Making Mommy Friends

My husband and I were the first among our group of friends to "pull the goalie" (as Matt would say) and have ourselves a kiddo. Some of our friends are starting the journey down the Trying To Conceive path, but among our closest friends, we're the only couple with a kid at the moment. I don't mind this. I don't feel like Roger has thrown a wrench in my social life in any way, BUT I find myself yearning for someone I can relate to. In the last 7 months, I feel I've spent far too much time discussing poop with people who don't really care to discuss poop and I've come to the realization that I desperately need to find myself a mommy friend, preferrably someone with a child near Roger's age.

Unfortunately at the moment between work and school, not to mention the fact that we're pretty financially strapped, something like a Mommy and Me class is out of the question (though I'm thinking of a way we can make it work during the summer when I'm out of school till August). That would be the most obvious avenue to find me some poop-discussing pals (okay, I don't really talk about poop that much). I'm at a loss at how else to make mommy friends. Some magazine article or book I read once upon a time suggested just striking up a conversation with a mom in a grocery store (or other similar place). I think the exact words were "she wants to talk to you as badly as you want to talk to her." Well, maybe. But I have this problem - I'm inherently SHY. It is extremely out of character for me to simply strike up a conversation with a total stranger, and furthermore, I wouldn't even know how to begin such a conversation. Le sigh. How to get over the shyness?

Well, a kind of amazing opportunity has placed itself at my doorstep. I don't generally believe in fate, but I can't imagine things like this happen too often. I'm not a WAHM, but Roger is a PATOB (Play At The Office Baby... I just made that up), so I'm lucky enough to bring him to work with me everyday. I have a Pack n' Play in my office, a walker, a highchair. Basically my own free, personal daycare with me as the care provider. Recently (in the last couple weeks) our company moved to a new office building, and at this new office building, in the suite directly adjacent to ours, there is another mom with a PATOB. I've watched her for a while now, unloading her car seat out of her car like my working mom twin (okay, is this starting to sound creepy?), and she seems to be roughly the same age as me with a baby who is roughly the same age as Roger. Hello? Is that Opportunity I hear knocking?

Yesterday, Opportunity quit knocking and just went ahead and walked right in. And you know what my stupid ass did? I pushed him back out the door. This mom and I happened to arrive at the office at the exact same time yesterday. We parked next to each other. We pulled our car seats out of the cars at the same time. I was totally unprepared. I wanted so much to strike up a conversation, perhaps comment on her mad skills in somehow perfectly fitting a car seat in a 2-door car. Instead, my damn shyness grabbed me by the throat and forced me to pretend like I was having trouble unlatching the car seat so that by the time I got Roger out of the car, she was already half way into her office. The thing that REALLY kills me, is that she was kind of looking into my car windows like she might want to talk to me too. But alas, I chose to be an Anti-Social Annie and blow a wonderful opportunity to make a mommy friend.

SO I've decided that some way, some how, I'm going to get over this dang shyness and just talk to her. I don't know that another perfect opportunity like the one that presented itself yesterday will ever arise again, but we do work in the same office building so we're bound to cross paths again sometime in the near future. I just need to remind myself that I won't find the mommy camaraderie I'm seeking if I stand idly by fretting over my silly shyness. Challenge accepted!

The Bottle is Your Friend

Weaning is going well. Really well, actually. Currently we're down to one breastfeeding a day (in the morning when Roger wakes up), and after this weekend... none. I was a little concerned about the transition to formula. I read so many articles about the benefits of breastfeeding that I (I hate to admit this) started to become one of those moms who looked down on moms who chose to formula feed right off the bat. Understandably there are many legitimate reasons why some moms might choose to not breastfeed or are not able to breastfeed and certainly no one can fault that, but when I heard excuses like, "I don't want to breastfeed because of what my boobs will look like when I'm done," it was difficult not to look down my nose. Admittedly I still can't understand how someone could be so superficial; if THAT'S your only reason for bypassing breastfeeding... well, to each their own. I think all new mothers should at least TRY breastfeeding - there are studies to suggest that even just a day of breastfeeding is better than never having breastfed at all.

Roger has been taking a bottle exceptionally well from me. He's always taken a bottle well, but it wasn't until very recently that I was the one to give it to him. When he was first introduced to the bottle, he wouldn't even take it if I was within visual range - I'd either have to leave the room or hide under a blanket. Thankfully this no longer seems to be the case; despite our very first bottle being somewhat disastrous, we haven't had a repeat with our subsequent bottles. And truth be told, I actually really like giving him a bottle. All the books I read while I was pregnant touted breastfeeding as the road to a more bonding relationship with your baby, but I find that I spend MORE time gazing lovingly into Roger's eyes with a bottle than I did with breastfeeding. My boobs blew up to such an enormous size during and after pregnancy (I'm WAAAAY past D in the bra cup alphabet), that Roger mostly spent his feedings with his precious little face smothered. And he gazes back. Sometimes he'll reach his little hands up and grab my face or my mouth. Yes, I realize it sounds backwards, but I honestly do feel like we're connected more with bottles than we did with breast.

Other benefits (the supercilious ones): my wardrobe isn't as limited anymore. Gone are the days when I needed to worry about how quickly an outfit would enable me to whip a boob out. Since our only feeding left is the morning one, I just keep my pajamas on until after Roger's been fed. I still haven't given up nursing bras (all my prepregnancy bras are still a few cup sizes too small) and I still haven't given up sleeping in a bra, but I know these will come with time. Also, with the end of breastfeeding, I can finally start focusing my efforts on getting rid of this post-baby belly that's been haunting me these last 6+ months. Yes, of course you can work out while you're breastfeeding, but taking a jog with full boobs - not fun. I tried it for a while. And then I tried pumping before exercising which added more time than I had to my routine, so I hung up the running shoes for the time being. I DO undoubtedly owe it to breastfeeding for the 40 pounds I've lost since giving birth, BUT I still have 10 more to go before I'm back to prepregnancy weight. I can't believe I'm saying it, but I'm really excited to start running again.

But okay, formula's not all rainbows and glitter. First of all, it's not free. The price of formula borders on the side of ridiculous. A 24 oz tub of powdered formula costs around $20 and it doesn't last nearly as long as you'd like to think it would. I'm still breastfeeding once a day and Roger's bed time feeding comes from my stores of frozen breast milk, so with about 16 oz of his daily sustenance coming from formula, we're absolutely cruising through a tub of formula. I'm sure it will astonish me even more when we empty our freezer supply and my milk officially dries up. Matt asked me the other day how long I thought a tub would last. Well, I know if we don't use it within a month we're supposed to throw it out, and I certainly can't imagine a tub even lasting much longer than a week. I'm guessing we'll probably have to buy powdered formula 3 - 4 times a month.

The other downside of formula feeding is the poops. Yes, the poops. Let's be honest here: breast milk poops don't really smell all that bad. Sure, I wouldn't want someone to be marketing a Breast Milk Poop air freshner, but as far as the scent of poop goes, it's okay. Since we started introducing solids (by which of course I mean mushy baby food), Roger's poops have definitely not been as sweet-smelling, but with the addition of formula to his diet, his poops stink to high heaven. STINK. Really bad.

Though Roger doesn't seem to mind it all that much, formula also doesn't taste as good (yes, I've tasted my breast milk. Come on now, what breastfeeding mother hasn't sampled a bit of her milk out of curiosity?). And it's definitely not as convenient as just sitting down in a comfy spot and unsnapping the nursing bra. Since we began weaning, I feel like a good portion of my life has been devoted to bottle cleaning alone, not to mention the preparation process. The bottle warmer that's been sitting in our pantry largely unused since we received it is now a regular addition to our kitchen decor.

Despite its cons, however, I'm not as downtrodden as I previously was about the end of breastfeeding. In a lot of ways I'm happy to be completely reclaiming my body. I'm eternally grateful that our breastfeeding relationship was relatively obstacle-free - Roger and I picked it up in the delivery room like we'd been doing it our whole lives (well, I guess at that point Roger was but an hour or so old so you could probably say he HAD been doing it his whole life). But the bottle's not bad either, and the most important part is that our little man's getting the sustenance he needs and he's healthy and happy. Breastfeeding or formula, I think all moms would agree health and happiness are ultimately what's most important.

"My Sleep Secret" or "My Guilty Pleasure"

Roger has, for the most part, been a great sleeper. We had some issues in his first couple weeks of life, but who could blame the guy? The world was a big, scary new place, and he certainly did not want to be left alone in his big lonely crib all night. When he was 3 months old was when we finally got him to start sleeping in the crib again, and he has since slept about 11 hours a night with no problems (well, mostly no problems. There have been a couple sleepless nights...).

Recently, in the last few weeks, our little superstar sleeper has started waking up around 10 and refusing to go back to sleep (and in one instance, he actually stayed awake until 10. His usual bed time is 8). I couldn't pinpoint the cause of this; he doesn't wake up fussing and screaming. He just wakes up and starts talking very loudly. We usually just ignore him and a couple times this has worked: he'll talk it out for a while and simply fall back asleep. More often than not, however, he'll get more and more persistent until it IS crying and not just talking.

I'm not a big proponent of the Ferber method. My husband and I disagree about what qualifies as "crying it out," and he also possesses the uncanny ability to completely sleep through Roger crying. There have been a few mornings where he'll wake up bragging about what a great night sleep he got, when I'm disheveled from soothing Roger all night and completely mystified how he simply did NOT hear the baby drama that transpired (okay, he's not really bragging, per se, but it certainly feels like it to me).

So lately our little munchkin has been waking up at around 10 or thereabouts. Matt and I have spent our fair share of time trying to remedy the situation: rocking in the rocking chair until it's rocked itself right into the wall, singing, bouncing, walking, producing our own white noise. All usually to no avail. If he persists in crying after we've exhausted all our "go back to sleep" methods, we'll simply let him come into the living room with us while we watch TV. He'll usually go back to sleep pretty quickly snuggled up with Matt on the couch. I've tried to avoid jumping right to the couch solution (which obviously works) simply because I don't want Roger to start expecting that if he wakes up fussing, it means he can come watch TV with us. As any mother knows, it can be exhausting to soothe a baby back to sleep and sometimes it's difficult not to simply jump to the easiest method - the one ruled out because it doesn't mesh with the directives you've set forth for yourself as parents.

One particularly exhausting night, after walking a marathon through our teensy little house, I put Roger back in the crib thinking he was out only to have his heartwrenching cry immediately sound as I slowly backed out of his nursery. This would be the point where Dr. Ferber would tell us to simply let him cry, but it breaks my heart to ignore Roger crying, even for a reason like not wanting to go to sleep. So I crawled into the crib with him. I saw it on "Raising Hope" and on "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" and I'm not quite sure what possessed me to do it at that moment in time, but... I did. It seemed like a good idea. Roger immediately cuddled up with me and ZZZZZZZ. Just like that. I've avoided using this every night, but when all else fails, it seems a better option to me than letting him fall asleep in the living room with us. At least he's in his own bed, right?

Crawling into the crib with Roger has become a little bit of a guilty pleasure for me. Matt and I decided before Roger was even born that he wouldn't be sleeping in our bed with us, but no rules were ever set forth about us sleeping in HIS bed (and I only stay in there until I'm positive he's asleep). I love cuddling with my little man, and I kind of like climbing into the crib with him (it beats doing laps around the dining room table). The tricky part is getting OUT without disturbing him. I imagine if I were a gymnist, I could maneuver out with some cool somersault move, but alas, I am no gymnist. I'm still mastering the art of getting out carefully, BUT at least it hasn't woken him up yet!!