unexpected side effects of baby-having #462: hair ache, hair loss, hair nests

Friday, nov. 20, 2009   |   0 comments

Since this baby hit the scene four months or so ago, I’ve kept my hair in a constant state of be-ponytail-ness to avoid having my hairs caught and torn in the vice-like grip of feisty baby fists. The result of all this hair tethering is that I now suffer from almost constant “ponytail ache,” a minor malady on its own, but surprisingly wearying when experienced cumulatively.

Meanwhile all the extra hair I accumulated during pregnancy is now falling out in droves. And since I’m rarely trashcan-convenient these days — what with spending 98% of my time either feeding the baby, rocking him to sleep, or making sure he isn’t choking or taking a header — I keep winding up with fistfulls of hair with no easy way to dispose of them. So I keep secreting these tangles of loose hair into my pockets “for later.” By the time “later” rolls around, I’m usually too comatose from sleepiness and round-the-clock babying to clean out my pockets. And hair, it turns out, is actually very washer-dryer resilient.

So that’s me. I’m the one with the aching scalp and the human-hair nests in my pockets. The personal ad just writes itself!

mercurial poisoning

Monday, nov. 16, 2009   |   0 comments

One of the freaky things about baby caring is that whatever magical thing seems to work one day — singing the “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” jingle at him makes him stop crying, tapping his forehead while making a “pwt-ting” sound like his head is a spittoon makes him start laughing — doesn’t always work the next day.

Tough room.

Just when you starting to get that “I can do this!” feeling, his interface shifts, and it’s back to the drawing board. Maybe he’ll stop crying if I turn up the heat? Turn down the heat? Turn him upside down? Right side up? Jostle his stomach while yelling “washing machine, washing machine”? Pudding? You want mommy to put you down in your crib and go get herself some pudding?

I know people in corporate USA like to say they prefer a job where they’re always tackling new problems and learning new skillsets, but now that I’m actually living that particular American dream, I say: Bring back the monotony and predictability! I want the parenting equivalent of stuffing envelopes, please. Not for all time, of course. Just long enough to give me the delusion that I know what I’m doing.

unwanted guests

Sunday, nov. 15, 2009   |   0 comments

Oh my god, this is almost too awful to type, but in the interest of posterity, I have to come clean. Or come unclean, more like…

We have fleas! Or at least Desi does. I caught one crawling around on his foot, and our friend Marilyn spotted one hopping around on his FACE! We are awesome parents.

I’m not entirely sure what to do about this dirty, dirty problem? We’re not thrilled about the idea of setting off a flea bomb — while we’re lame enough to turn our baby into flea food, we’re not quite lame enough to coat his environs in a toxic cloud. Marco dosed the dog with a round of Advantix tonight, so hopefully that will put a dent in the vermin population. Not sure what else we can do, though…wrap the dog in plastic? Dig a moat around the baby? Move to a new house? Town? State? Or maybe we should just hand the baby over to the Child Protection Agency right now.

bad reacting

Friday, nov. 13, 2009   |   0 comments

When I talk about baby matters, I get some interesting reactions. Sprinkled amongst the many supportive “congratulations” and “I want to bite that baby’s cute fat cheeks off“s are some strangely off-putting responses, and they seem to fall into two categories. At one end of the spectrum we have the “If You Think This Is Bad” spoilsports. On the flip side are the “Surely You’ve Never Loved Like This Before?” unsinkables. And even though one is pessimism embodied and the other is the purest expression of incomparable, undiluted love, I find them both equally disheartening.

Say I announce at the water cooler that pregnancy is killing me with its stupid two-to-three-hours-of-sleep insomnia. The spoilsports hop gleefully in to announce that if I’m suffering now, just wait until the baby gets here! At which time I can kiss all sleep goodbye, and also travel, reading, any and all me time, and happiness in general!

Since I’m barely hanging in here as it is, baby-having wise, it’s never fun to hear that things are going to be even darker just around the corner. Maybe I should give up now?

Or maybe, maybe it doesn’t always get harder? Or, if it does, my parenting skills might evolve to keep pace with the baby’s spiraling degrees of difficulty? But somehow those encouraging words never seem to be part of the message. Why are these spoilsports so fired up to inform me how in for it I am? Maybe they just want someone to keep them company in their hard, cold Legion of Doom?

Meanwhile I post new chunky, pink baby photos online, and the unsinkables rush to gush about the new levels of love I’m surely achieving.

Now. When we birthed this baby, after the midwives and cheerleaders had all cleared out, I quietly confessed to Marco, “You know how everyone says that the moment your baby is born, you feel a love like no other? Yeah, I didn’t feel that.” Don’t get me wrong! I was very happy when the baby was born. I just wasn’t euphoric like all the books and movies and Friends episodes had prepared me for.

I’ve definitely grown to love him, over time. (Especially now that my tore up vagina’s all good and healed!) But it hasn’t exactly been rainbows and bunny bellies…parenting is hard. So hard! And there are times when I love the baby a ton, like when he’s…sleeping. Or when I squeeze his soft, chubby American thighs. Or when he laughs and shrugs his shoulders and makes his cheeseburger face. But there are also times when I like him a whole lot less, like when he’s bolt-upright awake at wrong-thirty in the morning, or when he’s vociferously refusing to take his bottle from the nanny-share nanny so she has to call me and I have to race back over to the nanny-share house to coax him into taking it, thereby negating the many positives of paying for childcare.

So when someone goes to bond with me over how amazing and transcendental it all is, I don’t really relate. And not being able to relate to that sunny sentiment makes me feel like a heartless alien robot by comparison.

A heartless and clearly doomed alien robot.

are you ready for desi's clothes up?

Thursday, nov. 12, 2009   |   4 comments

It isn’t always an awesometoberfest having a helpless 15-pound being on your payroll. Sometimes he wakes up at three in the morning and refuses to go back to sleep unless you stick your thumb in his mouth and push him in his swing 500 times. Sometimes he plays with his food, smacking painfully on your budders like he’s blotting chapstick. And sometimes he blows right past his bedtime and Marco’s already asleep because he has to get up at 5am for work so you have to hold the baby’s squirming body in one arm as you type up the evening’s web log entry with one hand.

On the bright side, we get to dress him up in the world’s cutest outfits! Hooryay!