Back to Work

December is half over. Christmas is next week. And I'm going back to work in January. Sigh.

I'm still mentally adjusting to the idea. I'll bet every new mom who, before her baby is born, has every honest intention of returning to work ends up second guessing the decision at some point. And a whole lot of us back out of it.

This isn't to say I'm contemplating slipping my employer a note of resignation anytime soon, though I admit is is tempting. ("Thanks a bunch for all that paid maternity leave! Have fun filling my position!") I'm just really, really going to miss spending every second of every day with Little Blue Eyes. And I'm sure he'll miss me, too. He's awful young to be away from his mamma for two whole days a week.

Which is how I'm able to do it. I'm only returning to work two days a week, and I'll work the equivalent of one more day from home. And, I've lined up the most incredible childcare I could find, at a price that can't be beat. Isaac will be cared for here, in his home, by his Grandma. To pay her, I'll fill up her tank once in awhile. But it not payment my mother wants. She just wants to help raise her grandson, and the pleasure is hers.

So while rich people have nannies, the rest of us have grandmas. Thank goodness.

It must be that growth spurt

I keep finding these little scratches all over Isaac - his head, neck, face, and chest. He even gouged his cute little pouty lower lip. And every time I find a new one, I'm the one that cries like a baby.

Believe me, I try to keep his nails trimmed, but they grow so fast! It must be all of that delicious, nutritious breastmilk he's been gorging on the like a famine is coming.

Growth spurts. I've been hearing about them since Baby Isaac was born. From everyone. "Oh, he's sleeping a lot? Must be that 3 week growth spurt." "Fussy at night, is he? I'm telling you, the 6-week growth spurt is a real trying time!" "Can't stop eating, huh? That's his 3-month growth spurt."

It jives. It's just that my kid seems to take these growth spurts to an extreme. At six weeks, his size 0-3 month sleepers with the bunnies on them were suddenly squeezing his feet, (not to mention cramping his style.) Now, at 3 months old, he's wearing 9-month onesies under his 6-month rompers. He's kind of a beefy baby. And isn't he cute?

On the boob

I was not breastfed as a baby. Ditto for my older brother and younger sister. We were all born in the early 1970s, the era of the earth mother. I'd have expected breastfeeding rates in the U.S to be quite high then, along with the affinity for bra burning and macramé.

In fact, breastfeeding hit an all-time low in the U.S. in 1971, at just 25% for babies at birth. In contrast, the highest breastfeeding rate to date, since records were kept, is now, with an estimated 74% of newborns breastfed at birth.

This made me wonder - what happened in the 1960s and 1970s that led to such a low rate of breastfeeding? Why didn't my mom, a hippie herself, breastfeed her children?

She tried with my brother. She had little to no support. The doctors and nurses in her hospital were not actively in favor of it. Formula companies touted the benefits of formula over breastmilk in ads on TV, and no authoritative voice stepped in to correct the record. So when she encountered latch problems and then a bout of thrush, as so many new breastfeeding moms do, she just gave up. And she never tried it to pick it up again with her next two children.

I think that lack of support for my mom when her breastfeeding troubles began was key. Despite how natural and instinctual breastfeeding seems from the outside, the reality is that it is damned hard. To do it successfully, the mom and her partner need to be really committed to it, as do her doctors and nurses. And some sort of lactation support needs to be available to help when problems arise, like painful latching, infections like thrush or mastitis, or just general frustration with being "tied down."

I am now eleven weeks into exclusively breastfeeding Isaac. In the beginning, I was breastfeeding him about 50 hours per week. It was exhausting, and it hurt. But I enjoyed the quiet time we had alone together, and the closeness we experienced with each feeding. The most difficult period came about two weeks into it, when we both developed a mild case of thrush, which took a few weeks and a lot of work to get rid of. We've also worked through Isaac's outright refusal to take a bottle of pumped breastmilk, painful nipple vasospasm, and my baby's shortened frenulum contributing to a shallow latch.

But I've had an incredible support system. I live in King County, Washington, which has the highest rate of breastfeeding of any county in the country. We took a class on breastfeeding. All of my nurses in the hospital were lactation consultants. My neighborhood in Seattle has its own La Leche League chapter. And of course, these days, we all have Kellymom.com.

It's been really neat to share my experiences breastfeeding Isaac with my mom. She thinks it is wonderful that I am sticking with it. It's weird though... I don't at all feel like I was cheated by not being breastfed (though I do wonder if my infant bout with bronchitis could have been prevented had I been.) But I think my mother was cheated out of the experience of breastfeeding her children, and giving us, and herself, the benefits that exclusive breastfeeding provide. If only she'd have had a little support to get her over those initial, common breastfeeding humps...

Just passing time

I'm on maternity leave from my job. Obviously, this time away has been to stay home and care for my son, who is just over two months old now. But an added bonus has been to disentangle myself mentally, albeit temporarily, from a job that I've always taken home with me. And it's been really nice.

Maternity leave is not what I thought it would be. I'm not, for example, sitting around reading old copies of the New York Times magazine. Nor am I reorganizing my bathroom drawers, or knitting scarves for Christmas presents. In fact, I'm lucky if I change out of my pajamas by noon, or get the bed made by the time my husband returns home from work. And no, I don't take a shower every day. Not even close.

Really, I'm just hanging out with Isaac. We just pass the time. And I love it.

Birth Class Redux

Last weekend was our reunion for the childbirth class series we took this summer, taught by author, doula and childbirth advocate Penny Simkin. Everyone had their adorable babies in tow, we ate some very tasty potluck, and shared birth stories, from the near-perfect to the scary. Here's a photo of some of the fruits of all of our labors. (Isaac is the one about to suffocate the poor girl on the end.)


Natural childbirth has regained respect and popularity in recent years. For one, it seems we're all becoming more educated about the overuse of chemical induction agents like pitocin and medically-unnecessary cesarean births, thanks to books and movies like The Business of Being Born. More women are taking very active roles in their own birth experiences, writing birth plans and demanding that interventions in hospitals be explained to them and justified. And while epidural rates are as high as 90 percent in U.S. hospitals, there is a growing interest in med-free labor and childbirth.

My own desire for a natural childbirth stemmed from many things. I wanted what was healthiest for my baby. I don't like to be drugged and wanted to remember the experience with clarity. And, I wanted to fully experience birth -- which may be the most amazing and natural process of human life -- pain and all.

Preparing for natural childbirth is a little like preparing a Thanksgiving meal -- you make a guest list and menu, go shopping, slave away in the kitchen for days, and the beautiful dinner you've prepared gets all eaten up in about 45 minutes. Well, childbirth prep is just like that! For most first-time mothers, childbirth demands a ton of preparation over several months (especially if you want to go natural), yet the typical first-time labor lasts about 11 hours.

First, you have to choose where you want to deliver your baby and who is going to be your practitioner. I knew I wanted to work with a midwife, yet I wanted a hospital birth in case intervention was needed immediately. I chose to deliver at Ballard Swedish Hospital in Ballard with their team of midwives. Then, I bought a bunch of books, went to prenatal yoga and acupuncture every single week, drank gallons and gallons of red raspberry leaf tea to strengthen my uterus, and did more kegels than I'd ever care to count. I hired a fabulous doula. Then, I signed up for a childbirth class with Penny Simkin.

Penny Simkin is a bit of a celebrity around here in childbirth circles, and she's sort of the grande dame of doulas everywhere. She wrote Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Newborn and The Birth Partner. She started Doulas of North America. She rocks.

Her class series is geared towards pregnant women and their birth partners, and introduces and demonstrates a number of comfort measures that help deal with the physical and emotional sensations that happen during labor. (Comfort measures, by the way, are Penny's label for some things you can do to cope with the most intense pain of your life.) One of the class sessions was dedicated to explaining the common interventions that might be offered or become medically necessary in a hospital birth, such as IV fluids, vacuum extraction or emergent cesarean section (to which we all said, "Well, that won't happen to us!") She covered pain medication options (and did so graciously, without any bias whatsoever). We also had one class session devoted to breastfeeding, and one to newborn care.

Isaac's birth was wonderful, but did not go exactly as I'd hoped. I remember back when I was first drafting my birth plan, it began simply, "Our desire is to have a natural, med-free, low intervention vaginal childbirth." Then I got to the part where I was to outline "If a c-section becomes medically necessary..." I had no idea what to write. Which was no biggie, because that wasn't going to happen to me!

But it did. Isaac was positioned sunny-side up, and got stuck. After nearly four hours of pushing, it became clear that he would be born by cesarean. And the childbirth class was so important in preparing us, not just for the med-free part of my labor (which I needed too- that part lasted 24 hours), but also for the unplanned, the parts that weren't supposed to happen.

Looking back, I think this childbirth class was probably the most significant and effective thing we did to prepare for the natural childbirth I wanted. (I really could have skipped the perineum massage.)

The Power of a Smile

No one could have prepared me for the feeling that welled up inside of me the first time Isaac smiled at me. I'm talking about the first time he really smiled, not just that dazed look of pleasure from passing gas. He was four weeks old, and my heart just melted.

I suspect my experience is paralleled by parents everywhere, but damn, it felt special. The feeling is beyond joy; it was pure, unconditional love, but also a little sadness mixed in, and maybe some apprehension about the power of that love. And, a little clarity about how my life before that moment had really not had that depth of meaning before. I was changed forever.

Isaac is almost nine weeks now. He smiles for me many times a day, and I have to shamefully admit that sometimes, I don't even notice it. But I will never forget that first smile, and the way it made me feel, and how much it has changed my life.

SIDS = Maddening!

I just put my adorable baby boy down for a morning nap in his swing, right here next to me. Although he's less than an arm's length away, I can't resist stealing glances at his chest every 3 minutes to make sure he's still breathing.

OK. It's no secret that I'm neurotic. But see, I'm a new Mom, and my precious little boy will be eight weeks tomorrow. So naturally, I'm going out of my mind worrying about the mysterious tragedy known as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS.

SIDS kills about 3000 seemingly healthy babies every year in the U.S., most of them between 2-4 months of age. Most are killed at night, in the months of November, December and January. Sixty percent of the infants who die are boys.


Experts don't know what causes these tragic deaths. The current thinking among experts in the U.S. is that there is some biological problem with some babies that predisposes them to succumb to SIDS, should these babies be in a compromising situation. Recent research has lent some credence to this, such differences in the brainstem of SIDS infants, or in the inner ear of SIDS babies.

I took particular interest in the inner ear findings, as my son had his newborn hearing test shortly after he was born. I compared his hearing scores with those in the study, and was frightened to see that his scores more closely resembled those from the SIDS babies than the healthy, living babies. His scores for low-frequency sounds were a few points lower than the "normal" babies' averages. Also, his right ear scored just a tad lower than his left ear, and the opposite was true for the healthy babies. Yikes.

If these theories hold water, and I'm not convinced that they do, then as a parent, I just need to make sure my baby never gets into one of those compromising situations, right?. That's where the recommendations come in. For example, probably anyone with a baby knows that it is strongly recommended that you put your baby to sleep on his or her back, not tummy. Evidently, SIDS deaths have been cut in half since this recommendation was made. It may have something to do with them re-breathing their expelled air or something. Also, don't ever smoke around your baby, and don't have any loose blankets or stuffed animals or those cute little crib bumpers in their sleeping environment. Instead, to keep them warm, bundle them in a swaddle or sleep sack. But don't overbundle them, or they could die of SIDS. Got it? Oh, and to mess with their temperature even more, keep a fan running in their room, even in the wintertime. This could cut their risk of SIDS by 72%. (Except that I read the methodology for this study involved a whopping six subjects. And that the reduction in SIDS only applies to people who ignored all previous advice about tummy sleeping and not smoking and stuff...)

Still, if you follow these guidelines, your baby could die. Apparently, as many as two-thirds of infants who die of SIDS do not have any known risk factors. It's all a bit maddening, really.

But maybe there is another guideline that could actually save my baby's life. Maybe this guideline just happens to be missing from SIDS prevention tips lists here in the U.S. Maybe all I need to do is wrap his mattress.

The toxic mattress theory of SIDS appears to be little known or talked about here in the States. In fact, I knew nothing of this until yesterday, when I stumbled upon a mention of it in some blog comments. Evidently, some things used as flame retardants in mattresses can combine with the fungus that ends up in baby mattresses (from things like spit-up and urine). This could create a deadly nerve gas that hovers just above the mattress, poisons its infant victims, and they stop breathing.

Really? Well, 100,000 people in New Zealand think so, and there has not been a SIDS death among them. A study known as the Limerick Report claims to have disproved this theory, but really they were simply unable to replicate their lab findings, which confirmed the theory, in the field. The jury is still out. But the real-life statistics of mattress-wrapping in New Zealand is undeniably compelling.

Well then of course, after coming upon these mattress-wrapping instructions, I sent my husband straight away to Home Depot for a big role of polyethylene sheeting, which was $20. After about two hours, we'd wrapped our mattress and the baby's bassinet co-sleeper mattress in the noisy plastic. And off to sleep we went, waking only with each and every crunchy toss and turn.

Sigh. I'm still thinking about SIDS. Wrapping Isaac's mattress in plastic gave me some assurance for oh, about 37 minutes. Because really, the thing is... I'm not in control. He could die. And isn't it just maddening?