Staying home: understanding isolation as a stay at home mom

DOs and DON'TS of nursing 'fashion'

What to read when you're expecting (and what not to)

I stopped being polite to my husband

Britax B-Ready Stroller Review

*Sponsored Post*

This week I was asked to participate in a Blogger event through a partnership with Britax and Boston Moms Blog. Britax is showcasing their new B-Ready Stroller and gave me one to review. Thanks Britax!

The 2017 B-Ready is basically a frame that the car seat / stroller seat / bassinet and second seat can click onto in seemingly endless seating combinations (the website tells me there are 12 combos).

I got to choose an attachment to try out as well and I went with the second seat (no I'm not pregnant) but after seeing the other options I kinda also wanna get the cup holder, child tray (so that W can scatter cheerios along the street as we walk) and the rain cover. Not that I'm greedy or anything.

Anyway, the stroller.

In all honesty it took me a little while to warm up to. Its versatility also means that it's bigger than our other stroller and takes up a good chunk of my little car's trunk space. Also the many options mean there are a lot of buttons / levers to learn about in order to collapse or reposition it (once you know, it's super easy, but I guess I'm a slow learner). However, the more I use it, the more I'm loving it. Here are some of my favorite things:

Maneuverability: the two wheels at the front (rather than just one) make it easy to steer, even with a car-seat containing a hefty sleeping toddler attached. I can barely move our other stroller with the car-seat attached these days, so that is awesome. I can also steer it one handed, leaving my other hand free to hold my phone or drink coffee. That is a major selling point for me - if I try that with our other stroller W ends up in the street. Oh and it has foam filled tires and suspension so W gets a smooth ride, which I don't care too much about except I expect it adds to ease of onehanded steering and coffee drinking.

Storage: Sometimes we walk to Trader Joes rather than drive so that I can get some 'exercise' and he can get fresh air and shout at squirrels. I then forget I have the stroller, buy way too much and W rides home wedged between bottles of milk and boxes of cereal. No More! This stroller has tons of storage. It also serves as a great cat bed (just be sure to remove cat before heading outside).

Second Seat: When we got our first stroller I really didn't think about needing to one day push two children around. And maybe W will have a personality transplant and one day become a child I can trust to walk sedately beside me rather than running through traffic to the nearest body of water. But assuming he doesn't and assuming we do have another child in the next few years, having a two-seater stroller that is slimline enough to fit on our meagre sidewalks is fantastic.

Compatibility: It's compatible with our existing Britax car-seat, which is a major plus.

Recline: It's so easy to adjust the recline on this and the options mean that when he wants to shout at squirrels he can sit up really straight and when he falls asleep I can easily and smoothly tilt him back without risking waking him. And if he's ever in a funny mood and wants to look at me rather than squirrels, the seat can click on facing me instead.

Little details: There are small cool details that on their own aren't crazy amazing but add up to make the stroller extra parent friendly. I love that the 'viewing window' on the sunshade (no idea what it's actually called but the thing you peak through to check if they've finally fallen asleep) fastens with a magnet rather than scratchy wake-up-the-baby and catch-all-fluff-ever velcro. And the foot brake is color coded so you can tell with a glance if it's on or not. Also the handle bar is adjustable, which I haven't needed to use yet but if I suddenly get short then that'd be handy.

So to sum up, the B-Ready stroller won me over. It isn't super compact or particularly lightweight and it takes a while to learn which button followed by which lever to push and pull. But its other features (one handed pushability! easy-smooth-recline! 12 seating configurations! cat storage!) are so parent friendly and it's so adaptable that the pluses outweigh the negatives. Good work, Britax (and thanks for the stroller!).

A Year of Breastfeeding

Writing for Boston Moms Blog

"Your whole adult life, your small but reasonably symmetrical breasts have served you well — in that they've existed and...
Posted by Boston Moms Blog on Thursday, March 31, 2016

A year of you

Dear Bubbaloo, 

You have now so thoroughly taken over my life that I struggle to remember the time before you. This is probably a good thing. In the weeks after your birth, while marveling at your crumpled tinyness, the way your snorted and snuffled through the days, I also mourned the loss of sleep - how once I was able to sleep for 10 whole hours, waking only when the cat burrowed into the covers and curled himself into the crook of my leg. But gradually I accepted that this new reality, the one with you, does not contain ten hour stretches of sleep. I've moved on. Reframed my expectations. I've also accepted that my food will always be slightly cold and that, while I've never really been well groomed, clean clothes and brushed hair is the best I can hope for and some days even that is a pipe dream. 

I knew I would love you, bub. But I don't think I knew how much more I would smile. Or that I have an extraordinary capacity to be ridiculously silly, if it'll make you laugh or keep you from crying. I didn't know that it's possible to be so bored I feel I might ossify while simultaneously feeling joy and wonderment at the very existence of you. 

And while there are days when being home with you is hard - days where I count the minutes until your Dad gets home and where I pour myself wine at 4.55pm because waiting until 5pm seems far too long - I've also never felt so useful. Being the person you need - the person you want most of all - is this incredible honour, even though sometimes I want to shut myself in a cupboard in the basement just to give myself some timeout from the noise and touch and everything that is being a Mum. 

I am managing, so far, to keep my anxieties in check. When we go to the indoor play area and you put everything in your mouth, I resist the urge to spray you with disinfectant. I didn't bat that child with a cold sore away from you when she asked if you'd like to play. I just gently moved you a few feet further back. And when you found the cat vomit before me and decided to eat it, I didn't give you ipecac or call poison control or euthanize the cat. So I think I'm doing pretty well, don't you? 

Before you were born, I'd willfully ignored the fact that love this large comes with a side helping of terror. And now you're here and the terror has made its camp within me and I can make it work, I think. It's all worth the way when you first wake up you start talking before your eyes are fully open, and the way you think everything (the cat, my head, the toilet seat) is a drum and how you seem intent on determining the edibility of everything by eating everything (although actually if you want to start screening out the cat vomit and other gross or poisonous substances, that'd be fine). I love that your first word is Hi, and that you say it to everybody and manage to light up the grumpiest of faces. I love that you have fantastic taste in books and that you dance whenever there's a hint of music and that you're always so happy to see your Daddy. The terror is welcome because with it comes you, and I wouldn't be without even the screamiest second of you.  

A year, a whole year, of you becoming you. Of me becoming a new version of me. Of us becoming us. 

Now just learn to flipping sleep, OK? 

Leaving and Return

Leaving is dread and sorrow swallowed down and stuck in my chest. It is worry tugging at my fingertips from the inside. It is salt taste in my mouth and tingling in my nose. It is repeated silent promises - a chant, a lament, a prayer. It is meaningful looks and hushed regret. It is three months is not a long time. Three months is nothing. It is ignoring the not nothing of three months and three thousand miles and five hours time difference.

Leaving is a return. A return to 'cat' and 'drum' and our loose routine. And 'daddy'. Most of all daddy. It is neighbours and friends and weather extremes. It is home, in its way. Or they are my home and they are here, except for the they who are there.

Since I was nineteen my heart has lived in two continents. Stretching tight across dark ocean, sharks with their fins swimming beneath its taught fibers. Leaving and Return is balancing that tightrope across the Atlantic. It is 'more wine please' and 'planes don't crash because of turbulence' (except when they do). It is jet-lag now worsened by being shared with an 11 month old who can't take sleeping tablets. Or wine.

After a week or so, the leaving fades the jet-lag recedes and we settle back to regular phone calls and occasional Skype. It stops feeling acute and assumes its usual background hum. I know this. It's fading already. But my oh my do I hate how my life is punctuated by goodbyes.

This is the path you chose, my mum said.

You chose this for us too. She didn't say.

What to do today

In the summer -  when W was immobile and the air was warm, the ground was dry and the yard was not covered with leaves and acorns and other delicious baby treats - we would spend hours sat out on the grass. We'd read books, stare up at the trees and covertly check facebook on the phone while the other one was busy experimenting with how grass felt if he put his face into it. These days an excursion into the yard will result in muddy knees, partially digested leaf matter and an attempt to spear himself with a shovel.

Inside isn't much better. Kitchen drawers are made for trapping baby fingers; the cat intentionally leaves the door open through to his food and litter, and the robot vacuum cleaner I got for my birthday - while entertaining - is presumably not designed to play tag with a 10 month old. Everything else is just plain boring. Especially once the junk mail and potential electrocution sites have been moved out of reach. 

So we go out. Often at the expense of naps. But the boy needs to move and I need to not lose my mind. We go on play dates and he helpfully points out all the baby proofing they still need to do. We go grocery shopping, or to the local community farm. We go to the indoor play area where he manages to find the one piece of chalk small enough to fit in his mouth and big enough to stop my heart for a few seconds. 

Some days I run out of ideas or energy, or both. While he'd be quite happy visiting the rabbits and chickens at the local farm for the third time this week, I am less inclined. I relayed this to Jeremy - that sometimes I just don't know what to do with him. 

"Why don't you go hiking?" was his response. 

To some people, hiking means a leisurely walk in the woods. Something that requires sensible shoes perhaps, but sneakers would do the job. Something local and relatively short. 

Jeremy is not some people. 

To Jeremy, hiking means New Hampshire and the White Mountains. It means maps and emergency water. It means breathtaking views after breathstealing elevation gain. 

The White Mountains are 3 hours away. Our son weighs over 23 pounds. I am me and Jeremy has known me, as I am, for over 12 years.

I stared at him, somewhat (100%) incredulously. 

"Why not?" He said. "I totally would."

He would as well.

Lullaby

I love you, bub. You know that I think. But it's really very important that you fall asleep right now and stay asleep. At least for long enough for me to sit down with wine and read a bit.

Long enough for some of the ache from today to seep out of me and into the sofa. For me to start to feel a little more like me than I do right now - to remember that I am a person who likes art and music and poetry and who can talk reasonably intelligently about current events. Just sleep long enough for me to clean the kitchen floor ready for you to lick it tomorrow. Licking floors seems to be your new thing.

And if you could give me enough time to talk to your father about something other than you, that'd be great. We love talking about you but we need to make sure we remember the roots of us as well. You came from those roots.

My love, just sleep long enough for me to find my place within today - to understand that the day was not defined by your refusing to nap or your newfound ability to Houdini away from any and all attempts to change you. There were smiles and giggles today. You saw your first rabbit and there were moments where I could see you learning something for the very first time.

Just sleep a little longer, sweet boy. But if you wake and you need me, I'll be there.

My current refrain

Here are the sentences most often repeated at the moment. Aside from, y'know, I love you / you're beautiful / sweet boy blah blah blah...

• Where is your other sock?

• Don't eat that

• What are you eating?

• Don't bite me

• Ow!

• That's my phone

• Give me back my phone

• How are you not tired?

• That's cat food. Not baby food. 

• He will bite you

Survival of the whiniest

Another theory (I have many): whining is a key survival skill that has evolved over the eons and is now embedded into the genetic makeup of all children as a means to get what they want. It cannot be ignored or tuned out - it's the parenting equivalent of a mosquito in the ear and must be stopped by any means necessary.

Children know this.

They're programmed to know this.

So they keep going until finally. FINALLY. We cannot take it any longer and give in. Obviously this is the wrong thing to do. Obviously this teaches them that whining works. But the thing is, it does work. It's supposed to work. If the neanderthals had only held their ground and not given in then maybe this superskill wouldn't have developed to such great whiny heights. But they didn't. They gave in. And now we're doomed.

The eons are against us.

 

Origin story

W is starting to understand us and it feels miraculous. We say Uh-oh, he says uh-oh. We say clap, he claps. We say 'say Dada', he claps.

It's intermittent.

Yet aside from echoing 'uh-oh' to us (and we don't say it at appropriate uh-oh times, so we're not helping him much) , he's not talking yet. The sounds are all there, he just needs to attach them to objects. To people. To me.

But I've noticed that the sound he makes when he's upset, or tired, or angry is 'mamamamama'. And while I don't think he's asking for me, I do wonder if I will attach myself to the word rather than him attaching it to me - if by responding to his mamamama, the sound will eventually become a call. If maybe this is where the word found its root - from a pissed off baby and a responsive mama.

One of those days

Yesterday was one of those days. One of the days where I'm not sure if he's making me grouchy or I'm making him grouchy but we're both very definitely grouchy. One of the days where I spend far too much time on my phone; where I want to be writing or drawing or even running (and I never want to be running) - anything other than repeating the same tired songs in an attempt to keep him happy, to stop the whine.

We went to Walmart to look for baby gates, so that I can turn my back for five seconds without him setting off to eat cat food. There weren't any gates and a man in Walmart told me these were the best days of my life and I thought 'oh dear'. Then we went to PetSmart to look at the animals (so far he prefers PetSmart to any zoo or nature reserve I've taken him to) only all the animals had died or been sold, bar a lethargic mouse and a few sad budgies. Then I went into Old Navy where everything looked like everything I've ever owned, stretched. overwashed and thrown away. Followed by Nordstrom rack where everything was cashmere and really didn't deserve to be covered in baby snot. And then back home for another scrappy nap and the long long wait for Jeremy to get home.

Amid all of this grey boring day, there was a moment where I'd paused for a second to cry and wallow in just how tired, bored and covered in baby snot I was, and W turned around to look at me. I made myself smile at him and the grin I got in return - so perfect and toothless and adoring of me - broke through the grey.

So it was one of those days - snotty, guilty, boring, grey and the most perfect sunshine of a smile.

Brain power shortage

In pregnancy, occasional flakiness is brushed aside as 'Baby Brain', as if somehow being pregnant messes with your brain waves and slows you down. I didn't find this - I was just as forgetful and slow as usual. I did make use of the excuse, however.

What I want to know though is why no one talks about Mum Brain, because since having W my ability to hold down a conversation has diminished dramatically. And I don't just mean because I'm forever having to run off to stop him launching himself off/into/under hazards or being interrupted by screaming. I mean my brain moves so slowly that minutes pass by before I remember that conversations depend on two participants or that responses are required to questions. 

Similarly the number of times I have caught myself trying to make coffee by putting the grounds in the kettle or the cold water in the mug or - once - the hot water into the coffee grounds container is more than a little disconcerting. And I find myself stopping mid sentence to search around the echoing cavern of my brain to find the word for sponge or frying pan or something else equally mundane and presumably difficult to forget. 

I write all of this under the assumption that this is common to all Mums - particularly the co-sleeping, night nursing Mums out there - and not that I have early onset something-or-other. 

And, writing this, I've realised why no one talks about Mum Brain...

...They don't dare. 

wonder week my arse*

Figuring out what's going on with a baby - why they're being so darn fussy or why they're waking up every 20 minutes or why they categorically refuse to be put down (and yes that includes the baby carrier because clearly if your hands are free you're not trying hard enough) - is a bit like attempting to play pictionary with someone trying to draw a cat. Only they're blindfolded, using their left hand and have never seen or heard of a cat. You wind up just guessing all the guesses in the world. Where the simile breaks down is that at some point, the pictionary guesser will be correct whereas the baby guesser (aka me) might never be right because the answer may be 'all of the above' or 'just because'.

Apparently one of the reasons he might be being fussy and waking every 20 minutes and demanding to be held by my aching arms is that we're in a "wonder week" and he's secretly making some developmental leap which he's going to surprise us with when the crying aching fog lifts.

He better be able to speak in full sentences is all I have to say. 

*let the record show that this has been typed one handed while the other hand/arm supports a sleeping yet-still-nursing baby.

Giving up

There was a moment, when W was maybe 36 hours old, when I realised I had to stop waiting for sleep. Up until then, any time in my life where I'd been tired, sleep was just a wait away. True deep long uninterrupted sleep. I sat in the hospital room and felt this dawning realisation seep into me. He was ours. We had to take him home. Sleep as I knew it was a thing of the past.

Later, there was a moment when Jeremy left the house - to go to work or to see friends or maybe just to take the trash out - but I understood with a searing jealousy that when he leaves the house he really leaves. That he's actually able to just walk out of the house without a care. That his autonomy and independence is still wholly intact. I missed being solitary singular Me with an acuteness that felt physical. And I kind of hated my husband a little. 

At four or five months I had to accept that W was not a baby who suddenly slept through the night. People had told me it would change at four months - that it would get better - and I believed them. I was stupid. So we started co-sleeping because it was the only way I could get enough sleep to function during the day. And that is how we live now. 

I haven't eaten cheese since May. If you know me, you know that I alone do not have the will power to forgo cheese (or butter or cream or cake or curry or chocolate or ice-cream) for 24 hours. But W has a dairy sensitivity. I'm thinner than I've ever been, which is the one and only upside and I think I prefer eating cheese and having an arse. 

I've never been super well-kempt. But I'm down to maybe two showers a week and I let Jeremy cut my hair. And if you can't see the baby sick on my jumper, it was never there.

New mum hair

Nothing to fear but fear (and Donald Trump)

I have always been a worrier. I self diagnose myself with at least one fatal disease a week. I see peril wherever I go and have to get Jeremy to watch me unplug the iron because there's no way I'll believe my own memory. Sometimes thinking about the future and all its infinite unknowns gives me vertigo and I have to breathe myself back into the present.

Having a baby has not helped.

Here are a few things I am now afraid of (and a few that I've always been afraid of):

Walls
Gravity
Donald Trump
Stairs
People who think Donald Trump should be a presidential candidate
Lonely sad men with access to guns
Electricity
Blind cords
People who are more afraid of terrorists than the lonely sad men
Elmo
Isolationism
NRA
Furniture
ISIS
Grapes
Fox News
Water
Compassion Fatigue
Cars
People who get their news from Fox News
Ben Carson
People who think Ben Carson should be a presidential candidate
Flying

With most of these things, I swallow down my terror and smile. I make sure there are no fatal hazards around and let him explore the world in the presence of walls and gravity. When we fly and it's turbulent and I imagine us all plunging to our deaths, I don't let him see my fear. I don't want him to be afraid of flying, or of grapes or of water. Or even of Elmo, although that high pitched third person thing is crazy creepy. I want W to toddle out into the world and to feel safe and confident doing so.

I'm perfectly fine with him being terrified of Trump though. That's just common sense.

Wholemeal Paper

W made a beeline across the kitchen floor. I looked to see what he was aiming for (he only moves that fast when it's something illegal) and saw I'd left a brown paper Trader Joe's bag in the corner. He's got a bit of a thing for paper. Junk mail is his favourite - the glossy finish perhaps, or maybe he likes bargains. He pretends he's just flapping it around, inspecting the artwork, and then I spend the next five minutes trying to fish out a wad of paper from his cheek while avoiding losing a finger to those new teeth we were so excited about.

So the approaching fate of this brown paper Trader Joe's bag was fairly obvious. However my first thought was not that I should move the bag he was about to gum into chokeable mush, but instead that 'brown paper has to be better for him than white...'

Human Pacifier

Our next child, assuming we have a next child, is going to have a pacifier thrust upon them pretty much the second they emerge (that seems too gentle a word... erupt? eject?) and henceforth will have it offered to them on every possible occasion.

They cry? Pacifier.

They breathe? Pacifier.

Yes it will become a sleep crutch and yes we'll probably curse the thing once it's decided that 'we don't use pacifiers during the day' but that's OK.

Our next child is going to love their pacifier.

Our firstborn - love of my life, dear of my heart, loves his pacifier too. But his pacifier has legs, a head and a Master's degree in International Relations. The next child's pacifier is going to be a lot less educated and a lot more bought from Babies-R-Us.