There’s an episode of Desperate Housewives (yes, I watch that show but I watch everything on TV so it doesn’t mean anything) where one of the moms finally comes face to face with the ADD medication she’s been taking to keep up with her sons and she has a nervous breakdown. She’s sitting in the middle of this soccer field when her friends find her. As she shares with them how horrible she feels about the kind of mom she is, they each tell her their storeis of the hard times they endured with their children and the mistakes they made. She then asks her friends why they never told her this stuff before and they tell her that no one likes to look like they aren’t on top of things. The woman then tells her friends that they need to share those moments, that’s what friendship is about.
I need some of that lately. I am tired of everyone around me being so fucking perfect. Their kids are wonderful. They take all their naps on time and nice and long. They sleep through the night. They eat the perfect ten to fifteen minutes on each side and latch off when done. They burp on cue. They roll over, stand up, sit up, reach out, grab or whatever else they’re supposed to do by that developmental age.
Either everyone’s baby is perfect or they’re fucking lying.
I don’t understand the value of keeping your struggles to yourself. It makes it such that we suffer alone and make everyone else look and feel like they are the only failures in the world. What’s so fucking wrong with the truth? I’ll go first:
My son’s been on some sort of strike lately. He whines more often than he ever did. He really struggles to take naps and several times a week, we get in the car and drive around just so he can get some sleep during the day. He’s been eating so much lately that I feel like both my breasts are empty all the time. Last night, I finally took him to bed with me because he’s been waking up every 90minutes for the last week and I couldn’t take it anymore. In our bed, he slept a solid five hours before waking up for a meal. He doesn’t roll over yet (though he did once but I think it was probably an accident). He reaches out sometimes but won’t grab stuff unless we put it in his hands. There are times in the day when I’d be willing to pay him a thousand dollars for him to sleep for one hour so that he can be better rested. Lately, almost daily I question my ability to do right by him. If I can’t get him to sleep, what hope do I have of doing anything else?
I don’t want to hear advice. I am capable of spinning all this another way. I can tell you he smiles all the time and his smiles are wide and all consuming. I can tell you he’s in the 50th percentile of all his numbers. I can tell you he’s been gaining weight consistently and well. I can tell you he’s been perfectly healthy since the day he was born. I can tell you he’s the most beautiful baby in the world. All of that would be 100% true.
But so is the other part. And I don’t see why it’s important to hide it. I feel like if I shared my struggles, it might help another mom who’s also struggling. I remember when I was pregnant and hurt so much, I hated the fact that others didn’t tell me how difficult it could be. That lasted only nine months. This is much longer. This is too long to be acting. Is it really that important to look good? What’s the point of friends if not to share the rough times and to make others feel less lonely in their misery?
A year ago this time, I wasn’t pregnant. Or at least I didn’t know it.
A year ago this time, I quit drinking diet coke and started going to yoga more regularly.
A year ago this time, I was trying to have a baby.
David was conceived sometime in the month of May. Last year, this time, he was just a concept and now he’s a three-month old boy who has big blue eyes.
It seems like such little time has passed since he’s been born and at the same time I can’t imagine life without him. Having a baby has been a trying experience in so many ways. In the last week, he hasn’t slept longer than a three-hour stretch day or night and he seems to only be able to take a nap that last longer than twenty minutes if he’s in the car or attached to my breast. He eats in small bits and likes to bit or wiggle around. Two nights ago, he pooped twice in the middle of the night and three times in a row at six in the morning. He pooped right as I was changing him, all over my hand. Last night, he peed himself three times and I had to change him three times, which meant he woke up completely and it took me an hour to wind him down back to sleep. I haven’t been able to do anything that takes more than thirty minutes in the last three months. I have washed my pajamas and daily clothes at least thirty times to clean the spit ups. I can’t even count the number of laundry loads we washed of David’s clothes. I have books I want to read. Projects I want to complete. I want to update my site more. I want to take photos. I want to keep better track of David’s first months. But none of that is happenning. All I do is feed and play with David and try to put him to sleep.
The same three months have brought the biggest joys of my life. I know it’s cliche but he really did change my life and he really is the most amazing thing that ever happened to me. I don’t mean that the rest of my life doesn’t matter and I don’t think I would like to give up who I am. But each time I look into David’s smiling face and his shiny eyes, I can’t believe he came out of me. Jake and I made this little man. This little, happy man. And no other accomplishment in our lives will ever compare to that.
Happy three-months little boy.
The upside to baby sleeping through the nite: more sleep for mommy, less cranky baby, more sleep for daddy, less crankiness all around. Happy baby makes happy family. Well-slept household makes everyone happy.
Except my boobs.
Twice this week, David graced us with sleeping more than five hours consecutively at night. I have an overactive letdown, which means milk sprays out of my breasts too fast with too much power. Imagine feeding yourself with a garden hose on high. No matter how much you like what the hose is spurting into your mouth, you probably won’t like it when it’s being delivered this way. One of the ways I work around this is to feed David on one side at a time.
Last night, David ate a bit on both sides at 6:30 before he went to bed, his next feeding was at 1:40am, seven hours later. At that time, I fed him on the left side for a long time and we both went back to bed. My right side was already full and hard but I didn’t want to upset him and his sleep is currently more important than my pain, so I went back to bed. He stirred at 4 but didn’t actually wake to eat until 5:10am. By this point my right breast was in severe pain. A rock is softer. I got up and stood in front of his crib as David thrashed around. Sadly, I kept hoping he would open his eyes so I could pick him up and feed him. And the second he did, I swept him up and put him on my right breast. Within minutes relief was mine.
So now I have a dilemma. I am wondering whether I am willing him awake because my boob is big, hard, and leaking. Should I let him thrash around? Is it possible that if I didn’t interfere he’s actually sleep until the morning and I am hindering this progress in an effort to relieve my throbbing boob?
I know it will all adjust in time but until then my boobs are protesting the sleep-through-the-night plan.
This month’s obsession is sleep. I am sure I will write more about it as the obsession gets deeper and deeper, but tonight I want to specifically talk about middle-of-the-night feedings. At eleven weeks, my little one is still waking up several times for night feedings. The quantity generally depends on the quality and the amount of time I invest in burping him. For those people who said that breastfed babies don’t need to burp at night: You don’t know shit!
The middle of the night feedings are supposed to be quiet. The point is to quickly go to the aide of your little one, quietly feed him without rousing him too much, burp him, and put him back to sleep. You’re not to even change him unless he’s pooped. This way, he doesn’t fully awaken and thus it’s easier for him to fall back asleep. Makes sense, right?
I am pretty good at getting to him before he cries himself awake. At the first sound of hunger, thanks to my ultra-sensitive monitor, I rush to his side and make sure his eyes are open signaling actual hunger and not sleep talking. I pick him up and put him on the feeding pillow and we rock back and forth while I feed. It’s perfectly quiet for the first ten minutes. And then….
ACHOOOO!
My sneeze pierces through the night, making both me and my peacful baby jump. His eyes are wide open now and he doesn’t know what just happened.
ACHOOO! ACHOOO! ACHOOO!
Just in case he had decided to go back to sleep, my allergies let him know that’s out of the question. My sneezes pile on top of each other. Then to add to the punishment, my nose starts dripping. So actively that I have to actually blow it disabling all of David’s attempts to find that sleepy place. We’re talking fifteen nose-blows before the faucet of a nose I have will quit. Actually it doens’t even quit, it merely takes a break until I am leaning over to put David back in his crib. Then it decides to drip once more.
Now I have a conundrum. Do put him down more quickly to rush for a tissue and risk awaking him or do I let my nose drip on him? I won’t tell you which option I choose, but I will tell you it’s a nightly dilemma.
As David goes back to dreaming, I make my way into the bedroom, and just as I lay in bed it comes once more.
ACHOOO!
It will not quit until all members of my small family are awake and unrested.
Ps: I had intended not to write about my son or montherhood to not turn this log into one of those. I wanted it to be more than that as well as that. However, my life is little besides David and work and sleep right now so since it’s a major part of my life, I decided to write about it. This way, I ill hopefully get back in the habit of updating regularly and eventually start writing about more varied topics. If you don’t like reading about motherhood issues, visit me weekly and hopefully there will be at least one entry that’s not about David.
It’s quite funny that I wrote about letting go four years ago in reference to having children. Last night, in bed, I was thinking that having David has cured me of quite a few things. It’s a case of “when you have no time to worry, you simply don’t.”
I used to worry about everything. And I mean everything. I have a major issue with letting people down and if I feel like I let someone I care about down, I beat myself up for days and sometimes months. It’s not healthy and it doesn’t accomplish anything except to make me really sad. But I wasn’t able to stop doing it.
Before David, that is.
I’ve had some major letdowns in the last few months. I lost what I thought was a solid friendship. I realized that sometimes you can’t count on the people nearest to you. I understood the phrase “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” And I’ve finally admitted that often times the only one you can count on is yourself. I’ve also had some amazing surprises and an incredibly healthy and happy baby but those are not what we’re talking about for now. Ordinarily, just one of the things that went wrong would be enough for me to beat myself up for months. It would mean I’d mourn for weeks and go over and over the events to find the exact point where it all fell apart and how I should have done it all differently.
Before David, that is.
Now, I sleep the three hours a night that I can manage, I eat, I work and I play with my amazing son. I have somehow managed to move on and let go. If the people in my life aren’t there for me and aren’t willing to work with me, I guess we’re not meant to be in each other’s lives. Friendship takes a lot of time and commitment. It takes perseverance and being humble. So does family. If those traits are non-existent in a relationship, maybe there’s no relationship worth hanging on to.
It’s funny that I thought I shouldn’t have children until I’ve learned to let go. If only I knew having children was the thing that would teach me to let go.
Thank You, David.
Thank you Annie for letting me know that the comments are broken, I’m working on them.
That was the one common phrase I heard while I was pregnant. To me, that was some of the most frustrating words to hear. No one could tell me exactly what would change, the only guarantee I had was that life after would not be the same as life before.
No shit, Sherlock.
It always surprises me how I assume things don’t go on without me. I don’t mean that in the vain sense. I mean when I read a blog regularly like a religion and then suddenly stop. For example, because I have no time to keep up with it now that I have a baby, and then I revisit it months later, I get a weird feeling when I see that it’s business as usual. Even though I was contributing nothing to the site, I somehow felt like my visiting it regularly was part of what made it exisit. Intellectually, I know this not to be true but somehow I get the weird feeling “Wow, this site is still active and bubbling?” each time I lose touch and come back.
On the upside, this shows that one can take a long break and prioritize other things in their life. But when I come back, the other things are still going on and most of the time, I can jump right back in. In the last eight weeks, I haven’t read half the websites I used to visit regularly. I have not kept up with my email or my friends. There are days when I haven’t gotten out of my pajamas. I haven’t taken non-baby photos except for two days. I haven’t read more than two books. I haven’t slept a full night. I haven’t exercised. I have done the bare minimum for everyone and everything besides my baby.
However, it’s comforting to know that when the time comes all of those things will be waiting for me. Right now, I am working on what’s most important.
One of my workmates emailed me about her dreams this week. She told me that even though her friends seemed to have given up on saving the world as they got older, she hasn’t been able to. She still wants to make a difference and a consequential one. She wrote, “I know you are going to think this is crazy, young, and idealistic, but I still want to save the world…” I don’t think it’s crazy. It’s idealistic but definitely not young. If only young people can be idealistic, I think that makes the world a very sad place once we’re past our twenties.
Now that I have a child in this world, I believe I have even more reason to want it to be perfect. While my understanding of perfect and the boundaries of my possible effect in the world might change, my need to make it a better place hasn’t and hopefully will never go away. I still want to start a nonprofit. I still think that you can change the world and I still want to be only surrounded by those who believe in the power of change.
I never understood the cynicism that I saw in some of my friends. While I can understand that there can be experiences that lead one to question life and the way things work, I don’t understand the advantages of cyncism. What good is it? Does it make the person happier? Does it make the world more livable? Does it mean you’ve won somehow? I feel like it gives you nothing but negative energy that makes the rest of your life even more bleak and even more depressing.
If one chose to stick by their dreams and maybe alter them to be more realistic, more reachable, in smaller increments, wouldn’t that make their life more enjoyable? Wouldn’t it give them something to look forward to each day? Teach For America was a pretty depressing experience for me and I suffered a lot but I still think it’s a wonderful organization and I am glad it exists. Would I like it to be doing some things differently? Sure. But at least they are there, trying. That’s more than many of us.
I hope more people out there are like my work friend and still chasing a version of their dreams. Those are the people who will change the world and make it a better place for all of us.
I’ve been reading many of Paul Graham’s essays during my late night feeding sessions. The little one is still waking up every two to three hours so I have plenty of time on my hands. The articles are well-written and strongly opinionated. Besides being a good read, I find them to be extremely inspiring. They make me want to stay up all night coding.
Last time I was this motivated was my first year out of college. Jake was still at CMU and we would chat over zephyr while I worked on my 3-D Graphics class homework. One night we pulled an allnighter while chatting and I made huge progress on the trumpet. Actually, it’s the only perfect model I created. It was all because of the allnighter and the push to finish it.
Now that we have a little boy, I wonder if those days of staying up and coding or working on a self project are behind us. I sure hope not because they are so much fun and they remind me of the joys of programming or working on something I love. I don’t want that to ever not be a part of my life. Each time I read the articles, I want to learn all there is to learn about Python and I want to write the next great piece of software.
Now if I only knew what that was.
Our little baby turns one month old today. He’s been in this world for four weeks. He has grown from 6 pounds 13 ounces to 9 pounds 1 ounce. His hair has turned lighter and grown a lot. His eyes are even bluer than they were when he joined us. Even though I know it’s not purposeful, his smiles are already heartbreaking.
Here’s a list of google-queries I’ve made in the last month:
Thrush
Post-partum depression
Over-active letdown
Acid Reflux
Australian-hold
Breastfeeding with a fever
Mastitis
Curdled vs Hindmilk
Breastfeeding and peanutbutter
Gripe water downsides
Newborn stuffy nose relief
Baby massage
Umbilical cord care
Washing poop stains
Most of them were the overactive imagination of a new mom. One month down, millions more to go.
We love you more than words can express, David. Happy one month birthday.
I would like to say that life has gone back to normal in the karenika household but that would be a lie. I know that we will be establishing a new normal now that our household accomodates three, but I am assuming it will not look the way it does now.
The good news is that he has gained a lot of weight and is happy and healthy. No major or minor problems, thankfully. The bad news is that mommy is exhausted most of the time. She spends her days in her pink pajamas, eating, feeding baby, sleeping, working, and doing laundry. She has lost some weight but has a lot more to go and her back is better than expected but still in quite a bit of pain. While she is pretty patient with David, she’s short the rest of the time with the rest of the people in her life. She knows that’s due to exhaustion and it will go away. David spends his days eating, sleeping, peeing, pooping, and spitting up.
I had promised myself that I wouldn’t be one of those moms who constantly talks about her baby and that might be why I’ve been avoiding updating the site (that and a complete lack of disposable time). For the last three weeks, my life has been not much besides my baby and I assume it will be that way for at least a few more weeks before I start regaining some of my adult brain cells. I will start reading normal books again and having interesting thoughts again but, for now, I’m only concerned with the little one, making sure he’s well fed and all around satisfied with the service he’s getting.
So if you’ve been waiting for new photos or some thought-provoking entries (and I know it’s been a long time since we’ve had those) hang in there, they’ll be here in a while. I’m just a little busy enjoying the miracle of life.
It has now been two weeks since David has joined our family. There are so many little things that he does which I want to document daily but between feeding him, working, changing him, and sleeping, I seem to have zero free time to even brush my teeth. But I do think it’s important to document these precious days that will go by so quickly. I am open to suggestions on the most efficient way to do that. I will try to do regular updates here soon again and I promise it won’t be all about the baby, I just need some consistent sleep first.
When we found out that I was expecting, my doctor calculated my due date to be February 8th. The pregnancy.com website calculated it to be February 5th. When we did the 17-week ultrasound, we were told February 2nd. So when the 2nd and the 5th came and went, I was pretty depressed. As much as I wasn’t experiencing the bloating that comes with the ninth month, I was ready for the baby to come out so I could see the creature I’d been carrying around for months.
On Monday, the 7th, we went for our doctor’s visit. My doctor was scheduled to leave town on the 12th and if the baby didn’t come by then, we were guaranteed to have a different doctor for the birth. One that we never met. So we decided to induce the next night and got an appointment for 7pm. As soon as we left the doctor’s office, I felt terrible. Obviously the baby wasn’t ready to come and forcing him/her out because I want to have my doctor present sounded so selfish suddenly.
Jake and I spent the next four hours talking about whether we should induce or not. We knew all might go well but we also knew that inducing meant a higher chance of c-section and more drugs for the baby and possibly a much more painful labor. We decided that there were going to be many decisions where we were going to have to put our kid before us and there was no reason not to start now. So we went to bed knowing we were going to call my doctor the next morning and cancel the induction.
At midnight, my water broke. I was sleeping and felt it all oer the bed, it was the weirdest feeling. I called the hospital cause I wasn’t sure it was my water. They said to come in and they would let me know. We got to the hospital at 1am and they said my water had indeed broken and I wasn’t going anywhere. I was only 2.5cm dilated and normally they don’t admit you in the hospital until you are 4cm except for when your water breaks. I asked that we wait as long as possible before they give me medication to induce and was told they could wait six hours. They sent me up to labor and delivery and hooked me up to the machines. The night nurse, Heather Bacon, was awesome and helped us relax. Around 3:30, I told Jake he should sleep just in case it’s a long night/day. At that point, my contractions were more regular but still painless. Within an hour, I went from no pain to acute pain. I couldn’t breathe or move. On the way to the bathroom, I’d have two contractions, and three more on the way back. Heather came in to check on me and see if I wanted medication and I said not yet.
Another hour later I was in so much pain that I finally woke Jake up. As I was talking to him, Heather came in again and I asked her to check how far along I was. She said I was 5cm and could get an epidural if I wanted. We discussed it for a while and finally at 6am, I got an epidural. Whoever says epidurals hurt must obviously have not experienced labor. I was in so much pain at that point that I felt literally no pain from the epidural and as soon as he put it in, my pain disappeared. It was like a miracle.
An hour after the epidural, I was already 9.5cm so they called my doctor and told me to start pushing. Two hours and fifty minutes later, our little boy was born. The pushing wasn’t a huge amount of fun but his head full of hair was very encouraging and helped me push.
All the horror stories I had heard about labor turned out not to be the case for me. The breastfeeding was a bit hard the second day since David didn’t want to swallow. But we’ve got it down now. I had very little to recover from so getting back to normal wasn’t a long way. I worked on Monday before David came and we checked out of the hospital on Thursday, Friday morning I was working again. People had told me it would be impossible to work with him at home and so far that hasn’t been true either. Thankfully, none of the things I feared came true.
All in all, labor was less painful than 9 months of pregnancy and David is such a peaceful, wonderful baby that we feel blessed and overjoyed every minute of every day.
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projects for twenty twenty-six
projects for twenty twenty-five
projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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