6:42 a.m. -- 4 mos., 30 days
When M was pregnant, a friend asked if I realized that, when our baby graduated from high school, I'd be in my early 60s.
Yeah, I said, I was aware of that.
He asked, Don't you feel old to be having a first child?
Not really, I said. Lots of people -- Westerners, anyway -- have babies in their 40s. It's not such a big deal. It's not like I was ready to have a baby two decades ago. And it's not like I'm Tony Randall, who left behind 8- and 6-year-old children when he died at the sprightly age of 84.
Then Baby A was born.
One sleep deprived morning a few weeks later, when we were still being awakened every two hours, I asked my mother-in-law how she had managed her household, which at one point featured four children under the age of 7.
She never thought much about it at the time, she said. It was the 1960s, and lots of families were of similar size.
"Besides," she said, "I was in my 20s. I had a lot of energy."
I am 44. My energy flags. I feel old.
Much of it is the five-month experiment in sleep deprivation. As the chief diaper changer, I'm the one hopping in and out of bed throughout the night. Still, I suffer no delusion that I am more taxed than M, who breast feeds Baby A at all hours and, far more attuned to her nighttime rhythms, awakens when the kid so much as coughs.
At this point, Baby A regularly sleeps four to six hours when she's put down. But she goes to bed around 8 o'clock, meaning her first wake-up time comes around 1 a.m., just when we've settled into our first sleep cycle. Then she wakes about every three hours. And she likes to rise early.
On the good nights, her cries rouse me gently from a light dream state, to which a few stress-free moments later I happily return.
Last night was more typical. After a cranky evening she'd finally gone down around 8 p.m. We retired at 11. I was traveling deep in my subconscious -- a submarine? a steel mill? -- when Baby A roused me in her full-voiced thrash mode: limbs flailing, back arching, cries piercing. The clock read 1:14 a.m.
I tottered up, lifted her, and stumbled to the changing station, where I was annoyed to note that the diaper was practically dry. My mumbling of the Diaper Change song failed to soften her wails; increasing my volume only urged her to do likewise. I blew on her -- sometimes this makes her pee, which can relieve me from another change in an hour's time -- to no avail. I wiped, grabbed a diaper, and spent 20 seconds trying to find the velcro straps, only to realize that I'd put the thing on upside down.
Now Baby A was really howling. "What's wrong?" M asked.
"Nothing." I reversed the diaper, picked Baby A up, stumbled to M's side of the bed, and rolled her onto M's breast. She immediately settled down, but my brain was by now awake enough to spend a good 30 minutes wandering through a store of anxieties before drifting back to sleep. Baby A slept all the way until 5, but after that change she was wide awake, and I got to babysit for 90 minutes before returning her to M and turning to my computer.
By now I believe I'm accustomed to my perpetual state of mildly disturbed consciousness. And I count myself lucky -- I'm not working, and I don't have to use high-level brain functions routinely. (Not that I wouldn't mind being called to do so more often.) Plus, every couple of days I take the chance to lie on the kitchen floor next to Baby A's downstairs crib, put the boppie pillow under my head, throw her traveling blanket over my torso, and catch a few winks while she takes her afternoon nap.
Now the problem is less with my brain than with my bones -- specifically, a bone in my left wrist. As Baby A has gained weight (at last measure, almost 17 pounds), she's taking more of a toll on my carrying arm. Plus she's stronger and more likely to wriggle free, meaning one-armed carrying has to involve a firm wrist wrap so the left hand can secure her butt.
After several weeks of near-constant tweaking, my left wrist has given out. Even just turning my empty arm in front of my torso at a 90-degree angle shoots pain through the wrist.
M felt the bone a couple of nights ago and thought it felt "frayed" compared to my right wrist bone; she thinks I've fractured it somehow. This strikes me as hyperbolic; it seems more like some carpal tunnel variant.
Then again, she's right that I see doctors only when she's complained so often that I fear her wrath.
Holding her in my right arm isn't a long-term solution. I'm primarily right-handed, and it's awkward to lose my dominant hand. And she doesn't tuck comfortably into that arm; within seconds she slides down my torso, and I'm constantly rehoisting and readjusting. I've been doing a lot of two-armed carrying, but that prevents any other activity when she's in my arms, which renders too much of my day unproductive.
So every morning the wrist feels a bit worse. Every morning I commit to not carrying her in my left arm. And every morning by 10 I'm carrying her in my left arm. I feel like a ballplayer grinding through a six-month season, knowing a couple of rest days might help him heal but determined not to skip a game. I need a sub, a back-up, a designated carrier.
Yesterday, in the homestretch of our morning walk, we passed a trim, 50-something man jogging in the opposite direction. "How's it going?" I asked. "Feeling old," he said, though he was neither sweating nor panting.
I haven't jogged since Baby A's birth; our twice daily walks are nice, but they do little for either my cardiovascular health or my waistline. This guy, at least 10 years my senior, could run me into the ground. I was pushing the stroller with one arm, my left dangling to give it a breather. I felt vaguely pathetic.
"I hear you," I said. "Feeling a little old myself."
The man laughed politely. He didn't know the half of it.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Paper
6:54 a.m. -- 4 mos., 23 days
If personality is indicated, at least in part, by a person's preferences, every day we witness further developments in Baby A's. To wit:
Baby A loves paper.
Yesterday, opening a letter with her in my arms, I made the mistake of handing her the empty envelope. Eyes widening, she grabbed it like a ravenous animal tearing into carrion. Within seconds, it was shredded and crumpled, with bits of it stuffed in her mouth and sodden pieces sticking to her hand. Life had offered her nothing so enrapturing in weeks.
Then I made mistake number two: I took the envelope away, every last soggy clump of it. Again Baby A's widened, this time in horror. Was I really to be the agent who deprived her of this Nirvana? I was. Her grief passed quickly through denial and landed on anger, where it lingered for at least 20 minutes, longer than I've ever seen her in any obvious "mood."
Expressed in a series of outraged shrieks, her high dudgeon was unbudgeable. She allowed me to hold her, but when I tried to further intrude into her rage she spurned me, turning her face from my coos and kisses.
In a transference little commented on by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, her grief stages were then assumed by her father.
Bargaining had no effect. After depositing the envelope detritus in the trash, we hustled upstairs to her favorite current toy, a colored set of plastic keys: No solace there. We stepped into her favorite current device, a doorway jumper, where, lightly supervised, she often happily bounces for a quarter-hour: Not this time. The shrieks continued.
I moved into depression, and we moved over to our bed, laden with other toys: Useless. I lay on my back and swung her in the "weeza-beeza flying" game, usually sure-fire: No dice.
Not until I'd landed at acceptance ("The baby will cry continually for the next six hours, until M returns and can replace my hapless ass") did we arrive at a solution. To console myself, I turned on Springsteen's new album at a louder than wonted volume. Baby A immediately quieted, intrigued, and we danced for a while until the savage breast was soothed.
Remnants of her rage lingered. She was fussy for a few hours, and the next time we passed the table where we throw the mail, she twisted in my arms to search for the Paradise Lost of her soggy envelope. But the storm had passed.
Later in the day, in a tummy-time session lull, as a reward for some vigorous push-ups I handed her a ripped-out page from a magazine. Mistake number three. She tore into it happily enough, and I was reconciled that she would add processed paper pulp to her all-breast-milk diet.
But the inevitable point had to arrive. I thought I was prepared; when I began to extract the damp clumps from her fists, I had a fresh magazine page at the ready. But the first cut is the deepest, as Rod Stewart noted, and the second page is apparently akin to a rebound relationship -- nice in its way, but a pale echo of the lost love and no true consolation. Fortunately, this incident occurred on our tummy-time carpet, and vigorous rolling proved sufficient distraction.
The upshot: my parental lesson is learned. Perhaps this is preparation for her adolescence, when she considers attaching to other unsuitable partners. At any rate, for now I will create a barrier between her and her objects of desire, and her relationship with the nation's paper products will, for the time being, remain a long-distance one. Love the toy you're with, babe.
If personality is indicated, at least in part, by a person's preferences, every day we witness further developments in Baby A's. To wit:
Baby A loves paper.
Yesterday, opening a letter with her in my arms, I made the mistake of handing her the empty envelope. Eyes widening, she grabbed it like a ravenous animal tearing into carrion. Within seconds, it was shredded and crumpled, with bits of it stuffed in her mouth and sodden pieces sticking to her hand. Life had offered her nothing so enrapturing in weeks.
Then I made mistake number two: I took the envelope away, every last soggy clump of it. Again Baby A's widened, this time in horror. Was I really to be the agent who deprived her of this Nirvana? I was. Her grief passed quickly through denial and landed on anger, where it lingered for at least 20 minutes, longer than I've ever seen her in any obvious "mood."
Expressed in a series of outraged shrieks, her high dudgeon was unbudgeable. She allowed me to hold her, but when I tried to further intrude into her rage she spurned me, turning her face from my coos and kisses.
In a transference little commented on by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, her grief stages were then assumed by her father.
Bargaining had no effect. After depositing the envelope detritus in the trash, we hustled upstairs to her favorite current toy, a colored set of plastic keys: No solace there. We stepped into her favorite current device, a doorway jumper, where, lightly supervised, she often happily bounces for a quarter-hour: Not this time. The shrieks continued.
I moved into depression, and we moved over to our bed, laden with other toys: Useless. I lay on my back and swung her in the "weeza-beeza flying" game, usually sure-fire: No dice.
Not until I'd landed at acceptance ("The baby will cry continually for the next six hours, until M returns and can replace my hapless ass") did we arrive at a solution. To console myself, I turned on Springsteen's new album at a louder than wonted volume. Baby A immediately quieted, intrigued, and we danced for a while until the savage breast was soothed.
Remnants of her rage lingered. She was fussy for a few hours, and the next time we passed the table where we throw the mail, she twisted in my arms to search for the Paradise Lost of her soggy envelope. But the storm had passed.
Later in the day, in a tummy-time session lull, as a reward for some vigorous push-ups I handed her a ripped-out page from a magazine. Mistake number three. She tore into it happily enough, and I was reconciled that she would add processed paper pulp to her all-breast-milk diet.
But the inevitable point had to arrive. I thought I was prepared; when I began to extract the damp clumps from her fists, I had a fresh magazine page at the ready. But the first cut is the deepest, as Rod Stewart noted, and the second page is apparently akin to a rebound relationship -- nice in its way, but a pale echo of the lost love and no true consolation. Fortunately, this incident occurred on our tummy-time carpet, and vigorous rolling proved sufficient distraction.
The upshot: my parental lesson is learned. Perhaps this is preparation for her adolescence, when she considers attaching to other unsuitable partners. At any rate, for now I will create a barrier between her and her objects of desire, and her relationship with the nation's paper products will, for the time being, remain a long-distance one. Love the toy you're with, babe.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Pathos of the Lamb
6:04 a.m. -- 4 mos., 21 days
My father knows how to make animal noises. No "bow-wows" or "moos" or "oink-oinks" for him; his are more like barnyard impressions. As kids we thought of him as the Rich Little of animal sounds.
When he barks his signature bark -- that of a midsized pooch, starting with a hint of a growl and ending with a high-pitched plaintiveness -- neighborhood dogs have been known to turn to see the new mutt on the block. We weren't around enough cows to see if they could be fooled, but I always thought Dad's bellow particularly impressive. Cats, goats, roosters -- all sound truly animalistic. He also does a mean Woody Woodpecker.
So the bar is set high when I read Baby A's animal books, of which there seem to be quite a few in our library. This is good, since at this stage Baby A is more in love with sounds than images. The most successful of our daily reading sessions center on books with large pictures and one-word captions, with a soundtrack provided by a father desperately trying to imitate his own father.
Her current favorite is a flip-a-face book. Half its pages are set with generic cartoon eyes, nose, and mouth, while the other half feature semi-crude but recognizable cutouts of animal faces. Baby A's favorite is Cat; when I meow, she twists in my lap to gaze up at the sound. Her second favorite is Chicken, with its combination of high pitch and explosive "clucks." I've read that infants enjoy sounds at a high pitch, which is presumably why adults -- myself certainly included -- so often lapse into girly idiocy in their presence.
Continuing the face flipping, Baby A also approves of Dog (not at Dad's level, but in the ballpark), Pig (snorting is fun, with a couple of "oinks" thrown in to help her recognize the term down the road), Fox (not in Dad's repertoire, so I've improvised a "yip, yip, yip!"), Raccoon (dogged if I know, so I say "Shhhh -- raccoons are very quiet"), Panda (ditto).
Toward the end of the book are facing pages of Lion and Lamb. The first couple of times through, I tried to keep my lionine roar at a mellow level. I need not have worried. Baby A's favorite stuffed toy, along with Pat The Bunny, is Roar The Lion. Mostly she likes to suck at Roar's fuzz (which on a couple of occasions has shown up in her poop), but by now she's inured to the sound that greets her each time Roar is plopped into her lap. So even my loudest "roars" elicit, at worst, a startled widening of her eyes.
Lamb is a different story. As a class, Dad's ruminant impressions have always been among his best, with goaty little bleats or "baaas" emanating from somewhere in his sternum with particular lamb-like resonance. These sounds have long seemed to me vaguely sad, with a forlorn quality made peculiar by the animal's general cuteness and absence of expression.
But I'd never given it much thought until Baby A. Every time she hears my lamb sound -- a pale imitation of Dad's -- her face crumples, she puffs her lower lip out, and she starts to cry. To stop full-blown, tear-filled squawls, I have to hurriedly flip forward to Fox and start yipping. The first time through I thought it was a coincidence, but there's no doubting the effect -- my lame lamb impression strikes her as the most pathos-filled barbaric yawp in the history of the universe.
This new power, like many unanticipated effects of parenthood, must be handled with care. Not wanting poor Baby A to burst into tears every time she approaches a farm or petting zoo, I've been trying to get her accustomed to my bleating sound. So when we're cooking or having tummy time or when she's feeling particularly chipper, I occasionally will break into a quiet, gentle "baaaa." Outside of the reading environment -- sitting in our favorite chair, pawing at the pages, gradually building up from Pig to Panda to Chicken to Lion to Lamb -- the sound seems only to make Baby A look confused.
I count this as progress. M, for some reason, accuses me of cruelty to babies.
My father knows how to make animal noises. No "bow-wows" or "moos" or "oink-oinks" for him; his are more like barnyard impressions. As kids we thought of him as the Rich Little of animal sounds.
When he barks his signature bark -- that of a midsized pooch, starting with a hint of a growl and ending with a high-pitched plaintiveness -- neighborhood dogs have been known to turn to see the new mutt on the block. We weren't around enough cows to see if they could be fooled, but I always thought Dad's bellow particularly impressive. Cats, goats, roosters -- all sound truly animalistic. He also does a mean Woody Woodpecker.
So the bar is set high when I read Baby A's animal books, of which there seem to be quite a few in our library. This is good, since at this stage Baby A is more in love with sounds than images. The most successful of our daily reading sessions center on books with large pictures and one-word captions, with a soundtrack provided by a father desperately trying to imitate his own father.
Her current favorite is a flip-a-face book. Half its pages are set with generic cartoon eyes, nose, and mouth, while the other half feature semi-crude but recognizable cutouts of animal faces. Baby A's favorite is Cat; when I meow, she twists in my lap to gaze up at the sound. Her second favorite is Chicken, with its combination of high pitch and explosive "clucks." I've read that infants enjoy sounds at a high pitch, which is presumably why adults -- myself certainly included -- so often lapse into girly idiocy in their presence.
Continuing the face flipping, Baby A also approves of Dog (not at Dad's level, but in the ballpark), Pig (snorting is fun, with a couple of "oinks" thrown in to help her recognize the term down the road), Fox (not in Dad's repertoire, so I've improvised a "yip, yip, yip!"), Raccoon (dogged if I know, so I say "Shhhh -- raccoons are very quiet"), Panda (ditto).
Toward the end of the book are facing pages of Lion and Lamb. The first couple of times through, I tried to keep my lionine roar at a mellow level. I need not have worried. Baby A's favorite stuffed toy, along with Pat The Bunny, is Roar The Lion. Mostly she likes to suck at Roar's fuzz (which on a couple of occasions has shown up in her poop), but by now she's inured to the sound that greets her each time Roar is plopped into her lap. So even my loudest "roars" elicit, at worst, a startled widening of her eyes.
Lamb is a different story. As a class, Dad's ruminant impressions have always been among his best, with goaty little bleats or "baaas" emanating from somewhere in his sternum with particular lamb-like resonance. These sounds have long seemed to me vaguely sad, with a forlorn quality made peculiar by the animal's general cuteness and absence of expression.
But I'd never given it much thought until Baby A. Every time she hears my lamb sound -- a pale imitation of Dad's -- her face crumples, she puffs her lower lip out, and she starts to cry. To stop full-blown, tear-filled squawls, I have to hurriedly flip forward to Fox and start yipping. The first time through I thought it was a coincidence, but there's no doubting the effect -- my lame lamb impression strikes her as the most pathos-filled barbaric yawp in the history of the universe.
This new power, like many unanticipated effects of parenthood, must be handled with care. Not wanting poor Baby A to burst into tears every time she approaches a farm or petting zoo, I've been trying to get her accustomed to my bleating sound. So when we're cooking or having tummy time or when she's feeling particularly chipper, I occasionally will break into a quiet, gentle "baaaa." Outside of the reading environment -- sitting in our favorite chair, pawing at the pages, gradually building up from Pig to Panda to Chicken to Lion to Lamb -- the sound seems only to make Baby A look confused.
I count this as progress. M, for some reason, accuses me of cruelty to babies.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Travel
6:26 a.m. -- 4 mos., 15 days
Back home after a quick West Coast trip to see family. A good visit, but the travel seems to have thrown Baby A's parents off kilter, and we're both struggling with some kind of virus that has us hacking and achy but so far our infant has managed to avoid.
This was Baby A's third coast-to-coast roundtrip, and she's proven herself a good traveler. We really only have one meltdown over Kansas (on our Christmas trip) to complain about, where she was furious for no clear reason and it took all four of her parent's hands and about 20 minutes of shushing to calm her down.
This time, our West Coast leg provided us with our first real confrontation with a stranger over a parenting decision.
(I ignore the woman on the Long Island Railroad platform when Baby A was 6 days old and accompanying M and me on a business trip M was making to Washington, D.C. When she found out the child's age, and noticed that Baby A wasn't yet wearing a hat in the October chill, the woman walked away muttering to herself. All I could make out was, "It's none of your business. It's none of your business.")
Our airline of choice typically leaves its front row open to the disabled and, if no disabled folks show up, to parents with infants. Thus we can usually get aisle seats steps from the front bathroom -- ideal for quick diaper changes and providing the least discomfort to us and fellow passengers.
So we got our boarding passes switched to the front row and happily tucked into our accustomed seats. Only trouble was, the fore lavatory had a malfunctioning smoke alarm, rendering it inaccessible to anyone but the crew. Could we use it simply for diaper changes? We won't even need to flush the toilet, we pleaded. No dice, came the answer. So we faced several long trudges to the rear bathrooms.
This wasn't such a big deal. But almost as soon as we began taxiing toward takeoff, with the "fasten seat belt" lights prominently lit, Baby A either peed or decided she could no longer tolerate a previously wet diaper for another second. And, as always when she makes such a determination, she began to notify the universe of her discomfort, loudly, clearly, and continuously, demanding that remedial action be taken.
This left us with three bad options: 1). Stay seated until we hit cruising altitude and allow Baby A to cry for 20 or so minutes. 2). Stand up, ignore the seat belt light, grab the diaper bag from the overhead compartment, grab the baby, and head to the "aft lavs," as the pilot insisted on calling them in his announcements; or 3). Stand up, grab the diaper bag, and change the baby on M's lap.
Haste, safety, and the interests of our fellow passengers seemed to dictate 3). as the obvious choice. So I stood up, grabbed the changing pad out of the diaper bag, spread it on M's lap, and M plopped Baby A down, unsnapped the lower portion of her onesie, and ripped open her diaper. I stood, empty plastic bag at the ready, to take the wet (not poopy) diaper and pass a clean one.
At which point a flight attendant bustling forward stopped at our seats in horror. "You can't do that there," she snapped.
M noted that we couldn't use the front bathroom and that the fasten seat belt light was on.
"Well, you have to wait," was the peremptory response. "You can't do that in your seats. It's unsanitary." She paused, her nose crinkling with disgust. "It's gross."
I stayed standing, shocked into silence. M may have muttered something. But there was nowhere to go but onward. I put the wet diaper in the plastic bag, and we finished the change, chagrined.
As I replaced the diaper bag into the compartment, a middle-aged man in the 2nd-row aisle seat leaned forward and said, "That was out of line. Clearly, that woman has never had children."
I was about to tell him that she could take her childless ass straight to hell, but I bit my tongue. M turned. "Thank you for saying that," she said. "You're very kind."
While no passengers seemed discomfited by the incident, the flight crew was frosty to us for the whole 6 hours.
First, as had never happened on any flight, I wasn't allowed to walk Baby A in the foreward flight attendant area. And later, when the pilots opened the cabin door to use the "fore lav," and the crew had to bar the front area with a drink cart, M was standing in the aisle to calm Baby A down. The pilot commented on Baby A's cuteness.
The witchy flight attendant was having none of it. "You can't stand in the front three rows while the cockpit door is open," she told M.
"Oh, don't worry about it," the pilot said. "I'll take responsibility for this one."
"No," the attendant said. "We have to follow the rules."
M sat down, and Baby A recommenced fussing. When I returned from the aft lav and heard M's tale, I picked up the baby, walked back to the fourth row, and glared directly at the attendant barricaded behind her cart. She caught my eye briefly, then glanced away. I stared daggers until the pilots relocked the cabin door.
When we got off at the Oakland airport, we were greeted with a broken child seat. We'd checked it at the JFK gate, and one of the two crews had slung it so hard that its plastic carrying handle had snapped from its mooring anchor. It could still function as a stationary car seat, but as a portable item it was useless. If I didn't know better, I'd have sworn the flight attendant had radioed down to the ground crew to do its worst.
Fortunately, Baby A had about outgrown the seat, and we were ready to get another. We didn't tell this to the luggage supervisor, who couldn't have been more polite and gave us a $100 discount on our next flight.
I didn't ask, but he probably had a kid or two.
Back home after a quick West Coast trip to see family. A good visit, but the travel seems to have thrown Baby A's parents off kilter, and we're both struggling with some kind of virus that has us hacking and achy but so far our infant has managed to avoid.
This was Baby A's third coast-to-coast roundtrip, and she's proven herself a good traveler. We really only have one meltdown over Kansas (on our Christmas trip) to complain about, where she was furious for no clear reason and it took all four of her parent's hands and about 20 minutes of shushing to calm her down.
This time, our West Coast leg provided us with our first real confrontation with a stranger over a parenting decision.
(I ignore the woman on the Long Island Railroad platform when Baby A was 6 days old and accompanying M and me on a business trip M was making to Washington, D.C. When she found out the child's age, and noticed that Baby A wasn't yet wearing a hat in the October chill, the woman walked away muttering to herself. All I could make out was, "It's none of your business. It's none of your business.")
Our airline of choice typically leaves its front row open to the disabled and, if no disabled folks show up, to parents with infants. Thus we can usually get aisle seats steps from the front bathroom -- ideal for quick diaper changes and providing the least discomfort to us and fellow passengers.
So we got our boarding passes switched to the front row and happily tucked into our accustomed seats. Only trouble was, the fore lavatory had a malfunctioning smoke alarm, rendering it inaccessible to anyone but the crew. Could we use it simply for diaper changes? We won't even need to flush the toilet, we pleaded. No dice, came the answer. So we faced several long trudges to the rear bathrooms.
This wasn't such a big deal. But almost as soon as we began taxiing toward takeoff, with the "fasten seat belt" lights prominently lit, Baby A either peed or decided she could no longer tolerate a previously wet diaper for another second. And, as always when she makes such a determination, she began to notify the universe of her discomfort, loudly, clearly, and continuously, demanding that remedial action be taken.
This left us with three bad options: 1). Stay seated until we hit cruising altitude and allow Baby A to cry for 20 or so minutes. 2). Stand up, ignore the seat belt light, grab the diaper bag from the overhead compartment, grab the baby, and head to the "aft lavs," as the pilot insisted on calling them in his announcements; or 3). Stand up, grab the diaper bag, and change the baby on M's lap.
Haste, safety, and the interests of our fellow passengers seemed to dictate 3). as the obvious choice. So I stood up, grabbed the changing pad out of the diaper bag, spread it on M's lap, and M plopped Baby A down, unsnapped the lower portion of her onesie, and ripped open her diaper. I stood, empty plastic bag at the ready, to take the wet (not poopy) diaper and pass a clean one.
At which point a flight attendant bustling forward stopped at our seats in horror. "You can't do that there," she snapped.
M noted that we couldn't use the front bathroom and that the fasten seat belt light was on.
"Well, you have to wait," was the peremptory response. "You can't do that in your seats. It's unsanitary." She paused, her nose crinkling with disgust. "It's gross."
I stayed standing, shocked into silence. M may have muttered something. But there was nowhere to go but onward. I put the wet diaper in the plastic bag, and we finished the change, chagrined.
As I replaced the diaper bag into the compartment, a middle-aged man in the 2nd-row aisle seat leaned forward and said, "That was out of line. Clearly, that woman has never had children."
I was about to tell him that she could take her childless ass straight to hell, but I bit my tongue. M turned. "Thank you for saying that," she said. "You're very kind."
While no passengers seemed discomfited by the incident, the flight crew was frosty to us for the whole 6 hours.
First, as had never happened on any flight, I wasn't allowed to walk Baby A in the foreward flight attendant area. And later, when the pilots opened the cabin door to use the "fore lav," and the crew had to bar the front area with a drink cart, M was standing in the aisle to calm Baby A down. The pilot commented on Baby A's cuteness.
The witchy flight attendant was having none of it. "You can't stand in the front three rows while the cockpit door is open," she told M.
"Oh, don't worry about it," the pilot said. "I'll take responsibility for this one."
"No," the attendant said. "We have to follow the rules."
M sat down, and Baby A recommenced fussing. When I returned from the aft lav and heard M's tale, I picked up the baby, walked back to the fourth row, and glared directly at the attendant barricaded behind her cart. She caught my eye briefly, then glanced away. I stared daggers until the pilots relocked the cabin door.
When we got off at the Oakland airport, we were greeted with a broken child seat. We'd checked it at the JFK gate, and one of the two crews had slung it so hard that its plastic carrying handle had snapped from its mooring anchor. It could still function as a stationary car seat, but as a portable item it was useless. If I didn't know better, I'd have sworn the flight attendant had radioed down to the ground crew to do its worst.
Fortunately, Baby A had about outgrown the seat, and we were ready to get another. We didn't tell this to the luggage supervisor, who couldn't have been more polite and gave us a $100 discount on our next flight.
I didn't ask, but he probably had a kid or two.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Tummy Time
6:23 a.m. -- 4 mos., 7 days
For 30,000 or so years, human beings allowed their infants to sleep in any position they pleased. Many of those infants slept on their stomachs. Somehow, the race survived.
For the last couple of decades, pediatricians have concluded that a few babies who sleep on their stomachs die. Much remains mysterious about the condition known as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. But studies indicated that the main difference between the United States, where SIDS plagued a small number of families, and the rest of the world was that U.S. babies continued to sleep on their stomachs and sides.
So for the past couple of decades, thousands of U.S. pediatricians have warned parents that, unless their infants sleep on their backs at all times, they risk the horror of a child dying for no reason beyond their own grievous inability to monitor helpless offspring.
And so for the past couple of decades, millions of U.S. parents have spent countless hours sprinting into their nurseries to ensure that their babies have not somehow maneuvered their tiny kidneys away from their tiny mattresses and rolled to a SIDSian fate.
This pediatrician propaganda works, I can attest. When Baby A was less than a month old and spending a restless night, I spent a couple of sleepless hours with her sleeping on my chest. Because she was sleeping on her stomach, for two hours I counted her breaths, certain that each could be her last.
As my mind raced, I pondered whether any SIDS deaths had taken place when infants were sleeping atop an unstoned parent. But this mattered little to my implanted paranoia, which raged until I decided she was sleeping deeply enough to be moved. Having ensured that her back was plastered against the sheets, I, like most normal human sleepers, rolled onto my stomach and soon dropped off.
Beyond raging paranoia, all this back sleeping has begot another parental bane: Tummy Time.
Now that kids are no longer spending time waking on their tummies and learning to use their arms and backs to lift their heads, pediatricians have mandated that new parents become Personal Baby Trainers. So millions of parents now spend countless hours rolling their infants onto their stomachs and encouraging them to push up, bend, lift and strengthen muscles that are atrophying in the cause of SIDS prevention.
The main thing to know about mandated Tummy Time is that, like most rational humans faced with unwanted workouts, babies hate it.
The early days were particularly unbearable. Baby A couldn't turn her neck, and her tiny face would routinely mush against the blanket, carpet, or whatever fabric that makes up the Tummy Time Toys (play mats, cloth surfboard, etcetera) we were given. Once we turned her head to the side, she'd lie there, breathing uncomfortably, while we encouraged her to lift her head. This farce usually lasted about 60 seconds before we took pity on her and rolled her back.
As Baby A's neck has strengthened and she's learned to roll, Tummy Time has become less painful. Slightly. Unless or until she's tired, Baby A can use her back muscles to lift her head and look straight ahead, left, or right. That's positive.
But her arms are a different story. If we place them, elbows bent, on either side of her face, she'll use them once or twice to push herself up. Otherwise they tend to flail or flop far in front of her, or stay pinned below her torso, rendered useless. Occasionally she pulls all four limbs up and lifts her head, leaving only her torso grounded in an airplane posture. This is cute as all get-out, but it does nothing to build arm strength.
As her primary trainer, I have spent long sessions worrying how to counteract this flabbiness in my 4-month-old's biceps and triceps. I've kneeled astride her back, calling encouragement from above her head. I've lain with my face inches from hers on our bed and on the floor, pushing up my own head and torso while she smiles at my foolishness.
One shining day last week, I thought we'd solved the problem. "Up!" I said while doing a mini-push-up, and Baby A pushed up. "Down!" I said, my face falling to the bed, and Baby A put her head down, grinning hugely. "Up!" She followed. "Down!" She followed, the smile still plastered on her face. This continued for 30 exhilerating seconds and five repetitions as I decided that a). I had the smartest 4-month-old on the planet, and b). that Tummy Time woes were solved. Then Baby A tired of the game and turned her head in search of new stimuli. Despite enormous efforts, the commands have since sparked only amused or bewildered smiles.
How does one gauge whether Tummy Time even works? Mostly our training sessions succeed in inducing her to spit up, and I spend most of them wiping vomited milk from our Tummy Time Toys. Usually, despite lots of rolling and endless, giddy encouragement, after about 4 minutes Baby A ends up whiny and frustrated, with me following about 2 minutes behind.
Our kid's plateaued, with zero apparent interest in using her arms to push her head up or roll from her stomach to her back. Her adorably doughy limbs continue to demonstrate their worrisome paucity of tone. Can we buy tiny baby weights with which she can practice curls? If these came with suckable toys, Baby A would never stop pulling them to her mouth. (Maybe there's a business idea in there somewhere.)
As it stands, Baby A has not yet started to flail or scream at the very sight of her Tummy Time surfboard. Her father, on the other hand, has come to view its pink-and-white stripes and lime green pillow only through a lens composed of anxiety, fear, and dread.
For 30,000 or so years, human beings allowed their infants to sleep in any position they pleased. Many of those infants slept on their stomachs. Somehow, the race survived.
For the last couple of decades, pediatricians have concluded that a few babies who sleep on their stomachs die. Much remains mysterious about the condition known as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. But studies indicated that the main difference between the United States, where SIDS plagued a small number of families, and the rest of the world was that U.S. babies continued to sleep on their stomachs and sides.
So for the past couple of decades, thousands of U.S. pediatricians have warned parents that, unless their infants sleep on their backs at all times, they risk the horror of a child dying for no reason beyond their own grievous inability to monitor helpless offspring.
And so for the past couple of decades, millions of U.S. parents have spent countless hours sprinting into their nurseries to ensure that their babies have not somehow maneuvered their tiny kidneys away from their tiny mattresses and rolled to a SIDSian fate.
This pediatrician propaganda works, I can attest. When Baby A was less than a month old and spending a restless night, I spent a couple of sleepless hours with her sleeping on my chest. Because she was sleeping on her stomach, for two hours I counted her breaths, certain that each could be her last.
As my mind raced, I pondered whether any SIDS deaths had taken place when infants were sleeping atop an unstoned parent. But this mattered little to my implanted paranoia, which raged until I decided she was sleeping deeply enough to be moved. Having ensured that her back was plastered against the sheets, I, like most normal human sleepers, rolled onto my stomach and soon dropped off.
Beyond raging paranoia, all this back sleeping has begot another parental bane: Tummy Time.
Now that kids are no longer spending time waking on their tummies and learning to use their arms and backs to lift their heads, pediatricians have mandated that new parents become Personal Baby Trainers. So millions of parents now spend countless hours rolling their infants onto their stomachs and encouraging them to push up, bend, lift and strengthen muscles that are atrophying in the cause of SIDS prevention.
The main thing to know about mandated Tummy Time is that, like most rational humans faced with unwanted workouts, babies hate it.
The early days were particularly unbearable. Baby A couldn't turn her neck, and her tiny face would routinely mush against the blanket, carpet, or whatever fabric that makes up the Tummy Time Toys (play mats, cloth surfboard, etcetera) we were given. Once we turned her head to the side, she'd lie there, breathing uncomfortably, while we encouraged her to lift her head. This farce usually lasted about 60 seconds before we took pity on her and rolled her back.
As Baby A's neck has strengthened and she's learned to roll, Tummy Time has become less painful. Slightly. Unless or until she's tired, Baby A can use her back muscles to lift her head and look straight ahead, left, or right. That's positive.
But her arms are a different story. If we place them, elbows bent, on either side of her face, she'll use them once or twice to push herself up. Otherwise they tend to flail or flop far in front of her, or stay pinned below her torso, rendered useless. Occasionally she pulls all four limbs up and lifts her head, leaving only her torso grounded in an airplane posture. This is cute as all get-out, but it does nothing to build arm strength.
As her primary trainer, I have spent long sessions worrying how to counteract this flabbiness in my 4-month-old's biceps and triceps. I've kneeled astride her back, calling encouragement from above her head. I've lain with my face inches from hers on our bed and on the floor, pushing up my own head and torso while she smiles at my foolishness.
One shining day last week, I thought we'd solved the problem. "Up!" I said while doing a mini-push-up, and Baby A pushed up. "Down!" I said, my face falling to the bed, and Baby A put her head down, grinning hugely. "Up!" She followed. "Down!" She followed, the smile still plastered on her face. This continued for 30 exhilerating seconds and five repetitions as I decided that a). I had the smartest 4-month-old on the planet, and b). that Tummy Time woes were solved. Then Baby A tired of the game and turned her head in search of new stimuli. Despite enormous efforts, the commands have since sparked only amused or bewildered smiles.
How does one gauge whether Tummy Time even works? Mostly our training sessions succeed in inducing her to spit up, and I spend most of them wiping vomited milk from our Tummy Time Toys. Usually, despite lots of rolling and endless, giddy encouragement, after about 4 minutes Baby A ends up whiny and frustrated, with me following about 2 minutes behind.
Our kid's plateaued, with zero apparent interest in using her arms to push her head up or roll from her stomach to her back. Her adorably doughy limbs continue to demonstrate their worrisome paucity of tone. Can we buy tiny baby weights with which she can practice curls? If these came with suckable toys, Baby A would never stop pulling them to her mouth. (Maybe there's a business idea in there somewhere.)
As it stands, Baby A has not yet started to flail or scream at the very sight of her Tummy Time surfboard. Her father, on the other hand, has come to view its pink-and-white stripes and lime green pillow only through a lens composed of anxiety, fear, and dread.
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