Sunday, June 28, 2009

How Much is Too Much

Considering all the changes in my life in the recent couple of months I'd say I'm coping quite well. But every once in a while I feel like I've had it! Enough with the sleepless nights and not fitting into any of my clothing... Enough with being a walking breathing milk dispenser... Enough with not being able to do anything that requires concentration. Whatever I decide to do, it's going to have interruptions every couple of hours, or even every half an hour, or sometimes the entire plan is clouded with a constant interruption.

The main thought on my mind in the past few days has been my doctorate year validation. Tomorrow I'm going to have to stand in front of a jury and describe what I have been doing in my first year in PhD studies. Until a few days ago I had no idea. My mind was blank. I did... uhm... STUFF. All sorts of stuff! There was the 6 weeks I spent in San Diego... There were the couple of months that were wasted on small things. There were some experiments that I know I did but I couldn't even remember if I can use any of them in my article. So I had to make sure I know what to tell that jury. I spent a couple of days going over my data to find out what I've done and what I still need to do for my article. You can probably imagine it's pretty stressful to make an overview of your work progress when you haven't really thought of it for a while.

It appears I've been quite a busy bee and I definitely shouldn't fall short on my list of achievements for this year. I didn't create a cure for cancer but I'm sure my achievements are enough for a first year PhD student. Also I didn't quite reach the most optimistic goal I had set for myself - I didn't finish writing the article - but the year definitely didn't go to waste. I will talk about the best parts of the school year tomorrow and then I can go back to not thinking about school for a while.

...And a good thing it is that I don't have to think about it for a while because I want to chill and relax! I want to spend all my free time on myself! It seems I don't have much of MY TIME anymore. I hadn't really thought about it much but now that I needed some time for schoolwork it became clear how tight my schedule really is. Once every hour and a half I'm feeding the baby. That takes up to 20 minutes. About every other time baby girl won't fall asleep after feeding and wants to be played with. That's the best part. She's really cute when she's playful and it hardly feels like work but it still takes about 20-30 minutes. About the same amount of time is spent on baby-grooming (diapers, washing, changing clothing, admiring cute baby hair ). That leaves me roughly 40 minutes during each feeding cycle. Then there are the times when she won't settle in any position. I change her positions for 40 minutes and then it's feeding time again. And then there are times when she will only sleep in my arms so those 40 minutes are spent with only one hand free.

Oddly, it doesn't usually feel very restricting. I have learned to eat with one hand even if it's my left hand. I spend more time using the keyboard with one hand than with both hands and I have even learned to use mouse with my left hand. I have my tricks for getting everything done. It only takes a few minutes to speed-clean the apartment and I can usually find the 15 minutes to also wash the dishes. When I'm feeding the baby I use the time to watch stupid housewife shows on TV and I read housewife forums and write my very own one-handed typo-rich posts. Oprah is quite entertaining but I cringe every time she tells a sob story and asks people to harass politicians for a bill to be passed. I even watched John Edward's medium talk show Cross Country a few times and it seemed SO REAL! That's the real housewife trap! This guy John Edward was really talking with spirits!!! But then I watched it with Erkki and he told me how the scam works. Now I can't watch it anymore and I keep seeing right through John Erdward's mind play. I haven't watched even one episode of any Mexican soap opera yet and I doubt I'll be that desperate for daytime entertainment any time soon.

In short, taking care of a baby is the best excuse to spend time "doing nothing". Just staying in and not doing anything noteworthy no longer makes me feel guilty for being so lazy. There is a charm to this kind of life.

The busy baby schedule wouldn't be that bad assuming I can spend all the free time on things that really matter - Internet, TV, and tidying myself or the apartment. But when schoolwork takes away all this time my chores suddenly become very tedious. It's annoying to leave intense Excel tables to go and change a diaper. A simple task suddenly starts to feel so restricting. And it's not very easy or fast to make scientific graphs with only my left hand. Actually that's fun to try. So when does baby business become too much work?

After a long day I go to sleep. All of us are used to treating night time as a break from everything else. Whatever you were doing and how long it took doesn't matter after you go to sleep. It doesn't even matter if you're going to have to wake up early because the time between going to bed and waking up early belongs to you! Now imagine going to sleep knowing you will be woken up 1-3 hours from now! And you might be woken up 1 hour, 2 hours and 3 hours from now. You can not plan to have a good night's sleep because even the night isn't yours anymore.

But tomorrow after the validation I will play Sims3 while balancing a baby on my shoulder and I will use MY free time during the day because I know I won't have any of that at night time.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Odd Questions

A young woman in a forum described an odd situation. Soon after birth someone asked the mother, "Are you happy?" and the mother answered, "no". This was followed by a discussion about what a weird thing to ask. I tried to figure out what I would have answered. I probably would have diverted by saying, "I have no idea. I'm just tired.". I can't really say I was overjoyed like all those people in the movies after giving birth. It was more like a relief that the baby wasn't born dead or anything.

And you all know how paranoid I was about bad stuff that COULD happen. By the way, I'm a little paranoid about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), a condition where a baby just stops breathing for no apparent reason, so when the baby is sleeping in her crib in the other room I occasionally walk to her just to see if she's still breathing. Or better yet, I let her sleep on the couch next to me. She sleeps way better in the midst of commotion than she does in her crib in the nice quiet other room. Like really! If anyone would have told me 2 months ago that me and Erkki will be playing Guitar Hero World Tour using two guitars while a month-old baby is inches away sleeping soundly on the couch between us, I would not have believed it! She also sleeps well while I carry her on my shoulder loudly chatting with Erkki and getting a glass of water and she is still asleep when I place her in the crib. But 9 times our of 10, once she's been in her crib for a few minutes she's suddenly wide awake!

Ah, I'm so glad she doesn't do this at nighttime. After 1.30 it's magic time! We place her in the crib and she sleeps there 2-3 hours straight. Then she awakens, eats, and immediately falls asleep again. She doesn't even try to play with me at nighttime anymore. When she did that a couple of weeks ago I just held her and dozed off, barely staying awake. I made sure she sees that I can't keep my eyes open and I only peeked what she is doing. She gave me a wide sly smile and I tried my best to keep from replying with a smile. She was so cute. And finally she got used to "sleep time". Unfortunately she thinks sleep time ends at 6 or 7 a.m. After that, I try everything to convince her to let me sleep til noon. Oddly, if you asked me if I'm happy in the middle of the night when the baby smiles at me, and only me, I would replay, "yes, definitely" and it wouldn't matter that I'm tired.

That forum thread was sidetracked by other odd questions to ask a mother. The most common being, "Is she a good kid?". While it might be an okay question in general, it is a very odd way to ask about a newborn! Think about it - what's a newborn gonna do to qualify as a "not good kid". Probably not drugs and alcohol. This question should be phrased "Does she let you sleep at night? Does she spend much time not crying?", but if the answer is no, does it make her a bad kid? As if she's malevolently keeping parents awake and pretending to have gas pains to ruin all the parents evening plans. Ah what a mean little creature, what a bad kid. What a relief that I would be able to reply that I have a "good kid".

Well okay, maybe the question "is she a good kid" makes sense if you view it like this - a kid is good when the parents often get to say, "Ah, good!". "She fell asleep fast, ah, good. ... She quickly calmed down, ah, good." But the next question leaves no room for such rationalization.

The worst well meant question: "Does your son tease you much?". Uhm, that son was 2 months old. As if the son will pinch and bite and kick her mother. Or perhaps the son will play mean practical jokes to tease her mother. Or maybe verbally tease her? There is no way that the asker actually likes kids! There is a clear assumption there that infants are mean little creatures who get joy out of torturing their parents and ruining their lives. When parents don't sleep, the infant giggles in his crib and tries to think of new ways to torment parents. By the third week the kid gets the idea to pretend gas pains and gets bored of it after 3 months. And then gets new evil ideas to make everyone else's lives a living hell.

Anyway, I just wanted to share these thoughts about that forum thread but if I wanted this blog post to have a moral then it would be: if you hate kids, don't make casual conversation about children - your questions will show your true thoughts.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Summer Time

It's kind of difficult to avoid patriotism in a country as small as Estonia. With less than a million Estonians, I can't help but feel that I make up a noticable part of our population. That affects the choices I make in life. If I were to move abroad then Estonian population would significantly decrease... And if I would decide to have more than 2 children, I would significantly help with Estonian population problem. Every person counts. I do my part! I am needed here!!! Or at least that's what I keep telling myself when the long-awaited summer turns out to be 10-15 degrees of cold rainy weather.

Okay, I can't leave my tiny country, but I wonder - If Estonia ever conquered a warm tropic island would I pack my bags and go live there?... Mhhh... hehe... probably yes.


I haven't been outside as much as I'd like. Actually it's more accurate to say I have consistently decided that I wouldn't like to go outside with a weather like this. It doesn't feel like summer at all! You know when I first felt like it was summer? It was when I went to the fresh produce market and saw that they sell freshly soured cucumbers, strawberries and sweet cherries. And the strawberries aren't even from Estonia because it's too cold here for strawberries this year! And I'm pretty sure it's always been too cold to grow sweet cherries. Because you see, fruits and berries are sweet because of sugar and plants need SUNLIGHT to make it. And since apparently we have no sunlight we can't grow sweet things.

Well okay, some plums or apples or pears are kinda sweet, but not even close to a ripe pinapple. Even most of the common berries - e.g. red currants - are really sour! Here people either have to learn to like sour stuff or they have to eat imported fruits and berries. Strawberries from Lithuania were quite good.

When I was in USA I had a conversation about Christmas time and I said that it's orange and tangerine season in Estonia so Christmas time always associates with gingerbread cookies, mulled wine and tangerines. It's part of Christmas tradition to eat lots of tangerines. The person I was talking with was amazed, "you grow oranges and tangerines in Estonia? ". And then I realized it can be horribly misunderstood - "No, I meant to say it's tangerine season in whereever they import tangerines from.".

But that's so typical. For me the end of summer is watermelon season, even though I never heard of anyone growing a watermelon in Estonia even in their greenhouse. Some other things - like bananas - are consistently tasty and sweet no matter what season we have here. And some things - like avocados - are never ripe and tasty. I actually thought avocados are all green all the time until I went to San Diego and a friend picked out a brown/black avocado in the store and said "this one is good and ripe.".

...but among the extremely rare sweet produce that we can grow in Estonia, strawberries are definitely the tastiest. The best part of summer used to be picking strawberries, making sure there are no snails on them and then eating them right there and then. Ah summertime. If I treat strawberries as a sign of summer then I can honestly say there is no summer and it's already the middle of June. Perhaps there is no summer this year.

Well, everything has a brighter side to it: at least I don't have to worry about post-delivery beach season!!! (BTW, "Brighter side" suddenly sounds like a deliberate phun when I look out the window at our summer weather).


And the baby... Well she has a stuffy nose from this wonderful sunny summer time...

Friday, June 12, 2009

Big Girl

Do you know why young mothers are supposed to take their kid to the doctor's office so often? So they don't get cocky! Oh the horror if a mother actually believed she knows what she is doing when taking care of her baby. So when the danger of self-belief surfaces, the mother is instructed to visit the doctor so that the doctor (and the nurse) can make sure that mother knows that everything they are doing is wrong! It's a nice system and it really works.

So yeah, today I had a doctor's appointment. First things first... Remember she weighed 3382g at birth and around 3000-3100g when we left the hospital. Today she was weighed and she's ***DRUM ROLL*** 4720g!!! For people using percentile charts, that puts her near the 75% weight gain. 50% would be average and 100% would be "What the hell are you feeding that kid - lard?!". So she's definitely growing well. Length has gone from 50 cm to 54 cm. With average growth being 2cm in a month for the first 5 months I think 4 cm is very good.

Anyway, the nurse was inspecting her and pointed to her round belly. "Did you just feed her? No? Then she might have gas, OH she must be in pain!". The baby was just lying there looking at her with confusion after just waking up. "Have you been giving her tummy time?." I then told her that the baby only seldom lies on her stomach because she doesn't like it at all. "Lets see.". So she rolls the baby on her stomach after which the baby gets very uneasy and starts to cry like she's forced to be in a really uncomfortable position. The nurse gets all confused. "That sounds like PAIN-cry! Her tummy must be hurting. Oh, this is not good. I'll get the doctor to see this!" and then she rolls the baby on her back and walks out leaving me baffled and thinking, I told you my baby doesn't like lying on her stomach and is seldom forced to be in this position.

The doctor walked in, inspected her, then adjusted the diaper a little bit (because the nurse had folded it down ) and put her on her on her stomach again. The baby was uneasy but didn't cry. Then my baby raised her head up high and the doctor and the nurse got to make a tick in the file indicating that my baby can hold her head at one month age. Then I was interrogated and I got scolded when I admitted that I haven't always remembered to give my baby her daily D-vitamin. It felt like I have put my baby in grave jeopardy. Perhaps I do underestimate the power of taking daily vitamins and I promise to make more effort with giving D-vitamin to my kid in the future.

Then the doctor and the nurse noticed that my baby prefers to hold her head to the left and told me I have to put rolled up cloth on that side. This way she can't look to the left and the muscles will develop on the other side as well. It's probably because baby's bed is against the wall and it's boring to look to the right. I'll switch her head-toe direction for a while.

Baby was hungry, so they instructed me to feed her there. They saw that my baby eats correctly and finishes with a sleepy and satisfied expression. Doctor also commented that this is what feeding looks like when there is no shortage of milk. At least something good.

And like a cherry on top of the entire event, when I started leaving and strapped the baby in her safety seat (for her taxi ride), she decided she's still hungry and started to cry. Then she realized I have no plans of feeding her again so she started screaming a little... I quickly got my things and exited to the hallway where about 20-30 people were ogling at me! What kind of mother tortures the baby for her to cry like that... I'm not making this up. They really were all staring at me!

That was my "fun" time at the doctor's to remind me not to get too cocky with my ability to take care of my kid. Walked away with this wisdom: More D-vitamin, more looking to the right, and the knowledge that my baby is a big girl.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

A Little Bit of Sleep

I don't know what I'm doing right but something seems to be working. The last couple of nights the baby has been sleeping for good 3-hour stretches. In the morning (after 8 a.m.) she still fusses a lot and wakes up very often for comfort nursing. Today I simply let her sleep next to me for those few hours so I wouldn't have to get up so often. This seemed to do the trick. In the morning we were both better rested.

It seemed like a good solution at that moment. However, I'm not really sure I'm very comfortable with the idea of co-sleeping (it's the term used for sleeping side-by-side with child). I would never want to be in a situation where a 5-year old starts nagging at me so I'd let her sleep in my bed. My bed is MINE (and Erkki's ). It's my space where I can toss and turn all I want and no one's gonna stop me. Just ask Erkki. He learned his lesson the hard way! The thing is, he has a tendency to slide over to my side of the bed slowly but steadily during the night. One night I taught him that it's not so safe and I actually elbowed his nose in my sleep. It took him days to figure out why his nose hurts until one night he woke up to me ALMOST doing it again. But my kid is on my side of the bed when co-sleeping so I am constantly worried about her safety and I don't go into deep sleep when she's next to me. I sleep better with her in her own bed.

I'm especially uneasy about sharing a bed with my child after I read an article about co-sleeping in an Estonian news portal. It had got a over a hundred comments. Apparently there are so many women who have a problem with a child who demands to sleep in parent's bed. It all starts with feeding the kid there and pretty soon she isn't able to fall asleep in her own bed anymore. It was really scary reading material. One woman said they had to teach their child to sleep elsewhere when she was many years old already and the parents constantly woke up to her elbowing and kicking them and often woke up with her feet on their pillow. Like... EWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!

Back to the 3-hour sleeping stretches and only 3 night time feedings. I think I was right about feeding her more at a time. In stead of stumbling to her, giving her just enough food for her to doze off and then stumbling back to bed, I have developed a new strategy. When she starts to cry I start by getting dressed comfortably enough to stay awake for even two hours if necessary. I feed her in the living room so I am awake long enough to offer her more food than she's able to eat. I even change her diaper and burp her and then feed her again. And once she's well stuffed, she stays asleep for a good 3 hours straight. During the day I feed her more often but I'm trying to use the same strategy - once I start feeding her, I do my best to make her eat as much as she can hold! I will let her cluster feed as much as she wants and then she's good for a couple of hours.

Basically I started with the plan that night time feedings should be short and boring so she'll learn to skip them. And I ended up with the plan that if she's gonna wake me up to eat she'd better make good use of it! So in stead of helping her fall asleep as fast as possible, I make her stay awake longer.

Today I read another article in the same place - this one was about weaning children off breast milk. As it turns out there are women out there who breastfeed their 1 year old children on demand. That in itself isn't so bad but some of these 1 year olds demand for food 5 times during the night! This means that the mothers have been waking up once every couple of hours for a full year already! And it's not like kids really need to eat during the night at this age. It feels like those mothers have been horribly taken advantage of. They have been USED. Those poor milk dispensers. I was hoping my kid would sleep 6 hours straight by the second month and I see that's not going to happen but I really don't think I'm going to let her wake me up many times per night when she's already one year old! A sad fate that would be!

I guess it's true then that every child is unique and the same methods don't work for all of them and it's impossible to make plans or strategies before you really encounter the situation. But I still don't plan on waking up multiple times per night to feed a one year old and I don't plan on ever waking up with a 5 year old kid sleeping in my bed with her toes all over my face.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Grumpy on Demand

The modern wisdom of breastfeeding says that a child should eat whenever she wants and for as long as she wants. This ensures that she is never hungry and milk production is rapid enough to fit her needs. It might be difficult in the beginning but after about a month or two everything will balance out. The child will end up being eating the recommended six to eight times per day. She will learn to eat bigger amounts at a time and will sleep 4-hour stretches during the night. This means that the mother only wakes up once or twice depending on her need for sleep when the baby is one to two months old.

Theory is nice. The reality can be outright BRUTAL!!!!

My baby will soon be one month old and I wrote down her meal times. She ate 16 times in 24 hours - that's once every 30 minutes to two and a half hours. In general it probably wouldn't bother me so much, but 7 of those feedings were between 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. Oh my precious sleep time... In the morning I was so tired that I briefly considered closing her in the other room so I could sleep. And when I had postponed making coffee for three hours already I placed her in her bed crying and calmly walked into the kitchen to make coffee. No rush. If I can't calm her then the best I can do is to stay calm myself and my morning coffee is a great start.

The way I see it, this is just another problem to be solved. Hardcore breastfeeders would say it's not a problem, it's just natural. She must be hungry so she must be fed. But it is a problem because with so many feedings there is no way that I would be able to burp her every time. It would take two hours every night if I burped her every time. By 7 a.m. she's waking up because her tummy aches and she wants to eat to feel better. Eating also helps babies relieve themselves, so to them it makes sense to eat when they are in distress from eating. So as long as I let her eat every 30-60 minutes it can actually cause her pain and suffering... So it only makes sense to cut down the amount of her night time meals.

But as I mentioned in my last post, I think I know why she's fussing in the mornings. I think my not-enough milk issue turned into too-much milk issue. Actually it's called OALD or OverActive Let Down. Usually this condition is coupled with overabundance of milk. In the beginning of the feeding the rush of milk is so rapid that the baby ends up coughing, letting go and gasping for air, and struggling, trying to bite to reduce flow, swallowing a lot of air and eating too much too fast. The first milk during a feeding is always very watery and high in lactose concentration. If the baby fills up on the first milk (foremilk), then her body has a hard time coping with all that milk sugar and she gets gassy and frustrated but is still hungry because she didn't get any hindmilk, which is high in fat and protein content. Kinda ironic that my baby girl has issues with eating too many carbs... I told you carbs were bad!

Some babies cope with OverActive Let Down by having very frequent meals. This way the rush of milk is manageable for them and they can more easily get to hindmilk. So perhaps it's not by chance that she eats the most frequently early in the morning when milk production is at it's peak. Everything I have read about this condition explains the current situation and me and my baby have almost every single symptom they use to diagnose it. It will fix itself with time. All treatment is to reduce milk production but I wouldn't experiment with that after a mere Google diagnosis.

My planned solution - I will start postponing her night time feedings little by little. I will pretend not to wake up for as long as possible. If she really starts screaming, then I'll go to her but if she wakes up a little hungry then I will wait until she's very hungry so she'll eat more and then sleep for longer. It might mean that she'll start to eat too fast and she'll swallow air but since she always swallows some air and I'm already unable to burp her after night time meals now, it won't make things worse.

On the Internet breastfeeding activist consensus says that such a small baby must never be trained to sleep longer but frankly if I don't fix the situation now, I will end up so tired and frustrated I won't have any positivity to give her. I am convinced that happier mothers make for happier babies (and vice versa) so I see no reason to let her wake me up so often every night. It's for her own good if I sleep more.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Back to Life

The baby is a little over three weeks old so there is no longer any justification for sealing myself and my baby into the apartment. So the real test has finally begun - am I able to preserve anything resembling a LIFE as a parent.

The good news - I did not become depressed after giving birth! That might actually be the main reason for women to stop having fun. They are too depressed to enjoy life. Wouldn't it have been ironic if that had happened to me? I make a blog about having a life as a parent and then I give birth and I get so depressed I choose to avoid all people for weeks. Quite a life that would be...

The bad news - it really feels nice to take time off from work and not to deal with anything very complex. It feels TOO nice! Currently it feels so good to imagine I never have to use my brain ever again! Ah, wouldn't that be nice. After years and YEARS AND YEARS of university it feels relaxing to think that it's nap time, then feeding time, followed by diaper change, then time for entertaining an infant, and then nap time again. I wouldn't say that taking care of an infant is a vacation. That would be unfair towards all those stay-home-mothers who try so hard to be taken seriously. It is a job like any other. But compared to reading scientific articles and figuring out subtle nuances in plant stomatal reactions, I'd say that being a mother is a nice simple job that is pleasantly non-challenging mentally.

I have made a few decisions for my everyday life. Or actually more like rules of life. The most important one - shower every day! It's not "I might take a shower if it's very convenient and I really feel like it", the rule is "shower every day no matter what!". I find a time when the baby has just fallen asleep, I take the baby monitor with me and I go and take a shower. I make sure I'm all soapy as soon as possible. This way if she starts crying I'll have no choice but to finish showering first. Those are fifteen minutes well spent. If I let myself go and I'm all dirty and slouching on a couch then I won't want to see anyone, I won't even consider going out. But as long as I make an effort to look (and smell) decent, I'll think, "I already went through the trouble of looking neat, I might as well go outside as well. The main goal here is to be ready to meet people within 10 minutes at any time. Sometimes my morning shower is at 4 p.m. but shower-every-day is a rule I live by.

Another rule of life: find the time to see other people. During the first couple of weeks only very few people came here to see the baby. It was necessary because infants have such underdeveloped immune system. But as soon as the two weeks had passed, I invited some people over for a baby shower. In Estonia those are usually organized AFTER the baby is born. What a bunch of pessimists, right? Me and Erkki have a no-gift-toys-policy so people brought so many really nice pieces of clothing. Can't wait to try them on. One baby shower isn't really enough to protect me from becoming asocial, but I'm sure weekly role playing games will be a great help.

The no-gift-toys-policy is a good thing in a 2-room apartment with absolutely no storage space. Every toy must be in use nearly all the time! And a tiny baby doesn't really need many toys so each one should be carefully handpicked. On the weekend we all - me, Erkki and a sleeping baby in a carrier - went shopping and got the baby her first toy. Why buy a teddy bear when you can in stead buy a nearly neon-colored green-yellow-pink worm with huge round eyes on a disproportionally big and round head. That beats a teddy bear any day!

Back to the rules... Sometimes a stay-home-mother needs to get out. When it's sunny outside and I just really want to feel the wind on my face, I should never have to stay in and think, "but I can't go out. I'm a mommy now!". Being a mother just means it takes a little longer to get out of the apartent. About 10 minutes more time with the right equipment! First I get myself ready with the carrier, then I take one fed baby, add a pair of socks and a hat, then I pop her in the carrier and I'm ready to go. It actually takes less time to get out of the apartment than before because I can not procrastinate! If I wait too long she might get hungry again.

Another rule: sometimes the fresh parents need some alone time. I'm not talking about you-know-what. And I don't even mean the stolen two hours of baby nap time that can be used for an evening movie. Sometimes routinely me and Erkki just have to find a babysitter and get out of the apartment for a nice dinner or a movie. Can't have both. With such a young child it's good to plan for 2-3 hours at a time. We already started this new tradition with a Friday evening dinner in a gourmet restaurant. I had my first glass of alcohol - a glass of champagne (NOT sparkling wine) to celebrate our first child with Erkki. And then counted three hours until I fed the baby again. Fortunately that's exactly when her nap ended.

I was also planning to continue playing with XBox 360 when I'm home alone with my child but so far I haven't got around to that. I sleep/feed/entertain/change diapers/cradle to sleep until about noon, sometimes until about 2 or 3 p.m., then I take a shower and have my morning coffee and breakfast with online news and my daily googling sessions. And then I feed and entertain the baby again and before I know it, Erkki is already on the phone asking if I have any special requests for dinner. And before I know it, it's suddenly the weekend and the baby has outgrown another pile of clothes.

On a different note, the baby has been very fussy these past few days. She is outright impossible to please in the mornings but fortunately pretty tame in the evenings. That's probably why I have breakfast in the afternoon. It's frustrating when she wakes me too often in the morning but it mostly just means that I occasionally have to accept that I can't console her and I just hold a crying baby while I eat breakfast. I feel sorry for the neighbours and there's that little thought in the back of my head, "what if they think I'm a bad mother if the child cries so much.". I actually think I know what's causing the fussiness but I really need to try a couple of solutions before I know for sure. Everything is pointing toward the same problem and theoretically there's a way to fix it. And there is no way she isn't getting enough to eat so don't even consider it.