The C-Prize

Forget the X-Prize, for first re-entry manned space vehicle (or whatever it was exactly). No, don't forget it, but rather, here is the big problem I want to have solved through a competition. Colic.

We have a colicky baby. But last night I found a link to a forum with fairly old posts about Colic and Breastfeeding and I've been reading various threads in between sleeping and feeding and burping and trying to calm A. And the sense I get just reinforces what has been building for me since being in the hospital for labor, about the need for better research and understanding of complications with natural birth, and breastfeeding problems, and now colic. The doctors and nurses and midwives have answers for the majority of cases, but there are these other cases, on the periphery, which cause so much distress and emotional pain for parents.

The colic thread not only made me realize that we and A fall in the middle to low-middle end of how bad it can be (no projectile vomiting after every feed, or crying for 8 hours straight every day!). These parents are desperate and there don't seem to be many answers. Or, rather, there are too many answers. Acid reflux, hip displacement, food sensitivity (for some, to almost EVERYTHING), not burping enough, soy vs. milk formula, antibiotics, etc, etc, etc. Some work for some babies, and for someother babies, nothing works.

So there (and on countless other forums and websites), we have all of this data. Loads of it. Not complete, by any means, but loads and loads of variables. And maybe, with the right statistical approach combined with focussed follow-up experimental studies on interventions, there is some hope of turning "colic" into a collection of terms, much more subtle and varied, to help all of these people (parents and babies) from having to go through all that pain.

Now I just need to find the right people to fund the prize, and the right people to design the competition guidelines to get some great researchers working on this. Heck, even if 100,000 people donated $10 each, that would be QUITE the prize for this type of competition, right? And to put something like that together to solve a problem that affects so many women and babies would be pretty cool. Finally, something for the ladies.

Yup, C-Prize.

The post I desperately want to be writing

I sort of knew I might not get to all those other "future posts" I mentioned last time. Baby A. takes a lot of work. More than we knew. Until recently we just sort of hunkered down and bore it, wondering how all our friends had gotten through this.

Crying during and after feedings, pushing away from breast feeding after 2 minutes and needing to be physically pushed back to start again, lots and lots of intestinal gas after every feeding, keeping her up and not letting her get her sleep. Hours of colic.

And then our midwife got to the "end of her Latin." She had no more ideas for us, on whether to go just bottle (breastmilk and formula) or just breast (to get the baby used to it and not pushing anymore). We should talk to a lactation consultant. And other people. Her huge funds of knowledge were spent in our case. She was cutting us loose and wishing us the best.

Crap.

Around this time I started wondering if maybe there was a milk allergy in the way. The midwife gave a few ideas about how to start looking into this. And then, after a night of just breast milk, A got a substantial meal of formula all at once and projectile vomitted all over the floor and my mom.

Ok, time to get this figured out. The medical system (including midwives) is not meant to solve our baby's problems, not if they are uncommon. The system is good at solving the average problems - poor sucking latch, my overall health, etc. But it doesn't handle those statistical tails very well, and so far, that is where I seem to hang out when it comes to babies. In terms of fertility (where the gynecologist didn't know to send me to a specialist as quickly as she should have), pregnancy pain (where the osteopath didn't catch that my underwear was just too tight around the leg and causing the nerve pain), delivery (where the midwife and doctors on that first shift were not as focused on a natural birth), breast feeding (where the lactation consultants tried their 3 options and then declared that "breastfeeding isn't for everyone"), and now with A's big pains and tummy problems in that little body of hers. Poor thing.

So who is supposed to solve this? I think we are. That is our role as parents, at least partially, to flag those 3-sigma moments, and to push for them to be solved.

Which brings me to the post I wish I was writing. I would like to be making the "after X weeks of colic and abnormal amounts of crying, we realized that Z was the cause of it all and we're now finally calmed down. A sleeps and eats well and spends very little time crying. Thank god!" I think I may be able to make that post at some point, and not just "when she outgrows colic." Because I'm not okay to just call it colic and label her a fussy baby. I want to work on anything we can to ease this time for her, to make it better.

So I've stopped eating dairy products and we switched to a supposedly less cow-milk intensive formula. I'm also (although this seems more urban legend than so well supported) keeping a food diary to see if something else I eat is causing that gas pain. Which means I have eggs and ham for breakfast, but none of my beloved milk products, and now I'm also a bit suspicious of citrus, or chocolate, maybe onions? What have I been eating this whole time she's been home and having problems? Is it a short timescale issue where my current meal influences her next one? Is it longer term dairy (since there are some issues in my family with this)? Who knows. But we're trying to figure it out. With charts and timing.

And it seems to have improved, although having 2 grandma's and an aunt here doesn't hurt one bit. But A seems calmer with less fussy periods. She actually gets to sleep for 2-3 hours at a time, and this means she can be awake and alert and calm at other times, looking around at the world. And we seem to be getting more sleep as well as more calm time when we're awake. So maybe I'll be able to make that post soon.

Not yet. But I've got hope.

And a bowl of almond butter and a banana for a snack.

Life with a newborn

And a blog with a newborn.

Baby came 2 weeks early!

We were not quite ready!

Born last Sunday afternoon after 17 hour labor:
-water broke starting 24 hour clock to deliver before infection risk went up

-skull facing my spine - extra pain

-possible problem with size of head vs size of pelvis

-finally took epidural for pain (didn't plan or want to, but couldn't scream out
any more pain even on a LOT of laughing gas), which slowed down labor

-speeding up labor again would have required pitocin which increases contraction
strength and pain

-but epidural didn't work on left side. at all. even after pulling out part way

-chief anesthesiologist would allow second epidural try because of risks of something

-could have tried another local spinal anesthetic to finish labor but only gave me 2 hours
to get it all done

-if baby couldn't make it in this time would have had to do C-section under general anesthetic (breathing tube, more possible complications, not awake to hold baby right away)

-chose C-section on local spinal in the end

Beautiful baby girl A: Future post - Perfect others

Wonderful week in hospital under care of amazing nurses: Future post - Becoming a mother

Horrible time with breast feeding in hospital among doctors and lactation consultants who didn't quite listen to me or try to figure out my options. Finally at home with postnatal midwife successfully figuring out how to help me feed without teeth-clenching, shooting pain. Future post: Maybe you're just one of those women who can't breastfeed.

Over and out.

The size of the container

I thought that, as usual, it was about 6am. I've been getting up then, getting my multivitamin
and getting back to sleep. But no, 3:30am and there is a bird singing somewhere in the dense fog outside. Not that that woke me up, but i was really hot so I opened a window.

And now I'm up, and waiting for the juice and half a pear to digest enough that I can lay back down without the heartburn. In the meantime, I've been to a number of websites, and found this great visual blog on NYTimes.com:

http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/bathroom-art/

Anyway, back to that heartburn thing. I need to eat more because I'm not gaining as much weight as I should be right now. However, given that my stomach is currently about the size of a mandarin orange, it can be hard to fit much more than a mandarin orange in there at any given time. So I have to pace my eating. But this then means I need to pace my laying down, too. And since I can no longer lay on my back (too much baby weight makes breathing hard), and stomach lying has long ago exited my repertoire, and side lying is not so effective at making my back feel better or keeping me propped up, I have entered a strange minimization problem. Eating spaced out, but napping spaced out more. (And thinking about the correct usage of lay and lie is definitely not on the list once those issues come up.)

Which brings me to all the advice out there about enjoying things now that will be impossible when the baby is here. Like quiet dinners out with M, or sleeping a lot, or the feel of the baby moving. I understand these will change, at least intellectually I do. But at the same time, I can't have more than a mandarin orange at one time, nor is sitting for a long time all that comfortable, so I'm not sure which quiet restaurant I'm supposed to choose.

Taking "a last trip together" has also fallen off the list. Sure, I get that this will change once the baby is here, but too late. I sleep in the guest room right now because the mattress topper supports my weight better. I need to nap in the middle of the day. I don't feel very comfortable in upright train seating. Walking gets my back pain going. I'm not sure there is a destination left that is really that appropriate for me, other than the guestroom.

And as for the baby kicking, or the being pregnant feeling, I get kicked a lot. In all sorts of directions that don't make for fond memories - lungs, ribs, cervix. And I can't remember what it was like not to have this belly. So I know it will probably be the same when the baby is out and I can't remember what it was like to have this belly.

My point is, even though people can say that greater suffering is coming, with lack of sleep and exhaustion and never being alone again, they also say I can't imagine what those things will be like. So how am I supposed to enjoy this time in some way that makes up for the coming time. I have nothing to compare it to. I can't sit here and flip back and forth between pregnancy back pain vs. sleep deprivation. I can only know the discomforts of now.

There was a book I first read in highschool, about life in a concentration camp (don't worry, I'm not about to compare any of this to that....not really), written by Victor Frankl. I think it was called Man's Search for Meaning. And I think he was the one who talked about suffering as gas-like. In that it fill whatever container it has. That you can't say someone who suffered one thing suffered more than someone who suffered another thing, because suffering expands to fill us up. So I have a minor ache or pain, and you have something which involved going to the hospital. Since I can't experience your pain, my pain can fill up my container (me, my experience of pain) as fully as your fills up your container. I have nothing to compare to.

I don't think I explained that very well, but the point is this. I can't experience any postnatal things right now. I can't even imagine them. I still do appreciate people giving me a heads up on some last things to relish. But it isn't worth me trying to relish them as if I also knew what postnatal land was going to feel like.

So I'll have to settle for being excited about sleeping on my back, and being able to drink a whole glass of water just before I do it. Or about being able to walk up our hill without back pain later. Right now, my container is shaped differently than it will be in a few weeks, so for now the best I can do is imagining my current aches and pains and minor complaints being gone. Instead of feeling like I should be enjoying this time more.

I'll do my best, now and later, to enjoy life as much as I can, and put up with the container-full of whatever it brings.

My dog thinks like a 2-year-old human.

I was reading this article on NYTimes website about yet another study that has "surprised" people by implying that animals, in this case dogs, are smarter than we thought.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/weekinreview/01kershaw.html?_r=1&em

I'm starting to get a bit tired of the way these articles go. Always this surprise, or stated surprise, that humans aren't so unique, that we aren't somehow different than "all the animals." Duh. We are animals. And invariably, the dog or crow or parrot or elephant being written about gets compared to humans as if we represent some gold standard. They have emotions "like us," language skills "like us," or problem solving skills "like us." In this one, they study how many vocabulary words a dog can learn and talk about how dogs can be as smart as 2 year olds.

Two year olds don't exactly get wide recognition for being extremely smart. Neither do they sniff out cancer and impending epileptic fits (another thing the article talks about).

Why can't dogs, or dolphins, or primates, or any of them get respected on their own terms. In terms of the things they have evolved to do, and humans just get added to the animal list as yet another example?

It reminds me a bit of Aristotle's going on and on about how the female is inferior to the male, and her body represents some sort of "failed" male, where even conception was considered successful if it produced a male and flawed if the child was female. And if you start there, well you sure have a lot of studies you can do which will continue to surprise you, about how women are almost as "rational" as a 15 year old male, or almost as strong as a 12 year old male, etc.

The point is, which I've made a few times now, that even medicine can be biased in terms of what is normal, and in the case of women and giving birth, having that "males are the norm" view hasn't helped much. It may sound like a silly complaint from me, but extend it to something like breast development and take male anatomy as the norm (ever wonder why males even have nipples?) and complete the phrase "women's breasts are like _______ male breasts." What is even the point? Obviously silly.

So back to dogs, or rats, or whatever other animal is in the news as being "more human than we thought." Maybe it would be nice to look for some other way of comparing animals (including humans), just to give a slightly different viewpoint. Otherwise, it seems like animals are only as worthy of respect if they can be shown to be kind of human, and honestly, given all the other news headlines, I'm not seeing the undisputed upside of human behavior or intelligence or any of it.

What I love most about the pupper, in terms of her skills, is that she is always asking for what she wants. In this way, I often feel much less "honest about wants" than a 5 year old dog. I worry, I weigh the consequences (real, but more often imagined) of what I am about to say. I spend so much time not just saying what I want, that the pupper is my role model on this. She asks, takes it in some sort of stride (like not pouting or lashing out) if she is denied what she asked for, and then 2 minutes later, asks again.

Her napping skills are pretty fierce, too. Someday, I want to learn to nap like a 5 year old dog as well.

Bright "fall" color in Zurich

We took a long walk last weekend, on Saturday, because M had to work on Sunday. This was one of those walks that has no other purpose than taking a walk and seeing a new part of the city.

One of the buses I regularly take passes by the river where a lot of brightly colored trees stand. So I thought we'd ride that bus for a bit, get off and walk to find those trees. It wasn't the sunniest of days, but we did see a lot of color. Even if not all of it was from those trees.


There were trees.





But we also stumbled on a great stretch of walls near the river, covered in really colorful grafitti. The kind that I'd love to have someone do on a vinyl shower curtain for our bathroom (ok, not now that we have the colorful rug perhaps, but when there was no rug it would have been great to have that much color!).
You can see M and the pupper looking in the other direction...apparently dogs don't really get grafitti. At least not the visual kind. She leaves her own "tags" in many parts of the city, just with a different kind of "spraying" mechanism.




And then at some point, we started seeing people actually doing the grafitti. Of course, my first instinct was to think "you can't do that!" But I had just beeing enjoying what was up there already, and it seems like these walls are constantly being changed. Maybe every weekend, maybe more often?

There seem to be some rules, as individuals have some set amount of space to start spraying over the previous artwork. They work slowly, stepping back to look at their work. And the stuff they come up with is beautiful. I thought it was. Especially on a chilly, kind of grey day.

All the bright red orange things in the apartment

Somehow, I guess in a quest to lighten up the white walls and grey tiles in the apartment, we started collecting bright orange/red accessories. Like this cutting board - there is also a red one.






















And these pillows which sometimes sit on the back porch and sometimes on the dark grey sofa.














Of course, we've had this rug for a while, and that may have started the whole process. Matching the crazy orange red in the rug.








And what better way to accentuate that rug than with....a bright orange-red table.













Because, honestly, the red/orange table lamp over on the side was feeling lonely. It needed the company.
















Which brings me to the bathroom, which, like the kitchen, started out all white and grey (and remember how I really liked that red water kettle in the bathroom?).





Well, now there is a lot of orange/red in the bathroom, right down to some hand towels and even a toothbrush I got at my last dentist visit.


Who says there is no recovering from having to return a really great orange-red water kettle. Didn't leave a mental scar at all, or any sort of purchasing behavior which might imply a desire to "regain" that color elsewhere in the house.

phew. That's good to know.

Happy Halloween.