Moms of the UES

In the thick of our sleep problems (she wakes up only twice-nightly now!) I saw a posting on a mom's meet-up site for a talk given by a sleep expert. It was perfect timing, and seemed pretty necessary at that point. The posting made a pretty clear distinction, though - it was for the Upper East Side. But it included lunch, wasn't too far from our neighbourhood, and we were desperate for sleep, so why not. I paid the $40 and couldn't help but get a little excited about meeting other moms, UES or not.

Sleep Training

Recently, Alice lost her voice. She sounded like a very small, baby-talking Kathleen Turner. She lost her voice because of the four consecutive nights of scream-crying as we Cried It Out.

Breast Feeding in Public

Since arriving in NYC, I've been trying to gauge the level of acceptance of public breastfeeding (under my "modesty sheet" of course. Very Victorian.) And I've noticed that I now, a month in, feel a lot less comfortable with it than I did in Canada.

SIN

Ok, I probably have about seven minutes to write this, given the inner baby sleep clock I’ve developed.

 
- Alice said "da da" while looking and waving at M. She said it with intent, and purpose. It was definitely different from the usual baby talk. It was magical. It actually felt like magic.

- Last week, I had a meeting with a media company about some past work. I can’t really say which one, except lets call them SIN. They have a Yes/No list that’s pretty infamous. Skaters. Extant photography. Anyway, they wanted to ask me about research I had done in the past for a segment they’re working on for their video department.

Fourth of July

Fourth of July- we pack Alice up and make our way to the Macy’s fireworks display. It’s two hours of punishing heat, pushing the stroller up hills, weaving it around people so as to not skin their ankles and dragging it up long flights of stairs. But there’s a break- The subways here are for the most part air-conditioned, which means 45-minutes of lovely. About four hours before the fireworks are set to begin, we get off in Chelsea and make our way to the park to set up camp. The crowds are starting to grow, filling the sidewalk and spilling over onto the streets, and the police everywhere, looking serious and damp.

Sunset Park

We’re here! Well, not quite. We have two weeks in Brooklyn before we move into our own place in West Harlem. Right now, we’re staying in the Sunset Park neighbourhood, a Chinese/Hispanic community. Yesterday evening, when it started to pour, you could hear surprised exclamations in both Spanish and Mandarin. I had gotten Alice ready in her stroller for an evening walk, and as soon as we got to the door, the rain started. People slapped wet Chinese-language newspapers onto their heads and ran for cover. Alice and I trudged back upstairs, and once we were comfortable in front of the window to watch the rain, she heard thunder for the first time. She didn’t seem to think much of it.  

It’s an interesting hybrid, Chinese/Latin. There’s an OK 24-hour Mexican restaurant down the street, followed on the next intersection by Chinese storefronts selling linens and a locksmith service. I think I’ve seen four white people so far. I practice my Mandarin with my landlord and his family, who occupy every other suite in this building, and older floral Latinas bless Alice in grocery stores and bakeries.

Also, holy baby jesus it's hot. Sweat, just sweat. Everything's sticky. We live in front of the fan. 

I’ve only left the fan once, well almost. It was to meet Michael on the southern edge of Times Square, at about 30^th and Broadway, on the edge of the fashion district, and I had decided to walk the last ten blocks. It was about 7pm, and I trudged upstream with the stroller and all of Alice’s gear through the flow of young female professionals leaving work. Their dresses were fantastic – interesting, perfectly accessorized, expensive. They conducted business on headsets. They were younger than me. And as I lumbered along, the stroller cutting a wide line in the stream, my status – a stay-at-home-mom, a SAHM – flared up with the contrast.

This is what I do now, and it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done (Alice didn’t get to sleep until midnight last night! When I’m not taking care of her, I’m cleaning. You’re on call 24/7. It never stops. She's the most amazing thing ever in the history of amazing.) But involved is a military-style exercise in destroying the construct of the self. I can’t work for the next year probably, maybe two. And eking out writing time is like wringing ink from paper. To keep our muggy, AC-less apartment from declining into garbage-infested chaos, I am constantly working. I’m a housewife, and will be for a while. Nothing against this very hardworking profession, but it’s a shift in definition. I’m not used to not thinking about myself constantly.

But I'm throwing myself into it. Yesterday I read that egg yolk mixed with warm water removes most coffee and tea stains, and that a child needs consistent, loving care from ages 0-2 for their brains to grow right. 

Anyway, baby crying. Day begins. Happy Fourth!

Holy Crap

So, my move to NYC has been bumped up two weeks, meaning we have two weeks less to pack, sell, clean, say good-bye. We're in Walla Walla Washington now until the end of June, and then we have two weeks to get everything done. My husband drives all of our stuff to NYC on the 15th, I stay and clean with the baby for five days, fly to Vancouver for 10 days, again alone with the baby (but with lots of help from my friends!) then fly to NYC on a one-way. We're in a sublet for about a month in Brooklyn, and then move into student housing on the upper west side. It's going to be INSANE, and I will not be able to do anything else. So my dreams of maintaining this blog may be dashed, at least until July. It's a crazy time.

Happy mother's day!

It's come to this: I was reading a review of Drunk Mom, the new memoir by Jowita Bydlowska about her decent into alcoholism soon after giving birth to her son. Bydlowskais was a serious drinker, a black-out drunk, and it is after a night of binge drinking that she wakes up one morning with no recollection of the night before. This happens frequently during this period in her life. She's the only one home, and she doesn't know how long her one-year old has been in the crib alone. She assures herself that he hasn't gone hungry- bottles of formula in the crib "spill milk onto the mattress."

My first thought was, she feeds him formula?

I've been battling the guilt related not to a serious addiction to alcohol but for using Similac Advanced once a day, sometimes twice, to supplement my breast milk supply.

My worst offence was when my husband and I were in NYC for a few weeks in a rented apartment with my parents. I saw about four shows, and left my parents each time with the baby and a six-pack of the test tube-like containers of Advanced. I was pumping in the morning and evenings, getting up about twice a night to breastfeed her, breastfeeding her every three hours during the day, but it still wasn't enough to not supplement when I went out. It was the first time she had tried formula. As a result, she had some unforeseen digestive troubles that took a week to go away.

The flack I got wasn't so much direct finger pointing as praise for my recognition that what I had done was bad. 

"Well, now that you know, you can stop using that stuff."

"Have you tried (lie ins, where you confine yourself to the house for a week and do nothing but feed; drink fenugreek tea; "look feed," where you feed her every time she moves her eyes in your direction)?"

"Have you tried everything?"

Supplementing with formula is not the best thing for babies younger than four months - breastfeeding promotes the growth of health bacteria in their stomachs, and they're particularly sensitive to this in their first few months of life. It's one of the many, many health benefits to breastfeeding. Breast is Best. Breast is Best!

My own guilt was overwhelming. Once we had returned and I'd realized the magnitude of my mistake, I'd stand in the middle of our living room, recounting the tummy troubles she had suffered and ball as my baffled husband tried to reassure me that the baby is fine. And the baby was totally fine.

But I'd put myself before my baby. And I think that's what it comes down to. I'd done something that might not have been THE BEST for my baby in order to see some shows. Because mothers need to try everything, everything, leaving their former selves deflated in a heap behind them, in order to give their babies the best. And a part of me believes this.

But those shows? They included some of the best pieces of theatre I've ever seen. Sleep No More was wild. Peter Brook's The Suit was this shining little gemstone. I was talking to a theatre prof here, and the Nature Theatre of Oklahoma's Life and Times came up, and we had this satisfying talk about that kind of art that I wouldn't have been able to have otherwise. I felt totally enriched by all of it.

So what do we sacrifice for our babies, and what do we keep of ourselves? I'm still trying to figure that one out.

PS: We're moving to New York! We have two months to prep before we haul ourselves out of this place (although I totally love it here, and am sad to go.) It's random and insane.

Over-sharing

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Wow, old school

Blogging seems so old school now. Since I last posted three years ago, so many other forms of personalized publishing have cropped up. But it's like hip-hop and office supplies- I like it old school.

I think I'm going to start posting again, here on Laili, into the void. I'm a mom now, on Mat Leave, starting to think about preparing to move to New York. I have a contract I need to finish in the next few weeks, but I want to spend some time jotting down thoughts on good 'ol Blogger.