Mixed Feelings

I'm torn between wishing this page had an RSS feed I could subscribe to,
and a sense of relief that it doesn't.
It's a list of all the non-toy children's products that are being recalled, including furniture and clothing. It's funny that the clothing people keep forgetting that drawstrings are always a strangulation hazard. I suppose it's sad that parents keep forgetting, too.
Caveat emptor, dumbasses, it's clothing with a built-in rope.

Anyway, the list can be kind of upsetting, especially if you have a Baby Bjorn Active or a Fisher-Price Rainforest Swing.

I'll call her Belle

The name "Baby" has an expiration date on it, so I'm going to call her Belle.

I still don't know what her different cries are, but I think the reason for that is partly because I so rarely hear her cry when she's hungry. I feed her every 3-4 hours during the day, and it's only about once a week that she realizes she's hungry before I feed her. When she wakes up hungry at night, I'm just not that with-it to notice the nature of her cry. After all, I know exactly what she wants.

In addition to not getting particularly hungry during the day, Belle has taken to getting a good chunk of sleep at night, falling asleep by 8:30 at the latest and waking at 2am at the earliest. This leaves me with a dilemma many new moms face: do I try to get a full 6+ hours of uninterrupted sleep by going to bed at 7:30pm, or do I enjoy a quiet evening and continue getting 4ish hours at a time? So far, it's been the latter, and I'm trying to be in bed by 10:15, which mostly translates to "before 11". I usually get another 2-3 hours after that feeding before the next.

The only frustration we have with Belle's latest schedule and otherwise-delightful personality is that she has to have a good cry before sleeping most of the time. When she gets tired in the afternoon, she gets so sad and cranky. And in the evening when we're getting her ready for bed, there's always crying. Sometimes her evening crankytime lasts only 15 minutes, but sometimes it can go for 90 before she tuckers herself out. It's so very sad when she cries, and I feel so sad to not be able to help her.
I think that's one of the most important lessons of parenthood - that sometimes, we just can't help our children, we can only be there to hold them and love them. I've seen my mother go through the same thing when I've had hard times, so I might as well just learn how to deal with it now.

Media Blackout

I'm initiating a total media blackout starting tonight and continuing until I finish reading the new Harry Potter. I'm not surfing the internet, listening to the radio, and I might not even answer my phone. Honestly, I don't even trust my Mom not to start a conversation with something awful like "So, were you sad when Hermione died?"

This media blackout will take a while, because D's reading the book first. We're taking turns, because SOMEbody has to watch the baby.

I think I'll even refrain from tv that broadcasts after midnight tonight. But it seems like Scrubs reruns are probably safe.

My Plastic Paranoia

For years now, friends and co-workers have rolled their eyes at my paranoia over plastic. Particularly, over heating things in plastic. I often bring a Lean Cuisine to work for my lunch, but I always bring china from home to use in the microwave: I refuse to microwave any plastic. Also, I won't boil plastic; that's dangerous too. Also-also, no nonstick pans above medium heat. OK, medium-high.

My plastic paranoia naturally extended to baby products once I became pregnant. There is a chemical called BPA which has been proven to leach out of some types of plastic and into whatever is contained in the plastic. It is absolutely shocking to me that so many BABY BOTTLES are made with this plastic.

The baby-industrial-complex doesn't really want word of this to get out, and I haven't seen any major media coverage about the dangers and ubiquity of BPA, but there are plenty of studies available online. I forget where I found this, but this pdf from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy is a good summary of what's going on with plastics.
Some of the baby blogs I read have done some research, particularly:
Baby Toolkit
Daddy Types
Z Recommends

I'm guessing that posting this won't make a difference to my readers, especially because I sound like the kind of crappy alarmist email forward your aunt keeps sending everyone, but to twist a phrase,
Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't putting dangerous chemicals in baby bottle plastics.

It Can't It Won't and It Don't Stop

The thrush, that is. Poor Baby has had a mild case of thrush on her tongue for about a month. According to her doc, the mild cases are the hardest to get rid of, which only sort of makes sense. Anyway, I'm getting tired of swabbing her tongue four times a day.
It is, however, completely adorable how she tries to suck on the q-tip.

In other news, this week she has started making 'conversational' sounds, not just sounds born of raw need. Saturday she actually said "goo-goo" like people say babies do. It's so cute.

Regarding that last post

Y'all have to go watch Working Mommy.

Funny Ordie

I have another confession: when I read about the website in Entertainment Weekly, I thought the site was called Funny Ordie, like a guy's weird name.
It's got some funny stuff, including a few Will Ferrell videos that have him being terrorized by a toddler.
But what I really enjoy are the video shorts of female sitcom stars being incongruently badass.

Breastmilk Captures My Imagination, part 2

I know you were wondering about the part 2, right?

I just read the book City of Light, about Buffalo, NY at the turn of the century. It mentions wet nurses, and that got me thinking. Wet nurses must have gone out of style due to the burgeoning formula industry and the rise of the middle class (which meant less households employed servants). But now that breastmilk is back in style, so to speak, and pumping has become relatively commonplace, it seems like wet nurses could make a resurgence.

Now, since I'm talking about the purchase of bodily fluids for feeding infants, I don't think it would ever be quite an FDA-approved industry. However, after sitting in at my first-ever brestfeeding drop-in class yesterday, I could see how there could arise small, local black-market enterprises. Some women need more milk, and some produce too much. I imagine the covert exchange of Lansinoh bags, bartered for babysitting time, in the aisles of Babies R Us and at local coffeeshops.

I was kidding about the bartering. It's more likely women would give it away for free. Kind of like blood donation - if someone demands payment for it, you probably don't want what they're selling. Of course, then maybe lazy, selfish women would try to get in on the deal, figuring "Why be the cow when you can get the milk for free?"

Breastmilk Captures My Imagination, part 1

Ever since I started breastfeeding, I've been really curious about breastmilk, and its potential non-baby applications. For those of you who don't know, breastmilk tastes like sweetened skim milk. That sweetness makes me think it could be the perfect coffee additive, because it puts the milk and the sugar all in one place. One could even posit that it's the perfect ratio of milk to sugar by definition - it's what our body wanted when we were infants.

I started wondering whether it would be good for making a Vietnamese coffee, which involves sweetened condensed milk. I'd have to find a way to condense breastmilk for that, though. Then I started thinking it would be cool to try to steam it for a cappuccino, but I'm not sure that would work either, because the milk (my milk, anyway) seems too thin; not fatty enough to really foam up well. It would be an excellent ingredient for iced coffee, though - you'd need quite a bit of it, but it would be perfect, I suspect.

I'm not saying I've tried any of these methods, though. And it's not like I expressed an ounce this morning due to engorgement, then used it in my morning decaf. Although if I had done that, I'm sure I would pronounce it quite a tasty endeavor.

Like taking toiletries from a baby

I've been meaning to admit something here for a while: I've stolen toiletries from my daughter for my own use.

Let me explain.
Once we returned from the hospital, I went through the toiletries we had amassed from the baby shower, to figure out what to use for her baths, etc. I discovered that the Aveeno products contain the same colloidal oatmeal stuff as my oatmeal paths, so I decided to try the body wash on myself, to help with my lingerning post-partum PUPPPs. Also, the lavender-camomile moisturizer sounded nice, so I thought I'd try that, too. I think they were helpful.

The PUPPPs are well and truly gone by now, but I'm still using that body wash. It's nice. If we run out of other stuff for her, I'll return it, I swear!