Babies 101

Both my husband and I are the first in our families to have a child and it doesn't look like Levi is going to get a little cousin anytime soon.  But I can't wait to be an aunty and I often think of things that I wish I had been told before I became a mother.  I only have one child and he's not quite 9 months old so I am certainly no expert but I know I would really have benefited from the following advice...

Get ready for unsolicited advice.  Get ready for people, even loved ones, trying to stress you out; creating problems where there are none.  If you are OK with how things are going, then things are going OK.  From the moment you announce you are pregnant, get used to people telling you what you better get used to.  Get used to people trying to make you dread the future, dread each next step.  When your baby starts crawling.  When your baby starts talking.  Personally I have found that looking after your baby gets easier and easier & more enjoyable.  Get used to people telling you that it all goes by so quickly and you'll wake up one day & your baby will be all grown up.  To be clear, I'm not actually suggesting you put up with any of this shit.  I'm just saying that you will get a lot of it.  How you deal with it is up to you.

Babies are all different.  Even babies in the same family.  For every theory, school of thought and parenting dogma, there is an equal and opposite theory, school of thought and parenting dogma.  I say, whatever works. Whatever works for you and for your baby.  Use intuition and common sense.  Sure, listen to advice.  Consult Google.  But between the two of you, you and baby will work out what to do.  Whatever works, for now. Babies change all the time.

Mothers, look after yourself first.  Your baby feeds off you in more ways than one.  Eat and drink properly.  Babies need milk, love and to feel secure more than anything.  If people are making you second/third/fourth-guess yourself, your baby can sense your feelings of inadequacy and your lack of confidence will show in how you interact with your baby.  If you're feeling good, physically and mentally, you are going to be far more likely to be able cope with whatever your baby does.

Don't beat yourself up.  But don't beat yourself up about beating yourself up.  I had a great pregnancy & the cutest, biggest baby bump.  But as a mother, at times I felt like a failure, from the very beginning.  For having not only an epidural but an epidural top up.  For wanting to quit breastfeeding on day 6.  For letting him sleep in the bed with us at first because he didn't like the bassinet.  (Handy tip: put something like a phone book under baby's mattress because they often don't like to sleep lying completely flat).  For needing my husband to do almost everything but breastfeed for the first two weeks because I had difficulty walking and sitting.  (Levi was not only big but his shoulder got stuck.  I had stitches and my tailbone was bruised.)  Because I had a couple of mornings where baby and I were crying at each other because I didn't understand he was overtired, not hungry.  Because visitors would play with Levi and entertain him whereas I was too tapped out to.  Looking back, it all seems so ridiculous.  I blamed myself for everything not being perfect despite being warned not to fall into that trap.  And then felt like crap for feeling like crap.

Listen to stories.  Your story, your experience is the only one that matters. But it can be really frustrating when trying to get the answers to questions because the answer is often that every baby is different.  Sometimes it's just nice to hear a definitive answer, even if it won't really have any similarities to your situation.  Sometimes it's not about looking for answers but common experiences.  Sometimes it's just great to hear that someone's had a much rougher time than you.  It might not be that great to hear the opposite but sometimes, with enough distance, you might even enjoy telling your war stories.  Plus, you can be the one to give someone the realisation that they've actually had it pretty good.  Gauge your audience though if you're doing the sharing.  Don't whinge, gloat or gross people out.

You will hear so much in your antenatal class that it will be impossible to retain it all, especially because you're listening about stuff you haven't experienced yet.  I actually can't imagine being a mother pre-Google!  What I felt most unprepared for was breastfeeding.  How painful it was sometimes in the first week or so, even when he had latched on correctly. Waking up marinated in breast milk.  The pain of being engorged as my body tried to work out how much I actually needed to supply.  Not knowing how long that was going to last, or how long I was going to leak milk.  This is the one area that I recommend researching, even if it's just paying particular attention in your classes or grilling your midwife.  And if necessary after baby's born, consult a lactation specialist.

No expectant mother is unaware that sleep deprivation is one of the hardest things that they will have to deal with.  But personally, the hardest thing about being a new mother was having to focus so much of my attention on this little being so much of the time.  This little being that I didn't understand and that didn't understand me. Not being able to just put him down and read a book.  Or not getting a break from him when my husband was at work.  Sometimes the days would seem so long...

Get out of the house.  As soon as possible & as often as possible.  Whether it be walking a lot or taking baby to playgroups or other activities.  I find Levi is a lot happier when we are out and about, being stimulated and experiencing new things.  Everyone comments on how chilled out he is but at home, he gets easily bored and is often demanding.  He is also really comfortable with being held by other people.  Could just be his personality but we let everyone hold him from the beginning, partly because most people seemed to have more experience with babies than we did.  And it really does help that other people can hold him for me & that he is so sociable.  A clingy baby is so much more work.

Keep a diary.  Take photos.  Take videos.  Don't experience life thru these things.  Do experience the moment by being in the moment.  But have a record so it's not all a blur.  (Or as much of a blur.)

Be sensitive.  As a mother and an expecting mother.  There are people who can't have children, or who are having trouble conceiving.  Don't complain about being pregnant.  (At least not to just anyone.)  Don't ask people when they are going to have kids.  Feel free to occasionally talk about something other than baby.  (This can be especially hard for stay-at-home mothers like myself.)  And if you find yourself getting ready to dispense some unsolicited wisdom to a new mother, stop and consider how it will be received.  And if you're not sure...

In other news...

Levi Bryan Quick was born on September 9, weighing in at 10 pounds 9 ounces, or 4.8kg.  He's beautiful, funny, and I am so in love.  It's not easy, this whole motherhood thing, but it is definitely worth it.

It makes me think constantly about the world I have brought him into.  How bad it might get.  How to try to make it a better place.  How to lead by example. How to stop cursing the dog out in front of him.

I love you, little man.

Is this thing on?

So it's been almost a year since I last posted to this blog.  Once I got pregnant, it was almost all I thought about.  The growing life inside me.  My excitement, fears and discomfort. I didn't want this blog to be all about that.  And it appeared I had nothing else to say.  I still don't know I have anything to say but now I have fewer people to say it to.

Now that I'm a stay-at-home mum, my existence has become even more insular.  I don't really have any friends with kids.  I'm trying but I struggle with the whole coffee group mummy thing.  So far I haven't met anyone I would actually like to hang out with. Initially I was quite active on Facebook after my son was born; my cousins in particular were very keen for photos and details.  But then I started feeling like I was spamming my other friends.  I actually didn't post that many photos but I would post often. Then I really started to resent Facebook.  For making me feel like a nuisance.  For making me feel like I was shouting across a large room.  For making me listen to other people shouting about shit I didn't want to fucking hear about.  The number of people I was hiding from my newsfeed grew.  I began to really look forward to my New Years Day cull.  I even accepted friend requests that I normally would've rejected; just to bloat the beast I was going to gut.

But the final straw was when I tried to fundraise for AMI Round The Bays. I didn't go with the default official charity partner but chose one that dealt with child abuse / neglect.  Something that has been close to my heart for some time but more so now than ever.  I got quite excited at the prospect of using online social networking to raise money to help the vulnerable children in this country.  Or at least to do my tiny part.  I thought that the combination of the seemingly constant horror stories in the media and the humour of my fundraising page was going to ensure success.  I wasn't asking for much.  $10 for a great cause.  And yet not a single donation through Facebook or Twitter.  No comments, no likes, no nothing.  Yet if I made a bitchy comment or posted a humorous article, I got plenty of positive feedback.  So instead of a cull, at the beginning of this year I quit Facebook.  I've come pretty close to quitting Twitter too.  Instead I only use it for when I have something I just have to say.  Social networking has tremendous capacity to bring about change and awareness.  But I guess that's true of a lot of mediums and yet we mostly choose to embrace the inane, the glib, the trite, the meaningless.  Fundraising should have been a breeze.  I was really hurt that not one person responded.

So now I have no friends.  I didn't have many friends before, really.  But now I have cut everybody loose.  There are people out there who love/like me who aren't related to me.  But now they have to reach out and contact me.  One on one.  Or wait for me to contact them.  And we've all become such lazy friends.  But I feel happier without the safety net of Facebook. Quite a few of my FB friends don't have my email address or mobile number.  I have probably lost contact with them forever.  We'll see.

Waiting Expectantly..

We are going to have a baby.  And now that we're going to have a baby, we need a car with a backseat.  Preferably a station wagon with a boot for the dog can sit in, so that she doesn't lick the baby's face as it is held captive in its specially designed and designated seat.  Our parents assure us that we need to buy a house, especially as the one we rent has been deemed not appropriate.  I need new clothes as I pretty much wear the same outfit, outside of work, day in and day out.  I did recently buy 3 new dresses for work as my suits were cutting my swelling body in half (my mother put money into my account for my birthday for that specific purpose) & now I just wear these in rotation; each one for 5 days straight. I almost always feel I need a haircut.  I almost always feel I need some beauty treatment or another. I need to exercise the dog more though I would really like to be able to afford to send her back to daycare so that someone else can do it.  I need to learn how to drive.  I need to learn how to cook or to be motivated to cook.  I need to get out of debt so that we can get a mortgage.  (With our parents' help, of course.)

I am not unhappy.  Far from it.  This baby was planned & we are really looking forward to meeting it in another 6 months or so.  I was not unhappy before that.  But I live in a constant state of not being enough.  Of not having enough.  Of feeling so frumpy.  Of being on hold.  Of waiting for my life to get on track.  Of waiting to not be a financial burden to my husband. I am not standing still or moving backwards but progress is sometimes so slow as to not be discernible to the human eye. At least in this one way, I am indispensable. And quite a number of people are currently quite pleased with me.  For a change.

Yeah, so anyway...

When I first visited the States, I judged American girls quite harshly because so many of them seemed so incredibly simple and shallow.  But after awhile, I realised that most American guys seemed quite uninterested in what came out of my mouth anyway.  Any deviation from the usual mating script was met by a blank stare, followed by an announcement that he was going to get another drink or use the bathroom & then a cloud of dust would appear where he had just been standing.  I came to see why girls might not see the value in developing a part of their anatomy that the opposite sex showed little interest in.

While it did seem to me that the situation was particularly dire Stateside, the differences were probably more attributable to my going there straight from university, to my living in a ski-town, and to American snowboarders being way more like jocks than Kiwi ones tend to be.  And to be fair, I remember finding many conversations with my NZ tertiary-educated peers quite wanting; wondering how people could do so much talking without ever really saying anything at all.

I guess it could all be blamed on youth, alcohol and sexual urges except that explanation just doesn't sit well with me.  I'm not saying I think that none of those factors had any influence.  Just that I find, across the board, a lot of people seem to switch their brain off as soon as they open their mouths; have the most slippery grasp of reason and logic; and are most uncomfortable if you try to challenge or discuss all but the most basic concepts in any detail at all.

And I don't flatter myself at all when it comes to my intelligence.  Once upon a time, I was a very bright kid but ultimately I placed way too much importance in my natural ability & never really applied myself, preferring to see how well I could do with the bare minimum of effort.  Combined with the most feeble memory and retention of actual facts, in particular statistics, I turned out to be quite the underachiever.  While I have not consciously ripped off anyone's ideas for this blog, I'm under no illusion that many, if not all, of the conclusions I have come to, have not been arrived at before.

Which is why it astounds me again and again how easily I am disappointed. How dull and unimaginative people seem happy to be.  How few of the constructs and paradigms, that make up their reality, they are willing to explore.  How content they are to be spoon-fed.  And of the ones happy to challenge, they often seem unable to differentiate between being critical and being cynical; taking the lazy path of refusing to believe in anything at all; casually waving off any suggestion, that something might be worth standing for, with some vague anecdote about how they heard an unsubstantiated rumour that it's all bullshit anyway.

Godzone.

By now, some of you may be aware that I have another blog that features NZ-made clothing labels (and hopefully soon, stores that sell mostly NZ-made clothing labels).  So it can be correctly surmised that I am fairly patriotic.  And I do love this country & started the blog, in part, because of concerns about employment, small businesses, and how community and economy affect each other.

I think we have a very special deal in this little country of ours.  It could use a lot of work though & we could stand to be a bit more protective and appreciative of it.  I think this country lends itself to more boutique-style enterprises, as far as customer demand is concerned, but unfortunately the government seems uninterested in helping small business.

But mine is not an unquestioning, wholesale love.  Growing up all over, I considered myself a citizen of the world.  Because I moved around so much & because my mother's Indonesian, it felt weird to align myself so completely to one country.  Of course, it didn't help that I was never really interested in sport.  It is easier to critique something from the outside, and patriotism seemed to me to be rife with faulty thinking and dangerous antagonism.  (After all, wars have been fought over nothing less / more.)  What I do think is important is a sense of community, of valuing each other.  Appreciating what we've got.  And preserving it for future generations.

There seems to be a fair amount of capitalising on national pride and nostalgia at the moment in NZ.  Sometimes I get an uneasy feeling that I am just being manipulated.  Like "Kiwiana" is being used like some kind of artificial flavouring in ads to sell us to us; or in movies and TV shows to tug on our heartstrings & as some kind of substitute for actual substance.

There are numerous T-shirts and hoodies with strong patriotic messages, cashing in on warm fuzzies, that are in fact made by "our friends" in China.  (Most of the NZ Music Month gear is not NZ-made; though to be fair, they are trying to do more than sell clothing.)  Like the truly obnoxious T-shirt emblazoned with the image of NZ & the words BORN HERE, that was of course not made here.

I wasn't born or made here.  But I live here.  And I love here.  I know how special it is.  And I don't need the message constantly fed to me.  Especially by those happy to sell NZ out.

On Our Own.

It used to be that we were told what to think and how to behave by religion, the class system and social etiquette, but these are all struggling to stay relevant and respected.  We can pick and choose traditions now and create our own.  There is a much greater sense of individual freedom, as illusory as it may be.  The majority still rules but what it agrees on, or decrees, is in constant flux and can be more easily ignored or circumvented.  We often don't even know our neighbours.  And can pick and choose our own social networks.  We still have the law to guide us (which is slower to change & the enforcement of which tends to uphold the prevailing socioeconomic hierarchy) but the emphasis has maybe moved, from what we should and shouldn't do, to what we can get away with.

So are we thinking for ourselves now?  About what we want our lives to mean?  About the world we live in?  How we are all connected?  Or have we just stopped thinking about anything but ourselves?  Religion cannot be replaced by science for a number of reasons.  For one, the message needs to be repetitive and completely self-assured.  Science needs to always be happy to be proven wrong & to let new light shine on old subject matter.  Also, by its very nature, it is not as accessible to the masses as religion.  Its focus and scope is often too small or too infinitely large to give us any answers we require in our daily life.  And it tells us time and time again how inconsequential we are.

Might we turn instead then to the arts to fill the void?  (The very thing our education system tends to place very little value on.)  The arts tell us that what our hearts and minds contemplate does matter.  That, whether or not it continues to exist after our bodies expire, in this life, our soul does exist.  Our expressions of love, anger, sorrow, humour and fear live on after us in these mediums.  Which is why it is so important to tell your truth & not temper it in the name of commercial viability.  Art and entertainment have always had a tenuous relationship; and while it may not be possible to accurately gauge whether the balance has shifted, it is always safe to say that we could certainly do with less processed junk food.  The arts remind us, rather importantly, there is no one reality; that viewpoints are just that; and of our interconnectedness and the commonalities of the human experience.

I have read countless online remarks about how undeserving an artist (whether it be an actor or a couture designer) is of reverence or appreciation, even when they have just recently died, because they did not discover a cure for cancer, etc.  How infinitely more noble it is to be a scientist.  Despite the fact that many scientists are merely whores of capitalism, pushing the frontiers of production and exploitation, rather than healing the world's woes.  Much of what ails us has been caused by us.  And the cruelest blows can be those inflicted by the loss of love, of kindness, of hope.  Anyone who seeks to restore these and celebrate beauty and joy is worthy of our esteem.  Anyone who strives to remind us to take our blinkers off, and to think of others, is deserving of our respect.

I believe there is no big plan, no invisible puppeteer.  Bad things happen to good people & good to bad.  Everything can be taken away from you in an instant.  There is no inherent justice in the world, except that which we actively uphold.  It is now that matters.  How you represent yourself.  What you do more than what you say.  What you bring to the equation.  And what you learn from others.  We are heaven and hell on earth.  And there is no-one else to blame.