ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

To add to the list of postpartum WTFery, I'd say the arguments you have with your other half are most likely to be the least rational, indeed sometimes the most completely nonsensical ever. Double that after 1am.

'sleep when he sleeps' ok but that's also when i eat and shower

In all seriousness, showering shouldn't be a priority unless it would make you feel better than a nap would.

I say this because it took me waaaay too long to realise that four days with no shower is not the worst crime. Indeed, greeting visitors in your dressing gown with goth hair means (a) nobody outstays their welcome and (b) they might do some chores for you.

friend shared this on fb & it seems relevant re nostril finger cosleeping

http://youtu.be/3DrB_rfiFu8

Haaaaa yes v accurate IME.

If we had slept when the babies slept, we never would have slept because they didn't always sleep at the same time. Also we would have run out of clean clothes for them after about a week.

To add to the list of postpartum WTFery, I'd say the arguments you have with your other half are most likely to be the least rational, indeed sometimes the most completely nonsensical ever. Double that after 1am.

Ohhhh yeah, I remember that. In fact I think I kind of learned a new marital skill from having a baby, the thing where you have a screaming match but then 20 minutes later you just pretend like it didn't happen, no need to even apologize just back to being nice to each other

I've been told to shower once or even twice daily because of stitches - not sure how long i'm meant to keep that up but yet another thing to feel bad about not doing :(

Oof, that really is a pain. In all ways :(

I suck at napping so showers are always better for me than naps - refreshing! (and l had an emerg c-section so cleanliness was/is important). I should really learn to nap like a pro though :/ Naps are really nice when they happen :)

Hahahaaa that video!

I was thinking more about the "sleep when the baby sleeps" advice (I'm still bitter apparently) and I'm really annoyed at how often my doctors told me that. They should freaking know better. "Sleep when the baby sleeps and don't worry about housekeeping." Sure, okay that sounds good and all until you've got fruit flies, no clean dishes, and all of your clothes are covered in dried breast milk/baby barf. I know women of my grandmother's generation (and specifically my grandmother) were expected to prioritize housekeeping over baby and self-care, so that advice was probably useful for women of my mother's generation, but at this point it just becomes yet another impossible to meet expectation. Like, if new mothers are tired it must be because we are houseproud materialists who value clean underpants over our own health and well being, and not because having a baby is flipping exhausting.

The other worst thing a doctor said to me was when I was being discharged from the hospital, four days post-partum and sore and miserable from the c-section, and basically crying non-stop all day because I had to leave Ivy behind in the NICU (dark fucking day that was) and the doctor cheerfully told me that I should be thankful because lots of new mothers wished they could be in my shoes so they could go home and sleep!!!! Which wasn't even true because I was pumping every two hours, as instructed by the nurses and the DVD about pumping for preemie babies in which women solemnly told the camera that after feeling like they had failed their babies with their defective bodies, pumping milk was something they could proactively do to support their babies health and well being.

Gah.

Sorry I'm apparently having some feelings today!

Gonna watch that video again.

Ugh yeah seriously! After c-section I was also told things like "at least you can rest in hospital because nurses are there for you and the baby!" I'm like, have you ever been to a mat ward in 2014?? I didn't sleep for longer than 30 min at a time for all 4 days there, cumulatively about 3 hours of sleep, because i was either feeding, soothing, changing or watching baby, or talking to visitors.

Also cut-it-out: "oh first-time moms! Always so over-anxious! Lol!"
Grrr.

(I'm a pretty chill first-time mom really!)

The biggest difference between mother's of previous generations and us, I think, is the likelihood of relations living nearby. My parents are a 75-minute drive away and Stet's are up the other end of the country.

Yeah, same with us (well, both of our parents are on other sides of the country). That's harder than I thought it would be. I keep trying to convince my parents to move to the midwest when they retire but that's pretty unlikely to happen. I felt that difference most acutely when Jeff and I both had food poisoning/norovirus/non-stop barforama illness and still had to see to the well being of a baby. I never so desperately wanted to live close to my parents in my life. But it's also stuff like seeing how happy my parents are to interact with Ivy and wishing they could do that more than a couple times a year.

I was so happy when we got her to daycare that day. Barf.

speaking of barf, two nights ago my oldest woke up sick and last night it was the youngest's turn. i don't like being thrown up on :(

We have been passing an upper-respiratory virus around my family and my little girl gets post-nasal drip so bad that she gags and subsequently barfs from it. The past few days have been rough.

i think we have the exact same thing

all three of us also have an upper respitory thing right now! lots of coughing and clogged noses and post-nasal drip

Yeah, it's everywhere. My wife works at a clinic and the waiting room is standing room only these days.

it blows. my wife and son went down to her folks today for christmas, and i had to work today so i'm headed down tomorrow. i was totally looking forward to boozing it up a little tonight and smoking a little weed with the house to myself and blast some records, but now that i'm sick i am torn. knowing me though, i will probably still booze and smoke up despite the cold, you only get these nights off every once in a while, you know?

i kinda dig a little bit smoking w/ a cold - kinda likes dropping down into a dark, deep well. i don't drink when sick tho, i find that just makes me feel worse.

I've had some sort of upper respiratory thing more often than not since Ivy was born. I was back at the doctor yesterday. This time I actually thought it was bronchitis but he said it was the same old chronic sinus/ear infection bullshit. He also said that if ten days of amoxicillin doesn't clear it up, I'd have to make a choice between taking a more effective antibiotic and continuing to breastfeed. :(

I'm sharing a vacation rental with my brother and his two 1-year-old twins, and remembering what a nightmare all of that was when my boys were that age. So. Much. Crying. Luckily, since my kids have shared a room their whole lives, they can sleep right through all of the chaos.

haha wait how did I not know your brother has twins too that is nuts

My wife's mother and her husband came to visit when the baby was only a week or two old which was way too early, though to be fair he was two weeks late.

It was incredibly awful and actually much worse than being alone - her husband is an idiot man-child who is utterly useless and disinterested in the kid and only into doing bullshit chores that sound fun to him, like trimming a shitload of branches from a tree in our yard with no plan for getting rid of the car-sized pile of waste meaning I had to wrangle a friend's truck and spend a day making several trips to the landfill while my MiL tiptoes around trying ineffectively to play peacemaker and trying to stay "out of our way" when we had hoped to work her like a mule while she was here. Just shitty all around. My parents are coming out in late January which is a better time and they're far more accommodating and willing to help out.

All three of our families live within 10 miles of each other but 2000 miles from us so if one set was around sadly all of them would be, not sure it'd be worth it.

that's brutal joygoat, man i am feeling you there

Any other dads experience some subtle discrimination at work for being involved dads? Turns out I do.

Oh shit? Really?

I mean, my colleagues always assume to not like, invite me out to happy hour or weekend gatherings or whatever, but it's an informed assumption.

(man alive, who are you?)

(also, LOL)

(LOLing at "Man alive! Who are you??!?!?!?" and not the discrimination you are dealing with.)

Man alive, there's men alive in there.

fist-bump, joygoat.
When I was in hospital a day or 2 after having my baby, my dad came to visit with my mum (who was staying with us already). He came back to the house for the evening, with my husband, before going home, and in those few hours managed to:
- mess with all the central heating settings my husband had carefully set up
- mess with the settings for the TV/DVD etc that we'd just put together after renovating
- turn off the extractor fan in the bathroom without telling anyone so they all thought it was broken
causing a headache for my husband who was already massively stressed out.

dad's an electrician and is always doing this kind of thing (apparently he does it at other people's houses so it's a real psychological black spot) but the previous time he came up I'd warned him hundreds of times to please NOT TOUCH ANYTHING because we were haflway through renovations. He just laughed and said that was like a red rag to him. ffs.

I mean, my colleagues always assume to not like, invite me out to happy hour or weekend gatherings or whatever, but it's an informed assumption.

I've gotten kind of sick of turning down invites to after-work things from my younger coworkers tbh, who have no conception of what "I have to be home by 5pm so I can see my kids and eat dinner and put them to bed" constitutes

A couple I know who are childless but nonetheless as sedate, non-social and middle-aged as any parent, invited myself and my family over for New Years Eve. I accept. He says "what about the children? (aged 4 and 8). I say that they won't make it to midnight probably but we can just leave earlier. He says "oh well, let's just forget it then". UNINVITED!

I like to still get invites to social things. I can turn them down, no problem, but I don't like when people assume I automatically can't make it.

Basically found out that two supervisors, a male and a female, have a problem with me because they think I too often have to come in slightly late or leave slightly early for childcare reasons. They have also both made various comments to the effect that it should be my wife handling these things more often, or else I should "get better childcare." Co-worker has experienced similar. Worth noting I am salaried, not hourly, and work late/weekends regularly.

assholes

yeah pretty much

Was couched in "everyone gives you good feedback and says your work is good, but" so not really sure what their issue is

what a couple of fuckers

They are terrible managers. Is your HR department worth anything? You might bring this to their attention. You can pitch it as "Hey, just doing you guys a favor because I wouldn't want the company to be open to liability..."

But on your behalf and on behalf of wives who handle plenty, thanks, fuck those assholes.

yeah my wife does handle plenty, for real, plus what the fuck business do they have, etc.

We're too small to really have a proper channel to deal with this sort of thing, unfortunately.

you should definitely bring it up to your supervisors. comments like that are worth calling out. you can do it politely but firmly and unless they are really shitty people (which might be the case) they will probably back off.

the part immediately following "unless"

plus they are old and set in their ways