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Spotty Days
Now that Baby Bug has a full blown case of baby acne, I’m wondering if the same hormones that are messing with her body are the ones that are playing ping pong with mine. She woke up this morning with spots everywhere. On her cheeks, on her neck and even on the back of her head. I woke up crying. I hope it will pass.
It’s funny. I know I’m doing a good job being a mom. Baby Bug is getting chubbier every day. But the nursing just seems so unnatural sometimes. I guess I always thought I’d be like Brooke Shields in Blue Lagoon and the baby would find her way to my nipple all by herself. I didn’t realize how agonizing it would be to not be able to make your baby happy over and over and over again. Sometimes I feel like such a failure. I know I’m not. But it’s hard to not feel like one.
I figure it’s just hormones. Not full blown postpartum blues. Just a case of the neglatives. You know, when everything in your house seems dirty and if the cat throws up one more time in your favorite pair of shoes, you swear you are going to throw the cat out the window.
When Toby and I couldn’t agree on what design we should go with for our month-late birth announcements, I completely fell apart. I started questioning my whole identity. If I’m not a good designer any more, then who am I? Should I take my whole website down because I feel like my work is flat and I can’t figure out how to get my gallery pages back up? The doubts rained down on me like hail.
I know I’m a mom now and that is the best job I can ever have…but is that enough? Will I disappear into diaper-and-spit-up-land and be forgotten? And why am I so driven by praise? Isn’t doing what’s right for Baby Bug enough? Why do I feel like I need a cheering section just to get through the day?
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Happy Monthday
(…as if we needed one since that’s all I write about anyway)
Baby Bug is one month old today. WOOT! And guess what? She slept through the night… sort of. I don’t know what to really call it. But she’s not awake and she doesn’t want to eat no matter how many times I offer her the boob. She goes to sleep around 7pm and sort of pig-grunt-horse-whinneys every three hours. I think she’s waking up and I get all ready to feed her but as soon as I hold her to my breast, she’s off to the land of Nod again. There is no bringing her back, no matter how many times I stick my nipple in her half open mouth. She’s a funny little bug. So I guess I should celebrate that I have a one month old who sleeps through the night! For now. It’s just that her mommy doesn’t sleep through the night.
(I think I’m going to have to start blogging at night. Because I am getting NOTHING done during the day. I think the reason she sleeps so good at night is because she does NOT sleep during the day. Gone are my hours of poking around the internet reading other people’s blogs. Gone are my days of a clean kitchen, coffee made and dishes done before Toby wakes up. Gone are my days of walks on the beach watching the sun rise. Well, I haven’t given up on those completely yet. They just aren’t fitting into Baby Bug’s schedule. When we take walks, we take them in the afternoon.)
At one month, I already think my baby is the smartest baby in the world. She is lifting her head up ALL THE TIME and looking at everything around her. Looking, looking, looking… she loves to look around. (No pictures of the “looking” yet because I’m always the one holding her and I’m not so good at shooting myself at that angle.) She just can’t get enough of the looking around businesss. Her favorite position (since birth actually) has been over my shoulder so she can look. She’d be happy if I just left her up there all day. Maybe I could attach a tube from my boob into her pacifier and she could get her nourishment from up there. As soon as I bring her down to put her in the stroller or to feed her, she starts fussing. She does not like to be horizontal if she can help it.
Yesterday, her grandma came over to visit and help me catch up on some chores. Like laundry! I have SO MUCH LAUNDRY it’s not even funny!!! It’s like the laundry monster is taking over my house. How can such a little butt get everything so dirty! It’s funny really. Let me tell you a little story about cloth diapers. We’ll get back to Grandma later.
I use those cloth diapers to protect everything from the amazing squirting power rifle butt. I also use them to stop of my boobs from squirting milk all over Baby Bug’s face. I use them to burp her. I use them to protect horizontal surfaces from random violent spit up. I use them everywhere. Naturally, I’m always running out. Because you know, I don’t have a washer and dryer and the laundromat is across the street, germy and inconvenient.
To keep up with my constant need for clean cloth diapers, any time anybody called me and asked me if I needed anything, I always asked for more cloth diapers. I asked everybody for cloth diapers. In fact, I even contemplated asking the internet to send me cloth diapers. For a while nobody brought me any. I was very stressed out about it. What will I do? There is so much squirting poop!
But then a bugle sounded and everybody brought me cloth diapers. I have tons and tons of clean cloth diapers now. It’s been wonderful. Except when I did the laundry yesterday. I had to wash and fold all those cloth diapers. I folded and stacked them on the coffee table while I watched the olympics. The towers of cloth diapers almost reached the ceiling. And then when it was time to put them away, I didn’t know where to put them. I don’t have enough room! There are cloth diapers everywhere! I could make a castle for Baby Bug to play in out of cloth diapers. But I won’t complain because clean cloth diapers are better than squirty orange poop all over everything. Besides in two days, half of them will be back in the dirty laundry basket again.
But back to Grandma…
Yesterday while I was doing enough laundry to supply a troop of soldiers, Toby’s mom watched Baby Bug. This was especially challenging because Baby Bug refused to take the nice long nap that we’ve become accustomed to. The reason I bring this up, is because my baby is the smartest and most cultured baby in the world. Guess what was the only thing that pacified Baby Bug while I was in the trenches with the laundry? Bethoven. Not “Rock-a-Bye Baby” or “This-Little-Light-of-Mine”. No, Baby Bug likes Bethoven. She calmed right away while her Grandma sang the whole symphony to her. Funny Bug.
In other news, Baby Bug has spots. Baby spots, as in baby acne. Even though she’s covered in little baby bumps that scream at me to pick at them and I don’t (don’t worry) and she constantly has green goop leaking out of here eyes, she is still the cutest baby EVER. She is so cute! I can’t believe it sometimes. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and it’s all going to be a dream. When she’s particularly fussy (like when she’s the badger baby), I’m secretly glad because I have this theory that if she’s too perfect, she’ll be taken away from me. Like maybe she was just an angel visiting for a short time.
I have this deep inner fear that that stupid fortune teller I went to a long long time ago might be right. Why did I ever go and get my palm read on a street corner for ten bucks! Stupidest thing I ever did. Now for the rest of my life, some random woman’s words are going to haunt me. Why? Because she said I would have three children and one would die. Ugh. Every time I think of it, I get this horrible pain in my heart. She’s gotta be wrong. I don’t even believe in that superstitious mumbo jumbo… except sometimes I do. But she was wrong about some other things, so I’m hoping she’s wrong about everything.
My other theory is that fortune tellers don’t see your future clearly. I imagine if I were psychic, I would close my eyes and see random pictures. How you interpret those pictures is up to the fortune teller. So… in a way, I have had three children in my life and one of them did die. I had a third niece who died at birth. She was badly deformed and only lived a few minutes. It was very very sad but for the best because her life would have been incredibly painful. Maybe the fortune teller was thinking of that baby.
Anyway, I don’t mean to be writing about such sad morbid stuff on a super fun day. As Lauren Stranahan (host couple wife) said, “Happy Monthday Baby Bug!” I wonder what we are going to do today?!!