No one ever said on her deathbed, "I wish I'd spent more time with my tit in a plastic cone."

This is not my last pump, but it's close.

Over the last couple of weeks I've dropped the domperidone and have gradually increased the time between sessions, thereby reducing the number of pumps in a day little by little. I'm down to two.

It's almost the end of the line. My supply has been dwindling noticeably and drastically. It's never been plentiful; I topped out at around 24 ounces a day. After fourteen hours without pumping, last night I pulled an ounce and a half. I'm not sure I need to today, but I will because it feels too strange not to. If the yield's like last night's, the milk will be thin, mostly just water and useless.

I am deeply ambivalent about stopping, as much as I was about continuing. I can accept the various risks associated with discontinuing breast milk, mostly. The single place I get stuck? Antibodies. Before Charlie's six months adjusted, he's not making many of his own. Now, I can tell myself that we'll limit his exposure by keeping him away from crowds and sick people, something easily done where we live. I can pretend that because he wasn't especially sick in the NICU, he won't be in the same kind of jeopardy that other preemies might if he were to come down with an illness. I can give him bottle after bottle of the milk I've frozen, knowing that although it's not as rich in infection-fighting properties as fresh, it's better than nothing.

But it's all just rationalization, and not especially effective at that. The bottom line is that I'm willingly giving up, intentionally cutting Charlie off from something he probably needs.

For me, pumping is an inconvenience and not an impossibility: because Paul works at home and happily takes on child care, I'm able to find time to do it. My desire to stop is simple selfishness — not because it's been a rough eighteen weeks, although it has, but because I'm eager to be more present. I've spent hours a day at a remove from the life of this little family we worked so hard to build, and that more than anything else is making me crazy.

Now, we can argue until the cows come home — and who doesn't like a good dairy metaphor in a post about pumping? Am I right or am I right? Hah? Hah? Know what I'm sayin'? A'ight. Yahtzee! Also, boo-ya and other inarticulate interjections — about whether that's true selfishness. But I know it for what it is; now that he's becoming more aware, more interactive, more fun, I want to spend time with Charlie for my sake.

That's why I had a baby, after all.

I believe I'm doing the right thing for our family. I want to invest in the now, in the daily enjoyment of my only baby's only babyhood, rather than in the future, continuing to pump as a hedge against the lurking possibility of illness.

Have I made the right decision? I don't know. I don't know that there is a right decision versus a wrong one, when both have significant benefits and disadvantages. I might as well flip a coin. If Charlie gets sick, I'll feel I've made the wrong decision. But if I'd kept pumping, I know I'd regret that, too. I already do, knowing I've missed a lot in these first few months of his life. That felt right then; this feels right now.

So I have the convictions. The real test will be whether I have the courage of them. I feel vulnerable. I'm worried, probably unrealistically, that I'll be called upon to justify myself, by his pediatrician, by his neonatologist, by outraged strangers who see me giving a bottle. While I was still pumping, I felt safe from the criticism I imagined might come my way, even planning snappy retorts in my head should someone be rude enough to question me, something biting and witty like, "Mind your own goddamned business."

At times I am downright Algonquin.

Now I'm not so confident. In my mind I see myself stammering, rushing to explain, to people who are, after all, in no position to understand and have no right to any answer. But then if my composure is the only casualty, I'll be comfortable letting it go. I think I can take the heat in exchange for familial warmth.

Cry, robot

I am going to pour my heart out.

If you're infertile and still trying to have a baby, you'd do well to skip this one, because what I'm going to say is upsetting, especially, I imagine, to anyone who's sure that having a baby will make her happy. And if you're pregnant and happily looking forward to those sweet days of babyhood, better not read much more — I'm sure what I have to say won't apply to you. And if you're pregnant and scared to death about what might lie in store, this entry probably isn't for you, either, when you get right down to it. And if you object to self-indulgence, why, you just haul your Puritan ass right on outta here, 'kay?

I'll wait while you gather your belongings.

Okay, are they gone? Anyone left? At this point I'm pretty sure the only ones still reading this are the search engine spiders.

Fine. Here goes.

Dear Googlebot, I am desperately unhappy.

I'm holding Charlie in his sling right now, curving my arms uncomfortably around him so I can type without jostling him too much. He's finally fallen into an exhausted, fitful sleep, and I'm afraid that any sudden move will bring him back into squalling consciousness. He'll cry, I'll cry, he'll drop his pacifier on the floor, and I'll leak snot onto his blanket in a sun-catching stalactite of sadness.

Maybe he'll be momentarily quieted by the captivating prism effect it casts on the wall. No, that would be too much to hope for.

To put it in terms that will be easier for you to understand, Googlebot, darling, I will rephrase it: 100010101001001001110111010100110011100111011100010111010101001010011.

And furthermore, 0. And the 1 you rode in on.

I never thought having a baby would be easy. Let's get that out of the way right now. I was aware that I'd have to grow accustomed to functioning on very little sleep. We understood that our productivity would give way to the constant demands of caring for a child. I knew, or thought I did, how emotionally draining the newborn period would be. It would all be very hard; I acknowledged that. But I told myself smugly, "Even stupid people do this every day. Surely we can, too."

No, and don't call me Shirley or a complacent jackass who thought she had it all figured out. You're a fine one to talk, anyway, Googlebot, steering people here of all places when they search for terms like "pregnant cat spotting."

I don't truly know whether we have it harder than average, whether Charlie is higher maintenance, whether we're less competent or stable. It doesn't matter much, because you work with what you have. What we have is a situation that's making me feel doomed to unhappiness with no end in sight.

Oh, hey, while I have you here, Googlebot — may I call you Gooey? — do you think you could jigger things so that when people search for "little virgins" and click on a link to my site, their testicles are delivered a jolt of electricity so strong that it sears their pubes into a crumbling frizzle? And when they search for "little vergins [sic]," their partial frontal lobotomy is swiftly completed via a crackling blue bolt of lightning, all thanks to the magic of the Internet?

No? No, what? No, I may not call you Gooey?

There's the reflux, which is flaring up at the moment; Charlie cries when he tries to eat, then cries from hunger because he isn't able to. There's the fact that he simply doesn't nap, delivering no more than 30 minutes at a stretch most days, and that only grudgingly. There's the isolation, not being able to take him anywhere, and not feeling right about going out alone when it means leaving him with Paul when he's so relentlessly demanding. There's the lack of sleep, which is a minor consideration but still worth throwing on the pile, and of course the sobering responsibility of caring for a small beautiful being who cannot fend for himself. There's the unresolved grief, the shellshock, and the deep disappointment of the way Charlie came to be. And the anger, God, the anger! The anger that makes me pant like an animal, with only one thought: This wasn't how it was supposed to be.

Yeah, I could go on, but you already have about 724,000 results for "babies suck," so what would be the point?

When does it end? Everyone told Tertia things would get better at 12 weeks, and indeed they have. Although I know she had an excruciating three months, I'm sick with envy that she's enjoying motherhood while I'm still so wretched. If it's not too much trouble, could you please replace every instance of "gorgeous and divine" on her blog with "gaping, flaring asshole"?

It would make me feel so much better. Thanks. Mighty decent of you, G.Bo. (Do you like that better?)

So back to the subject at hand: when do I get to enjoy this? At eighteen weeks in, I'm hating almost all but the ten minutes every two days when Charlie is visibly happy.

If anyone but you, GooBo, were reading this, I'm pretty sure she'd be agape by now. "Wait," she'd say, furrowing her brow quizzically, "I thought having a baby was supposed to make her happy."

Yeah, that's what I thought, too.

Leading with his chin

I've been carrying Charlie around a lot in the past few weeks, either in the sling or in my arms across my chest (if his mouth is jammed up against my armpit the pacifier doesn't come out so often). The good news is that he's gotten so used to being jounced into relative calm by my clumping around the upstairs -- eight laps with detours into every other room is a quarter mile -- that sometimes he stops screaming and heaves a big sigh of relaxation as soon as I pick him up crosswise.

The bad news is that his head sticks out. Our house was custom-built for a small man, we're told, and the doors are not very wide. The hallway is narrow and has sharp corners. Every time I go through a door, carrying Charlie point foremost, I'm half sure that this is the time I'm going to thwack his little skull. No matter how I angle my arms, Charlie is in the lead. It doesn't help that I've rammed my own shoulder or hip into a doorframe more times than I can count when I wasn't carrying the boy.

Thus far I've avoided disaster by fixing my eyes in terror on the clearance between Charlie and every bit of molding or sheetrock that threatens to clobber him as we walk. Gives an extra hitch to my steps that no doubt helps keep him disoriented and docile. As long as I never gain any confidence in my ability to keep him out of harm's way he should be fine. At least until he starts running into walls and doorframes under his own power.

1800 seconds

In my head, Charlie's life is full of clocks: a clock starts ticking when he finishes his meal, so I'll have an idea when he might be hungry again, when he goes to sleep -- count every second gratefully -- or when he fills his diaper, so that I have some idea when he might be angry and straining again. Even when he's in his gym kicking at the toys, or watching his mobile, there's a little timer in the back of my mind ticking off the minutes till he starts getting those overstimulated shakes.

I try to think more in terms of chess clocks than of the blinking LEDs that grace every made-for-TV bomb ever created. You know, the bombs with all the booby traps so that they'll go off the moment you try to move or disarm them.

Which brings me to the longest half hour in Charlie's day: the time between when he gets a dropper full of Prevacid to control his reflux and when he can start sucking down his next bottle. (It took us a few days of complaining that his new medicine wasn't working worth a damn to read the warnings not to give milk less than 60 minutes before or 30 minutes after a dose.) But if you're Charlie waking up hungry and swallowing a nice gulp of what tastes like yummy food, only to be told the next gulp is in forever, package inserts are slim comfort.

How long is 30 minutes? Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi is a minute, and don't think he's not potentially alert and ready to blow for every one of them. We change him, we make him stare at his mobile, we give him a bath, today I slung him and took him for a nice sedative walk in the park. Tomorrow, who knows?

Perhaps I shall get him a watch and just explain calmly and reasonably that he can't eat until the requisite time has gone by. Do you think I should get him a digital watch or analog?

Shorts

On Friday Charlie had his four-month pediatrician's visit. He is in the 25th percentile for height, weight, and head circumference according to his actual age, weighing in at 13 lbs. 13 oz.

He is now a baby of folds. I am storing my extra set of car keys between a few of his extra chins, and I can't find my voluminous file of medical-related receipts but I am fairly certain he's mischievously tucked it away within the fleshy pouch behind his left knee. If I can't pry it out I'll be sending the entire baby to the IRS, arriving at the post office with a squirming package marked, "HAND CANCEL PLEASE."

Charlie also had his routine immunizations. I know this is a controversial topic, the decision whether and when to vaccinate a kid. We are going the conventional route. I have wholly bought into the notion that a social contract applies.

I understand that many people feel differently, and have serious concerns about the safety of vaccinations. Not me, man. I like to live dangerously. In fact, I've requested that Charlie's shots be super-sized with an extra measure of mercury. I am hoping it will give him super powers.

...

Things I have dropped on Charlie's head while carrying him in the sling

1. Potato chips. Crumbs removed with a greasy moistened fingertip, then deposited neatly into my mouth. (Fingers then wiped on sling, which is fortunately machine washable.)
2. Caffeine-free Diet Pepsi. Licked away efficiently through catlike contortion of upper spine.
3. Latest Pottery Barn Kids catalog. Required trip to emergency room to ascertain that Charlie had no concussion, and assurance that the resulting dent in his forehead will mend without issue. Impatiently awaiting next catalog to see whether they make a line of tastefully personalized infant-sized helmets.

...

My heartfelt thanks for the kind advice and support you all offered during last week's freakout. Things are better now. I think my hormones have righted themselves once more after the crash brought about by the end of pumping, and I think Charlie has improved noticeably. I also think I'm happier having ended my unhealthy relationship with the Lactina Select.

The other night I was sitting on the couch with Charlie snoozing prone across my bosom. "Hey," said Paul, "you can do that now."

And indeed I can. I can hold the baby close to my body without cringing or shying away.

Yes, things are better now.

...

Paul is distracting Charlie during the tempestuous half-hour before lunch.

Julie: He's really staring at you. I think he likes you.

Paul: Nah. He's just memorizing my face so he can pick me out of a police lineup later.

So you've decided to have a kid in the NICU!

This is for Pazel, who asked. It's my best advice for how to make it through your child's NICU stay. If you have any survival tips to share, please post them in the comments.

He's not going to remember any of this. You will — oh, you will, though other NICU mothers have assured me that the memory will recede in time — but he won't.

One terrible night, Charlie needed a spinal tap. We weren't permitted to stay in the NICU for the procedure, although I'd hoped to; when the only thing you can do for your baby is to be there, well, you want to be there. When we returned to Charlie's isolette immediately after the procedure, I was surprised to see how easily he slept, pink from his transfusions, looking pretty good for a baby who was, as the doctor later said, "knocking on the pearly gates."

He slept. His vital signs were good. The next day he was measurably better. He wasn't going to remember any of this. That knowledge was one of the only comforts during Charlie's long NICU stay.

Know how I just said that when the only thing you can do for your baby is to be there, you want to be there? Don't always be there. People will tell you that your baby knows you're with him, and I believe that's true to a degree. It's comforting. But there's a tyranny in that statement, too. If he knows, shouldn't I be there all the time?

God, no.

Your baby needs you there, but he also needs you rested, clear-headed, and relaxed. You're going to be none of these. After all, your kid's in the NICU. But do what you can to approach that ideal. You'll need to be ready to make decisions about treatment, to digest vast amounts of information, and to spend time bonding with your baby under very upsetting circumstances. So go home. Have a decent meal. Get some sleep if you can.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Try.

I can't imagine how grueling and upsetting it would be to have a child in the NICU and another at home. I'm not speaking from experience but from intuition when I say that the kid at home might need you more just now: after all, she'll remember this. The NICU baby won't.

So go to the NICU, of course. Be involved in your baby's care. But please don't forget to take care of yourself and the other people who love you. It'll be okay, because...

Your baby is in the most competent possible hands. Many NICU parents report being extremely upset to have to leave their baby behind when they went home after birth. This never bothered me: Charlie so obviously needed help that I was deeply relieved to have access to qualified people to care for him. And I couldn't have asked for a better team to do it. Every single one of the people who cared for Charlie was vigilant, skilled, and compassionate. (Okay, there's a caveat there, but more on that in a second.)

As far as your baby's physical needs are concerned, he will never in his life be better cared for than he is now. He'll be looked after round the clock by people who'll get to know him. I found great comfort in that.

Remember that caveat? Let's talk about doctors. From what you've written, it sounds like you've run into the same unsettling character we did, the doctor who does this every day and has therefore grown tone-deaf.

One doctor in particular said a lot of boneheaded things. One day postpartum, is "We don't have a crystal ball" supposed to help? What parent wants to hear how close her kid was to dying only hours after the crisis is over? Who wants to hear her future reproductive hopes scotched by a doctor who's not even an obstetrician, much less her obstetrician?

And yet. And yet. Despite what was either his callousness or his utter social ineptitude, this doctor gave Charlie top flight medical care. Don't assume a lack of concern for your baby when a doctor shows a lack of concern for you. Instead...

Get your feelgoods from the nurses. In my experience, nurses more than doctors seemed to feel that they weren't just taking care of a baby, they were taking care of a family. Time and again I watched nurses encourage the fathers to get involved, for example, to do kangaroo care or to feed the baby his bottle while the mother pumped. More than once the nurses reminded us to do things to take care of ourselves, to find a good local restaurant, to see a new movie just out, to go down to New York for the day. (And I'd plug the breast pump in...um, where, exactly?)

Get to know them as much as you can. They're going to be spending an awful lot of time caring for your baby, and you'll be spending an awful lot of time with them, even for a short NICU stay. You'll feel better if you know who's who. For us, it helped enormously to know that the people caring for Charlie were people and not just employees.

The NICU nurses encouraged me to pump, furnishing much better information than the hospital lactation consultants and making sure we had privacy around Charlie's isolette so I could watch Paul hold the baby while I did so. They spent a lot of time explaining what they were doing, reassuring us that the majority of what they did was utterly routine, and standing quietly with me at Charlie's bedside while I cried with a comforting arm around my shoulder.

Ignore that baby behind the curtain. You'll see a lot of other babies in the NICU, and a lot of other parents. Some babies will do much better than yours and will go home sooner. Some won't. And some really won't. Some parents will seem to be taking this all in stride. Others will look pale and crazed. (That would be me.) Avoid the temptation to compare babies, to fret about how short a stay they have or, more sadly, to imagine your baby in their place. No other baby on Earth has the same set of circumstances as yours, so it's pointless to compare. Irresistible, but pointless.

And fight the urge to wonder how that perfectly put-together mother looks so gorgeous three days postpartum, how she keeps her mascara from running when she cries, how she doesn't look like she's cried at all. She's not you. And she's not superior. Don't let her make you feel inadequate. (Key her car in the parking lot later if you must.)*

Even though you're your baby's parent, he's a patient in his own right. You'll be informed almost as often as you're consulted, if not more so (though non-urgent interventions will be discussed with you beforehand and major procedures will always require your consent). If your baby's doctor decides he needs a course of treatment immediately, it will probably be started before you're aware of it. This is initially upsetting, but ultimately very good. When Charlie contracted an infection of his central IV line, an infection that turned into sepsis, a course of antibiotics was begun immediately, in the middle of the night, before Paul and I were even aware he was sick. Those extra hours might have made a life-and-death difference. I am so grateful we didn't find out for sure.

It will get better.

It will get worse.

Lather, rinse, repeat as needed.

No matter how many times experienced NICU parents warned me that Charlie's course would likely be a long series of vertiginous highs and vomit-inducing lows, I didn't truly understand that until, oh, about the third peak followed inevitably by the third valley, a valley so deep it rivaled the Marianas Trench. You won't really know it until you live it, but once you do, you can say, "Oh. So that's what they meant." And have a good stiff drink or two.

Now some practical pointers:

Don't feel bad about calling the NICU. And don't feel bad about calling the NICU a lot. The nurses are used to hearing from parents, and are happy to talk with you about your baby. I used to call in the morning before we went in, to ask them how his night was or to request that they wait to bathe him until we were there; in the evening after his daily weigh-in; and in the middle of the night after I'd pumped and needed a reward.

Some things I used to ask that helped me feel more involved:

• What was Charlie's weight tonight?
  
• How much did he eat?
  
• What position is he in right now?
  
• Did he cry last time his diaper was changed?
  
• Who was taking care of him tonight? Who'd be on next shift?
  
• What was he wearing?

You know, normal parent questions that made me feel closer to Charlie. The nurses don't mind. Once you know them, and once your baby's condition is stable, you'll feel like you're having a casual conversation with a friend about a baby you all care for deeply.

Consider leaving a disposable camera by your baby's bedside. Ask the nurses to take pictures of him while you're not there. Sometimes they'll capture him doing something really cute, like sucking his thumb. Or pulling out his IV lines.

Instruct your family and friends that no news isn't bad news. You're going to be too busy to keep everyone informed, so it would be kind to let people know that if they don't hear from you, they shouldn't assume the worst. You might want to send out a single e-mail update to a list of loved ones instead of talking to people individually; you might want to change your outgoing voice mail message to reflect current conditions; you might want to designate one person to be the communicator so that you only have to keep that one person apprised. Your choice. You get to decide what information to share and how. If anyone later dares to complain, you are in the perfect position to draw yourself up, assume a look of righteous rage, and bellow, "My kid was in the hospital!" Then key her car.**

Take care of your hands. You'll be washing them a thousand times a day with harsh soap and cold water. (If you can wait for the water to warm before you rush over to see your baby, you're a better woman than I.) You'll be drying them with hospital-grade paper towels. And if you have any tendency to fidget during times of stress, your nails and cuticles will be a raw, bleeding mess. I kept a tube of lotion in my purse; no sooner had the doors to the NICU slammed shut behind me after a visit than I was pulling out my Kiehl's Unusually Rich - But Not Greasy At All - Hand Cream. My hands still felt like I'd been getting a daily manicure with steel wool, lava, and lighter fluid, but it probably would have been worse without religious greasing.

Take clothes for your baby to wear. If your baby is spending a lot of time under bilirubin lights, he won't be able to wear clothing all the time, but once he's able to it's much nicer to see him in an outfit you chose yourself. There was only so much pastel-blue-"I love my Daddy!"-footballs-and-airplanes garb I could stand.

Take a water bottle. In our NICU, no food or drink was allowed in the patient area, of course, but an exception was made for nursing or pumping mothers, who were allowed to drink water. (Any time you're not pumping, you should probably be drinking.) I took a refillable bottle that held much more than the hospital's paper cups. Plus I could smuggle in vodka and no one was ever the wiser.

Take your own Kleenex. You're going to cry, and you're going to cry a lot. Unless you're happy with industrial-strength hospital tissues***, you'll want something softer than 200-grit sandpaper to apply to your rabbity-looking eyes and red-rimmed crusty nostrils.

Yeah. I'm sorry, and I hate it, but you're gonna cry.

_____
* For the love of God, don't key her car.
** Hers, either.
*** And don't rub it with hospital Kleenex. Jesus, what is wrong with you?

How quickly they forget

OH MY GOD THERE'S BLOOD EVERYWHERE IT'S EVERYWHERE MY GOD MY GOD THE DRIPPING AND IT'S ALL DOWN MY LEGS AND OH GOD OH GOD ON THE FLOOR AND THE WALLS AND MY LEGS AND MY SOCKS AND OH GOD THE PAIN WHERE IS IT ALL COMING FROM I CAN'T SEE I CAN'T SEE I'M TRYING BUT GOD THE BLOOD DISEMBOWELED WITH A GARDEN WEASEL OH ALL OVER MY HANDS NOW CAN'T STOP HELP ME SOMEONE HELP ME PLEASE MY GOD IT'S ALL OVER EVERYWHERE AND BETWEEN MY LEGS AND OH GOOD CHRIST THERE ARE CLOTS OH GOD JESUS WILL ALL GREAT NEPTUNE'S OCEAN OH GOD I KNOW I'M DYING WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE HELP MEEEEEEEEE HELLLLLLP MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Oh. Wait.

Cycle day 1, for the first time in a year.

Why, this blog practically writes itself!

Seems like lately I've seen a lot of posts asking readers for their input — you know, polls, surveys, requests for advice, that kind of thing. As I'm always one to hop on a bandwagon as long as I don't have to sit next to the stinky guy, I thought I'd turn to you all to help me solve these pressing problems I am currently facing.

Plus, you know, I work hard, damn hard, writing these posts, making it all nice for you and your friends, going out of my way to put on a touch of lipstick and a clean frock when you come home at the end of a long day at the office...

So you do the work today. I would appreciate it if you would answer one of the following questions:

1. Where can I find a short-sleeved V-neck T-shirt that will accommodate, not to say showcase, my opulent rack?

   Friends, at 20 weeks postpartum I am still wearing my maternity T-shirts. Pride compels me to assure you that they're the kind of shirt designed to sheath the pregnant body in a sausagey Lycra casing, and not the kind modeled after a circus tent, so they do not in fact swirl around my waist exactly like the hoop skirt of antebellum ballgown — only sort of. Still, I feel decidedly sheepish wearing them when I'm back in my pre-pregnancy pants.

   But my pre-pregnancy T-shirts no longer fit in the bust. What I need is a T-shirt that houses my majestic prow without creating an unsightly pucker across same. As long as we're going with the ship metaphor, it must also taper neatly at the waist instead of billowing freely like the topgallant of a three-masted schooner in the gale of high seas. Gap and Ann Taylor: great for waist, lousy for bust. Old Navy: generally a little cheaper-looking than I like. Eddie Bauer: tends toward the boxy. American Apparel: hahahahahahahahaha ohhhhh.

   Think shapely, not boxy; tailored, not sloppy; black or just possibly gray, not festooned with rhinestones and kittens, please.

2. What kind of stroller should we buy?

   It should be reasonably sturdy, with wheels that can negotiate a packed but unpaved path through a wooded park. It should not be so heavy that I can't push it up a steep hill while laden with approximately twenty pounds of baby without expiring from exertion. And above all, it should have handles that are long enough to be comfortably used by someone tall — adjustable, perhaps. Finally, it should corner like it's on rails, get at least 35 MPG/highway, have a handy cupholder, a 10-disc CD changer, a place to hang a pungent Little Tree air freshener, and a prominent expanse to display my bumper sticker that reads </bush>.

3. What should I serve for dinner this weekend?

   Due to the impressive array of food sensitivities our guests carry, these foods are forbidden:
   

   • wheat gluten in any form
     
   • aged cheeses, including cheddar and parmesan
     
   • chocolate
     
   • nuts
     
   • caffeine
     
   • any kind of food dye
     
   • any kind of soy-based item
   
   Due to Paul's sister's selective vegetarianism, I also must not serve:
   • meat

   ...unless it is the meat of a

   • fish

   ...which I do

   • not

   particularly care for.

   Finally, due to the immoderate enthusiasm of one of our guests, I should probably not serve:

   • booze

   ...though I cannot swear I will not slip away to guzzle some on the sly in the:

   • pantry
   • half-bath
   • coat closet
   • little warren I've created in the basement within a teetering pile of suitcases

   Anyway, my current dinner menu includes a can of tuna, some iffy off-brand mayonnaise, a handful of stale rice crackers, and the banana that is slowly blackening on the end of my kitchen island.

   Do you think that will stretch to serve twelve?

4. Does this post strike you as sort of...well...lazy?

   Yeah, me, too. I'm sorry and embarrassed. Really. The shame overwhelms me. I'm going to crawl into my dark little den of luggage now. If you need me, you can find me licking the inside of the soft-sided cooler that still smells of coconut rum, eight years after that trip to the Bahamas.

Thank you in advance for your comments, which will pick up the slack and make it possible for me to enjoy some quality me-time. I'll check back once I've run out of intoxicating residue or when I get my tongue caught in a zipper, whichever comes first.

A raisin and the son

Today Charlie had the last of his visits from the home health nurse, who's been coming monthly to give him his Synagis injections. In addition to stabbing his small but meaty thigh with a needle so fearsome it looks like she's going for a core sample, each time the nurse has weighed him; listened to his heart, lungs, and gut; and given him a brief once-over to make sure he's hitting his developmental milestones.

The chart that's used to track his accomplishments is called the Denver II. It consists of a rough timeline of expected behaviors in several different areas: gross motor, language, fine motor, and personal/social. You find your child's age on the chart, then draw a line down through the activities he's expected to have mastered. Then you examine each intersection to determine which percentile your kid occupies. Based on this in-depth assessment, you settle back in your chair feeling the smug satisfaction of being the fine overachieving parent of a fine overachieving baby.

Or, if you are me, you freak out just a little.

The chart is simply fascinating. Some of the listed activities aren't things you'd necessarily notice your child doing if you weren't looking for them — bringing both hands together at midline, for example, or following an object with his eyes first to midline, then, at a later stage of development, beyond. Others are things you'd notice — smile spontaneously, smile responsively, laugh, and squeal, and in that order, please.

And then there are the raisins. Apparently my child is due any day now to manifest an enduring interest in raisins, or so Denver II insists. First, he will regard raisin. Next, he will rake raisin. Later, he will become disaffected, and will dump raisin. Yes, he will divest himself of raisins in a single shocking act of scorn. Oh, he is impetuous! But do not worry. Should he subsequently find himself in need of more — perhaps for feeding himself or baking me a cake as fast as he can, as Denver II promises he will around 9 months of age, when he is expected to be pat-a-caking up a motherfucking storm — the nice people at Denver Developmental Materials, Inc. will kindly furnish replacement raisins for only a nominal fee.

And one day he will look for yarn! (Denver sells that, too.)

But I'm getting ahead of myself with the raisin. Before he can regard raisin, Charlie must regard own hand, and he has not done that yet.

At 11 weeks, he's neatly meeting the milestones for his adjusted age, with the exception of discovering his own hands. The visiting nurse was very surprised by this and kept saying so, suggesting that maybe he'd been doing it without my noticing. Little does she know that not a single cell of Charlie's divides without my taking careful note. No, not yet. Yes, I'm sure. He doesn't know he has hands.

He uses them, and to great effect; he bats at toys hanging off to his side, kneads my hands absently as I feed him, clutches the edge of his blanket to feel its fuzzy chenille, repeatedly brings his fist to his face in a hilariously ill-aimed attempt to suck his thumb. But he doesn't hold his hands in front of his face to inspect them. He's not entranced, as I'm told babies are, by the sight of his own fingers. He hasn't made that connection.

Of course I am concerned. I spent some time this afternoon making a formal introduction. (Poor boy is so acutely shy, he wet his pants upon being presented.) Tomorrow I will make up some labels, and perhaps a set of helper mittens. I will work with him on this.

After all, how can he hope to become a fighter pilot, razing entire buildings full of impoverished and defenseless Middle Easterners, unless he begins to develop hand-eye coordination at the very earliest stages? How in good conscience can I indenture him to a nefarious weaver of fine silk rugs if I can't promise that his eyes are sharp and his fingers nimble? You tell me, effendi.

More to the point, how the hell is he going to dump raisin if he can't even find his hands? I'd better get cracking. There is much to be done. That yarn isn't gonna look for itself, you know.

The ravening monster

How soon they grow up.

This morning between 5 and 11 Charlie consumed about 11 ounces of milk. That's the equivalent of five gallons a day for an adult. We'd gotten so used to our petite little boy taking three, maybe four ounces at a feeding (it used to be hard enough to force just two ounces down his throat in the bad old days). Yeah, sure, in the past few weeks I've been filling those four-ounce Avent bottles to the shoulder, but I could still be in denial about how much Charlie was eating. This is getting to be too much. (Literally: the top of the threads is six ounces exactly.)

I know Charlie's gluttony is a good thing, even if it means yet another body of hard-won knowledge has become obsolete -- and that I'm going to have to start mixing formula in half-gallon jugs. But it still does take one a little by surprise.

Whoever sent the big-baby bottles, thank you.