Sucking Face

Ila does a lot of weird stuff with her mouth. The two oddest at the moment sound pretty tawdry: blowing on my nipple and sucking on my face. Right now she's really into opening her mouth just a bit and blowing out air through the small parting of her lips. This was interesting to me just as a new skill in her repertoire. However, she now stops nursing but stays on the breast, just detaching her bottom lip a little...and she blows. This is even more skillful, I guess. Perhaps a new developmental milestone?

The much more graphic penchant she has is to give me big, slobbery open-mouthed kisses. When she's getting hungry, and I am holding her, she leans toward my face with an open mouth and latches on wherever her mouth lands. My jaw, my eyelid, my cheek, my nose. Then, she gets going slobbering and sucking. I'm lucky to avoid a hickey. As she comes at me, like a baby vampire, she has this amazing look of purpose. I'm not entirely sure what this is about. I'm assuming she's hungry. But maybe not?

The funny thing about her Baby-acula routine is that it's weirdly touching to me. It strikes some primal chord. She gets hungry and just wants to attach to me somehow; get her herself hooked up to the chuck wagon. And this is...somehow very sweet to me, like she wants to fuse her little being to me with that part of herself that she is most in touch with - her mouth. It's the port to her little soul.

Anyway, I am sure I sound like a weirdo here, but something in my resonates with this bizarre baby kiss. Something in my very core responds to it. It's not unlike my desire to give her kisses all the time, which is what I do instead of gobbling her up. And I almost mean that literally; I sometimes want to...just absorb her. Freaky, I know. I suppose the mouth is deeply connected to the way that we attach ourselves in love and affection to others. So, I guess I'll take these wacky little kisses while I can get them.

Phases & Faces

Anne Lamott, in her lovely and funny book about her journal from her son's first year, documents the tender and sweet pats her son gave her breast while nursing at some point after he was several months old. This was a new developmental milestone: Hurray, baby can pat! Baby shows love for mama, or, at least, affection for The Boob, that favorite part of mama. In fact, this is a developmental note on many charts, "baby pats mother's breast." This particular milestone is probably not that important, but it lodged in my brain; I've thought of it a lot, especially in those early painful weeks of breastfeeding. It helped to think my breasts, currently enduring nipple torture, would - soon! - be favored with something sweeter and kinder, little pats from their biggest fan, Ila. It was exciting just to think of Ila doing anything. This was New Ila, the tiny larval being who didn't show affection or even much sustained interest in anything. Imagine her reaching out, consciously, with determination, to fondly pat me. That's a pretty sweet little idea.

This is what really happened. Ila started, recently, pulling off my breast mid-nursing, to a position about 4 inches from me to stare down my nipple as if it were a riddle she couldn't figure out, or a taken-for-granted, inanimate, everyday object suddenly gifted with speech or even magical powers. She was riveted, absolutely curious and fascinated. Then, instead of the affectionate pat I'd been expecting, she reached out her hand and grabbed my nipple and tried her hardest to pull it off. Hmmm. I think I'll take the pat. Though she does the nipple stare down frequently, fortunately she doesn't often try to take it with her as a souvenir. This doesn't really feel like an awesome new developmental step, to be honest.

Although, I haven't consulted developmental charts much in recent months, some steps really stick with me. Odd ones, too. For instance, I can't remember anything about when Ila may say her first word according to the charts, but I know that she's supposed to be clapping soon. Which is strangely important to me. Why? I'm not sure, but I find myself thinking when I see other babies her age clap, "Oh my god, maybe there's something wrong with her. Why isn't she clapping?! Maybe she's autistic." Now, the link between autism and clapping isn't well understood, or event existent, but it where my brain goes. She's not smiling much; maybe she's autistic! She's not crawling; maybe she's autistic and developmentally delayed. These worries are not really founded in anything reasonable; nor do I think they are linked to consulting charts and comparing Ila to them. No, it's just old fashioned fear; I must worry about something apparently. Usually it's autism.

Fortunately, for my neurotic, autism-obsessed mind, she has been really opening up to the world lately. She makes a much wider array of faces, noises, smiles. She has this weird almost fake smile. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a smile or just something she's trying with her face. It's sort of a grimacy, teeth-gnashing smile. This is when she is in fact gnashing her teeth. Because, yes, she is grinding her teeth, apparently something normal for some babies at certain stages. This is another developmental step I think I could have skipped.

She's also becoming adept at not-really-wronged cries. When you take something from her hands, she has a special cry. She used to sort of squawk, a hollered mixture of startled surprise and displeasure. Now she does this longer, fake cry thing, like something is really wrong. I suppose, from her perspective, something is wrong to her - she doesn't have what she wants. Now, I suppose, the job of parenting is determining the best way to sort out how you deal with the different wants a child has...which all makes me think that, while having an infant is difficult in it's own way - namely, physical exhaustion and sleeplessness - kids certainly get trickier, taking more sophisticated tools to deal with.

Oh well. I don't really have enough energy to get too worried about anything that remote right now - is this the bright side of sleep deprivation? Plus, that baby is so damn cute.

Singing the Song of Ila

I planned to write something different, something NOT about sleep...then, Ila decided to wake up at 9:30 PM and stay awake until 1 AM. So, here I am, talking about sleep again. It gets...what? Old, I guess. I feel that I'm becoming quite dull - I just talk about her sleep - how little there is, how broken up it is, how I feel about it, how I feel without sleep... There's so much else going on, so many other things to say, right? Maybe not.

This focus on sleep is not unique. I have decided that when people say that having a baby is difficult, it is mostly because, with an infant around, they are missing one of these:
1. sleep
2. free time
3. the illusion of control
The thing is, I will finally "adjust" to whatever broken up semblance of a good night's sleep I'm getting...then, Ila will do something new and exhausting, like this. I think that is probably what life with an infant is like - always changing. Therefore, having an infant is like having infinite opportunities for Personal Growth. Which is about as fun as it sounds.

This weekend, I was thinking about the fact that I'm very aware of how quickly Ila is changing - how much more big and grown up she is now that she babbles, sits up, holds her head up, grabs things...how I've kind of forgotten what she was like as a tiny baby. This makes me a little sad; not that I want to go back...or that I think having a baby is the best part of having children. I hope to enjoy most of my time with her (I'll see how those teens years go) - ideally, I will love all the periods, at least in some way. No, it's not that I want her to stay a baby forever; it's just that watching her move through her baby life so fast, makes me realize that all of the times - all of life, really - goes so fast.

Okay, here we are again, at another of my favorite topics: the Indianapolis 500: Race to Death. Death, endings, death, endings. I'm sorry if you're sick of hearing about it...all I can say is, I'm sick of it too. Apparently, astrologically, I've got a lot going on with Death. I guess it's a very charged topic for my life. So, it's a fertile soil for me to...blah blah blah. I can't even pretend to finish that sentence. Fertile my foot.

Back to life, for the time being.

Other than throwing the occasional sleep curve ball, Ila's generally pretty happy and calm. She is not particularly interested in getting places too fast. A couple babies her age, from her birth group, are already crawling. Not Ila. She's also not really rolling much. She's pretty content to move at her own, unique pace - which is, for the time being, a slow one.



She is, however, busy with other things. She's really waking up to the world of smiling social interactions. She's started getting very excited when she knows she's going for a walk or getting a bath. In fact, even when Kiyomi just takes off her diaper and clothes to carry her naked to the bathroom, she gets all smiley and happy. Then, she tries to dive into the water as soon as she sees it. It's pretty adorable, especially with all her crazy, different-stages-of-growth little teeth. She looks a little hill-billyish when she really grins.

She's been a very pensive and intensely observant little being so far in her life - a little stingy with the smiles and laughs, to be honest. However, she's really coming out of her shell. She used to always do this thing where, if you weren't looking at her, she'd stare and stare at you. Then, when you looked at her, she'd look away. She's looking away a little less and even smiling. I'm so fascinated by this; it seems so different than either Kiyomi or me. I wonder if she will be shy or reserved...or just a little quiet? Or, totally the opposite. Who knows what any of this means?

Speaking of predicting her future, my lovely yoga teacher did an astrological reading for Ila today. Among other things, she has a lot of female energy, focus on women, etc. in her chart. And, kind of a lack of manly energy. That's amusing. Maybe, at some point we should have a male friend be her "big brother." I'm not sure what we would ask of him - to take her fishing? Is fishing something men do more than women? Will it offer the manly energy she needs? Could we just have a mannish woman show her how to fish?

I guess Ila's also supposed to be a career powerhouse. That's also fascinating. I haven't really thought a lot about this in relation to Ila. I guess I have thought that I hope she finds something she loves to do...but, very generally. It is kind of exciting - in a really sort of icky, egocentric way - to imagine her being powerful and successful in her chosen profession. Hmmm, I should probably not get too caught up in that. If I do something ridiculous, like become a crazy stage mom taking my kid to all kinds of gross talent searches or commercial auditions, please kick me in the shin. Really hard. Then maybe slap me, just for good measure.

I suppose on the most basic level, I hope that Ila is happy. I mean, lately - after reading several books on happiness - I am not sure that's necessarily the point of life. What is the point of life? I'm not sure. I guess, "be happy" has been a fairly standard answer of mine. But, when I think about it, I guess I really want to be fulfilled more than simply happy. Those two things overlap...but not always, not at 2 AM when Ila wants to nurse for the fifth time. Then, I think, I am working toward being fulfilled - that is, I am doing the work of having a child, which is something that make me feel connected, competent, engaged, human in a really embodied, powerful way - but I'm not necessarily happy about it at that moment.

In keeping with this, I've been reminding myself, at frustrating moments, that to be present with her is the best gift I can give her right now. Even if it is taking inordinately long for her to fall asleep and she keeps waking up or she wants to be held all day long regardless of all the things I think I need to get done, just moving through those hours calmly and without resistance is an amazingly powerful and simple - though sometimes challenging - way to nurture my little one.

Ila & the Rotten Eggs

So, Ila's Christmas present to us was the worst night of sleep ever. Seriously, compared with the beginning of her life, this was quite extraordinary. Those first few nights of her life were hard, and I felt like a trauma survivor only sort of surviving, but Ila herself wasn't really fussy. On Christmas Eve however, she woke every 45 minutes or so and screamed when she woke up. Teething? Too much excitement? I'm not sure, but it was hideous. It's a good thing she didn't do this earlier - back in June or July, when we were really strung out on new infant insanity - because somebody might have lost it.

Since then, it hasn't been so bad, just her usual waking a few times or being awake a while. However, I just snuggle her and try to go back to sleep. This is so much better than having to get up and walk her around just to keep her from shrieking. I have no idea what I would have done if Ila had been more of a screamer or had had colic. You sort of partially lose your mind in those situations, I think. I imagine you feel like you're doing something wrong, you drive yourself crazy trying to figure out what it could be, but it's really totally out of your control. Ugh, next to "be patient," "admit you don't have control and accept it" is my least favorite life lesson.

After Ila's night of hollering, I think she was a courting a little no-sleep hysteria. She had a crazy laughing fit in the morning when Kiyomi threw an eggshell back down into the egg crate. So, Kiyomi scolded the eggs and violently abused them for ten solid minutes to Ila's utter delight. What a bizarre sense of humor she has.



For the New Year, I would like to try and enjoy the present. I realized last night after watching the very dark new Harry Potter movie (much better than the last!), that I am always thinking about endings. I'm not sure if I'm a "glass half empty" or "glass half full" person; I only know for certain that I'm a person who is obsessing about when my glass will be empty even if it is totally full and what I'm going to do about it and how I'm going to get it filled back up and whether I can even be happy without a full glass.

I realized this about myself right after college. I found that when I was on vacation, I had this panicky feeling about how quickly my lovely trip would go and how sad I would be when it did end. Sort of gets in the way of just enjoying reality, no? Now I'm doing the same thing with Ila. I move through my days with this vaguely panicky feeling that she's going to grow so fast, that I will be old and sad and without my sweet baby, who will be off on her own, walking around on two grown legs, thinking and eating and learning and living her life, in about two heartbeats or something insane like that. Who needs that pressure? So, I say, I'll try to enjoy the present without obsessing about it ending and changing.

To that end, yesterday morning, I was lying in bed waking up with her from our morning nap (I had to join her for this one - holiday exhaustion) just enjoying being close to her. She moves her hands around in front of her when she's lying on her back waking up. She was doing these tiny and totally asymmetrical hand clasps, where her fingers are all interlaced, but unevenly and awkwardly, with extra fingers mashed together, etc. Then she lifted her little hands and spent a minute or two just crossing the first two fingers of her left hand, you know, in the "good luck" or the "I get to lie 'cause I'm crossing my fingers" kind of way. She kept doing it over and over like she was practicing her little finger coordination. It is fascinating and so sweet to watch her little hands and to witness all her new little discoveries.

Post Sleepism

I've given up on anything resembling a normal night's sleep. I feel pretty good about this, which indicates to me that I must be getting at least a reasonable amount of sleep since I'm not feeling totally wasted and homicidal. I've stopped looking at the time at night; stopped trying to figure out how much I've slept. This is a bit disorienting but maybe preferable. I'm just trying to relax into...this new post sleep world. By the way, this is something my unconscious did for me. My rational brain would still be busy trying to figure this all out, stressing about it, weeping in frustration. But this last month has been weird enough sleepwise that my unconscious kicked in and told every other system to just kick it and sleep when I can. Nice. Also, totally outside of my control.

I should say that all this was working beautifully until a couple nights ago. Ila has been waking a lot and whimpering sadly when she's awake. She also doesn't want to nurse, which is unheard of...and undermines my best night time strategy. All this, plus the determined ferocity she has shown in gnawing on various objects, made me ask her, "Are you teething?" She has one of three answers for all questions put to her. She stares intently at me - maybe she's trying to communicate telepathically? - OR she looks away coolly as though my question is both boring and beneath her OR she babbles and screeches in her native language, which, based on the drunken slurred sounds and guttural inflections is some form of baby pidgin Russian.

So, obviously, I had to feel around in her mouth. This sort of works, meaning I glean no concrete information but a hunch of sorts about some knobby and raised parts of her gums. However, this works better than trying to look in her mouth. She frantically tries to suck my finger when I try to hold her little lip back to see her gums. The first three days I tried this, I couldn't see anything. Finally, I saw FOUR teeth coming in! Her top front four. At first, I could only see the two side front teeth - not the middle teeth. I thought that I was going to have a little hill billy baby for a while - two middle bottom teeth and two teeth off to either side. Hmmm. That's a good look. But, I think she's getting all four front teeth at once. Ouch. Needless to say sleep is a little bit of a joke right now.

Fortunately, this all started after our recent trip. Ila had her first adventures on an airline. We flew up to San Francisco, and it went very well. I think she slept better in the hotel than she had anywhere else for the preceding month. (Lesson: Maybe we should live in a hotel? Screw the expense!) We did lots of exploring and visited with some lovely people. I learned that I CAN carry a twenty pound baby in a front pack and a diaper bag on my bag and not die. I did feel a little like a camel, but it was surprisingly manageable. She frequently fell asleep in the front pack; it was lovely and sweet and kangaroo-like to have her little body nestled against mine. However, she liked to wake up - shocked to find herself strapped to me and with limited mobility - on crowded buses and scream and holler until I took her out, under the irritated glares of our fellow passengers. Ah well. It was, all in all, a lovely first big trip with a baby.

One nice part of being on a trip is that I was constantly with her - holding her, interacting with her - without any real distractions. Now that we're home, there are all these boxes to be unpacked...and chores to be done...and just all the gobbledegook of daily life to attend to. I find myself sometimes looking at Ila with a feeling of sadness, like I'm not just basking in the wonderfulness of having a sweet little baby. It's hard. I can't imagine doing other work -outside the home - in addition to basic baby care and life work; I think I would feel racked. Or maybe I would feel totally fine with it? Who knows. I guess I should just focus on my actual experience rather than being sad about what I'm not doing or feeling compassion for the imaginary version of myself that has to work 40 hours a week away from Ila and misses her terribly. Seriously, how schizoid can I be? I'm beginning to think I'm not necessarily all that well. I mean, I think I'm really afraid of grief and loss (so, basically, I'm human)...but to be worrying about grief and loss that I am not and will not be feeling. I don't know. Maybe it's time for therapy. Until then, I guess I'd settle for a little more sleep.

Sweet & Sour

The last several nights, Ila has been bent on torturing me. She wakes 3 or 4 times to nurse, actually whine-cries (she's never really been a night crier) when she wakes and the boob is not instantly in her mouth, and sometimes rustles around for a while after eating before falling back to sleep. Needless to say, these are grounds for being put outside on the front porch...but she's also been doing something so indescribably sweet that I'm totally disarmed. Sometimes when she wakes and I lie her down next to me, she doesn't actually want to eat. Instead she wiggles her little body so close to mine it's touching and then nestles her head into my chest. Then, her whole body relaxes and she goes back to sleep. This is unspeakably endearing and lovely.

It reminds me of something I read in a Penelope Leach baby book about when babies are first smiling. In the manner of a total wet-rag of disappointment, Leach says don't be fooled by those first real smiles! Babies do not smile because they love you. No! It is just an evolutionary mechanism our species has adapted in order to continue to get fed and loved despite screaming for three hours a day, puking on every article of clothing you own, and keeping you up all night. Well, Penelope, it works. The same basic thing is going on with Ila's little night snuggles. It's finally gotten cold here, and she wants to board the mama train for warm, well-fed dream land. It's not about love; it's about surviving the "harsh" winter conditions. Although this is all true, having her sweet little body next to me really does make me feel a little equanimity about the whole not sleeping thing...so, I guess I'm a total sucker. Such is motherhood, I suppose.

In fact, this all makes me thing about the general work of parenthood. It seems that I'm really being heated by the furnace of my own love here - I mean, it's creepy and weird when parents are trying to get something from their babies, be it a sense of love, peace, a reason to live. You can get these from parenting in a functional non-damaging way, if you are really getting these feelings from your own ability to love; your own generated warmth and nurturing and care for another little being; from the power of learning to truly love someone unconditionally.

Let's just admit to ourselves that really parenting is about giving, fairly one-sidedly, for the first 25 years or so. This isn't based on what I anticipate with Ila, rather it's based on my memories of me growing up. (Actually, being a teacher also brings this lesson home, too.) The amusing thing, that Penelope Leach would smile patronizingly at I'm sure, is that I totally think it really won't be like that with Ila. I guess I sort of acknowledge parenting is sometimes a thankless task...but you're so high from loving your baby other times that it all evens out.

This is all essential because, in addition to being a very demanding little being, Ila is sometimes just strange and uncanny. Last night when I went to bed, I moved Ila into her own little bed and settled myself down to sleep. I couldn't really relax and felt like I was being watched. I opened my eyes to see Ila staring unblinkingly at me. The light was dim, but I could see her little mole eyes boring into me. I smiled and even whispered to her, but she just kept staring at me. It was a little Omen-esque or how I imagine Rosemary's Baby must have been staring back at Mia Farrow's dopey-eyed look at the end of that movie...so I had to reach out and touch her to make sure she wasn't actually turning into a little Stephen King baby before my eyes. She did some slow blinks upon being touched and looked a little less like demon spawn. But, these moments it really hits home that I have no idea what is going on her mind, or even what the landscape of her thoughts could possibly look like, being pre-verbal and all. What is it like in a baby's brain? How can I possibly even imagine it?

The world is certainly new and enormous to her in a way that I can't fathom anymore. For instance, we've given her a little banana and apple in the last week. What this means is that she has gnawed, slobbered and sucked ineffectually on the fruit while I held it in my hand. We haven't really started solids in earnest, but I was curious to see what she thought of these things. She did some spastic twitch upon tasting the banana, like she was encountering something wild and not entirely acceptable. But she grabbed at the banana for more...then proceeded to grimace and gag, probably only swallowing a few mouthfuls of lightly banana-flavored slobber. Still, she finally gagged and spit up copious amounts of fruity saliva. Charming.

I guess when you're used to a liquid diet that is delivered in a warm and snuggleable package, real food is bizarre and hard to understand. In that vein, I love when she's nursing and her little eyes roll back in her head. It's like she's mainlining a liquid form of happiness and love. Pretty cool. My aunt mentioned to me recently that the parts of the brain that register pleasure from love and food are very close to each other. Watching Ila nurse, it is not hard to believe this.

Who put the plates where the towels go?

So, moving is no fun. That's my banal yet horribly true observation for the day. We're in the middle of moving and, as I used to say when I was seven, it's the pits. I also used to say, when I was about three times that age, that moving was one of the worst things you had to do over and over again in life - third to breaking up and finding a job. Now, I'd have to add giving birth to that list, though, I suppose you can choose to avoid that entirely if you want. Along that line of logic, I suppose you can also choose to avoid heartbreak by...becoming an emotional eunuch? Okay, so I think we're coming to my second banal yet horribly true observation of the day: if you want to experience probably the most amazing part of being alive - deeply loving other humans - then you risk heartache, frustration, difficulty...and two minute contractions that come right on top of each other for four hours straight followed by months of sore nipples and exhaustion.

Seriously, though, moving isn't fun. However, I think I'd probably update that list of mine from when I was 21. I think "getting a job" would change a bit to "truly pursuing professional choices that both keep you off the streets and don't make you feel dead inside." I'm working on that one. I have a bit of distraction in the form of an infant at the moment, which is probably good as I don't think I could swing figuring out my next life move while getting so little sleep.

Incidentally, I was talking with some other new mamas recently about hearing folks who do not have children gripe about not getting enough sleep. Now, if someone has a sleep disorder, that's fine. But, when someone says to you, infantless person, "Wow, contrary to what I've always believed, I've learned I can function without dying on a few hours of broken up sleep," do not say that you also haven't been sleeping well. I've always believed I am more generous and understanding than this, but I'd like to land a well-placed kick to the shins when someone without an infant complains about lack of sleep. Until you've had a child that, no matter how desperately wasted and exhausted you feel, you must take care of...a child that thinks it's okay to nurse three or four times a night for a week, then spend a week waking up every night at 2:30 AM for an hour or two, just to keep you feeling like you're being subjected to some sleep deprivation experiment...well, if you haven't experienced life with an infant, I don't really want to hear about your sleeplessness. Go to bed earlier! Take a fucking nap! Does that sound grumpy and bitter, or what? I also have always nursed this belief that, if stranded on an island with a bunch of other folks, I'd be one of the level-headed, fair, thoughtful ones. I'm beginning to see that that is perhaps a delusion on my part...

To be perfectly honest, I don't really understand where this idea that I'd be one of the calm and collected ones in a disaster even comes from. I think "finding a job" made it on to my list because I secretly believe I'm not really capable of taking care of myself. I feel so indebted to all the wonderful people in my life who help me with everything from the mundane - making dinner - to the more complex of comforting tasks - listening to me rant about, say, sleeplessness...or just reminding me to live in this moment now, instead of in some deliriously grand, imagined future or some cheek-burning, embarrassing memory. I don't know; maybe I'd do okay on the island with the other people...but a Castaway situation would really be the end of me.

As contradictory and strange as this sounds after detailing my irritation with people for the minor offense of complaining of sleeplessness, I think I do really love and care about people. I hope that Ila also has this deep, compassionate love for other beings, even for the really selfish, hurtful folks. This is, of course, why the risk of heartbreak, why being in a long term relationship or having a child is worth it - because love is the best part of life. For instance, when you are drained from crazy, erratic baby sleep and also trying to do the dumb things of your waking life - like finding all those things that you've misplaced while moving - it's amazing to have other people who love you around to carry your hefty 19 pound baby about, make her smile and keep her safe...while you slowly regain your grip on all those lost objects - the salad bowl, the camera, and even a measure of sanity...