the grandparents (part trois) take visiting to the next level – and many other thoughts because the baby is sleeping

Yesterday was day three of the third set of grandparents a-visiting.

Fortunately, Jonah was on fairly good behavior, because Scott was at work, I needed to get out for an extended pilates and bodywork session, and the GP’s agreed to babysit.

They arrived around 11ish which gave us enough time for Marcia to fix me a sandwich, clean the kitchen (bless her), hold the baby while I showered, and then for me to go about offering instructions and demo-ing various baby care and baby soothing techniques. We covered diaper changing, bottle feeding, and Harvey Karp’s 5 S’s (although I suspect that she disagrees with the concept that tight swaddle or vigorous rocking might be soothing). I gave Franz a 5 minute tutorial in how to Moby Wrap, using a stuffed Pooh bear, and made my escape just as Marcia was rocking the little swaddled bundle to sleep.

Other than the fact that I possibly did not leave enough pumped milk to truly satisfy the little one (how much is enough???), no one was harmed in the making of my two hour break. I hear he didn’t nap long, but was thoroughly entertained by Grandpa Franz making faces, and Grandma Marcia dangling a yellow stuffy overhead — Yellow is the first color they can see, she says.

This was our first official experience with babysitting.

My parents are due to visit again in two weeks… (I know you guys are reading this. Are you ready? You don’t have to use the cloth diapers; we’ve got disposables. I’m going to be pumping and storing milk every day until you arrive.)

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Speaking of milk: I decided to try giving up dairy. Why? Because so many people mentioned it to me? No. Maybe. It’s like when you hear a thing and you just think, Okay. And then suddenly you just find yourself doing it. I wanted to see if it might help to clear up his baby acne / cradle-cap-that-covers-his-face. A friend of mine gave up dairy for her baby’s face rash and it worked in just two days — and Dr. Sears’ book links excessive baby acne with dairy allergy. I didn’t really have hope for it alleviating the fussiness, but that would be nice too .

It’s been three days, and his skin does look a lot better. So I’ll be sticking with that for a while. Even though I do miss cheeeeeeeese.

I have to admit, I’m also avoiding broccoli and related gas producing vegetables. I can’t help it. When your baby looks straight into your eyes and screams until YOU cry, you try things.

Last night, between Jonah’s moments of mellow and bouts of tears, Scott was looking through our library of baby instruction books once again for answers. He started with “fussing at the breast” since J does that a lot these days, and then landed in the colic chapters.

While I was giving the baby a boob, Scott came into the nursery with Happiest Baby and laid down on the rug to read us a story the first half of the book (which I’d skimmed previously but not really read since, seriously dude, just get to the solution part because I need help NOW — was my mentality at the time).

Each day seems to offer a different idea, solution, hope for relief. On this day, I liked what Scott was reading. Without going back to the book for quotes — the general idea is that our boy is sensitive to normal gas and digestive movements, not that he’s overly gassy, or has any medical issues. Perhaps the most reassuring was the idea that while his crying seems horrible, he’s not actually suffering.

Like the post-partum doula said, babies are like smoke alarms. They don’t distinguish between burnt toast and a house fire.

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A few thoughts on labels…

Does the word “colic” help us? It has sure scared me. So has the acronym “GERD,” and the threat of being stamped with “Post Partum Depression.”

This is tricky stuff because a diagnosis can be helpful. For example, GERD is an actual medical condition.

If I understand the problem, I can find a solution, right? But what if the path to diagnosis is vague, conflicting?

That’s not really what bothers me though. What I’ve noticed is that the label tends to shut me down. Maybe this is just me, how I react. Can I solve a problem without labeling it? Maybe. Maybe the problem for me is the quick way that normal ranges of experience are problematized, medicalized. This is not to belittle those folks who have serious medical diagnoses. I’m talking about the grayer area where all these books and DVDs hang out, and in my own mind.

Over the weekend, I started looking at PPD checklists online because with all the crying I’ve been doing, that’s the thing people have been wondering about me. It’s in their faces, around the edges of their comments, and in our direct conversations at times.

I do have a therapist (oooooh — I so tried to hide that fact here, would rather talk about psychic chiropractor; I loathe the phrase “My therapist says…”), and her opinion is that while I am a highly emotional person, I am not suffering from PPD.

I’ve heard stories from friends about their experiences with it, which sound more severe than what I am going through (mine is probably the cuter “Baby Blues”), and so I didn’t think I was there myself but when I realized the internet had CHECKLISTS, I had to go look. And looking made me think about labels because as soon as I read the list, I started to feel that wailing hopelessness approaching. I mean only three of those items have to be true for you and some of them could be depending on how I looked at them.

So I stopped reading the checklists.

Yesterday and today, having gotten more sleep than in the previous 48 nights, I feel like I am coming up from underwater. A little. In fact last night the boy slept 5 whole hours in a row, and then 2 more after that! And pilates was a healing, both the exercise, and because my pilates instructor also does a chakra balancing technique called “Core” on me — would I ever see someone that isn’t esoteric?

The boy is smiling, yes, and that helps a lot too (!!!) though there is still a slightly vague quality to it. I say this not to be ungrateful or unappreciative, but for those people who might be reading this and be at risk for the same false ideas I had about what a baby’s first smile might look like… For my baby anyway, it’s a process of emerging, arriving.

He seems to be arriving more and more every day.