P-A-D: Day 16, Mommy's New Hair

I'm allowed to be in these baby photos too, right? I've been dying to cut off that wretched orange grow-out for months, and now that Kailea has finally been born, I can dye it again! Although, I think for now I'll just stick with a new haircut...

Photo-A-Day Challenge: A Year of Kailea in Pictures

I've decided to set a challenge for myself: to take at least one photo of Kailea every day for her first year of life. Sadly, there are two days missing there at the beginning, but no one can fault me for being a little too doped up after major abdominal surgery to keep track of stuff like that! Also, I'm not convinced that some of the photos I have aren't from those days, and that they've just been tagged improperly when shared by others. I need to find the time to sift through the metadata of all the photos that have been shared with me from those first days to see if any of them are indeed from those two missing days.

Until then, I'm content that I've uploaded Kailea's first two week's in photos via the previous two posts. So now I can start posting one per day.

So here we have April 27, Kailea's 15th day of life, where she was re-introduced to Nurse Becky.

I have huge heaps of gratitude for Nurse Becky, as her diligence in monitoring little Kailea's non-stress test results that fateful day quite possibly saved our little girl's life. Everyone wanted to send me home. I wanted to go home. Kailea just wanted to continue stewing inside of me. But Nurse Becky kept coming back to dote on me and check the monitors, still not convinced that everything was completely kosher. As it happened, a weak contraction was all it took to plummet Kailea's heart rate dangerously low because her embilical cord was wrapped around her neck.

So thank you, Nurse Becky.  Another nurse took over monitoring at one point, my OB actually lifted Kailea from my womb, an amazing anaesthesiologist doped me up really well, and a whole team of amazing medical staff made my entire stay at Northwest Hospital and Medical Center as comfortable as possible. Certainly more than I had expected! But it's Nurse Becky that I credit most with sticking by me and my baby, making sure we indeed were united as Mother and Daughter outside the womb. Thank you!

Kai's Second Week of Life

When last we saw our fearless heroes, their adventure had just found them returning home for the first time as a family of three. Gone were the days of being a mere duo!

And so our adventure continues. Is there really ever an end to the adventure known as parenthood? Probably not, but we would prefer a few breathers in between the adrenaline rushes. Kailea continues to grow and thrive, but with too many bumps in the road! Despite efforts to combat her reflux, she continues to spit up.

Now, all babies spit up. But with Kailea, it is a bit beyond your typical burp that brings up some of her latest meal yet undigested. Not quite Exorcist Baby, but a little too close for comfort.

But really, the main problem I think is us. Our time spent in the hospital has trained us to constantly watch the baby with a critical eye, looking for problems in every thing she does. We classify her spit-ups, we log her diapers with descriptions of her poops, we turn on the light to check on her every time she makes a noise in the middle of the night. I soaked up all of this information from Eric's Mom about how "normal" baby behavior can seem bizarre - spitting up, straining to poop, going "too long" between poops, etc. (Have I mentioned that having a baby nurse in the family is amazing?) But being in the hospital and all of these things being signs of concern, now they are of concern to us. It doesn't help that they have all of these goals that she's supposed to be hitting.

X many poopy diapers, X many wet. X many ounces per feeding, X many ounces per day. X many ounces weight gain per day. Gah! Numbers sound so important, and they flash in your head like neon lights, so you can't stop thinking about them. She had X-1 wet diapers today, she ate only X-3 ounces, she only gained 1/2X ounces today. AAAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEE!!! Make it stop!

She is so calm and alert and content, with good color, and a healthy appetite. I think that's enough for now. I really, really do.

Am I becoming an optimistic Mommy?

Kai's First Week in Pictures

Because life has been so crazy, I'm only getting around to these pictures now. I wish I wasn't missing some days, but hospitals don't exactly inspire Kodak moments.

Is this her first baby?

 On the way to Kailea's first set of x-rays at Children's Hospital, I got to hold her as I was pushed in a wheelchair by someone from "transport", with my mother-in-law pushing Kailea's IV get-up beside us. I couldn't take my eyes off of her. Days had already slipped by with her much too far away from me, so I was going to soak up every bit of her that I could during the short trip.

I heard the staffer ask, "Is this her first baby?" My mother-in-law answered in the affirmative. The staffer responded, "I can tell."

This annoyed me. Almost everything about our stay annoyed me, so no big deal.

But sitting here tonight, holding my baby's hand as I take another turn on my Medela breast pump, it still irks me. How could anyone possibly hold this tiny little body in their arms and look away at anything else? Just looking at her, and everything else in existence just falls away.

Kailea's First Week of Life

Dear Friends and Family,

Eric, Mysie, and Kailea are finally back at home, resting comfortably, after quite an eventful week. Thank you everyone for all of your messages of kindness and support. We know that everyone has been very curious about what the Cairns family has been up to these past few days while we have been out of communication, and now we finally have a little time and energy to get an update out to everyone.

Kailea Christine Cairns was born on Friday April 13, 2012 at 6:18 pm. She weighed 6 lbs. 2 oz., measuring 18" long. She was delivered via C-Section at Northwest Hospital & Medical Center.

Things have been moving very quickly since I went to the Birth Center at Northwest Hospital at 1pm that Friday for a non-stress test to monitor the baby's activity level. Kailea wasn't "waking up" enough to give us the readings my OB was looking for, so at around 4:30pm we tried a quick test to see how she would respond to contractions. She responded badly, but quickly perked right back up after contractions were halted. Still, my OB came on the scene and it was decided that it was time to get our little girl out and into the world. The C-Section threw all of our birthing plans out the window, the procedure itself was a bit scary, but everything went like clockwork - Kailea was born healthy and happy.

Little did we know Kailea still had some adventures she wanted us all to experience to keep us on our toes. Over the weekend she experienced low blood-sugar results (that quickly got better), was unable to keep her meals down for very long without vomiting it all back up, and jaundice. Each symptom on its own would not have been so worrisome, but on Monday morning the combination of the three had the pediatrician decide to transfer Kailea to Children's Hospital for further testing.

The three of us then spent the better part of the week at Children's Hospital of Seattle, enduring test after test to rule things out. There were false-positive tests for infections, countless x-rays, surgery consults that didn't pan out, all sorts of monitors and contraptions and tubes hooked up to baby in uncomfortable places, zero privacy, and very cramped living quarters.  It was a scary, stressful, sleepless time for us all. We were finally sent home Thursday evening, with the official "primary diagnosis" as vomiting, with a secondary diagnosis of hyperbilirubinemia (jaundice, basically). Both were decreasing and under control by that time, so everyone agreed it was time for us to go home and experience some normal home life!

We are probably going to spend the rest of our lives playing "what-if" in our minds, wondering if any and every little thing could have been done just a little differently, could we have somehow avoided such a lengthy, frustrating, scary stay at the hospital. But right now we're just thankful that so many amazing people at Northwest Hospital and Children's Hospital were there for our family, all doing their jobs wonderfully to make sure that we all got the best care, so now we can be confident knowing our baby girl is going to be just fine.

It's so nice to finally be home as a family!

3 Days to Go: Nursery

Yep, only 3 more (full) days to go until the EDD! Holy cow! Currently waiting for a non-stress test at the Birthing Center, bored out of my mind and they haven't even started. *sigh* Here are some pictures of the nursery for y'all. :)

Logophile Dilemma: Should I Stop Swearing When I Become a Parent?

Warning: uncensored swear words within!

I am a logophile: I love words. I love the way they sound, the way they look, the way they feel as they escape my mouth. I love their power, their mystery, their histories and depths. There are some words that I personally find ugly, but only because of the way they sound or the way they look (I have a distinct un-fondness for the letters "g" and "u"), and I don't know of a single word that I would ever label as "bad". How can a few letters grouped together possibly get up to any mischief?

I was raised in a home with the typical American dichotomy of attitudes towards "bad words": my siblings and I were forbidden to swear, but our parents weren't. So, like most American teenagers, learning to swear was part of my high school rebellion. It was an interesting journey, filled with painfully public mispronunciations (penis is not spelled the way it sounds!), over-usage, slip-ups in front of adults, and mixed feelings about my own morality.

But as the years progressed, the more reading I did, the more critical thinking I experienced, and the more views of morality I was introduced to, my hesitation and quiet rebellion changed into something much more empowering. I began to claim words for myself, their meanings, their spellings, their usage in my daily life. I discovered that yes, words have power, but that we are the ones who give them that power. I embraced the movement to redefine the word "queer", I was utterly dumbfounded and forever changed when I learned that the word "cunt" was in many ancient languages synonymous with "priestess", I began to spell my first name in lower-case, and "fuck" became my favorite word out of the absolute rejection of society's need to ban it.

So here I am, all these years later, and I'm considering the possibility of life without enjoying my favorite words. I am really, really frustrated by just the scope of the task. I'm also feeling quite morose about giving up something that I feel goes to the core of my personality. How do I move forward? The usual way: I've gone online and done way, way too much research on the topic.

There are multiple schools-of-thought on the subject of parents swearing in front of their children, which is both reassuring (some people empathize with me!) and unhelpful (what, there's no definitive answer to a parenting dilemma?!). On the reassuring side, I'm glad to see that there are people out there who can still think critically about societal norms and how to approach them when raising their kids. Here are some of my favorites:

From Lies We Tell Kids by Paul Graham

Most parents use words when talking to other adults that they wouldn't want their kids using. They try to hide even the existence of these words for as long as they can. And this is another of those conspiracies everyone participates in: everyone knows you're not supposed to swear in front of kids.
I've never heard more different explanations for anything parents tell kids than why they shouldn't swear. Every parent I know forbids their children to swear, and yet no two of them have the same justification. It's clear most start with not wanting kids to swear, then make up the reason afterward.
So my theory about what's going on is that the function of swearwords is to mark the speaker as an adult. There's no difference in the meaning of "shit" and "poopoo." So why should one be ok for kids to say and one forbidden? The only explanation is: by definition. [3]
Why does it bother adults so much when kids do things reserved for adults? The idea of a foul-mouthed, cynical 10 year old leaning against a lamppost with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth is very disconcerting. But why?

From Parental Advisory: I Swear How do I get my kid to stop cursing when I can't? by Rebecca Odes & Ceridwen Morris

One of us has a mother with a mouth like a trucker. She stuck by her controversial vocabulary while raising kids, perhaps for similar reasons — it felt like part of who she was — or perhaps because she couldn't have stopped it if she'd tried. Her loose lips may have contributed to some cross-generational camaraderie, but there was also a fair amount of humiliation involved in having a mom with a dirty mouth. Now, having a foul-mouthed Grandma around has actually forced the family to think creatively about how to frame the curse education curriculum, which brings us to an important point: There are ways to discourage cursing without making it "bad" or wrong.
It turns out that kids can learn that some words are for grown-ups, and are only acceptable in some contexts (i.e., coming out of Grandma's mouth). To continue the above example, the grandchild in question is now more likely to scold his parents on their verbal indiscretions than to make one of his own. He did go through a brief phase of experimentation, but it faded fast. Of course, all kids are different, so it's hard to know how yours might respond. And there is a difference between a grandmother cursing and a mother.

From danoah unleashed: Should we really call them “bad words” to our kids? by Dan Pearce

So if most of the grown-ups use “bad words,” what does that teach my kid? As he himself grows up, he’s going to hear a lot of the people he loves use a lot of the words that he has been told his entire life are bad.
....
I am amazed at how often he hears a word and tells me “Dad, that’s a bad word.” He’s even said it about words like “bum,” “sick,” and “heck.” Where he is hearing that they are “bad” is beyond me, but I’ll tell you this much. He is always relieved when I tell him that those words and some of the actual “bad words” aren’t really bad, they’re just grown-up words that some people don’t like.
Maybe I’m going about it the wrong way, but I don’t think my kid likes thinking that the people he loves are “bad” people.

From There are worse things than swearing in front of your children by Linda Aitchison

I guess, in the scheme of things, I can't believe it matters all that much. I want my daughters to enjoy language, to experiment with it; express themselves well and think about the impact of what they are saying.
I don't think swearing is necessarily lazy or disrespectful, but can be an effective way of letting off steam. It can also help you think very much about what you are saying and why. Determining if a swear word is needed and when may just teach us a thing or two about language.
So long as my children's swearing isn't meant to demean or insult anyone else, it's going to have to be okay by me. Especially as I'm the one who needs to wash her mouth out with soap.

From How To Stop Cursing In Front of Your Kids by n00b dad

Honestly, while you’d love to be the shining example to your kid, it’s completely out of your control. You could go your entire life without saying a negative thing in front of your child and they will still pick up cursing from another source. All you can do is control your own mouth (and temper) teach them that cursing isn’t the best idea and hope they don’t say something inappropriate in a large crowd.

Then there is the unhelpful side, and I mean very unhelpful. These are the people who find swearing as evidence of modern society's moral decay (somehow ignoring the fact that every language, ever, has incorporated swearing since time immemorial):

From Zero Tolerance for Disrespectful, Cussing Kids by Lin

I shake my head in disbelief and complete disappointment in parents these days, who are shirking their responsibility to be tough but loving, teaching and training their children in matters of respect towards parents and other authority figures.

And/or those who label swearing as uneducated, unimaginative and lazy (forgetting all the charm and wit of poets like Chaucer and Shakespeare and Wilde and Twain):

From Swearing in front of your kids - a comment made by "Sherri" on 9/17/10

It is not that you ARE uneducated it is that you come across as uneducated and quite honestly lower class. I guess the best thing I can think of is this to describe it.......You see the rich, well mannered, well educated ladies and gentlemen never do you hear them cussing like truck drivers as they are sitting in there fancy clothes for afternoon tea, or playing golf or the CEO's of NASDAQ sitting there swearing there heads off Then you have the poor, less educated people hanging out with heir homies and bros in the projects and I don't think one word if you can even decipher the English isn't a swear word. So when you swear/cuss in front of your kids and all the time you come across as less educated and much lower class. How you conduct yourselves and hold yourselves is how you are perceived.

And/or those who would prefer that children live in a delusional world of naive innocence where nothing bad ever happens and no one ever makes mistakes:

Comments from Cursing in Front of the Kids – Moms Speak Out!

“I don’t curse in front of anyone, and especially not my kids. I was raised in a house where ‘crap’ was a swear word, and I admit for a long time the ‘s word’ in our house was stupid. I hate swearing. It makes me feel all dark inside.” –Lolli
“I do not curse in front of my kids. I try to be as wholesome as I can." –Elizabeth

So now that I've waded through all of this soul searching, these opinions, these new ways of thinking... what am I supposed to actually do? Let me tell you, finding some guidelines that are informative and interesting and without opinion on this subject is tough. Frustratingly so. Some examples:

How to Stop Swearing in Front of Your Kids by Michelle Johnson comes with 5 simple steps: examine yourself, make a commitment, replace swear words, train yourself, share your commitment. Sounds good - I especially like #1, since I think it's important to know yourself before you go trying to teach your kids. My main problem with this entry is how it starts: with a photo of a couple shouting at each other (implying that swearing is only ever done in anger with connotations of violence), and an introduction about how "unintelligent" and "lacking in emotional control" you are when you swear. Is it really that hard to write a good, informative piece without stooping to opinion and judgement?

Apparently, yes, it is! The even better guidelines I found here, “F--- You, Mom!” How to Stop Your Child from Cursing in Your Home by James Lehman, MSW. FYI, you have to "register" by giving an email address in order to read the entire article. This is some great stuff, about halting your kid from turning an argument around on you, about the difference between swearing and verbal abuse, about not making a huge deal in the heat of the moment but establishing rules from the outset. Here is a quote of my favorite part, about having structure in your kid's life so that consequences can easily be worked in later - tricky!

It’s also very effective to have an age-appropriate schedule and structure at night that lists how much time your kids can spend on video games, the computer, and watching TV. Say for example your child has an hour free time to play video games, but the way he gets that hour is by doing his homework first. If he curses, that extra chore you give him is done during that hour, and he loses part or all of his free time. That system should be in place, so later on when your child calms down and wants to deal with the issue because she wants her cell phone back, you can say, “You know the consequences for cursing and name-calling.” And they should get a different checkmark or extra chore for every time they curse.

This is by far the best thing out there that I've found on the subject. Until the last sentence: "It’s important to realize that children who know how to act respectfully and speak respectfully are better equipped to deal with the adult world than those who prefer to sound like thugs." Really? After all that great thought and informative, rational, method-based advice, you close by resorting to a judgmental word like "thugs"??? *sigh*

In the end, here is my favorite entry that I found online about the subject. It's no-nonsense and simple.

From How do my wife and I stop our son from learning to swear from us? - a comment from "tomjedrz" on 9/25/11

The answer from the collective "Captain Obvious" ... Don't cuss in front of the kid ... is certainly correct. I don't expect it is very helpful to the OP, either. I am sure it occurred to him already, and I expect he asked here because he and his wife are struggling with it.
So the real question, as far as I am concerned, is ...
How do parents prevent kids from doing things that they themselves do?
This is actually a legit question, and actually comes up again and again as kids grow into adults. Topics include staying up late, chores, homework, drinking, sex, makeup, driving over the speed limit, etc.
The real answer is to lay down the rules and enforce them. This idea that we have to behave consistently with the rules we apply to the kid is silly. When the kid cusses, make clear that the kid is not allowed to cuss and apply consequences. When the kid protests that Daddy cusses, tell him that he is not Daddy, and when he grows up he can cuss all he wants.

OK, research done. Now what? Honestly? I don't know. Eric and I are going to have to have a long, long talk about this. He feels more strongly about the end results than I do, while I feel more strongly about the reasoning. We both agree that our daughter needs to know that there is such a thing as "inappropriate language". But agreeing on exactly what that means, agreeing on context, agreeing on teaching this? Now that's another story.

Great Expectations

A few weeks ago Eric and I had a long conversation about the baby over breakfast. (FYI, The Saw Mill Cafe is awesome!) I wish I'd written about this sooner, as I'm sure I've probably forgotten half of what was said, but I'll try now because it was very eye opening. You see, so far there hasn't been much discussion about actual parenting - the journey to get to this point, to just become parents, has been such a struggle, that there hasn't really been much time or energy left over for planning what we'll actually want to do as parents.

Well, aside from my conviction that our daughter will spend the first 18 years of her life locked in her room with no exposure to any media whatsoever. No news, no internet, no Facebook, no texting, no vapid television, and (most importantly) no Teletubbies. Oh, and no dating until she's married. Yep, now that is the proper way to raise a child! It will be difficult, but we'll figure out some way to socialize her on a regular basis without messing this up, I swear!

*cough*

Anyhow, aside from inventing devious ways of keeping our child from ever growing up or becoming an actual individual free-thinking person, parenting hasn't been much of a topic around the house. But what vague ideas I did have were weighing on me, mainly my personal expectations.

The dilemma: how do you set high expectations for your child so that s/he will be motivated to aim high, to constantly strive to achieve as much as possible, but without losing hope or feeling like s/he is being crushed by unrealistic goals?

Eric and I both already have high expectations for our daughter, although the specifics are different. Eric really wants her to excel in school, and after school, to basically excel in life. I want her to be above-average at everything. I kept revising that statement over and over again during the course of the conversation, and throughout the rest of the day. I really want her not to be average. OK, I really don't want her to be mediocre. OK, well, if she does turn out to be average, I just don't want her to be bad at anything. Well, obviously she's going to be bad at some stuff - everyone has their weaknesses. I really just don't want her to be really bad in any large/important category in life.

I want her to be beautiful, to be smart, to be successful, to be athletic, to be kind and moral. I want her to be above-average at everything. But I will be perfectly happy if she is pretty, if she is smart enough to finish school and get into college, if she gets a job/career that she likes, if she is healthy, if she is a nice to animals. But what I really don't want is for her to be ugly or fat or dumb or hopeless or a constant couch potato or mean or evil. I want her to have every advantage in this life, and not start out with a huge disadvantage right off the bat.

I spent my entire childhood convinced that I was both ugly and fat because the vast majority of people around me treated me like I was. It wasn't until I was an adult that it occurred to me that they might be wrong, and I've spent my entire adult life trying to convince myself that I'm not ugly or fat. It's not in my power to see myself as beautiful or even pretty, to imagine myself as fit or even just not plus-sized - my mind has to struggle with the concept of the possibility that I may be not-fat and not-ugly. My mind has to struggle to believe that I might possibly be something approaching average when it comes to my body. I do not want my daughter to ever have to struggle with anything that negative being so ingrained in her.

So really, all my expectations of my daughter having an excellent education, of having a successful career, of having a happy family of her own as an adult, those can all just hang. I just don't want her to start out life with a giant "X" on her forehead, either literally or figuratively. That's not really too much to ask, right? We can work on proper motivation towards excellence later I suppose.

I had one of those dreams last night

I had one of those dreams last night, the one where you are a terrible mother for neglecting your child. I had my first taste of these back in Junior High when my baby brother was born - I lost him in the supermarket. As an adult, I've had them from time to time about my pets - they usually revolve around suddenly remembering that I've forgotten about the pet for weeks at a time, and it's been locked in a drawer somewhere without food. I'm always relieved at how not-dead my pet is from starvation, and how happy it is to see me instead of angry about the whole neglect issue.

Last night I dreamed I set my baby down on the couch, walked away to do something and was distracted for a time, and when I came back she had slipped off the couch to go hide amongst a floor littered with toys that were bigger than she was. She was quite possibly the smallest newborn to ever crawl and play hide-and-seek, as she was (suspiciously?) the size of a kitten. I found her where she had camouflaged herself in a pile of Legos. She had slipped her head inside this monstrously-sized plastic yellow head of a generic Legoman, making odd noises so I thought she couldn't breathe. I whisked it off of her face and she was just giggling and cooing at me. I picked her up, cupping her in my palms carefully, quietly scolding her and myself for being so silly. Then I started bathing her with a wet washcloth in the fashion displayed in the Newborn Care class we took a few weeks ago. All was forgiven, as she was happy, unharmed, and unstarved.

I am dreading the dream where I discover I left her sleeping in a dresser drawer 10 days ago. I wonder if she will purr and meow in greeting, giggle at how silly I am, or cry because she is so starved.

Note to self: wait to get Legos or Duplos for Kailea until she is too big to slip her head inside of them. Although... that sounds much safer than giving a newborn regular-sized Legos to choke on. Hmm. Maybe the moral of this story is I need to invent giant Legos that babies can safely play hide-and-seek with. Much, much bigger than Duplos even.