They Also Grow Up To Print Pamphlets, I Bet

You get a lot of printed materials in the birthing classes for first-time parents, all of it filled with helpful and instructive — and often extremely opinionated — information.

We left each week’s class clutching a new folder of photocopied data on why we’d be dooming our daughter to a life of squalor and dereliction if we failed to follow each recommendation to the letter.

So far we’ve whiffed on, I’d say, two thirds of what the nurse instructors said we absolutely had to do, and Veda seems just fine. But I’ll be watching her closely for symptoms of brutal neglect and crippling parental ignorance, don’t you worry.

Posted in Veda, photocopied directives, stable respiratory rates | 1 Comment »

Where Does All The Milk Go?

Just a few numbers I ran to find out what Veda does with all this milk we pour down her.

Posted in Veda, formula conversion, weight gain | 6 Comments »

For a Guy Who Writes as Much as I Do, You’d Think I’d Be a Better Lyricist

[Sing to yourself, as softly as possible]

Hush little baby, don’t say a word.
Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.

And if that mockingbird don’t sing,
we’ll check the store’s return pol-i-cy.

And if that manager won’t help,
we’ll get a new bird off his shelf.

So now we’re a pair of aviary thieves,
with telltale feathers poking out our sleeves.

But on the way to the parking lot,
we’ll check to see what we have got.

And if that birdie turns out mean,
We’ll set him free and flee the scene.

But if he tries to peck our eyes,
we’ll pelt him with old french fries.

And you know how hard those can get,
A rain of pain on our ex-pet.

And if our car doors won’t unlock,
We’ll sprint away in our shoes and socks.

And if that pesky bird gives chase,
Um… I’m not sure what to sing in this place.

I wish I knew how the real lyrics go,
I’d check online but it’s too slow.

And you’re almost about to sleep,
I hear only some quiet peeps.

So I may research this a little later,
and quit assaulting wildlife with stale taters.

We should have stayed in that pet shop,
and by now our story would have stopped.

A real parent would have known this song.
…I made it up as I went along.

I’m slowly starting to realize,
how much parenting is improvised.

Posted in amateur lyricism, stale french fries, wildlife assault | 9 Comments »

Veda, Somewhat Late-A

She’s still cuter than ever. And with no hair on the top of her head, she’s like an adorable little Benedictine monk!

Posted in Benedictine monks, Veda, infant hair loss | 2 Comments »

Beautiful Needle, Blessed Haystack

Yesterday morning, about 3:30 or so, the breast pump broke. I was bottle-feeding Veda while Penny was just starting to pump — yes, it seemed convoluted to us as well, but that’s our system for you — and the reassuring chug-chug-chugging of the pump motor suddenly fell silent. Penny looked up, her bosom heaving and growing increasingly painful, while Veda paused momentarily at the realization that no more milk was being added to her stockpile. I, in turn, started assessing the problem.

We do not live in a major metropolis. We used to, on more than one occasion, but for the moment we’re nestled nicely in a modest town of about 4,000 souls, continuous with a slightly larger city of 12,000 or so. This, while imparting an undeniable charm to the vicinity, does limit one’s options for attending to a fallen breast pump at four in the morning.

Fortunately, I was coherent enough, even at that hour, to perform a little troubleshooting. Most likely, I reasoned, the problem was not in the pump itself but the power supply — the little wall-wart box you plug into the socket. Maybe it just burned out, and a new AC Adapter would put us back in business.

But where to get one? This town is tiny, to be sure, but we do have a Wal-Mart. Of course. I wasn’t sure of the store’s hours, though, so I quickly looked up the number online and dialed to check.

Well, it rang. And rang. And rang. I pictured groggy floor sweepers, riding their hissing contraptions across all those acres of white linoleum, either not hearing or actively ignoring the telephone. But I needed an answer, so I hung on the line.

On about the ninth or eleventh ring, a tired voice answered, “Hello?” Immediately I knew something was wrong.

“Um, is this Wal-Mart?” I glanced over at the digital clock, reading 3:50 or so. “I’m, ah, I’m really sorry if this is a wrong number.”

“That’s correct” said the groggy person on the other end, and hung up. Oh man. Sorry about that, buddy. I double-checked the number on the site, and it must just be posted wrong. I dialed it right.

Eventually I found an alternate number and verified that the store was open. I sped over, pump and power-supply tucked into my sweatshirt’s front pocket, and strode on in. The electronics department was empty, as was the majority of the store — save a few of the floor sweepers I’d envisioned.

I did find an adapter of the proper voltage, current and polarity, and began to head for the registers. Just then, one lonesome bearded fellow about my age, who must have drawn the short straw when shift assignments were drawn up, appeared around the corner.

“Hi, can I help you?”

“Hey there. I hope so. I’ve got an out-of-commission breast pump at home, and it’s kind of an emergency.” I looked down, noting his wedding ring, and added, “I don’t know if you know much about engorgement, but it’s not something you want happening. I’m really hoping this adapter works.”

The guy said he didn’t have any kids yet, but that he actually did know what I was talking about — he used to be a dairy farmer.

“I bet your wife isn’t complaining as loudly as the cows did” he said, and we both laughed a little. He kindly cut open the impenetrable plastic packaging and unraveled the various cords therein. We checked to see if the pump worked with the new adapter, and it would — as long as somebody held the plug tightly in the socket. I figured I could do just that, and rig up some more secure system later. I thanked him and departed, swinging by the maternity section to grab a manual breast pump just in case.

On the way home, where I connected the new universal adapter and confirmed my initial hunch — we were back in chug-chug-chugging business before long — it occurred to me that this was something of a feat of modern survival. It didn’t involve rappelling down into a canyon or choking down a dung beetle or anything, like that awesome lunatic Bear Grylls or anything, but it was a feat nonetheless.

In the dead of night, in still fairly unfamiliar territory, and with resources limited to an internet connection, a car and a credit card, I’d essentially field-repaired a specialized piece of equipment in under 40 minutes. As I thought about this, I tried to estimate how vast an area I’d had to consider for my initial search as compared to the really very tiny precise location of the adapter. (I checked just now; of the county’s 554 square miles, I’d correctly drilled down to a parcel of about ten square inches — one 222,402,723,840th of the total area — that contained the part we needed.)

And as I thought more about this accomplishment, so ordinary on the face of it but in truth a marvel of 21st-century societal convenience, it occurred to me that this was still really nothing. Not in comparison to the feat pulled off a few weeks ago.

You see, out of nowhere, Veda came into our lives. And of the observable universe’s 93,000,000,000 light years of space, what were our chances of ever locating the 20-inch-long, six pound, five ounce little person who would puff up our hearts with immeasurable joy? Practically negligible. It would be like picking the exact right quark out of the right electron in one single particular atom of the Empire State Building. Tripping over the exact grain of sand you were looking for, out of all the beaches in the world. Not a chance. And yet here she is. (Along with her mom — only slightly larger in cosmological terms, and whose path was just as miraculously intersected with my own.)

So in retrospect, lining up the electrical adapter that re-secured Veda’s food supply and Penny’s comfort wasn’t so impressive after all. It was but a dim shadow of the herculean effort put forth by forces I’ll never understand but will eternally appreciate.

I did get to hear some cow jokes at 4 am, though, and that has to count for something. Don’t you think?

Posted in Veda, disgruntled dairy cows, the observable universe | 8 Comments »

Veda, Comin’ At Ya

Several dozen more photos of the little lady, now that she’s all of three weeks old. At this rate, which is around ten photos per day — and these are just the selected “keepers,” you understand — we should be approaching 20,000 Veda images by the time she starts kindergarten.

Posted in Veda, exhaustive documentation, paralyzing cuteness | 2 Comments »

Hush, Little Baby

Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, “Why, why, why?”

- K. Vonnegut

Parenthood so far has got me feeling philosophical. For one thing, there is the unmistakable in-the-middleness it illuminates for you — the realization that you might not actually be the center of the universe after all, but that it *does* surround you, in time as well as space. And further, you see that just as sure as this little being came from you, you came from someone else yourself. The honor then becomes the fact that you somehow get to take part, not that you had (or have) a hand in making things the way they are. Humility, if not hilarity, ensues.

The prevailing and recurring challenge of early parenthood to me, though, is a familiar one in philosophy: the Problem of Evil. It’s a thorny issue for theologians and plain folks alike, since it can be argued academically as well as observed intuitively: bad shit just seems to happen sometimes.

Like what? Oh, like inconsolable crying that goes on for three hours. For example. Let us assume Veda is a good person, who has had only eighteen days on Earth so far to swindle the elderly or scheme for power or punch a kitten, and has done nothing of the sort. If she’s the embodiment of innocence — and I’m inclined to say she is — then what business does she have yowling at the top of her tiny lungs ’til the cows come home? And what have we, her parents, done to deserve the anguish that accompanies watching your beloved offspring writhe in distress on a regular basis?

It’s only natural to wonder, I think. And last night I found myself proposing a few theories to help make sense of the shrieking and carrying on that filled our darkened bedroom, where ordinarily we’d be sleeping peacefully at this time of night. (In Buddhism you would call this mystery “dukkha,” which is most often translated as Suffering, but is said to mean more accurately “disquietude.”)

So what of Veda’s crying, then? Why must it happen? And in answering that, let’s explore both the cause and the purpose, as both seem to provide valid responses to more or less every “why” question.

Here was what I came up, starting with purposes:

- It’s for a good cause. The ends justify the means. One day we’ll have a delightful and inspiring youth to share our lives with, as opposed to a screaming beauty who can barely make eye contact but is exceedingly talented at ruining our nights. And maybe we’ll appreciate it all the more since we’ve been through this.

- It’s a challenge to make us stronger. A newborn is almost specifically designed, it would seem, to test one’s patience. She’s deafening and unreasonable and at times seems almost sadistically demanding, but she is also tiny and fragile and impossibly precious. So she’ll drive you crazy, but you can’t walk away. At the end — again, the end — we’ll be those unflappable, confident parents who can take on anything. Maybe.

(now for the causes)

- It’s the way of nature, and a flaw of design. Because humans evolved to walk upright, our hips reconfigured in such a way that our babies must be delivered at a time that is technically premature. What counts today as a “full-term pregnancy” is not equivalent to a full gestation period in other animals — whose young, as we know, can often see, move and even walk shortly after birth. Thus, the burden of a helpless infant is the price we pay for bipedal mobility. I read this once; I swear.

- It’s payback. We ourselves were this outrageously dependent on someone else in our babyhood; it’s only fair that what went around should come back around.

…and lastly, most likely (and least reassuringly) of all,

- There is no reason. Babies are difficult because of their biological status; the planet we inhabit can only sustain certain kinds of life, and this is the lifeform we’ve become: one with a tempestuous beginning as well as a strong and mysterious drive to put ourselves through this same ordeal as adults, but this time from the other end of the bottle. To preserve the species, we are programmed to take on what we know in advance will be “the toughest challenge of all,” and are in fact programmed to do it again, even once we know firsthand what’s required.

Now, this last possibility strikes me as, like I said, the most plausible. Our efforts to put the crying of an infant in some sort of cosmic perspective are pretty much just folly and self-delusion — in the end, the theory would say, It’s Not About You. And that’s also about where Buddhism would leave you, I think. It is our craving for order that makes us suffer the wailing of our children, rather than just accepting and addressing the problem. It is what it is.

If we understood that it’s nothing personal, and babies just cry and the phenomenon has no obligation to make sense to us, we might be able to gain freedom from the suffering it causes us. Which sounds awfully nice.

*****

From last week’s Newsweek - the Feb. 23, 2009 issue, in the article “Who Says Stress Is Bad For You?“:

Who tends to be least resilient?
A. People who are insecure
B. People who are happy
C. People who are sad
D. People who are self-focused

The answer, according to the article, is D. “Egocentric or self-focused people are more likely to take things personally. And the extent to which people take things personally affects their ability to be resilient.” It goes on to use this principle to explain why you’ll bounce back better from, say, having your house hit by lightning and burned to the ground than you might from being mugged in a parking lot. Even if the loss is greater — all your worldly belongings versus your wallet — you’re less likely to dwell on it and blame yourself, so you get over it faster. Thus, cultivate a worldview that sees more lightning strikes and fewer anti-you-in-particular attacks and you’ll be a lot better off.

When you’re trying to feed your child who won’t stop screaming, despite the ample presence of food, though, this is somewhat difficult.

*****

In the end, I think it’s safe to say that much of the reason for parenthood being so challenging to us is, well, our insistence on finding a reason for parenthood being so challenging to us. So in a way I regret picking up the computer the other night and making my list to begin with. Hush now, Colin.

But on the other hand, it was what I was compelled to do, and now it’s done. Like I said, it’s only natural to wonder.

Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand

Posted in Veda, dukkha, egocentrism | 4 Comments »

As You Wish, Little One

After a couple close calls in the famously forbidding Fire Swamp, Westley, formerly known as the Dread Pirate Roberts, offered the following sage reassurance to Princess Buttercup, who was growing doubtful they’d emerge alive:

“No, no. We have already succeeded. I mean, what are the three terrors of the Fire Swamp? One, the flame spurt — no problem. There’s a popping sound preceding each; we can avoid that. Two, the lightning sand, which you were clever enough to discover what that looks like, so in the future we can avoid that too.”

And this afternoon, as Veda swings contentedly in her swing, enjoying a full belly of Mom’s milk and the soothing repetition of both the swing’s motor and the Juno soundtrack on the stereo, I too am reassured.

For what are the three terrors of the Newborn? One, the Persistent and Maddening Cry. Well, in the past two weeks Penny and I have encountered that on several occasions, and had ample opportunity to learn how to overcome it. Changing her diaper seems to work well, even if it does temporarily worsen the screaming, as does holding her in my arms and climbing the stairs several times, and if that doesn’t work there’s always music, or dancing, or both, or the pacifier, or swaddling her tightly so she feels secure, or trying to feed her again, or burping her, or softly singing old rap lyrics in her ear. Between these many resources — and calling in the Grandmas when necessary — we can almost always get The Cry under control, so no worries.

Two, the Mind Bending and Disorienting Sleeplessness. This is another formidable foe, indeed. But it’s one Lope and I have encountered repeatedly, Lope in particular, and again we have developed methods for dispatching it. Taking shifts is probably our foremost tactic, with me borrowing Veda for a few hours each morning so that Lope can get some shuteye without a baby on her chest. We also employ the Sleep When The Baby Sleeps strategy, recommended by everyone, ever, and of course Lope avoids caffeine at all cost before breastfeeding, and on top of all that a little white-noise generator that sits at the bedside seems to work wonders for all three of us, the little one included.

So there you go. The terrors of the Newborn, vanquished. We’ve already succeeded. But what, you ask, about the B.M.O.U.S.es? Bowel Movements of Unusual Stinkiness? I don’t think they exist.

*Note: Not that I see myself as dashing Cary Elwes and Lope as my hapless rescued princess in this scenario. Not at all. If anything, she’s the one scaling the Cliffs of Insanity and outwitting dastardly evildoers in a heroic black mask, while I fumble around with ill-fitting baby clothes and struggle to dodge sudden streams of pee.

Posted in Veda, fire swamps, grandma deployments | 5 Comments »

A Fun Morning With Veda

We’re letting Mom sleep a little bit right now, playing in the light by the window, making some coffee and listening to the latest Weepies album. But she wanted to say Hi, so I told her I could probably type one-handed.

Posted in Veda, floppy heads, morning greetings | 3 Comments »

More Veda Than You Can Shake a Breast At

Why have I taken so long to update the blog and tell you what Veda’s up to? I’ve been too busy taking pictures of her, that’s why!

(She’s wonderful, by the way. See for yourself. This is the whole story of her birth, from labor to coming home. That first one is Lope hiking in the snow, a few days beforehand.)

Posted in Veda, breast shaking, excessive photographing | 4 Comments »