Last week

Sitting at home buried under 2+ feet of snow is not how I had envisioned spending my last week of maternity leave.  I was finally getting the hang of enjoying myself…feeling more comfortable running errands, meeting people for lunch etc etc.  Now I’m just trapped here, litterally…my car is in the garage and our 50 foot back alley that leads to our driveway is still covered in Saturday’s snow and now it will have another foot or more added to it on Wednesday.  I had hopes of finishing off some errands, I still have things to return to baby-stores and I desperately need to get to a fabric store to finish some projects.  Not to mention I had high hopes of going out and getting a bunch of new work clothes to fit my improved smaller frame.  I also had a few leisurely lunches planned with friends too.

To say I’m disappointed with the outcome of this last week and the unavoidable reality of having to go back to work is an understatement.  The bright side is I have saved a lot of leave because the government has been closed.  I could probably postpone my start date, but I really want Royce to have his 2 weeks alone with Syd before she starts daycare March 1st.  Not that he will be ‘alone’ because his Mom and then his sister Rhonda arrive next week to meet Syd. But still, it will be good for him to be the primary person in charge of feeding and entertaining this pip-squeak for a while. 

The 16th is my first day back.  Outside of my anger of my snow-covered last week, I am also having bitter-sweet feelings about returning.  In the mornings when I’m energized and Syd is as sweet as sugar I want to stay home.  But by 2:00 when I’m tired and I’ve exhausted my bag of entertaining tricks, I’m ready to go back.  I’m sure my first week will be so busy and it will go by quickly.  I’ve got a lot to catch up on, and will have plenty of fun figuring out how to get my pumping scheduled between meetings.  I know I’m missed, I’ve gotten a dozen emails asking when I’m returning, so thats a good feeling and is sorta giving me momentum as I prepare for my first week back.

Digging out

The snow stopped falling Saturday night around 6 PM.  Our friends Boris and Kelly were without power all day with little hope of restoration til morning, so they stayed with us on Saturday night.  Was a full house with 4 adults and 3 kids but it was fun and I was glad we could help keep everyone safe and warm.  That’s the thing I love about this neighborhood…we all sorta look out for each other.

Sunday everyone was digging out.  And I, being cooped up for longer than I desired needed to get-out.  We got all bundled up and headed out for a snowy walk.

Cars were buried, kids were sledding, men were shoveling…it was quite a day!  The final photos of the blizzard madness and digging-out are on flickr.  We are supposed to get another 4-10 inches on Wednesday, let’s hope it’s more towards the 4 inches than the 10 inches because I’m not sure where we are going to put all this snow!

Snow, and more snow

Is winter over yet?  I’ll admit it has been nice to at least be on leave during this snowy season.  I hate having to go to work in snow or even sleeping with the anticipation of the government possibly shutting down.  This is our second blizzard. First was in December when Syd was a few weeks old and I never got the camera out.  This AM I ventured as far as I could (deck and porch) for some shots.  Will continue to add some more photos as the day goes on so check back if you like.  Seems like we have over a foot right now and it’s still snowing…

12:00 update — Dad is home!   ERs never close and Royce’s group isn’t smart enough to keep doctors in a safe place and would rather have them travel back and forth in a storm.  He left for work last night around 9PM, arrived at the hospital at 10 PM.  And around noon today he walked up the path.  The hospital does have a 4×4 service but even with this much snow it is hard to travel so he had to walk a few blocks home.  At least he doesn’t have to go back until Monday afternoon!  In the spirit of the snow day Syd dawned her Alpine Swiss onesie.  All together now:  AWWWWWW!

Sleep

I’ll probably bite my tongue for this, but we got ourselves a good sleeper.  By 6 weeks Sydney had dropped the 1 am middle of the night feeding.  I should rephrase that…ahem…Mom got tired of trying to wake up Sydney for the middle of the night feeding, so it got dropped.

We then found out that she could sleep from 9pm to about 4am.  Then 4am moved to 5, then 5:30, and now if I let her she can sleep until 7am.  We have a few rouge nights where she will pop back awake at 2 or 3 am.  I don’t feed her if she happens to wake then, as our pediatricians put it; “many adults would find it pleasurable to eat in the middle of the night too, but that doesn’t mean they should.”  Typically if she wakes in the middle of the night some rocking or some pats will put her right back to sleep.

For the most part she goes down with little protest.  If she does protest I can pretty much guarantee it’s because she needs more milk, so I nurse a bit longer and then we have sleepy baby with heavy lids. 

I’m feeling confident that I can work around this when I go back to work.  I hope I can get up at 5:30, get myself ready, feed Sydney and be at daycare when it opens by 7 am.  Hopefully she will allow me to get ready first before putting up to much of a protest .  That order of things will allow me to focus my morning feed on her and our time together, and not on the stuff I still have to do before I get in the car and go to work.

Naps are a different story.  She dozes throughout the day mostly in the stroller during dog walks or in the car seat while we run errands.  I’m hoping that day-care can get her on a more regimented nap schedule.  Then again maybe why she is such a good night sleeper is because she prefers to save it all up by not sleeping during the day!

First dress!

Was a hard week…not sure why…just mentally I had a hard time being a mommy and Sydney was sort of cranky all week.  Royce seems to work every day.  And his schedule, as usual, is haphazard.  No pattern to the madness and I’m a creature of habit and routine and it’s hard to get into one when some days Dad is home during the day, sometimes at night, and sometimes part of the day and none of the night.  And some days are even worse… he gets home early AM leaves in the afternoon and between him eating, running, napping and getting ready to go to back to work there are times when I seem to go 48+ hours without someone to watch baby while I do basic things like take a decent shower (not a speed shower) or eat without getting serenaded by crying or even get computer time to do boring things like pay bills.  Ugh.  It’s been a rough go at it.  After a particularly hard day it’s very hard to send him off at night that is for sure.   I’ll figure it out eventually.  Or maybe I’ll just go insane.

Some exciting things did happen this week.  First up was the arrival of her first dress from Grandma!

Grandma sent me the same pattern (Simplicity #4243) and I was waiting to see the fit of the dress before I started one of my own.  Like adult patterns, these things can sometimes be pretty off on sizing.  Because we are wearing onesies underneath them right now, I think I’ll make the XS which will take her through the winter and still fit her in the spring and maybe even summer.  I got some sweet vintage print fabric from the fabric store last week that I’m dying to use.  Also ordered a fun floral from fabric.com which was on-sale.  It’s a bit light-weight so I’m thinking a summer romper will be perfect for her since she may be crawling by then, and I’m thinking crawling in a dress would be logistically difficult.  However, it’s hard to get decent sewing time in…even with the bells she can only last about an hour (sometimes she will fall asleep though).  I can’t wait til the attention span or her naps get a bit longer!

Syd has also embraced the love of her crib piano.  We had to actually take it out of the crib because at night and at nap time all she would do is stare at the piano…you could just see her longing to kick it.  I ended up tying it to the bottom of the crib which is where we have her play mat anyways.  Now the crib is for sleeping only…no play!

She has also discovered the joy of sucking on her hand.  Can’t quite get the entire thing in her mouth but she sure tries to shove it in.

She has also been managing to do complete 180 turns in her crib at night.  I’ll put her down with her head facing one side of the crib and when she wakes her head is on the opposite side.  I have no idea how she does it considering she is in this straight-jacket swaddle like blanket secured with Velcro.  I’m also amazed it doesn’t wake me up because I’m sure there has to be a decent amount of effort and grunting going on during the process that my monitor should be picking up.

That’s all for now.  I uploaded a bunch of photos to flickr so be sure to check them out.

We still have a long way to go.

This is definitely a venting post so if you don’t feel like listening to a sleep deprived new mom on her soap box…move along…this post has nothing in it for you.

Growing up here in America you think you have it pretty good as a woman.  We have reproductive freedom (for now at least), we can work, vote, and most of us get paid somewhat similarly to our male co-workers.   I always thought that seemed to be enough, and then I had a kid.

First blow was lack of paid maternity leave.  I blogged on this back when I was pregnant.  It sill pains me to tell people when asked that “the federal government does not have paid maternity leave”. They gasp, and I feel embarrassed. Why?  because large companies typically offer a meager 6-weeks to new moms.  But our federal government, which should be setting the standards in my opinion, doesn’t give squat.  I’m glad to report that starting next week I will have exhausted all my accumulated sick leave and will be dipping into my annual leave bucket to cover the last 3-weeks of my maternity leave.  I could take a 3-week vacation…but I guess this is considered vacation…some vacation!  LOL.  Oh and keep your fingers crossed that Syd (or god forbid MOM) doesn’t get sick when I go back to work because I have no sick leave left to cover any time away.  A co-workers wife who works for a European embassy has an entire year off with her new baby.  I’m not sure of the details…I’m almost certain she is not getting her full salary during this time…but I know she is getting *something*.  Must be nice.

Second blow is the one I’m dealing with now…attempting to get my pump purchase and pump rentals reimbursed by my Flex-Spending Account.  This seems like such a no-brainer to me.  Its $$ I set aside tax-free to cover medical expenses, yet something that is considered to be ’medical equipment’ isn’t reimbursable.  Huh?  I’m confused.  I’ve called, I’ve submitted claims…reject, reject, reject.  I even tried calling BCBS to see if they would just pay for it outright…the lady said No..but should have included a statement of the like:  No, we do not reimburse breast-pumps because that would promote breastfeeding and that would promote healthy babies which leads to healthy children and then we wouldn’t have any sick child visits and we wouldn’t make any money.

Luckily for Syd and me our pediatricians office has a nurse practitioner on staff who is also a lactation consultant.  Our weekly doctors visits with her during Syds first month were billed as ‘feeding problems’ instead of lactation consults which wouldn’t have been covered.  Our neighborhood lactation center charges $100/hour for a consultation.  Not cheap.  And definitely not something affordable by all women of varying socioeconomic classes.  Honestly if it wasn’t for my ability to get help from our pediatricians office for our $25 co-pay I’m almost 100% sure I would have given up on breastfeeding entirely.

Sadly, yes, BCBS  and Flex-Spending reimburses for Viagra and other erectile dysfunction drugs.  Said bluntly, erections are more important to the Federal Governments health plans than healthy babies.  Disgusting.

I could go on…the maximum 5k we can set aside with a Flex-Spending account to cover child care expenses is just laughable.  That 5k will barely get us through 3 months of day-care.  And the measly dependent deduction we get for taxes.  Make you wonder why people even want to have kids, and maybe explains why some women choose abortion.  No one is willing to help them raise a healthy child, or give them time off to bond with their child.  I’m actually amazed the pro-lifers haven’t starting using this spin to get somewhere in congress.  Maybe instead of taking away our rights to abortion they should start lobbying for women and family rights, which in turn would give women and families the support and encouragement they need to have their baby.

Makes sense to me.  I can only hope and dream that by the time Syd is in this situation there have massive changes to support these rights which seem to be forgotten.  Sadly, we still have a long way to go before all women and children are considered equal to the big rich guys (and their erections) in congress.

Pig kickin’

Our dear daughter loves to kick those tiny little legs!

We thought her obsessive kicking may cause a problem after her first round of shots this past Tuesday at her 2 month appointment. Put more bluntly by our NP:  “Most 2 month olds are blobs so they aren’t bothered by the pain in their legs from the shots…Miss Active here may have a different reaction.”  Glad to know I don’t have a ‘blob’.  LOL

Three shots in the legs didn’t slow this kid down though! After some good napping she was up for some serious pig kickin’. Her play mat came with this pig that has a bell in it…we set it near her feet and she just goes to town.  The video is my first attempt at using a video camera.  In addition to kicking, it also features cooing, smiles, and general cuteness (and of course my voice which sounds weird to me)

The rest of her appointment was pretty straight forward.  We have a long (22 inches; 41%), skinny (9lbs 11oz; 24%) baby with a smaller than average head (38 cm; 35%)…or at least that is what the percentiles tell us.

Royce thinks they should give these sort of statistics to adults when they go to the doctor.  I can see it now…’Well Mrs X you are fatter than 98% of women your age and your height’.  I mean we are so proud of our children’s statistics why does the fun have to stop at a certain age?   Maybe if we brought back some statistics some adults would take a moment to see how large they are truly getting year after year.

Diaper bag

Not that I don’t like any of the diaper bags available on the market…just wanted something a bit more creative and unique.

I used a hodge-podge of patterns/resources (including Vogue #8506 bag B and Amy Butlers “Little Stitches for Little Ones” for the pockets) to come up with the final product since the bag I really wanted was an out of print pattern (New Look #6453 bag C).  Fabric is a decorator weight fabric from Ikea and was chosen because Royce thought the goats were cool. *sigh*

Month 2

Goodness time flies.  I can barely remember those hazy first days…they seem so long ago, yet also sometimes seem like it was just yesterday.  It is odd really.

First to report, she is eating very well.  We had a chat; mom-to-daughter; and we agreed that she had to figure out breastfeeding by her 1-month birthday or we were going to go straight to pump n’ bottle feed while I was on maternity leave.  Lucky her (me?) she figured it out a few days before her ultimatum and we have been happily feeding ever since.  We still haven’t figured out how to peacefully breastfeed in public, but that I’m not too worried about.  As long as I don’t have to miss more than 1 feeding I’m comfortable enough to give her a bottle of milk instead of wrestling her underneath my hooterhider (which by the way has to be way easier to wear/use/maneuver when you are not wearing winter clothing for it to cling to and make you stuffy).

She is quite the squirmer.  Loves to just kick kick kick those little legs.  Great for me, I can plop her on the floor and tie bells to her ankles for a good hour of entertainment (while I do something else…like sew).

Which brings me to the next thing.  I finally got back on my sewing machine!  What’s a Hawkeye fan to do living here in MD with an important bowl game and nothing for her babe to wear (except for a super cool hawkeye hat — thanks Al and Katie!)?  She makes her own Hawkeye gear of course!

Amazingly Hancock Fabrics had an Iowa print, and I took some felt and stitched a black “I” onto a white onesie.  It came out pretty sweet if you ask me.  According to Royce…the lace “made the pants”, and I would have to agree!  And check out that big belly on her!  Hilarious!

I also completed our diaper bag (I promise a picture soon!).  I started when I was about 38 weeks pregnant and it just never got finished.  I fashioned it from a couple of patterns and my own inspiration.  The fabric was a steal of a deal from Ikea and I let Royce pick it out so that he would feel cool carrying it.  All and all, it’s pretty functional, however I wish it would stand up on its own.  Although the fabric is sturdy, the overall feeling is floppy.

OK, back to Sydney.  She is the cutest, smartest baby around (we are biased of course).  She is doing all the things she should be doing so far.   Probably ahead of the curve on holding up her big ol’ head…she is a curious little bean always looking around.  I’m sure her list of things to do and discover will get even longer in the months to come.

This past week she got to go down to the big city.  We wanted to check out the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition Collection at the National Portrait Gallery and the weather finally warmed up enough for us to attempt a venture downtown.  She had a grand old time (and so did Mom and Dad).  We even caught a few more of the other exhibitions, one of which was a fantastic segment of the “Portraiture Now: Communities” that portrayed 180 people from Maquoketa, Iowa.  We also ran into a large mural by the Missouri artist Thomas Hart Benton.  I remember learning about his art and seeing it at galleries growing up.  Dare I say we have another artist to plan our next nursery around?

This month we also embraced the big-girl bath.  No more sponge baths for this girl!  I pulled out this tub a couple of weeks ago and I haven’t turned back. She LOVES bath time.  Just sits there in awe…not a peep out of her (except a few seconds when you put her in and take her out).  So much nicer on Mom than the sponge baths which she screamed through.  Sometimes I actually use bath time as a way to calm her down during the o’ so lovely ‘witching hours’ of 4-9PM.

I’ve got 4-weeks left of maternity leave and I never thought I would say it… but I could totally see myself staying at home and being with this kid 24/7.  Alas bills need to get paid and I didn’t go to school to get a doctorate for nothing so I need to work a few more years (or move back to the Midwest) to make it all feel more worthwhile.  I’ll enjoy every ounce of these last 4-weeks though!  Check out more pictures from month #2 here, and be sure to read the captions!

Thawing out

I must apologize for the lack of blogging lately…I’ve kinda got a little something that keeps me busy!  It also doesn’t help that our basement (where my computer is) is an ice-box.  I’m kicking myself that we didn’t get new windows put in when we remodeled that space.  We saved a few bucks at the time, but now we have a room we can’t use for 3-4 months of the year without plugging in an electric heater. 

We have had snow on the ground for about a month now…a record for this area.  Wind has been a blowin’ too (which doesn’ t help the poor window situation).  It’s become common to see our dining room curtains billow as the wind howls through.  Which absolutely kills me because the furnace has run non-stop these past months as I’ve been home all day and I have to keep it at a relatively normal temperature for the wee-one. 

Things are starting to thaw out however.  I’ve finally sloughed off the long underwear I’ve put on each day under my jeans and hopefully spring will be here soon.  Supposedly it will be in the upper 40’s tomorrow, and we hope to take Sydney for her first trip downtown for a little culture!

Sometimes between feedings or errands all I can get up are some photos but I don’t have the time to link them to the blog.  You can always check Flickr…the place where I’ve decided to keep all our photo-fun.  Our photostream is here.  Book mark it if you like, and check back often.  The newest photos always appear first…and the newest ’sets’ (groups of photos I upload in batches and try to organize them as such) will always be on the right-hand side of your screen.  And if you forget…don’t worry!  The newest activity always appears here on the blog down the right hand side…just click on ‘more photos’ and you will find our Flickr home.

Thats enough housekeeping for the day!  I’ll post more photos soon, maybe even some video (gasp!), along with a run down of our 2nd month. 

Stay warm!