well, one thing is certain, she was NOT the school nurse. She was a force to be reckoned with, and I had no idea the day we got off that plane in Germany, and even on the day that I got back on the plane home, how much I'd become attached to the inimitable Frau Doktor Riegler.

Baby V's earrings

Is there anything funnier than a newborn baby wearing giant clip-on earrings perched on the sides of her tiny little ears?

Because I don't think I could take that level of hilarity. When Chebbles did this yesterday it almost killed me.

Carolyn Jessop

I just finished reading Carolyn Jessop's book, "Escape," about her tortured life in the FLDS and subsequent escape.

The amazing part is that it's a true story. The unbelievable part is that it JUST HAPPENED.

The FLDS cults that have thrived in Utah, Arizona, Texas and British Columbia... holy crap, people. It's happening right now. Underage girls are being forced to submit to arranged marriages with old men, and the young men in the community are being abandoned on highways because, well, if you're an old dude with 71 wives, there really is no need for the 70 other guys.

The brainwashing, if it weren't evil, is almost admirable. It's so complete that women feel that they will go to hell if they don't obey their husbands in this lifetime. They are told that they are sealed for all eternity with their husbands, and even if these men beat starve them and their children -- they MUST STAND BY THEM. Or they will burn in hell, and be excommunicated from their peers.

Check out these chicks. Especially the MIDDLE ONE:



They are clearly being forced to say what they do. And the middle one's facial expression makes me want to fly a helicopter directly to her house and rescue her.

"Escape" is an excruciating but fascinating memoir of Ms. Jessop's escape from the community. She is the first woman who ever was able to leave and gain custody of her children. And that happened in 2002.

I also feel like some of the precepts of their organization are good. You can see the underpinnings of the nice parts of Mormonism peeping through the cracks, but power-hungry perverts have wrecked it for everyone, and now they have all these traumatized women and children in full long underwear under massive dresses in the hot sun living in terror of their one shared "Father."

And these women are lousy with fertility. They usually have something like 12 children, and sometimes 20 or so. But they aren't allowed to kiss and hug their kids, so it's not fair all the way around. Their bodies are wrecked by all that childbirth and hard work of raising kids (while wearing long underwear) and they must submit to sex with old guys (while wearing long underwear).

I'm glad that a spotlight has been shone on the injustices the children in this community are facing, and I am glad that the 16-year-old in Texas was brave enough to call the authorities about what was going on. But now, after reading "Escape," I wonder what the heck happened to that child, particularly now that they creepily deny her existence.

What makes a man sexy?

I know you all* like Obama, but I had to tell you how much I went "SCHWING!" when I saw this in the New York Times today.


*Except you, Mom, you old Ms.-subscribin' Hillary fan.

Little Mermaid Lyric Mystery

Chebbles and I like to sing "Part of Your World" a lot. If you were in our house, you'd say it was more than "a lot" and you'd probably call it highly excessive before you ran from our mermaid-filled house screaming.

But here is the strange thing -- some of the lyrics are mysterious, and no one can give me a straight story about them.

This is refrain in question:

"Bet'cha on land they understand
That they don't reprimand their daughters
(MYSTERY WORDS) women sick of swimmin'
Ready to stand."

Disney says those lyrics are "Strong young women" but it really doesn't sound like that's what Ariel is singing. We listen to that song approximately three times a day in our home, and I'm always vexed when we get to this lyric.

Many lyrics sites claim it's "Bright young women" and another one claims "Proper women."

What the heck? Why would Disney say the lyrics were one thing, when in fact they are another? And I'm sure it's not "Strong young women" so... what IS IT?

Otto's collection

We're all weary of the raccoon problem around here, whereby they continue to enter our house through the cat door. It's been going on for a long time, assisted by my nutty neighbor who continues to nurture their expectation that people feed them all the time.

It's gross.

For a long while I simply locked the cat door, but we've grown weary of manually opening the door for our active cats.

So I installed a magnetic cat flap door which hypothetically works by only unlocking when my cats enter the door wearing special magnetic collars.

Well, of course it doesn't work, but I've kept the magnetic collar on Otto because he is handily collecting all of the dangerous, tetanus-laden items from around the backyard, and delivering them back to me for disposal.

It really is handy. I've gotten numerous rusty nails and staples because Otto has reported home with these objects attached to his collar. He currently has a couple skanky BB's attached to his collar magnet, and I just need to pin him down and throw them away.

In a few months, Baby V will be mobile, and looking for new and interesting things to put in her mouth. Thank goodness for Otto's efforts, clearing the space of rusty metal junk. Now if we could collect the potentially lethal mushrooms from beneath the play structure, we'd be all set.