Gear Gap

I'm enjoying a rare moment w/out the little guy on me, he's actually snoozing on the futon all alone, it is pretty cute, little baby couch potato. Since he wants (and needs) to be with me all the time, I've been trying to figure out how to carry him around without carrying him around. But having a big baby makes a lot of the infant baby gear impractical... he won't fit in the sling because my torso and shoulders are to small to support him in it lying down and he can't old his head up yet to sit up in it. The hand-me-down front pack KILLS my back, and he's too little for a backpack. So I'm searching. Good thing Berkeley is a bastion for baby gearheads. Unfortuately, random lengths of fabric you wrap around you and the baby can retail for $60-$120. Can I not break my back AND the bank, please?

The baby gear thing is funny. Most of it has nothing to do with the baby, mostly with the parents. Babies don't care if the stoller has fancy brushed silver wheels or what the carseat cover looks like. I realized yesterday that my kid has all this gifted gear marking him as coming from a much more monied family. The stroller and carseat we registered for are those I got used to babysitting and nannying for folks with real money. I justify the brands because it is sweet to have a stoller that only requires a tap of the foot and one hand to fold it, and our carseat is rated safer than our car. I wonder how even the folks with money are justifying this...I see them everywhere! My first car was cheaper than that...

Tied to the chair, strapped to the bed, feed me!

Surgery and a new baby make life move pretty slowly at a rapid pace. I am having difficulty grappling with the speed at which my daily life has becomes mind-blowingly new and different, while at the same time pretty darn tedious. I do pretty much nothing all day, and it is such hard work! I start off the day in bed, breastfeed, burp, change, repeat. Then I sit in a chair and breastfeed, burp, change, repeat. I try to get my teeth brushed and clothes on by noon. I try to spend some time outside. I am exhausted.

Trivial tasks seem like expeditions to me right now. Food, for instance. I woke up dreaming of making banana bread. Right. As if I could sneak the boobs away from the baby long enough to mash and mix and bake such a thing. I have not gone grocery shopping for five weeks, or cooked anything more complicated than a microwave burrito or bowl of cereal since the hospital. I thought it would be a huge thing for me to cede control over food purchases and menus to Nat ("Make sure you feel EACH ONE of the apples for bruises, honey."), and allow folks to bring me food. I got over it pretty fast. I can't IMAGINE going to a grocery store right now, or, for that matter, even trying to put peanut butter on a slice of bread while juggling our son (who will still not stay asleep without being attached to a parent...I can't wait until my incision is healed enough for me to wear him in the sling!) How could I drive? How could I walk all through the store and carry the baby? What if he got hungry? Where would I feed him? How would I load the groceries into the car? I find it amazing when I can leave the baby for five minutes to grab a granola bar and then brush my fuzzy teeth.

Be warned, fellow foodies (as if these missives should prove as birth control), the kitchen gadgets will stand alone for many moons.

How do you people without partners or with other kids do it??

Who needs the manners?

I haven't biked to work since week 32 of my pregnancy, which, though understandable, still makes me really lame since I work about two miles from our house. In Boston I limited my biking to after work and weekends, but I was a hard core bike commuter last year while working in San Francisco. BARTing, busing, and biking every day through wind and rain and rush hour in the city taught me something very important: roads are built with nothing but automobiles in mind, and that makes it scary as hell for anyone else. Even bike lanes are dangerous - try biking the Embarcadero towards the city at rush hour. You have an equal chance of being doored or cut off by cars parked to your right as you do being run over or cut off by the speed racers heading home on your left. Add a few feet of water, like last Spring, and you get to test your tires and brakes against the flood, too. Not cool.

The only times I have felt truly safe and protected biking in Boston or San Francisco has been on Critical Mass rides. And I think that is sort of the point...bikers on our own are an endangered species, en masse we have power - power and an amazing sense of peacefulness. It is so QUIET on those rides, and so fast...even with thousands of people it takes only a matter of minutes for everyone to get through each intersection.

There's been a lot of anti-CM press in the Chronicle lately, stemming from a run-in with a mini-van during last month's ride. There are certainly some righteously out of control folks who ride Critical Mass - biker zealots of sorts who see it as a really aggressive political action. But that's a really small fraction of the whole. Overall, I'm sure most riders are more like me - they just want to be recognized as part of a large group - a group that should have more rights to the street. The last Friday of every month should not be the only time that it is safe to ride a bike on the city streets. Interestingly, it is the only day that it is really not an advantage to try too drive your car down Market Street. Deal with it.

Critical Manners is a bicycling group that seeks to offer an alternative to the monthly Critical Mass demonstration rides by biking single file and following all the traffic rules designed to keep cars rolling and bikers on the defensive. I think it is ridiculous. I admit, I was scared to find myself inadvertently leading the pack through a red light by city hall last fall, but, then again, who are those lights really made for? And how relevant are they when thousands of bikers are clogging both lanes of the street? I don't see how a single lane of timid bikers convinced that following traffic rules makes the city safe for bikers makes any impact on public planning or commuting issues.

And that's my rant from the nursing bed. Someday Silas and I will ride Critical Mass together...and I'll feel safer doing that then biking with him to work any day.

No manual

I have been someone's Mom for seventeen days now. Oh, have they flown by! I've been blogging the highlights of Silas' weeks on his blog, but wanted to share some of the lessons I've learned thus far in the journey.

There are no manuals. Even with twenty years of consistent baby exposure and experience, I am reduced to tears when my son cries so hard he turns purple, and floored when he stops the instant I snap the last button on his jumper. Oh - and today we figured out that he likes showers much, MUCH better than baths.

You immediately stop thinking of breasts as anything to hide. I have already breastfed at a plant nursery, a parking lot, a crowded restaurant, and in front of every visitor we've had...I've also learned that big babies are hungry a lot.

You can prepare for it all, and you'll still never be ready. Nat and I are scholars - we read and discuss and reflect and prepare. It definitely helps to have he resources and background, but we still have to parent moment by moment. Our baby is leading us through this maze, and we're learning how to follow - from his birth (nothing like I'd pictured), through each and every day.

The village is real - and we need ours. Having supportive family, friends, neighbors and physicians surrounding us during this time has made everything so much easier, it is amazing. Without them I can't imagine how much harder this would be! And it helps to have a mother who can clean my house to higher standards than my own flirtation with OCD. Also helps to have friends who know good food and like to feed it to us. AND it is great fun to show off the baby without leaving the house.

You do need all the blankets, burp cloths, and baby sheets. It looks like a lot, but they do a lot of leaking...especially in cloth diapers.

And now onto more nursing...

Lucky

I was sitting out in the yard this morning nursing the baby and thinking about how lucky I am. I figured I'd be incredibly overwhelmed, sleep-deprived,and milk-brained at this stage of motherhood, but actually I've been feeling pretty great. I assume it'll get harder when our help-less days and less-sleep nights stretch from weeks into months, but right now I just feel so incredibly blessed. I have the chubby little babe I've always dreamed of here in our sweet little house with birds building nests and plants popping up all around us, friends coming by to marvel and feed us, gifts on the doorstep, and a partner and a grandma who have been handling most everything else. How did I get so lucky in this life?