NaNoWriMo

For those of you who don't know what NaNoWriMo is, here's the official website.

For those of you who are too lazy to click the link, here's NaNoWriMo in a nutshell: it stands for National Novel Writing Month, and in order to be a winner, you have to write a 50,000 word novel between November 1st and 30th (that's roughly 1,700 words a day, for you math-minded types).

What does this mean for me? It means for the next thirty days, I'll be furiously tickety-typing away with one hand and bouncing the baby with the other. Camille will probably be so used to the sound of a clacking keyboard by December that she won't even blink when she hears it (right now, it wakes her up and makes her cry).

It also means that this blog might get a little neglected. A little. OK, a lot neglected. 1,700 words a day wouldn't be hard at all if I didn't have the Camilleworm fussing like a... fussmonkey.

So, that's where I might be all next month. But don't worry! I shall return in December, just in time for all kinds of sickeningly adorable holiday baby picture postings!

Belly Button Answers

In my Diaper News post, I had a couple of questions that I thought would be better answered in a new blog posting than a comment to that post.

She has an innie! Good thing, too, because an outie belly button is on the short list of criteria that will result in her being sold to gypsies. Also included on this list are a third nipple, and a dislike of Stephen King novels.

Camille's tum-tum

This is a picture I took of Camille's umbilical cord stump-area after the stump itself fell off. It was a little bloody and gummy (it would leave little tiny blood smears on her clothes for a day or so), but not smelly or oozing or anything. This scabbed over and flaked off over the next few days, but now her tummy is all cute and blood-free.

I'd take a picture of her current belly-button and post it, but she's finally asleep and I am NOT waking her up.

Don't Shake the Baby

We've all been inundated with information (in the form of TV commercials, pamphlets, or just being told face-to-face) expressing the fact that shaking a baby is very, very bad. We should never shake a baby for any reason, these sources say. Camille likes being bounced, and I even feel bad about bouncing her, like maybe I'm doing it too hard and am inadvertently giving her Shaken Baby Syndrome (Bounced Baby Syndrome?).

In January, a Jacksonville woman shook her three-month-old baby to death. She explained that he was crying while she was trying to... are you ready for this?... play Farmville. She took a break from Farmville just long enough to shake her baby, smoke a cigarette, and then shake him some more.

W T F

She just recently pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. I think her sentence should involve life imprisonment and sterilization.

Camille has been going through a cranky phase for the past couple of days. I think she might have a cold and an upset tummy. Or maybe it's just PURPLE crying. Whatever the cause, the result is intense crying and screaming no matter what I try to do. Boob? No. Binky? No. Nap? No. Bounce? Yes... but only for a minute. Then right back to crying.

I don't want to shake her, because I don't get mad at her. I feel sorry for her. She's so committed to the cry, so distressed, so distraught, that it breaks my heart. When she finally cries herself to sleep, it's glorious, don't get me wrong. But I still want to know how I can stop her cry. Not because I can't stand her crying, but because I don't want her to have a reason to cry.

I'm Dreaming...

...of a White Halloween??

Global Warming My Ass

WTF?! What happened to Global Warming? Dammit, Al Gore, getting my hopes up and shit. Snow in October is the OPPOSITE of Global Warming!

On the upside, I'm not sweating my ass off anymore. AAAANNNNDDDD I had an excuse to put Camille in her snowsuit that my mom bought her.

Yesssss I know, she looks like a pink Ewok. But it keeps her nice and warm and that's all I need it to do!

P.S., I didn't strap her into her carseat while she was wearing the snowsuit. I just sat her in it to take a picture. :P

One Month Old

Camille is one month old today! Time sure does fly when you're sleep-deprived!

September 26
Here she is at the hospital.

October 26
And here she is on the couch!

The teddy bear in the second picture (her name is Stephanie) is my teddy bear that I've had since I was two or so. That bear has been to more countries than most people I know. Every time we do a picture like this, Stephanie will be present to gauge Camille's growth.

And yes, I realize that Camille is only wearing one sock. She kicked one off and I didn't notice until after I took the picture.

Squirt Cancer in the FACE

So apparently, boobs don't simply make the yummiest thing you can feed a baby (milk, duh). They're also cancer-killing-juice squirt guns!

OK correction: potential cancer-killing-juice squirt guns.

Behold.

After reading that article, how can anyone afford to NOT breastfeed? Your baby gets the best food possible, and you can corner the market on a cancer cure. Everyone wins!

More On Poop

So, poop might be one of my favorite topics to write about. There have already been a few poop posts, and I'm sure there will be more in the future.

Today's poop post is all about the first postpartum poop. I'm sure any pregnant woman who's spoken to anyone who's delivered a baby has been told all kinds of horror stories about how horrific the first poop after you've had a baby can be. I was told by one of the nurses that it feels like giving birth all over again (albeit to a very smelly and not-as-cute baby); kudos to that nurse for putting the patient at ease, might I add.

Along with 800 mg Ibuprofen, stool softeners are among the medications you'll be offered after the birth. Here's some advice:

TAKE THEM BOTH.

Especially if you tore at all. And probably even if you didn't. I tore, but according to all medical professionals present, it was barely a 1. Here's some more info on perineal tearing, but essentially, a first-degree tear involves skin and maybe a little subcutaneous tissue, but no muscle. It's the tear everyone hopes for (except, maybe, no tear at all). I was informed that my tear involved only skin, and I needed exactly three stitches (see my page on Beast Day for the rundown on how much I hate the doctor who stitched me up).

Even just a little tiny tear hurts, especially since it's in a spot that you use a lot more than you were ever aware of before it got beat the fuck out of. I never thought sitting down would be such an ordeal.

I also never thought peeing would be so painful. The nurses know what they're talking about when they recommend the squirt bottle and witch hazel pads. I now understand why people use bidets. Do it.

But anyway, we're not here to talk about pee. We're talking about doody.

Take the stool softeners. You'll be so glad you did. After being totally surprised by the pain of peeing, I started to have nightmares about pooping. I avoided eating food that I knew would plug me up (dairy!), and dreaded every time I felt the need to make poopers.

You can't hold in poop forever, though, so the day came where I knew it was time to bite the bullet and give birth to a poo-baby. I went into the bathroom expecting to have my ass torn apart.

And... it wasn't that bad.

In fact, it wasn't bad at all. I hardly felt it. I walked out of the bathroom singing the praises of whoever invented stool softeners.

Stories From My Childhood

Once upon a time, my mom worked at a realty company (she still does, but back when this story took place, it was a more different realty company). One day, she was unable to pick my sister and I up from daycare for some reason, and when she expressed this fact to some coworkers, one of them - Charlie - offered to do her a favor and pick us up.

Well, Charlie came to daycare and picked up my sister and I. I think I was probably 4 or so, and Harper was 2. Little kids, in any case. Harper got strapped into the safety of the rear seat, but since I was a fearless badass, I got to sit in the front seat.

As Charlie was driving Harper and I back to the office, he got cut off by a crappy driver - probably an old person, or in Florida-speak, a "blue hair."

The Dreaded "Blue Hair"

Charlie didn't want to swear in front of the impressionable childrens, and he caught himself before he did, and instead said something like, "Oh, what a jerk!"

I looked up at him, and very matter-of-factly, said, "My mommy would have called him a fuckin' asshole."

The moral of this story is that your kids are silently recording everything you say, and are preparing to repeat it later at the most inopportune time imaginable.

Diaper News

I know, how exciting, right? :P

Well, Camille is big enough to wear 1's instead of NB diapers now. And we don't need the umbilical cord cutout of the NB diapers anymore, since her cord is all fallen off and healed and all that fun stuff.

It's weird the stuff I get excited about now.

The #1 Question

I have many friends with babies. I also have many friends without babies. It seems, however, that no matter what their current offspring status, they all had the same question:

"Did you poop??"

OK, people. You want to know, so I'll answer.

I don't know.

And I'm not just saying that because I don't want to admit to pooping. I really don't know. I didn't notice a lot that day (much of which Jake has reminded me of), and I haven't gotten around to asking Jake if I pushed out a poop while I was pushing out the baby.

You read and hear all kinds of things about labor, one of which is that a lot of women poop. There are many soon-to-be mothers who worry about that the most, and those who have experienced labor always offer this assurance: don't be worried, you won't even notice it.

And I think that's true. For me, anyway. If I did poop, I didn't even notice, and I didn't even think about it until the first time I was asked about it. You're preoccupied with more pressing issues, I promise.

Binkies are Fabulous

Camille loves her binkies.

I originally wasn't planning on giving her a binky, but this kid loves to suck. Sometimes (like right now!) the binky is the only thing that will stop her from fussing. Not that she fusses a lot; I've been assured by veteran parents that Camille is an angel. My mom always told me that I was a good baby, but she recently revealed to me that, apparently, I was a pain in the ass.

And even though Camille loves the binky, sometimes she's not in the mood for it. In those cases, when we try to put it in her mouth, she makes a face like we dipped it in shit. Then she'll spit it out and continue crying or fussing or whatever she was doing.

I don't intend on letting her keep the binky past a year old. When I was a kid, I was addicted to binkies until I was like 3 or something. Finally, my mom got me to get the binky monkey off my back. Oscar the Grouch was my favorite Sesame Street character (after Cookie Monster, of course), and I was under the belief that he lived in our kitchen trash can. My mom told me that Oscar wanted to have my binky (I thought I only had one, when in reality there were about 700 backup binkies), and I happily gave him what he wanted. A short time later, I was spotted peering into the stinky depths of the trash can, saying, "Oscar? Oscar, I want my binky back."

Shhh Baby Sleepin'

I think I'm starting to get used to this whole baby thing. I don't freak out every time she squeaks anymore, which is an improvement. I actually got to brush my teeth before noon today... hooray!

On the other hand, my house is kind of in disarray. I need to do laundry... BAD. Fish tank is still clean-ish, but the water needs to be changed soon. And the dog... poor Sophie. She gets a potty walk in the morning and at night, but I just don't have the energy to take her on a long walk yet. Yet. I will. But I figure, I only have time to go to the bathroom two or three times a day, and she doesn't get more potty time than I do!

Oh yeah, I have the best husband of all time, for a million reasons. I won't brag. But yeah. He's the best.

I'm kind of stressing a little, because my boobs don't seem as full as they were last week. Last week, I felt like a dairy cow. Now, the milk has slowed. I try to pump at least one bottle a day in addition to what Camille eats, and it seems like it's getting a lot harder to fill the bottles up. But I guess the more I pump, the more milk will be produced. That's what they say, anyway.

Speaking of Sophie, she's doing great with Camille. When I put Camille in her swing or bassinet or on the couch, Sophie is usually there sniffing Camille's feet or hair, tail wagging. She hasn't been too overexcited, which is cool, because I was expecting her to totally flip out.

Urp, the Beast stirs!

The First Milestone

OK, so it's not really that much of a milestone, but the CamilleBeast is 10 days old today. That's double digits! They grow up so fast. *sneef*