Things I Do, Now (i.e., I'd never do this stuff pre-baby, seriously!)

Since I've had R, I find myself doing things that surprise me, sadden me (as in, pathetic-sad), and even embarrass me. Like:

1. I get into the driver's seat of the car, look over, and find in the cup holder a stale cube of bread (in plastic wrap, I assure you), a leftover bribe for getting R into the car seat without too much back-arching and screeching. I snatch it up, thinking "Jackpot," and devour it, utterly indifferent to the number of days it's been sitting there.

2. I never am able to finish my morning cup of coffee uninterrupted, so whenever I return to it, it's cold. If I made myself a fresh cup each time this happened, I'd drink us right into the poorhouse. So throughout the day, I just keep topping up my coffee with hot water, whenever I have the chance, until by the end of the day, I'm drinking a very translucent brown water for reasons I don't even understand.

3. (a) I often find myself at home, feeling weak with hunger, but unable to do anything about it because the baby's sleeping and there's nothing in the house to eat. I'll occasionally stagger into the kitchen, open all the cupboards, stare into the fridge, confirm there's nothing to eat, and drink some more pale-brown water (see 2 above).

(b) I often find myself out of the house, rushing somewhere, feeling weak with hunger but unable to do anything about it because the baby's awake, but only for the next two hours, and there's just not enough time. There's never enough time.

(c) Alright, sometimes there is food to be had. But there's only so much peanut butter, cheese, and bread a person can eat. Why peanut butter, cheese, and bread? Because these are the things that can be taken out and gulped down in approximately 30 seconds or less. Mind you, gulping down peanut butter or cheese is extremely hazardous, and should never be done unless you have a baby standing at your feet, yanking at your pant leg and wailing. In which case, you'll put your life on the line, day after day. Also, a tip to new mothers: Eat standing. Don't waste those precious seconds on stupid things like carrying the food somewhere, pulling out a chair, sitting down--all that la-di-dah nonsense.

4. I come up with asinine fantasies, such as procuring skunk spray (I've never Googled it, but is there any doubt that somebody sells it online?) and leaking it down into my neighbor's balcony, which is right below our apartment and where she emerges every freakin' hour, from 5am in the morning until 1am at night (okay, there is a short reprieve some time in the middle of the day), to smoke cigarettes. The smoke rises up and for some reason gets sucked into our apartment, if our windows are open. Sometimes it's just too hot and stuffy to keep the windows closed all the time, though, and so I'll open them, the fumes inevitably come rushing in, and when I imagine R inhaling this second-hand smoke, that's when the juvenile ideas start churning.

5. The other day, I microwaved (get your pens out, everyone, this is an original recipe, from me to you) some leftover white rice, then stirred in a handful of frozen peas (thawed with hot water) and half a can of tuna. Ambrosia from the gods--is what you'd think too, after being on a steady diet of cheese, peanut butter, and bread for the past year. I might have even moaned a little, while eating this feast. Oh my god, my stomach just growled in recollection. I need to stop blogging and find something real to eat.

Maybe Not Helpful Tip

In a pinch, breast milk works great--like an all-natural hair gel--to keep baby's hair out of her eyes. Really!

Baby Sunscreen Recs

Summer is heading this way and most babes are going to be getting more sun exposure--unless your baby is like mine and flinches and flails, even when asleep, at the merest tickle of light. I'm the mom that you see either walking with an umbrella when it isn't raining or entombing her baby inside the stroller with layers of blankets, but only because R, my little baby vampire, demands it. Anyhow, for everyone else, Safe Mama recently did a nice baby sunscreen roundup.

Disposable Diaper-Changing Sheets

Before Baby R was born, a fellow dog-owning friend confessed that she used puppy toilet-training sheets when changing her son's diaper. Having no desire to wash the diaper-changing pad cover every time there was leakage (or squirtage, as the case sometimes is with a baby), I thought it was a pretty good idea. One concern I had, though, was that it could add up to a lot of money. My dog's pee pads are not cheap, but because I live in an apartment and mostly because I'm a lazy bum and don't want to trudge all the way downstairs and outside late at night for that last potty break before bedtime (oh, stop sneering, all you home-with-a-yard owners), I'm willing to fork over the dough and withstand censorious looks from the petshop cashier person, who informs me they have a great toilet-training class for dogs.

A second concern was that I didn't really want my baby's skin coming in contact with questionable chemicals, which those pet sheets are often treated with to encourage a puppy to pee.

After touring a few incontinence Web sites, further Googling led me to Mednet Direct. At $34.95 for 300 sheets, this was definitely the cheapest deal I could find. And everything about the site was totally suspicious--just check it out and you'll see what I mean. In addition, at the time, all I could find online were endless press releases about Mednet and its great deal on puppy sheets, but nary a legitimate human review.

Being the wild risk-taker that I am, I decided "what the heck" and ordered a box. For the record, they have a pretty expensive flat-rate shipping charge of $12.95, but the total price was still lower than anything else I could find. A week later, much to my surprise, the pads arrived, and in a fairly compact box, to boot (a bonus, as I'd been worrying about where to keep 300 bloody pee-pee sheets, but the whole lot fit quite neatly in the little cabinet under the bathroom sink).

First things first, the quality of these sheets is not great, especially for dogs. My pup is a little guy, but when he uses one of these sheets, the pee rapidly seeps past the border--and just keeps on going. On the other hand, it's more than adequate if you're using it for changing diapers. Unless there's an accident, your baby isn't going to pee on this thing. It's just to catch a smear here and there, and save you from doing extra laundry. In our house, one sheet lasts us a long time, unless Baby Girl has a particularly explosive blowout.

So that's the verdict: The Mednet sheets are cheap, both in price and quality, but for changing diapers, you don't need to waste your money on something better. They're also great for diaper changing outside of the house, whether you're protecting your baby from having to come in contact with those changing tables in public restrooms or doing an emergency change on the floor...somewhere.

SimplyNoise.com

So we're officially "sleep training"--spurred on by three evenings in a row of very cranky, inconsolable wailing by a baby who's tired but won't sleep. I'm reading books, Web sites, mommy/baby/parent forums, you name it. And one recurrent recommendation was a white-noise machine. So yesterday, Baby Girl, the dog, and I strollered through darkness and rain to Target, in search of this supposedly magical apparatus. They didn't have one.

Sleepwise, it hadn't actually been a terrible day. Our little evening outing seemed to have put the little pookies in a good mood and she continued to nap happily in her Bugaboo Cocoon even after we got home. She's been waking up in the middle of the night, not hungry but fussing, though, and I was eager to test out the power of white noise. A quick "white noise" search brought me to SimplyNoise.com. What I like about this site is there's no downloading required. You just go there and the white noise starts. There are actually three options--white, pink, and brown/red noise--with white being the highest pitch and brown/red a deeper rushing sound, almost like ocean waves. I set up the laptop near baby's bassinet and just let it play all night.

I don't know if the sleep training is starting to work or if it was all about the white noise, but yesterday, at exactly 1:40am (that girl is like a clock, I tell you), I heard the heavy breathing and then the dreaded "eh eh eh," and then--silence. Until 8:30am the next morning. Hallelujah, praise the Internet, Elizabeth Pantley, the Baby Whisperer's idea of "wake to sleep," and the almighty white noise--and I really have to go and feed her now.

Carlson Baby Ddrops

I was at Wholefoods the other day and made a happy discovery: Carlson Baby Ddrops, the vitamin D supplement I'd mentioned in my previous post. A friend got the okay from her daughter's pediatrician--I didn't even think to ask ours (sigh)--so it should be safe to use.

I'm glad to report that these drops are completely tasteless. There is a slightly sour odor, which might bother breastfeeding moms, since you're supposed to put the drop on your nipple (and let the baby suck away), but it really doesn't linger. The best part is that Baby Girl doesn't even realize she's taking a vitamin.

One thing: The solution is fairly liquid, and you need to have baby ready at the breast, right before you put a drop on your nipple, so you can quickly get that boob in his or her mouth. Also, be careful of sudden flailing arms--the first time I tried the drops, Baby R's hand suddenly flew out and went right through the stuff, and I didn't add another drop for fear of overdosage (which maybe isn't a real concern, but hey, I'm a first-time mom--leave me to my paranoia).

The only bad news is that the aforementioned friend's pediatrician also said breastfed babies need an iron supplement. Groan.

Vitamin D Supplement for Baby

There are a lot of differing opinions regarding giving your baby a vitamin D supplement. Only if you live in Alaska--or Canada (love the sweeping geographical verdict)--some say. Just take a vitamin D supplement yourself and it'll pass through your milk to the baby, my friend told me. All a baby needs is a few minutes a day in direct sunlight, claim the old-schoolers. The Baby 411 Blog has a nice post that sums up the vitamin D situation.

Baby R's own pediatrician recommended a vitamin supplement for babies--which I did most dutifully go out and buy. And which, I acknowledge, has been sitting a few squirts short of full at the back of the medicine cabinet for months. Why? Because, at the time, the only supplement seemingly available was a foul-smelling liquid (apparently, it's the vitamin B that's the stinker) multivitamin called Poly-Vi-Sol. You had to give a whole dropper's worth every day, and it was so hard to administer to my little baby because she absolutely hated it: her whole face would scrunch up and turn bright red and she'd repeatedly stick her tongue out, as if to get rid of a bad taste in her mouth--not to mention the fact that she pretty much spit out the majority of what I painstakingly was trying to squirt in.

[Editor's note: Can I interrupt this post to say that my baby is crying her guts out right now and it's extremely hard to think, let alone blog? I've tried everything: fed her, changed her diaper, read her a story, held and cuddled her. Nothing. Hated it all (except the feeding). For any new moms out there, this kind of thing happens and the intense stress it invokes will churn your stomach and shave five years off your lifespan.]

But then I found out that last year, the AAP had upped their recommended vitamin D dose for children from 200 IU to 400 IU. Worried, I did a little online research and thanks to the La Leche League forum, learned about something called Carlson Baby Ddrops. You just need to give baby one drop--applied on the nipple, for example, for breastfeeding moms. Sounds easy and painless, and I'm going to try to find it tomorrow, if the stress of my still-wailing baby doesn't first cause my brain to explode.

Update: I found the drops at a local supermarket and wrote a short review on it.