Around the Bend

I blame the lack of blogging on something very simple - this month, we moved! We're now settled in a 2 BR house in the Silver Lake area of LA, only about 5 minutes from where we used to live but with way more space. We've also got a lovely patio area, a non-working hot tub, and carpet instead of hardwood, which is nice for Elisa.

This past week, I think Elisa has finally turned a corner. She is adjusting more and more beautifully into life outside the womb. The past month or so, she would be in a good mood in the mornings, but get fussier as the day progressed. Lately, I can get a smile out of her almost all day long. She's doing better with riding in the car without crying, and she charms most people she meets with a smile and sometimes even a laugh.

Sleep training was hard to stomach at first...in the newborn days we didn't feel good about letting her "cry-it-out" for very long since her needs were so physical (hungry, poopy, tired). Then we realized that more and more often, she cried because of her emotional attachment to us and our soothing methods were becoming less and less effective. So we letting her cry, and after one night of a rough wailing session and us going in to comfort her in intervals, she woke up bright eyed and smiling, and napped without a complaint the next day. It's been up and down since then, but overall, she is learning to sleep better in her crib than she ever did. Now, when she's content to go to sleep, we can put her in the crib without the usual swaddle, rock, nurse routine, and she'll eventually drift off to sleep. There are of course times when she does not want to sleep, but in general it is getting easier and easier to put her down for naps and bedtime. What a huge blessing! Getting her off the pacifier will be another battle, but hey, one thing at a time.

Here's our happy girl at almost four months.

End Fourth Trimester

Elisa had her 3 month birthday yesterday, which we celebrated with our monthly cupcakes from Lark, my favorite bakery in the neighborhood where I always eat way too many pecan bar samples every time I go in there. Yum. Of course, the only way to have her taste the cupcakes is for me to eat them. This is a good tradition. Yesterday we got the autumnal pumpkin flavor and our classic vanilla favorite.

I've been waiting for the end of the first three months. Not that I haven't enjoyed taking care of her and seeing her grow in the newborn phase, and I often really miss how little she was when she was first born. But everyone kept telling me - hang in there, the first three months are the hardest and my doctor even termed it the "fourth trimester." I had this glorious view of what this next period would be like, that maybe I would wake up on October 12 and she would be a perfect angel, no crying and fussing or anything. Wrong. Today has been a tough day, probably because I am itching to get more of our stuff packed up but frustrated that she won't seem to nap for more than 20 minutes. I finally got her to take a nap now after a fight with the swaddle blanket. Last week, Paul's mom and grandma came to visit and she was great in the mornings, but totally fussy every evening. It took tons of rocking, swaddling, and shushing to get her in any kind of state to go to sleep. We even had a meltdown episode at our favorite dim sum restaurant. For some reason, Elisa just wouldn't stop crying for the 1 1/2 hours that we were there. We had to take turns taking her outside, and just when we thought we had gotten her calmed down in the car, she started another crying session that lasted the whole way home. Suffice it to say that we won't be going back there anytime soon, unfortunately. So far the end of the fourth trimester has been pretty unremarkable, sadly enough. People were saying, the first three months are the hardest - it'll get easier. Now they're saying things get easier after six months! Hopefully things will get easier soon.

Little Miss Personality

Lately, Elisa has been smiling and cooing to no end. It's such a fun stage that she's getting into. Last week, I brought her to work where we were having a faculty luncheon and she charmed everyone she met, smiling and laughing, sitting quietly while we ate, and then making her exit with a very big poop that leaked onto my hand while I was holding her (luckily, no one else noticed).

I'm seeing some of her personality start to come out, and although she's barely 3 months old, these are my guesses. We'll see if they hold true:

• She's a people person - she loves meeting new faces and smiles at both familiar and unfamiliar people, then gets totally exhausted from the energy it takes to process all of it.
  
• She's determined and a bit stubborn (don't know where she get's this...). This is evident in the way she fights her way out of swaddles, refuses to sleep even if she's really tired, and the vigorous way that she nurses.
• She's vocal and communicative. If she's hungry, she has a specific cry (sounds like, "Aaa. Aaa. Aaa!") and if she's not done quite yet but I try to close up the cafe, she'll let me know right away.
  
• She's a clean freak. If her diaper is the littlest bit dirty, she protests - loudly. Sometimes she cries loudly right before she starts peeing, which we've found out the hard way because it often happens while we're changing her diaper and pee ends up on the changing table and all over her clothes. It seems like she thinks the idea of sitting in her own urine for any amount of time is philistine and unrefined. Maybe she's ready for potty training already!
  
• She's smart. Lately, she's been cooing and babbling, and when you say a word to her, it sounds like she's trying to say it back to you! A word she seems to say a lot sounds like "Ah-go" which I think sounds a lot like "Aiko," the name of our dog and something we say a lot around the house. I'm sure all parents think their children are smart, but she has one particular expression where her brow is furrowed and it looks like she's processing something really complex, like contemplating her philosophy on life outside the womb or solving quadratic equations in her head.

Another parent told me that the 3-6 month period are the "golden months" because babies sleep longer during this time and start to become so cute and interactive. If this is a glimpse of what's to come, then I'm looking forward to it. We're still working on the sleep part of it, but hopefully she'll sleep longer and longer stretches soon.

This is currently my favorite photo of her, which Paul and I both posted on FB so you may have seen it by now! I bought this hat when she was about a week old and didn't think it would ever fit her - it seemed so huge at the time.

In the present

I think we've been looking for a new place to live intermittently for about 6 months. It started at the end of my pregnancy, after graduation when I had time, but I was soon too huge and immobile to deal with moving. So we put off the search for awhile, although I'd still poke around on craigslist to see what was out there. We've seen places from as far as Sherman Oaks to Koreatown to Highland Park and Eagle Rock, all the while lamenting the fact that we'd probably be leaving our neighborhood of Silver Lake, which we have loved living in for the past 3 years. Well, finally the right place has come along, only about 5 minutes away here in Silver Lake - and we'll be moving in October 15!

It reminds me that in so many areas of my life, I'm always waiting for some kind of change to occurs which I am somehow convinced will improve my life, and I don't do anything well until it happens. Waiting for the ideal job, the bigger house, the better car, the superior guitar. While I'm sure some of these things might make life easier or more enjoyable, I really want to learn how to just be here in the now and enjoy what is before me right now. This new house will be a big improvement in space for the baby, but it won't make my life so much better that I should stop everything now and place all my hopes in our new living situation. So while normally I would be pretty stressed out about moving, especially with a 2 month old baby, I am trying to let the moving happen when it happens and still focus on what is before me.

I'm constantly reminded of this challenge while taking care of Elisa every day. She changes and learns so many new skills and things each week that if I keep my eyes on the future, I will miss what she is in the present. Lately it seems like her development has really taken off. She can now follow faces coming in and out of the room, suck on her fists and fingers, pet the dog when I help her, sit in the Bumbo, and drool. Her neck control is improving, she is nursing less frequently, and she is smiling - smiling lots, which is so precious that I find myself speaking in a really high voice and cooing and oogling over her whenever she does. We're trying to shift her bedtime a little earlier, and are hoping the evening fussiness will go away soon as she gets used to the new schedule.

Here's Elisa at 2 1/2 months, completely enthusiastic about her ability to be sort of upright.

Better All the Time

Elisa is now two months and four days old. She's suddenly in her third month of life. I don't know what has happened since her birth - it's all a total blur that is somewhere deep inside my memory as a hard time but a beautiful time. Lately we've turned a corner in her growth and in our everyday lives. Somehow things are getting easier, and it happened very suddenly yet very gradually.

The biggest improvement as of late is that Elisa is now getting up only once a night! I feel like I'll jinx it by writing it here, but it has been pretty consistent for the past 2 weeks or so. It has made a huge difference on my body and my energy level. Getting up to feed her 3 times a night like I had to in the very beginning was exhausting, and left me feeling like a wreck every day. Last night she even went for a 6 hour stretch from about 11pm -5am. A few times a week we have a bottle ready for her at night so that Paul can feed her and I can sleep through the night, which is A-MA-ZING!

I think my emotional health is improving also. The biggest reason is that I am making a concerted effort to get out of the house every day. I'm making a little schedule for us - Monday: walking Silver Lake; Tuesday: the local farmer's market; Wednesday: weekly Target run; Thursday: Trader Joe's or Costco; Friday: City Center (our favorite Korean food eating area and grocery store). These lovely activities can happen out of order too - this is just a sample of our glamorous life. Even if I don't necessarily need anything, it's essential for me to get dressed every day and get out of the house to remember that I am some kind of active member of society, if even just a consumer.

I've also just started exercising again, which has been completely painful. My local trendy workout class, Pop Physique, offers a new mom's special which is an unlimited class pass for 3 months at a discounted price. It's an intense hour long workout similar to the Bar Method with exercises targeted at different parts of your body and core combined with some ballet and yoga stretching. I used to go before I got pregnant and found the class difficult but totally worth it. Now it is beyond hard, but I'm pushing myself to go three times a week to get the most out of my unlimited pass. It's pretty awesome so far - I've been twice this week while Paul watches the baby in the evening, and I've already noticed some changes in my body. Mainly soreness. Right now my core is totally sore and it's hard just to get myself on and off the couch! After labor, all of your extra body fat just turns into this squishy mess as if to remind you that something happened there. On my first day back at Pop, I was sweating through my workout trying to keep up with the instructor, telling myself to keep going. I had flashbacks of what labor was like and the sheer determination it takes to make your body do something it doesn't think it can do. It's very much like what my hands first felt like when I started practicing guitar again. It's so hard but so possible.

I've started a tradition that every month on the 11th, we get cupcakes to celebrate another month of Elisa's life. This month we didn't get pictures of the cupcakes because Paul accidentally dropped the box and they got smushed, but I still ate them. You know, so Elisa could have some too. But I did get a picture of her in the pretty blue dress that Auntie Lav sent us last month. All the 3-6 month clothes are fitting now and the newborn stuff is too small - in fact, at her 2 month checkup she was weighing 9 lbs and 15 oz - nearly 10 lbs!

Our little girl is growing so fast!

Love and Fear

I suppose that when you start to love anyone, the most human thing you can do is also become afraid. I never feared starting to love my parents or siblings since I've always known them, although I have feared losing them so much that even now, just thinking about that will often bring me to tears. With my husband, I grew to love him very gradually, dipping my toes in the water a little bit at a time, giving my heart time to process and consider if this endeavor would be worth the pain if I were ever to lose him someday. When it finally decided yes, it was already too late; I was in love with him and could not be convinced out of it even if I tried.

I wonder about this love/fear phenomenon because ever since Elisa was born, I have begun loving her so intensely that sometimes it brings on these gigantic fears. This past weekend, I turned 30 and my mother graciously offered to watch the baby for a night while Paul and I went to Napa for a surprise getaway. I had a fabulous day. He had booked me 2 hours of spa time, which was followed by a lovely little picnic on the balcony of our room before we went out to dinner. I was looking forward to a full night's sleep in the plush hotel bed, but could not fall asleep for the life of me. There was this huge void in my heart and I lay there awake, staring into the darkness while Paul snored away peacefully, thinking about the baby and missing her like crazy. Even though she was with my own mother (who sent me photos of her every hour) and I had no reason to be afraid for her safety or her life, the irrational, terrible demon of fear started to devour my mind. I tried my best to stop thinking and feeling scared that something could happen to her, to stop worrying for once and let sleep overtake my tired body, but I couldn't.

I woke Paul up after tossing and turning for a few hours and he was sweet enough to process all of this with me and pray with me. Instead of reassuring me that she would be perfectly fine and safe, he reminded me that everything was in God's control and that I needed to trust God's hand in this new journey of motherhood. Such a hard thing for me to do, especially in the wee hours of the morning. It isn't true that my baby will always be healthy and safe, but it is true that God's plan is always better than mine, and here is this new area of my life that I need to continually lay down at His feet and say, "You give and take away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

On the long drive back to LA, I continued thinking about this new blessing in my life that I have not yet learned how to submit to God. My heart has been so full that amidst the exhaustion, it often feels like it is about to burst - and I think, how could loving a little person so much ever steer me away from Him? But God calls us to love Him above and beyond anyone else, even our kin, our own flesh and blood. It was this very relationship, that of parent and child, that God decided to use to demonstrate His immense love for me on the cross. I don't think I have ever fully grasped what it means to give your own son for someone else's life, and in that moment as we drove into the sunset on interstate 5 gazing upon cows and dry landscapes, it hit me what this great sacrifice really was - that God gave His son, in all His perfection, to die so that I could live. And God probably felt the intense love for His child the way I feel about Elisa, but a thousand times over. Could it be that He gave me this child so that I could get a better grasp, if even just a tiny inkling, around the whole concept of the meaning of the gospel ?

I think so. I think Elisa is in my life because somehow loving her does bring me closer to my Maker. And not because her life will be perfect or free from sickness or hardship, but because when I lay down this precious gift in my life to my Lord and King, I am loving Him a little bit more - and that is indeed my greatest calling as a mother.

Baby Blues

No one ever tells you that along with the bliss and intense love that comes with being a new mom, there are also a lot of tears. They say this is common, since your hormone levels are skyrocketing, you are sleep deprived, and you're getting used to a new little person that demands your attention 24/7. It's the baby blues, or more severely, postpartum depression, or most severely, postpartum psychosis. I just heard a story about a mother in Irvine that dropped her seven-month old baby off the roof of a parking garage. It made me sick to my stomach to think about, but also shows how delicate a woman's emotional health can be after birth.

Mixed with the moments of love and baby bliss, I've shed a lot of tears this past six weeks. I cried when we first got home from the hospital because the baby seemed so unhappy and somehow I felt like it was my fault that her entrance into the world was so rough. I cried when the baby cried and I had no idea why she was crying, and my friend who happened to come over probably thought I was a serious nutjob. I cried when all of my family members who came down to LA to help us left and I went about my day alone for the first time and felt so lonely. I cried while breastfeeding because it hurt so badly the first few weeks and I wanted to give up. I cried whenever I touched my Boppy pregnancy body pillow because it reminded me of how much I used to sleep when I was pregnant (proudly, about 10 hours a night!) I cried when the dog barked at the baby crying because I didn't know how I could deal with crying and barking at the same time, but couldn't bear the thought of giving away the dog even though we would never do that. I cried when the neighbor complained about the baby crying. I even cried when I was really hungry one day, there was no food in the house, and I had no idea what to do because I was so tired I couldn't think straight.

Luckily, I feel that things have turned a corner although it's been a rough transition into motherhood, mostly because I had no idea that it would be like this. When people used to talk about babies waking up in the middle of the night, I would think, "Oh, I'm sure our baby will sleep through the night" or "I can deal with getting up in the middle of the night once." But you don't imagine that it is multiple times a night for days on end, and all of that added with the pressure of adjusting to feeding the baby 8-12 times a day and trying to be a great mom can make you feel like you're about to crack sometimes.

I had a heart-to-heart conversation with my mom when she was in town last week to help me with the baby while Paul was away on a company retreat. I was exhausted from a few awful nights of the baby not sleeping well, combined with anxiety plaguing my mind causing terrible insomnia. I tried to nap and couldn't fall asleep for the life of me, and was so tired and wiped out I almost felt like I would vomit for whatever reason. I came out of our bedroom in tears, and begin rambling about every single fear or anxiety that had taken over my thoughts and prevented me from sleeping. My mom listened patiently, assuring me that it was perfectly normal to go through all this huge life change. She reminded me to keep everything in perspective - here was my beautiful, healthy baby girl, and she needed a mom who was happy, not a mess. This stage, after all, is temporary - she won't be an infant forever, and it will all pass before I know it, and this isn't the end of my career as I fear it will be, but a special season where a baby needs her mom the most.

I've taken much of her advice to heart and feel that somehow I've turned a corner lately. In an honest conversation with my doctor, I told her that I had been feeling slight signs of depression. She asked me if I had thoughts of hurting myself or my baby, which are signs of more severe postpartum depression, and I quickly said an honest no. So she assured me that what I was feeling was normal, and that it would pass quickly. But sometimes when I don't have enough alone time or go for days without leaving the house and not realizing it, I still feel like I could be teetering on what feels like a dark abyss - and I fight my way through it, reminding myself that I am blessed beyond belief to have this baby in my life and I want to love her with every ounce of my being. Now that I've gotten the green light from my doctor to exercise, I'm going to try to get out a few times a week to take my little creatures (dog and baby) for a walk around the lake and to get some sun (not hard in LA) because that helps prevent depression too. I also pump a bottle for the baby every night so that Paul can help with one of the night feedings, which allows me to usually sleep for 4-5 hours straight. And when I do need it, Paul takes the baby out so that I can teach, have some alone time, and just collect myself every now and then. This helps a lot too and he enjoys taking her out on joyrides around town. In fact, tonight they are out in Westwood at a dinner while I taught a new student, took a nice long shower, and finally got to blogging again.

So you who are reading this can help keep me accountable. I'm keenly taking steps to fight against a darker place of emotional health, and I'm going to try to be the optimist that I'm not and think positively for once - because as my mom says, if you want your children to be happy, you have to be happy yourself. And when Elisa smiles up at me as she did today after a really big poop, I know she deserves all the happiness in the world.

Here are my two little creatures in our first time together around the lake (about a 2 mile walk).