Nora's 5 Months Old!

Our little lady turned five months old today!

This month has gone by faster than any of the ones before it.  It seems like just yesterday I was snapping her 4 month photos on Valentine's Day!  But when I reflect back on this month, she has really changed a lot in this short time.  Among the things that stand out for me this month are:
-She rolled over! but still doesn't do it with any regularity.
-She found her feet, which have quickly become her favorite toy.  They're always within reach!
-She is much more attentive to everything that's going on.  She looks at people when they speak to her, she rotates her whole body to watch Oscar walk around the room, and she cranes her neck up to look at you when she's sitting on your lap.  (I included the picture at left to show she does, indeed, have a neck!)
-She's grabbing at everything!  If it's within her reach, she's going to get her hands on it.  Our favorite is when she reaches out to touch Oscar.  She's developing better depth perception and getting much more coordinated with her hand movements, too, which you can see in this quick video--

The most major change is that she gets so happy these days.  She still has a somewhat difficult temperament in the sense that she requires almost constant attention to keep her content, especially if naptime or feeding time are approaching.  But when she is content, she's so cheerful.  We used to work really hard to try to get her to smile, and now she smiles almost every chance she gets.  We get plenty of giggles these days, too, and earlier this evening Billy had her laughing harder than she ever has before.  This change also helps us recognize that we are starting to come into our own as parents.  In retrospect, we've always been pretty good at figuring out what she wants, but when she was unable to show very many positive emotions, it was hard to recognize our successes and much easier to get discouraged.  As she continues to develop, her sleeping habits continue to improve, and she is more and more able to interact with us, we can see that we are doing a good job helping her get a feel for the world around her and learn how to live in it.

As we gear up for Nora's first St. Patrick's Day, we can't help feeling like we're pretty lucky already.  If you look closely, you can see that she's sporting the shamrock pants my mom got her.  Mom's visiting us next week and we can't wait to see her!

Spring is Coming!

Nora's getting ready for spring!  Here she is decked out in the Timbers jersey her Uncle Nate bought for her on the day she was born.  Today is their First Kick, the MLS version of Opening Day.  It will probably fit her a bit better toward the end of the season, when hopefully she can cheer the Timbers on in the playoffs!

Eagle eyed readers might also notice that she is sporting a bit of a hair cut.  The hair over her ears was getting a little ridiculous and her bangs were down in her eyes, so I gave her a trim.  I tried to keep it from looking too blunt, but the difference is noticeable enough to us that she seems even more like a real little human now!

We are also hoping the time change brings us a little more family time.  She has regularly been going down for the night between 5 and 6pm and waking up for good between 6 and 7am, which works okay with our schedule, but if we can shift those times back an hour we'll get to see her for longer in the evening.  Last night we were able to go out to dinner as a family, and I think the last time we were able to do that was when she was around one month old.  We thought we might be pushing it, but she was happy in her car seat for a while and then she was very happy to sit on my lap, watch everyone walk by the booth, and try to grab everything in front of her.

We can't believe she'll be five months old this week!  Where did this past month go?!

On Breastfeeding

I've written about The Old Man and the Sea before.  I like this book because I can relate to the Old Man, who is determined to the point of stubbornness.  I can appreciate that his determination has its payoffs and its drawbacks.

There is a scene in the novella that I think about all the time.  Santiago has been trying to catch a fish for months without any luck.  The villagers say he is salao, the worst kind of unlucky, but Santiago still believes he will find success.  The part I relate to is the precision with which he attempts to catch a fish.  He takes great care in preparing his bait, setting his lines, and observing the signs of the ocean that indicate a fish might be near.  He says, "It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready."  I mentally rehearse this line all the time.  You can't control luck, but you can be ready to capitalize on it when it strikes.  This is my general approach to life, really.  I would rather be exact.  Then when luck comes you are ready.

For the past several months I have been lamenting that my approach to living and my strengths as a person are not particularly well suited to motherhood.  I may relate to Santiago's preparation, but I have less success relating to his patience.  I also don't do well in circumstances where there is a great deal of uncertainty or where success is hard to measure.  It's pretty tough to be exact as a new mom.

In recent weeks, though, I've been thinking about how this approach, and my strengths as a person, have helped me out considerably when it comes to breastfeeding.  I am obsessive about conducting research, evaluating information, and acquiring knowledge.  I am determined to the point of stubbornness, and I have a lot of experience enduring difficult circumstances in order to achieve a desired result.  All of these things have helped me make breastfeeding work for me and Nora.  She took to nursing better than some babies seem to, so I realize that there was some luck involved in our success.  But I've also been trying to give myself credit for doing the legwork ahead of time and for possessing the determination that allowed me to make the most of that of luck.  When the luck came, I was ready.

Despite his experience, determination, and belief in himself as a fisherman, Santiago repeatedly says "I wish I had the boy" during his fishing expedition.  He's referencing a young boy named Manolin, who was Santiago's apprentice until his family made him switch to a more successful boat.  Nonetheless, Manolin supports, encourages, and looks after Santiago while he is on land.  This kind of support is another thing I'm fortunate enough to share with the old man.  Through all my research on breastfeeding, I've learned that one of the main reasons mothers fall short of their nursing goals is because they don't have adequate support from their family, friends, and medical professionals.  Breastfeeding is really important to me on the level of intellect, because I know how many health benefits it provides my daughter and me.  But it's also very important to me on the level of the heart.  Now that we've established good nursing habits, breastfeeding Nora is emotionally rewarding and the bond it has helped us create is something I will always cherish.  So I also wanted to say a public thank you to the following people, all of whom have been instrumental in helping me and Nora establish and maintain a good nursing relationship:

Thank you to my mom, who taught me that nursing was natural and possible by breastfeeding all three of her children and by reassuring me, from the very beginning, that I was giving Nora exactly what she needed.
Thank you to Billy, who had to stand by helplessly when I was emotionally and physically exhausted by Nora's feeding demands, but who found ways other ways to lighten my load and never suggested giving up on nursing.
Thank you to my lifelong friend Krista, who showed me nursing was possible by successfully breastfeeding both of her girls, and who always responded promptly to my frantic late night emails with encouragement, sympathy, and advice.
Thank you to my brother and sister, who provided an extra set of hands during Nora's three week growth spurt, and who kept me in good enough spirits to survive those most difficult few days.
Thank you to my mother in law, Patti, who has embraced the uncertain task of learning to feed Nora expressed milk while she babysits, even though it is her first experience with on-demand feeding.

Breastfeeding is not easy.  There were some days when I spent nearly five cumulative hours nursing Nora.  Plenty of tears were shed.  I couldn't have done it without support from the people close to me.  But because I have friends who are currently pregnant, and others who are planning to conceive in the not-too-distant future, I wanted to say, publicly, that breastfeeding is one of the few things about being a new mom that you can prepare for, it is one of the few things about being a mom that gets easier in time and eventually makes your life easier, and it is one of the most rewarding things I've ever done.

Timshel

I don't believe in a lot.  I do believe art is meaningful, though.  I don't really pretend to know much about most forms of art aside from literature, but today I had one of those sublime artistic moments that is hard to explain.  But I'll try, even though I am pretty sure this chain of ideas will not make sense to anyone else.

I have been missing my dad very badly lately.  My mom is coming to visit us soon, and I'm really excited for her to get to spend time with Nora now that Nora is so much more engaging.  The flip side of this excitement, though, is that it also heightens my awareness of the sadness I feel about the fact that my dad never got to know my daughter and never will.  And he never got to know me as a mother, and I'll never get to share the experience of parenthood with him.

A few days ago I posted this photo of Nora on facebook, and Nate messaged me to say she is smiling Dad's smile.  I didn't realize it until he said it, but he is right.  There's something about the openness of her mouth, the angle of her head, and the proportions of her chin and cheeks that reminds me of my dad's real smile.  That made me go through more recent photos of Dad to compare, and it made me pay special attention to the events in which he is giving his real smile rather than his forced photo smile.








Real smiles: Playing washers in our yard in 2008.

Riding the Maid of the Mist at Niagara Falls in 2009.

At Vickie's graduation in 2010.

I was so thankful to Nate for bringing this to my attention.  I was thinking about this on my way to school today, though I'm not sure why.  I was also listening to a Mumford and Sons CD that was popular with the rest of the world 2 years ago, but which I didn't bother to download until today.  And then these lyrics came on:

And death is at your doorstep
And it will steal your innocence
But it will not steal your substance

And I thought, true.  Dad's death stole whatever innocence I might have had left.  It did not steal his substance.  I hope it did not steal mine, either.  And then the song continued:

But you are not alone in this
And you are not alone in this
As brothers we will stand and we'll hold your hand
Hold your hand


And now I'm thinking, okay, this is getting really weird.  Dad tried to teach us that we don't have to go through life on our own.  And the very best thing that has come from his death is the effort Nate, Vickie, and I have made to be supportive of one another.  And just when this song came on I had been thinking about how my brother had been, figuratively, holding my hand "in this."  And then the song continued:

And you are the mother
The mother of your baby child
The one to whom you gave life

What?  Now, tears.  I could not actually believe these words were coming over the speakers.  I hit the back button to listen again, so it was a little while before I heard that the verse continues with:

And you have your choices
And these are what make man great
His ladder to the stars

And when I heard that, I began trying to figure out where this comes from.  I knew I had never heard this song before, but I knew I have heard something like this quote.  But I couldn't figure it out.  And I listened to the song over and over until I got to school, and I could not figure out what the mother and baby child portion could possibly have to do with the rest of the song, but it touched my heart.

But when I got to my office, I looked this up, and I see that the song is called "Timshel."  Oh, right, I think.  East of Eden.  I've never read it, but I know this concept of Timshel, and I realize that I recognize the quote from this novel.  (We won't digress to talk about how come I know quotes from novels I've never read.)  Further, East of Eden is one of my brother's favorite novels.  One he has been trying to convince my sister to read for years.

I still have no idea what the stanza about the mother is doing in the middle of this song.  Maybe Nate could explain it to me.  But thank you, Nate and Vickie, for holding my hands and always reminding me I am not alone in this.  And thank you for this song, Mumford and other musicians I think are too old to really be your sons.  Somehow you made me feel like my baby will make some of my sadness okay, by way of a song I was not trendy enough to hear until now, which seems to be derived from a book I have not had a chance to read, immediately after my brother who loves that book pointed out that my baby is capable of smiling my dad's smile.

And since that probably didn't make any sense at all, here: listen to the song yourself and make your own memory.  And maybe you can agree with me that Dad probably would have liked Mumford and Sons's kind of Simon-and-Garfunkel-ly vibe.  Or maybe he did like them and he just never told me.  I still get his subscription to Rolling Stone, so he probably knew plenty about Mumford and his theoretical sons.

Nora Rolls Over!

... as promised, here is the footage of Nora rolling over!  I could tell she was going to do it today, so I set up my flipcam and tried to coax her into rolling over without touching her.  She wasn't having it, but when I got up to make a sandwich, she rolled over on her own as I watched from the kitchen!  Throughout the course of the day she did it about 6 or 7 more times before tiring herself out.  She doesn't do it very quickly, but it's fun to watch her slow attempts to balance her body in different ways to complete the motion.  She's shown so much progress in the past week or two that I'm sure it will turn into a completely automatic motion in no time!  Without further ado--



Patti gave us the "Baby's First Year" calendar she used to keep track of Billy's milestones, so it is fun to be able to compare his progress to Nora's.  He was placed on his belly to sleep, so he rolled the other direction first.  He rolled from his tummy to his back at almost 4 months old, but didn't roll from his back onto his tummy until almost 6 months old.  It also says he "found his feet" at almost 5 months old, so Nora was several weeks ahead of him on that one!

Choose your words wisely: there's a mother in the room

There is a job opening in our department this year for a "20th Century Americanist," a position which I someday hope to be qualified to fill. This means that after sifting through hundreds of applications and conducting preliminary interviews, our department is hosting visits from the top three candidates. During their visits, each candidate has to present a lecture on his/her current scholarship, and those of us in the department are supposed to attend so we can share our opinions of each applicant. Those of us who are graduate students can also benefit from seeing how the candidates handle the job talk since we should be giving our own job talks when we go on the market.

Attending today's talk meant I had to renegotiate my entire Monday schedule in order to drop Nora off early, fight traffic, and arrive on campus before 10am. Just getting there felt like an accomplishment. But before the the candidate's introduction was even finished, I was already thinking "Well. If this is the type of person I am going to have to compete against, I am never going to get a job in this field." The longer the candidate talked, the more I realized I am many light years away from being prepared to perform the role of "job candidate for a tenure-track professorship."

But there was one flicker of hope midway through her talk. She referred to something as the "emblem of an aborted dream." I haven't read the book she was discussing, but unless I misunderstood her explanation of the novel's events, she should have said it was the "emblem of a miscarried dream." This is a significant difference, not only on the level of language. And at this moment, a lightbulb went off in my head.  I remembered:  "I think you will find that this enhances your scholarship," my mentor professor told me when I told him I was expecting a baby.  Love, work, and having a baby mutually inform one another, argues Mary Austin in "The Walking Woman."

When this woman said "aborted" instead of "miscarried," and I began thinking about what a significant difference that is, it occurred to me that maybe Mary Austin and my professor are right-- maybe being a mother is the thing that will make it possible for me to contribute something unique to the academic conversation.  I looked around the room and could only find one other mother in attendance.  This might be the only thing that sets me apart, actually, in a room where every single person has degrees from more prestigious institutions than I do.  (Valpo is many good things, but a literary studies powerhouse it is not.)

Being a mom could actually be an explicit advantage, given my research interests.  For years I have been trying to figure out why I am so fascinated by American women's writing of the First World War. I have known they had something to say which still doesn't register in public consciousness because male narratives of the war have always been privileged. What unique thing(s) are expressed in these women's works, I still don't know. Sometime in the past two years I began to think it has something to do with how knowledge of conception and reproduction help us to make sense of the war differently. Male and female writers alike refer to the war in terms of conception and birth all the time. They suggest that the war was a difficult period, like pregnancy or labor, but it was necessary and noble to endure because they believed it would deliver new ideas into the world. When the events of the war destroyed this optimistic view, and writers started mourning the loss of the idea the war was supposed to represent, they began comparing the war to miscarriage and stillbirth.  Maybe, now that I've conceived, carried, and delivered a baby, I'll eventually be able to make sense of these comparisons in a way I wouldn't have been able to do if I wasn't a mother.  I guess time will tell.

But for right now, I am trying to be encouraged by the fact that my reaction to a single comment during today's talk helped me to realize that, at the very least, being a mother has given me a new, more interesting academic perspective than I had before.  This is the second time this has happened to me, actually, so now it's a trend.  (I won't go into it here, but if you're curious, ask me sometime about the epiphany I had regarding Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath after I learned how breastfeeding really works.)

I had a good day as a mom today, too.  Nora was thisclose to rolling over for me and Billy!  I've been trying to help her with this for a while.  At first, when I'd roll her, she'd push back against the motion.  The other day she started rolling into it.  Today, I was putting a little ring in her hand and she was using it to pull herself over.  While practicing this back-to-tummy roll with my help, she flopped from her tummy onto her back all by herself a few times.  The video of her rolling over all on her own cannot be far off!

This time, with giggles