11/7/22

neck started feeling better the day after R massaged it : )

pace of life changed so much w baby. besides work, only getting like 2-3 things done a day, and they are only things like taking a shower and doing the dishes. but am falling more in love w him every day. i love to just look at him, he looks like a little baby-man. and he’s so entertaining now, speaking words nonstop starting when he first wakes up (that’s actually how i know he’s really awake- he starts just saying all the words he knows)

11/9/22

omg do not ring my doorbell. I think whoever rings doorbells or even knocks loudly are so detached from kids/family/baby life. The baby’s always sleeping when this happens. in the same vein, those cars and motorcycles with super loud engines piss off R and I, as parents of a baby, whereas they never did before.

i usually eat intuitively, like what my body feels like eating, but I think for this period in my life, I should eat more with my head than with my intuition/feeling, because my sleep is so messed up that I think it’s affecting my appetite/cravings- I’m craving too much sweet stuff and therefore consuming it because I’m used to eating whatever I feel like. but just realized that if there is one time in my life I should be more bookish or systematic about my diet, it’s now.

11/10/22

This is the year I was, at any given time, either hungry or tired. if I see a new mother in the future, I’m always gonna first, without needing to ask, bring her food and drink or help her get sleep. Those are the only things I want, all the time.

11/11/22

he’s still biting me sometimes. Usually I try to let it go, but today when he fell asleep he was doing it on and off and I was afraid it would just continue and hurt even more so I stuck my pinky in to release and that made him bite down harder as he yanked his mouth away still locked on, which hurt so much I started crying, but not loud crying because I didn’t want to scare or wake him up more, so I was shaking with quiet sobs while he also cried because i woke him up, and I quickly frantically put him on the other side , and he was quiet. I don’t think I’ve ever cried so hard from physical pain before, not even with my skin which I just bear silently, but I guess it’s because this biting pain is more sudden.

1:06 am, tired after literally hours of rounds of breastfeeding during which i was almost sleeping/then woken up again, woke up this time thinking he was still attached to my breast but saw he was in fact done and had turned his back, but my itchy feet now keeping me awake and after i itched them and they were weeping and burning, just as i left his side for a second to get paper towel and spray to clean up, he wakes up crying for another round and i’m saying, “ok, ok, ok, ok” in a tone to comfort him as much as myself at that moment while holding iphone flashlight and wiping up as much skin scales as i can from the bed and from him too cause when he got up he rolled and sat in them (like my worst nightmare), then stacking pillows and putting him back to my breast as fast as possible, baby finally sucking, i think: “wow. this is as much as i can physically handle.” like…i know my breaking point kind of now, my limits, bc baby has brought me up to them.

this whole week (and like half of last week?) have been trying to fold and put away this pile of clean laundry that i just keeping dumping in his crib. The pile keeps growing; i think it’s 3 or 4 loads’ worth now. Each day i am actually excited to do this and check it off my list, but then between getting sleep in the morning, work, baby care, basic hygiene and basic eating, basic everything, i run out of time. tomorrow’s friday, it’s been so many days and nights of it just sitting there and me rummaging through it for clothes i need at the moment.

11/2/22

just in the past few weeks it seems, he’s been soaking up new words like crazy. He’ll repeat words you just said even when you’re not teaching him, like when you’re just talking to other ppl. Here are words he currently knows and uses to talk to us:

yes, no, open, close, kick, out, walk, eat, more, egg, hot, mmmm, po-po (pick me up), nene (want to breastfeed), mama, dada, nana, grandpa, cat, dog, octopus, frog, turtle, laptop, moon, airplane, keys, acho (peek a boo), monkey,  bear, unicorn, medicine, sun (for sunglasses), eyeg (for eyeglasses), eh (for elephant), broke, dock (for Hickory Dickory dock), doo doo (for baby shark), poo poo (when he has to pee or poo), fart, burp, hair, comb, phone, eyes, nose, teeth, head, Hunter, ball, hi, bye bye, car, vroom vroom, bike, kiss, swing, gentle, fast, cocon (for coconut water), shirt, pants, jacket, hat, shoes, socks, off, ow, ouch, hold (when he wants to hold something), cheese, snack, drink… that’s all I can think of for now, and he learns more every day…

11/3/22

he doesn’t even want to hold anyone’s hand while walking; he wants to do it himself.

11/6/22

The night before, I turned weird while breast-feeding and hurt my neck, and the next day I couldn’t hold it or move it right and it hurt. So last night R was massaging it for me while the baby was asleep, and it was really nice. But at one point – it was when he had his two palms against the back of my neck and was tilting my head back so gently and slowly and I could not do anything but lean against his hands because it hurt to hold my head up on my own, that my body had a sudden reaction of starting to cry.  The best I can describe why is because I just felt so vulnerable in his hands- if he let go, everything would kind of be lost because I couldn’t hold my head up on my own in that position (too painful)- I was completely leaning on him and depending on him for support and care and warmth and comfort in that moment, and I guess in my relatively independent life, I’m not used to that feeling of utter dependence; but I was utterly dependent on him, in that moment. It was so tender and everything that it just made me knee-jerk cry (which surprised me as it seemed to come from nowhere) for a few seconds until he changed the position.

10/25/22

when I lean forward lately, since he started eating more solid food, little pieces of food that I don’t know what food it is falling out of my clothes.

one of the worst most helpless feelings i’ve had as a parent so far: hunter scratching his eczema while looking at me and saying, “itchy” and me nothing I can do but reply “sorry” and just keep putting the array of all-natural organic balms and creams I’ve collected for both him and i, which don’t help much. i put ice pops from the freezer on his itchy spots too hoping the cold will help soothe.

10/26/22

I hope I can go back to regular sleep after this is over, that I’m not an insomniac now and that I can get normal sleep like I used to, when the day comes when it’s possible for me again.

10/28/22

reading Diaper Free Baby and it kind of changed my whole outlook on mothering. like the end chapters especially…i’m not practicing the diaper-freeness to a T or even mostly, but i love her philosophy/heart source/where she’s coming from. One of the things she suggests for dealing with the overwhelm of motherhood is “lightheartedness,” and that just struck a chord with me. i’d like to try that.

with a baby, you have to be ready to be interrupted at any moment…and if you want to keep your grace/dignity/sanity- not merely ready but also like… open-arms, wholly welcome to it.

10/29/22

the tone of voice when he speaks lately is very commanding and matter-of-fact, like you should understand him, but his words are not understandable many times. it’s really cute =)

when I’m not with the baby, I’m doing things for him: folding his laundry, washing his dishes, cleaning up after him, thinking about him, buying things for him, etc.

10/18/22

sometimes during nursing he lays his hand on my stomach and i think how his hand used to be pressing from the other side of that wall, how his whole body used to be swimming and squirming and pressing inside there, but then i look at how big he is now and can hardly believe he once fit entirely in there.

10/19/22

A constant I’ve found of baby life: not beginning things that I meant to do in the morning until the end of the day. and this thirst all the time, almost unquenchable, I think from the breast-feeding

10/20/22

weighed myself today at 88.8 lbs, i think the lowest ive ever seen it. i eat full fat ice cream like every day- i eat butter and eggs and cheese and cream and full fat yogurt and everything, am not restricting anything but carbs (pasta, rice, potatoes, bread, etc). so not sure why the weight loss, the only thing i can think is that it’s my f’ed up sleep still, that it’s messing with my normal metabolism or something. Because I ate more meals pre-postpartum (like 3-4, or more) than now postpartum (only like 2 meals a day) because i wake up so late, spending most of the early and late morning and even into early afternoon trying to catch up on the sleep I was deprived of from the night before, and this routine has been on repeat for some time now.

10/8/22

contrary to what i first thought (and hoped), healing is not going in a straight line. It got better, then a little worse. but i notice that there’s a certain level of bad that it is not reaching, that it went to before.

another reason I realized having a kid is exhausting, not just physically: if you were taught shame or other negative things in your childhood, you realize it as he’s going through the stages you went through, and you’re trying to unlearn it as you go, while also distancing yourself from it in order to make up new ways to teach him differently, that you never considered before. all this takes a lot of emotional and intellectual energy I think.

10/12/22

he’s so observant/sees what we don’t see. He was just running around the room playing and suddenly started saying “Mickey” a lot and me and my dad had to look around for a minute to realize a video had just come on the TV with mickey mouse in the background of the video.

10/13/22

last night, when he woke up half asleep, he said “doo doo” (what he calls baby shark) and then fell back asleep. then this morning, while mom was using the vacuum downstairs, he screamed “vacuum!” so clearly, it was really funny. when he hears her using it, he keeps saying “vacuum” and making a “woo woo” vacuum noise.

10/14/22

something i learned bc of baby (and mom screaming it at me during stressful times): like…. when he needs me, i have to stop cleaning/putting things away and attend to him first. i didn’t really get that at first. I am/was so used to cleaning up after myself. but with a baby, sometimes (a lot of times) you just can’t. you just kind of have to drop everything.

I started wearing this necklace with an H on it just today, made out of my old Silverettes that I sent back and they made into this charm. Hunter noticed and pointed at it and I told him, “H, for Hunter”, and he repeated this (in simplified baby form) after me. I’ll try to always wear this necklace and when he’s old enough see how far back he remembers, he’s only one year and one month old now. 

baby is peeing in the sink now. we just hold him standing at the edge and make a “sssss” sound and he goes (esp in the morning just after waking). I’ve been trying to tune in to his peeing/poo schedule and trying to get mom in on it too. He peed in his baby potty for the first time yesterday – he went to mom and said “pee pee poo poo” and mom and dad took off his pants and sat him on the baby potty and made the sssss noise and he peed. I came downstairs in time to see the end of it and join them in the clapping.

He’s learning so many words now. Tonight he kept saying “out” and “walk” so we took him out on a walk and while he was walking, he kept saying to himself, “walk walk walk” – it was really cute.

10/4/22

started crying today while reading an article online written by a mother about how her son (and in her opinion, all children) naturally wean themselves and sleep the night when they’re ready. Her son was into his second year and still waking during the night, just like Hunter. When I read the part where she wrote “I thought I would never sleep more than two hours at a time again”, I felt it right in my chest.  One of her main themes was that this period of sleeplessness is only a short period compared to the entirety of your child’s life, and just the hope it gave me to read about someone going through the exact same thing and coming out on the other side ok, made me kind of involuntarily burst, I realize now because…it just feels endless all the time to me. The tiredness is frequently….painful, palpable.

10/5/22

starting just the other day, feet (and kind of all my skin) starting to feel and look better. Maybe it’s the turmeric supplement I started taking a week and a half ago? But it just seemed to, in one day, all the raised patches went down & start to heal on their own, for no explicable reason, and I’m not even using the hydrocortisone or any steroids. Just like one day a few months ago, they all just raised on me and got bad and wouldn’t heal no matter how i treated it, for no explicable reason, with no discernible change in my life.

10/6/22

I feel like maybe in eight years, I’ll have time to be myself again.

Sometimes I feel really good while I’m working, like a calm comes over me. It’s hard to explain but I think it’s kind of because, when typing a dictation, there’s not really any way I can work smarter or more efficiently: it’s very linear work, every word said I must type down, and there’s this purity about that to me that I can’t find in a lot of my other daily tasks. With other things, I frequently feel that maybe there is a smarter or better or faster way to do them, but with my work, there’s really only one way to do it, and so I can relax into the process while I do. I love my job and am really grateful we found each other.

10/7/22

Have never had so many “everything is everywhere” moments until I had a baby. By which i mean like, nothing is where it belongs- clothes and products and food and tissues and misc items just unimaginably strewn about the house, the room. But that’s what happens I’ve found, when there is this person crying whose needs are more important than putting everything back where it belongs. I also realized these moments stress me out – i’m used to, from being childless most my life, having time to clean up after myself, and love being surrounded by order and beauty at home. But i realize that now (and ever since he was born, really) we can’t do things exactly when we want to, anymore. It’s a baby-having fact that no one prepared me for, that I learned the hard way. Have actually tried to post this entry twice since last night, but first he woke up crying to nurse while I was writing it so i had to stop, then tried again later this morning but it clashed with his naptime and had to nurse him again. Now he’s fallen asleep and this is my third attempt – the charm I guess.

10/8/22

Just found out recently about Elimination Communication. Reading the book Diaper Free by Ingrid Bauer. I think it’s awesome, and so wish I had learned about it sooner. Gonna try this with baby asap. It made me think today, when I was reading it, how living in the US, I enjoy the benefits of like the “latest” and most “modern” everything…but at the same time, if I’m not careful and don’t question or think things through on my own, also suffer from integrating its heavy-handed and frequently untrue marketing narratives into my personal beliefs.

9/25/22

in caring for him, why this prevailing feeling of helplessness and inadequacy- when you are the person he wants the most? He lately all the time is just like “mama, mama, mama” and clinging to me.

he started doing this thing when he first wakes up in the morning and I’m still lying down: he crawls over and puts his face on my face and repeats “mama” a million times, with different intonations, and alternating stressing the first and second syllables. his slobber gets all over me and his jaw opening and closing against my face feels cute lol and makes me laugh, even though im so tired.

9/26/22

so crunched for time it feels self-indulgent to just check my email.

9/27/22

have not broken out this bad ever/in a long time: bad on neck, sides of torso around to back, hands and arms up to shoulders, thighs (front and back), have dark itchy spots down legs, and of course, tops of both feet have been bad for months now. So it definitely feels systemic, and also makes me wonder if breastfeeding/lack of sleep (or both) is what is causing it.

Started taking tumeric supplement yesterday

10/1/22

was just reading that mother rabbits use bits of their fur that they pull out themselves to make a nest for their babies. was wondering if there’s a correlation with my skin being so bad while im in the nursing phase. maybe it pulls the nutrients from my skin to make the milk.

just want to make a note to myself for the future in case I look back on this time like it wasn’t that hard, and feel like i could have another child: it was that hard. And unless there’s a big change in my life circumstances (like being able to automate everything like food and baby care and cleaning so I wouldn’t have to worry about anything but breastfeeding and caring for him), I could not do this again. I feel like if me and R can get through this with our love intact, we can get through anything.

10/2/22

kind of scary, i don’t remember ever being in the 80-lbs range. but just weighed myself and im 89.2…i chalk it up to still not getting my full sleep (for a year now, which messes with my appetite). i was feeling esp skinny lately. not trying to lose weight. maybe it’s the keto diet, idk. I feel like once I start sleeping right again, the weight will come back.

2:17 am – are you more of a mother with the more kids you have? Or are you just as much of a mother with one?

9/19/22

today drove on my own, for the first time in a long time (since the birth i’ve mostly been driven around by R or my parents) with baby in the backseat to parents’ house. He cried like the whole time and didn’t fall asleep. mom said later that i have to talk to him the whole time and ask him questions (like a crazy person, because he’s not really going to answer). but if that’s what it takes to keep him from crying, I’ll do it.

9/20/22

weeks are passing like days. That’s how fast they feel. 

9/23/22

when i saw him this morning, he looked even bigger and taller than yesterday, and when i held his hands they felt as if they grew more overnight, too. 

9/25/22

yesterday noticed him noticing for the first time, the flowers i have hanging near the ceiling in my bedroom. he was looking up and all around, with a look of wonder. it’s cool to see his field of vision expanding more every day. 

9/9/22

I feel like I’m not that good a mom now, that i just don’t have the instinct to know what the babbling means and don’t like to do mundane  tasks like cleaning and changing, but I feel like I’ll be a better mom once he can reason and talk with me, I feel like I’ll do better then.

i feel kind of like…you haven’t really been tested in life until you’ve constantly endured, as the sole caretaker at the time, the demanding screams of a baby.  If you both come out on the other side okay, i feel like this is a …. or can be a….superior level of refining fire/resiliency strengthener. There aren’t many things as stressful as this, i think.

9/10/22

I was thinking, that the perfect thing would be, regarding weaning, if he was the one that stopped the breastfeeding on his own, because I would hate to feel that I was taking something he seems to love so much away from him. It would be nice if the initiation came from him.

9/12/22

had this moment yesterday at Hunter’s birthday party that weirdly made me feel more like a “mom” than anything else so far: I picked two pieces of sticky, half-eaten pizza crust off the ground and stuffed them in my front pocket because Hunter kept trying to pick them up and eat them, and I didn’t have anywhere else to put them right then because I was running after him inside the playground. Being at his 1-year birthday with these slobbered-on crusts in the pocket right over my heart, I just felt struck suddenly, with reality, with just this silent badge of… momhood. it seemed the most absurd/out-of-character thing I’ve had to do in the name of baby yet.

he’s started to get very clingy to us, running to our legs and holding them, his dad and i.

i’ve always had the goal to not need help taking care of him anymore and want to eventually stop spending every week at my parents’, but did not know any precise measurement until this morning: I realized it’s when I can get work in and type it without him screaming and crying when I turn my attention away from him, which is what happened this morning when I tried to do my work. He does this when I venture out of the playpen away from him but also when I’m right next to him and just need to do my work. I’m not sure when this time will come (months? years??)- when I can do my work and he won’t cry himself into a sweat- but I realized that is what needs to happen before I can start handling him alone every day. I even turned on his favorite shows and opened the lids of the toy boxes to pique his interest, but he paid all that no mind once he noticed I wasn’t paying attention. it was impossible to work because I couldn’t hear the dictation over his screaming.

something I’m happy about lately is that the other week I weighed myself and I am back in the 94-pounds range, which is what I weighed before I got pregnant. Also my belly looks pretty much like it did before- I notice a slight bulge that’s different, but I think other people wouldn’t notice, and it’s ok with me, as I did have like a person living in there for a while.

9/14/22

had this thought today while looking into baby’s face while he was nursing: “this is my chance to give someone my best, for their whole life.” I’ll have so many opportunities with him. And maybe also it’s a chance for me to test the boundaries and find out how far my best really reaches.

such range of ambivalence about breastfeeding. some days (like tonight) i am crying or almost crying out of frustration/pain if he’s restless and keeps coming on and off the boob and biting hard each time (he is probably frustrated too, he’s very congested with a cold) and my back hurts from sitting up for so long- i can’t lie down because upright is the best position for his runny nose. and then some days it’s easy, when he’s well and ready, he falls asleep without a fight and it’s all peaceful and lovey-dovey. i feel both “oh my god, when will this ever end?” and also “oh no, i feel the end of this is so close.”

9/16/22

it’s only 10:15 right now, but it feels like 12 or 1 o’clock to me, I’m so tired. Maybe it’s the colder temps that have recently settled in during the night, but also i think I went to sleep too late last night (it was around 1-1:30 am, baby is sick with a cold, he kept waking up like every hour to nurse)

9/17/22

he’s at this stage where he seeks me out and clings to me so hard with his little  arms wrapped around my neck; he’s never clung like this before, all wrapped around me like a little monkey. i don’t encourage it at all (i want him to be really independent), but when it happens, my heart melts and melts, and i savor it, bc i know it’s fleeting.

9/4/22

there was a point  while nursing tonight while me and Hunter were lying side by side facing each other, that we held hands right in the middle of us. his hand is definitely bigger, not an infant’s hand anymore, it’s like a kid’s hand now, and he holds your hand intentionally now, with more intention. it was kind of the sweetest calmest moment ever.

9/5/22

3:51 am – tonight he started nursing around 7 pm and nursed continuously until about 10:30 pm when he seemed to fall asleep, but woke up every 1-2 hrs since then to nurse.  Felt hot, but when I checked his temp, he didn’t have a fever. What was unusual is he nursed and nursed and just wouldn’t fall asleep. In the middle of the night I actually had to go upstairs to get rodrigo and we took him for a car ride at like four in the morning. He fell asleep in under five minutes, and we brought him home, and his schedule has been pretty normal since then. but it was weird, and really energy-zapping for both me and R.

9/9/22

I think I know what happened on Sunday night like five days ago when he wouldn’t sleep – he was sick, and I didn’t realize it. The day before yesterday, he got this head-to-toes body rash which my mom said looked like measles, it looked bad. He wasn’t acting much different though, except being a bit more irritable/easily crying. We took him to the doctor the next morning, who after examining said it was not measles, but was “some kind of virus” which had probably just passed and the rash was like a result of it passing. I said he had a birthday party coming up, should we cancel it? And the doc said no, since he didn’t have a fever or runny nose or cough or anything, that he wasn’t contagious, and that the rash might even be gone by then (which I was really surprised, cause from the looks of it, had thought it was something really serious and had already said bye-bye to the bday party, in my mind). I was just really relieved it wasn’t measles, cause I think he still hasn’t gotten that vaccine, not being eligible for it until his 1-year appointment, which is next Friday. I was so worried before we went to the doctor, i had a knot in my stomach…i think I now know the meaning of “worried sick.”