Smart Patient, Dumb Doctor

Samantha has this white spot on her tongue. I noticed it when she was really little, like, a month old. Of course, the worst things ran through my mind: Cancer. I brought it up at her next doctor's appointment. The pediatrician told me not to worry about it. Watch it, but don't worry. And it's not cancer. So I did. Nothing changed.

Many months later, I was watching Oprah episode about medical mistakes and being a smart patient. She had a guest on who was a famous chef who had had oral cancer that started as a small white spot on his tongue! He almost had to have his tongue removed!! Needless to say, I freaked out and brought it up to the doctor again. She referred me to an ear, nose, and throat specialist (ENT).

This guy was supposed to be a pediatric and adult ENT, but I don't think he's ever seen a baby in his life. When he started to examine Samantha, who was sitting on my lap, he said, and I am not making this up, "Open up!" Then when she didn't "open up," he said, "Say ahhhh!" He was dead serious, too.

Uh, dude, she's 9 months old.

Although that was the point of this post, I should probably tell how the story ends. The ENT doesn't know what the spot is. He says he's 99% sure it's nothing and he's not willing to put a baby under in order to biopsy it (too much risk). Unfortunately, this makes me nervous since the famous chef's point was that his oral cancer could've been avoided had they just biopsied the small white spot in the first place!

At Least I'm Dressed

Some people may think that being a stay-at-home-mom (at least temporarily) would afford me LOTS of time to blog (or do whatever), but what I've learned in my almost 11 months of not working is that I barely have a little time to get stuff done, let alone blog. Hence, my last post was more than a month ago.



Samantha is now an expert crawler and stander, so I can't leave her alone for a second. Actually, it's she who won't leave me alone for one second. She's kinda a mamma's girl (in Italian this is called a "mammona"). I can barely leave her in her play area to go get my morning cup of coffee. She starts whining and then crawls all the way into the kitchen just in time to have to crawl all the way back. I've tried explaining to her that if she just stayed put, she could save herself a lot of energy as I am coming right back, but she's stubborn. ; )

Anyway, the point of this post was supposed to be about how when I was rocking her to sleep this morning for her morning nap, I was making a mental list of what I was going to accomplish in the 1 - 1.5 (sometimes 2) hours Samantha was sleeping. Here's the list:

1. check email
2. get dressed
3. move car (don’t call DCFS on me, please)
4. make phone calls
5. put on makeup (which I normally don't do, but we were meeting up with friends later on)
6. fold laundry (and watch 15 minutes of one of the many Oprahs I have recorded)
7. vacuum downstairs
8. clean downstairs bathroom

She fell asleep and off I went. I literally move in fast-forward to get as much done as possible. I got halfway thru #5 and she woke up which means that #6 would have to be done with her in the room (which takes twice as long since her new thing is taking the laundry out of the basket and scattering it around the room).

It's now the next day and I still haven't had time to do #7 and 8.

So now you know why I haven't called you back or why if you come over I may have half my makeup on, laundry strewn about my living room, and nothing is vacuumed or clean. I do promise to be dressed, though, and to have checked my email, though. Those are always first on my list. ( :

Free Toy!!! Provides hours of fun!!!

If you follow my blog, you'll know that I wasn't thrilled about getting Samantha too many plastic toys or that her favorite thing in the world is a plastic water bottle. I was happy, however, that the plastic water bottles are free since we reuse and reuse them, so she just got an old one we've had for god-knows-how-long. Well, things have gotten better! She has a new favorite "toy" that is free AND environmentally friendly! Wanna know what it is?

My belly fat. For real.

After nursing her, my shirt's lifted up, thus exposing my belly fat (which I am trying to get rid of...not very hard, though). The other day after nursing her I laid down, belly fat exposed, and put her on top of me. She kind of "crawled down me" until she was face to face with said belly fat, looked up at me, and gave me a great big toothless smile, like she couldn't believe her good fortune! She then gave it another good long look, buried her face into it, and blew a great big raspberry! She raised her head to look at me and had the expression of having just completed the BEST thing she's ever done. She'll do it for a loooong time, too, like 15 minutes (which is a long time for a baby to do anything... except cry...they can do that for a really long time).

It's really funny to see. I'd post a video of it if it didn't mean exposing my fat to the world. So for now, only my husband and my sister have been privy to this phenomenon. My husband expressed concern that she may suffocate "in there" and to be careful. I think he's the one who ought to be careful now after saying that!

Money Saver

Even before our daughter was born, my husband and I tried to live as eco-friendly as possible: we recycle religiously, we drive fuel-efficient cars, we reuse everything until it basically falls apart, we keep our heat down, etc. Now that we have a daughter, we try to raise her in an environmentally-friendly way as we can. Aside from cloth-diapering, we try to avoid buying too many plastic toys for her. Actually, since she has 2 sets of grandparents and many loving friends, we haven't had to buy much of anything for her since she's been born!

This Christmas, though, I really wanted to get her something. It's her first Christmas after all! So I went to Timeless Toys, this great toy shop here in Chicago, to pick out something for her that, hopefully, would not be plastic and made in China.

I came home with something plastic that was made in China. I spent more money on it than I would have liked, but whatever. It's cute and fun and she actually really likes it!

What she REALLY likes, though, and in fact I may say that she LOVES and GOES CRAZY FOR are, interestingly enough, plastic water bottles. (Again with the plastic!?!) I swear, if you walk up to her holding a plastic water bottle, she will give you this huge grin that just melts your heart. You think she's showing you how happy she is to see you, how much she loves you. No, she's excited to see the water bottle.

Thanks, kid. Now I know what to get you for Christmas next year.

They Missed the Mark

I love reading with my daughter and I think she really likes it, too. She's a very touchy-feely baby, so books with paper pages are kind of dangerous for her right now. She's already gotten one paper cut, so I'm sticking to board books for the time being.

There are series of books called "Baby Touch and Feel" in which each page contains a different texture for baby to feel. They're usually about animals and you touch the animal's "fur." My/her favorite is called "Frosty Friends." Not only does it have awesome pictures of animals, but it also has information about each animal, plus it rhymes, so it makes it that much more fun to read aloud.

Here's an example from the book:

Fluffy little penguin chicks
huddle close together.
Mommy's fur protects them
from the cold and icy weather.

or

The polar bear is king
of this cold and snowy land.
No other creature on the ice
is quite as strong and grand.

Both of those are good, yes? They're factually correct and they're cute! However, the authors really missed the mark on some of the animals:

Can you feel the wolf's pink tongue?
Forget about your fears.
He's just a big and hairy dog
with furry, pointed ears.

Uh, yeah...wolves are real friendly! Nevermind that if you tried to touch a wolf's tongue he'd probably tear you to shreads.

This one's a little less ironic, but still:

With big and furry antlers,
this reindeer is so sweet...

When I think of reindeer, the word "sweet" doesn't come to mind. Hell, even fictionalized, reindeer are mean with not letting Rudolph join in their games and all!

There are others, like calling a seal gorgeous and friendly, that make me laugh and wonder how difficult it is to write these things without freaking kids out. I'll have to try my hand at trying to make tigers sound cute and fun or making sharks sound like great swimming partners.

Any requests or suggestions?

She Did It!

This is probably not big news to anyone else except me and my husband (who has mysteriously and annoyingly quit blogging, hopefully to return soon), but SAMANTHA ROLLED OVER! I guess if you have kids, you know what a big deal this is.

Rolling over is pretty much the first thing she can do by herself. Okay, granted, I have to put her on her belly so that she can roll over to her back, and once she's rolled over she'll pretty much stay there forever until I move her elsewhere, but that middle part she's got down ALL BY HERSELF!

She, by the way, doesn't find this a big deal at all. In fact, the first time she did it, I freaked out and was all like, "Oh my god, you rolled over!!! That's so wonderful! Incredible!! WOW!!!" She pretty much laid there like, "What?"

It's exciting since it's the first in many, many firsts. Just thinking of all the things to come kind of boggles the mind: sitting up, rolling over the other way (from back to front), her first tooth, crawling, walking, talking, her first day of school...I could keep going but frankly I don't want to think about her getting too old too fast.

For now I'll just relish in the fact that my baby can roll over all by herself.

Good Thing I Don't Believe in Hell

I was raised Catholic, but I really don't believe anymore. No, I don't know what happens to us when we die, but I personally don't think that our souls go to heaven or hell. However, I've done something so terrible that it's a good thing I don't believe in hell or I'd be going there for sure.

My daughter was given this cute little stuffed animal lamb. It's seriously so cute, soft, and cuddly...EXCEPT that when you squeeze it, an oddly high-pitched voice starts reciting, "Now I lay me down to sleep...". As my husband and I have decided to raise our daughter without a religion, we thought this toy inappropriate (and as I said before, creepy). So what to do?

For a while I just ignored it. It's not like she's playing with it anyway. The only thing she really wants to play with are her hands, which she shoves into her mouth, sometimes both at the same time, so far that she gags. So for weeks, the fluffly little lamb sat on her rocking chair with all the other stuffed animals.

Then the other day I was in the kitchen crushing some whole pecans with a mallot.

Do you see where this is going? Am I going to hell?

Yes, I beckoned my husband to bring me the lamb. Yes, I took a mallot to its middle where I could feel the mechanism inside, and, yes, I pummeled it. The first couple hits did nothing. In fact, each time I hit it, it kept starting, "Now I lay me down to sleep...". So I had to hit it continuously, over and over, until the thing finally stopped. Am I a terrible person?

I'm just so glad that it didn't go into that distorted slow-motion voice, "Nooowwww I laaaay meeeee dooooooowwn tooooo sleeeeep....". That would've haunted me forever. Hopefully I'll only be temporarily haunted by the vision I have of myself, mallot in hand, pummeling this poor lamb.

My Crazy Baby

Samantha, who is exclusively breast fed, is one crazy baby. While I truly do enjoy breastfeeding her, it's nice to get a break every once in a while and have my husband feed her my expressed milk from a bottle. S's pediatrician thought it would be a good idea to introduce the bottle at 3-4 weeks, after S had established a strong latch on the nipple. (Sorry to any guys who are reading this. I'm sure that if you want to read about nipples, this is NOT the context you prefer).

She did have a strong latch, so at the 4-week mark, Brian gave her a bottle. It went great! We intended to do this every day, but, well, we didn't. But we did do it a 2-3 times a week with no problem. Until...

I dunno, 2-3 weeks ago, S all of a sudden would NOT take the bottle. And when I say she would not take the bottle, I mean that when Brian put it in her mouth, she FREAKED out. She cried as if someone is was...I dunno, physically harming her (I can't even bring myself to give an example of how someone may physically harm my baby). It's the kind of cry where the baby doesn't breathe for a really long time. The kind of cry that makes me want to cry.

So wtf? This happened a couple of times and thank god I was around because I finally ended up breastfeeding her after the hysterics died down. We read the baby books to find out just what the hell the problem was. And you know what they said? The problem was ME! Supposedly, some babies do NOT take a bottle if mommy is around. They apparently can smell their mother's milk and want it from the source. Crazy babies. But this is NOT what makes my baby crazy.

For the next couple of weeks, whenever we wanted S to take a bottle, I had to make myself scarce, which in all honestly, is kind of annoying unless I legitimately have someplace to go. Then S took the bottle fine. When I did stay around, even if I was in a different room or on a different floor, forget it, the baby was not having it.

Last night, I wanted her to take a bottle because this weekend, Samantha will be sleeping over at Nonna's (grandma's) while Brian and I go to a wedding, and I am FREAKING out that she won't eat. Yes, yes, I understand that she'll probably be fine because I won't be around, but I can't help it. It's the first time we're leaving her.

So at about 7:30, in the middle of dinner, I notice S giving her hunger cues, right on time. Brian starts to prepare her bottle and I got out of there. I told him to call me either when they were done or if it wasn't happening. 20 minutes later I get a call from Brian...I assumed they had finished, but, no...crazy baby had been in hysterics for the past 20 minutes. I came back in to a baby that had calmed down, but to a husband that was totally frazzled.

I sat on the couch to BF her when Brian asked if he should throw the milk away (once heated up, you can't use it again). Usually I would say yes, but something made me think to keep it a little while longer and I asked him to bring it to me. I fed S. the breast on one side and she passed out on my lap for a couple minutes (What a life!). But when she woke up, instead of putting her on the other breast, I gave her a bottle AND SHE TOOK IT! FROM ME! WTF????

When I called Brian upstairs to view this, his jaw almost hit the floor. WTF, CRAZY BABY??? No, seriously, wtf? He thought it was just him, but I assured him it was not. I mean, she's taken the bottle from him many times before without incident, and in fact, I handed her over to him last night so she could finish the bottle, which she did.

I searched for an explanation: Had she been tired? Had she been too hungry? Was the milk too warm? I think it's no, no, and no.

She's just a crazy baby.

This is What I'm Doing Now?

My daughter, who is almost 2 months old, is napping, and while there are about 7 things I should be doing, this is what I am actually doing:

81 words

I actually got up to 82 wpm, but stupid me didn't save the proof, so you'll just have to take my word for it. Thanks to Laural for this big (and many other) time wasters, er, spenders.

The First Month

The first month of my daughter's life has flown by. It's really incredible how much has happened and how much has changed. She went from being this little ball of mush that couldn't really do anything but eat, sleep, poop, and cry, to a big ball of mush who has added smiling and cooing to her repertoire. Oh, AND sleeping through the night! That's right, my 5 week old daughter sleeps through the night in up to 7 hour stretches.

*ducks from being hit by stuff being thrown by other new moms*

Her sleeping routine goes like this: She falls asleep at 1 a.m., sleeps til about 7 or 8. Eats for an hour or so. Then goes back to sleep until noon. Not bad, not bad. I'm NOT complaining.

So in this first month, I've tried to keep mental track of some observations I've made about babies and being a parent:

1. BABIES MAKE WEIRD SOUNDS. I was warned about newborns being noisy sleepers, but I had no idea that my infant daughter was capable of sounding like a variety of jungle animals (mammals, birds, and insects included), Yoda, and a gremlin all at the same time. It's really quite bizarre. Add on top of this my husband's snoring and it's a miracle I fall asleep at all.

2. BREASTFEEDING IS HARD. While Samantha and I have mostly worked out our problems with this, the first 3 weeks were NOT fun. I don't know why I expected it to "just work," but it "just doesn't." Is it the media that portrays bf'ing as easy or is it just that nobody tells you how painful it is? Sorry if it's TMI for some of you (does anyone even read my blog anymore?), but the redness, blistering, scabbing, peeling, and irritation of my poor nipples make we want to just remove them and soak them overnight in cool water. Or trade them in for rubber ones. Nevertheless, I stuck with it and the aforementioned symptoms subsided. So, we're sticking with the bf'ing.

3. PARENTS NEED AT LEAST 3 ARMS. When you hold a baby who can't support her own head, you need to use one hand to hold her under her butt and one hand to support her head/back. Uh, what happens when you need to answer the phone or write something down or basically anything else that you need to do? Well, at first you don't. Then you learn ways to hold your baby that only require one arm and learn how to do things that usually require 2 hands with one.

4. MY BABY IS FOREVER DESTINED TO WEAR PINK. Everything that was gifted to me during pregnancy was green and yellow. Now everything is pink. Funny thing is, I think my baby looks "better" in greens and yellows!

5. MY HUSBAND AND I ARE SCREWED. This is one cute kid. She gets cuter by the day and now that she's started smiling, we are sucked in by her cuteness. Hell, it's not even her smile, it's everything: her sneezes, cooing, burps, hiccups, farts, poops, cries...EVERYTHING. I'm hoping this infatuation will last.

6. EAU DE BABY SPIT-UP. I think I am forever destined to be covered with and smelling of baby spit-up. It does not smell good, but I only have so many clothes and only so much time to do laundry, so now half the time, I don't even bother to change. I'm like, "Eh, it'll dry!" and just leave it.

Samantha's Birth Story

I pretty much wrote the following for me, so I wouldn't forget how it all went down. But I figure that I would share it as long as I have it! Sorry if it's TMI for some, but nobody said birth was pretty.

June 27, 2008

I woke up for about the sixth time that night to use the bathroom, about 4 a.m. When I came back to bed, I couldn’t fall back asleep. At about 4:45, I felt the baby move A LOT and heard a “popping” sound. I had heard of this happening to others with no effect, so I just ignored it. About 5 minutes later, I felt slight wetness, but not enough to wet the bed or anything, so I just ignored that, too (there’s a lot of wetness/discharge during pregnancy). About 5 minutes later I felt even more wetness, so I got up to check it out. Once I got into the bathroom, there was a sudden gush that came out, the end of which was tinged with blood. I figured my water broke! So I woke Brian up (me: “Brian, my water broke!” Brian: “Really?”) and called the doctor. She said that if it was my water breaking, it would probably still be trickling, so she wasn’t convinced. She said that my baby’s head might be blocking the rest of the trickle, though, so she told me to go to the hospital. No rush, though, just be there within the hour and eat something light. So Brian and I took our time, got our stuff together, and ate something light: toast. I started having non-painful, but time-able, contractions which were coming about 10 minutes apart. I had just taken 2 bites into an apple when a contraction hit me more strongly and I just knew that this was it. “We gotta go,” I told Brian as I threw the rest of the apple away. My contractions continued in the car and got slightly closer together. When we got to L&D, the doctor checked me out and said I was 2 cm dilated and that she did not feel my bag of waters inside me, and I was admitted at about 6:15 a.m.

My contractions were very regular at this point and getting more and more intense, but manageable. I breathed through each one with Brian’s help as my coach. At some point, however, they got INCREDIBLY PAINFUL, so painful that I threw up. I cannot even describe what the contractions were like. The closest I can get is comparing them to menstrual cramps x 4,000,000. At about 9 a.m., I requested (demanded?) an epidural. The anesthesiologist came in and set me up. It was a longer process than I thought and difficult to stay perfectly still to get the catheter and shot (or whatever he did) in my spine while having these insanely painful contractions. I remember, though, when the medicine hit me. I was sitting up and slowly the room came back into focus. I remembered where I was and was again aware of who was around me. Yes, the pain is so intense it bends your mind like that. I cannot believe that women go through labor naturally. They have super-powers that I do not possess.

So from about 10:00 a.m. on, I felt nothing. That’s right…NOTHING…from my waist down. It was strange to not be able to feel or move my legs, especially my left one. (For some reason, the anesthetic usually affects one side more strongly than the other). At this point, I think I was 3 cm dilated and almost completely effaced. I felt great, carrying on conversations, answering the phone, etc. My mom and father-in-law showed up. Around noon, Brian, my mother and my FIL went down to eat lunch. By the time they returned, I was 7 cm…progressing very, very quickly! Around 3:00, I was 10 cm dilated and ready to push!

Brian and my mom stayed during the pushing. It was pretty grueling and repetitive. I had been worried that with the epidural I wasn’t going to feel the urge to push, but I did, even though I didn’t feel the pain of the contraction that accompanied it (yay modern medicine!). Brian was an awesome coach, helping me lift my head and put my chin to my chest, reminding me to use my arms and pull up (on the bed handles). The contractions were slowing down, not coming as often as they were before, so my doctor gave me a shot of pitocin, which helps move the contractions along. When that didn’t help, I had another round of pitocin, which also didn’t produce the desired effect. After 2 1/2 hours of pushing, the baby was NOT moving down. The baby was faced the wrong way and had a big head. Between contractions, the doctor would reach in (yeah, this part was greeeaaat) and physically turn the baby around, but when I started pushing, the baby just flipped right back over. (Stubborn like mommy). The doctor was afraid that the baby’s head was just swelling in the birth canal instead of moving down. She said that she usually gives her patients 3 hours of pushing before considering a C-section and that she was absolutely willing to go for another 1/2 hour. I asked her for her professional opinion: Would another 1/2 hour of pushing move the baby down at all? She didn’t think so since the past 2.5 hours had barely moved that baby. After some crying, I decided to have a C-section.

This part is kind of a blur for me. I think it was about 5:30 p.m. when I was wheeled in to surgery. I remember seeing Brian dressed in scrubs. He was told to wait in some holding room for about 5 minutes until I was ready. (He later told me it was the longest 5 minutes of his life). I remember being moved from my rolling bed to the surgery table by many people. I remember the anesthesiologist, Dr. Eng, was really, really nice. He stayed up by my head and told me exactly what he was injecting into me. Brian was brought in and was sitting right next to me (on the “safe” side of the curtain). It was weird to be awake the whole time and not feel my body being cut open. I remember the doctor announcing when she was making the incision. During the next hour, I pretty much just laid there and listened to the doctors’ idle chit-chat. I remember finding that to be strange, but I guess this is routine for them. After about an hour, the doctors announced, “Okay, this is it!” I felt an intense amount of pressure and then heard the most joyous sound I have EVER heard in my entire life: my baby crying. Of course, Brian and I sobbed. Then we heard the doctor say, “It’s a GIRL!” I was shocked. I was so sure it was going to be a boy. The doctors were all surprised at how big she was and I heard them betting on the baby’s weight. One said at least 9 lbs., another said 8 lbs. 5 oz. She ended up being 8-3.

Brian was beckoned to the table where our daughter was being evaluated and cleaned up. They handed her to him and he brought her to me, or as close as he could. (There were lots of machines in the way). Out of the corner of my eye and through my tears, I could just make her out: our daughter.

I was then sewn back up with stitches and staples and brought into recovery where I spent an eternity before they brought the baby to me. At this point, it was about 2 hours since she was born and I still hadn't really seen her, let alone hold her. Even though I was totally out of it, I was going crazy waiting for her and Brian. Finally, FINALLY, they brought her in. She still had no name at this point because I wanted to see her before we chose one of our two girls' names we had picked out. We chose Samantha Florence, which I think is the most beautiful name in the world.

A Star is Born

I have a really, really good reason for not posting in such a long time. My baby was born!

Samantha Florence was born on Friday, June 27, 2008 at 6:25 p.m.

She weighed 8 lbs. 3 oz. and was 20 inches long. I will eventually post her birth story (in the process of writing it), but for now,

here are some pictures of the day she was born. Looking at them, I'm amazed at how much she's already changed!

My husband and I feel so lucky to have her in our lives. All our nervousness and fear has been replaced by happiness and thankfulness.

Life 1 and Life 2

I overheard 2 of my students speaking yesterday:

H: "...yeah, my mom says that in her 'other life' she..."

A: "Oh, you mean before you were born?"

H: "Yeah..."

A: "My mom says that, too!"


I guess this is a good lesson for a mom-to-be, huh? Only 7 weeks left of Life 1.

It's Official

I'm officially taking the year off next year. It's weird and I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I'm grateful that I have the opportunity to spend a maximum amount of time with the baby during its first year of life. I'm happy that my husband and I are the kind of people who save money by living below our means (I don't buy killer shoes and we drive practical, gas-saving cars) which allows me to stay home. I'm excited by the idea of not having to pick out an outfit to wear everyday (at least one that matches) and not having to sit in traffic. I'm excited to have a break from what I've been doing for the past 11 years in a row. I'm happy that the crazy third graders across the hall are the class that I'm going to be skipping. They seem nuts.

But...

I'm also kinda freaked out. I've always worked. I'm not good at relaxing. Okay, not that I'm going to be sleeping in and eating bon-bons all day during the year I stay home. Ha! Far from it, I'm sure! But I don't do well without structure. Even over my summer vacations I get a little stir-crazy by the end and almost look forward to school starting again. Almost. I fear being bored. I fear not enjoying motherhood. I fear feeling guilty for not enjoying motherhood. I worry about being lonely...I mean, a newborn doesn't make a very good conversation partner. I don't want to turn into the kind of person who talks baby talk all day to her little one and then can no longer hold an intelligent conversation with an adult because the only things she is exposed to are binkies, blankies, and poopy diapers. I will need exposure to grown up things.

So if you are a person who knows me. Please call me next year and talk to me about things that don't end in the long e sound. Invite me out to lunch. Go to a movie with me. Anything to remind me that I am still a real person.

I'll tell you one thing, though. I will NOT miss grading papers, which is what I've blown off by writing this blog entry.