NewKid

Sorry that was so short! Yes, I am pregnant. About five minutes pregnant - 4 weeks, 2 days.

After Eleanor was born, as much as I loved her, I didn't think I'd be able to do it all again. The sleeplessness, the isolation, the anxiety...I just didn't think i could handle it.

The miracle of sleep, plus Prozac, when she was 5 months old went a long way toward making it better. By the time she was six months, I knew we'd do it again someday, but I figured we'd start in fall 2007 so they'd be about three years apart.

When Eleanor was 11 months old, I started to feel the first stirrings of baby fever. She was so much fun! How could another one not be even MORE fun? But we decided to stick to our planned timeline.

In September, when Eleanor was 14 months old, the baby fever got intolerable and I finally broached the subject with Andy. To my surprise, he said he felt ready, too. We decided to wait until after my first appointment with my new GYN, scheduled for late October. I wanted to meet her, discuss pregnancy timing, whether I should stop the Prozac, etc. But we had a plan! In preparation, I started charting, just to get an idea of my cycle.

In mid-October a friend of mine got married, and we got a babysitter for one of the first times ever. The wedding was a blast. Do you see where this is going? We had fun. But...two days later I looked at my chart and realized I was ovulating. Oops!

One week after that, I got heartburn and sore boobs. By 8 DPO, I decided I must be imagining it, and took a test that evening to shut myself up. I knew it would be negative, and I could go back to wondering for a few days.

It was positive. So were the approximately 1,000 other tests I took over the next few days to make sure.

So here we are! I did meet with the new doctor, and she's great. I'm off the Prozac for now but she'll try me on Zoloft at soon as NewKid is born (Prozac is no good for breastfeeding, unfortunately.) My first prenatal appointment is December 19.

Wish us luck!

July 14, 2008

Is it:

a) Bastille Day?
b) the day after Eleanor's second birthday?
c) EDD of Eleanor's new brother or sister?
d) All of the above?














Answer: D.

My brother and SIL (yes, THAT brother and SIL) recently announced that they're expecting another baby. It was nice to greet that news with genuine happiness and not a months-long meltdown, I have to say.

Sometimes little things still nag at me. On Father's Day when they made their announcement at dinner with my dad and his family, we got in a discussion of all the babies born recently and how they've all been girls. We have Eleanor; my brother and SIL have Emma; my stepbrother and his wife have a two-year-old daughter. My dad said something like, "Well V [a cousin] has two boys, but she's the only one so far."

I said, "Well, we had a boy."

Silence.

It felt like it went on forever, but it was probably only a couple of seconds; then my dad recovered himself and said, "That's right, you did." And the conversation moved on. But that kind of sucked. I don't go through every day thinking about Joseph constantly any more, and I don't expect anyone else to, either, but I had the sense my dad had completely forgotten.

It's nice to know there are still people out there checking this blog! I've done some reading to see what's going on with everyone and thought I'd check in and let you know how we're doing.

We moved to Fairfax, VA at the end of January. It's been wonderful! My husband is happier than he's been in years - he's loving his job again, he has a 15-minute commute, and it's no longer a 15-hour ordeal to see his family. I think we've visited them more in the last six months than in the six YEARS we were together before that. They're thrilled, of course, since they get to spend time with Eleanor.

I found a job within two months of getting here, and started at the end of April. I'm a writer/editor for a big government contractor, and I like it. I'm learning a lot, and I love being able to write again. We found a daycare less than two miles from the townhouse we're renting, and we love it. Eleanor was 9 months old when she started, and she adjusted really well. (The first day, the teacher told me when I went to pick E up, "We wish ALL our babies were like Eleanor!") She's been in a separation-anxiety phase of crying at dropoffs lately, but overall they tell me she's doing great there. I drop her off a little after 7 am; then Andy leaves work at 3 (he gets there at 7) and picks her up on his way home. They have about two hours of daddy/baby time until I get home around 5:30. She's gotten really attached to him, and he's gained a ton of confidence in his parenting skills without me being the default because I was around all the time.

I miss E while I'm working, and sometimes it seems like there aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done, but overall, being a working mom feels much more balanced and fulfilling than being at home did.

We celebrated Eleanor's first birthday on July 13:

She is a joy and a delight. Ever since about 5-6 months, motherhood has gotten better every day. I love tickling her and making her laugh. I love watching her eat things I never thought a baby would like, like Gardenburgers and pasta with pesto and dill pickles. I love that she sleeps through the night and we all wake up happy and refreshed. I love her chubby little arms.

She started crawling around 10 months, and from there things just exploded - a month after she first crawled she pulled up for the first time; within a few weeks she was cruising, then letting go to stand momentarily on her own, then taking a few tentative little steps here and there; and last night she strolled across the room so nonchalantly that it took me a minute to register what I was seeing.

Life couldn't be better right now.

A few more pics:

About 9 months old:

Trying out a first birthday gift:

Anyone still out there?

Six Months Old!

I am a bad blogger. I apologize.

Eleanor turned 6 months old last Saturday. So much has changed since I last wrote. As is probably obvious, I was so anxious all the time and I really wasn't enjoying motherhood as much as I wanted to. In November, the counselor I've been seeing since I had Joseph suggested I go see her colleague, the psychiatrist, about possibly going on meds for PPD.

I wasn't sure about it. I wanted to feel better, but I didn't want to take meds if I didn't have to. I thought maybe my problems were related to sleep deprivation - by November, Eleanor had become completely dependent on her pacifier to sleep, and was waking up 6-8 times a night wanting it put back in. I was a zombie. So I met with the psych, but we decided we'd work on the sleep issue first and see if that helped.

In mid-November, we taught Eleanor to sleep without the paci, which was remarkably easy and involved almost no crying. The very first night after we took it away, she slept ten hours straight. TEN HOURS. Now, she's fallen into a predictable pattern - bedtime around 7:30, wakes once to eat around 4:30, and then sleeps until 7 or 7:30. It's like heaven.

But I was still a wreck. I can't really describe it - it was just the creeping feeling of always feeling like I was doing something wrong. Even though she was sleeping, I had insomnia. I was anxious and lonely and bored. So around Christmastime, I went back to the psych and we agreed to start me on Prozac.

And...I'm like a different person. I don't know if it's all the Prozac or if Eleanor suddenly got about twice as cute and fun as she had been, or a little of both, but it's been a revelation. She is the BEST. She laughs all the time. She rolls over. She sits up without support. She's learned to scoot herself around on her back. She loves to be bounced up and down. Being her mom is SO MUCH FUN.

In other news, we sold our house. We close on the 31st! I've been running around scheduling movers and packing stuff up and getting ready to go. I'm really excited. I'll also be looking for a job once we get there, which I'm looking forward to.

Rambly post - but I'm hoping to start writing again more. Here are some recent pics:

With Emma (Eleanor's on the right) at Christmas:


Six months old:

Falling apart

I'm not doing so well here. I need to get all of this out.

Eleanor recovered from her nursing strike. I figured out that for whatever reason, she didn't want to lie on her left side in order to nurse on the right. I brought her to the ped, but no ear infection; she was just being picky. She's back to nursing normally, but now we have the opposite problem - all of a sudden, at three months, she's refusing the bottle. She took it fine from the time she was 3 weeks old - she'd even take it from me. Now all of a sudden when you put it in her mouth, she just sits there, then cries if you try again. We've tried breast milk, we even tried formula. We tried bottles and nipples from Medela, Dr. Brown's, Evenflo, and Nuk. We tried Andy giving her the bottle and we tried me giving it to her. Nothing works.

This is a big problem. I have not been away from her for more than two hours since she was born, and it was only two hours on two occasions, and on both of them it was just me, not Andy (he stayed with her). I am going crazy. I need to get out. Things have been better since I joined Gymboree and met some nice-enough women - we even went to a Reel Moms matinee this week, which was fun. But I need some non-baby time. We have a wedding coming up in a few weeks and my mom was going to watch Eleanor (not overnight, we were going to stay with my mom too, but we'll be gone from 3 pm - 12 amish. Now if the baby won't eat, I don't know what I'll do.

All of the information I can find online says that maybe she'll take a sippy cup, but a baby can't get a lot of milk from a cup at this age. And that's a problem because...well...please don't flame me but...I want to stop breastfeeding in the next few months.

I don't mind the actual physical act of breastfeeding - it's fine, although I don't get the whole magical mystical bonding experience from it that people go on and on about. It's just feeding her, plain and simple. But I hate so many things that go along with it. I hate being the default middle-of-the-night parent. I hate not being able to go anywhere without the baby. I hate that none of my shirts fit. I hate strapping myself into industrial bras even to sleep. And most of all I hate the breastfeeding information I find online. It's almost all of the breastfeeding as religion/lifestyle type, the kind of information that cheerfully advises me that no, my breastfed baby will never sleep through the night, and that's as it should be, and I really should give in and let her sleep in the bed with me, and why should I mind not being away from her when I can just wear her in a hand-sewn organic hemp sling 24 hours a day? All of this does not make me feel better. It makes me feel worse, much much worse. I think of spending the next year waking up multiple times a night to nurse, and never going anywhere alone or with just my husband, and I feel this uncontrollable panic.

And the worst is the guilt. How can I feel this way after what I've been through? Why should I WANT to get away from this baby we waited for for so long? What's wrong with me? Why should I not want to nurse her til she's 20 to make sure she's as healthy as possible? Maybe Joseph is better off, not having to be parented by me. Maybe I should have taken what happened as a sign that I wasn't meant to be a mother.

I still see the therapist that I've been seeing all along, but she's no help at all. Honestly, I don't see why one needs a social worker license to sit there and tell me, "Well, you're going through a lot of hormonal changes. You'll be fine." Shit, I could tell myself that for free. And I can't talk to Andy because we end up fighting; he accuses me of LIKING or NEEDING to worry, and of making everyone around me (read: him) suffer because of it.

I just don't know what to do.