Patient Baby

When Nathan was just a week old, breastfeeding wasn't going well. Neither of us were 100% sure what to do and despite marathon feeding sessions, he just wasn't gaining weight. We visited a lactation consultant who helped immensely, solved the problem, and our little boy has subsequently porked out. She also made a comment that has continued to reverberate in my mind.

"Wow!" she said, "You have a patient baby."

And she was right. As we practiced latching, we would let him latch, get a few swallows of milk and then take him off and try again. He tolerated this for fifteen minutes or so with the merest of protests. He grunted and rooted when taken away, but there was no screaming, crying, or turning all red in the face. He wasn't passive, but he wasn't angry either.

He has continued to be similarly patient with everything we do. Trying to get him dressed, covering his poor eczematous skin with lotion, bathing him, taking him out to restaurants. (The only exception may be bottle feeding. But, hey, the poor kid already had to learn to eat once.)

Now, watching him try to coax his body into locomotion, I am reminded again of how patient he is. He has always been active, turning somersaults from the first moment I could feel him move. Now, put him on his back and he immediately turns to his side and then continues to strain, trying to get all the way over to his belly. I'm not sure what he thinks he'd do when he got there since when put on his belly he does exactly the same. Push up on arms and chest and L-E-A-N to the side. "I think I can. I think I can." If he could only figure out where to put his pesky arm, he'd be over and rolling across the floor. Nothing could stop him.

And again, he doesn't fuss. He just keeps trying. he grunts and sticks his tongue out with the enormity of his effort, but just keeps straining. On his belly he tries and tries until gravity overcomes neck muscles and his head falls - kerbonk - to the floor. then he picks it up and tries again.

Two nights ago, on his back, he actually got his legs and hips over. He then proceeded to pull himself in a circle, pedaling with his feet, trying to get the rest of his body to just flip too.

If he didn't look so much like the two of us, I'd be convinced there was a mistake in the lab. Who knew that impatient plus impatient squared made patient cubed.

One thing is certain. We're going to need a lot of baby gates. And fast!

Babyless Rant

I apologize to those who have not read the books, but surely you are at least aware of the"Twilight" phenomenon? Boy meets girl. Boy turns out to be vampire. Girl loves him anyway, Girl then spends more than 1000 pages trying to get herself turned into a vampire. I haven't read the fourth book yet, so I'm not sure if she succeeds.

I finally figured out what bothers me about these books. It's the utter weakness of the female character. Here we are in a time when teen pregnancy is on the rise again and somewhere around half of marriages end in divorce and the adolescent book craze is about a high school girl who "falls in love" with someone she has barely exchanged three words with and then spends all her energy trying to get him to either a) have sex with her or b) make her one of the undead so she can spend eternity at his side. Preferably a) then b). Furthermore, she does all of this while reiterating to anyone who will listen that there is no way she could ever be good enough to deserve him. And then, when he tells her he will sleep with her . . . after she marries him, she tells him she is not "that girl". You know, the kind who humiliates herself by getting married right out of high school. Eternity of craving human blood? Fine. Marriage? I should say not!

They are "in love" but the shared ideas, principles, goals that their love is based on are conspicuously absent. It's an sophomoric "love at first sight" infatuation. And don't get me wrong. I have no problem with that in principle. I just disagree with setting that as the standard for girls to measure up to when they are deciding who to have sex with or pledge their life to. I don't think she should marry him. I also don't think she should give up her humanity for him. That she wants to give up her humanity for a boy at all, horrifies me.

She does contemplate, for about five pages, spending her life instead with her best friend who makes her feel warm and happy and good about herself. This is someone who she has gotten to know, who understands her and whom she understands in return. (Don't get me started on the fact that he is a werewolf. That stretches credulity beyond the breaking point, in my opinion.) But no, despite the beauty of the future she can see with him, she chooses the one who makes her feel bad, inferior, and usually miserable. Sweet.

I am also rankled by Bella's pitiful lack of self esteem. "He's too good for me," is a chorus that plays in almost every chapter and her desperation to hold on to him despite that belief is demeaning and embarrassing. When they are temporarily, though she thinks permanently, apart, she considers her life basically over and engages in a barrage of escalating risky behaviors designed to "hallucinate" him back into her life. Eventually these behaviors do bring him back. Again, what is the lesson being taught?

Having said all of this, there's no way I could stop reading. They're ridiculously easy to read and addictive in a trashy Harlequin romance kind of way. Plus, I hold out hope that maybe in the end Bella will realize that she is beautiful, smart, and desirable, that half of the high school male population is in love with her, and decide to consider her options and get to know Edward a little better before allowing him to exchange the blood in her veins for ice. Maybe, just maybe, there's a modern girl in there trying to get out and set a real example. but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Growth Spurts Make Everyone Cranky

It's easy to get smug. Your baby is bigger and starts sleeping longer between feedings. Maybe you only get up twice a night, a generous four hours apart. There's the occasional five hour sleep. You wake up heart thumping, convinced your precious little alarm clock has choked to death in his sleep, but after affirming that he is still breathing, you are unutterably grateful for that uninterrupted time with the backs of your eyelids. And maybe, just maybe, there's no more poopy diapers at night, allowing a thoroughly lazy mom to forego a moonlight diaper change. If the baby doesn't get diaper rash, you start to feel invincible.

And then it strikes. The GROWTH SPURT. Suddenly, it's all gone. Forget four hours. Forget three. You feel victorious if it is a full two hours between feedings. Your good natured child is replaced by a ravenous beast who wakes from every nap convinced that the gnawing emptiness in his belly has never been filled and that if he does not make his demands known to the next zip code, no one will feed him this time either. And does he reward you with a sappy milk-drunk smile for stumbling bleary-eyed out of bed for the fifth time that night? No, ma'am. Growing is tiring, after all, and he can hardly be bothered to come fully awake to eat. You wish the same were true for you, but someone has to keep his head from falling off, the way it lolls forward on his tiny neck when you sit him up to burp him. After 24 hours of every 2 hour feedings, you no longer need the baby alarm clock. Your engorged chest will tell you when it is time for someone to eat, confirming that he has, indeed, done his job. ("I must, I must, I must increase supply".) The final bonus is undoubtedly the increase in excrement. After all, what goes in, must come out. Often all over the PJ's. Only his if you are lucky. Nursing moms, take heed. Make sure there are lots of clean clothes when the growth spurt strikes.

The upside? All those extra calories he needs come from mom. An excellent excuse to eat more. Or eat the same and watch the baby fat melt away. Or eat next to nothing at all because who has the time to make food?

And besides, on the other side of this painful 48-72 hours is a bigger, even more huggable baby.

Baby Love

There really is nothing better than the gooey smile and unconditional love of a 10 week old. Especially one as handsome as our Nathan.

Seeing Spots

There are six confirmed cases of measles in southwestern PA.
Measles. In the same zip code as my not-yet-old-enough-to-be-immunized child. In children old enough to be immunized. Who should have been and weren't.

With more and more parents opting out of childhood vaccines, herd immunity is waning and an epidemic is waiting. How about polio? Our parents breathed a sigh of relief when immunization wiped that disease from the U.S. But this generation of parents doesn't remember. Will it take a return of the iron lung? How quaint. Leg braces? Permanently paralyzed infants? What tragedy will be required to remind people they are lucky to live in a developed country with all the advantages that entails?

As a childless pediatrician I could calmly listen to parents enumerate their many reasons for not wanting their kids vaccinated and patiently counter their usually uninformed or misinformed opinions. I was shocked by the tragedy when I would see a child, near death in the ICU, fighting for their lives against a vaccine preventable disease. I felt awful for the parents who would have to live with the guilt. Worse for the children who didn't have a choice. But it wasn't personal.

As a parent, my stance is simple and selfish.
Vaccines do save lives.
They do not cause autism.
Don't cheat your child out of the best preventative care measure in history.
And keep your unvaccinated potential reservoir for preventable disease away from my angel until he is fully immunized. Stay out of the schools, libraries, McDonald's PlayPlaces. When measles comes, with Darwinian precision, for your child, I don't want mine caught in the tide.

Stepping off my soap box now.

Rest assured that as a pediatrician I can still carry on a reasonable conversation about the subject if required. But I will not hesitate to bring up the measles here in our area or to remind them that their children are breakable and only they can protect them.

Upstaged

The scene: Living room couch. Mommy sits with Nathan reclined in her lap, his feet up on her chest. Mommy blows raspberries and Nathan rewards her with drooly wide-mouthed smile. Ditto for a panopoly of strange faces, songs, and poofs of air blown in face.
Suddenly Nathan looses interest, attention caught by something else.

Mommy: What are you looking at, sweet boy?
Nathan: A-goo (punctuated with enthusiastic arm flap)
Mommy: (making vain attempt to get into his line of sight) Pffffffffffft!
Nathan: (studiuosly avoiding eye contact) a-bleu?
Mommy: What are you looking at? (pregnant pause as mommy follows his gaze) Ohhhhhhh. Your toes!
Nathan: (staring in wide mouthed awe at newly discovered beings at the end of his legs) Mmmmmm-blech! (wild kicking of feet)
Mommy: (touching painfully adorable and wiggly little toes) Those are your toes. And your feet!
Nathan: (giving Mommy a questioning look then returning attention to feet, brow furrowed in concentration) A-bleu? (followed by tentative toe wiggling)

Repeat last two lines about 50 times.

And that is how, today, I was replaced, at least briefly by a new entertainment.
Nathan has found his feet.