2007 August | Kaiser Mommy

Archive for August, 2007

Aug 15

Why Alex is a boy.

I don’t mean the XY XX genetic choices – but the why for me.

The very thing I fear – the perpetual motion – is what I need in my life.

I’m a sit on my ass kind of girl. In front of the tv, with some knitting, with a laptop, with some food, kind of girl.

I was picked last for teams in gym, I got my glasses broken constantly in contact sports, I could never ride my bike up the hill, I once tripped on a painted line in gym and sprained my ankle, my dad sponsored the summer softball team I was on – and I still once heard the coach say while I was going up to bat, “Here comes the girl who can’t hit.”

I have this weight issue. (However, today is 162, opa!) I don’t want to move my bod. It feels strange to me. The only thing I’ve ever trusted my body to do was childbirth.

But I have this boy.

This boy who doesn’t want to be still. This bright little boy who wants to see things and touch things and lick things – he’s not content sitting and listening to me describe it – he’s an up close and personal kind of guy.

This boy smiles when I put him on my shins and do crunches. This boy laughs when I bring my shoulders to him and exhale raspberries at him while I crunch. This boy loves when I pull him up and down, straining my triceps and shoulders in a good way. This boy loves being bounced up and down in the squats and lunges that I hate hate HATE to do. This boy likes to take the ride on my stomach as I do the bridge from yoga class. This boy is a mover and a shaker.

He’ll teach me to be active. He’ll teach me to live in my body rather than surfing online to find a picture of what I’d rather sit and envy. He’ll teach me to laugh while I get strong.

I just have to let him teach me. And damn that’s hard.

2
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Posted in Issues, Weight

Aug 14

Kiss me Kate

Alex was supposed to be Kate. Katelyn Emilee to be exact. I come from a matriarchal (sp?) sort of family and I always pictured myself with a girl. It’s a DNA thing, much like men want to pass on the family name – I am the last female in my family – you have to go back to my great great grandmother to start down a family branch to find a female in my generation. Family names ending all over the place with all the non childbearing females for three generations. (Which goes back to my family breast feeding theory – still collecting information on that by the way.)

Any time as a sort of adult that I’ve been around little boys my friends watched my shoulders creep up around my ears in the stress of watching them… be boys. The perpetual motion, the dirt, the daredevil… oh I’m getting short of breath just thinking of it.

Kate had been named since I sat in a 4 hour Statistics class scheduled once a week on Mondays. I never considered having a boy, I’d ordered a girl, I knew that’s what I wanted, the only concession I made to the idea of having a boy was that if we had a girl we could be done having kids and Scout could go off to the man snip factory, and if we had a boy we were having another kid. The End.

At my 20 week sonogram we learned it was a BOY. And not just kind of a boy. A BOY to make Scout proud.

Yeah. Scout asked, “Are you SURE that’s not the cord?” and the tech replied, “Umbilical cords don’t come with scrotum and testicles.”

Meanwhile I bit my cheeks and breathed carefully, trying not to bawl my guts out. I succeeded until we got to the car. On the way out of the hospital we’d passed a little boy trying to climb over the railing to the stairs and parachute down with his jacket. I came unglued. At dinner we sat by a dad and his boy and his girl. The girl ate nicely and quietly, the boy screamed like Karl Rove hating people prior to the resignation.

I emailed my mom a single line, “Scout gets to pass on the family name.” She too was stunned. What were we going to do?

I tried to get into it. I went to the scrapbook store to buy boy stuff. It was all horrible trains and gross blue and I left in tears.

It took a month of real mourning for the baby Kate that I wasn’t going to meet. One night I was in bed feeling sorry for myself and I felt the little boy inside me say, “I feel like I’ve failed a test!” and he broke into tears. And so did I. Because that’s how I’ve always felt to my own dad – like I’ve failed a test for being a girl. It got my attention, and I began to nurture the little boy inside of me, rather than my fear of WTF was I going to do with him. I finally scrapbooked his sonogram photos and as I wrote the words “I love your baby face” and “I love your baby feet” – I realized I truly did.

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Posted in Mommy Related Stuff

Aug 11

164.5 … still

Hm. That number just keeps hanging on.

But then, let’s be honest, so has my habit of eating whatever I want.

So. Starting this morning, I am back on smoothie track. Want my recipe?

I mix equal portions of:
flax seed
vanilla whey powder
oatmeal
and put it in a container to make it easier to get to.

For 1 serving (all of these measurements should have”-ish” after them):

1 cup vanilla yogurt (I like Silk Soy better than dairy)
handful of almonds (or healthy spoonful of peanut butter – for the nutty protein)
3 Tbsp of the flax/oatmeal/whey powder mixture
some frozen fruit – I used strawberries. about a cup worth I guess.

use either milk or a juice to thin out as needed – i may have used some orange in it.

personally I think the almonds make it special. oatmeal is crazy good for you, I don’t really care for it but I don’t notice it in the smoothie.

I’ll make it and whatever is left I just put in the blender in the fridge and add to it the next day. That way I don’t wash a bunch of (expensive) stuff down the drain just to do it all again the next day.

1
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Posted in Weight

Aug 06

To Kill a Mockingbird

Sigh. I’ve decided to tackle TKAM for a project over here. This will be character building. I just have difficulty picturing some of my students with reading levels equal to Green Eggs and Ham getting much out of this book. Challenge to myself is to find a way to make this accessible to them. To find a way that they can go through the rite of passage of TKAM in high school along with their peers.

I’m going to miss going back into the classroom this fall. The new clothes, the new beginning feel, sitting in boring meetings writing notes with the work girls. I know I’m doing good work here, but I’ll feel a little out of whack right after Labor Day as my “new year” internal clock won’t have the alarm set this year.

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Posted in Issues

Aug 06

Aunt Rake is on her way!

My long time BFF Rachel is on her way to the land of vices – two days of running around with a girlfriend, the blissful idea of getting to paint a wall in my bedroom while she plays with the baby. Oh bliss!

I love my husband, I love my baby, but there’s just nothing like a girlfriend after two months of being strictly mom and wife to two men!

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Posted in Kaiser Mommy

Aug 05

Oh yeah… the baby

Uh, yeah. The one this blog is titled for. Him. The one I haven’t actually talked about for a while.

He’s great. I dropped my basket on Tuesday morning b/c I’d had no sleep (I stayed up too late talking to Mrs. NOT Tater, then he woke up every hour-two hours doing kick/bicycle legs all night) and Alex woke officially at seven and was in-con-solable. Oh and Scout was out of town. I broke down sobbing, the scary sobbing, the “I didn’t know sounds like that could come from my throat” sobbing. The cat even crawled up on me and let me sob into her fur while I rocked Alex and repeated “I don’t know what you WANT”.

Somewhere in there I threw my cell phone against the wall. I’d tried to call Scout to … I don’t even know what … and the call failed … so I threw the phone … because phones do not merit CPS/DFS visits. It now has some lovely yellow paint permanently embedded in it from where it hit the wall.

After that, I picked up my basket and put my shit back in it – all together again. I put Alex on his back on the bed next to me (because he was finally chill enough to hang out OUT of my arms) and I curled up next to him with my eyes closed. He was still just as active, but now that I had given up any hope of a REM cycle – ever again – I was okay with his activity. I opened my eyes and he was on his tummy. Strange. That’s not how I left him. I rolled him on his back and closed my eyes again. Yet again when I opened them, he was on his tummy.

So. He wasn’t really trying to kill me with lack of sleep, he was just too busy trying to accomplish a major milestone to want to sleep.

Week 14 has brought a baby who can play tummy time in front of DVRd Sesame Street for almost an entire episode – allowing me to get some basic cleaning of the kitchen and feeding of the self accomplished. Guilt free even because, Hello! Tummy time!

He sits in his big boy chair at the table and makes chewing faces while watching Scout and I eat our solids.

He can hold things, spoons (Scout hadn’t licked off the chocolate – Alex got the chocolate ALL over himself. Good boy. Mom’s boy.), CD cases, sharpened pencils (Scout again, he retrieved the pencil quickly), mom’s face, dad’s hands, and yes, yes, he’s found his package – grabbing on for a little self massage of his own during baby massage class today.

He’s trying like mad to get up on his knees and hands. That fun precrawling stage that is a warning that we’d better get finished unpacking SOON.

He stands all the time while holding our fingers. People are starting to comment on this – on how ready to get going he is. Again, we’d better get finished unpacking SOON. (Blogging at 130 am after an evening cuppa coffee is clearly helping this cause not at all.)

He looks at me and seems wise. Like he’s calling me on my shit and loves me anyway.

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Posted in More Mommy Stuff

Aug 05

Speaking of Boobs . . .

There’s a hub-ub of breastfeeding talk going on – this at Strollerderby, this at Blissfully Bitchy, and I know I’ve read more, but as I sit here pumping with one hand and typing with the other I’ll just get on with my thought.

I’ve been really pondering this for two days now. Alex and I started off nursing and have ended up exclusively pumping and using bottles. I can share my story if you want, but it’s not necessary for what I’m hoping to learn from you.

My mom did not breastfeed me, she had some sort of shot in the hospital that dried up her milk (purposefully), and had me on formula and rice cereal when I was a week old (per the advice of her L/D nurses) – One representation of a 70s mindset to feeding babies.

(Punch line – we can now find all kinds of info on how that can jack your blood sugar – I can be proof of that.)

My grandma (mom’s mom) did not breastfeed because she was told by her doctors that it would increase the risk of breast cancer – she used formula. One representation of a 40s mindset to feeding babies.

(Punch line – she had to have a radical mastectomy in the 70s. Thanks for your advice doc. (Sarcasm))

As I was feeling frustrated and a little sad that at 14 weeks I think the critical period has passed for Alex to ever nurse from me again it dawned on me:

No one in my immediate family has breastfed a child since my grandma was born in 1915. That’s NINETY TWO years of family culture there. I’d have to go back to my Great Grandmother to find a woman in my close family who could nurture me and help me.

I have had exactly one of my peers breastfeed around me enough to give me *any* clues what it was like.

I know many choices I have made have been a direct result of what my mom did. Her birth story of having me was always very positive, honest (yes it hurt), measurable (she’d had endometriosis – death wishing cramps for a week for no reason vs. death wishing cramps for a day that would result in a child – she’d pick labor any day), and non alarming. With this background, I never feared labor and my biggest beef with my own labor story is how much people tried to interfere, the pain was manageable (one day of suck vs. the 292 days of suck preceding it – fair trade).

My hypothesis is that the women who are successfully primarily nursing (and for this I mean straight from the breast, not pumping like me) at 6 months are women who have mothers who breastfed. I believe a good mother/daughter bond is better than a lactation consultant any day (notice I said “good”, clearly if you have a mom who harps on your ass and makes you feel like crap – a bad lactation consultant is better than her.)

If you will answer a few informal questions, I will pull out my college statistics book and learn how to figure correlation again to see if it seems to make a difference if you come from a line of breastfeeding women or formula women as far as longevity of breastfeeding goes:

1. Did your mom nurse or use formula with you/her children (elaborate as necessary).

2. Did you choose to nurse or use formula with your child/children (elaborate as necessary).

3. If you nursed, how long did you nurse your child/children (elaborate as necessary).

(And if *any* of you respond with “heck, my mom still nurses me … Well, I’m just speechless )

23
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Posted in Nekkid Stuff

Aug 03

More important than 164.5

Wandering the Google Reader during naptime (It’s nice relaxation during pumping) I linked my way to this blog post. I’d run across “Team Whymommy” before but hadn’t locked in on it. I now join masses of good women sending good energy/prayers/thoughts off to Whymommy – who I’ve never met.

This is what she wants me to know, and wants you to know too:

Inflammatory breast cancer

Monday July 23rd 2007, 3:11 pm
Filed under: About Us / Favorites, breast cancer

We hear a lot about breast cancer these days. One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetimes, and there are millions living with it in the U.S. today alone. But did you know that there is more than one type of breast cancer?

I didn?��Ǩ�Ѣt. I thought that breast cancer was all the same. I figured that if I did my monthly breast self-exams, and found no lump, I?��Ǩ�Ѣd be fine.

Oops. It turns out that you don?��Ǩ�Ѣt have to have a lump to have breast cancer. Six weeks ago, I went to my OB/GYN because my breast felt funny. It was red, hot, inflamed, and the skin looked?��Ǩ��funny. But there was no lump, so I wasn?��Ǩ�Ѣt worried. I should have been. After a round of antibiotics didn?��Ǩ�Ѣt clear up the inflammation, my doctor sent me to a breast specialist and did a skin punch biopsy. That test showed that I have inflammatory breast cancer, a very aggressive cancer that can be deadly.

Inflammatory breast cancer is often misdiagnosed as mastitis because many doctors have never seen it before and consider it rare. ?��Ǩ?�Rare?��Ǩ�� or not, there are over 100,000 women in the U.S. with this cancer right now; only half will survive five years. Please call your OB/GYN if you experience several of the following symptoms in your breast, or any unusual changes: redness, rapid increase in size of one breast, persistent itching of breast or nipple, thickening of breast tissue, stabbing pain, soreness, swelling under the arm, dimpling or ridging (for example, when you take your bra off, the bra marks stay ?��Ǩ�� for a while), flattening or retracting of the nipple, or a texture that looks or feels like an orange (called peau d?��Ǩ�Ѣorange). Ask if your GYN is familiar with inflammatory breast cancer, and tell her that you?��Ǩ�Ѣre concerned and want to come in to rule it out.

There is more than one kind of breast cancer. Inflammatory breast cancer is the most aggressive form of breast cancer out there, and early detection is critical. It?��Ǩ�Ѣs not usually detected by mammogram. It does not usually present with a lump. It may be overlooked with all of the changes that our breasts undergo during the years when we?��Ǩ�Ѣre pregnant and/or nursing our little ones. It?��Ǩ�Ѣs important not to miss this one.

Inflammatory breast cancer is detected by women and their doctors who notice a change in one of their breasts. If you notice a change, call your doctor today. Tell her about it. Tell her that you have a friend with this disease, and it?��Ǩ�Ѣs trying to kill her. Now you know what I wish I had known before six weeks ago.

You don?��Ǩ�Ѣt have to have a lump to have breast cancer.

P.S. Feel free to steal this post too. I?��Ǩ�Ѣd be happy for anyone in the blogosphere to take it and put it on their site, no questions asked. Dress it up, dress it down, let it run around the place barefoot. I don?��Ǩ�Ѣt care. But I want the word to get out. I don?��Ǩ�Ѣt want another young mom ?��Ǩ�� or old man ?��Ǩ�� or anyone in between ?��Ǩ�� to have to stare at this thing on their chest and wonder, is it mastitis? Is it a rash? Am I overreacting? This cancer moves FAST, and early detection and treatment is critical for survival.

Thank you.

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Posted in Nekkid Stuff

Aug 03

164.5

I hate this number.

During the 15 year awkward period I had (ages 8-22), I didn’t pick up on the transition from getting larger clothes because I was growing taller to getting larger clothes because I was growing fatter.

When I was 20, I hit my top weight of 164. I don’t remember how I felt specifically. I don’t really remember how I looked. This really was just more of the same for me in a decade and a half long stint of being awkward and undateable. You’d think the giganto boobs would have helped – but apparently giganto boobs are only good when they look like Pam Anderson (circa Baywatch), not Eddie Murphy (circa The Klumps).

I lost weight accidentally, I’d started eating less because I lived with my mom and didn’t want to eat all her groceries. Once I started hearing comments I stepped on the scale and was shocked to see I’d lost, oh, say ten pounds without really trying. I mean it was the same “oh I’m trying to lose weight” mantra that I always said, but this time it was actually happening.

I lost weight through using free weights. No gym, no running. Just a DAILY freaking 10 rep routine with the weights.

I lost 20 pounds in a very moderate, healthy way. Then Scout and I broke up and I lost 10 pounds on what I call the coffee/nicotine diet. By the time I graduated college I was down to 134, dressing and clothes shopping was a whole lot of fun, but I admit I cringed when people asked me how I’d lost it – I didn’t want people thinking the way I lost that last 10 pounds was GOOD idea.

I’ve gone back up the scale twice since then, and was back down to 139.5 for a brief shining moment on the scale 15 months ago. Then we went to Europe, then I got pregnant, then I weighed 183.7. But I got a cute kid out of it, so that’s all worth it.

Losing the first 19 pounds was easy, 7 pounds of kid, 5 pounds of kid nurturing stuff, 7 pounds of no sleep and stress. Then it all came to a screeching halt with the move and the Culvers Frozen Custard within walking distance and all the company paid for meals for 30 days. Two weeks on real (ish) food again and I’m at my nemisis number.

164.5

It’s time to change. I don’t want to be too self conscious to hang out with my kid at the pool, I don’t want him to be embarrassed of me…

Oh wait, while those reasons are true, let’s just be honest.

I wanna be a MILF.

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Posted in Weight

Aug 02

Memo to Baby Schu

I have a friend who is a lawyer. She is not married (BUT SHE’D LIKE TO BE. HINT HINT – oh…. excuse me Tater…. my bad). We were talking (IM) about baby sleep because of a conversation I’d had in yoga yesterday (more on that at a different time. I like my can of worms closed in these hot summer months). We talked of how we’d like things to be – which resulted in the MOST awesomely drafted memo ever. I once again believe I should hang up my funny crown because there’s a new princess in town.

(edited so y’all believe we’ve actually graduated from institutions of higher education)

(for sake of clarity I will her NOT Mrs. Tater and I will play the role of Mommy)

NOT Mrs. Tater: Like I said, I have a bias about how I’d “like” to handle stuff but I don’t live with an ankle-biter full-time.

MOMMY: Well, I fully expected said crumb snatcher to be sleeping in his crib in his own room on a completely separate floor of my home at the time.

NOT Mrs. Tater: I find memos very helpful at my job, think you can send a memo to file to BabySchu?

MOMMY: Like BabySchu, you can now start sleeping 12 hours at a stretch and waking up with a dry diaper and good mood? Sincerely yours, Mommy?

NOT Mrs. Tater: Well, I would have your lawyer write it up as “Mr. BabySchu, as you recall, we agreed on April 25, 2007, that all employment and service opportunities (hereinafter “Motherhood”) would include required periods of inactivity of at least 12 hours per 24-hour cycle (hereinafter “Sleep”).

MOMMY: OMG. Awesome.

NOT Mrs. Tater: We have noticed that Sleep has been markedly absent from our prior interactions and would appreciate its return.

In addition, as previously discussed, all bodily functions of each party remain that party’s individual responsibility.

This memorandum shall serve as a reminder that all foul moods and waste products are yours to be disposed of and Mother will heretofore bear no responsibility for said articles.

We appreciate your cooperation in these endeavors.

Best regards,
Mother

Acknowledged and agreed to on August 1, 2007,
Alex”

MOMMY: I’m totally putting that on my blog.

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Posted in Issues

Aug 02

Fear

This is happening in our old backyard. We found out just about the time to put BabyKaiser into sleep mode for the night. Scout made phone calls while I looked at the story online – grumbling about the “if it bleeds it leads” local station. (Which I did not link to just out of principle. CNN is having a love fest with them anyway). I held the baby and was more focused on him than anything. In a matter of minutes, Scout was done with the calls checking on family and friends and my brain engaged to realize that I had all sorts of people to check on as well. I had to suppress all that fear, anxiety, nausea and nervous energy that naturally bursts forth when adrenaline hits. I had to suppress all of that because I was holding the baby, and you just can’t freak out while holding a baby who you really want to go to sleep. If you freak out, Baby will freak out right along with you. I haven’t had to suppress my natural adrenaline rush before. My hand still shook a tad while I was texting the world I knew to check on – all the while bouncing Alex and crooning, “you’re okay, you’re okay” just in case he was picking up the prayer in my heart that I was about to get as many return text messages as were going out. I put on my wrap and snuggled him to me so my hands were free. I shook my head to block visions and thoughts of the people on that bridge – to keep me from picturing “what if it were us?” “what if my baby was in a car in the water?” Long after he fell asleep I kept him with me and am burying my nose in his hair as I type this. Grateful we are safe and dry, and praying everyone else is soon safe and dry as well. Taking comfort from the closeness of my little one.

ed: After the babe stirred to have his diaper changed we got him out of the wrap and changed into pjs and nighttime diaper. Now Scout is swaying with the baby long after he’s asleep and doesn’t need swaying anymore – I can only assume, letting the baby love help keep the fear in check.

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Posted in Issues