Well, Muses was put off and rescheduled for tomorrow… I was all disappointed at first, but given that it is FREEZING and RAINING (and occasionally sleeting & hailing) tonight, I think I’m glad. But tomorrow it’s going to be a lot later, so that’s not so great. And still cold. Grrr. Oh well, gives me more time to practice the butt-twitch! How do you dance while holding a flag? I have no idea. Maybe there’s a Wikihow

When I was in the hospital after Calliope was born, I kept asking them if they would tell me what blood type she is, but they wouldn’t. So I ordered a testing kit online — she is B+, like Mike. I knew it!

Went out to a diner the other day for lunch. It was straight out of some bygone era — all countertops and white bread and large helpings of breakfast goodies dripping with butter and processed cheese. Delicious. It even had a bunch of different pies, just like oldskool diners are supposed to have, so Mike and I got a slice of apple pie for dessert. And they fried it. They fried the pie! Fried pie!! It was soooo good.

I know I had other tidbits but my brain is gone on holiday. I now own 4 skirts and a dress. isn’t that weird? Mike took me shopping yesterday at American Apparel yesterday. I never wear skirts. Or dresses. It’s one of my great failings as a wife, apparently. It seems that all their skirts and dresses can be worn in about 40 different ways. Too bad I’m a hopeless case when it comes to these kind of creative, convertible things…

Time to feed the beast. I’m late tonight. Man, I’ll be glad when the 4AM feeding goes away!

Current Mood:  tired

I am so over this breast feeding thing. But I don’t know what to do about it.

This is an interesting article about the above. While I don’t agree with everything she says, I found it amusing, and hitting awfully close to home in a few ways.

I do believe that there is no way that formula can (or ever will, really) be able to completely duplicate the makeup of breast milk. I do believe that breast milk is far and away the best, and that the scientific claims that it is really important for the baby’s immunity etc., are pretty accurate. I wouldn’t be so flippant about them as the author is. However, I don’t think it is the MOST IMPORTANT THING. The most important thing, I think, is the mother’s attitude toward the baby, regardless of what she is feeding it. And so what happens when breast feeding is so problematic as to damage or hamper the mother’s relationship with the baby? Should she just “get over herself”? Is she just being a moral/emotional/whatever weakling if, despite herself, her attitude toward her baby is changing because she finds breastfeeding so difficult for whatever reason? In my book, no.

I don’t think breast feeding (or not) is a MORAL ISSUE. Sure, there are right reasons and wrong reasons for choosing not to (for instance, I feel that if someone didn’t want to breast feed simply because of vanity, that would be a moral issue, i.e. that is wrong), but most often, those reasons are not explicitly “right” or “wrong” but walk some indefinable grey line.

Which leaves me in a bit of a quandary. What to do, when I get back to Australia. I have been struggling through the breast feeding thing for more than 2 months now. Calliope eats 7 times per day, for an hour each time (in the past few days the time has *finally* lessened a bit). This 7 hours per day is one of pure misery for me. It is horrible painful and I don’t know what to do about it. They say it’s supposed to be painful for about the first 2 weeks, while you get used to it. And while it’s true it did get less painful after 2-3 weeks, the pain is nowhere near gone. I have tried everything possible… lanolin cream, pumping instead (also horribly painful, regardless of whether it is electric or hand held), nipple shields, different positions, the midwife’s suggestions of rescue remedy cream & sage tea compresses. I work diligently to make sure Calliope’s mouth is in the right position. I have consistently treated her and myself for thrush, just in case that was the problem.

I went to a doctor and asked. I went to a lactation consultant and asked. The lactation consultant actually pissed me off because she, of course, subscribed fervently to the Religion of Breast Feeding and told me that my baby would become overweight if she had any formula (to which I indignantly replied, I was formula fed and I am NOT fat, at which point she became a bit embarrassed) and that it wasn’t acceptable to even give one formula feeding out of the SEVEN per day because my milk supply would be permanently damaged.

In the beginning the whole thing was seriously damaging my relationship with Calliope. I was so pained and exhausted from the feeding sessions that I didn’t want anything to do with her in between. I didn’t want to cuddle her, talk to her, kiss her, or look at her. I’d just hand her over to Mike like a little doll and he would spend happy time with her. I dreaded the feeding sessions so much — I just didn’t want to feed her at all. I would get so angry, so frustrated, so stressed out. In the past month, it got a bit easier for a while — she stopped sleeping so much and became more interactive and started smiling, which made her seem more like a person and less like a thing. But lately it has gotten worse again, because she struggles so when feeding… she claws me with her little claws, kicks me with her giant feet, twists and jerks her head violently back and forth, chews on me and often bites down so hard it is just agonizing. I don’t know why this is, but I suspect she is kind of lazy and wants the milk to just fall into her mouth with no sucking effort.

For the past 3 weeks, while travelling, I have given Calliope a few formula bottles — usually about once every other day (though this week I think it has been once per day). Nice organic Swiss formula from happy mountain grazing Swiss cows. It actually tastes pretty good. [I don't believe the bottle is the issue because before that, I used to give her bottles of pumped milk and she wasn't acting like a wrestler during feeding.] There hasn’t been any affect on my supply, or her behavior/happiness/healthiness. Or indeed on her sleep patterns, even though they say formula takes longer to digest.

So the question is: once back in Oz, can I/should I go to partial breast feeding? One the one hand: it’s only been 2 months, and they say you have to do it for at least 6. On the other hand, it has been a whole 2 months, which is more than the really critical period of 6 weeks while the colostrum is still in the milk. Partial breast feeding could work fine, or it could go wrong and I could lose my milk altogether. Dunno. Could go either way. Am I an evil person for wanting to give up? Will Calliope be permanently damaged by not having exclusively breast milk for 6 entire months? I don’t want to subscribe to the Religion of Breast Feeding, but I’m so freaking paranoid. It’s so easy to feel guilty.

I’m sitting here typing this, and my poor nipples are throbbing with pain. And I have to feed her again in just 15 minutes!

Current Mood:  discontent

Szplug, I’m so annoyed at the US Consulate in Zürich. I called them, weeks before Calliope was born, and told them my situation and asked what I should do, and they said “don’t bother applying for her passport and SS here, it will take too long, go away, do it once you get back to Australia.” So I followed that advice.

Now that I’m in the States, I’m discovering that I was supposed to declare the new baby to the US Embassy in Bern. Had I done so, it would be a LOT easier to get all her US Citizenship stuff while we are here. Because I didn’t do that (because freaking Zürich told me not to bother doing anything while in Switzerland), everything is that much harder.

I had thought Calliope would automatically be a US citizen… but she is not. She requires naturalization, because we are not currently permanent residents of the USA. So we have to fill out all this horrible paperwork to get her naturalized and pay a whopping $460 (already paid $50 to get her birth certificate translated into English). If I had got the paperwork from Zürich, it only would have cost about $50 and I could have gone straight to getting her a passport, instead of having to get her a Certificate of Citizenship. Ugh.

I don’t even know if we have all the necessary information… we need to prove that both of us were US residents for at least 5 years after the age of 14. While in Boston, we went to MIT to get them to print out official pieces of paper saying the years that we were attending MIT… hopefully that will be good enough. You’d think they could look up our tax records or something.

I’d just leave it be til we go back to Zürich again and can get the necessary documentation, but since we hope to get Aussie citizenship in the next year and give it to Calliope to, I’m a bit nervous. If she already has 2 citizenships, I’m wondering if the US will be super anal about giving her US citizenship as a third. So I want to get it done before she gets Aussie citizenship (if she does).

Even so, I don’t even think there will be time to get her her passport before we leave. And I’m pretty sure to get the passport the child and both parents have to be present on US soil. How annoying is that!!

*sigh*

Current Mood:  annoyed

So my whole life (well, since I attained my adult height at the age of 15 or 16) I have weighed about 127 pounds. Let’s say, 15 years of being between 125 and 130, but generally closer to 125. Then of course I got pregnant, and gained close to 40 pounds (agggh!) so came in at about 165 lbs. That was my weight, anyway, at my last doctor appt which was about half a week before Calliope was born.

Thereafter, I didn’t weigh myself, just because we had no scale in Switzerland. So here in New Orleans Mike’s sister has a scale, and I weighed myself this morning… 133. Ergo, 32 pounds down, and only about 5 pounds to go. I guess that’s not bad… Calliope was born less than 2 months ago! i’m actually pretty amazed, given that I have done less than zero exercise, and I have been eating an awful lot of junk… you can’t help it in New Orleans

Still, I feel pretty fat & hideous. I can’t be *that* much fatter, since I don’t weigh that much more, and at least part of that weight goes to my (ahem) new and improved (?) bustline, which hardly qualifies as “fat”. Still, I have a mini muffin-top where never a muffin-top was before, and I swear other parts of me are unhappily fatter as well. Will it come off on its own? Or am I going to have to (gasp, horror) start myself on a deliberate exercise routine?

I never could bear the gym. And I loathe running, though I used to manage it once a week after work with a couple friends of mine. (But then it was a social event!) I swear I’ll never get one of those horrible giant jogging baby carriages. Ugh! I wouldn’t use one if you paid me. I’ll have more time now, since I’m no longer working when we get back to Oz, but will have Calliope in tow… I’d probably get in trouble if I stuck her in the Ergo and went rollerblading, huh?

Current Mood:  contemplative

I’ve never been in a city that is as in love with itself as New Orleans. It’s pretty funny. Being here is almost like joining some kind of club, rather than visiting a city. New Orleans loooooooooves to proclaim itself!

Went to our first parade last night. Calliope was not amused. I had no idea what to expect — it was interesting! Lots of beads already! This parade was made up of mostly school age kids — massive high school marching bands, skinny teenagers dancing and twirling batons and flaunting their barely pubescent selves in cute little sequined outfits. Most of the floats (dang, they are about 20 feet high) had little kids throwing out the beads and such on them. Cute. The bands were ridiculously loud — but that’s what you get when you have some 20 trombones, 30 trumpets, 10 sousaphones, and who knows how many saxes, clarinets, and the like all blasting away as loud as so many hundreds of high school kids can blast ‘em!

Mike caught (well, was explicitly thrown, since he was wearing Calliope on his front in the Ergo) a large plush purple bunny holding a small plush pink bunny. Heh. How fitting. Poor Calliope kept squoozling down in the Ergo and putting her little claw in front of her face as if she were trying to hide from all the noise and excitement!

This afternoon we’re going to take a bayou tour. Should be fun! I love all boats, even slow, flat barge-like affairs. Maybe there will be ALLIGATORS. Ooooh. The sun just came out too…

Tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday. Ahhhh!

Current Mood:  chipper