Suits, high heels, and breast pumps!

“Do I really want to change out of my stretchy pants for a silly job?” For new working mothers this can be a really hard decision. You knew when you got pregnant that you would, without a doubt, return to the workforce and not turn into one of those mothers whose whole world revolves around her baby. You would even roll your eyes when you saw fellow co-workers leaving meetings or work events early to get home to their offspring. You told yourself, “I will never be like that”. Then the last week of your maternity leave rolls around and you realize that not only did you not complete Season 4 of Scandal like you planned, but you are not ready to leave your little miracle with a bunch of strangers for 8 hours a day.  

Oh no!!! Are you turning into one of “those” mothers? The answer is YES and it is okay. Your baby is the most demanding person in your life and you cannot feel guilty about wanting to respond to that. Besides, there are many more things that you will feel guilty about down the road. Mergers & Acquisitions just don’t seem important after you literally created a future employee in your stomach. You just have to CHECK YOURSELF LADY!! Your baby will be perfectly well cared for and you will even look forward to having conversations about things other than reflux. You may actually feel confident that you have the skill set to accomplish the tasks that are put in front of you—something you can never feel as a parent. I am not saying there won’t be hard days when you are late to work because your darling angel had a massive blow out just as you were putting him in his car seat and you don’t even realize that you have poop all over the side of your shirt until you are walking into a board meeting. This will happen. You have to let it go and join the ranks of the rest of the parents in the office that are all doing their best to make it all work.  

Luckily, employers are getting better (or being strong-armed) about trying to find ways to keep mothers in the workforce. Make sure you talk to your boss and ask for what you need. You may be surprised at her flexibility. Or you may realize that your job is not flexible at all and that you need to find work that allows you to be a parent and a career woman, knowing that you cannot be exceptional at both all the time. Sometimes you win at work and sometimes you win at home. There are trade-offs, but most kids survive the process. In the end, 50% of kids with mothers who work are psychopaths and 50% of kids whose mothers stay home are psychopaths. Have more than one kid and may the odds be ever in your favor.  

SURVIVAL TIPS ON THE RETURN 

• Get on a schedule 
  • While a lot of mommies don’t like the idea of scheduled feedings, it may be a necessary evil if you plan to return to the workforce. A good resource if you are having trouble getting on a schedule is Baby Wise. It is a bit militant so just pick and choose what you want to pull out of it so that won’t go completely insane.  
• Block off your pump times on your calendar 
  • If you don’t have it as blocked time on your calendar, you are likely to delay or even skip your pumping sessions. This will also help your co-workers get used to the idea that you are unavailable 3 to 4 times a day because you are producing liquid gold and cannot be disturbed. I would often skip a pump because a meeting got scheduled and it caused my supply to drop faster than Mel Gibson's career.  
• Have a back up outfit in the car or in your office 
  • This will be a life saver when you accidentally spill just-pumped milk on yourself or leak through your top while watching a YouTube video one of your co-workers sent you about a tiny kitten’s daring rescue from a tree by four exceptionally attractive firefighters. 
• Use your lunch breaks for errands 
  • While I would love to suggest that you use this time for yourself and take a break, no one has time for that. Utilize the time to hit the grocery store by yourself and get whatever frozen dinner you need for that night. 
• Just say “no” 
  • Now is the time to flex those boundary muscles. You are going to have to draw the line between work and personal life. Make sure you are upfront with your boss and co-workers about your inability to work late nights and/or take on someone else’s workload.  This is when it really hits home that you have transitioned from the young, hip crowd in the office to the "mature" lot with mortgages and pest control issues. Hang in there. Those reckless youngsters will have an after work tequila night that will land one of them in the delivery stirrups in no time. 

What a typical day back to work will/could look like for you:  

5:00-5:30: Nurse 

6:00: Get out of bed lazy head 

6:00-7:00: Shower, throw down breakfast, and pack pump bag, bottles and baby’s daycare bag while your little one happily sits and watches the chaos from a swing 

7:30: Drop off baby and swallow the guilt that is in your throat 

8:00: Start your day at a job where you are actually rewarded for your competency 

9:00: Pump 

12:00: Pump 

3:00: Pump 

5:30: Retrieve bambino from cage at daycare 

6:00: Nurse 

6:30-7:00: Bath (b/c daycare is a germ breeding ground) 

7:00: Bedtime for babe 

7:30: Pour yourself a big bowl of cereal because you are too tired to cook 

8:00: Pump 

8:05: Fall asleep on the couch while trying to catch up on Game of Thrones 

9:30: Milk dripping from your pump and through your shirt wakes you enough to stumble to bed 

2:00: Nurse (if you haven’t yet gotten the little one to sleep through the night) 

Oh yeah, you forgot to work out. I’m sure you’ll fit it in tomorrow between the crawl to bed and the midnight feeding. If not, you’ll be eligible for the silver sneakers discount at your gym in no time!  

A few resources that will make you feel better about going back to work:  

Lean In: inspired by Sheryl Sandberg’s book, this site does a great job of inspiring you to stay engaged in the workforce. Get the audio version of the book for your commute. I couldn’t ever stay awake long enough to read it.  

The Working Mother: This site gives you several resources and information on “mom-friendly” companies and how to survive the workforce.

Feeling guilty about going back to work? : A great article from HP on how staying at home isn’t right for every woman.  

How to Rock a Newborn Schedule: A realistic look at scheduling from Incredible Infant.

The C-Word

Colic is an ancient medical term for “your baby screams at you for nine hours a day because he hates you and you’re probably a terrible mother.” Like IBS or global warming, colic is a catch-all explanation for a host of vaguely connected symptoms that nobody really understands and a few loony jack-holes deny exists. Some people think it’s related to gastrointestinal issues, but they are confusing colic in infants with colic in horses, so don’t listen to those people when they recommend you check your haystacks for mold. Colic in infants has no explanation and no treatment. It arrives out of nowhere like a tsunami of velociraptors and leaves you lying eviscerated on the living room floor in a bloody pool of your maternal hopes and dreams.

My son’s symptoms developed when he was about three weeks old. He cried all day, beginning just after my husband left for work, occasionally breaking to nurse and doze for a few minutes, and then resuming with renewed vigor until midnight. If he was awake, he was crying, and no amount of swaddling and swinging and shushing made it stop. Even my father-in-law, a physician who received his medical training in Mumbai where patients routinely presented with complaints of bubonic plague, felt that C seemed an exceptionally unhappy baby. We described the situation to our pediatrician at C’s 4-week appointment, oozing new-parent naiveté from our overtired pores as we awaited a proper diagnosis and course of treatment—Zantac, exorcism, whatever the APA recommended. All we got was a fact sheet on colic and an assurance that “it usually passes by 12 weeks,” with no useful suggestions for how to prevent the complete obliteration of our humanity in the interim.

Here are the facts on colic that no pamphlet will tell you. Colic will make you regret having a baby. It will convince you that you have destroyed your life and any hope of future happiness. Colic will make one week feel like one decade, and it will make the prospect of surviving it for eight more weeks feel like you have been condemned to the burning flames of hell for infinity years plus eight more weeks. Colic will make you hate your husband, scream at your pets, hide from your friends, and cry during American Idol. Colic will make you consider running away to join ISIS so you have some space to relax and just breathe.

There is not much you can do about colic, but there are a few things that helped me persevere without contacting an adoption attorney, and a few other things I only discovered in hindsight that might have saved me some despair:

1) Buy a Baby Bjorn: My number one life-and-custody-saving apparatus was the Baby Bjorn Classic. I plan to have my Bjorn bronzed and mounted over my mantle I love it so much. The Bjorn holds your infant upright and tight against your chest, and for whatever reason, this is what is required to quell the evil spirits. It costs about $50 on Amazon.com, which is a whole lot less than the co-pay for in-house psychiatric care.

2) Tell Someone: Tell everyone. When your friends or neighbors or colleagues ask you how it’s going, say, “It’s like having genital warts removed with nail clippers.” Some people won’t get it; they will back away awkwardly while muttering the usual drivel about your heart exploding with joy and love. But some will understand because they went through it, too, with colic or another postpartum nightmare that left them miserable and isolated. They won’t have any solutions to offer you, but at least you’ll know that people survive, and sometimes they even voluntarily procreate a second time.

3) Know That It Ends: Unfortunately, the absolute worst piece of advice I can offer is also the most true. Yes, like high school and the first few episodes of most HBO series, the adage applies to colic: It gets better. It doesn’t happen all at once, but slowly the hours spent crying recede and somewhere in the empty black void of your baby’s eyes appears the glimmer of a human soul. Then one day out of the blue he smiles at you. Let the healing begin.

Our journey into the light began around six weeks with the first real smiles, and things improved dramatically at eight weeks when we took C to a family wedding in Aruba, because apparently all he really needed was a warm ocean breeze and some dark rum in his breast milk. By 14 weeks he rarely cried at all without an obvious reason, and ever since he’s been a delightful boy with nary a sign that he was once possessed by the demon Zuul. Maybe it’s the Stockholm Syndrome speaking, but I would endure it all over again if I knew the result would be a child as easygoing as C. Which pretty much guarantees our next kid will be charming for the first 12 weeks before transforming into Rosemary’s baby.

Written by: Kathleen

I promise, that first smile makes it all worthwhile...unless it's just gas.

Only Fools Rush In

After you give birth but before you leave the hospital with your sweet, squishy little cherub, they will make you watch a video about how shaking your baby is bad and you shouldn’t do it. Duh, you will think, what do I look like, one of those women on the Maury Povich show trying to figure out which of four possible meth dealers is her baby’s daddy? And then three weeks later as you stand alone in your kitchen after midnight, bouncing to the sound of the vent-hood fan while your tiny Beelzebub hisses and thrashes in your arms, you will think, Oh, I get it now.

In theory, newborn babies are pretty special—you have this sparkling, untarnished soul infused into a bag of cells that somehow over the course of 40-ish weeks divided and morphed into a perfect miniature person. You stare deep into the dark pools of their eyes and see physics and philosophy, evolution and creation, the yin and the yang of the universe, all swaddled in your arms and looking like a burrito with a hat. In reality, a human infant is a vacuum of continuous need that, if not addressed with punctuality and precision, will result in an eruption of screaming rage that will make you wish you were drowning in molten lava because then at least you would be allowed to close your eyes for a second.

Nobody prepares you for how difficult the first few weeks with your baby can be. Or, as in my case, your friend Alice tries to prepare you, but you kind of tune her out because you’re 37 weeks pregnant and you really miss wine. Not only do they not prepare you, but throughout your third trimester many people will deliberately mislead you with exclamations of “Enjoy every minute of it!” and “It goes by so fast!” When you’re finally on the other side and holding your newborn in your arms, you will remember their words and realize that either they are sadistic assholes or their memories are clouded by all of the sleep and personal hygiene they get to enjoy. Yes, you will love your new baby because millions of years of evolution will produce the proper hormones to make it so, but you won’t necessarily be in love with your baby, and there’s a decent chance you won’t really like him all that much. He’s the reason your life—and your body—are no longer your own, and yet you barely even know the guy, and he never says thank you or apologizes for pooping on your lap.

One night when our son was about two weeks old, my husband and I lay awake for a few minutes after one of the 47 late night feedings, and we started whispering back and forth our tentative admissions.

 “It’s not like what I expected.”

“Sometimes I really miss our old life.”

“Did we make a huge mistake having a baby?”

“I mean I love him, but if both of you were drowning, I’m pretty sure I’d save you.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell us it was going to be like this?”

“I think Alice tried to tell us at that party a few weeks ago—”

“Oh right. I just figured there was just something wrong with her.”

My revelation is not universally true, of course. Some parents—and some babies—are better suited for the newborn stage than others. If you find yourself reveling in a state of bliss for the fourth trimester, go ahead and enjoy every minute of it, but for the love of Satan please don’t post that shit to Facebook. If it isn’t love at first sight, if you find you are incapable of enjoying every or even any minutes of it, know that you are not alone.

People with children over the age of 12 will tell you that the day their babies were born was the best day of their lives, but I think that is only true in memory. In truth, the day your first child is born is the most transformative day of your life. You can’t be expected to recover from that with a two-night stay in the hospital and a bottle of Percocet. You can’t be expected to recover from that at all. You will adapt, and soon you will fall so deeply in love that you will actually feel your heart splitting apart and reforming to accommodate the feeling. And in ten years or so you will be that ass-hat at the water cooler telling some swollen pregnant lady to enjoy every minute of it, because it really does go by so fast.

Written by: Kathleen

Boob vs. Bottle

There is no more explosive topic among the warring mommy factions than the issue of breast versus bottle. C-sections, circumcision, co-sleeping—those are like your church youth group’s annual talent show, and breastfeeding is the Grammys, complete with a Kanye-West-type character stealing the mic and telling you how you’re doing it all wrong. Breastfeeding proponents will point to various sources of correlational data to support their claim that “Breast is Best,” and they are correct that most health advocates encourage exclusive breastfeeding for as long as possible in the first year. Those same health advocates also assert that a 1200-calorie diet of kale and quinoa is “best” for adults, yet I imagine a few of us supplement with red wine and bacon from time to time.

I breastfed my son for 11 months, and I also supplemented with formula starting around five months, when he began sleeping 10 hours at night and my supply took a dip. I spent a few days wallowing in guilt and frustration, but when the choice came down to supplementing or waking myself up twice a night to pump, I traded in the fenugreek for an evening martini and bought a can of formula.

As someone who both breastfed and formula fed and survived the wrath of La Leche League to tell the tale, below are some of the advantages I found to each method of feeding your child. In the end, if you find yourself despairing over poor supply or bad latch, just remember that our grandparents’ generation fed their babies Coca-cola and rice pudding straight from the bottle, and our parents turned out just fine.*

 * Except for the diabetes and heart disease.

Advantages to Breastfeeding:

1)      Opportunity to sleep for at least 60 minutes at a time for the first several weeks of your newborn’s life, plus the potential confidence boost if you manage to not murder your spouse when you overhear him telling the neighbors that he’s tired from “taking the night shift” because he got up once around midnight to see if you needed an extra pillow under your Boppy.

2)      Ability to get your infant to stop crying on an airplane, as long as you’re OK fielding the judgy eyes of the flight attendant when you ask for a double-mimosa to “help with let-down.”

3)      Excuse to take two to three breaks from work each day to sit alone in a utility closet attached to your breast pump while playing Candy Crush and trying not to notice how few ounces your left boob is producing.

4)      Total and complete de-sexualization of your breasts to the point that soon you will no longer require a nursing cover in public nor will you let your husband put his mouth anywhere near them ever again.

5)      Moderate sense of superiority because you secretly believe you’re a more selfless mother than your friends who don’t breastfeed, even though you also secretly envy them because they can enjoy a date night with their husband without fourteen days of advanced planning to ensure they have pumped enough milk for the baby’s normal bottles and the extra bottles your mother gives him every time she baby-sits because she secretly thinks you’re starving your baby by not giving him formula.

Advantages to Formula Feeding:

1)      Experience getting scolded by up to three different lactation consultants before you’ve even left the hospital, causing you to both weep uncontrollably and throw a bottle of Similac in the night nurse’s face.

2)      Ability to feed your infant in public anytime, anywhere, without having to wear a special bra or fumble with a blanket, as long as the public place sells distilled water and has an accessible outlet for your portable bottle warmer because Junior will only take his formula if it’s been heated to a perfect 92.6 degrees.

3)      Advanced discovery that your baby is allergic to both cow’s milk and soy and thus can only ingest a special kind of formula made from rose petals and bluebird tears that costs $450 a can and is not eligible for Amazon Prime.

4)      Opportunity to share feedings with your spouse, thereby giving you some much needed alone time to cry in the shower while questioning your femininity and your value as a mother.

5)      Sense of satisfaction in knowing that you are providing your child with nutritious sustenance in the manner that works best for your body, your baby, and your family, while also secretly relishing the fact that chances are good your baby will sleep through the night a full six weeks before those bionic breastfed babies do.

Written by: Kathleen

My Name is Baby, and I'm a Paci Addict

To some in today’s 30-mpg-on-the-highway-cross-over driving, old-world-vineyard preferring, grad-school-loan-repaying parenting community, suggesting you use a pacifier is the equivalent of telling you to formula-feed your baby while she sleeps on her stomach in a forward-facing car seat. I mentioned the word “binky” in our toddler music class last week, and every mom in the room turned to stare in panicked silence before openly contemplating whether someone should call Child Protective Services.

There are many concerns listed in the Googlesphere regarding the use of pacifiers, each ranking higher than the last on the “shrill harpy” scale of mommy-crazy. According to the most alarmist claims, your paci-sucking baby may never learn to talk, or he’ll have constant ear infections, or he’ll grow up to be a cross-dressing sociopath who tells his victims to put the lotion on the skin. For the sake of balanced reporting, I consulted the Mayo Clinic, my new online source of hypochondria ever since WebMD assured me that my frequent foot-muscle-spasms were definitely cancer. The Mayo Clinic is all, “some people use a pacifier and develop normally,” the way you might say that some people smoke a pack a day and live to be 102.  Then they go on to list the pros of pacifier use, which include soothing your baby when he cries, helping him learn to fall asleep, and reducing his risk of SIDS. The cons include nipple confusion, dependency, and crooked teeth—but only if your kid is still gnawing on his binky at age nine, and then let’s be honest, you’re already in trouble with the meth you’ve been cooking in the basement, you negligent ass-clown. Assuming you have a 12-step program for paci-addicts lined up before his second birthday, grab yourself a handful of rubber nipples from the hospital stash and go forth fostering an oral fixation. I promise it’s worth it.

As anyone who has read the first five pages and then skipped to the middle of The Happiest Baby on the Block will tell you, sucking is one of the “5 Ss” that, when applied in perfect order and coordination, will make your newborn baby stop crying for at least 90 seconds, thereby giving you time to call your husband and demand he cancel the rest of his business trip and fly home from New York immediately, no matter that it’s 11PM and he’s actually in San Francisco. Your baby can also be calmed by sucking on your boob or a bottle, but the former leads to cracked nipples and co-sleeping until college, and the latter to cashing in your 401(k) to pay for extra formula and future summers at fat camp. You may have to work at building the paci habit for a few weeks, but the dividends pay off in the form of faster self-soothing, earlier sleeping through the night, and more frequent passive-aggressive comments from your mother-in-law that confirm your suspicion that she thinks you’re a mediocre parent at best.

Of course, I can’t guarantee you that using a pacifier won’t turn your precious angel into a serial killer—my binky-loving son is just 19 months old, and so far his only questionable behavior toward animals is his stubborn insistence that cows say “boo.” However, I will say with anecdotal certainty that a healthy pacifier habit can stymy a dropped-apple-at-Whole-Foods tantrum, straighten a no-more-car-seat full-body arch, and reverse your baby’s pre-dawn wake-ups that, without fail, follow the nights you decide to open that third bottle of wine. I’m still new at this parenting thing, but in my opinion, extra sleep and avoiding a public scene in the vegan dairy aisle are totally worth the potential future cost of braces and home drug testing kits. And let’s be honest, if you’re still reading my recommendations after the first four posts, you’ll probably be paying for one of those things in a few years anyway.

Written by: Kathleen

Because you can't give them ambien . . .

When it comes to sleep training, there are hundreds of methods and millions of opinions. What is the “right” way to get your child to sleep? First of all, I recommend you approach this from a different angle. What is the right way to get you to sleep? Ultimately, your little one will follow the method that suits you best, and she will feel happy and supported if you are well rested. Think of it as sleep training for you. Below are a few of the most common methods and MY opinions on them. I want to emphasize that these are MY opinions through MY own experience and they come from a parent who had to work full-time. I found that it wasn’t just one of these methods that worked for us, but a combination of them. In other words, skip the album and go for the mixed tape.  

Some things to note before getting started:

#1 - Even the best sleepers will have sleepless nights and even the worst sleepers can learn how to sleep.

#2 - Whatever your situation, make a plan. When your little one inevitably rebels against the method of your choice, make sure you know what your next move is going to be, because at 3am you are about as rational in your thinking as a cat with tape on its feet.

#3 - EVERYONE needs sleep. You are going to be more efficient as a parent and member of the human race if you can keep your eyes open long enough to catch your nocturnal offspring before she scales the chimney. 

THE FAMILY BED (CO-SLEEPING) Championed by hippies, helicopter moms, the emotionally needy, and Alicia Silverstone.

Recommended for: Those with no need for a schedule

What is it? Practice in which babies and young children sleep close to one or both parents, as opposed to in a separate room.

Upsides: You don’t ever have to get up!!! You, Brian Wilson, and your baby can lounge in bed all day somewhere between slumber and sleep. You won’t have to rejoin the world until your child requires solid foods.

Downsides: If co-sleeping continues well into the first year, you run the risk of your child being dependent on you to fall asleep, thus not allowing you to return to a social or romantic life and forcing you to change your sleep patterns to match theirs. Forget wine nights with friends and settle for quickies in the pantry.

Check Out: Beyond the Sling: A Real Life Guide to Raising Confident, Loving Children the Attachment Parenting Way by Mayim Bialik, PhD

NO CRY METHOD Used by Marilyn Manson and the creator of Gangnam style.

Recommended for: Vampires and masochists

What is it? Advocates for parents to lull and sooth their baby to sleep in order to avoid the fear and negative sleep associations that, this theory claims, can develop when a child is put to sleep alone.

Upsides: You get to judge the Cry It Out parents for being cruel and the Co-sleepers for being creepy. Your little one experiences a peaceful transition into sleep and his future is full of rainbows and unicorns, AND you get to hop in and out of bed throughout the evening to quickly replace the pacifier, breastfeed, or lull!

Downsides: This can be an extremely laborious process that can lead to varying results. This method is unrealistic for working parents or anyone that wants to parent with the umbilical cord detached. Imagine working the night shift for several months and only being able to sleep while waiting in the drive-thru line.

Check Out: The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night by Elizabeth Pantley

CRY IT OUT (CIO) Used by Hillary Clinton on Bill after the 2000 election. 

 Recommended for: Those who strive to have a work-baby-life balance and some semblance of a schedule

What is it? Approach that lets a baby cry for a specified period of time, offering comfort at regular intervals, in an effort to teach her how to self-sooth and fall asleep on her own.

Upsides: Better quality sleep for the whole family and your baby learns how to put him/herself to sleep! While the CIO method may appear to be a type of cruel and unusual punishment, its results are indisputable AND it works quickly. This means you can have a relative, a babysitter, or even your pet put your little one to bed while you’re out reconnecting with the friends that remind you of your award-winning personality and distract your from your breast leakage.

Downsides: Requires an enormous amount of resolve. This can be agonizing at the beginning. Hearing your bundle of joy scream until there’s no noise is no parent’s idea of fun. If you can survive what is actually a short amount of auditory torture and come out the other side emotionally intact, then you will reap the benefits. This method sometimes requires you to wash, rinse, and repeat as it doesn’t always stick with round one.

 Check out: Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems by Richard Ferber, MD and Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth, MD

Q&A

My friend said her baby slept through the night after just two weeks. What am I doing wrong?

Your friend is a liar. Find new friends.

 When can I start instituting a bedtime regime?

A routine can start whenever you are ready. However, the right time to get your bundle of joy to sleep 8 solid hours varies depending on the baby. Most online information says 3-4 months old. Be sure to check with your pediatrician to make sure you are both ready.

We’ve tried to let our little one cry it out but just can’t seem to do it. Any suggestions?

Earplugs.

Will using the Cry It Out method turn my child into an animal torturer?  

The jury is still out on this one, but we haven’t found any known connections between sleep training methods and aptitude to torture animals. All adolescent animal torturers are equal part co-sleepers and solo sleepers. If this is a principal concern, I suggest making a choice between the kid or the pet. It’s worth noting that it is harder to leave a toddler in a box outside Kroger than a pet—mostly because toddlers refuse to stay in the box.

 In closing, do some reading. The likelihood of your little one hitting a crime spree at 14 because you did or did not share a bed with him is about as likely as someone naming her child North West Apple Blue Ivy Buttercream. Besides, you will do plenty of other things that will eventually contribute to his delinquency. The biggest thing to remember is to be consistent in your choices.

Written by: Alice