The Flamingo Mama

Wow. Mommyhood is hard work. It has taken a whole month for me to have a small speck of time to get back on this site to post a blog.

As it is, I am sitting here typing this while rocking my baby in her car seat with my left foot. This takes a fair amount of coordination....more than I knew I possessed and is doing a number on my left quads. I'm going to be lopsided after this blog since my right leg is just sitting here relaxing as I write. Really, I'd do about anything to keep Isabel asleep for a decent interval. I really think someone needs to invent a device that will simulate the movement of a car for the poor, ragged mama whose baby has fallen asleep in the car and who just needs to get some things done around the house while the baby snoozes. This device should adapt for any brand of car seat.

Isabel refuses to sleep very long in any other object but my arms. Today she fell asleep in the car on the way home from postnatal yoga class. Yeah. On the way HOME. Not IN class. Nope. That would've been way too easy for mama. Just to make things interesting, she screamed (except when I was nursing her) for most of the 75-minute class. Yay. Our first postnatal class, too. She and her little buddy, Lillian were the youngest ones there, and postnatal yoga is all about acceptance, so it didn't really matter, but I would've liked to actually get to participate in class.....at least do a little stretching!! Oh well. Perhaps we'll do better at Friday's class....IF we make it there. Today we barely made it on time, but what else is new.

Leaving the house seems to take an inordinate amount of time. Prenatal Yoga is at 10:30 AM on Tuesdays and Fridays.....NOT Isabel's best hour of the day. A noon or 1:00 PM class would be better for us, but we don't get to set the schedule. This morning we got up around 8:30 AM, nursed for 30~ish minutes, and then Isabel had a lovely hair washing/head massage in the kitchen sink. She got a new diaper and a fresh onesie (with cute little duckies on it!) and then she was forced to sit in her hated vibrating chair (seat-belted in, of course - safety first!) while mama took a quick shower. Isabel conveniently fell asleep in said vibrating chair, which doesn't often happen, but only until I was out of the shower (not dressed). At that point she started to cry, so I attempted to bounce the vibrating chair (since she prefers bouncing to vibrating....sigh....) with one foot while putting on deodorant, brushing teeth, blow-drying hair and getting dressed. Think stork. Or is that flamingo? Whatever bird stands on one leg is the image I'm trying to convey. Forget makeup. I don't even remember how to put it on anymore. ;) I've decided that drying my hair is a better use of my limited getting-ready time. Otherwise it looks like crap.

Once I'm dressed and ready, then I need to take the dogs out to the potty (aka, our back yard), then put them in their kennel, then fill up my water bottle since I cannot get enough water these days (nursing is thirsty work!), and then check the diaper bag to make sure I have everything I might possibly need for a 1.5-hour outing. Diapers, wipes, plastic bags to hold stinky diapers, fresh onesies should cute baby have a blowout, burp cloth, blanket in case baby gets cold, nipple shield since said cute baby will NOT nurse without one (grr - I blame the nurses in the hospital for that one. They got me started that way, and now she won't eat without it!), baby sunscreen, in case we are out in the sun for longer than a few minutes, a sun hat, mama's wallet, mama's water bottle.....you know, just the essentials. ;) I wonder if this gets any easier once the baby gets a little older. I suspect not. Or perhaps I'll just get faster at this.

Isabel is now 7 weeks old, and I feel like I'm finally getting the hang of this mommy-thing.....mostly. I'm no longer that afraid to take her out of the house. The fear doesn't stem from exposing her to some illness (bad mama!!)....it stems from being afraid I won't know what to do if she has a melt-down in public! However, I'm now feeling a bit more at ease about that. I'm also figuring out how to actually get some things done around the house now. I have two different contraptions that allow me to wear my child on the front of me leaving my hands free for such needed activities such as laundry, putting away clean dishes out of the dishwasher, and getting on the computer. However, when she's being worn, she does NOT appreciate her mama sitting down. She tells me in no uncertain terms that she prefers that I stand. sigh. The other day I wanted to catch up on my Isabel-photo uploading from the camera to the computer, and I ended up putting the laptop on the breakfast bar of the kitchen counter (perfect for standing), and standing there bounce-rocking for 2 + hours while I uploaded and labeled about 4-weeks' worth of photos. My back had words for me by the end of that activity!

Laundry while wearing an infant is interesting. It's sorta like when I was pregnant in that I have to sidle up to the washing machine sideways because I cannot reach it with an infant strapped to my front. Also, I don't know if you've ever tried to get wet laundry out of a top-loading washing machine to put it in a front loading dryer, but it's not easy with a kid stuck to your front side. I finally remembered that my parents had brought me my grandma's Reacher thingy at Christmastime when I couldn't bend over to pick up the things I kept dropping on the floor. Genius invention!! Did you know that the Reacher thingy allows one to pick up most clothes (except for heavy jeans) out of the washer and deposit them into the dryer? Yup. I also used it last night when I kept dropping clean, dry socks on the floor of our bedroom when I was putting away the clean loads of clothes. Oh, and what is it with never-ending laundry?!! I guess I understand that babies do generate lots of laundry....I'd have even more if we were using cloth diapers! We're not. I've had to wash her pajamas and a couple of towels after one use here lately because she has pooped in them. Yay. She and I had a chat about not pooping in her clean towel as I'm taking her to the bathroom for her bath, but I think she forgot about our chat because she did it again the next day.

Recent Discoveries:

* Isabel really likes her changing table. If she's screaming her head off, I can often calm her down by putting her on her changing table for about 20 minutes.

* Isabel farts like a gassy old man. What a Pooty McPooterson! Man, she lets 'em rip....especially in bed in the mornings. Good thing you can't usually smell them. I suppose that'll come later.

* Isabel likes it when her daddy plays horsey with her. This is a very recent discovery, and she seems to enjoy bouncing so much that I ordered a birthing ball at the suggestion of a couple of my yoga mama friends because they said that this really works to soothe a fussy baby. It's supposed to be delivered tomorrow, and I cannot wait to try it out!

* Isabel is now doing better at night. This is mainly due to sideline nursing, the best invention ever. She doesn't usually poop during the night, so if she wakes up, I just pop out a boob and after a bit, she falls back asleep....sometimes with boob still in mouth. I learned the hard way that it's better to put the boob away after nursing, or else I will awake in a pond of breastmilk.

* Nursing tank tops are a wonderful invention for nightwear. Forget those nursing nightgowns unless they actually have the flap that comes down. You need easy access at night.....very easy access!!

* Finding time to pump is hard. Especially if daddy works 12-hour shifts and is not home for many hours at a time to give you a break. I go back to work on May 3rd (sob!!) and so far, I've only managed to freeze one solitary, lonely little 6-oz bag of breastmilk. eek.

* Huggies diapers suck. I've examined them and they seem to have the same components as Pampers, but they sure don't hold in the poop like the Pampers do. It's worth the expense to buy the Pampers, trust me.

* Conversely, I prefer Huggies wipes to Pampers wipes. I think the Huggies are thicker and stronger and hold up better to wiping poopy booties.

* Nursing makes me ridiculously thirsty. Especially when I don't have a bottle of water within reach. I notice this phenomenon most at night. I think it would be worth the expense to either install a drink holder to the bedroom wall above my head or as my husband suggested, to just run a hose through to my side of the bed. Perhaps I should wear a Camelback to bed. Have you seen those things?! Pretty cool invention. I used to have one when we would go mountain biking a lot, but I haven't seen my Camelback in a few years. Hmm. I wonder what happened to it. I'm seriously thinking about where it might be.

* Eating is difficult while holding a baby. Especially when the baby doesn't appear to want you to eat and is flailing arms & legs to let you know that. I have to admit that I've accidentally dropped spagetti sauce on her a couple of times. Oh, and once I found a small bit of sausage in her hair. Ooops. I now inhale anything I eat because I never know how long she'll give me to injest my food. Generally it's less time that I'd hoped. Even having dropped food on her in the past doesn't deter me from eating while nursing her. You do what you gotta do! I've had chats with her before about allowing me to eat so that I can have the energy to produce lots of breastmilk for her, but I'm not sure she's taken that chat to heart.

* BooBoo (our 2-yr-old Chihuahua) LOVES his new baby sister. I was worried about how he would do with her, but he is very loving. He sniffs her booty (as if to tell us when she needs a diaper change....if only we could get him to play dead when she has a stinky diaper!!), and he licks her hands, head and feet very delicately. Just a couple quick licks here and there, not huge sloppy baths.

* Surprisingly, Isabel can still fit in newborn-sized onesies....but not for much longer. I can tell she's about to bust out of them. She's already too big for the Gerber newborn onesies. She grew out of those after only about 3 weeks. Geez. Good to know that Gerbers newborn onesies are for midget babies.

Uh oh, the munchkin is awake and pooting away like mad! I'd better wrap this up for now. I'm sure I'll have more discoveries to list the next time I can get on and blog! Oh, and I have now been sitting her rocking my baby in her carseat with my left foot for about 3 hours. Argh. My left quad is massive. The things we do to keep our kids happy. *shaking head and tisking* ;)