UltraViolet

I read a blog called Her Bad Mother and the author (years ago, it would seem, I am so behind blogolistically speaking) called for others to write about the physical nature of their love for their children. I read some, was enthralled, and couldn't wait to give it a whirl myself.

Before Violet, I always heard moms and grannies talk about how they wanted to "eat a baby up." What a horrible, Rosie O'Donnell-esque turn of phrase it was: "Eat a baby up." It was in the same vein as 'cutie-patootie' -- makes me want to puke. First off, ingesting a baby makes no sense. After carrying one for nine long months, going to all the trouble of getting it out, who would want to put her back in? I didn't understand why holding her, cuddling her, rocking her might not seem like enough. Who are these crazies who can't get enough baby via the typical routes? Who are the loons that want to devour poor little babies?

Turns out, I am a baby-eater. Or at least, I would be, if I could be. I suppose, figuratively, I am one. A baby-eater. I really only have an appetite for my baby, but, I think eating just one baby is all it takes to fall under the heading.

The delight of her skin under my fingers is the most soothing sensation I have ever felt. Now, in late winter, with temperatures still lingering below freezing most nights, I have a terrible urge to let her frolic in only her diaper, just so I can glimpse those wondrous new skin cells in all of their rosy, dimply, glory. But just seeing her skin isn't enough, I need to stroke it; with my fingers, with my lips, pressing my cheek to her round belly.

I feel thankful that we are still nursing; I don't know how I would ever get my fix of hands-on baby time if she didn't have to collapse in my lap and snuggle close to me 5 or 6 times a day. She is such a baby on the move these days: crawling, cruising, chasing her dog, I would never be able to justify pinning her down to squeeze her meaty thigh if she didn't need to nurse. And as basic as her need is for her sustenance, my milk; so basic- so primal really- is my need to hold the tiny girl in my arms. When I curl her to me, Violet's slender fingers will find their way to my mouth, inspecting my teeth, my tongue, gently nipping at my lips, as if she understands the urge I have to gobble her up. She's willing, if only for the moments we are connected, baby to bosom, to let me have a nibble; to enjoy again what is surely going to be a fleeting consumption.

Tentative Symbiosis

The Scout-Violet relationship is growing day by day but still uncertain at best. Violet is a dog enthusiast already, but her enthusiasm does little to quell Scout's baby loathing. Now that Violet is mobile (no, not crawling; but scooting, reversing, butt-pivoting, and toddling with help from a friendly finger), Scout has more to fear. When and if Violet does begin actual forward crawling, I have no doubt it will be the dog that motivates that movement. Her smelly fur is irresistible to the baby and Violet would like nothing more than to suck on her long, hairy tail, oblivious to the fact that it probably grazes every dump Scout takes.

The baby-dog attraction I definitely get. Scout is the best toy in the house; unpredictable and unattainable. What I don't get is why Scout doesn't get the hell out of Violet's way. The dog is way faster on the ground and able to jump up on any piece of furniture in the house. Yet, there she sits, a mere 10 inches from the baby, and then growls and bears her teeth when Violet yanks her furry rear end again and again. She yips but hasn't bitten; so far Shawn and I are always close at hand to scold her. I have even gone as far as to pick Scout up off of the floor where Violet is playing and put her on the sofa. She immediately jumps back down and goes back to laying within a foot of the baby. Go figure.

I would like to think Scout's constant proximity to Violet is related to some primal protective instincts, like that dog that suckled the tiger cubs. But knowing Scout, I think it has far more to do with Violet's burgeoning consumption of human food. Human food, any variety, is ambrosia to Scout. She is consumed by the desire to get her mustachioed under bite around even the smallest morsel of human food. Now that Violet is eating, and doing so messily, I might add, Scout is much more interested in her. Scout sits under her high chair during meals and is right there when we pick her up after eating, cleaning every grain of rice that falls from the baby to the floor within seconds. In many ways, this is nice and eases the burden of cleanup for us parents. But in other ways it is annoying, as Scout rears up and whimpers begging for the leftover baby vittles if we don't immediately wipe out the seat of the high chair.

Forget giving Violet a pretzel or some cheerios to nibble while she plays on the floor. Scout is there like a vulture, gently but persistently weaseling the food out of Vi's hand. And it doesn't help that Violet's eating patterns involve a lot of sucking followed by waving the food around for a while. As soon as she goes to wave her gooey pretzel in Scout's general direction, the dog politely removes it from her hand and devours it with minimal chewing.

I realize Cesar Milan would probably be having a heart attack if he read this. This certainly is not how a pack leader would behave, letting a lower order canine steal food from her pup. And I also realize that it is just a matter of time until Scout crosses the line with Violet and that is something I really don't want to deal with. So if anyone has any suggestions on how to deal with dog-baby relations in the Pierce household, I'm all ears...

Life on the Outside, More Violet than Felicia

Violet passed the 9 month marker this week and celebrated by going shopping at Carter's. Nothing but the finest sweatshop cotton for my little one!

Nine months old means that Vi has passed a milestone of her life and now has spent longer out of utero than in utero. What a host of changes her little life has already seen! For example, on the inside, she did not have to breathe. All that pesky inhaling and exhaling she does now was done for her by me. However, in my belly, she didn't get to eat Snyder's Homestyle Pretzels, her new fave.

But, the more things change, the more they stay the same. In utero, Violet frequently had the hiccups. That didn't change--several times a week she still sounds like an IU student after playing Sink the Bismark at Nick's. While she was in my womb under the pseudonym Felicia, she was covered in vernix, a white cheesy substance that protected her baby skin from the water she was afloat in. This morning she was covered in actual cheese; whipped cream cheese, to be specific, that was on the English muffin she and I shared. During gestation, especially during the last 2 months or so, Felicia did a great job of making me uncomfortable by resting her girth on my bladder. Violet, too, likes to make her mother uncomfortable, but prefers going the route of pinching any of my exposed skin whenever we are nursing testing my conviction never to spank my child.

The biggest thing that I've noticed as Violet turned 9 months this week, is what an unignorable symbol she is of the passage of time. Like marking big red Xs on a calendar, Violet is a human countdown--or, more aptly, a count-up. She changes quickly yet subtly making it hard to tell if she is actually acquiring a new skill or just stumbling along doing baby stuff. Then--POOF--baby stuff was a new skill and she is opening every cupboard door in the house looking through the treasures that lie within. I have always been both fascinated and saddened by the way we perceive time and having Vi around intensifies both of those feelings.

Oooo, That Smell

Standing over Violet, wiping off her highchair and face after she gummed down some Cheerios, I smelled the smell of baby. Not the sweet, yummy, baby smell that grandmas and other older women always report when they take a whiff of a newborn's head, but the sticky, oaty, scent that accompanies a growing human who has begun to eat real food, take real craps, but not really wash themselves.

Shawn and I bathe Violet every other day, more frequently if needed, so I'm pretty sure the smell isn't a hygiene issue. I don't even know if it comes directly from Violet though I know she causes it. Right after a bath, Violet smells like her soap, a lightly-perfumed lavendery concoction that, when combined with a certain baby giggle, is probably the root cause of all the spoiled little girls in this country. And even when she is covered with sticky biter-biscuit residue, has peas mushed in her neck-creases, and has a full diaper, she doesn't stink, not really. The diapers smell bad, yes, but they are easy enough to change and dispose of and most of the visible food can be wiped away.

I wonder if having a baby living in your house isn't kind of like sharing your home with a cat. When someone walks in who doesn't have a cat, they can tell right away that one lives there. I love cats, grew up with cats, don't have a cat right now, but probably will own a cat in the future. The thing that I never realized until I did not have a cat living in my house is that cats, as clean and fastidious as they are, have a certain feline odor that is impossible to disguise. It probably has something to do with those scent glands near their whiskers they are always rubbing on your legs and sofa. No matter where you put the litter box or how often it is emptied, the cat smell is a part of your house and easily identifiable to those people who do not have a cat.

I assume the infant smell is the same. No amount of Clorox in the Diaper Genie or Dreft in the laundry can hide the baby smell. Even if we were able to find enough closet space to contain the papasan swing, the Cruise n Crawl Jungle, the Sit to Stand Activity table, the Rainforest Jumparoo, and every other large, colorful, molded Playskool monstrosity that sits in our living room screaming "Baby Lives Here!," I am sure that someone without a baby would know that we had Violet. All the baby stuff has a smell and that smell permeates your home. From the artificial, sterile, lemony/powder scent of baby wipes, to the MRE aroma that accompanies anything packaged by Gerber, to the indescribable smell of plastic covered in drool that is all of her toys, Violet has marked her territory at the Pierce house.

The other funny thing about the smell that is Violet: I love it. I remember going to babysit when I was younger and smelling the baby smell at my charge's house and being sooo happy that my house didn't smell like that. In all likelihood, my own house with two teenage boys and a gross pre-pubescent girl probably smelled much worse, but it was our smell. And now, just like that, the baby smell is our smell, too. And I wouldn't trade it for all the cleaning ladies in the world.

OK, a cleaning lady would be pretty awesome. Maybe I would just ask her not to scrub the highchair too hard...

A Blurry Line

The dangers of drinking alcohol during pregnancy are well documented. Every pregnancy pamphlet, book, and website will warn the expecting mom that alcohol can cause birth defects. The Surgeon General has even spoken up about the danger of drinking alcohol on an unborn fetus and put his warning on the back of my cheap bottle of 2007 California Red. The common wisdom is that there is no way to know how much booze is too much booze for an unborn baby and Mom's best defense against fetal alcohol syndrome is to just avoid the stuff all together. Some mommies (like me), chose to live on the edge during our pregnancies and indulge in the occasional glass of wine during dinner. I suppose knowing when to say when when you are 40 pounds overweight becomes a little easier. The temptation to have just one more drink and stay out late dancing just wasn't as strong when I'd been constipated for 4 days.

The clearly defined line in the sand becomes a bit windblown when you are talking about the rules for alcohol consumption and breastfeeding. Somehow, the"pump and dump" method became the accepted method for a breast feeding mom who wanted to drink. I guess if I wanted to go on an 8 hour bender and get really shitfaced, I might need to express milk at some point in time just so I didn't get too engorged. Breast milk, like blood, does not hold on to alcohol indefinitely when a mom drinks. About an hour after a drink is consumed, the alcohol content in blood and milk is at it's peak. As her blood alcohol level falls, so does the amount of alcohol in her breast milk. So if I have a glass of wine before bed and fall asleep without pumping, my milk will not have alcohol in it the next morning as my body processed my wine while I slept. There is no need for me to rid my body of any alcohol laced milk, my liver will do that job for my whole body.

Since Violet is still nursing on demand, it is rare that I go very long when I'm not at work without nursing her. And I admit, I'll have a couple glasses of wine during the evening and I still nurse Violet that night. I am usually drinking with my meal, over the course of several hours, and would never nurse her if I felt even a little drunk. That's not to say that I haven't worried about the safety of drinking while being a breastfeeding mom. I've read as much about it as I can (curiously, there isn't a lot of research on the topic), and talked to lots of moms. It seems that lots of breastfed kiddos have survived their mom's social drinking and I am pretty confident that my minimal alcohol consumption has no affect on sweet Baby Violet. The first time I drank after Violet was born I was so nervous, I asked Shawn several times if he thought it would be OK for me to feed her. I have gotten over that fear, as you can see by the accompanying photo. No real staging was needed for this; I have a glass of wine 3 or 4 nights a week.

I think, more than any worries I have about Vi's health or development, I worry that people will judge me as a bad or negligent mom. I certainly don't want to give people who are ignorant about nursing any ammunition. That's why I was so disheartened when Shawn told me about the Connecticut mom who was arrested for breastfeeding her infant while intoxicated. You can read the story here. Clearly, this mom was in the wrong, having 7 drinks with a 3 week old baby is just too much, but it sounds like she needs some treatment for post-partum depression, not a trip to county jail. Anyway, I think a good rule of thumb for parents of infants, breast feeding or not, is that if you have had too much to feel safe holding the baby, you've had too much to be an infant's caregiver. But if the police are going to start arresting moms for the crime of drunk nursing, there needs to be some clear rules about how much is too much.

All She Wants For Christmas

If Violet understood the concepts of Christmas, wanting material things, and getting the most bang for her entertainment buck, she would most certainly put Baby Einstein DVDs at the top of her wish list. I don't know what it is about these videos that she loves so much, but I sure wish I'd thought of them.

The idea is ingenious: set excruciatingly basic footage of children's toys, animals, babies, and puppets to music. I'm sure the production cost is minimal and, at $14.99 a pop, the lady that invented these things must be rolling in the dough. As with all winning products, the marketing is really the key to Baby Einstein's success. Call it Baby Couch Potato and you probably don't move many units. But a baby couch potato is exactly what you get when you turn one of these things on. As you may have inferred from the name, Baby Einstein markets itself as an educational tool for babies. All the DVDs focus on a different instructive principle: Baby Bach is music appreciation, Baby Wordsworth teaches first words, Baby's First Signs employs Marlee Matlin to show various signs from the ASL lexicon. So, you see, they are good for my baby. She'll have a leg up on the other kids on the playground this spring if she diligently watches her Baby Einstein videos this winter. At least, that is what I told myself tonight when I want to eat a baked potato without her putting her tiny hands in it or wailing when I refused to let her tip over my wine glass.

It is true, Violet does like to watch these 20 minute "movies" and I am amazed how well they hold her attention. I never thought babies were much interested in anything on TV which makes me a bit suspicious of Baby Einstein. Not so suspicious that I won't plop her down in front of one so I can grab a shower, but suspicious just the same. It is sort of creepy-cute the way Violet squeals and beats her arms when the DVD begins to play. And she looks at the toddlers who "star" in the movies like they are near, dear, friends. I don't think she looks at any real people with as much tenderness as her little face expresses when the weird puppets come on the screen.

Honest to God, she really doesn't watch them that much. I know my Mom uses the Baby Einstein DVDs as a distraction when she's caring for Violet during the day and she needs a break. Typically, I don't play them unless I need to take a shower and Vi's awake. Couldn't she play quietly with her toys while I shower, I sometimes wonder. The thing that makes the DVDs so handy is that when I pop one in, Violet suddenly doesn't notice when I leave the room. On the other hand, if I spread out her blanket and scattered all of her favorite toys around her, she would be occupied for somewhere between 3 and 12 minutes. Enough time to shower and dress?? Doubtful. If I'm in the same room and she gets frustrated, I can walk over to Vi as she plays on the floor and re-direct her attention to another toy. With Baby E, there is no need for Mommy to redirect, the monkey puppet or Marlee Matlin do it for me.

So I've been trying to quiet the voice of the parent I was before Violet was born. That parent reminds me that the television should never be used as a babysitter and that babies whose first foods are vegetables and fruits will be healthful eaters their whole lives. I really had good intentions of living by the Rules for Raising Perfect People, but this job is often far more difficult than I thought. I still know what the "right" thing to do is, but sometimes I just want to eat my baked potato and wine unmolested. And if Violet can be learning the sign for "Neglect" at the same time, doesn't everyone win?

Be Here Now

Momming is, as everyone tells you, a full-time job. Besides going to work, I could probably list from memory how many times I have been out without Violet since she was born almost 7 (!) months ago. Shawn and I have had 2 dates and gone to 2 weddings, I've been out with Jen once, I met a friend after work for drinks about a month ago, and there was one time when I met my co-workers for beers. So when I left Vi with Shawn to go to a holiday dinner for work on Friday, I was a bit disappointed when he called me at 9 o'clock to tell me the little lady hadn't stopped crying since I left home.

The dinner was close by so I got home less than 10 minutes after he called. Violet had 3 vaccines on Friday afternoon and I think the residual effects of those were probably to blame for her unusual fussiness. Whatever the reason, she continues to be a Momma's Girl and her tears disappeared when I walked in to the room. Shawn handed her off to me and, as soon as he did, she turned back to him and grinned from ear to ear, just as an extra slap in the face in case he wasn't sure who her favorite is right now.

This is the thing about Violet's babyhood (and every other mother's baby, as well): It's all or nothing. I can't spread her infancy out; it is finite and fleeting. In 10 years, when she is so over being held, there will be no way for me to recapture that. When she is 17 and wants to spend more time without me than with me, I'm sure there will be no convincing her that snuggling on the sofa is a great way to spend a Saturday night. As much as I'll wish for the feeling of her otherworldly soft skin under my fingers when I am an old, wrinkled, woman, I'll have to settle for the memory of these days she and I are spending together now.

Keeping that in mind, it is easy to turn down an invitation for drinks or rush home from a dinner party or put the vacuuming off for days. Baby Violet will not be Baby Violet for much longer. While I sometimes wish I could put her on hold to do my stuff, that is not an option. So I submerge myself in her babyhood, coming up for air only occasionally, and not worrying too much about what else I might be missing.

This is a poem my Mom recited for me when Vi was just a week or two old. I don't know who wrote it, but it is a wonderful sentiment.

Cleaning and scrubbing can wait til tomorrow,

Cause babies grow up, I've learned to my sorrow.

So quiet down cobwebs, dust go to sleep.

I'm rocking my baby, and babies don't keep.