We are on day… (think: Wednesday night, Thurs, Fri, Sat, Sun, do the math)… day five of Daphne’s cold.  She’s less “clear snot running down the nose” and more “hack, snorg, gack”.  This has become our new work: snorgy.  And if you’ve ever had a head cold, you know exactly what I mean.  It’s frustrating, because she breaths better if she’s upright (duh!), and would sleep with me holding her in the glider the first two days of her cold, but now pitches a fit if I sit down with her in the glider when it’s bed/naptime.  My butt doesn’t even have to touch the seatpan and she’s off.  And, of course, with a baby cold, she starts crying, then she gets snorgier, then she starts coughing, then she starts doing that gasping coughing thing because she’s so worked up.  (This occurs both quickly, and is something she normally doesn’t do.  So I have little built in tolerance for it.)

I’m so thankful it took six months for her to get her first real cold; she at least as figured out mouth breathing.  And I’m thankful she’s still nursing pretty much exclusively (outside of an apple slice here and a sweet potato fry there) so that she’s getting antibodies from me.  But I’m not so thankful that now Jason and I are sick as well.  Or that, apparently, baby colds can last two weeks.  Two weeks?!  TWO weeks?!!!  I’m getting pretty crappy sleep here and it’s going to go on for two weeks?!?!  And the two weeks when I have three days of teacher training, four days off, and four days of teacher training back to back?  Bleh.

Fortunately, in the time between her waking up and trying to start putting her down to sleep, she’s generally pretty darn happy.  She’s loving going for walks (in the stroller, due to the rain and not yet figuring out our full rain system in the backpack); I imagine the cold air is helping her breath better.  She’s loving her baths (started splashing with her hands yesterday).  She’s nursing like crazy (more medicine, please).  And her diaper rash is improving.  Now if only we can teach her to not compulsively rub her eyes when she’s tired and unswaddled!

With yoga teacher training, growth spurts, and various classes, it’s been two months since I last posted a baby-blog update, and I wish I hadn’t waited so long.  Daphne turned 6months old last Wednesday and had her six month shots and doctor’s appointment on Friday (15lb 12oz, 26.25″) and did well with those.  The sleeping issues had been going fairly well for a while, then she hit a growth spurt that started with wonky sleep, then required lots of food, and has continued with the inability to stay asleep for a full nap or go to sleep at an even semi reasonable time at night.

On the other hand, she is starting to sit up by herself, and due to the need for lots of diaper free time for a persistent (but relatively mild) diaper rash, she’s getting the idea of using the potty.  In the past few days, she’s even started trying to vocalize with other sounds.

Looking back on everything, I can now say that, if I had to do it all over again, I probably would not do the yoga teacher training I’m taking at this time.  Being away from Daphne and Jason for the vast majority of every other weekend, having to try to make it to various classes at a studio that’s 30-60 minutes away (depending on traffic), and trying to get all the homework done between sessions is just draining.  I do think there is something that it has added to my time as a new parent – time away, a perspective on patience and self-awareness, and a chance to practice something I love – but I am looking forward to it being finished and not feeling quite so cramped for time.

And, hopefully, I can get back to blogging more often so that I’m not missing two month stretches at a time.  While I feel that I have gotten a good opportunity and space for being present for the growth that Daphne has shown during that time, it would be nice to have the time to record some of the highlights and reflect on it.

5 Things For Which I Am Grateful

1. Tea – again.  The ritual of sitting down, with myself or with friends, for a cup of tea.  Time is slowed for the length of a cup.
2. Daphne’s swim class was canceled today.  I love the class, but I like being sufficiently well slept for happiness.
3. Jason’s creative brain.  He made a huge “spider” crawling out of our tree onto our front bush for Halloween.  When he gets an idea, he makes it happen.
4. Fleece blankets and down comforters, because winter is cold, and I like to be warm.
5. Winter.  I don’t care about big seasonal differences, but the fresh, chilly air is nice (once I get used to it 😉 ).

Contemplate the Current World Crises

The ACOG (American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists) just submitted a competing potential piece of legislation to congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard’s submitted legislature regarding maternal care.  While the later addresses use of evidence based medicine in a culturally competent way, the former just calls for studying more of why there are cultural/ethnic differences in outcomes.  The ACOG is even, in it’s press releases, saying that they don’t like legislature that doubts them.

According to Dr. Waldman it is unacceptable because a) it promotes “the wholesale adoption of delivery models that have not yet been proven safe and effective, including doula support, group prenatal care, and home-birth,” and b) it “questions ob-gyns’ ability, compared to certified nurse-midwives, family physicians, and certified professional midwives, to deliver care that supports physiologic birth.”  —The Unnecessarian: A Tale of Two MOMS

I find it simply so frustrating that there continues to be – on a large scale, anyway – such holding on to old, “easiest for me” ways when the evidence is contrary.  Exactly what I can do about it is an interesting question.  It’s hard to shift the views of a large, established, slow moving organization of elites.  They don’t want to change and don’t recognize outside persuasion to do so.  Becoming involved in the political level is interesting, but, I suspect, ultimately frustrating, as working against the perceived experts generally doesn’t go well.  But being involved at the grass roots level, informing the women who ultimately play a large (if they so choose) role in the process may be the way to go for me.

Six Questions

1. How has yoga changed my life?  I’m not entirely sure how to answer this question, as I have discovered that I don’t really know how to evaluate what my life would be with different choices.  It’s not so much the “what” as the “how”.  Every decision we make gives us a different experience which informs the rest of our lives in some fashion.  Good experiences and bad alike, they all have the potential to change us in some way.  Perhaps yoga has made me more receptive to utilizing that potential.
2. How is teaching connected to your path/destiny?  I like to share what I know and what I love.  Perhaps as a way of connecting with people in an environment that feels safe for me, it is a way to give to others the space to investigate something I’ve found that I think is wonderful.
3. What is your motivation as a teacher?  The “oh!  that’s interesting” moment when a student puts something together in their head and/or in their body and makes some discovery – small or large – that is the impetus for exploration in themselves.  Even if it doesn’t necessarily lead to anything, seeing people make that exploration is incredibly rewarding.
4. What do I have to offer that is unique?  My slightly socially awkward and nerdy personality that has utmost confidence that there is a little nerd in everyone.
5. Who am I?  Another question I don’t know how to answer.  I wouldn’t say that I “AM” my job or whatnot, but I think that I would say that I “AM” a mom.  The nurturing instinct that has been able to manifest more fully really is a part of not only what I am, but how I think and act.  I might have to say the same thing about being an engineer, but I’m not sure on that yet.
6. How do I give my gifts to the world?  Clumsily, but that’s just my way.

5 Things For Which I Am Grateful

1. Technology – particularly my phone. While it can sometimes tether me and be a source of aggravation, it keeps me connected to the people I want to stay connected with. It lets me keep track of things I need to in a way that is easy for me, so that I have less worry.  And it lets me record life events even if I’m otherwise unprepared. It helps me simplify a life that could be more complicated.
2. Fall rain – smells wonderful, returns lawns to green, marks the changing of the seasons, and doesn’t keep me inside.
3. Times when Daphne is asleep, so that I don’t have consistent demands on my time.
4. Times when Daphne is awake, because she’s got an awesome smile and is amazing to watch/interact with.
5. Wool socks, to keep my toes toasty warm.

Contemplate the Current World Crises

As I continue to mostly ignore the news, I am remaining mostly blissfully unaware of the big crises in the world, but catch glimpses of them here and there.  While I don’t want to stick my head in the sand, there are times when it’s really nice to disengage and avoid being overwhelmed by all the things we can find out about in the world!

Six Questions

1. How has yoga changed my life?
2. How is teaching connected to your path/destiny?
3. What is your motivation as a teacher?
4. What do I have to offer that is unique?
5. Who am I?
6. How do I give my gifts to the world?

I had no intention of introducing solid foods this early, but Daphne not only has great head control, and sits fairly well in her Bumbo, but she’s been showing a LOT of interest in our food. So, partly out of Jason’s prompting, by following her prompts, she got her first real attempt at playing with real food yesterday.

Months ago, before we were born, we decided to try baby led weaning when it came time to introduce solids. The basic idea is that introducing solids is not about feeding, but rather all about curiosity. And a baby can generally manage what she feeds herself if she is the one who feeds herself. So, no putting parent putting food in her mouth. No purees to be “sucked”. Give the baby a wedge of food that she can grab and explore on her own. Of course it’s not fair to start off by giving her something that her toothless mouth could never handle – like a raw carrot – but something like a ripe pear. Which is what Daphne’s first food was.

We had finished eating dinner, and she was showing interest throughout the whole thing. So I had Jason get her a spoon to play with. (In baby led weaning, you do use spoons, but for them to feed themselves, not for putting food in their mouths for them.) She grabbed the proper end of the spoon, and with surprising little difficulty, got the spoon into her mouth as a fun toy. So I hemmed and hawed, then grabbed a pear out of the fridge, cut a slice so it would make a nice wedge, peeled it, and held it in front of her. You can watch the rest:

My hat is off to all the working moms out there. I’ve always had a suspicion that, while I could make it work if I had to, it wasn’t really for me. This first weekend of the next stage of yoga teacher training has proven that too me.

I love teaching yoga – and I love doing teacher trainings, because we get to dive into the deep end of the pool. It’s a new way of becoming a student again. But it’s draining. Two to three hours of practice a day, with additional physical work when doing practice teaching or looking at bodies, is a lot! Particularly on this four-month post-partum, anemic, sleep deprived mom. We also don’t have a whole lot of breaks during which I can pump – two (if I push it) during a 8 hour day (including commute) just doesn’t cut it. While I’m fortunate enough to be able to pump extra during the days between training weekends, and am close to keeping up with her supply, I know that this is only going to work BECAUSE I have only one day a week where I’m gone for that long, and the other two days I’m gone are at times when she wouldn’t eat as much anyway.

I can’t really say that my mind is always separated from what I’m doing in my training – it’s not too hard to generally stay focused on task and not drift off to wondering how she’s doing, except for during Savasana, that is. But it certainly is a distraction. And, though I am happy to see her when I get home, I’m sore and tired, so I wish that she didn’t require so much physicality out of me.

This first teacher training weekend focused on standing poses and backbends. With my new body, it’s certainly a whole new practice, and backbends, which used to be a place of freedom and exploration, are now tentative, cautious things. The teacher for this weekend is the same one that taught my 200-hr training, and I feel like she has changed her teaching. It may be due to the fact that we have a very wide range of students in the class, but I like the approach, even if I find it challenging and somewhat different than I’m used to. (Though, I can already see, we are likely to have a difference of opinion when it comes to the prenatal section of the class, and I’m already thinking about how I want to approach those differences.)

On that vein, there is a final project that needs to be done for the class, and I’m thinking about making it related to prenatal yoga in some fashion. The final project has sparked a fire of creativity in me – well damped by the other demands on my time though it may be.

I’m happy for these four (or eleven, depending on the week) days between training weekends, even if one day each week will be in back to back yoga classes. It feels like a chance to slow back down (ironic, coming OUT OF a yoga weekend) and reconnect with Daphne.

This comes after a long weekend of changes. Sure, I realize that her patterns are going to change, seemingly constantly, for quite a while. But I hardly expect dramatic shifts over the course of a day, even if there is some random event that messes up her pattern.

The event in question this time was an attempted camping trip. Some hiking buddies invited me out to the North Cascades to a luxurious* base camp. (*Luxurious is relative here. We usually go backpacking. So having tent sites, a fire ring, potable water from a faucet, and flush toilets in a drive in site… That’s total luxury!) It was a two hour drive away, and would be the first camping trip for Neo and Daphne, with Jason staying home since he’s not much of a camping person. I deliberately overpacked, so that the Subaru hatch was filled up with tent and chair and clothing and food and diapers and virtually everything I thought I would need that I could bring. Even a bouncer. The one thing that I thought would be good to have, but I had no where to make use of it, was the exercise ball we bounce her to sleep on. And that was the one thing I really wish I had. Well, that and a big car camping tent.

She slept most of the trip there, but demanded we stop and nurse about 15 miles from the campsite. On a nice, cool, bright day, with ample turnouts in the country highway, there was no reason not to. Heck, we even got a river view (and whatever the aural equivalent of view is) to go with her meal. My friends did most of the work getting me unpacked and set up – and had a great time passing Daphne around to meet and play with her. But eventually we had dinner, and then she had dinner, and she was clearly getting overtired. So I tried putting her to sleep. Swaddling her went alright, but putting her in the bouncer was a bust – she just wanted to try sitting up. I tried bouncing her on my leg, but there was light in the tent, and she had no interest in sleeping. After about an hour, I called it quits. Perhaps it would have worked if I spent longer, but my gut feeling was that it would have been a LONG night of trying a lot of things cramped uncomfortably in the tent (or trying to get back into the backpacking tent with a sleeping baby, which is just precariously risky). I’ve learned to go with my gut over the past four months. So they helped me back into the car, and I got underway. Again, she demanded to nurse on the way home, but this time being pulled over on the side of an almost deserted country road in the pitch dark to nurse was FAR less fun.

Still, I’m glad we got out there and gave it a try. I know now that I want a humongous car camping tent and to bring an exercise ball along next time. But she greatly enjoyed it, as did my hiking buddies. Even Neo had fun, though it was all a bit new to him.

Daphne has discovered her hands. Well, is in the process of discovering them, anyway. And it’s one of those things that is adorably cute to watch, hilarious in the seriousness she gives it, and then makes you realize that maybe hands and the ability to control them really is a pretty amazing thing after all. Nothing like a baby experiencing things for the first time to remind you of what you take for granted.

In related firsts news, she also got to try her first non-booby-milk taste. She’s been watching us eat, and enjoying it, for the past few weeks. She’s made a few passing attempts to reach out towards the food, but nothing serious. In particular, she enjoys watching us eat noisy food, and was having a good time watching Jason eat a particularly crunchy and tasty new crop apple. So, when she reached towards it, Jason let her give it a try.

Daphne opted to show off her new trick today at her four month checkup: monkey sit. She so wants to interact with her environment. I’m fairly certain she will have some kind of mobility by six months – even if she is just repeatedly rolling in order to get somewhere.

For the past five weeks, I have been back at puppy training class with Neo. Class being during the day, however, Daphne gets strapped into a carrier on my front to offer confusing hand gestures to Neo, and away we go.

It’s been a little tough, because I have to move somewhat slower with her on me, and because it presents logistical challenges with where I can reach. Additionally, it’s harder to bend down – I can’t lean forward, so have been getting a lot if squatting workout.

Neo is doing pretty well, and having a “little sister” seems to be helping his maturity along so well that he was able to do a sit for exam in our last class. He still needs to work out exactly what his role is when it comes to guarding Daphne, but he is definitely making progress, and looks quite happy to be back in class.