a fungus among us!

D. is at a point in his development where he appears to have multiple chins, but no neck. In fact, there is a neck there, but you'll very rarely see it, as D. has to be relaxed and leaning his head back just so for you to catch a glimpse. If you try to bend his head back to see it at other times, you're likely to provoke fussiness or at least a lot of wiggling.

A few weeks ago, I noticed some whitish buildup in the folds of D.'s neck that smelled a bit like sour milk. I figured it was, in fact, milk that had built up there from an earlier feeding with the bottle (when D. was actually still taking the bottle, those feeding almost always had spillage). Last week D. took his milk only from me, directly, and yet there was still whitish gunk building up even after I'd wash his neck/wipe it off as best as I could. It seems (says the pediatrician) that D. has a fungus as a result of moisture being trapped in the folds of his neck. We have some cream to use that will hopefully clear it up, but I'm also wondering how I can prevent this from happening again? There are so many neckfolds! It's hard to monitor them all when D. is so uncooperative. Am I just a bad mother?

In other news, in the past couple days, D. has really started looking at me, fixing his eyes on mine for minutes at a time. When I talk to him while he's doing this, he'll start smiling. It may be the sweetest thing I've ever seen.

restless

D. has been fussy much of the day, poor guy. He's finally sleeping, sweetly. I'm absolutely exhausted, and yet I can't seem to fall asleep myself. What's wrong with me?

Yesterday I took D. out to our first moms/kids group outing at this beautiful park on the ocean. We were late on account of my having to try to get D. calm enough to get into his carseat before leaving the house, then needing to change his diaper in the backseat of the car before leaving (and do requisite soothing). He amazingly slept all the way there, but started crying about 5 minutes after I got him up to the playground meeting place in his buggy. I fed him three times while there, and changed three diapers. It took me an hour to get from the playground back to the car since I had to stop 3 times on the way back-- once to feed him again, twice to change diapers. Then I fed him again in the backseat of the car before we left. And again, thankfully, he slept in the car on the way home... which made all that work worth it.

The moms seem nice. There are about three in particular I'd really love to get to know better. No real connections made yet, though. I need to open up more, and be patient. And I need to get some sleep.

raspberry

D. has been laying in my lap and somehow rolled into me enough so that his mouth was touching my belly. He blew a raspberry on it. I can't stop giggling.

on our own

P. left today to go off and defend his dissertation back in Old City. That means D. and I are on our own until next Saturday. Yowza. The past few nights D. has been an absolute terror, crying or screaming for two or three hours with little reprieve. P. is very good at getting him to stop, at least temporarily, by doing these deep knee bend/bouncy kind of things. I'm very inept at them. Sometimes I can get D. to go down and fall asleep by nursing him in bed, but sometimes D. just gets so worked up there's nothing I can do. So I'm pretty nervous about how these next several nights are going to go.

It seems to me that D. spends a lot of time sleeping during the day for a newborn (but how am I supposed to know what's normal?), and maybe that accounts for him being so wakeful at night? I've tried to spend some more time engaging him today while he's awake. I gave him a bath, tried to get him to play on his playgym (he especially likes the mirror), took him out for a ride in the car and a walk by the shore... but when he's fast asleep (like he is again now) I have a hard time finding the heart to wake him...

Maybe the kid will take pity on me tonight? I'm doing the best I can.

fussy bino

Cute as D. is, and as much love as I have for him, I'm starting to feel pretty anxious about being left alone with him-- for an entire week(!) starting this Saturday. He's been fussy-- a lot-- and it can be pretty overwhelming, particularly when I'm running on not too much sleep as it is. He seems to calm down a bit with bouncing. P. is very good at it, but it's quite hard on the arms, and I can't keep it up for very long. There have been moments that my trying to calm him has brought me to tears, and I'm so grateful that P. has been here to provide some relief. Not sure how things are going to go once he's gone... it's not like I've met anyone else in this area I can rely on.

I did find a "mom's meetup group" online the other day, and I'm hoping to go to my first event next week when P. is away. But even taking D. in the car by myself is a bit stressful. Thus far, there have always been three of us when D. is riding along, and one of us always sits in the back seat with D. in order to give a pacifier or bottle in case D. starts screaming. I'm very shy around people I don't know (heck, I'm shy around people I do know, too), but I think that hanging out with some other moms could do wonders for my spirits.

How can anyone do this parenting thing alone?

all I want for Christmas:

detachable boobs. Actually, just one would do. Lately Bino has taken to nursing himself to sleep quite a bit. He hangs on and keeps sucking in his sleep (or so it seems). After 4o minutes or so of this, I will try to (carefully!) detach him... but sometimes, like this morning, he starts to wake up shortly after. The other factor here is that D. often has a definite preference for breast to bottle, so I can't always give a bottle of expressed milk to P. and go take my shower (or whatever). If I could detach just one breast, though...

Man, I'm tired.

world of pajama

Some few nights ago I was lying in bed feeding D. and contemplating his pajamas. They have a picture of a cat and, behind it, an outline of another cat. In my sleepy stupor, P. and I had a conversation that went something like

z: Is this supposed to be two different cats? or is it two pictures of the same cat?

p: It's two pictures of the same cat.

z: But in the world of the pajama, is there one "real" cat and one drawing of that same cat? or is this one cat having an out of body experience?

I can't remember exactly how the rest of the conversation went, but the phrase "in the world of the pajama" had us snickering for the rest of it. Who talks like this? And does it sound just as silly when I use similar phrases in class?

dream

There's a recurring motif in my dream world. It's happened twice now. In the dream I discover I have a second Bino-- it's always a twin sibling of D. In the first dream (a week or more ago now?) I felt very guilty and anxious for having suddenly made this discovery. I hadn't been paying much attention to D's sibling, and I had a hard time even remembering his name-- if I had named him at all. The brother was smaller that D., and thin. I hadn't remembered to nurse him or do much else with him either. I was torn between how to spend my time between nurturing D. and nurturing this new brother, too. In the second dream, the twin bino is even smaller-- about the size of one of my fingers! Same theme. I wake up still anxious.

I can't quite figure out what's going on here. The tininess of the new sibling seems related to all the worries we had about D. at the beginning, though, when he wasn't eating well and had to get his food down a tube. Some of those worries definitely followed us home. In my dream, I'm doing fine with D. (most of the time-- when he's crying and crying I feel like a terrible mother). So why do I seem so afraid of neglecting him?

sweet, sweet bino

D. is 6 weeks old yesterday. He seems to be struggling some, having these fits of inconsolable crying, especially at night. We've discovered that music (he likes Bach and Vivaldi, especially) helps some... 2 nights ago P. danced around the dining room holding D. up near the stereo speakers, and D. quieted. His eyes opened wide, his head tilted towards the music, he was happy. We're making time for music and dancing more often during the day now. But music and dancing and bouncing won't always work. Last night Bino kept crying and crying and crying and crying until we were at wit's end. It's exhausting. During the night and into the early morning, he's really congested. His nose is stuffy and he makes all sorts of snorting and squeaking noises when he tries to nurse. Poor thing. I wish we could do something for him.

We've been having a lot of sweet moments, too, though, and D. is actually awake for more of them. It's lovely watching him take in things going on around him-- like the music I mentioned earlier. Friday night we went out together and found live music playing down by the harbor. We went back on Saturday for this maritime festival. I carried D. around in a sling, and he slept much of the time and was content for most of the rest. He seemed to respond to the music then, too, but a few times he was interested in taking a peak at the world outside the sling, too.