We have a milestone!

Time: 7:33 p.m.

Location: Little Green House, 2nd floor

Event: While waiting patiently on the playmat for her brother to finish showering, TheGirl rolled over.*

Reaction: Mild puzzlement, mingled with frustration at her inability to get back over. Eventually, I put her back on her back. She then repeated her little gymnastics move three times.


* Triggering circumstances: The TV was turned to ESPN, which had just flashed the following score: Tampa Bay 10, Yankees 6. So she may have been protesting that.

The pity party begins now

I hit the wall at approx. 12:25 this morning. The dear, sweet, wonderful Girl, she of the big blue eyes and Michellin Man thighs and tiny half-smile that looks just like mine, had awoken an hour earlier for her regular 11:30 feeding. She ate, we communed, I put her back to bed. That's when the trouble started.

She has picked up a cough at daycare. It's nothing serious, just enough of a cold to wake her up. So that became our routine. She'd cough herself awake and start to cry, I'd put the binky back in her mouth or pat her on the chest. She'd fall back asleep, then cough herself awake again. Rinse and repeat, to the point that I was near tears. After about 45 minutes of trying to be a reasonably tough, I picked her up in the hopes of helping her breath a little easier. That's when she took a massive, messy poop all over both of us.

While I was changing her, buck naked myself after quickly throwing off my soiled pjs, I took a step backward and nearly tripped over one of TheBoy's small wooden chairs. He likes to leave it by the changing table (actually my dresser) so he can check out her poop and compare color schemes and scents. The chair has come close to killing me a few too many times, and so I did what any reasonable, sleep-deprived, emotionally fried mommy would do: I picked up the chair, and I flung it the length of the house.

Let me just state for the record: This sucks. TheGirl is delightful and easy, except at midnight. TheBoy is cute and smart and the best kid on earth, except for his new habit of going to pee every 10 minutes (our pediatrician says it's a cry for attention, not diabetes) and sucking on his shirtsleeve pretty much all the time. Judybat is just as tired, if not moreso, than I am. This morning, my back tightened up to the point that I could not get out of bed without sounding about as pained as I did during labor. Plus, of course, there are the lingering but still real effects of my post-partum depression.

Again: This sucks. I am tired and in pain and emotionally spent. In my rational moments, I know that for every step backward -- three blowout poops in 12 hours, say -- we take two steps foward with TheGirl. I know that we're due a big developmental spurt in the next few weeks that should lead, among other things, to sitting up and rolling over, both of which will make our lives easier. I know that a lot of the stress is self-induced. I know that there are times when I cannot imagine havng a better life, mostly when I'm at work or during that delightful hour between TheBoy's bedtime and ours when we curl up on the couch and watch "Battlestar Galactica." I know that a year from now, maybe even six months from now, I will look back on this period and wonder why I was so danged whiny.

Still, once more: This sucks.

Enough already

I think I have a) been a journalist for too long, b) become a horrible person, or maybe c) I remain a perfectly nice person who just hasn't gotten a lot of sleep lately, because my second thought after hearing the news on NPR about a shooting on the Virginia Tech campus that left 22 people dead (later the death toll would rise to 33) was one of revulsion, not for the act of violence itself, but for the media assault that is sure to follow. "Here we go again," I thought, scrolling through the coverage in my head: the inevitable comparisons to Columbine, photographs of candlelight vigils and flowers laid around campus, endless images of weeping students, speculative psychoanalytical assessments of the shooter, story after story eulogizing the dead, delving into the pain of those left behind, quoting politicians as they offer up prayers and rattle on about what's to be done. Have I left anything out?

Perhaps it's the war in Iraq that's got me so jaded about the wanton waste of human life. Not to mention the ongoing conflict in Israel. Not to mention the latest African genocide. Have I left anything out?

Forget about video games; it's the news that's desensitizing us to violence. How many days in a row can you hear about suicide bombers in crowded marketplaces or American soldiers blown up by roadside IEDs before you start tuning out Morning Edition to replay in your head old episodes of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, until your 4-year-old brings you back to this decade with the words "Four people are dead."

What?

"The radio just said four people died, Ima."

Oh. Yeah, that happens, you want to say, because what else there?

My first thought, by the way, was "Holy crap!" which could be evidence of option C, but unfortunately does not rule out A or B.

Correction

Remember what I said last week about enjoying nighttime feedings and how pleasant the evenings had become?

Clearly, I was tempting the fates. TheGirl has suddenly begun waking up four, five, even six times a night and, thus, so have I. She must be going through a growth spurt, because she seems hungry each time. Last night, we put her down at 9:30. She woke up at midnight, 1:30, 2:30, 4:30 and 6. It's only been a week, and yet ...

Pre-baby, I had this fairly common dream in which Judybat and I were in the mood to, you know, but we couldn't find any place with privacy. The dream consisted of my increasingly frustrating efforts to find a nice, quite spot for some adult alone time. I'm having the same dream these days -- except now I'm exhausted, and all I want is a nice, quiet place to sleep.

What's really frustrating is the regression we're seeing. From six weeks to two months, TheGirl slept through the night, midnight to 7 or even 8 a.m. Then she started waking up once. Now ...

Dang. It's a good thing she's cute.

Mother's little helper

I went to our family doc today to discuss my continuing post-partum anxiety. Really, I went to ask for a prescription to replace the 100 mgs of Zoloft I'm taking each morning. Give me drugs. Now give me better drugs.

The anxiety, I explained to her, is better but still there, still a big ball of "aaaaaack" sitting on my chest and in my gut when I rise and shine each morning, still a fuzzy grey filter over the lens I use to view the world, still a soggy blanket draped over my head, still ... you get the idea.

So I asked for something else. And she said no. A friendly but firm no.

Her thinking: The Zoloft has helped alleviate the all-over sadness that was bothering me during the first couple of months home from the hospital. Shifting to a new drug would mean slowly coming off the Z, which could bring the depression back with a vengence. Plus, I'm fully aware of how irrational my anxiety is. I'm worried about feeding TheGirl, will I have enough milk, will I have to dip into the freezer stash, etc. But I know good and well that she's a healthy, happy, huge little thing. (Like mother, like daughter, apparently.) Since I'm so self-aware, my doc says, the best course of treatment is counseling, exercise and time. "You have to train yourself," she said. "We can leave open the possibility of trying another prescription. But I don't think we need to go that way right now."

So instead of a magic pill, I got a little tough love. We'll see how that works.

Night hawks

Spring break is finally over, and I'm pleased because it means I'm no longer alone in the dead of night. Our next-door neighbor suffers from insomnia, and so three or four nights a week, I look up during TheGirl's 3 a.m. feeding to see his bedroom light shining. Although I feel bad for him -- and for anyone up at that hour -- it's comforting to know I'm not the only one.

I shouldn't complain. To be honest, I'm growing to enjoy the late-night/early morning feedings. TheGirl, easily distractable during her day-time meals, has eyes for nothing but the nipple in the dark. It brings home the true power of motherhood -- baby splayed across my lap, her eyes shut, slowly and steadily gulping herself back to sleep. Everything has that blue, nighttime tint to it. Through the window, I can see stars, the moon, the silver shadow of clouds gliding in. It's pretty much the definition of peaceful. Plus, there's the promise of more sleep to come, assuming I do my job correctly.

Sometimes I think I might actually miss these times in a few months, when I hope and pray she'll be sleeping through the night.