And the heavens rejoiced

No mono.

Pesach plans full speed ahead.

There will be much imbibing of grape juice and Dr. Brown’s black cherry soda. (Based on previous experiences, I think I will have to pass on the pesachdik Coca-Cola.)

There will be trips to the park, naps, lots of potato chips, and matzah balls in my soup. I might even try synagogue for once. I will attempt to finish all of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth for book club on the 17th.

Miss M will be singing the frog song a lot. ”One morning King Pharaoh woke in his bed / there were frogs on his bed and frogs on his head / there were frogs on his nose and frogs on his toes / frogs here, frogs there /  frogs were jumping everywhere.”

Taxman will be not be at work.

Best of all, I will not be in labor.

This is the way infancy ends

I’m sure every parent has that moment when you realize the tiny person in your life is really on the way from babyhood to personhood. Their first bite of ice cream, outgrowing a certain outfit, a first tooth, first word, a first “sleeping through the night” (no, this isn’t it for me!).

Both of my babies were born in the spring. Their newborn summers I tried to keep them shaded and wearing hats and tucked into Solarveil ™ slings–they run way too hot to be dressed in long sleeves and pants during the steambath that is a New York City summer.

So my trigger that signifies the beginning of graduation to toddlerhood and beyond? The first time I lean in to kiss those chubby red cheeks and they smell like sunscreen. I know that by the end of the summer I’ll have a walking, watermelon-stained, mischievous, curly-haired (maybe?) rascal making me laugh, instead of the wide-eyed, giggly baby. He’s already so big, but his sweet cheeks are heralding the changes to come.

Vermillion alert

My mother-in-law has not being feeling well. We all thought it was maybe strep throat; it’s been going around. Or something viral, like I had, but I am over it. She got antibiotics, but they haven’t done anything.

She saw another doctor today who thinks that she might have mono. Which is of course not fun for her. But the ramifications of this go far beyond feeling yukky. Because we are supposed to go to her house for Passover. All of it. Lock up our apartment and throw away the key. Kick her and my father-in-law out of their bedroom, bring cute grandkids, and come on in with all our hurly-burly. (Bound to be less exciting than last year, when I was in labor at the first seder; then we saddled them with Miss M for four days and nights.)

So if she does have mono and is contagious, we are kind of uninvited. And have nowhere else to go. A chametz-laden house. Maybe 1 or 2 pots and 1 or 2 pans (and a chef’s knife? maybe?) that I could use. Really no time to plan, clean, shop, cook, or have a nervous breakdown. (And it’s not like I can cut into my long, luxurious nights filled with 10 straight hours of sleep.) Wait, that’s out of order. But I digress.

We have to wait for the bloodwork to come back. Honestly, though, oy.

Why it’s good to be a boy

When you’re in the bathtub and your sister has hogged all of the parts of the tub toy again and your ema is just too damn tired to tell her to share for the 4,000th time that day…

…you’re just fine and perfectly content because you come built for such an eventuality.

I’m only saying.

Really, nobody else thinks this is cute or charming? Did Taxman get to you?

A second chance to make a first impression

A friend of mine, who lives in Israel, wants me to help a friend of hers, who lives in my neighborhood, pick a sling for her baby. No problem. I can do that.

The awkward part is this: She says she doesn’t know who I am, but I’ve met her before. More than once. She went to Columbia with our mutual friend, and I definitely met her there. We were both at her wedding. And then again in Israel–one night Taxman and I went to a pottery painting place with our friend and her husband, this woman and her boyfriend-now-husband, and a couple of other Columbia alumni. I have pictorial evidence.

I mean, it’s not like we had heart-to-heart conversations, but it feels weird to me that I know what she looks like and where she went to school and where her husband is from but she apparently couldn’t pick me out of a lineup.

On the other hand, I suppose it’s encouraging that I didn’t do or say anything that would negatively distinguish me in her mind.

But I am kind of dreading the first three minutes of meeting her, because I don’t think I am really good at first impressions. So having to do it over? Yuck.

uccchhhhhh

I think I got whatever the kids had. Except maybe not, and I am not on anti-biotics. It’s flu-like and generally I feel like stepped-in gum.

For everyone staring down the barrel of another Pesach, here is a reprise of my
Passover Raspberry Brownies.

Will crawl back to the computer when I can.

Why blogs beat baby books

I started a baby book with Miss M, but it never took. It just seemed so trivial. Who came to visit us in the hospital…I mean, we’re either friends with them now or not really. The baby book became a receptacle for the synagogue birth announcements and little hospital wristbands because I have the shiny happy website where I note all of her (and AM’s) stats and milestones, although I am totally delinquent about doing this for AM. I hope he still loves me later.

But blogs are really the kind of place where you can note anything. The good, the bad, the cute, the obnoxious, the funny, and the “I have no idea what I am doing as a parent; I should be shot.”

So last week I told you about AM’s first ear infection; this week I can report his first nightmare (potentially night terror). The further news, though, is excellent, because the nighttime “I’m being tortured in my sleep” screams lasted for less than five minutes before he was once again peacefully sucking his thumb. Not to compare, but Miss M’s night terrors used to last for up to an hour.

Second child: easy, breezy baby. Didn’t we luck out?

Me, encapsulated

This morning in the wee hours (4? 5?), I was nursing AM for the second or third (or fourth?) time overnight.

I was on my right side.

And I looked over my left shoulder, to where he normally sleeps, and had a panic attack because I didn’t know where the hell he was.

It didn’t last for more than two seconds, but long enough to realize I had to blog about it. Assuming I remembered. (And I did!)

Is there a doctor in the house?

This is going to be a little disjointed; see any random post for sleep-deprivation tally and its effect on my brain.

So I have been thinking about pediatricians lately. And how it’s hard to advocate for your kids in the face of authority.

I am emailing with someone who is moving to the neighborhood from another NYC borough, and she is looking for a new doctor.

I’ve also been an alternately sympathetic and outraged ear for my friend D, who has gotten some zingers lately from a local pediatrician. I have no idea if D is blogging it out herself; of course my original thought was, “She has a 2 1/2 year old and a 4 month old. How can she have the time and headspace to blog?” But then look at me–would any of Miss M’s classmates’ moms think I am offering up my snark to the universe? Probably not. They might even think I am nice.

Pediatricians have a big job. The good ones appeal to the small set but also know how to talk to their parents. Unlike a “regular” internist, who might see any given patient once a year or less, a pediatrician sees a kid from birth to 12 months probably a minimum of six times (this is assuming, in my privileged way because I am too scandalized to admit that it is otherwise for millions of kids, that the baby has health coverage). Even if each appointment is only 10 minutes, that’s a lot of face time.

And even more than that, parents, especially first-timers, are often looking for guidance that inches beyond medical and into “lifestyle.” Would you ever imagine troubling your grown-up doctor about what kind of laundry detergent to use? What about a brand of underwear? Or plastic cups?

So it’s a fine line. I admit this.

But really, if your heart’s not in it, there are plenty of specialties where you don’t have to interact with kids andtheir parents. Hell, there are specialties where you don’t have to interact with patients all that much (radiology, hematology, pathology). I suppose that once you set your path and do more training it’s difficult to change. Honestly, though, it would be great to give it some thought beyond internship and residency and the hotshot toys. My dad was planning on being an OB/GYN but realized he didn’t want to be delivering babies when he was 50; he picked another specialty.

I’m not saying my pediatrician or her practice are perfect. I was trying to parse the “the office is closed” message yesterday–clearly a fever, sore throat, tummy ache and sore ear isn’t an “emergency,” but some antibiotics were looking pretty necessary–and wished for a way to get through to a person. (We got dosing instructions from our neighbor, and my dad called in the Rx.)

But overall, I am really happy with our pediatrician. She’s kind to the kids, who are inevitably screaming from the first crinkle of the paper, and she is my biggest breastfeeding cheerleader. You should be a La Leche League leader. Nursing through pregnancy? Good for you! Tandem nursing? You’re such a great mom!She never forgets that the kids are individual parts of a family and everyone’s health and attitude reaches out and affects everyone else. (She was disappointed to learn that my evening book club was only once a month. “What else are you doing that’s just for you?” she wanted to know. Does blogging count?)

Anyway, our path to this pediatrician was twisty. We started with the practice where D’s kids are now. I “interviewed” with them when I was pregnant. But, really, what could I possibly have known? I knew that I wanted to breastfeed. Did I know that I would breastfeed until college pre-K? No. Did I know that we’d actually love like babies in our bed? No. Did I know that I would instantly know that my daughter really would cry all night if left alone in a crib, rendering any kind of sleep training an impossibility?* No. Did I know that our crib would be a great place for laundry? Also no. Did I have a clue that we’d wind up with a second car, rendering moot our desire to have a pediatrician’s office within a 10-minute walk? No.

So at Miss M’s 4-month appointment, when the doctor said, “Get her out of your bed,” I bristled. At 10 months, I was instructed to stop nursing her at night because that was causing her gastric distress (it wasn’t; it was the dairy sensitivity that the doctor completely missed in his eagerness to get her to cow’s milk) and that it would make her fat. I took umbrage to such a bald-faced lie and resolved to leave the practice.

But D is dithering. She’s at the pediatrician a lot. Her older son, a classmate of Miss M, is sick a lot. He’s got a million food allergies and frequent ear infections. Her younger son was a very fussy newborn, tons of stomach distress. She reported to me that the pediatrician (she sees the woman in the two-person practice) told her at one month that the baby was allergic to her breastmilk and that she needed to wean him immediately to very expensive “pre-digested” formula. What? No, seriously. What?!I told her to cut out all dairy (her first attempt to do this was really half-assed) and to ignore such idiotic advice. When her older kid is so allergic (to dairy, among other things) she should stop breastfeeding? But here’s the thing–it wasn’t her sister-in-law or a nosy neighbor feeding her such crap. It’s her pediatrician.

Then last week D reported that the baby’s 4 month checkup had included the lovely advice to nightwean him because he’s big enough (weight-wise) to not need to eat at night. And to sleep train him, “First let him cry for five minutes, then eight, then 11, etc.” and that if D couldn’t stomach it, “Don’t worry, it doesn’t make you a bad mom.” Even if the doctor was joking…you just don’t say that. If she wasn’t joking, what the hell is wrong with her? I wish I could call the American Academy of Pediatrics on her. Dangerous nursing advice and ignoring medical research and obnoxious comments all in a neat little package. And I love these little pronouncements–hey, doctors, if it’s so easy to resettle a baby without nursing at 3:00 in the morning, here are my keys…you come do it.

Naturally I’ve been pitching my pediatrician. “You have a car,” I told D. “It’s not that far. This office accepts at least 25 insurance plans. What are you doing staying there? It’s toxic!” She sighed and said she didn’t know.

I’ve been there. You have to reach your limit before you really break out of the complacency. But once you do, you can hardly believe what you put up with in the past. I hope it comes soon for D and her boys.

* We never even tried, and I’m not sorry. Even though it took two years for her to sleep through the night, it took much less time for her to go to bed peacefully.

Color me sheepish

Here I go, carrying on like a lunatic (to be fair, yesterday was “not a good day”) when the lovely and equally-if-not-more-so sleep deprived twin mommy Persephone linked to my blog. She nurses twins, so she automatically rocks.

So I apologize to anyone who might have caught me at less than my sparkling brilliance (hahahaha). I do have a real post brewing that I hope to write. If Miss M naps today we’re golden. If not, there is a whole stack of videos waiting. She is sick, after all.