Working mom

It's not often I feel like a working mom (because for all intents and purposes, I don't technically "work"), but I am definitely feeling it this weekend. Just the stress of having to leave your baby in someone else's care while you go and be professional, when you'd really feel so much better if you could just strap the baby to your body. Alas, this isn't always possible.

So last night I strapped the baby onto a random 16-year-old girl for four hours while I sang. It wasn't quite as seamless as the previous Saturday. When I checked on him at the second band break he was screaming his head off, so I awkwardly nursed him in my breastfeeding friendly vintage dress. On the third he was screaming again. The girl didn't seem phased by it, but it certainly didn't feel good for me. I had hoped he would just sleep, but no. Now I'm all worried about tonight...the dress I brought is not at all breastfeeding friendly, and it's a later night (goes until 2:00 AM). And we also have to discuss what I'm paying her. I hope it's not more than $60 because that's all I got.

Stuff like this is just a bit of a logistical nightmare. I can't bring a pump, and there's nowhere to store breast milk nor time to pump, so I have to make myself available for feeding, and my clothing doesn't really suit that purpose, and there's also no good place to do it nor time. And really, he should be fine not eating for four hours - he does it at home all the time. But I've come to realize there are more reasons than being hungry for wanting to nurse - needing to poop is one, and another is needing comfort. So it could have been any number of things last night.

Still and all, this is temporary - by the time the event rolls around he'll be a month older, and when the DC trip happens he'll be a month older still, and the next time the band travels (if we do at all) it probably won't be until next summer and I doubt I'll be breastfeeding then. So as stressful as this has been, it really is a one-time thing.

Went down to the beach yesterday. Boy how I miss the Atlantic Ocean! Sigh.

First flight

I'm in a sterile campus dorm room outside of Boston, nursing my baby who hasn't had any breassesses in probably six hours. Poor kid! He was a real trooper, though. Mom, not so much.

I was a ball of nerves all day. I don't know if this is a first time mom thing or what, but I have a terror, and I mean terror, of annoying people with my baby. To the point that even when people remark how "well behaved" he is, I find I have to answer by qualifying, "well, at this age they aren't really good or bad, they're just communicating when they cry, blah blah blah" as if anyone cares. I say a lot of this is still related to my previous and sometimes still crappy attitude towards other people's children. I'm working on it (my crappy attitude).

There was a couple in front of us with a toddler and a baby, and watching them struggle made me not want two kids, ever. And then tomorrow morning I'll change my mind. And so it goes.

So Bumpus was "good" I guess, in that he didn't scream his head off or anything, but he certainly had his moments and was super squirmy. In the bathroom changing him I put him on my shoulder and he promptly threw up all over my shoes. Upon return to my seat he peed all over my pants and shirt (not to mention himself). In an attempt to keep him quiet I let him mangle my nipples. Then I tipped a half cup of water directly into my purse. Mostly I was just tired and hungry and stressed out from running a little too late to the airport, and then the flight being late anyway resulting in nearly missing our connection. And thank God my bandleader friend thought to race back to the gate to pick up the gate-checked carseat halfway through the trip - I never in a million years would have guessed they wouldn't check it through, even though earlier I had had the fleeting thought, "can you imagine if we get there and they lost the car seat?" I'll never make that frigging mistake again!

So we're here now and on to the next adventure, which is the singing gig tomorrow night. I did connect with the woman who had been recommended to me by the organizers - her teenaged daughter doesn't dance and was looking for babysitting opportunities. I figure this will mainly consist of her hanging out near the stage with the baby in the Beco, since this seems to have worked last Saturday. I'm going to meet them for lunch tomorrow. Fingers crossed! And now - lights out!

Thanks, apologies and travel dilemmas

Hey all, first off I wanted to give a belated thank you to all you ladies who have been commenting on my blog. I appreciate each and every comment, even (or especially) the ones I accidentally delete (this happened again yesterday - sorry SurlyMama, my fingers can be clumsy on my phone sometimes). And that's another thing - I've been a bad commenter lately, and there's a good reason - I do 99% of my blog writing and reading on my phone, and since blogger changed formats I find it really hard to read blogs and make comments - the font is too small and I can't seem to get past the "make sure you're not a robot" thing so I get frustrated and quit. But I do care what's going on in your lives and hopefully will find a solution for this soon!

Tomorrow is my last day in LA before flying to Boston. I have exchanged emails with, but not solidified anything with, a potential babysitter for when I sing Saturday and Sunday nights. Now I feel like an idiot for not being more proactive about this - I mean, what if we never connect and I'm stuck with no one to watch him while I sing for three hours? What am I going to do? I can't take him on stage and breastfeed while singing. This is the kind of crap I need to be better at.

I've decided not to take the stroller. Although it's a good way to cart around the car seat in the airport, I won't actually use it for the baby, so what's the point? Just one more big bulky thing to cart around and he hates it, so carrier it is.

I read some interesting blogs and comments today by women thinking about a second baby and some feeling like the reason they want to have another is to recreate their first baby and do everything right - or at least, with less anxiety - this time. I can understand that. I often think of myself with a newborn a second time and how great it would be to know exactly what to expect. But then this image is shattered when I think of having a jealous two-year-old who's used to having me all to himself, and how incredibly hard it would be to balance those two unique needs. A newborn who needs constant holding and feeding and nurturing day and night, and then a toddler who needs cooked food, big poopy diapers changed, stimulation and attention and love. It's a lot. Hats off to you ladies who manage two close in age by yourself. I'm not saying I couldn't do it; I'm just saying it looks really, really hard.

Insurance, Inshmurance

Today I had my meeting with the insurance lady. She explained the ins and outs of life insurance, which is far more complex than I ever imagined. Basically, you can do a cheap version called term life insurance, but they really encourage this other kind which becomes like a line of credit you can borrow from at any time. This is very appealing to me due to the insecure nature of my job – I like having low-interest places to borrow money from. However, in doing the numbers the only way to have a nice cash stash to borrow from is to pay a super high premium (like, $300 a month). For a shmoe like me who can only afford $100 or so tops a month, I can maybe have $10,000 at my disposal ten to twenty years from now. Not so exciting. Still, they recommend doing a combo of term and this other thing who’s name escapes me now (and I can’t get up to check the paperwork because the baby is asleep on the Brest Friend pillow that’s around my waist and…well…you know how that is). So I will likely set myself up with a $400,000 policy so that in the event that I croak l’il RT will at least be able to pay off the house and have some left over. I don’t know what the heck I’m doing tying myself down to still more monthly payments, but I just know if I don’t do it now I never will. And I do want him to be protected since, after all, he has only me.

Any attempt at lowering my health insurance costs of course failed. I can save on the premiums but then leave myself hanging if ever one of us needs prescription drugs or runs up expenses meeting a large deductible…and if I ever have baby #2, this scenario will happen. I can’t imagine the luxury of having an NHS that just covers you no matter what. Sure, you have to wait, and sure, the care isn’t up to US standards (so I’m told). But at least you have FREE health care and you don’t have to be utterly destitute to get it. I never was for national health in my more conservative days, but age has made me more, not less, liberal. If every other freaking country in the world can have some form of national health care, why can’t we? At least people like me – single mothers who make some, but not a lot, of money, would have something to fall back on. I was watching a Dateline or 20/20 on my DVR about the “new poor” – people who were middle class but are now going to food banks, etc, just to get by – and there was one similar thread in all of these families’ stories: crippling medical bills, that caused them to lose homes, savings, everything. People in other countries must look on stories like these with horror. It’s just so utterly wrong. I mean, here I am thinking about having a second child, and the number one reason I would pass on the idea is because I can’t afford a second baby’s $300 + a month cost for health insurance.  How screwed up is that?

Well, at least I know that Kaiser is, in fact, the best deal in town, so I am not (for all intents and purposes) being ripped off. And I was reminded that once Bumpus turns two his premium will drop dramatically, AND Healthy Families is still on the table until I get a “no” from them. I just have to accept that things are going to be kind of expensive for a while. Oh well, I guess all the money I’m saving from not eating out, traveling, or shopping at Anthropologie (not on the sale rack) has to go somewhere, right?

3 months pic

3 months

Totally didn’t have time to do the cute little 3 month sticker photo yesterday. I spent the day in San Diego and didn’t get home until midnight, and by then we were both over it. But I’ll do it today. The anal retentive (OCD?) person in me that’s strict about exact dates and times is very uncomfortable with this.

Bumpus is three months, which according to Dr. Google, means he is no longer a newborn. I have often wondered how our ancestors felt about this milestone. A friend of mine pointed out recently that a baby’s first birthday doesn’t mean much to the baby because he’s too little to understand, but it means a lot to the parents, in that they managed to keep the baby alive for that whole first year. So today I celebrate the passing of the fragile newborn age. Despite my utter ineptitude I have kept Bumpus alive past those first difficult months. And even better he has not been sick, had diaper rash, failed to thrive, nor been dropped or fallen on my watch. I knew this one was a keeper.

I did notice that the anniversary of my chemical pregnancy passed on Friday.  Like so many of my fellow bloggers who suffered loss before a healthy baby, I did contemplate this a bit on Friday. I remembered sitting on the couch with my heart pounding, feeling more and more discharge slipping out of me, finally calling the Kaiser helpline, then getting myself over to the emergency room, then going to my bandleader friend’s house to tell him and his wife what was going on since we were about to leave for Boston (the same trip I’m going to take this Friday). I remember that ugly, insecure feeling of being the single chick trying to have a baby and having no idea if it would ever work out, and the torment of keeping it from my friends in case it never did. How alone I was in all of it (although very grateful for the few friends I had told, and my sister, so I at least had a few shoulders to cry on). I remember lamenting, “I wish I had a crystal ball.” If only I could have had a peek at a year later and seen cute little Bumpus and how amazing he is!  But unfortunately life just doesn’t work like that. Today I sit here and wonder if in a year I’ll be pregnant with baby #2 or if I will have abandoned the whole idea, or if I’ll still be unsure. OR even worse, if I’ll be in the middle of trying and have experienced more loss. It could go any way, really.

My enthusiasm over my Boston trip has been somewhat dampened by the fact that hardly any of the relatives I arranged to meet with after my singing gig are actually going to be able to show up. First my sister warned me her husband probably wouldn’t be able to make it because he’s an engineer and is on a huge project – fine, I’ll see him on my NY trip in August, so no big deal. But then it was her brother in law, who works, who can’t get off work. And then it was his wife, too (my “other” sister), which also means their son. And finally Saturday morning it was their parents (my son’s defacto grandparents) who emailed to say they also couldn’t make it because of work. Huh? Apparently nobody realized the 4^th of July this year is in the middle of the week, and where I’m going to be in Massachusetts is about three hours away from where they all live, so a quick day trip isn’t really possible. So even though everyone was gung-ho about meeting up to see the baby for the first time when I planned this months ago, now nobody’s coming. After talking to the “other” sister on the phone, I get it – they are poor working folks who just took all their vacation time on a trip a couple of weeks ago and just can’t ask for more days off. Had I come on a weekend it would be no problem. But it did dawn on me just how difficult it’s going to be to have my son be consistently in their lives. They are never going to visit me here, and most of my trips to the east coast are for gigs which are always on weekends. I can come on holidays of course – but just visiting once a year doesn’t really cut it with a kid who grows so fast. It breaks my heart when I think these people aren’t going to see him at this stage – in fact probably won’t see him until maybe Christmas, when he’ll be so much older. Ugh! Oh well, what can you do? At least my sister will be there, and we’re gathering at my cousin’s place, and I imagine my uncle will come out too. So there is that.

I now have to start my flurry of activity before I leave on Friday. Luckily I stocked up on diapers, bought a new big suitcase, have arranged a ride to the airport, and am in general ready for the trip. Now I just have two remaining big event projects – finalizing the contest music for eleven contests, and editing the video tribute, which I am absolutely determined to get done before I leave. When I get back it will be (gasp) only three weeks until my event, which is always a mess of paperwork, customer service, and niggling last minute details.  In other words, not good at all for in depth projects that require long stretches of time and concentration. On the health front, baby has not slept through the night again after those three nights. We’re back to a four-five hour stretch, followed by cluster feeding the rest of the morning until I just give up trying to sleep and get up for the day. But hooray, my breast pain appears to be gone. It left as suddenly and inexplicably as it appeared – one day I just noticed I wasn’t in pain anymore. I haven’t done anything different, so all I can guess is it was just some kind of temporary growth pain I was in, or something. Lack of pain has allowed me to almost always now nurse without the nipple shield, which makes things less fussy and gear-intensive. So, hooray for no more pain!

Future fears

Lately I've been in this weird habit of fearing upcoming parenting hurdles (I know most of you are thinking, "what do you mean, lately?"). I guess when some of the parents you know are going through a "rough patch" all at once, it doesn't inspire confidence.

For example, walked with my friend the other day with the video game-addicted seven year old and she reiterated how he calls her a "mean mommy" and how disrespectful he is to her; I find this horrifying, but she seems sort of sadly resigned to it, like it's normal for kids to throw fits and lash out at you, say they hate you, etc. Is it normal? Maybe I'm the one with unrealistic expectations. Am I still in that delusional "my kid will never..." mode? It's possible. However, I know I would never have dared talk back to my mother, tell her I hate her, take a tone, no way, Jose.

I look at my sweet, innocent little baby and it breaks my heart to think he could ever be angry at me, defiant, disrespectful. But he's not always going to get his way, which means he'll be mad at me from time to time. Do I have the testicular fortitude to handle this?

Another parent friend of mine with a ten year old finally admitted to me last night what I'd suspected for years - that his son has major sensory/OCD/anxiety issues. He would tell me stories about his son sitting down to draw a picture and then throwing a screaming, crying fit when it didn't come out just right, and throwing and breaking things, and I'd think, "ummm...that's not normal." But then again it seems like every kid today has some "disorder". God knows I had major anxiety at his age, but nobody cared in the 80s. So nobody did anything about it, and eventually I figured out my own coping techniques.

Before I was pregnant I was scared of being pregnant. When I was pregnant, I was afraid of labor. When I was in labor, I was afraid of caring for a newborn. Now I'm afraid of having a baby that's mobile and needs to be entertained. And so it goes. Some of the things - caring for a newborn - have been nowhere near as bad as I expected. Others - labor - were infinitely worse than I ever could have imagined. I suppose raising a kid will be a bit like that. Some phases will be good, others a nightmare. Or not! I have one friend with a son who's now grown who all along the way was just a delight (and I can confirm this, since I've known the boy since he was five and now he's 21). He was just always a pleasant, mellow kid who loves his mama. Can I have one of those, too, pretty please?