Mum friends

You want to know something? Being stuck in an apartment while it's hot and humid and with no air conditioning although they promised to install it on Thurs (and trust me, when one is staying in a corporate-priced-and-paid apartment they really ought to do what they say because the rent is just a shade over what I personally make in a month) sucks, especially pregnant. Perhaps I will try to time any future children for different times of year.

And today after hanging with Lohr & co perhaps I will finally get my ass up to the National Gallery to see the Renaissance exhibit, which is gloriously air conditioned as well as being beautiful.

I was thinking about mum friends today - you know, friends you make that have kids the same age. One of my bestest friends was pregnant when I was and had her daughter a few months before Emily and we had Plans, I tell you, for when we were going to be on EI together. What's more, she had formed a little potluck dinner parents' group which Carl and I cheerfully joined as junior members.

Once Emily died the group part fell apart; we didn't really want to go to the potluck dinners with everyone else's babies and toddlers, and I kind of think they didn't want to see us. New parents are especially afraid of people like us, because we represent their worse fears, or at least that's what I told myself (really, it was not wanting to sit with their kids). Now M. my friend and I stuck together - if anything we're closer, actually, and I adore her daughter despite having shed tears over her little head here and there. And some of my far-flung friends have children - N. is raising her children outside of Geneva, U. currently is posted to Ryahd.

But I'm going to have to make local - Guildwood local! - mum friends. After, of course, my kid comes out breathing. The nice thing is that lots of ways of doing this are kind of created for everyone - La Leche leagues and groups and blah blah blah.

The bad thing is that parenting politics come into it. The earliest divide seems to be attachment parenting vs. everything else, although there is an 'everything else' that's off the other extreme; I don't even know the name of it, but it's the one that insists that babies have to be on a schedule and that they cry to manipulate you.

Personally, I think we're liable to fall in the middle somewhere. Lyria certainly will be an attachment parent and in fact Magdalynn leans that way too (and without obvious Oedipal leanings, either). But I draw the line at co-sleeping, sort of. I have a co-sleeper, the kind that attaches to the side of the bed (not the kind that fits in between the spouses). And we'll use it until witch baby learns to turn over.

(Although I know that will come when it comes from yesterday's contortions it seems impossible that this won't be a pre-mastered skill from the womb. In fact it would not surprise me, after yesterday, if this child sprang from my uterus and went on immediately to an international rugby career. Soccer seems not violent enough.)

And then we'll use a crib, possibly even in - *gasp* - the nursery. Actually come to think of my new master bedroom which is lots smaller than the one we had, almost definitely in the nursery. Because I honestly do believe that it is best for children and parents to sleep in their own beds, except if someone has a nightmare or whatever. I realize this is attachment parenting heresy and I realize I may also eat my own words some day. But I think learning - in a mild way - to settle down on one's own, greet the dark, and doze off is a skill that may end, at 17, in not running away with one's boyfriend because the fear of loneliness is great. Well, okay, not that extreme... but something like.

Buuuut I don't believe in letting one's kid scream for 4 hours, and I don't believe that any babies under 6-8 months cry to manipulate parents. Hello? They're still working on object permanence. Manipulation is a little bit beyond them. And after that I think there are gentle, nicer ways to gradually transition to falling asleep in a crib, including standing there for 4 hours patting the baby's back now and then or whatever it takes. I may be overly optimistic, but I am into transitions rather than abrupt change.

Slings and carriers - I'm all for them and so is everyone. For one thing, this frees up hands for other things and you can move around, go out, walk around tidying, whatever. For another it seems to make sense to me that someone who just spent months inside a person would like the sensations of warmth and movement hanging off the outside. And also then you can check so easily that the baby is breathing! So on the topic of baby wearing, although again I'm not a fanatic, I think I'm very in the attachment camp.

Breastfeeding - well, I am totally for it, to the point that it's one small consideration about the c-section (you can't let the baby latch on right away). But again, I'm not fanatical. If there were a reason that formula had to be introduced, I would deal with it, despite it being so. much. easier. to wipe off a breast than to sterilize bottles and nipples and get lumps out of formula.

And after seeing some of the things around fatherhood more clearly lately and over this last year, I've also decided that once breastfeeding is totally established (assuming we as a team achieve that) it will be good to introduce a couple of pumped bottles a week. Both as a backup - say something happened to me? that would be a shitty time to be trying to convince the baby that really s/he wants to nurse from a bottle - and also as feeding time for Carl and witch baby.

(And also, if things go really well I want to take a class in the fall, but it's more likely I'll start in the winter, since at 2-ish weeks I'm not sure I'll know how well they went. But I would like to do that: get a night out a week keeping a hand in the publishing business by finishing that certificate I started and also get some adult time.)

I also think weaning on some gradual schedule sometime around one year is good (and solids before that), but it depends on the kid, their allergies, etc. Did I mention I had a milk allergy until I was 9? Many of my parents' stories involve the frantic search for soy formula in the 70s.

So I'm not sure I'm La Leche league material, you know? I know it will work out, but when I read the acerbic discussions on the 'net and hear drive-by parenting stories, I really wonder how one finds the parenting moderates.

We'll work it out.