The Seversons

It’s strange to me that most of the country sees the South as something almost foreign, where the accents are thick and everything is backwards.  Personally, I really love the South despite its flaws and I will miss it dearly when we leave Atlanta.

Mostly, it will be sad to leave behind that hospitality that you find everywhere.  When my mother was in town she commented that just a simple trip to the grocery store always took longer than she planned since everyone was always wanting to say hello and chat.  This is true.  I have had these chats with nearly every cashier and bagger at the grocery store and a few with the people behind the seafood and deli counters, too.  They are also the kings of walking you out, which never appealed to me until I was hugely pregnant and then lugging a baby around.  It is enough work trying to fit the groceries in the cart with the baby’s car seat, but at least I never have to worry about going out to the car and getting everything loaded.  They seem to take it personally if you say no.

Even the people in the aisles will say “Excuse me” and “Pardon me” when they are especially full.  And I admit that when I walk around, I leave the shade over Graham’s face partially up so that people can see him.  I enjoy being stopped and asked how old he is or told how cute he is.

I will also miss just how lovely it is here.  When I moved to Georgia I was astonished at how green it was.  In the West, where I grew up, there is greenery, but it’s all kind of spread out.  You could never use the word “lush” to describe it.  Here I am regularly astonished when I drive through an area covered in trees and plants.  Native Georgians would be horrified to know that I love empty lots covered in kudzu, a much-maligned weed that grows at an astonishing rate and is considered a blight.  But kudzu is so pretty, I can’t help but admire it despite its reputation.

And there’s the weather.  Sure, we had a torrid June, but the winters are quite nice and August has actually been lovely.  (From what I’ve seen when I’ve gone outside.)  I think humidity is great as long as it’s warm, and I like that there are fireflies (aka lightning bugs) right outside our door in the summer.  I may be able to get away with going all winter without a coat for Graham if we get lucky.

I am trying to find a place to go walking with the stroller to get out a little more to enjoy the landscape and get some exercise.  On Saturday we tried a route in the middle of a park in Emory’s campus and introduced Graham to nature.  He slept through it.  He sleeps through the grocery store, too, to be fair.  It was nice to get out and work up a sweat, though I have my doubts about how often I’m going to actually be able to get out of the house with the baby and the stroller without having to worry about traffic or weather or something.  But I’m going to make an effort.

And here is some video to close.  Btw, those of you who are friends with me on facebook will probably see photo/video overlap between the two and those of you who access our photo website will have the same thing.  We’re pretty sure you won’t mind.  He is cuteness personified, no?  I certainly think so.  I’ve probably watched it ten times despite the fact that he’s kind of attached to me 24 hours a day for viewing live whenever I’d like.

I am learning lots of parenting lessons.  For example, if you think you’re running your household you are seriously deluded.  Graham is in charge around here and he doesn’t let us forget it.  The last couple weeks he’s started letting us know just how important eating is.  When you stop feeding him to burp him you will hear a shriek like nothing you’ve heard before.  I sympathize, of course, if someone took my food away in the middle of my meal I would probably have a similar reaction.  He also sets our sleeping schedule and he thinks night starts some time around 3 a.m.

Another parenting lesson: never say never.  I started this one back during my pregnancy.  After insisting to myself that I wouldn’t be one of “those women” who is constantly obsessing about her pregnancy, I spent nine months completely obsessing about my pregnancy to anyone who would listen.  I’m not into obsessing about my baby thing nearly as much, but it is hard to find other topics of conversation.   However, I have found that you can’t predict what you will or won’t do.  I’d expected to be breastfeeding and having the baby sleep in the bassinet in our room at night.  The breastfeeding is still only our secondary feeding source and let me tell you about sleeping.  Graham hasn’t spent any time in that bassinet in weeks.

I really shouldn’t complain.  Graham pretty regularly sleeps for more than 4 hours at a time, and I can often get a couple of  long-ish sessions out of him in a night so I feel semi-refreshed when he wakes up with his I AM STARVING shriek.  It’s not so much how long he sleeps but when and where much that can be crazy.  During his last couple growth spurts the when is pretty much never.  And the where is limited.  His bouncer is a decent choice, but not always reliable.  The crib and bassinet are great if you want him to sleep for 5 minutes.  If you want this kid to sleep, you have to take matters into your own hands.  Literally.

Once upon a time I would have said there was no way I would ever co-sleep.  Then I had a baby who only sleeps soundly when he’s being held.  We’re not technicslly co-sleeping since Graham hardly ever comes into our bed.  But most nights I spend at least half my sleep in the bed in the nursery with the Nugget.  Once upon a time I probably would have gasped in horror at the suggestion of co-sleeping, now it is the only way we can actually sleep.  Never say never.

Another lesson: you thought pens were hard to keep track of, try pacifiers.

In other news, I haven’t been able to really see myself in Graham at all since he was born.  I could see some of Eric right off.  When Eric’s mother pulled out some of his baby pictures, when my mother saw them the next morning, she said, “Who took pictures of Graham?”  As Graham gets bigger, the resemblance to baby Eric is changing.  Instead, he seems to be a clone of his cousin, my nephew Jameson.  And since Jameson is on my side of the family there has to be some me in there, right?

Take a look:

Spencer has stolen my baby!!  But at least he gave him a bath!

And take a look at this match-up:

Uncanny, no?  (Andrea calls this Jameson’s “Al Bundy” pose.  Graham’s is  more Thriller, but that’s the biggest difference.)  Looking at pictures of Jameson at 4 and 6 weeks I keep thinking, “No, that’s MY baby.”  They even have the same hairline.

Speaking of hair, in some of his pictures now and in certain light, Graham’s hair has taken on a reddish-shade.  There’s no saying if it’ll stay that way but we’re wondering if we may get a ginger in the family.

Now here’s a goodbye smile from the king of our castle:

If there was an MVP award to give out to a member of our household, it would not go to me or Eric.  It would go to this little thing, the itzbeen timer:

I heard about it while I was still pregnant and put it on the registry.  (Thanks again, Lee & Elycia!)  But I don’t know if I could have known just how useful it would be.  I’m never very good at keeping track of time and it’s only been worse since we’ve been sucked into the baby-time vortex where you lose track of what day it is, not to mention what hour.

Had we been going on our original plan and were breastfeeding on demand, we probably wouldn’t have used this so much.  But instead we have to do the neverending three rounds of breastfeed, bottle feed, pump and while there’s still some on demand action once in a while, you definitely need to know where you stand.

I still hope that we will get down to breastfeeding only one of these days.  Because right now not only is there the three rounds of feeding, there’s the time between feedings when you have to clean the bottles and the pump parts and let them soak in hot soapy water, rinse them, and make sure they’re dry in time to be used again.  Plus the bottle for the feeding has to be prepared so you don’t end up with a screaming baby in your arms while you’re frantically getting it ready.  Especially since that means you’ll probably forget to put the baby’s gas drops into the bottle.

At the moment I’m doing okay.  The baby will be eating in the next hour whether he likes it or not.  (Don’t worry, he always likes it.)  I have already rinsed all my supplies and they should be dry in time.  I even have a little time to finally fold the laundry that we took out of the dryer some time yesterday.  If I wanted to, I could lay down with the baby for 30 minutes or so.  But then there’s the risk that it’ll have me super drowsy once it’s time to get going again.  My best shot at a nap for the rest of the day is hoping the baby goes to sleep right after he eats, that I get to pump in peace, and then after washing everything he will stay asleep long enough for me to move him to another room so I can have him nearby if he wakes up.  In that scenario we may get a good two hours if we’re lucky.  And all that’s assuming that I actually have the ability to nap.  You’d think sleep deprivation would make this easier, but it doesn’t.

Anyway, back to the timer.  I just have to say that we couldn’t live without it.  We’re working on getting Graham on a day/night schedule where he has to eat within a certain amount of time during the day and then we let him sleep as long as he likes at night.  Sometimes this works out great, and other times it means you’re awake most of the night because he simply doesn’t feel like sleeping.  (Happily, I can report that it seems the Fussmaster General is on leave, at least for now.)  But you always know exactly how long it’s been since he last did something.  And it can give you good news when you wake up and see that you’ve both slept for more than an hour.

Other life savers?  Audio books.  Since the feeding process often takes over an hour, I like to have some kind of distraction.  I have watched nearly the entire series of Band of Brothers.  (We’ve had it for ages and I never was very interested, until I ran out of stuff to watch and realized that it has Damian Lewis, who was the main actor on Life, one of my favorite shows that just got cancelled, and it seemed a suitable way for me to mourn.)  I am also halfway through my third audiobook and I have a fourth waiting in the wings.  I admit, it never occurred to me to wonder what women do during all those feedings.  Staring at your baby is lovely and all, but given that it takes up about 8 hours a day or more, I often need some other form of stimulation.  For our next feeding I’m all ready with last night’s episode of Mad Men.  (Even though I’m not nearly done working back through the DVD’s from season 2.)  If anyone has other suggestions I’d love to hear them.

Given his parentage, it’s no surprise that Graham already shows a lot of ambition.  He is not content to just sit back and accept his role as “baby” in this family.  In fact, in the last several days he has received two new official titles.

1) Fussmaster General.  Babies are prone to occasional bouts of fussiness and Graham has hit a big one in the last couple days.  I swear that yesterday he slept less than 8 hours total, even though he should be sleeping 12 to 20.  Not only has he not been sleeping but he’s been particularly upset while he’s awake.  I originally thought this may only merit him the nickname Fussy McFusserson, but Eric bestowed this grander title and it is now in general rotation.  Instead of just a name, it is a title, a position of power, a policymaker.  It’s fitting given the way he has taken control of the house.

2) President and Founding Member of Future Chunks of America.  At birth, Graham was about average weight and length, but he was slow to gain for the first few weeks.  Much of this has to do with his difficulties breastfeeding, which was then been exasperated by my decreased supply since my bout of mastitis.  We are still working on trying to get him on 100% breast milk and I have to say that there’s very little that can make you feel more frustrated or depressed as a new mother than having trouble breastfeeding.  I’m starting to feel more confident that things will get better even though they’ve been slow going.  And I pretty quickly got over the heaven-forbid-your-child-eats-any-formula shame.  It’s not nearly as bad as the your-child-is-starving shame.

Today he had his first baby physical therapy appointment to try and get the kid to learn how to eat correctly, which should help things along.  Who knew there were exercises for your tongue?  I continue to pump with every feeding, which means that I spend about half of the day feeding the baby.  Breastfeed, supplement with bottle, pump.  The whole affair can take up to an hour or longer, depending on how long it takes me to calm him down after eating so I can sit down and pump.  Wait an hour or two and do it again.

One thing we have done is increase the amount he’s eating.  Especially since he was still such a skinny guy.  At least this one thing is already working well.  Today he was up to 9 pounds so he’s gaining about on schedule.  He now has a baby double chin and his diapers do not fall around his knees, but he’s still got a ways to go before he gets those lovely rolls of baby fat, especially on his very slim little legs.

But he has big dreams, and thus the founding of Future Chunks of America, a club for skinny babies who dream of chunkiness and are working to make that dream a reality.

And now some pictures from what appears to be Graham’s blue period.  (I swear he has clothes in other colors.  And I swear he really does not spend all day in the bouncer.  It’s just easier to take a picture when you’re not holding the baby.)

And the kick is good!

His newfound fame hasn’t gone to his head, but he is already trying to avoid the pesky paparazzi.

Oh, and did I mention his third title?

3) Cutest Baby in the World

1. Support Staff.  For the first week or two of Graham’s life we knew we wouldn’t be completely dead because there would be at least one grandparent there.  It turned out we had about three weeks total from pre-delivery on, and for a while we had 3 out of 4 there to help out.  This isn’t just useful for having an extra set of hands to take over on the night shift, it also means there is actual food for dinner and the dishes are washed.  As the still-recovering mother or the almost-back-to-work father, you will be regularly urged to go ahead and get some more sleep.

2.  When you’re about to lose your support staff, have some sort of crisis so you get them back. Our last remaining grandparent, Eric’s mother, was due to depart this previous Sunday, leaving the three of us on our own for the first time.  It all would have gone according to plan except that I got mastitis (inflammation from a blocked milk duct) over the weekend.  This in and of itself may not have done the trick, mastitis seems to be pretty common and often somewhat mild.  But I seem to have developed a particularly nasty case.

Actually, I’d been feeling sick-ish from around the time we came home from the hospital.  I assumed it was just sleep deprivation since it never really took and I usually felt better if I’d had more sleep and I had no real symptoms of mastitis.  Then on Friday I felt sick again along with pain in one breast.  I tried feeding, warm compresses, and resting, but by Friday afternoon things were worse rather than better.  I called our lactation center and was told at around 4 p.m. that it sounded like mastitis and I’d better call my OB’s office before they closed for the weekend.  Sadly, my OB’s office closes at 1 p.m. on Friday’s so I was out of luck.  I tried Student Health, but they had nothing left for the day and don’t open on weekends during summer term.  I was weighing my options, not sure what to do.  Surely I just needed someone to call me in a prescription for antibiotics and be done with it, right?

On Friday and Saturday Eric had a retreat to attend a little ways out of town.  On Friday evening I was in bed while my mother-in-law had the baby and waited for Eric to come home.  As the night progressed I went from feeling bad to feeling like death and I realized that my situation would not wait until Monday.  I felt just like I had in 5th grade at camp when I got pneumonia and was near-delusional in the infirmary.  So I informed Eric by phone that when he came home he would be taking me to the ER and he probably would not be able to get to Day 2 of the retreat the next day.

One thing you’re supposed to do with mastitis is continue to express milk, so we had to pack up the breast pump and all its accessories to take to the ER with us.  When the nurse first took my temperature he asked me if I’d just had something hot to drink.  At the time I’d just finished a really really hot flash that lasted around an hour and had now broken into a more comfortable cold sweat that was soaking through my clothing.  Later when we saw the doctor I was shivering under 3 blankets and continued to shiver for about an hour, until I got a warmed blanket on top of the other 3.  My expectation of a prescription and a pat on the back on my way out the door wasn’t to be.  Instead we were kept in observation while they pumped three rounds of IV antibiotics through me.

We got back home about 12 hours before my mother-in-law had to leave for the airport.  About 12 hours after that the new round of reinforcements arrived: my parents drove in from Texas.  (During the brief period we were unmonitored, our dinner consisted of pizza we had delivered to the house.)

And yes, for those of you keeping track, this is yet another one of our major-life-event trips to the emergency room.  There was the one on our wedding night, the one during my pregnancy, and now we have one to celebrate the birth of our first child.  Each stay has been progressively longer.  I’m wondering what will happen when Eric graduates next summer.

3.  Make sure your baby actually eats enough food. Breastfeeding really doesn’t give you the opportunity to know just how much your baby is eating.  They tell you to count the number of wet diapers and such things to know everything’s okay.  Turns out those are not reliable indicators, since they were giving us the all-clear, but in actuality Graham wasn’t eating enough.  This was verified when he was weighed before and after eating, just to check.

Fortunately, since we’ve changed his feeding plan, he’s been less fussy, sleeping better, and developing lovely chubby baby cheeks.  And we are eternally grateful to the wonderful lactation center where they are not all mean and judgmental but are all sweet with lovely dripping Southern accents.

4.  Keep a positive attitude.  Despite the extra assistance there will still be plenty of bumps in the road.  The mastitis came at a particularly bad time since we’d just started the new breastfeeding plan.  Graham has a high palate and his tongue does not cooperate and next week he will get special baby physical therapy to help him figure this whole thing out.  But we’ve been knocked off our plan thanks to the day I spent in the hospital and my continual feeling-crummy-ness since.  Graham is still getting enough food and I am gradually getting back into the swing of things.

To stay positive, it is always helpful to take a picture of your baby wearing his oft-worn “serious face” with your own Honey Bear, who appeared in your own baby pictures.  They make a cute pair.

Wait.  What is this thing again?  A pet?  A piece of furniture?  A fancy new gadget?

Oh, RIGHT.  Baby.  Good thing he has a label.

(PS, we have a password-protected site where we are posting pretty much all of our pictures.  We’re happy to give the link to family and friends, just leave a note or send an email and we’ll get it to you.)