Bad MuthaBlogger

Baby and me are having sleep problems. We don’t get enough, and it’s starting to show. Sleep deprivation is taking its toll on me. I look haggard. My eyes are sunken and dark-rimmed. I swear to God I have tons of wrinkles. I have grey skin tone and my hair is turning white. I’m an older mum, I don’t need this shit. It’s hard enough as it is to keep up with the spring-chicken, super-fit mums around here.

Why isn’t he sleeping through the night? And why doesn’t he nap for more than 20 minutes in the day? He’s nearly 4 months old, and it seems like every other mother in my playdate group is getting way more sleep than me. Aside from the age problems, how’s a gal supposed to get any blogging done around here, nevermind cook, clean and wash-up?

Just lately, he’s started thrashing around at bed time. I know he’s tired, he knows he’s tired, but instead of closing his eyes and slipping into sleepland, he thrashes his arms and legs up and down, pants heavily, and fusses about, whipping his head from side to side, and squawking like a hungry, tired bird.

What used to take me 15 minutes to put him down, now takes me over an hour. It is exhausting. The sleep experts would say: put him down, let him cry, walk away and leave him be. But I just can’t bring myself to do that. It’s too heart-wrenching. Poor little mite’s been through so much already.

You know those dolls with the eyes that pop open when you sit them up, and then whose lids close when you lay them down flat? Well, my baby is the exact opposite. He can be fast asleep in my arms, with eyes closed tight, but as soon as you lay him flat on the bed, “ping!” they pop right open and stare wildly about. And he’s AWAKE, just like that, ready for action. 

Right now I’ve got him in a moby sling, strapped close to my chest, while I’m bouncing on one of those big fitness balls at my desk. Impressive, huh? Being able to type and bounce at the same time. Unfortunately it doesn’t work for very long, because he doesn’t like the tap, tap, tapping of the keyboard. It keeps him awake.

So, in a minute we’re off to bed, to thrash around for an hour. It’s only 8pm but since we get up again at 11pm and then again at 1am, and then again at 3am, and then again at 5am, might as well go to bed and try to catch some shut eye with him when I can…

My sciatica is playing up today. It’s not excruciating like it was, but it is kind of annoying, niggling at the back of my mind, making me feel irritable and under the weather.

Before Baby I didn’t even know what sciatica was. Now I’m an expert. I won’t bore you with the details, you can look it up for yourselves. Wikipedia do a pretty good job.

It all started when I was in labour, at my house. I was pushing and pushing for the umpteenth time, on my back on the bed with legs akimbo, my mum, sister, and both midwives pushing down on my knees and feet, and yelling at me to push, PUSH, PUSH!!!

I remember that I felt a lot of performance anxiety and stress, that somehow I wasn’t doing it “right”. And then suddenly I felt all tingly and numb in my right leg. Then the pain of the contractions took over, and I forgot about my leg. That is, until I had to go to the hospital and tried to walk on it. I couldn’t put any weight on it, hence the need for a wheelchair once I got to the emergency room.

I forgot about my leg again, until well after the birth, when the epidural and other painkillers wore off. I slowly began to realise that I couldn’t feel my foot, and that there was some sort of radiating, shooting pain in my leg and ankle. Compared to labour, the pain was minimal, so I ignored it, assuming it would get better in a few days. But over the next few days, it got worse and worse, until it was so excruciatingly painful, I couldn’t take it any more. I needed some serious painkillers, but since I was breastfeeding, the doctor would only allow Tylenol, which did nothing to alleviate my symptoms.

I spent a couple of weeks in bed, flat on my back, unable to hold my baby properly, and unable to get up and walk around without being in complete agony. It was serious bullshit. Hadn’t I gone through enough with the whole hospital birth nightmare? How could life be so unfair? All I wanted to do was to love and take care of my baby, and I couldn’t even sit up to hold him.

I had to feed him lying on my side. I had to feed myself lying on my side. I couldn’t read or watch a movie. I couldn’t do anything other than lie very still and try not to focus on the pain. It was horribly depressing, and I started to slip into a black pit of despair. Talk about post natal depression. It was bad times.

I couldn’t stop crying all the time, and I was so desperate to get rid of the pain, but instead of getting better, it actually got worse. It was like someone had flayed the skin from my foot and ankle, and poured kerosene on it, and then set fire to it. At the same time someone else was poking a series of red hot needles into my calf muscles and thigh.

Mum was worried about me, and frankly, so was I. After a couple of weeks she dragged me out of bed to an assualt of appointments, in an attempt to cure my pain. The first was with an acupuncturist, who claimed she could cure me by sticking needles all over my front and back, and giving them an electrical charge, which she said would calm the sciatic nerve and therefore heal my sciatica. The cost was $350 and did nothing for the pain.

Next, we went to a chiropracter who examined me and then said he wouldn’t touch me with a barge pole, since I was only 3 weeks post partum, and too high-risk. He showed me a DVD that explained how my sciatica was probably due to a slipped disc in my spine, which resulted from pushing too hard for too long during labour. He then showed me his miracle machine that could stretch out my spine, and allow the bulging disc to release the trapped sciatic nerve, and therefore relieve my pain. However, since he wouldn’t work on me for at least another month, I was forced to look elsewhere. At least he didn’t charge me.

Next we found another chiropracter, an old-fashioned type who used his hands to make lots of cracking and popping sounds. He guranteed that he would cure me, although he said since I’d had an epidural it might take a few sessions. I went to 15 sessions, and spent $2,250. It did nothing. The pain was still there, just as intense. It had moved around a bit, from my leg more into my foot, and I was learning to live with it, but it did not get better, and some days it actually it got worse.

By now I had been in constant pain for about 2 months, and I was getting to my wits end. If it wasn’t for my baby, I would have sooner died than feel that pain. I seriously contemplated chopping off my leg. One day it was so bad I had my sister drive me to the Emergency room at the hospital. I was sure that I had broken my ankle, or had some other serious injury and would need to put my leg in a cast, or have surgery. They examined me, pronounced I had sciatica, referred me to a specialist, and charged me $700. In other words, they did nothing for my pain.

I decided to go to a physical therapist. She told me I had an exploded disc, and that it would take me many months to recover. She gave me a few exercises to practise, to strengthen my inner core, and I went to several sessions to learn some very basic exercises for getting out of bed, feeding the baby, sitting up for dinner. I bought special cushions for sitting on and sleeping with. The cost was $900. But none of this did anything for my pain.

Oh yeah, and not forgetting that I also went to a cranial osteopath, and spent around $1800 having my bones and cranial fluid ’subtly manipulated’.

Total (waste of money) cost for all this useless therapy? $6000.

Both the physical therapist and the emergency doctor told me that I needed to get an MRI and consider my options to (a) have surgery or (b) take some serious meds, such as cortisone and painkillers. I did not really want to go down that road, but I was so desperate to be pain-free that I was ready to try anything. So I made the appointment for the MRI and waited.

And then… a MIRACLE occurred.

I was lying on my bed, waiting for my MRI appointment when mum came in and dropped an old, tattered book down in front of me.

“Thought you might be interested in this” she said. “Found it on my shelf while I was having a clear out”.

It was an old, marked up copy of “Healing Back Pain” by Dr. John Sarno. At first I thought what a bunch of new age mumbo-jumbo. But I had nothing to lose at this point, so I started to read it. To my surprise, I found it a right riveting read, and promptly read it from front to cover in one sitting.  I liked it so much I bought the DVD and watched that in one sitting too.

But the real surprise, was that my pain practically disappeared overnight, just from reading the book. Not completely, you understand, I still had to watch the DVD and put Dr. Sarno’s principles into practise, but after about 2 weeks I was completely pain free. It all seemed to make sense, it was ridiculously logical, and I could not believe that I had been suffering for so long when the solution was simply in my mind. Dr. Sarno is a Godsend, an unlikely hero if ever I saw one, but a genius nevertheless.  

Which brings me back to today, when a semblance of sciatica is bothering me. Not enought to make me wince, but it’s there in the background. Time to dig out the Dr. Sarno book, and find out what is going on in my mind to cause the pain…

I found the perfect nappy at long last. The dog’s bollocks of diapers has to be the gDiaper. To be honest, they’re not totally perfect, they still leak poop when baby has his explosive moments. Is there a nappy out there that doesn’t?

You have to make sure you put them on properly – at first I was putting them round the wrong way with the velcro at the front. Plus I don’t think I was putting them on tight enough, nor placing the ”tree farmed fluff pulp” inserts properly. You simply must do this and make sure your change the inserts regularly, or they will leak pee pee aswell.

Another downside is that the poppers on the inside plastic thing tend to dig into baby’s skin and leave a red mark. But overall I like these nappies – they fit fairly snugly, look stylish, and make me feel good about helping to save the planet. You can flush the inserts down the loo, after you’ve swished them about a bit, and you can snap new inserts in their place. This saves having to wash the cloth part after every poop and pee pee.

There was a bit of a learning curve in the beginning, and I resisted using them for a while, but I’m glad to say I persevered and am now well into the groove with these diapers.

Have to say that I don’t trust them completely, I still use Seventh Generation disposables for night time, as baby can pack in a lot of poop and pee in an 8 hour period.  Also, you gotta use disposables on travel trips, it just makes sense not to have to carry around a lot of dirty diapers while on the road.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with all those Fuzzi Bunz and Kushi’s I bought in the early days…

The F.O.B. sent an email this morning to say he is “deeply depressed” by a recent conversation with his lawyer. In his own words ”it seems we are still engaged in all out war once again“.

And I thought we were moving into a peace zone. I was all ready to drop the litigation and go to mediation. Try to resolve things amicably once and for all, for the sake of baby. So it was big news for me to get his email and read that ”someone is out to screw me and my family for everything they can get California style resulting in a desert of a relationship“. Could he possibly be talking about me???

He’s quite eloquent with words, the ol’ F.O.B.

I rushed over to my lawyer to get the full story, and it seems that things had progressed, or rather digressed. My lawyer is a large, smiling, mean bastard. If he was a dog, he’d be a Pit Bull. You do not want to get on the wrong side of him. Technically, he works for me, right? But he has a way of twisting things around so that I feel like I’m working for him, that he’s the one calling all the shots.

I stepped into his office with my assertive hat on, ready to instruct him to drop the lawsuit and find me a mediator, and I left his office with my tail in between my legs, feeling confused and unsure about the F.O.B.’s intentions, and wondering whether I should be going for the jugular, that is seek full disclosure of F.O.B.’s assets, and let the court settle our child support case.

What to do?

Why does it all have to be so complicated? All I want is for the F.O.B. to provide support to our child, so that he has the same privileges as all his other children. That’s fair enough, right?

So, now it’s up to me to go back to the F.O.B. who is in God-only-knows-which-country-and-time-zone, to try and find out if he is willing to make a reasonable settlement offer on paper. Pronto. Otherwise, I swear to God my lawyer will have a full-on international financial investigation in swing. And then it really will be WAR. And we all know there are no winners in war. Only killers and casualties.

This weekend I managed to squeeze in another F.O.B. shopping spree not quite on the scale of before, but we got a few more big ticket items. Like the BBQ for our new patio. 

Question: Why is it so hard to find a small, compact, easy-to-use BBQ?
Answer: Because Americans take their BBQ-ing VERY seriously. In America, bigger = better. 

First we stopped at “Barbeques Galore” where every BBQ was the size of a large SUV. Some of those BBQs are bigger than my entire kitchen. I kid you not. Then we tried Home Depot, where we bought the smallest BBQ they had, which was still huge. I’m still waiting for it to be delivered, as it was too big to fit into the back of my SUV.

It was under $300, which got me thinking about all the parts and labour that went into making the thing. I wonder when the real price of oil will start to reflect in the price of our products? Was buying a gas BBQ really such a sensible idea for the future? Maybe I should be buying oil stock instead.

After the BBQ adventure, I steered the F.O.B. into a couple of high end baby stores where we bought a new big boy car seat, some snazzy clothes, and a whole set of primo bedding for the new crib. I tried to buy a new stroller, but couldn’t make my mind up. They were all looking like cheap trash made in China.

Don’t get me wrong – I love my Bugaboo Cameleon, despite the fact that the chassis broke the second time I used it. And it took me several weeks to figure out how to open and collapse it, without screaming in frustration. But hey, overall it’s stylish, modular, and comfortable. Baby loves it too.

BUT I need at least one other stroller, for convenience you understand. It’s jolly inconvenient taking the Bugaboo stroller in and out of the car. And I want a stroller I can open and collapse with one hand. Besides,  all the mums around here have at least 3 strollers, and I feel left out. That’s one stroller for the car, to be out and about in; one stroller by the back door, for short trips around the neighbourhood; and one stroller kicking around (a three wheeler) for jogging trips.

Have to keep up with the Joneses, you know.

The F.O.B. breezed back out of town already. Here today, gone tomorrow. Actually, he left yesterday. Breezed in. Breezed out. A whirlwind 2 day visit. Off he goes back to Canada, Texas, London, the Channel Islands, Switzerland, Bermuda, Singapore, Thailand, and then maybe he’ll swing back through California again, if we’re lucky.

All sorts of icky feelings and nasty thoughts came up for me while he was here. I had to battle them down and bite my tongue on more than one occasion. I’m not completely nuts, I know I gotta keep things on an even keel with the F.O.B. for baby’s sake.

For 2 whole days the green-eyed monster made a rare and momentous appearance in my life. I was eaten up with jealousy every time the F.O.B. picked up baby and called him “m’boy“. It was so incredibly irritating. I can’t explain it. I know it’s unfair of me, and totally irrational, but I wanted to snatch my baby back and run up the road, far, far away where the F.O.B. couldn’t find us.

Everywhere we went, he insisted on carrying baby and holding him for hours, looking lovingly into his eyes and saying what a lovely boy he was. He only reluctantly handed him back to me for nursing every couple of hours, and then quickly took him back again. People in the street and the shops kept stopping him and saying what a lovely baby he had, and how old was he, blah, blah, blah. It was making me sick with rage.

But instead of snarling, I smiled sweetly and swallowed my feelings (no wonder my jaw is killing me right now, it’s all those repressed screams, or maybe it’s from gnashing my teeth all day long).

He’s never here, he hasn’t signed the birth certificate yet, and he wants a paternity test done, so why am I being so nice to him??? A lot of women in my shoes wouldn’t even give him the time of day.

The truth is, on a good day (which isn’t very often) I want my son to have a father. Even a part-time father is better than no father at all. Plus he’s our bread and butter right now. Without him, we’d be on poverty row. So you see, the F.O.B. might be an S.O.B., but he has a place in our lives. And once he signs that birth certificate, for better or for worse, he’s here to stay.  

F.O.B. was here for the birth (sort of) and is here again nearly 4 months later. Nothing in between. It’s a fly by visit – he’s here for a whopping 2 whole days. He might come back for a few days in July, if he can fit us into his busy schedule. Then again he might not.

Before Baby (B.B.) I might not have cared. After Baby (A.B.) I have mixed feelings. I sort of care, and I sort of don’t. I’m confused. Part of me is angry and outraged that he doesn’t want to spend more time with his son. What kind of a father is he? I mean, he hasn’t even signed the birth certificate yet. Part of me is angry that he even bothers to show up here at all. He hasn’t declared paternity, therefore he hasn’t acknowledged our son, therefore he doesn’t get the right to even talk to my son, never mind visit him and hold him.

I don’t know how he has the nerve to show up here on the Saturday, completely disrupt our life, “ooh” and “aahh” over his beautiful baby boy, and then leave on the Sunday. And we are still no nearer to signing any legal child support agreement. It’s enough to make me pull my hair out and scream blue blooded murder of the english tongue.

This is really starting to stress me out. What to do? My baby simply does not like his car seat, and since we live in a car culture and spend huge amounts of time on the road, it is turning into a BIG issue.

Apparently I’m not alone. I did a google search on “baby hates his car seat” and there were 334,000 hits. But actually, that number seems surprisingly low, don’t you think? Surely there are millions of babies out there who hate their car seats?

You have to admit it makes sense. Imagine being strapped into a small seat so tight you can hardly wiggle your arms and legs, or shake your head from side to side. And then placed backward in a forward moving vehicle, so that you can’t see your mum or any friendly faces, just the boring fabric of the car seat. Add to that the noise of the car engine starting, and moving high speed on the road, passing other noisy vehicles, and you have some idea of why your baby might be freaking out when he gets put in his car seat.

I’ve tried a few tricks to get baby into the swing of things. First of all I sing at the top of my voice (this doesn’t really work if someone else is in the car, as I can’t really sing for shit). I have a special baby song that I made up (to the tune of “Grandma, we love you” if you know that one). it goes:

“Bun-buns I love you, bun-buns I do,
Though you may be far away, I still think of you,
I can’t wait to get you out and cuddle you, and suckle you to my breast
There’s no one quite like bun-buns, oh I do love you the best!”

Cheesy, I know, but if I keep singing and singing that same verse over and over again, sometimes it does the trick of keeping baby amused. The again, sometimes it doesn’t.

Another thing that seems to work (again, the key word here is sometimes) is having someone sit in the back with the baby to entertain him. We have a Lamaze bee toy, all multi-coloured and crazy looking, that lives in the car, and on journeys it can be bounced around to another song:

“Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzzy bee, buzzy bee
Sting who you like, but don’t sting me!”

That one came from grandma, who used to sing it as a child in England. Buzzy Bee can hold baby’s attention for 20 minutes or so, but eventually he gets tired of Bee and wants out of his car seat.

I tried putting a mirror back there so that I can see him, and he can see me. That worked for about an hour, and now doesn’t work at all.  A total waste of $20.

When I am at my wit’s end, and if I am sitting in the back seat, I stick a finger in baby’s mouth. If he’s really tired this will send him straight to sleep. But if he’s not tired, then this will piss him off even more.

I’ve adjusted his seat straps (thinking maybe they were too tight), taken out the head protector, driven with the stereo on full blast, and even opened all windows for a blast of fresh air, but nothing seems to work for very long.

Finally, I pull off the road, get him out of his car seat, give him a cuddle and nurse him. Which always works wonders, until we have to hit the road again.

I’ve heard it gets easier when baby can face forward. But man, there are a LOT of car rides from now until then. And before you make the suggestion, no, I am absolutely not going to get a portable DVD player and play Baby Einstein videos. No baby of mine is going to watch television of any kind until they are at least three years old. Not even if it stops them crying in the car seat. A gal has to draw the line somewhere.

OK. It gets easier the second time around. Maybe ABQ is an easier, more chilled out airport than SFO. Maybe I was more prepared. I knew we wouldn’t get any help going through security. I knew I needed my Moby sling with me to carry my baby. I knew I needed lots of food, water and glossy gutter press magazines to read on the plane. Sadly I forgot to pack my new bottle of cedar body lotion in my case and it was confiscated at the security check, as it was 3oz over the allowable amount. Unbelievable. I even offered to pour half of it out, but those security guys are tough. They said no way, jose.

This time we chose to fly United Airlines, because South West suck. Not only we were allowed to pre-board, but we had front row seats with extra leg room. And the air hostess (or as my sister keeps reminding me “flight attendant”) was super friendly sweet.

I put my babe to the breast and he slept like a little log all the way home. Not a peep out of him. Not even a stir when we landed. It seems that baby has inherited jet setting genes. I just need to figure out a way to offset his budding carbon footprint.

Yesterday we went shopping in the local health food store in Taos, New Mexico. I packed baby into his front-pack Baby Bjorn, and just made it to the freezer section when there was a loud explosive “shplooot” and my sister yelled “Oh NO!” as I felt warm sticky poop shoot out of my left side all down the Baby Bjorn, my shirt, jeans and the floor. I stood frozen next to the peas, and hissed at my sister to do something, NOW!!!

She ran all around the store looking for a napkin, while I stood over the green puddle of poop and tried to look inconspicuous. Would you believe there wasn’t a single napkin in the entire store?? Not in the deli section or the juice bar – I mean, how ridiculous is that?! Instead she grabbed a bread stick bagette out of a nearby bin, and pulled the paper wrapper off and shoved it on the floor, to cover our tracks. Then I made a quick getaway out the front door and ran into the car to try and clean up the mess.

Which brings me to my point – is there a single nappy (that’s diaper to you American folk) out there that doesn’t leak poop, because if so, I would like to know. I have tried almost every single diaper on the market, and none of them work. My mum says that the way they did it in the old days (cloth nappies with pins and flannel) is the way to go, but I want an all-in-one, snappy, happy nappy, that’s earth-friendly, green and biodegradable. This is the 21st Century, dammit. Is that too much to ask?