Breakdown

Not the cool kind of breakdown, like in a song where they say "break it down" and proceed to do a bunch of amazing licks. This was more of an emotional breakdown, and probably my first of many as a mother.

We live a pretty low-key life. I have a good job where I could easily get full-time hours, but we've chosen to live an economical life until Lilah is a year old and spend as much time with her as we can possibly squeeze in. This means a lot of lazy days just spent rolling around on the floor with her, taking walks, blueberry/apple picking, camping, and just general family time. When I work more than three days a week, I start to feel a little frazzled. Not because I can't handle it, but I literally feel the minutes ticking away - minutes with my family I will never get back. I do pick up extra days for bills, or to pay for something fun we want to do, but generally I try to keep it to a minimum.

Here's a time line for this past week. Saturday - work. Sunday - work. Monday - off and we did nothing. Tuesday - picked up a shift for end-of-the-month paperwork. Wednesday - Lilah's 6 month appointment (switched from 12:45 to 7:45 at the last minute!), grocery shopping, lunch with Ann, apple picking, visiting Ann at the new office, Target supply run, pharmacy run, autumn care package baking extravaganza, trying out a new dinner recipe. Thursday - appointment with an ophthalmology specialist, lunch at Tamaki and Tea, Dano's class, eye appointment for me, a couple pies to bake, and the Junoon concert at 7:30. Friday - work. Saturday - Blessing of the animals in the morning and Dano playing a can drive in the afternoon after his class. Sunday - church, pumpkin patch and corn maze trip.

Just a tad busy!

So the actual reason for my breakdown was mostly Lilah's appointments. It was early in the morning, but she was charming, as usual. She weighed 14lbs, 13 oz. She was 26in long. I was bothered by her weight gain. She had consistently gained 2lbs every 2 months, and all of the sudden she was just barely putting on a pound? I asked the doctor about it, who dismissed it completely. "Look at her. She's moving all over the place. She's actually burning calories now. The growth charts are put out by a formula company anyway. I don't apply it the same way to breastfed babies." I felt slightly better. I can't remember if I mentioned it before (and future 16 year old Lilah will be mortified), but when she was born, Lilah had a labial adhesion. The skin around her vaginal opening was, for lack of a better term, stuck together. It separates with growth, but we were watching it to make sure it was indeed separating instead of adhering more. At this appointment, Dr. Hatfield wanted to start an estrogen cream to the area to get the skin to release, since it wasn't shrinking and could start to interfere with her ability to urinate. That bothered me a bit, not because I was opposed to the treatment, but because (stupid, absolutely) it meant there was something wrong with her. Something minor and cosmetic, but something nonetheless.

At the appointment, I also brought up her pupils. They were both the same size, so I knew it wasn't a neurological disorder, and her vision was developmentally appropriate, but when they dilated in a dim room, one had a chunk missing! It was round, then all of the sudden at the top, it dipped down, like the moon when it's not quite full. It wasn't a coloboma, since those are near the bottom. Dano said he saw nothing and I was crazy, but it nagged at me. Pupil size and shape is very important. They should always be equal. I mentioned it to the doctor, who looked at it with her penlight and saw nothing. I said, "It only happens when her pupil dilates. If they're constricted, they're equal." I felt a "Let's indulge the worried mother" vibe emanate from her, and she turned out the light and shined the penlight at the wall.

"Oh! You're right. There it is." I felt a hundred percent better.
"My husband said I was crazy."
"You're not crazy. I can see it. I'm going to refer you to a specialist, since I don't know enough about eyes to be able to give you a good idea what it is."

Lilah finished up the appointment with 3 shots in the leg and a tasty lunch of Middle Eastern food. She had hummus and loved it, but mostly threw it up as a side effect from the shots.

Her appointment with the ophthalmologist was the very next morning. She flirted with the office staff and other patients in the waiting room. I saw our transporters from work with a resident after her appointment, so I chatted with them to quell the panicky feeling in my stomach. We were checked in by the assistant, who was very nice and found Lilah a stuffed purple fish to play with, since we had forgotten Ignatius (her plush pig and most favorite friend) at home. Even she noticed her pupil, since we were in a dim room.

We met with Dr. Ulrickson who made friends with Lilah and asked some questions. He noticed exactly what I was talking about and told me what I already knew - her pupils were equal and reactive, her vision appropriate, it wasn't a coloboma, and he had never seen anything like it. He also said, "Some babies will let me cover one eye while I look at the other, and some absolutely refuse to do it. The ones who refuse turn out to be very stubborn later, every time. Miss Lilah wants nothing to do with it." "Great," I thought. It was true enough. He would smile and talk to her, waving a toy around, and attempt to cover one eye up. She would skillfully weave to one side and avoid it, smiling as if to say, "I like you. You're nice. But I have no intentions of letting you cover my eye. Thank you, though." He asked us to hold her still while her he looked at her eye under a microscope. You would have thought we were beating her. We had no sooner gotten ahold of her when she started to stiffen her body, flail, and scream (clamping her eyes tightly shut, of course). I'm sure it was scary to have a stranger pull on her eyelid in a dark room with lights shining in your eye and being held down, but she could have spared the theatrics. He got a few quick glances before giving up. She buried her face in my chest and bawled pitifully. He said he'd just suggest looking again in 6 months, because he couldn't see enough, but didn't think it was a tumor or anything that could cause her to go blind. "If it was, I'd suggest putting her under general anesthesia so we could take a good look under a powerful microscope. Ugh! If only I could get another look at that eye! It's rare. I've never seen anything like it." As a mother, my ears heard only "tumor...blind...general anesthesia" and this fierce feeling reared its ugly head and I wanted to hide her away and not let him touch her again. In a rural area like this, rarities are, well, rare, and there have been a lot of "exploratory surgeries" performed at the teaching hospital with no solution found, just fishing around to show the students. "Not my daughter," I thought. Obviously, Dr. Ulrickson wasn't suggesting anything close to that, but I was still afraid. I was also afraid she would go blind or have cancer go into her brain from something they didn't catch. I suggested laying her in my lap with Dano and I talking to her quietly, and him examine her with a handheld magnifier. He took another look, then started laughing.

He saw tiny strands of her pupil that had adhered to the front of her cornea. When the pupil constricted, they weren't pulled taut, so they looked normal. When it dilated, they were tugged at and the top of the pupil appeared to dip down. He said he's seen it on a minuscule scale before - one or two strands - under a microscope, where the person wasn't even aware and had never noticed a vision change. He had never noticed it on such a large scale, and still wants to see her in 6 months, but it appears to be just a genetic abnormality. "I see in her history she has a labial adhesion. It's kind of like that. Just a small adhesion of the pupil and cornea, only not so easily fixed with a cream." Something happened in utero, causing small, random adhesions in her body. Undoubtedly it's something from my genes, but at least it's something that is, for all intents and purposes, cosmetic only.

Still, the good news didn't keep me from having a complete and utter breakdown later in the day. Too much activity, stress, and pent up emotion and fear from that appointment pushed me over the edge. I think I've been building up to it for 6 months. Maybe I can go another 6 before the next one. Here's to hoping. In other news, Dr. Hatfield had said Lilah is so busy and curious, love standing, has little interest in sitting up, and her leg muscles already so well developed, she expects the child to be walking by 9 months. Walking. If that isn't enough to get me working up to another freak-out, I don't know what it.

Autumn crept up

It seems like we were sitting around all summer, wishing for warm weather and sunny days, and while we waited, the leaves changed. Seeing the oranges and reds, and the apples turning rosy on the branches made me restless. Some people get depressed in the winter, or restless in the summer to get out and "do stuff". Not me. I get this itch as soon as I smell the wonderful hint of decay in the air. The leaves are dying, the year is dying, and I get an urge to pack up and go, to write, to bake, to create, to live. So I made up my mind to go camping.

It seemed like the universe was working against us. I got mandated for a 12 hour shift the morning before we went, Lilah was impossibly needy, Dano had class until 1:00 on Saturday, and I had to do all the cooking, packing, and errands alone and with a baby who followed me around the house, crying and holding up her arms. I finally got everything finished, and picked Dano up from the school. We got a quick lunch and headed to Munising for 48 hours. I was delighted to see our phones didn't get reception. I needed some time away from phone calls, facebook, texts, work, and drama. We picked a beautiful site by Pete's Lake and set up camp. I, with no formal training, created a beautiful fire and felt like I was starring on an episode of "Man vs. Wild". Dano, in setting up the tent, realized the poles weren't in the bag. We had to drive back into town and buy a new tent. I refused to let it get me down. Lilah played happily in her portable crib with her toys, for the most part. Unfortunately, she absolutely and utterly refused to nap. Not in her crib, not in the tent, not in my arms, or the car. There was too much to do and see, and she wasn't going to miss a minute. That got old fairly quickly.

We had a lovely dinner (even though Dano didn't like half of it) of baked chicken and spaghetti, and bakery-fresh Italian bread. S'mores were for dessert, of course, and Lilah even got a taste of marshmallows. Dano played songs on his guitar, and the music carried through the woods and over the water. The stars came out, the fire died down to embers, and it was beautiful. We went to bed pretty early. Lilah finally fell deeply asleep in her basket, and Dano and I laid in our tent talking quietly and listening to the sounds of the woods at night. He drifted off before I did (because I was sleeping on a rock), but I eventually followed.

It was a rough night. 3 different times, large, thumping, snorting animals stomped around our campsite and rifled through our supplies looking for food. They tore through our garbage (which contained only diapers and aluminum foil from dinner), snarled, fought, screamed, and hissed. I was sure a flock of bears was waiting just outside to kill us. Dano woke up a few times with me, tense and alert, but dismissed it as raccoons or porcupines and rolled over again. Pride would like me to say I did the same. Truth, however, prevails, and I did not. I shook with fear, sweat a cold, terrified sweat, held Lilah's basket close to me, and cried hysterically. Lilah never stirred. She was in a deep sleep until the sun came up.

We went on a hunt for local waterfalls the next day. After having a breakfast of stick bread filled with cream cheese and fresh blackberries, we had coffee in a wonderful local coffee shop/bookstore called The Falling Rocks Cafe. The staff was really friendly, took Dano's information to play shows there occasionally, Lilah charmed them, we had our great coffee, and we left. We strapped Lilah into the carrier (thankfully, she's old enough to go on our backs now! Much more comfortable), and headed out. One charged a small fee to get into the falls area, but the rest were free and, as God intended, nestled back in the woods. A few didn't even have signs to tell us where to go. We relied on the advice of friendly locals and helpful fellow-hunters. Some were visible from the road. Some were a short walk over a boardwalk. One was part of a city park. A couple (my favorite ones) were unmarked and a little deeper in the woods. I love precarious trails and steep inclines. I love having to work to get there. It makes it that much more rewarding to round a corner and see a waterfall in all its glory. Lilah even got to stand under one and get wet. She wasn't pleased. At all. I was consistently amazed at God's handiwork, and the beauty of creation. The most magical waterfalls we saw were the ones no one owned or kept up with. They were hidden away like secrets, and we found them.

Despite the "bears" (which were really a herd of very angry, very stupid raccoons), sleepless night, rocks under my ass, and tent fiasco, I have wonderful memories of our first camping trip as a family. I'd love to make an early autumn camping trip an annual tradition.

A monster has been created

Her name is Lilah Rose. She's eating everything! I was fully planning on exclusively breastfeeding until she was 6 months old. We've given her rice cereal several times when she boycotted bottles while I was at work, but that was the extent of it. Around the same time her first tooth came in a couple weeks ago (and another tooth st just below the surface!), she would nurse frantically while flailing and screaming until the milk let down. Typically, this took 30-60 seconds. She would proceed to gulp and suck down every drop of milk she could get. She emptied the breast in 5-10 minutes. She would repeat the performance on the other side. After both were empty, she would ball up her fists, screw up her face, and howl angrily and pitifully until I made more milk. Then she'd do it all again. It got so bad that I called the doctor's office and begged to be able to start her on some solids. I got the okay 2 weeks early.

I've been making my own baby food and it's going great. I created a monster, however, by saying, "Mmm!" as I spooned a bite into her mouth. I thought it was adorable and precocious when she started saying it back to me, or would slap her hands impatiently on her high chair, close her eyes, and yell, "MMM!" if I was taking too long to give her a bite. I always laughed and thought, "How great is this? She can tell me what she's wanting! Wonderful." When we were out for lunch at the Wild Rover, this new skill turned around and bit me. I was having a cup of soup and a pub salad, and I had no sooner lifted the soup spoon to my mouth when I heard a frantic noise coming out of Lilah's carseat. "Mmm! Mmm! Mmm!" I looked at her, and she was flailing her limbs in all directions, and looked like she was about to jump out of her skin. I gave her a bite of broth off my spoon and tried to take a bite myself. "MMM!" She was frantic and wide-eyed. I barely got to eat my lunch. She ate all the carrots and most of the potatoes, and a good bit of broth from my soup. What was once the first verbal communication attempt on the part of my child has now become a habit which often results in hunger on my part and her consuming most of my food. The good part is she's not nursing like a crazy person anymore, and she's back to 4 hours or so between feedings as long as she's getting solids. The bad part is I know I'm not going to get much to eat if I hear rustling from her seat and her shouting, "MMM!"

Clueless

I have come to the conclusion I am clueless as a mother. Until now, until this point in my journey, there has always been an obvious next step. She's hungry - feed her. She's tired - put her to sleep. She's wet - change her. She's teething - soothe her. I have always felt a calling on my life to sustain human life and give the person/people in my charge the best quality life I have to offer them. You could say I'm in the business of keeping people alive until they reach their appointed time to die, then helping them make the crossing over as peacefully as is in my power to do so. I have never in my life encountered a situation where I have felt helpless or without direction in this area of my expertise until this week.

Lilah will be 24 weeks old on the 8th of September. She's nearly 6 months old now, has nearly doubled her birth weight, has a tooth, is crawling, and has met all her milestones. I realize now that's what I was concerned with - assisting her to meet her milestones. There's nothing wrong with that, since she is a somewhat advanced, if not right on schedule, baby. This week, however, I came to the startling realization that what was once a small bundle of raw emotion was now a cognitive person. Lilah's first developmental task according to Erikson (the psychologist I most closely adhere to) is Trust vs. Mistrust.

"first stage which corresponds to Freud's oral stage centers around the infant's basic needs being met by the parents. The infant depends on the parents, especially the mother, for food, sustenance, and comfort. The child's relative understanding of world and society come from the parents and their interaction with the child. If the parents expose the child to warmth, regularity, and dependable affection, the infant's view of the world will be one of trust. Should the parents fail to provide a secure environment and to meet the child's basic need a sense of mistrust will result."

That was hugely important to me. For at least the first 6 months of her life, if was my entire job as a mother in a nutshell to provide that safety and security that would not only shape my relationship with my daughter in the future, but also dictate how she would view the whole world her entire life! This week, I realized she had mastered that. She knew when her parents or grandparents had her, she was safe, and therefore happy and willing to explore the world around her. With that exploration has come a new challenge that I feel I am unprepared for as a mother - autonomy.

Lilah has a routine that we stick pretty closely to. She goes to bed, eats, naps, and plays at specific times of the day. This happened naturally, and she's thrived on routine and habit. Now, she's started exerting her will more and more each day. I put her in her swing to take her nap as usual, and she looks straight at me and whines (not cries, just whines) until she gets picked up. Sometimes she even manages a tear or two. It never occurred to me it was a behavior issue until I watched her smile even as I was reaching for her. Now, I know you can't spoil a baby with love, cuddles, or security. If she was in need of reassurance and needed a snuggle from Mama, that's perfectly all right and what I'm here for. But after cuddling her and putting her back in her swing, the whining picks up again. It only stopped when I A) Let her lie on the couch next to me and hold my leg for her nap or B) Put her upstairs in her crib. If I kept her on the couch, she slept poorly and mostly played. If I put her in her crib, she understood it was nap time and went down with barely another noise. It's easier for me to keep her on the couch so I can pay bills, fold laundry, or do whatever else needs to be done. It's better for her if I take the time to put her up in her crib and tuck her in.

Situations just like that have popped up more and more. She knows what she needs (sleep, playtime, food, etc.) and she knows how her routine dictates the need will be met (part of the trust she's mastered already). But she's pushing the limits. I can see it in her eyes, too. She'll look straight at me and whine for a variation, something - from her purely emotional point of view - more desirable. She doesn't do it when Dano is alone with her. He was home one morning and watched her do it and watched me give in to her. "Why do you give in? Why don't you put her in her crib?" "It's easier..." I was horrified to hear myself say. I have since stopped doing it and putting her in her crib to nap. She's too young to be "naughty", or to push limits to get on her parents' nerves. She's just learning cause and effect. "If I push the belly of my musical seahorse, he sings and lights up!" In the same way, she's learning, "If I make these awful noises at Mama, she picks me up and I don't have to put myself to sleep in my crib!" This is just the next stage in her ongoing exploration of the world around her. It's just a stage I'm not entirely ready for, and one in which I highly doubt my own abilities.

Slow down already!

Today I was looking over pictures of Lilah's first month of being alive and wondering, "Who was that alien little creature we brought home?" She was tiny and helpless, and never made a peep. Somehow, that baby went away, and was replaced by a big girl who sits up, crawls and rolls around, and talks to us every day. She attracts people to her like moths to a flame.
"How old is she?"
"Isn't she a doll!"
"Is she a good baby?"
"Does she sleep through the night?"
"What's her name?"
Those are the usual ones I get. She'll never remember how many times I answer them every time I take her out. All she knows now is that humanity, it would seem, was created to pay homage to this tiny being. It's absurd, the amount of fawning and adoration she's subjected to, and she just soaks it all up. If every person on earth were a separate planet, they've spent the past 5 months revolving around a tiny, baby-shaped Sun.

Where did the summer go?

I've been telling myself to blog for a week now, before I get so behind I forget something. Every time I sit down to do it, I think to myself, "I could spend time on the computer, or play with Lilah" and I always end up playing with Lilah. She's sleeping now, so it seems like the opportune time to do it.

She's eating cereal before bed nearly every night now, because she was waking up famished in the middle of the night. She sleeps in her crib every night, as well. Mostly it works out well. She always wakes up around 7 and realizes there are toys within reach, so one of us has to drag our lazy butts out of bed and retrieve her. Whenever it's my turn, I find a grinning baby with chubby arms wrapped around one of her favorite stuffed animals in place of the peaceful, sleeping baby I had left in the crib 8 hours earlier.

She loves to experiment with her voice. She always seems surprised at what weird and bizarre noises she can make come out of her own mouth. Her first sounds were just squawks, which evolved into "conversations" with us. Then she learned she could screech like a hawk, and liked to wake us up that way. Then she taught herself to whisper. She sounded possessed. She would roll over to me and nurse in the morning after we got her from her crib, then roll over to Dano and proceed to grab his beard, smack his cheeks, or just grab both sides of his head and whisper menacingly until he woke up. Now she's moved on to the deeper range of her vocal cords. She sounds exactly like a mourning dove when she makes those sounds. Larry swears she said "Mama" when she was upset the other day. I think 5 months is still a little young for that.

She's crawling! It blows my mind to think about. A week ago, we could put her down on the floor and she'd have so much fun rolling around and playing with her toys. She'd occasionally give a half-hearted effort to scoot a few inches, but didn't seem too interested. About 3 days ago, she discovered that if she got her knees under her and her butt in the air, she could go about a foot if she pulled herself along with her arms outstretched in front of her. It was cute to watch her try. I guess I didn't realize she was getting better and better at it until last night. We were at Ann's and Larry's house, and Lilah was on a sheet on the floor (she likes to put fistfuls of dog hair in her mouth) and every time I looked up, she was off the sheet and headed somewhere else. We laughed at her the first few times, but then it became very clear: Lilah Rose Marie Alexander could crawl, and was very good at it. God help us all.

Where did July go?

I felt like I barely sat down one time last month. One day, we're hanging out with Max on July 4th eating Veggie Burgers, and the next day, I'm doing documentation at work and saying aloud, "Is it really 8-1? Are we sure?"

So much happened last month. We were busy every single weekend and many times throughout the week. We celebrated Lilah's first Independence Day with brownies and strawberry daiquiris. Even Max got a virgin one. We went to Pioneer Day fireworks and had a great weekend hanging out with Dano's high school best bud Brent (whew! That's a lot of B's!). We went hiking and had a cookout with Dano's cousin Sam and her little girl, Ada. Lilah loved her second cousin and they giggled together all evening. We picked my friend Bronson up from the airport and went to L'attitude for martinis and snacks. He spent the night, then we drove to Gay, MI to spend a day with his family there. While in Gay, we explored the ruins of an old iron ore mill, watched his kids play Wii, and had an awesome campfire on the beach. That same weekend was Hiawatha weekend, a traditional music festival. We ran into Mike Waite on a bus, where he held Lilah and had a few minutes of folk-bonding. She camped for the first time and did wonderfully. The weather went from 40s at night to 75 during the day. Lilah got the full hippie experience complete with songs around a campfire and her very first tie-dye dress! Thanks Grandpaman! She loved it. She got to play with her good friend Talula Ravani, and they both wore their tie-dye and played in a hammock. She got to see her cousins, Zedd and Ephraim, and met her second cousin Kelsey and her Uncle Chris and Aunt Karen for the very first time! The last weekend in July, we stayed with Max for the weekend again so Ann and Larry could camp and bike. It was mostly rainy, but we all went shopping and had a laid-back, good time.

What's Lilah been doing during all of this? She's been growing, mostly. She started boycotting bottles when I went back to work, so now and again she gets rice cereal, which she loves and devours. She now weighs 14 pounds even, and she's 24 1/2 inches long. She's more than met her milestones. She has the cutest belly laugh at inappropriate moments (like when Mama is talking to Daddy about "old people sex" at work), a smile that darn-near takes up her whole face, she can sit up nearly unassisted, and she rolls like a boss. She never stays where you put her anymore. She always ends up 5 feet away. She's also attempting to scoot across the floor by pushing with her toes. I have a feeling she'll be a mover early, this one. The doctor definitely thinks it's possible she's got a tooth trying to pop through, since she's a drooly mess and eats everything. She sucks on her fists until she gags. We were outside playing today and exploring nature, and she ate a flower. One minute she was looking thoughtfully at it, and the next minute it was gone. I nearly dropped her and started to search for the number to Poison Control when she made a face and spit it out again. I told her not to do that again and she grinned. She's very vocal and has a lot to say about the world around her. She'll go to anyone who wants her, and she's an absolute darling 90% of the time. That other 10%, well, it makes you very thankful for the 90%.