Gennyland’s advice for new parents

When I was pregnant everyone had advice for me. Some of it was great, some of it was pretty commonly-held wisdom, and some of it was completely useless to me, and half of the battle remains figuring out what advice is pertinent to me and my family and my particular situation.

There are some things that everyone will tell you when you're expecting. "Sleep when they sleep!", "Don't worry about your messy house!" they will say, and all of that is well and good but I have more advice now that I've been through nine weeks of parenthood (and am therefore an expert, ha ha). Instead of verbally annoying everyone I know who is expecting, I am getting my yayas out by putting it in my blog. So here goes:

Get a swing or some other kind of hands-free device where you can put your baby down and get some things done. In my case, I have to pump breastmilk after every feeding, and because of the configuration of my pump rig, I unfortunately can't hold the baby at the same time. So she has a little rocking swing at my feet and she falls or stays asleep in there, so that when I'm done pumping I can go clean things up, get something to eat, etc. without her freaking out. If she's awake, she's usually content to look at our bookshelves or at me making faces at her.

Sleep when they sleep but by this I mean: don't put the baby to bed and then stay up watching Saturday Night Live. Because an hour after the show ends, as you've just drifted into a deep sleep, she might be awake and needing your full attention. I learned this the hard way, um, a few times.

Tummy naps are the best Putting baby chest to chest, propping your head up, tucking a small blanket over her back and under your sides (nice and taut) and then rubbing her back until you are both asleep is the nicest thing ever. Just keep your hands on the baby's back to ensure that A) she doesn't roll off and B) she's breathing ok. Make sure her face is unobstructed.

Don't buy too many 0-3 month onesies Especially if your baby is born at the tail end of summer and all of your onesies are summery with short sleeves. You will therefore need to have pants, cardigans, and socks to go with everything. As well, onesies are the go-to gift for nearly everyone, so technically you won't have to buy any at all. Buy sleepers instead – lots of sleepers. Although I guess you'd use a lot of onesies if your baby's born in, say, May. Ignore this advice if your baby was born in spring or you live in a hot climate.

Think two feedings ahead This is particularly important if you are a non-traditional breastfeeder such as myself. I don't rest easy unless I've got her two next meals (or the better part thereof) socked away in the fridge. Also, breast milk can stay out at room temperature for four hours, so it's not a bad idea to finish a feeding and take the next one out of the fridge so it warms up at least a bit. If you are breastfeeding in the traditional sense, it pays to think of where you will be, what you are wearing, and the time it might take to feed so you can plan your day accordingly. Like, don't plan on being at the opera wearing a turtleneck when feeding time approaches, that kind of thing.

Keep your house as tidy as you can because no matter what they say, if you are anything like me, if the baby is fussy and the dog is hyperactive AND there are dust/pet hair tumbleweeds rolling down the hall and fruit flies everywhere from the three overripe apples on the counter, it can send one over the edge. I require some external order to feel any internal order. Tidy when you have the chance or get someone else to do it for you.

Always burp the baby It's tempting to go "oh well she's finished eating, now I can go and get X, Y and Z done" but no sooner do you put her down on her wee play mat when
blaaap out comes the liquid gold you just finished getting into her and then there are tears (yours) and the motherly guilt starts ("how could you DO THIS TO ME?" – I'm kidding) and you feel like oh my god, did the last feeding even count? So burp the baby. It takes a bit of time and effort sometimes but it's very satisfying to hear that wee little belch, and then you are free to go do X, Y and Z. NOTE: if the baby's fast asleep when you finish feeding her, a belch may not be required. Don't rock the boat.

Fix up a station for yourself Perhaps it's more of a nest than a station, but I have a corner of Nora's room set up with a platform rocker (electric blue pleather and wood – I got it from an old nunnery and it was the best $60 I ever spent), her little swing chair, and a small table. In this corner I also have the following essential items: my laptop, my breast pump, the collection of cleaned bottle parts required for feedings, a stash of healthy snacks (a tin of nuts and dried fruit - wheee), paperwork and bills that need to be dealt with, a glass of water, a book for lists, a journal, a portable phone, and my agenda. It's like a little lactation office set up in the baby's room. It makes everything feel very official, and also very contained.

Ask for help Many people offer help before you have a baby – take it. I am fortunate that my mom lives about 3 minutes away, so she's at my place every day helping me with various things: taking the dog out to pee, tidying the living room, holding the baby so I can have a shower, and in the early days she even fed me. If people offer help, think of specific things they could help with and take them up on it. Don't be shy; everybody likes to feel needed.

Spring for the nice bras I bought a stretchy relatively-cheap (but still not exactly free) nursing bra at Thyme maternity and after one washing the elastic of the chest strap was shot. Nursing bras are not real glamorous by nature, but there are nice ones out there, and it pays to have some good support and not feel like a droopy sack of poop all day. Plus, you get milk on them and the milk gets crusty, so you'll need a bunch. Invest in three or four good nursing bras or nursing tank tops and keep them laundered.

That's all the preaching from me this go-around. Maybe sometime soon I'll write about something unrelated to my kid, but for now, this is pretty much all I've got going on.

Stuff you can do in the middle of the night

Nora is a pretty good sleeper for someone who's less than two months old. However, she still does need to get up a couple of times in the middle of the night to eat, which means, for me, that she eats her bottle (I don't breastfeed in the middle of the night, I am too exhausted and I'm a bit too full if you know what I mean), then I put her back to bed, come back downstairs, and pump for twenty minutes. Usually around 3 a.m., though it can be 2 a.m., 4 a.m., 5 a.m. and even 6 a.m., which I still consider to be the middle of the night. It's usually at 3 or 4 hour intervals, which is tolerable.

I have learned to love this quiet time by myself. I make the best of it. Herewith is a list of fun things you can do in the middle of the night while you're breastfeeding and/or pumping, and if you have a computer handy:

• Shop. So far, since Nora was born, I have bought the following items online: this here laptop computer, wedding gifts for two separate cousins, a set of cordless phones (with integrated answering machine! I am so excited), a book, and I keep trying to buy crap on the new Gap Canada website but am having troubles with my password. Probably for the best.
  
• Go on facebook and catch up with friends. All of a sudden I am a prolific commenter. All of my comments happen between 2 and 5 a.m.
  
• Write this here blog. For those of you looking for something to do, write any blog! It's fun and keeps your brain sharp at 4 a.m. But maybe don't hit 'publish' until morning.
  
• Pay your bills. If you don't already do this, sign up for online banking. It's fun to track your money in the middle of the night.
  
• Read a book. Sure why not?
  
• Catch up on celebrity gossip. Apparently Michael Douglas isn't doing so well and that makes me sad for some reason. Stay strong Jack Colton!
  
• Eat. I keep snacks beside my feeding/pumping station and catch up on my eating in the middle of the night, because I often forget during the day. These are healthy snacks, mind you. I'm not scarfing Doritos at 4 a.m. like a big stoner.
  
• Tidy up. Quietly. If you have a nifty hands-free pump like I do, you can fold laundry and put stuff away on tiptoe.
  
• Write lists. You know me, I love lists. In fact, I just wrote 'write lists' on a list. How crazy is that? Anyway, I have written a list of Christmas gifts I'd like to get (we do this in our family), Christmas gifts I'd like to give, things Nora still needs wardrobe-wise, things to do, etc. etc. I have a little book for lists right beside me.
  
• Knit (while pumping with a hands-free pump only).
  
• Get addicted to computer games. For awhile I enjoyed a free trial of 'Bejewelled,' and when I crawled back into bed after all was done I had visions of tiny jewels falling in my brain. Thank god my free trial ended. Now I'm all into computer Mahjong.
  
• Compose lengthy emails that you will either send in the morning, or not.
  
• Catch up on your hand-written correspondence. If you have recently had a baby, you will likely have thank-you cards to write, so this is a good time to get that done.
  

Anyway the options are almost limitless in this age of computers and other portable electronics. One can get into a lot of trouble at 4 a.m. when left alone in the peace and quiet.

Progress Report

This week I can say that Nora transitioned from being a tiny scary fragile baby I have to take care of to being my daughter. I can't really describe why or how this happened, but she's six and a half weeks old, her eyes are more open, and she smiles when smiled at. She tracks us when we move from side to side and she reacts when we make funny faces and talk to her in a goofy voice. Her personality is starting to emerge and I hate to say it, but I think she's got more in common with me than with her father. She is a piquant baby, and I think it'll be hard to trick her. She's sharp for someone less than two months old.

One of the things that I have learned in the last few weeks is that the best thing to do when you are taking care of a new baby is to get out of the house. With the baby, I mean. Ha ha. I started walking with a neighbour who has a baby only two months older than Nora, and I have gone out for lunch with friends, and even gone to a breastfeeding clinic in the city, all by my lonesome (with Nora, I mean). It's essential to really own this motherhood thing, without making too big a deal of it. I have had to adopt an attitude of 'yep this is my kid, so what' when I go out. Even while I'm trying to un-wedge the stroller from the back seat of my pickup truck in the pouring rain, I have to just act like everything is perfectly normal. This is my life now. When I go places, I wrestle with a stroller – it's just the way it is. At least my stroller is a pleasure to wrestle.

At said breastfeeding clinic, I learned that I likely don`t have any supply issues with my milk, that maybe I just have to have more stick-to-it-iveness about this whole breastfeeding thing. I have to reduce bottle use (formula was phased out ages ago, these are bottles of breast milk) and ergo rely on the pump less, which would be nice because right now it's 3:49 a.m. and I'm pumping as I write this. Nora does breastfeed, and is rather surprisingly effective at it as well, so I`m going to have to learn to trust that she will tell me when she`s hungry and she`ll take what she needs. We`re going back to the clinic tomorrow just to check progress, latch and do a weigh-in, but things are looking up in terms of breastfeeding. I don`t think she takes vast quantities from me at any one time, but so what if I have to breastfeed her every two hours? This would be more pleasant in warmer weather but whatever, I`ve cranked up the heat. This is no time to conserve.

I had my six-week check up with my doctor today. It was pretty relaxed; my doctor is something of a hippie and generally tries to be extra laid-back with me because she knows that I am something of a hypochondriac (who me?). She wanted to discuss sex and contraception, which I found hilarious, since hello, I had a baby six weeks ago. Six weeks is nothing people! Also I reminded her that it took us four years to conceive this one so perhaps contraception would be wasted on me. She seemed to think I was being foolish but we`ll see. Nora told me she wants a baby brother but at this pace, her dad and I are running more of a military operation than a romantic one.

My doctor was concerned about the baby blues, but in talking to her I realized that this is no longer a concern in my case. The fog lifted at around four weeks and since then, I've just been feeling the regular ol' frustration regarding feeding, lack of sleep, a messy house, and paranoia. No more depression. I'm glad that my case was textbook, that it lifted at four weeks like all of the folks online said it might. I was feeling kind of guilty about it. And recently I have been celebrating the fact that I am so blessed. Several people around me have suffered misfortunes; one girlfriend recently had a third failed IVF and are now talking adoption, a male friend and his wife had to terminate a failing pregnancy, another girlfriend gave birth to her baby by surprise at 28 weeks (both are doing well, but oy vey the baby was 2.7lbs), and a friend of a friend gave birth to a child with a rare genetic disorder who passed away at two months old. I am so blessed, so anytime I feel the baby blues, I have to give my head a shake and realize that my baby is perfect. She might not feed so well from my breast all the time and she's sort of cranky some days, but she's perfect. She doesn't even poop, so she's pretty low-maintenance (she goes about once a week, sometimes twice, which the doctors have assured me is fine). She is utter perfection.

So tomorrow we return to the breastfeeding clinic, and I have started taking a drug to boost my milk supply because I'd really love to be able to stockpile it for times when other people take care of Nora, for mixing with her food after we start on solids, or just for peace of mind. I've seen through the haze enough to get excited about skiing this upcoming winter so we're going to get our passes and try to go one evening per week like we used to, since I missed last year altogether. I've even bought new ski pants. We are so fortunate that my mom and dad live at the bottom of the ski hill, so that it will be easy to drop Nora off and go.

So here's a recent picture of my daughter. She's nearly seven weeks old, and she is my whole life.