Bliss of Life

Since we’re four months along, I thought it would be a good idea to put together a list of things that have really worked for us and those things that we could have lived without.

THE GOOD STUFF

I’ll start with the bare essentials–those things that promote sleep!

Swaddling

Swaddling works well for us. When Lily is swaddled, she sleeps longer, wakes up less in between feedings, and she doesn’t look like she wrestled with Freddy Krueger in her dreams, meaning she can’t scratch her face while she sleeps). I really like the Kiddopotamus SwaddleMe swaddlers made from organic cotton. Most moms stop swaddling their babies when they start busting out of the swaddle or the blankets become to small, but since these velcro together, she doesn’t usually bust out. They come in different sizes, and they have a variety of colors. Occasionally, if they aren’t pulled tight enough I wake up to find her looking like the statue of liberty with one arm waving free above her head.

Baby Hammock

We’ve used this hammock by Naturessway since Lily was born. At first it was just for naps during the day, and she slept tucked under my arm at night. But when she started going to bed before me, we put her in the hammock until she wakes up for her first feeding. Now I treasure that first few hours of uninterrupted sleep unhindered sleep. The nice thing about this hammock is that swings and bounces. If she stirs in her sleep, the hammock bounces and sometimes that’s all she needs to settle.

Airflow Adjustable Baby Positioner

Once Lily wakes up for her first feeding, she’s in the bed with us for the rest of the night. I put her in this baby positioner and nurse her lying down in bed, which allows me to fall back asleep while I nurse her. I don’t think this baby positioner was made with the intention of holding a baby while she is nursing, but until I figured out I could, I got kicked, and kicked, and kicked while she nursed until she fell asleep and I was wide awake. Another upside to this positioner is that it helped me let go of my fear that she would roll onto her face and not be able breath, that kind of thinking doesn’t promote sleep.

Tres Tria Pillow

This is a sturdy pillow made out of organic rubber foam, no stinky off-gassing. I got this when I was 7 months pregnant and my hips needed more support than a bed pillow could provide. Then when Lily started really making the effort to roll we put the Tres Tria co-sleeping pillow on the edge of the bed.  I move it in between Lily and Ben when she is in between us because Ben sleeps like it’s an olympic sport–all focus, no distraction.  I sleep better knowing there is a barrier between he and Lily. We picked ours up at Austin Baby Store, but Tiny Birds Organics also carries the Tres Tria Pillow.

Reebok StayBall

In the early weeks of Lily’s life when her digestive system was still trying to figure how to work, this was one of the few things that could put her to sleep. Ben would sit on the ball, hold her close to his chest and bounce her until she was calm. Sleep came shortly after that.

Bum Genius Cloth Diapers

These are all-in-one diapers that are adjustable to grow with your baby, and they are fantastic. They seldom leak and they wick the moisture away from her tender parts so well that, it’s sometimes hard to tell if she is wet. I don’t know if this has anything to do with the diaper, but Lily never cries because her diaper is wet.

Haba Mobile – Curtains Rise

Having a mobile above the changing table makes my life so much easier. Lily almost never cries during diaper changes because she’s checking out her mobile friends. I like this mobile because the mouse and bear are facing down, making it easy for her to see their smiling faces, and they are detachable. I make them buzz around before they land on her little cheeks and bestow kisses. Now she is able to grab them and hug them to her chest, which makes diaper changing even more fun for her.

Cranial Sacral Therapy

Cranial sacral therapy, who knew? This not-so-well-known treatment stems from the osteopathic world. Even though I have had osteopathic adjustments,(subtle adjustments to the soft tissues) and I actually prefer them to chiropractic adjustments, it wasn’t until Lily was born, that I got see for myself just how powerful cranial Sacral therapy is. When Lily was almost three weeks old she started nursing for hours at a time. At first I just thought she was really hungry, but a lactation consultant diagnosed the problem. Her top pallet was too high. She couldn’t get enough milk. After a half hour of nursing she could only extract little more than half an ounce, whic was about 1/4 of what she needed. Three cranial sacral treatments later and she was nursing like a champ.

Auskin Sheepskin Baby Car Seat/Stroller Cover

Car seats are hot! I can’t count how many times I pulled a soggy, sweaty Bean out of her carseat. We recently got this sheepskin cover to (hopefully) make the car seat experience more comfortable. When Ben was installing it, he took the head support pillow out since she doesn’t need it anymore, on it was a sweat stain.  Poor Bean.

More Milk Plus Tincture

When I needed to boost my milk supply this stuff was a life saver. The suggested dosage is on the conservative side. My doula recommended that I triple the recommended dosage. After that, my milk supply increased in three days.

THE NOT SO GOOD STUFF

The First Years Sure Comfort Delux-to-Toddler Tub

This was a last minute registry item. I’ve used it once during the first few weeks after Lily was born, and she cried the whole time, but to be fair she cried during all kinds of baths until she was 6 weeks old. When she started enjoying baths, it wanted to be in the tub with her. It now sits behind our bear-claw tub, below our towel rack, awkwardly taking up space.

Bamboo Kiddopotamus SwaddleMe Swaddlers

This may seem like I’m contradicting myself because I already said that the organic Kiddopotamus SwaddleMe’s are great, but hear me out. Bamboo is a very stretchy fabric and our Little Bean is a slender baby. She used to sweat a lot when she slept, so we bought these with the hope that the lighter, more breathable bamboo fabric would be cooler for her.  They were cooler, but they stretched so much that she could wiggle her way out. I often woke up to a flailing baby smacking me in the face, wearing what appeared to be a tube top. Her dad and I agree–she is entirely too young for a tube top. So these didn’t really work for us, but maybe they would for a slightly thicker baby.

Pumping

Yuck! I can’t stand pumping. It’s time consuming and messy, not to mention that the flanges gave me a rash.

Gripe Water

There are probably a dozen different brands of Gripe Water. It contains ginger and other herbs help with digestion. It’s suppose to soothe colic, but it didn’t work for us. Actually, when Lily was 7 days old we had what we now refer to as the gripe water incident. The short story is that Lily choked. It wasn’t a cough, cough kind of choke. It was silent. Her lips were blue. I have never known that kind of fear.

THE UNDECESIDED STUFF

Itzbeen

I had a hard time putting this one in the maybe catagory because it almost never left my side during the first couple months when life was kind of a sleepy-eyed blurr for both me and Lily, but after she was two months old, I hardly ever used it. It’s a nifty gadget that keeps track of the time between feedings, diaper changes, naps and whatever else you want to keep track of. Ben used it for watering the lawn.  When we were trying to get her top pallet to drop, I used the Itzbeen faithfuly to clock how long she nursed. That was the only way I could tell how much milk she was geting. The problem with it is that it doesn’t have a memory.  It now sits in my nursing basket in the living room.  I ocassionally use it to check the time since we don’t have a clock in that room.

Meester Kitty

When Lily was born Meester decided that litter boxes were too esoteric for him, so he got creative about where to put his pee and poops. Since then he’s been in quarentine, locked in Lily’s play room, which stinks considering the time we spent prepairing it for her. Now we rarely use it because we have to keep the doors shut. Otherwise, he gets out. We’ve let him out in the past, but the smallest change, like newly installed baby gates or an overnight guest, sets him off and he’s at it again with his creative litter boxing, peeing on bouncers and bath mats. That sad thing is he is such a gently cat. He would be a perfect playmate for a child. He cozies up to Lily when her clumsy hands explore his face, and he doesn’t even flinch when her hand pulls his fur or his ear. Every time we put her on the changing table she arches her back and turns her head so she can look at him sitting by the window. It’s really sweet, and kind of crummy.

Lily turned four months last Friday, and yes, the fourth trimester is over.  She rolls over like she was born doing it, and then she gets stuck on her belly.  Ben saw her roll from her belly to her back yesterday.  It was for his eyes only because she hasn’t done it since.  What she has done is cry. When she was learning how to roll she revealed a brand new cry.  From what I can tell, it means she’s frustrated.  She only does it when she’s tired and she dropped the rattle she was playing with, or she’s tuckered out from being on her belly and trying to flip over, or in the car seat, which sucks.

She’s had a few crying spells the past week that remind me of the ones she had when she was only a few weeks old.  I think she gets over tired and then there is no other way to balance herself out except cry.  I realize I’m making it sound like she cries a lot.  She doesn’t.  It’s just that in the past she cried so very seldom that it disturbs me to see her cry at all.  But if she hadn’t cried, I wouldn’t have realized that comforting her now feels more like comforting a small child rather than a baby.  She puts her arms around my neck, so I can wrap mine around her small frame, and turns her head to the side to rest it on my shoulder.  When she cried all the way home last Thursday night nothing could soothe her, not my singing and shaking her favorite rattle to the rhythm of the song, not reaching into the backseat to stroke her forehead, and stopping to nurse was only a temporary relief.  She finally stopped crying the moment I wrapped my arms around her.  She didn’t need to nurse–she just needed me.  She had the post-crying hiccups and when she finally settled, I cried.

She still wakes up smiling most of the time, but sometimes she’s cranky waking up from naps.  Her hair is fancy, or so she’s been told.  It’s coming in thick, like mine, and the same color.  And it appears that she has my smile and possibly her father’s dimples, and God knows whose sense of humor because everything is funny to her: strangers, grandma, kisses from her papa, sneezes from her mama.  She doesn’t laugh very often, but she smiles all the time.  One of my friends said she smiles with her whole body.  Ben and I believe that it’s our job to make sure she never forgets how to do that.

Her hands reach for everything now days.  She likes touching my face when she looks at me and pulling my hair when I pick her up.  When she’s scared, the little fists return and she pulls them in close, but hardly anything scares her anymore.

Nursing is different now.  She still falls asleep nursing, but all the conditions have to be just right, which means no talking, deep breathing, drinking or moving around in anyway that is not conducive to her getting into the noming zone.  While she nurses she moves the outside hand in a circle from her cheek and towards each of my collar bones.  It’s rhythmic and steady and looks like a moving meditation.  If I put my finger in her palm, she clasps her fingers around mine but continues to move it in a circle.  It’s distracting and precious, just like her.

There were other things I wanted to write about, but it’s late and my brain is tired.  My baby is sleeping, which is what I should be doing.

She’s been working hard on rolling.  At first, she only tried when she was under her play gym.  Now, it doesn’t matter where she is–bed, floor, couch, changing table.  If she’s down, she is working on flopping over.  She intuitively understands the concept of leverage.  Over the past few days, I watched her try to grab and bite the blanket she was on to anchor her body in the direction she wants to go.  It’s adorable and heartbreaking and hillarious.

Then today, she did it! I’m not sure if it is technically a roll, but she successfully went from her back to her belly.  Her arm was stuck underneath her, so she used it to roll back and forth from her back to belly, belly to back.  A face full of dimples and gums, doing a nice cat stretch in between.

It looks like what is referred to as the fourth trimester, the period of time that a baby needs the outside world to mimic the womb as much as possible, will soon be a thing of the past. Now, when I take her out, she doesn’t need to be turned into my body the whole time. Now, she takes some time to get comfortable with her surroundings, then turns her neck and stretches herself out towards the world and away from me.  (She will be doing this for the rest of her life.  It may take the rest of my life to get used to it.)  She will reach her little hand out and touch whatever we put in front of her. She liked touching the different fabrics of clothing when we were shopping yesterday. Of course, there is a very short time between touching, grabbing and putting in the mouth. Everything goes in the mouth these days.

Speaking of mouths, her kisses are juicy wet because she opens her mouth wide when she sees that you are going to plant one on her.  It reminds me of the song Suck My Kiss, by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  I can’t remember all the words to the song, but I’m pretty sure this is not the scenario they were singing about, but it fits.

The other day, I was strapping her in her car seat when I noticed that her fingers looked different. They’re just longer I told myself, but that wasn’t it. The tip of her fingers are what looked so unusual to me, the area around the nail bed. It wasn’t until the next day that I figured out why.  The difference wasn’t that her fingers were longer, although they were.  I wasn’t used to seeing them open, resting on the side of the car seat in the same way that an adult places her hand on an armrest.  The days of tight little fist clutched against her body are slipping by.  Now, I look forward to those little hands reaching for my own.

Just like her little hands, the rest of her is opening, and my role is changing. I’m not just her protector and provider, I am now her tour guide on this planet, for a while at least. I can’t think of a greater privilege than introducing and exploring this great big world with her.  Just look at her.  Obviously, it’s going to be a blast.