Strategies to Prepare... Nevermind

Amelie,
You're sleeping again!  Holy smokes.  This entry will be for pregnant friends, sharing what I learned in the adventure of your coming, and for you yourself should you choose to procreate some time long in the future.

The birth preparation book that is most written-in and dog-eared of all the ones in my library is Hypnobirthing by Marie Mongan. 

It stuck because the lolling sound of her voice -- oh crap, you're waking up in the next room...
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So here is a picture of what I found when I went into the bedroom, after an unsuccessful 20-minute attempt to nurse you back to sleep (in which you did sleep but awoke entirely upon my trying to extricate myself) -- you, propped between rolled up blankets with another blanket over you for security and under you for the inevitable spit-up, hungrily sucking on your fist despite my just having nursed you for 20 minutes.  And here is a picture of what you look like, triumphant in your efforts, cooing happily beside me now.

Which reminds me, the sleep book I'm currently reading is The 90-minute Baby Sleep Program.  Today is the first day of applying it.  So far you, Amelie, have successfully gone to sleep within 20 minutes of the time it predicts twice this morning -- using nursing as a soothing-to-sleep strategy -- but you have proceeded to awaken 20 minutes later both times.  Ah well, only 50 minutes left until I try again.

More on that Hypnobirthing thing very soon (the new mother wrote naively).  Time to put you in a sling and go get me some lunch.

A Short History of Your Life

• Amelie,  

  This is my first entry since before your birth and it's rushed because any moment you'll wake up.  Today is your 2 month birthday, and you are gorgeous and sweet, a total angel baby, but red-faced with rage today after your shots.  You got full revenge by shrieking so irately that I ended up trapped in a public restroom, sitting on the floor nursing you for most of an hour -- every time I tried to stop you would shoot immediately into full-blown wail.  I have tons of things to tell you about, but for this entry I'll just hit the birth and a little bit of advice for pregnant friends regarding having a newborn.

  Birth was a total shocker to me, a truly amazing experience -- humbling in the extreme and one hell of an adventure.  My respect for all women who are brave enough to give birth, however it happens, grew exponentially in light of my own story.  Your Daddy and our doula Stephanie Watson-Cambell did an amazing job, as did Aunt Sarah, Mama Kate and Yaxa who helped us through the long days of labor.  Aunt Sarah even made the gorgeous bumble bee blanket (with a matching headband) in whose furry loving softness you spent much of your first days.

  Here's the story.  The castor oil didn't work at all, but it did deprive me of refreshing sleep Wednesday night -- which wasn't helpful because Thursday night the hospital began inducement (Daddy hates the use of the word induction when talking about starting labor, because labor is induced, not inducted) so I couldn't sleep Thursday night either.  Real labor kicked in Friday but only by ramping up an IV of Pitocin -- you just did not want to come -- and I finally managed to get you out on Saturday right after noon, a total of 40 hours after the nurses started the process.  You were so big that instead of spelunking around my pelvis etc. like most babies do, you just bulldozed your way through everything (called full-body dystocia) and it took me longer to recover than it would have if I'd chosen a Cesarian.  You ended up being induced 8 days after your due date but born two days later on June 25th, 2011, exactly 10 years to the day after I moved to Virginia to start my life with your Daddy.  You weighed 9 lbs 4 oz at birth and were 21.5 inches long; today you are 12 lbs 14 oz and 24 inches long, at the 98th percentile of length for 2-month-olds!  That's a lot of nursing.

  
  

  Newborn parenthood, though unarguably an ongoing challenge, is nowhere near the hell I anticipated, for a whole lot of reasons. Mostly it's easier because you are a very relaxed baby, sleeping or nursing peacefully most of the time, and because a battalion of good friends and family gave us gift cards, brought us meals, and supported us enough that Daddy could stay home to enjoy you for your first 6 weeks.  Meemaw and Papa helped a whole ton and were here to welcome us home from the hospital. 

  Daddy reads to me while you nurse sometimes, mostly books about parenting strategies and how to help you sleep, so I'm going to post a bibliography with book reviews on here eventually.  Our primary strategy has been to hold you a ton and follow our (well-informed) instincts before counting anything, since humans raised healthy babies since long before we could tell time.  We didn't put you down for the first 10 days of your life, using slings instead, and you sleep in a side-car attached to our bed so I can reach out and comfort you when you start to wake up.  You slept 6 hours on your 4th night of life and average between 6 and 8.  Your Daddy and I are the least sleep-deprived parents of a newborn ever, and you are enormously kind to be treating us so gently.  We've done everything as cheaply and plastic-free as possible, an excellent example of which is that instead of buying a plastic baby bathtub, you just take baths with me.  I'm glad we didn't have room for a baby bathtub because we learned to nurse in the bath and it has become a relaxing and happy time for us both.

   

  Friends who are expecting,

   The most useful thing I can tell you, from reading tons of books but mostly because of our (anecdotal) immediate experience, is to use a cosleeper side-car instead of a crib. They take up way less room, cost a lot less, are actually safer than cribs since you can hear it if the baby has breathing problems, and allow you to care for the infant before s/he wakes up enough to scream. Amelie almost never gets all the way to crying. Oh, second piece of advice, if you use a sling and carry the baby around, you don't need a bouncy seat or a stroller (we're way short on space and $$ so most of my advice follows those lines) plus the baby sleeps really well on your body (again no crying).
  

  The three most influential books I've read are the Science of Parenting (neurological evidence about how parenting strategies impact personality development), Our Babies, Our Selves (an ethnopediatric description of how varied cultures use different strategies with different outcomes) and La Leche League's Womanly Art of Breastfeeding.  Brian's Aunt Diane not only was an author of that book, she was also the expert interviewed by the anthropologist in Our Babies, Our Selves and she popped up in my 4th favorite book, Attachment Parenting.
  
  I forgot to tell you, Amelie, that you weren't named until you were one day old.  We decided to name you Amelie Carroll Lucy Thye, every name in honor of people we've loved -- and a story I'll tell you later.  Yay that you have come!  Those were the first words you heard, in Arapaho, spoken by your father -- hohou tohno'useen, thank you for coming.  Welcome to our lives, you little angel!  And please keep sleeping.  :o)