Once again I remember today as birth day. 2:15 am was the day I met Veronica. She’s four and a half months old now, and doing well. I guess I doing well, too. At least I’m not doing as badly as I had.

I do recognize that it’s self-centered of me to phrase this as 20 weeks of “motherhood”, rather than V’s 20 weeks of life. Yeah, yeah…she’s holding her head up, getting fatter and stronger and all that. But *I* was to talk about *ME*

Probably makes me a bad mother. But it’s my blog, so I get to say what I want.

It is strange being a mother. Right now, it involves a lot of television. I did not used to watch this much TV. But i have to sit still with my baby a lot. So, while thinking about this huge change in my life, it struck me when I heard Peggy from Mad Men say the following:

i wanted other things…, one day you’re there. And then all of a sudden there’s less of you. And you wonder where that part went…if it’s living somewhere outside of you

and you keep thinking maybe you’ll get it back and then you realize it’s just gone

I’m not entirely sure what she’s referring to, but the conversation takes place when she’s telling how she gave up her baby to keep being a career girl.

I think of it in the reverse. I feel like parts of me are missing–or at the least starved into near non-existence. And I wonder if I will get them back. I wonder if that was the deal I didn’t know I was making, that being a parent means permanently putting aside certain things.

On of the doctors I saw after the hospital visit was trying to help me. I went to her to see if I needed some help for postpartum depression. Maybe I wasn’t being as good of a mother as I needed to be. My child ended up in the hospital, after all. Maybe I needed some help with anxiety. So I checked in with the psychiatrist.

She was trying to help me, but as usual I didn’t fit her template. I’m not exactly a spring chicken anymore, but the way she was talking to me reminded me of an adult trying to be hip to a teenager:

“I know what you are going through. I chose to have a child when I was older, you know. I had to give up my life. I couldn’t go out to restaurants and I couldn’t read as much as I used to. It was a big change.”

But that’s not it at all. I don’t miss dinners out. I don’t mind the hard work of taking care of her, exactly. I just feel so fundamentally different. And I don’t recognize myself.

How does a river come to terms with itself when a dam has been built? The Colorado River ran a long time through a lot of land before men came in and made Hoover Dam. It didn’t stop running when the dam was put it place, but it was really changed. Different forces were put into play. It became this big pooled up deep lake behind the dam, and a skinny trickle after the dam.

If the river were self-aware, I think that would have freaked it out.

So, after the 3 day hospital visit which turned all of us on our heads, I have to figure out a way to get back to predictability.

The thing was, Veronica wasn’t gaining weight. She wasn’t getting enough to eat. That’s basically the good answer, because it is an easily rectified situation. She hadn’t been getting enough for quite some time, and all her little baby fat was used up. So, not only do we have to get her back to the normal weight gain of a healthy growing baby, we actually have to catch up a little.

THAT MEANS: we feed her as much as she will possibly eat. Every time she opens her mouth, we are supposed to stick a bottle in it.

I was visited by so many doctors in the hospital–come to think of it, I don’t think the same doctor visited us more than twice. NOT ONE of these doctors gave directions about how she was supposed to be fed.  Just that she needed to gain weight.

Since I wanted to get sprung of the institution I adopted the stick-a-funnel-in-her-mouth-and-pour methodology. I estimated that the best way to get her to eat was to give two hours between feedings so that her tummy could digest and make room for the next installment.

Of course I feel bad that she wasn’t getting enough to eat, and I want to get her back to stable health. But we had a system before. We knew what to expect. And long ago, she had decided that sleeping through the night was more important to her than eating. MONTHS ago she just stopped asking for food in the night.

it was wonderful

But it’s possible that her hunger was being short-circuited. She didn’t tell me that she needed more food; not exactly. But now that she’s on the 24-hour all-you-can-eat buffet, she remembers that she wants to eat in the middle of the night. And because we need her to get chubby again, we want to feed her as often as she’ll take it.

To make things WORSE, the hospital gave her a cold. So she’s all snotty and not feeling good.

After that hospital visit 2 weeks ago, her world is totally topsy turvy. She doesn’t really know what to expect (other than formula). And neither do we.

Chris wasn’t really part of the schedule establishement before. He didn’t do the hard labor of setting it up the first time. He seems to think that magically it will “get better” after Veronica’s cold goes away.

That would be nice.

But in the meantime, I’m trying to figure out how to make this take shape. One cocky little dietician came by to “talk” to me in the hospital. Her goal was to insist that if Veronica didn’t start eating solid foods really soon her life would be ruined.

I pointed out that since our baby was underweight, and we wanted her to gain weight, our choices in what to feed her should be the most nutritionally dense. “Solid foods are not as nutritious as Milk.”

“Well, yes, that’s true. But if she doesn’t start eating solid foods her tongue and her mouth will not develop the necessary skills and it will be a problem.”

I was getting tired of all the “problems” that every choice I made in raising my daughter created. Since all the reading I’d done about feeding solid foods said that she should start somewhere around 4-6 months, and she was only 4 months old, I figured I had some time to play with.

I verbally wrestled the little dietician to the ground and got some rules of thumb out of her:

caloric needs for infants for healthy growth:  102 calories per kilogram of weight

But Veronica needed to gain wieght, so she said 150 calories per kilogram of weight

“But…don’t…these aren’t..” she obviously wished she hadn’t given away her secrets. Too late!

So, okay. If Veronica were to gain weight at a regular pace, she’d need 530 calories. That means 26 ounces of formula. So if we feed her 5 times a day, 6 ounces each time, we could get all her caloric needs met in the daytime.

But she needs to gain. That means 780 calories, which is 39 ounces.  We’d have to feed her 6 and a half times in a day. That’s assuming she’ll take 6 ounces each time, which is really hard to achieve.

The thing I don’t know is when we can go from super-weight-gain diet plan to regular growth plan. I don’ think she’ll ever be an average weight baby. But I’d like to stay above the 5th percentile, you know? if she ever gets sick and hits a patch where she can’t eat enough, we need some play.

I’m pretty sure that if we go to a more regular schedule where she knows she’ll be eating (and sleeping) at certain times, she’ll fell secure and once again be able to sleep through the night. I’d like to pick a time to begin the day, and then feed her maybe every 3 or every 2 and a half hours thereafter up until bedtime.

Then bedtime will happen, and she’ll be all full and happy and SLEEP through the night. We all could use the rest.

Well, since the scare at the hospital we’ve had to give a lot of thought to little Veronica’s eating habits. Our, more precisely, our feeding habits.

If the hospital visit had NOT happened, we were prepared to begin the very exciting prospect of feeding her solid food. The doctor (prior to hospital visit) had said we could, and the Gerber rice cereal box confirmed it “Begin feeding when child can sit up with support.”

She can definitely sit up with support and has been insisting on doing so for a while.

The only hesitation now is that solid food is not as nutritionally dense as milk. So if we are trying to fatten her up, the best way is to use formula and NOT the solid food yet. Which is a shame because we’ve dying to give this solid food thing a try.

Because I’m chomping at the bit, I bought some baby spoons for when we finally DO give them the food. I thought, even if she can’t have the food she can get used to the spoons.

Chris disapproves. “I don’t think it’s the right message to let her play with these things as toys.” But I couldn’t resist.

Laying down to sleep last night with Chris (finally!) I was talking about all the things that had happened.

“…and you heard; she’s learned how to shriek.”

He raised his eyebrows and nodded. I laughed.

“Chris, everyone says to me ‘enjoy this time!’ But I am not enjoying it; I’m so scared and serious. I don’t know how to enjoy her.”

“People who say that don’t remember what it’s like. They can take her, play with her and then give her back.”

So now Chris is back. The big hurdle of his Germany trip is over. I’ve been back at work, and most of the return-to-work hurdles are known. The end of May is next week. That’s another hurdle crossed: May.

She’s 4 months old now. One third of her first year is accomplished.  I just have to get through her first year.

Except I don’t. I mean, I have to get through much more than her first year. But that is too big to think about, when I am staggering under the weight of one hour.

One third of the way through her first year—I just want to get through her first year.

But naturally because I have to do everything the hard way, I am thinking about how I need/want to have number 2. And how I may not want it because I CAN’T even think about how that would work.

Kate (of Jon&Kate plus 8) talked about how one day they decided to feed their newborn sextuplets by themselves one night. How one day, they called everyone and said “We’re going to do it alone.” Then, she said, evertime she thought she couldn’t do it she would remember, “We did it yesterday, we can do it again.” And then again. And then again, until it was just what they did.

I remember thinking “How can I possibly go back to work? I HAVE to go back to work, but I can’t do this and do the things that it takes to get to work.” But time passed, she got older, I got stronger, and here I am at work and it is better than fine.

So right now I think there is no way that I could possibly go through pregnancy and newborn babyhood again. And I also think there is no way I could not be terribly disappointed in myself if I don’t.

But maybe time will pass and I will get stronger and then suddenly what was unthinkable will be possible. I just have to believe.

Arrgh. Faith is all fine and good when it isn’t about something so damn important. Sure, God created the world out of a formless void. Whatever. But that I will get from here to being okay without hyper-detailed instructions?

But maybe I do have the instructions, even if I don’t like them very much. To misquote Sleepless in Seattle:

Well, I’m gonna get out of bed every morning… breath in and out all day long. Then, after a while I won’t have to freak out about getting myself out of bed every morning and breathing in and out… and, then after a while, I will realize how I have it great and perfect….

It’s so different, being a mother. Another plane of existence. There aren’t roadmaps, because my daughter is something new in the world. And so am I, although I’m not as new as I used to be. And Chris is something new too.

This new family that we are now is unmapped.  And so much of it is on my shoulders. Whoa. It makes me think of the Watchmen. Dr. Manhattan, who had to reassemble himself after being atomized in the lab experiment.  I feel atomized. And every second that passes is spent trying to pull myself back into existence by force of will.

I do believe that I will emerge..am emerging…have emerged from this as a better, stronger person. But it is not a pleasant experience being atomized.

I want to learn to scream into the thrill ride. Throw my arms up on the roller-coaster loop-de-loop. That’s my style.

Or at least it used to be. I suppose it’s not that V needs to be a year old and everything will be different. It’s that the atomized me needs to be a year old and everything will be different.

So that map I want? It is just a calendar. Oh geez.

Chris has been out of the country for 5 days. That meant I had to take care of our little 4 month old daughter alone for four days.

Children are meant to have two parents. MOTHERS are meant to have a back-up.  It’s not that I mind taking care of her. The holding, the rocking, the changing of diapers and feedings–these are not SO bad. I can carry her forever as long as I have someone to carry me.

The bad part? The awesome alone-ness. The quality of being alone, by myself, is a totally different quality than being alone with my baby. Faced with the prospect of being alone with her for five days had me quivering in my socks.

So I lined up a social activity for every day that I would be alone. It worked out okay, and I practiced my new mantra “I can handle whatever comes.”

The whatever could and did include a child who refused to go to sleep at night, a child who woke up every HOUR all night long, and a kid who decided she was hungry but wouldn’t eat.

But I could handle that. I am the grown up here, I can handle it. To borrow a stranger’s blog comment “It’s amazing what you can handle when you have no other choice”

What I cannot handle, is being alone. I KNOW that if I don’t have contact with the outside world, the wallpaper will start talking to me. And I don’t have wallpaper.

But Chris comes home tonight. 9 and a half hours from now.