June 13, 2002
It's hot. Damn hot. It is DAMN HOT!
Those of you who live in places that get real weather are probably doubled over laughing right now, and if you're not, then you will be when I tell you that "DAMN HOT" around here means 80 degrees. But hey, it's Seattle. We are a damp and pasty people. When the sun comes out, it causes car accidents. I kid you not. So 80 degrees is something to write home about, or at least something to write in your web journal about.
I went on my daily walk with Zeke today and when we came back, he promptly conked out for a nap. I sponged him off with a cool washcloth anyway, because he felt kind of hot. I had a little sun hat on him to keep the sun off his face when we went out, and I also used baby sunscreen. Supposedly you're not supposed to use sunscreen on babies until they're 6 months old, but the back of this one said it was safe for babies and PABA-free, and I figure that whatever negative effects he might get from the sunscreen are less than the negative effect of getting a blistering sunburn.
The heat does make some aspects of parenting a bit more trying. The sling, for example, is less comfortable on an 80-degree day than it was during all of those cool spring days we just had. It's not so uncomfortable that I'm willing to give up its convenience and lug a stroller around everywhere, but it does get a little toasty. Luckily, Zeke is now capable of sitting in the hip carry, which lets his little legs hang free. Previously we'd been putting him in the kangaroo carry, where his legs are folded up in front of him, and I really think that would have been too hot.
You know, I've been meaning to write about the sling, and various other aspects of attachment parenting, and maybe this would be a good segue. I first ran across the term "attachment parenting" when I was still pregnant, and had absolutely no concept of what it meant. Then I got a copy of The Pregnancy Book and The Baby Book by Dr. Sears, and he explained that "attachment parenting" is a term he came up with to describe a certain style of parenting. This parenting style fosters a close attachment between parents and child; hence, "attachment parenting." There are various tenets, and I am sure I can't remember all of them off the top of my head, but it includes babywearing, co-sleeping, breastfeeding, and responding to your child's cues. (I think there's a "b" word for that, too, but I can't think of it.)
I wasn't sure about co-sleeping at first, but Keith thought it might be a good idea, and I'm so glad we did it. We only have one bedroom here, so Zeke would have been in our room anyway, but my original thought was that we would put him in his crib to go to sleep at night. After all, isn't that what everyone else does? I had no idea that some people actually took their babies to bed with them. But when I thought about it more, it seemed like a pretty good idea. After all, a newborn baby just spent nine long months tucked securely inside his mother's womb; does it seem fair to expect him to suddenly start sleeping in the middle of a crib, all by himself?
So we planned to co-sleep. We got a crib anyway, "just in case", and attached it to our bed as a sort of side-car. The fourth wall of the crib is detached, so the crib mattress and our mattress are jammed right together. I just wasn't sure, when I was still pregnant, that co-sleeping was really going to work out. I did not know a single other person who had ever actually done it, so I was dubious.
Then Zeke came along. He was so little and tiny and precious, and he fit so perfectly into my arms, and he seemed so content to sleep right by my side. If anyone at the hospital had tried to come take him away from me and put him into a sterile isolette, I would have punched them, C-section incision or not. The whole time we were in the hospital, he slept snuggled up next to my side in my hospital bed. It seemed a perfect fit, and I was astonished at how natural and obvious it was. Every instinct in my body screamed that my baby was supposed to be by my side, and nowhere else. The isolette stood empty in a forgotten corner of our room, unwanted and unnecessary.
Co-sleeping has turned out to be better than I ever expected. Especially in the early days of breastfeeding, I can't imagine how I would have coped with having to get out of bed to go fetch the baby from his crib and only then feed him. Zeke only rarely cries from hunger, because I am usually able to respond to his earlier cues and feed him before he gets so hungry that he has to cry. I think this would not be the case if I had chosen to put him in a crib in another room. Besides, it is a wonderful feeling to go to sleep next to my tiny infant, my head close to his so that I can hear his breathing and feel the rise of his chest, his little feet propped up against my tummy.
Breastfeeding, too, has been one of the best decisions I ever made. I am sometimes reluctant to talk about this too much, because on occasion I've gone into raptures about how great nursing Zeke is and how easy and wonderful breastfeeding is, and I notice that the woman I'm talking to has this look in her eyes, and then later I find out she bottlefed her baby. It's never my intention to hurt anyone's feelings, so sometimes I just don't say anything. I'm still not sure how I feel about that. I feel that if I were somehow a stronger or more self-secure person, I wouldn't care, and would just talk about it as much as I wanted. But I do hate the thought of hurting someone's feelings.
Anyway, there was never any question of my not breastfeeding Zeke. I was determined, and I would have done anything to be able to nurse him. I was fully prepared to feed him through one of those tubes you tape to your chest until my milk came in, if necessary. Whenever anyone asked me if I planned to breastfeed, I always shrugged and said, "Oh, I'm going to try," because I didn't want to come off as a militant breastfeeding Nazi, but my real answer, the one in my heart was, "I am going to breastfeed no matter what it takes, no matter what we have to do, and no matter how hard it is at first."
It's a good thing I had that attitude, because it was hard at first. It was really hard. Maybe because of Zeke's jaundice, or maybe because of all the anesthetic from my C-section, or maybe just because he was naturally sleepy, he did not want to wake up much at all in his first several days, not even to eat. He was sleeping four and five hours at a stretch when we were in the hospital, until the nurses told us that we really needed to wake him up to eat at least every three hours. Then we we did wake him up, he didn't want to latch on. He'd get my breast in his mouth and just kind of sit there, like, "What now?" His suck was so weak that he was getting barely any milk out. I wound up having to pump my milk a couple of times to feed it to him via tube (remember those feeding tubes I mentioned?) until his latch became stronger.
But his latch did become stronger. For the first few months, we still had problems getting him to stay latched on. I'd have to get perfectly situated with my two pillows plus Boppy, and then we'd get started, and he'd latch on... and then pop off. I'd latch him on again... and he'd pop off. Again, and again, and again. It was so incredibly frustrating, and I wondered if it would ever get any better. The idea of nursing in public was laughable. Until Zeke was two months old, I practically had to disrobe in order to feed him, and then it would take up to an hour at each feeding session, because he kept popping off and falling asleep and doing everything except eating. (I'm not even going to go into detail about pumping milk every two hours while he was hospitalized at Children's, except to say that it was a total nightmare and I never want to have to go through that again.)
He's four and a half months old now, and I can tell you that not only can we nurse in public, but we can nurse in public without anyone ever knowing what we're doing. I lean over, pop him right on the breast, and he happily slurps away for ten or twenty minutes or so, and then he's done. Voila. No mess, no stress. I don't even need my Boppy pillow anymore.
I will also tell you that all those early weeks of frustration and trying to get him to latch right and waking up leaking, and all of that hassle and turmoil, was completely worth it. It was SO WORTH IT. When we go on walks, I don't take a diaper bag. I just throw a diaper and a baggie of wipes in my backpack. We can go anywhere, anytime, and I don't have to worry about how I'm going to heat his bottle or where we're going to find sterile water. When he's hungry, I can feed him immediately. When he wakes up at 4 AM for a feeding, I just roll over and latch him on. Keith doesn't even wake up, half the time. Lately, sometimes I don't even fully wake up.
I was snuggled up on the couch with Zeke a couple of weeks ago, nursing him in the side-lying position while reading a novel, and his eyes were half-lidded and he kept patting my chest and making contented little noises, and it was the best feeling in the world. There is nothing that compares. There's all kinds of statistics about how breastfeeding is good for the baby and good for you and reduces your risk of breast cancer and gives the baby all sorts of immunities and so on and so forth, and that's great, and all those things certainly contributed to my initial decision to breastfeed. But the best reason is because of the special bond I have with Zeke, and the quiet special moments that we share when it's time to nurse. There is nothing like it in the world.
I was going to talk about sling wearing and cue feeding as well, but I've been working on this entry so long that Zeke is awake from his nap. So I guess it's time for me to go put theory into practice yet again, and save the rest for later.