Finding Time to Get Something Done

What do you know – we seem to have reached the stage where it’s possible to get something done and have a baby underfoot. Perhaps I’m reaching this realization late. My husband doesn’t seem to have any problem doing what he wants to do while he’s on baby duty. But I don’t like River to feel as though he’s losing out on attention.

River doesn’t mind not being the focus of attention though if he’s fixated on something that’s important to him. This morning, after breastfeeding him and giving him some time with dad, I put him in the highchair for breakfast. Here’s a tip – if you want some time to get things done, try a day-old bagel. I gave him a chunk of day-old high-fiber power bagel that I’d purchased for myself but didn’t get around to eating. He likes it, but it was chewy and getting a little firm. So it took a long time for him to gnaw on it.

While he was busy, and safe in his chair, I managed to sort through his clothes, get rid of everything under size 12 months, bring up some bigger clothes from the basement, sort through them, and put some of them away. We received a ton of clothes from a woman who had clearly spent a lot on her two boys, then ended up having a girl for her third child and wanted to get rid of the stored clothing. It’s fun to bring up a new box and see what surprises are there. I enjoyed finding a black sweatshirt with glow-in-the-dark letters that read Boo! It should work well at Halloween time.

I fed River some yogurt, cleaned him up and took him to the bathroom. The one downside of letting breakfast drag on for well over an hour is that he doo-dooed in his pants. It was worth it this morning though.

Then I gave him some free play time, and again I was able to pick up and arrange things while he moved around. When I wanted to do something on the computer, I let him play in the exersaucer in the office.

Usually our mornings are taken up by the eating routine and then a long walk with the stroller. I missed out on my exercise this morning, but was really pleased to realize that it is possible to get a couple of things done with a baby underfoot. I can’t imagine doing anything that required concentration or analysis, except when he’s sleeping, but this still helps.

What tricks have you found to occupy your kids so that you can get things done?

What is it about the poop

that makes it more enticing than an entire roomful of toys strewn across the floor?

We came home from a long afternoon of errands. I put River on the potty, he pooped, I was proud of him. After getting him back in a diaper and his clothing, I left the room for 2-3 minutes. I returned as soon as I heard what sounded like the potty being dragged against the floor.

He had pulled the wipe out of the potty, as well as a bit of the poop. He had poop on both of his hands and was clearly entranced by the small piece on the floor. A bevy of colorful toys surrounded him, but the poop was far more interesting. I’m afraid I don’t understand what the attraction is.

I'll have the same thing as baby

My mother-in-law recently sent me this article from the New York Times, saying that we are in the vanguard of parenting. If I’d known it was newsworthy to feed a baby the same food I eat, I would have written an article myself!

Like the author, we’ve been feeding River the same food that we eat (minus refined sugars or white carbohydrates) since he was six months old. I started with the slow introduction of cereals at four months, then vegetables per current guidelines. Then I met baby Mirena and her parents and saw she was already eating bananas with avocado. At around the same time, I read an article, which told of an Indian woman living in America who ignored most of the U.S. guidelines and had a 13-month old son with very sophisticated tastes who was happily munching on a raisin, walnut bread in a NYC café.

I began to think that small children in other countries eat very spicy food and they must get used to it from a young age. I thought how the extreme pickiness I hear of seems to be largely a U.S. phenomenon and wondered if the bland early diets encouraged a taste for bland foods later on. I realized that River wasn’t at particular risk for allergies. And should he have a reaction to any dish I’d serve him, we could narrow it down to 3-4 ingredients and figure it out from there. I no longer saw the need to introduce things one at a time.

We had used spices since the beginning of the non-cereal foods – carrots with ginger, green beans with basil, peas with mint. So I just ramped it up a notch and started to puree (in a food processor or blender) whatever I was making. Early on he had turkey and blackeyed pea soup with collard greens. He loved a chicken, kale, tomato and corn tortilla casserole. He goes bonkers over borscht. Spaghetti squash with a beef and pancetta tomato sauce – yum! When I was eating spicy palak paneer and didn’t have his food ready yet, he ate mine eagerly rather than wait. He eats collard greens with red pepper, is comfortable with garlic and onions and has even had a taste of jalapenos.

Just in the past week or two, he has begun to reject some items – sweet potatoes and squash that he liked before, pureed roasted vegetables that he ate happily whole. I began to worry. I would really, really like to avoid having a picky eater. My husband (who had a very limited diet over many years of childhood) won’t eat anything that’s been touched by vegetables and refuses most fruits, no beans, baked or mashed potatoes and is unexcited by wholegrains. He has plenty of wonderful qualities and I know a picky eater is not the worst thing that someone could be. But it does make it very hard for us to eat together, and very boring for me to have to eat the same pot of soup day after day after day. It’s been wonderful to be able to share things with River.

I finally realized that River’s rejection was not coming from the taste, but that he’s getting sick of purees. I was giving him whole foods as snacks or desserts, but I tried to incorporate them into the meals.

On Friday night I made a chicken with vegetable tangine for guests. For River’s next two meals, I mashed the vegetables from the tangine (spiced beets, parsnips, potatoes, olives, eggplant, garlic, raisins) only slightly with a fork, together with some cooked brown rice. He loved it. Today I was running errands with him over his lunchtime and didn’t have any baby food with me. We stopped at a restaurant and figured I’d share my meal with him. I ordered a cup of cream of spinach soup and alternated bites with him. He danced with excitement. Then I got some tilapia and filled him up on chunks of fish, eaten in bite-sized pieces. For dessert he had the lemon slice from my soda. It was a healthy meal for him, and easy for me – no advance preparation needed.

I’m crossing my fingers that River’s culinary openness continues, especially when he sees what daddy’s diet is. Since dad does recognize the importance of example-setting, I’m hoping he’ll also work on eating healthier when River is around. In the meantime, I’m thrilled to share my cooking with an appreciative audience and glad that River is able to gain a good amount of vitamins and minerals from his food.

For those of you who were more adventurous in what you fed your baby, did your child continue to be open to various foods as s/he grew older?

Photos: going after the couscous at 8 months and later the same day, lemon num-nums.

It Never Hurts to Ask

Enfamil has a new formula, Next Step, that the company is trying to market to 9-24 month olds. It seems like a smart plan from a corporate perspective – get the babies on it during the last three months they need formula, then convince the parents to spend the money on formula for another year.

The company recently sent me a $7 formula check to try to get me hooked. Since I’ve yet to spend over $8 on any formula in this country, a $7 check wouldn’t get me to buy it. I knew other people who had received samples of the formula. I wondered why I hadn’t.

So I contacted the company and asked how I could request a sample. A few days later, a 13 ounce can is here. It just happens that today I also found 13 ounce cans of Similac on clearance at my local drugstore for $3.99 each. With just over two months to go, we’ll definitely make it through River’s first year with a total formula expenditure of about $100.

The Business of Being Born

I finally picked up a copy of the DVD The Business of Being Born, a film that was recommended to me both by a doula and by a babysitter. It’s a film initiated by Ricki Lake, who found her at-home midwife-attended second birth much more fulfilling than her first standard, hospital birth. In the film, she calls attention to the problems facing obstetric care in the U.S. and seems to promote giving birth at home.

The points she made that I agree with are:

• Being in a hospital can make one feel like they are on a timeline. I felt this both in the process of giving birth (I felt pressure to give birth before the staff shift change at 7 a.m.) and in the discharge (I didn’t feel ready to go home when they thought I should leave). Having a doula there definitely helped me to reject suggestions (such as breaking my water early on) that would have speeded things up without a clear benefit.

• Technology is often used because doctors think the high-tech things are cool, not necessarily because it’s helpful to the mother or child. Case in point – electronic fetal monitoring. For more details, check out the good book A Thinking Woman’s Guide to A Better Birth.

• One intervention can lead to another. I think this is true especially if one isn’t careful. But if you are careful, and especially if you have a trained advocate with you (in our case, a doula) this doesn’t have to be true. I had the epidural, but no pitocin or other inducing drugs (as the movie says is common with an epidural), nor a caesarean. I did have an epiosiotomy, which I didn’t want, but the doctor didn’t give me much of a choice. Soren was a big boy (8 pounds, 10 ounces and 21.5 inches) and I’m not so big down there, so I guess overall I’m impressed I got him out at all.

• Doctors are not trained in seeing what a natural birth looks like. This I think is unfortunate and I hope doctors who care will voluntarily seek out this experience.

Points I disagree with:

• While it’s true that the medical establishment can push women into choices they don’t want, if you prepare for this in advance, you are not entirely helpless. I thought having a doula with us helped immensely. Discussions with the doctor were also of some use. I’d asked him about a “birthing bar” which goes over the bed, so instead of pushing lying down, I was sitting up and had something to grab on to. I was ready to do what I could to avoid induction. Unfortunately, the promise made by my doctor to not force me to use electronic fetal monitoring with the epidural went against hospital policy and was not honored. I learned that next time, I’d have to speak to the hospital admin and the anesthesiologist ahead of time.

• Natural birth is made out to be beautiful and possibly comparatively easy. While I had an epidural, I felt a heck of a lot of the natural elements – several hours before the epidural and everything during the pushing. Most people I speak to who did it naturally usually say that they did ask for an epidural at one point. I’m sure that overcoming that pain makes one feel strong and I admire them for doing so. But the pain is intense, hard, horrible. I don’t think it’s wrong to ask for relief if it’s needed. I also think the film failed to bring up the risk of tiring oneself out from excessive pain, and needing a c-section because there is no energy left to push (I know someone who had this circumstance).

• I recognize problematic cases are the minority, but I think the difficulty of transferring from home to a hospital at a critical point is underestimated. I live about six blocks from the hospital, an easy 15 minute walk from my house. When I went to the hospital, around six hours after labor began, I was in so much pain I didn’t know how I could possibly endure the ride there. I also had great problems remaining seated. The ride was extremely, extremely uncomfortable. My husband was thanking the stars that I didn’t chose another hospital I was considering one hour away. And I don’t think I was any more than three centimeters dilated. In the film, viewers see a ride to the hospital and it’s not pretty in her case either.

I do like the idea of a home birth. I wish it was possible to have a home birth plus an epidural-like medication. My sister-in-law had one baby in a teaching hospital and another with a midwife in water. She said the second was more painful, but less traumatic.

When I look back on my birth experience, I do feel a certain sense of trauma. It was scary and bloody and painful and I didn’t feel entirely in control. But I don’t know that I could or would want to handle any more pain than I did. And because I was strep-B positive, I needed an IV no matter how I gave birth unless I wanted to put my child at risk. Though the film makes me wonder whether doing without the epidural would have made me feel better at the end, I wouldn’t want to be the place of Cheryl Strayed, the author of an essay in the current issue of Brain, Child magazine. Because she felt an epidural could put her baby at risk, she gave birth at an off-site location and went through 42 hours – 42 hours! – of natural labor to give birth to her just-under-11 pounds baby. Thank God she said she “truly suffered’ during her non-intervention birth, “literally..ripped apart at the seams” or I would really feel like a wimp.

Thinking back on the experience, if I had to do it over again, things I would do the same are:

• Having a doula or midwife, especially if giving birth in a hospital
• Having my husband sneak food in
• Avoiding induction and drugs to speed up labor

The main thing I would do differently would be to speak to the hospital administration and anesthesiologist ahead of time, though I know that wouldn’t be easy. From the anesthesiologist, I’d like to know what the drug combinations are and what effect they will have. Those last couple hours in which I felt everything were probably the most traumatic part (in large part because I thought the major pain was over). From the hospital administration, I’d like to know what rules are and aren’t negotiable. I wasn’t happy to be forced onto the electric fetal monitoring, nor was I happy that they wouldn’t let me have my placenta (it’s my body part and I don’t see why they should have the right to sell it to cosmetic manufacturers). I had wanted to copy the Vietnamese tradition of planting a baby’s placenta in the yard of its first home, so it will always have a place to come back to.

In sum, I appreciate Ricki Lake bringing up the subject. I feel like it’s one that not talked about. By the time a woman looks into these issues and begins to think about it, she’s probably already pregnant and doesn’t have a lot of time for advocacy. I wish the film had brought up suggestions for advocacy, things women can do beyond having a home birth that will ensure greater choice for and respect for women in childbirth.

I think the most critical change needed to improve the care women and babies receive is for the medical establishment to loosen strict regulations (if this means signing something absolving them of any responsibility, so be it), for doctors to learn about how birth works naturally, and for hospitals, staff and insurers to give women the freedom to make their choices and deal with their labor on their own timeline.

I think having a caring person at the side of a laboring woman during the entire labor would be a good start. In Spain, a midwife goes through the birth with a woman in the hospital. A doctor comes in only when needed. It seems the perfect combination of trained support and medical attention. A doula can provide the same support in the U.S., but they might not receive the same respect from the doctor as midwives do in Spain. And you need to arrange for them yourself.

I also think it’s important for women to not be thrown out into the abyss of the unknown after birth. In England, midwives stop by and visit the mother at home several days after the birth. This is done for every family under the national healthcare. The mother is able to ask for advice and assistance. And it’s paid for by public funds because it’s deemed important that infants are well taken care of early on and that mothers are helped in doing this. Because of the realities of the U.S. health care system, the success of these things changing will probably be tied in to the possibility of a nationalized health care system – where people are treated as people and not as profit-making patients.

Just thinking back on the experience of birth, just watching the movie, brings up so many emotions – fear, anger, joy, pain, wonder. There really is something to be said for women feeling a bond with others who have gone through the birth experience. No matter how someone chooses to go about it it’s a life transforming experience.

I feel like it’s so hard to know what to do during a first pregnancy because one can’t know exactly what it’s like or what your individual experience will entail until you’ve been there. For those who have given birth, how satisfied were you with your choices? What would you do differently if you were to do it again?

Writing this post motivated me to look at the video my husband shot immediately after birth for the first time. It took me almost ten months to look at it because reliving those moments was just too scary. River is lying on my chest, I continue to pant and to cry out, even after it’s over. I look at him as a strange, heavy weight suddenly upon me. I say owie, because it still hurts down there and still will for some time to come. In all the photos from his birthday, I look awful – puffy faced, shocked. I also see a photo of him on me and blood and guts still dripping out of my lower region. I understand why the Kyrgyz don’t allow men to accompany women in childbirth for fear that they will no longer be attracted to their wives. I respect and appreciate my husband for being there, for holding up and for still finding me attractive. I think it was enough to subject him and the other people with me to that though. So this video is not of the birth, but within the first hour afterwards.

Parenthood Blogging

Around the time I decided to start a blog on the motherhood experience, I also thought it would be helpful to find some other parenting blogs to read – to see what others are doing and how they are getting through the trials and joys of parenthood. Given the huge numbers of parents out there, I thought it would be easy to find some good stuff. I was wrong.

I have sorted through hundreds of blogs in order to find a couple worth reading regularly. I went to Technorati, looked at the blogs under parenting and copied the top 200 or so. Out of those, I liked only about five of them. And most of the ones I liked were at the bottom of the popularity list.

What I am looking for in a blog?
1. Honest, intelligent and insightful writing
2. Not a laundry list of I did this or child did that
3. A focus on sharing information or experiences rather than a focus on trading links, gaining a larger audience or appealing to the masses.
4. A voice I can trust rather than someone beholden to sponsors

I think it’s number 3 that turned me off of so many of the blogs. Technorati rates blogs by “authority” by counting the number of blogs that link to that particular blog. So in an attempt to get more links, more authority and more readers, blogs find all ways to get people to link to them. Ie. put a link to my blog on your blog and leave a comment and you’ll qualify to win A, B or C. Number 4 often becomes an issue after a blog has reached number 3. Once they have become popular, they are able to attract sponsors and their posts may begin to spend more time advertising than providing quality information.

I also suppose that the more popular a blog becomes, the more the blog owner is pressured to appeal to the masses, which can mean refraining from stating unpopular opinions or fearing to criticize something some of the readers believe in.

Here are the blogs I’ll be checking in at in the near future.

All and Sundry
Ask Moxie
Crunchy Domestic Goddess
Frugal Fu
Her Bad Mother
IzzyMom
Suburban Bliss: Birth Control via the Written Word
Unruly Scrawl
Velveteen Mind

I’d love to find others, especially among the less popular blogs. If you have a favorite, please share.

Living Life as a Poem

“You know I think the tendency of one’s life is to harden into commonplace living. We ought to struggle against it, for surely the world about us is a living poem, and every one has the power to make life a living poem or else a dead letter.”



This is a quote from Anna Leonowens, of The King and I fame, to her daughter in 1880. I came across it in an excellent biography I just finished of Anna called Bombay Anna.

I love this quote firstly because it shows the character this woman had. This was a woman who adventured around the globe, finding success for herself and her children, at a time when it was rare for a woman to do so. I admire her curiosity, her intellect, her adaptability.

I also feel a certain kinship with her. I share her desire to question social norms, to travel the world, to learn and to write. It was a fear of the commonplace, of the boring routine of the lack of challenge of living where I knew and understood how everything worked that drew me overseas and kept me going back.

Now that I have a 9-month-old child and a husband, I’m tied to my home country in a way I never was before. I can still travel, and I have, even with baby. But it’s more difficult for me to live overseas for long periods. I’m at much greater risk for hardening into commonplace living.

I thought I’d be unhappy living in a small town where I rarely see anything too surprising when I walk outside. During my first few months here, while pregnant with River, I wasn’t very happy. I did appreciate a lot of things – the gyms, the safety, the length of the colored-leaf season. But I also felt bored.

Now that River is here, I’m surprised to find that I don’t mind living here too much. A trip to someplace new every couple of months helps. But I think what helps most is River’s ability to remind me of things I long since stopped noticing. The way he finds newness in the commonplace is similar to what I found by landing in a foreign land. By seeing this place through his eyes, I can once again appreciate the excitement of a door lock, a 7-month old withered balloon, a leaf, a man cutting tree limbs hanging over the road.

That said, I am concerned about how I’ll continue to live a living poem. River is a big part of my poem for now, a beautiful lyric song. I appreciate the nature that surrounds me, my family, the people I’ve met, the details of a sprig of flowers or the construction of a church. However, to fully live out a poem, I know I need to be involved in the issues that drive me – poverty alleviation, economic development, equality, social policy, literature, health. I have to find a new way to contribute my skills to the world, to live and to learn, to be a good mother and to feel fulfilled. I have to remember that life offers far more beyond the commonplace and it's up to me to find a way to grasp it.