Vancouver Aquarium

So yesterday, I did something CRAZY. It all started a week or so ago when my sister pointed out that she hadn't seen Gwen since May, and wasn't due to see her again until August, and that this was simply unacceptable. A premise with which I wholeheartedly agreed. So she pitched the idea of meeting in Horseshoe Bay for the day, as both of us are just a ferryride away. She'd bring my nephews, I'd bring her niece, we'd have a nice visit.

But then as plans progressed towards reality, we realized that my nephews would be bored out of their minds to just hang out in Horseshoe Bay all day. Thus, the idea of going to the Vancouver Aquarium.

Thankfully, Sara's husband Dave decided to come along, because I don't know how we would have wrangled three kids, two diaper bags, a sling and two strollers throughout the aquarium, let alone the adventure on public transit to get between there and the ferry terminal.

Although most of the time I carry Gwen in the sling, I brought the stroller on this trip for two reasons: one, because I knew my back couldn't deal with the sling for the ENTIRE day, and two, because it can hold all my STUFF. When I'm just bopping around town I have the diaper bag over one shoulder and the sling over the other, and that's just fine. But for a full-day odyssey, I wanted some support.

Sadly, Gwen insisted on being carried most of the day, so my back is very sore today PLUS I had the annoyance of fighting through crowds with the stroller without even the benefit of having a kid in it. Next time, I shall insist that Gwen hold her head up enough to be in the MEC backpack or the Snuggli or somesuch, which would allow me to carry both her and her STUFF without any stroller-rasslin'.

Anyway, here are some pictures.

There was only one choice as to what Gwen would wear to the Aquarium - her shark onesie. Sadly, this made many Philistines mistake her for a boy, despite the PINK blanket.



There is a baby beluga at the Vancouver Aquarium - born June 10th. It's pretty small. For a whale, I mean.



Here's Gwen with her Auntie Sara, Uncle Dave, and cousin Andrew. Scotty is there too, but didn't fit in the frame.


And here's Gwen on the ferry ride home. The shark onesie fell prey to a spit-up incident, but Gwen is still cheerful. She was a very good girl all day - I am blessed, she travels pretty well.

PS: Sara and Dave agree, it's NOT a tooth. Stay tuned to hear what Lillian thinks after our appointment with her tonight.

You want the tooth? YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TOOTH!

I really need an experienced parent to come over and poke at my daughter's mouth to tell me what the hell this is.

Signs pointing to tooth:
It feels hard, and didn't bleed when I poked it (so it isn't thrush).

Signs pointing to not-tooth:
Gwen has none of the signs of teething (red cheeks, drooling, chewing things, fever). With the exception of irritability and fussiness, which could be caused by any number of things. Plus, she's TEN WEEKS OLD. And wouldn't the fussiness be going away, now that the 'tooth' is through?

(PS: Yes, I know my title is groaningly dumb. But it made me smile, so whatever.)

My baby swing needs new batteries again

Gwen is ten weeks old today. And looking a lot more chubby, don't you think?

So, things have been hectic around here lately. There's a lot going on.

First, the good news. Her thrush is almost gone, as in you wouldn't see it if you didn't already know it was there. Even more exciting, the nurse at the health unit told me that since my nipples have been symptom-free for nearly a month, I can go ahead and start storing breast milk if I want to.

In other good news, Gwen is really cute when she wants to be, smiling and cooing and nearly giggling.

However, there are times when she is very anti-cute. Her latest habit is to wake up for her night feeding and then not go back to sleep. For example, last night she went to sleep at 6:30pm. She woke at 10:30pm to nurse. By 12:45am we were *still* trying to get her back to sleep. What usually happens is that she falls asleep while nursing or will pull off and drift to sleep while we rock on the glider. Then when I put her down in her crib she wakes up and fusses. I tried feeding her again to make sure it wasn't hunger, then tried rocking, shushing, walking, burping, even changed the diaper to make sure she was comfortable. At one point Chris said he would take her in the office where the white noise of his computer fans usually mellows her out, so I went back to bed until the next time I was needed. Apparently she screamed at him for 15 minutes straight and I slept through the whole thing. At about 1:30am I told Chris to go sleep on the futon downstairs and I took Gwen to bed with me so she could nibble-nurse all night and I could at least lie down while she did it.

So yeah, that part's not so great.

It seems that a major part of her discomfort is gastrointestinal. To put it bluntly, she cries (or screams) when she farts. When this happened a few weeks ago we thought it was because it irritated her thrush rash, but it's still happening and the rash is a non-issue, so I don't know what the problem is. I've started giving her Infacol, but it will be a few days before we know whether it's working.

Now, as for that mysterious bacteria found in her urine sample. There has been a lot of ridiculousness about this which, as I said yesterday, both bores and irritates me, so I'm not going to get into it. The latest is that she went to the pediatrics unit at the hospital today and got a catheter inserted so they could get a "clean catch" sample and be sure any bacteria present were actually in the urine, not just on her skin. I expect we won't have results from that until Monday. In the meantime, she is gaining weight which indicates there is no bladder infection. She is, however, still her cranky little self, and as far as we know there is no cure for that.

I will say, though, that since I am spending less time feeding her she seems like a more content and interactive baby on the whole. As long as she's not having any gas issues.

So, the catheter itself was not nearly as dreadful as I'd feared. Gwen didn't cry at all, which is so strange when you consider the banshee screams she emanates to let us know that she has to fart. After we got home from the hospital, though, she was fussing all over the place and opening her mouth so wide to scream that I could see something strange in her mouth.

Something that looked like a tooth.

It can't possibly be, though, right? It must be thrush or a mouth cyst or some freakin' bizarre oral growth that no doctor has ever seen or maybe even heard of, because she's inherited her charming medical luck from her mom. But surely 10-week-old babies don't get teeth?

Still gaining!

I weighed Gwen at the health unit today and she was 10 pounds, 5.4 ounces. Since their scale and Lillian's differ, to compare apples to apples you have to look at her last weight from that facility, which was last Thursday at 9 pounds, 6.5 ounces. So very nearly a pound in 6 days. Clearly the formula is working.

The nurse I saw today confirmed that there is nothing magical about formula over breastmilk, and heartily agreed that I could "top-up" with breastmilk if that was what I chose to do. So for now it's breastmilk top-up when we're home, formula when we're out (because you can mix formula on the fly and not have to worry about keeping it cool). Soon I'll be lying to old drive-by noseypokes just like Amber.

There is a whole thing going on with the stoopid mystery bacteria but it annoys me and bores me so much that I can't imagine you would want to read about it. Just know that I am frazzled and frustrated and mostly not thinking about it, and I'll let you know what's up as soon as I do.

The Vulnerability of Motherhood

There is this unwritten rule in our society, and it is: if a woman of any age is out in public with a child of any age, anyone who comes into contact with her is welcome to comment or offer criticism on subjects ranging from the child's manner of dress to the behaviour of the child and everything in between.

I call this drive-by parenting, and the best thing about it is that you don't have to actually be a parent to participate! No, single people are just as welcome to criticize as anyone else.

I was vaguely aware that this sort of thing happened, but the first time I heard a tale of it firsthand was from a friend who had troubles with her milk supply and so had to supplement with formula. She told me that she'd been approached in a local mall and asked point-blank "What's in that bottle?". I was horrified. What business was it of anyone's? That child could be adopted. That mother could have cancer and be taking drugs that could pass through the breastmilk. There could be (as there was) a supply issue. The woman could be babysitting and feeding a bottle of breastmilk. There are probably dozens of other legitimate reasons for giving a kid a bottle, whether breastmilk or formula, and having recently found myself in a similar situation I think that most mothers think long and hard, perhaps even agonize a great deal, over the feeding of their babies. The fact that strangers feel entitled to comment on it, knowing absolutely nothing about that family's situation, makes me jaw-clenchingly angry.

I had the opportunity to witness my very first drive-by last Wednesday afternoon. My car was at the dealership for an oil change, so I took Gwen for a walk in the stroller to kill time. We ended up at a nearby mall, where I sat in the kids' play area to nurse Gwen. Another woman came by with two tween-aged kids, a boy and a girl, who commenced playing with the crayons and blocks and so on while the woman sat on the bench beside me, idly paging through a kids' book. Not long after, a fifty-ish woman came walking by. Without pausing in her stride, nor meeting anyone's eyes, she commented briskly to no one in particular, "They're missing school already!?" with a look of disapproval shot towards the tweens. Aware, as apparently she was not, that it was the 25th of June, I turned to the other woman and asked, "Isn't school out for the summer?" She confirmed that it had been the last day. But Granny Drive-By was already long gone. She didn't want a conversation, she didn't want an answer, she didn't want to give anyone a chance to defend themselves by giving valuable information. She just wanted to drop her ill-informed opinion, giving someone the opportunity to feel like crap, and continue on her merry way.

I don't know how the other woman was affected, but I was in a blind rage.

Ever since I heard about the "What's in that bottle?" comment, I've been working on coming up with snappy retorts that make it clear I don't think it's anybody's business how I feed, dress, talk to, or treat my child. But with this event, I suddenly understood that when the Drive-By happens to me, and it will, I won't get a chance to respond, whether in defense of my actions or of my right to make my own parenting decisions.

The very next day, we were told that we had to start supplementing Gwen a lot more rigourously than we had been. One week and 10.5 ounces later, it seems this was the right choice. Bottle feeding, for us, is the new black. Bring on the drive-by.

Things have changed in the past generation. When Chris and I were infants, breastfeeding was not nearly as common as it is today. Breastfeeding was what animals did, and maybe third world women who couldn't afford formula. But here in North America, we knew better! We could have Scientifically Developed Formula, specially created to give your baby all the nutritional value he or she needed. I was breastfed, and my mom tells me it was a bit of a rarity at the time. Chris was formula-fed, and his mom has been subtly pushing me to give up breastfeeding since the first week of Gwen's life. But today, we know that breastmilk is absolutely the best food you can give your child. The American Association of Pediatrics recommends babies be breastfed exclusively for six months, and continue receiving breastmilk for their first two years and even beyond. There are hundreds of reasons why Breast is Best.

It's wonderful to have all this support and knowledge about breastfeeding, encouraging new moms to do what's best for their babies.

But.

As mentioned above, there are a lot of reasons why any given baby at any given time might be drinking from a bottle. And I think we've swung too far into Breastfeeding Fanatacism. I've seen moms at the drop-in who are supplementing with formula and feel they need to defend this choice by explaining their baby's whole life story before they can say anything else about any concerns or questions they have that week. I've heard other moms talk about how all they can find on the 'net is info on how great breastfeeding is, and no useful info on how to formula feed. And I've mentioned here before about how breastfeeding is touted as a Beautiful, Natural, Bonding Opportunity, a myth that annoys me no end because if you, as a new mom, don't find it Beautiful and Natural, there must be something wrong with you!*

So, society wants you to breastfeed. And you know it is best for your baby. So, assuming you are willing and able to do so, off you merrily go, nursing your baby whenever and wherever she happens to request it. But there is another facet to this issue: the pure unseemliness of public nursing. My friend Tricia was recently in another local mall (apparently, that's all we new moms do; go to the drop-ins, and then hang out at the mall) and was looking for a place to nurse her son. She was kindly but firmly directed towards the 'family room', which is of course nothing more than a washroom with a couple of stalls, a change table, and one chair right next to the garbage can. Yes, any new mother would love to spend an hour or so sitting in such a room! Ever so much more pleasant than sitting in the mall proper, watching the world go by! So you're subject to criticism no matter what you do; society expects you to breastfeed, but they sure as hell don't want to see it.**

*I also think that breastfeeding is so hard and painful in the beginning that once it stops hurting and starts working, women are so flooded with relief that they think it is a Beautiful and Natural Bonding Opportunity, when in fact it is just Mind-Numbingly Dull. But that's just my opinion.

**I am completely over my fear of nursing in public. I have even considered doing a summer tour of Important Nanaimo Landmarks and nursing at every one of them, just to stir the pot and give myself something to do. In certain situations I do use the Hooter Hider, but if I don't feel like it then I don't.

By the way: Your right to breastfeed anytime, anywhere is protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.