Showing posts with label babies. Show all posts
























Last night in bed, I started scratching my left hand and right arm. Vigorously. I turned on my handy little flashlight app and saw that I indeed had two new bug bites. Mosquitoes? Spiders? I tend to have pretty significant reactions to both.

In any case, I was pretty sure they were mosquito bites - and after a rather lengthy session of scratching, (yes, I know you're not supposed to), I finally fell back asleep.

Cut to a few hours later, when I awoke from a strange dream - and something occurred to me:

Wait a minute... Can the Zika virus be passed through breast milk?

Shit. It probably can. What if I was bitten by an infected mosquito? Crap.

So, I googled, as is my way. I found this article on Kelly Mom, which states the following:

"To date, there are no reports of infants getting Zika virus through breastfeeding.Because of the benefits of breastfeeding, mothers are encouraged to breastfeed even in areas where Zika virus is found.“ 

Hmm. No reports eh? Well, Zika is relatively new here in the United States and they just discovered/reported that it can be transmitted through blood and semen. It was also just reported today that  279 pregnant women in the U.S. and its territories have the illness. (157 women in the 50 states and 122 in the U.S. territories).

I conferred with John, who basically thinks I'm being insane - and he's probably right. I have a tendency - but the thing is, better safe than sorry!

I'm down to one feeding a day with her - and I think now might be a really fantastic time to just cut it out. She doesn't even seem that interested anyway and derives a great deal of joy from holding a bottle on her own. She gets crazy distracted while breastfeeding - and frankly, I'm kind-of over it.

Our pediatrician said anything past 6 months is bonus territory - and that the 6 months is really for immunity-building purposes and so she's covered, seeing as how she's 7.5 months now.

Part of me can't help but be concerned about her last feeding now.

And part of me can't help but think this is a sign. It's time to cut her off. Nobody seems to know what the deal is with this virus - and I just don't want to take any chances.

I'm sure that some will interpret this as some kind of lame excuse to cut the baby off from the milk bar prematurely - but I can assure you, it's not. I'm paranoid. If something happened to my baby that could've been prevented, I think I'd pretty much want to die.

So, I think this is it. I think she's done.

We will see how it goes.
Leigh Hope Fountain 0 Comments

























Friends are pretty great -- the loyal ones, the ones who stick by you no matter what... they're invaluable. I consider myself blessed to have a small handful of friends who I could have a veritable nervous breakdown in front of that wouldn't abandon me in my time of need. In fact, it has happened... more than once.

These are my true friends. I think they know who they are. 

Some I speak with or see regularly. Others, I can go a year or so without hearing from and when we reconnect, it's like nothing has really changed. 

Now that I'm a mom in New York City however, I've begun to see the benefit in having other mommy friends. I had a few, but unfortunately, they moved to greener pastures, (literally... Michigan and Colorado). 

I recently reconnected with a friend who I hadn't seen in a handful of years, and guess what?!? She had a baby in that time. In fact, she beat me to the punch by about a year. Her little one is 18 months old and she happens to live in one of the neighborhoods we're contemplating moving to this summer. 

My friends back in California have lots of other mommy friends. And they have cars, so it's fairly easy to do the whole play date thing. In NYC, it's not so easy, especially if those friends live in other boroughs and you have to pack up the baby and all of the crap you need to have on-hand for baby and either use a carrier or a giant stroller to get a baby up and down subway stairs, etc. etc. 

I've done it. It's one of many reasons I'm an even bigger proponent of lightweight, highly compact, old-school strollers, (which I'll be purchasing this week). I've got an 18-lb baby girl and carrying her around on my chest is lovely - until I've done it for almost an hour and my lower back starts telling you that it's time pack it in and go home. 

Anyway...

Late one night not that long ago, I figured I'd google apps for meeting other mommies in the area. They must exist, right? I can't be the only one with a new baby who doesn't know any other mothers. I found a few - but none of the mommies were in my 'hood. I think those apps might all still be in their infancy and I quickly abandoned them. I realize I'm not helping their cause. Then I ran across a few stories about new apps for women meeting other women to hang with. 

It wasn't specifically for mommies, but I figured there are bound to be a few on there... so I signed up. In swiping through profiles, I quickly discovered that the vast majority of participants are 20-something college students or recent grads. Not for me. But, I'd stumble across a profile or two here-and-there of someone in their 30s. I said 'hi' to a few of them. They said hi back. I also found exactly one other mother in Brooklyn. 

We have plans on Friday. 

It's a little weird. I'm aware. It's like dating for friends. And so it's weird. But it's hard making new friends as you get older - even in a city as densely populated as this one.

I met my husband online back in 2004 when everyone thought I was insane for having to 'resort' to internet dating to find the one. In fact, I'd tried match.com as far back as 2000 when I was more or less 'assigned' to look into it for work. I immediately loved it. You're opening your world up to an entirely different set of people you'd probably otherwise never, ever meet. 

And guess what? It fucking worked. I have a kick-ass husband and now we have a kick-ass baby - and we need some kick-ass fellow parent friends to hang with here in Brooklyn. 

So I'm willing to experiment with tech again, to track down some good peeps. Wish me luck. 
Leigh Hope Fountain 1 Comments

















I realize this is the BEST POSSIBLE THING for Little G, and it's why I'm doing it.

Yes, it is a lovely little bonding thing, and yes, the health benefits for her are tremendous - no denying. It also helped me drop the 18 or 19 lbs. I gained during pregnancy practically overnight.

That said, we are just about 6 months in now... and I'm not gonna lie - I am getting very tired of walking around with comically large breasts. I was huge to begin with, (around a 36 DD or E or some nonsense), and now I'm walking around with a 36 G. A G!!!

I recently took a day trip to D.C. for work. Literally - a day trip where 10+ hours were spent traveling and about 3 hours were spent at an awards luncheon. I bought a hand pump for the occasion to bring with me so that I wouldn't wind up painfully engorged. Guess what didn't work? It was a nightmare. So there's the discomfort factor too - and carrying around an electric pump the size of a lunchbox that weighs about 5 lbs and has too many components to make it truly transportable sucks - as does feeling comfortable pumping in a public women's restroom with other women waiting on line to pee. Needless to say - this was bad planning on my part, and I won't be doing that again.

Back to the preposterous size of my boobs:

I am 5'2" tall - and while I'm curvy and not exactly small-boned, these breasts are officially disproportionately large on my person.

It is NOT okay.

I'm getting to the point where I am getting ridiculously self-conscious about it - especially as the weather warms up and I'm having to shed more layers. I also hate nursing bras. Yes they are convenient - but they're slightly padded adding even more insult to injury.

Of course, I'm going to hang on for 12 months of this, (so about another 6.5 to go), but the second I hit 12 months, I am done. D-O-N-E. done.

Then, I'm going to examine my breasts every single day like a neurotic does, to see if they're shrinking back down to their pre-pregnancy size, (which was already a bit too big).  I'm not exactly sure how long I'm supposed to allocate to this. A month? Two months? In any case, if they don't at least go back down a few cup sizes, (preferably 3 although I'll take two), I'm seriously contemplating a reduction. Once again, good thing I work for the best plastic surgeons in the entire world at the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS).

Speaking of ASAPS - I'm heading to Vegas shortly for our Annual Meeting, and I'm supposed to attend a cocktail event where I'll need to dress appropriately. Tonight, I'll be rifling through my closet to see if I even own anything that will fit over my massive mammaries. If not, I'll be doing some shopping this weekend and daydreaming about October, which seems very far away at the moment.

Thank God I have this adorable drooly little distraction!
Leigh Hope Fountain 2 Comments



















So I recently took Gypsy in for her 3 month well visit - (she's now 14 pushing 15 weeks old believe it or not) - and of course, I was beaming because I, like so many other parents, already believe our child is gifted, special and beyond compare. (Cutest, smartest, bestest, etc.).

And to us, she is.

But I had one of what I am certain are fairly common moments among parents when that wind is completely taken out of your sails:

Me: She totally wants to stand up already like a big girl. She loves standing - despite not being able to do it or even crawl yet. And she's laughing out loud already too.

Pediatrician: "Oh yeah - that's completely typical for three months."

Me: Silent, but thinking - Hey... don't call my daughter typical - She is extraordinary... magical... totally unique!

That said, she's still in the 83rd percentile for head circumference, so there's that.





Leigh Hope Fountain 0 Comments


















As anyone reading this blog regularly knows, our little Gypsy hasn't been a great sleeper and has basically insisted on sleeping on us the vast majority of the time. We have accommodated her and I even trained myself to sleep on my back on the COUCH in order to do so - but I know this is NOT smart for a multitude of reasons. Namely:

  1. Anything can happen when you're sleeping and I can't be entirely sure she's protected. She could shift her position and wind up smothering herself. We all know this would be very, very bad. I don't need to go into great detail.
  2. I don't sleep well this way. In fact, I'm not entirely convinced I do any real sleeping at all this way. No sleep = crankypants.
  3. It isn't good for her. I mean come on - she's got to learn to sleep like a normal person at some point. At first we resorted to a swing - a lovely rock n' play that everyone raves about. It worked - kind-of... in that she'd sleep in it for short stints, (maybe an hour - two if we were really lucky), then wake up and demand the chest again. Again, not good for her and not that great for us either.
  4. My husband and I hadn't slept in the same bed for three months. THREE MONTHS. We slept in shifts. One of us was always on the couch with her and the other in bed. After a while, I realized it was easier for me to just stay on the couch most of the night. My left shoulder started hurting... a lot. It sucked. Again, no bueno. 
After three months of this nonsense, we realized something had to give.

At her two-month well visit, our pediatrician told us to begin sleep training. We looked at her like she had just asked us to sacrifice our baby to the devil. No way! Too young. I asked my Facebook friends what to do and got a mixed bag of responses. Many condoned sleep training. Others didn't. It was totally helpful and totally not because at the end of the day - I realized we had to do what was right for us and our daughter - because when you're a parent - you have to turn off the noise of everyone else's opinions and make your own.

That isn't to say the info I received wasn't helpful. It TOTALLY was. In fact, I did a ton of reading based on those recommendations and everyone else's experiences and ultimately, it helped me come to a conclusion with my husband one full month later:

It was time to sleep train this little girl.

And so we started. In fact, I believe we've now been on this quest for 9 days. Today will be day 10.

Good thing too, because we started about a few days shy of her three-month "birthday" and had just received an email from our pediatrician warning us about the failure to sleep train by three months. It was incredibly, incredibly ominous. Honestly, it sent a shiver down my spine.

Ultimately, we went with some type of sleep training that isn't quite as harsh, (I guess), which was more or less the Ferberization method.

Don't get me wrong - this method is still no picnic. You put your baby in the crib after a bedtime routine - and walk away - letting him/her cry it out for small increments at first - and gradually increasing over the next handful of days. You can go in and comfort your little one during those 5, 10, 15 min. increments but cannot take them out of the crib. As any mother will tell you - this goes against every cell of your being. Your instincts and hormones are BEGGING you to free your child from the confines of its baby jail. BEGGING. It is torture.

Anyway, I quickly realized that the so-called 'comforting' your baby didn't do much in the way of comforting - at least not with ours. Sometimes, it would make her cry louder and really dish out some of those desperate cries - the ones that brought me to tears. After about 3 or 4 days - we decided to truly let her just... cry it out.

And it worked! Each day, the crying lessened in both intensity and duration to the point where she would barely cry on-and-off for a little while each night. Then she regressed and had a really bad night of almost non-stop crying for two hours. I texted a smart girlfriend about it. She offered sage advice and told me to stick with it. I did - and cried with my daughter - but in the next room where she couldn't see or hear me. After a week + of this, I wasn't giving up. Last night was a huge improvement again. Not only is she not crying that much - but she's now regularly napping in her crib too - without much of a fuss. In fact, there was only a brief 10 minute crying fuss fest last night when we put her to bed - and then she slept pretty consistently until 3:00 a.m. - when she woke up for a feeding. Then she went right back to sleep - in her crib - without any fussing whatsoever. And then she did that again at 6:00 - slept pretty soundly until around 10 a.m.

It was AMAZING.

So, I guess this opens me up to all kinds of criticism for being a heartless parent - for ignoring the needs of my child and putting my own needs first. Well, trust me when I tell you naysayers - Gypsy is sleeping better, is noticeably even happier, much more active and playful and we are MUCH better parents, because we are SLEEPING. Sleep is precious. I have never been a fan of it, until it was pretty much taken away from me for nearly three months. Now I have a brand new appreciation for it entirely.





Leigh Hope Fountain 0 Comments


 







I knew a move would ultimately be inevitable, but we may actually break our lease early in an effort to pre-empt Gypsy's crawling and walking firsts, because our current apartment just isn't conducive to either.

Our current apartment, (which we've now been in for 3 1/2 years), has treated us well. It has a yard. A YARD! That is almost unheard of in New York City. In fact, that's predominantly why we took this apartment pretty much sight-unseen save for a few pics when we moved cross country from California. It also has a sizable kitchen for a New York apartment - and is located in Park Slope, one of the nicest neighborhoods in Brooklyn - rife with more puppies and babies than anyone really knows what to do with.

We have adored living here, but the cons are starting to outweigh the pros.

Notably:
  1. No room for Gypsy to walk or crawl.
  2. The only "room" available for Gypsy is a basement level space with no windows. (It's currently used to house tons of her things, including her Pack n' Play), but she rarely spends any time down there at all.
  3. Her crib is in our living room. (Adjacent to our bedroom which is separated by a couple of French doors that I'll be blacking out the windows of today as we progress with Night 2 of sleep training). Please reserve commentary naysayers. Thanks.
  4. Our living room is more or less, Gypsy's room. (See pics).
  5. Our living room isn't exactly baby safe. (See pics).
  6. We just purchased a new TV and ordered another cable box for our bedroom because we need the living room to serve as her bedroom for naps and of course, bedtime.
  7. We have shitty new upstairs neighbors. Pretty sure they're in their 20s and single. Might be trust funders because they don't seem to work... like ever. I'll let you do the math there.
  8. Our rent is obscene. OBSCENE. That is all you need to know.
  9. We're not a big fan of the uber-judge-y Park Slope parenting crowd. I was at a nearby bar recently and a woman overheard me discussing vaccines with another patron, (who happened to be wearing her baby) and offered unsolicited advice on the toxins in those vaccines and how to eliminate them homeopathically. (Don't get me wrong - it was well-intentioned and clearly she was trying to help), but the intense opinions and the my-way-is-best attitude here is enough to make any newbie mother feel like an inadequate disaster). I get the impression that a neighborhood we're currently eyeing wouldn't produce as many of these encounters.
  10. The neighborhood we're currently eyeing is cheaper - a LOT cheaper and apartments are more spacious - MUCH more spacious. Saving money and not feeling claustrophobic in our living room seem like very good things.
So that's where I'm at. Looks like we'll be moving sooner rather than later. Just need to get through my first trip away from my adorable little girl in March/April and then we get serious.

Hey - but look at Gypsy sleeping in her crib!!!


Unreal.
Leigh Hope Fountain 0 Comments
























(Wrote this about a week ago - so dates won't make sense).

Over the past month or so, I've asked my husband exactly two questions about his take on this whole resurrected Star Wars craze. (You've heard of it, right)?

1. Does it bother you that every-other-commercial features Star Wars and that you can't throw a stick without it hitting something Star Wars-related?

2. Did you hear what Lucas had to say about the new movie? And if so, I want your pre- and post-viewing opinion.

This line of questioning reminded me of why I fell for John Brian Fountain in the first place.

(This is a demented love letter, so be warned).

Let's start with John's answers: 

1. No.

Why I love this: John is, without question, a die-hard Star Wars fan. He loves every single movie. He doesn't bitch about any aspect of a single one of the first six made... EVER. He loves them all. He hasn't yet seen the seventh, but he will be (finally) tomorrow and I am very excited for him. I also think it's a phenomenal way to start the first day of 2016. I wish I could go with him but I can't and in a way, I almost think it's better. It's just him and the movie. That's it. No distractions.

2. Yes.

For those of you that didn't hear, apparently Lucas is a bit disappointed that the story isn't as relationship-focused as his vision for the franchise was always supposed to be -akin to a family soap opera.

Back to John's answer. (Bear in mind that I am paraphrasing and probably not doing his explanation/opinion justice).

John: Yeah, he sounds a little bitter, but I don't blame him.

Me: But he CHOSE to sell the franchise - after he probably made a fortune just from licensing to Disney for their theme parks and what not - not to mention countless other profitable licenses.

John: Yes, but he probably sold it somewhat reluctantly. For the past 10 years, he's had to put up with incessant slamming and vitriol coming from the same people who worshipped the first trilogy.

Me: Yes, but he chose to try to be successful in Hollywood and SUCCEEDED and anyone who goes down that path has to know that they're going to have to deal with a combo platter of love and hate. It goes with the territory.

John: But he couldn't have predicted that this world he'd create would have such a monumental impact... globally - and that decades later upon the advent of the Internet, he'd be subjected to an endless onslaught of hatred - in the form of outright insults to accusations that he has ruined people's lives to wildly offensive parodies. And not just online - in person too. That has to get to him. For there to be this hateful backlash to the world that HE created, to have to live with never being able to live up to every single fan's expectations... it can't be easy.

Me: Jesus. You're totally right. I guess I don't blame him for being a bit bitter either. So do you think you're going to like the new movie?

John: Yes.

And I hope to God he does. And I hope I do too, because my husband is totally 100% correct. George Lucas CREATED this whole entire world that everyone is gaga for... until they stamp their feet and decide that they could've written the latest screenplay better. In the meantime, when you stop to consider the millions his creation has had a monumental impact on, let alone the artists, filmmakers, etc. whose imaginations were ignited by Star Wars, it's pretty preposterous that he even has to deal with some of those same people raking him over the coals for expanding that universe in a manner they deem inappropriate.

So here's the thing. My husband's take on Star Wars is the same take he has on everything he truly loves: He loves hard and deep and forever. That's not to say he wouldn't admit it if he really hated any of the movies. He totally would... But he really loves them - all of them...

... and it makes me love him more.

And he's Gypsy's dad. :)

Side note: People hated the ending to Lost, including me. I find it all the more interesting that JJ Abrams directed the latest installment of Star Wars.
Another side note: Since writing this, John did in fact see the movie on New Year's day and gave it a B+. I have no idea when I'll get around to seeing it. Probably not until it's on On Demand or something.
Leigh Hope Fountain 0 Comments
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)