Thanksgiving November 23 - December 6, 2003 About a turkey, cold relay, and unfathomable crying.

	Thanksgiving - our celebratory breakfast notice my refined hairdo and luxurious high class dress

I have been writing every year that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. As Martina says -- every year we have a reason to be thankful for something. You must agree that this year, we had a very eminent reason. Originally we decided to stay at home because of Tommy. Now that we brought a child home from intensive care unit during a peak of flu season, we somehow seem disinterested to expose him to social illnesses. Paradoxically, it was I who got a bad cold, and our reasoning turned on its head -- we chose not to infect our friends.

Sid bought a piece of turkey (there's no chance we could ever devour usual twenty pounds of a whole American bird -- not even with Hippo trying hard), and in an unchecked moment, when Tom closed his tiny eyelids for a few fleeting minutes, we had a marvelous meal. He himself did not get denied, our turkey, including those few sips of wine, must have arrived to him within hours, passed through his mother. Unfortunately we forgot to get cranberry jelly -- one of the indispensable components of a Thanksgiving feast. On the other hand -- the very original party included the presence of "Native Americans" (today it seems to be politically incorrect to call them Indians) -- and although Tom is not an Indian, he certainly IS native American, so we honored traditions that way. Or did we not?

	Sid fulfilling his fathering duty. I am afraid that Tommy shall master a computer before he begins to walk.

On Friday past Thanksgiving, my cold felled Sid as well, which had very soothing effects on my spirit. I admit that I began to be mentally dented from a breastfeeding and diaper-changing roller coaster. And from my finding that Tom would never show any gratitude for being perpetually freed from heavy load in his diapers, no; he would always squeal as if I were hurting him irreparably. OK, I am aware that I should get used to kids NEVER showing any gratitude, but on that Friday I had enough. Fortunately Sid felt so sick he could not sleep and he treated himself all night by a hot tea, and as he was being up anyway, he took to Tom and kept bringing him only in necessary cases, which he could not fix himself (i.e., breastfeeding).

Our home care suits Tom quite obviously well. From a repressed, quiet, little baby, he transformed into an outstanding member of our household. Sid claims that he can "acoustically differentiate" Tom's desires. I don't know; Tom's performances before falling asleep -- grunting, whistling, lip smacking, and braying -- invoke the image of something between the sounds of a neglected TB case shortly before death, and a medium sized ZOO. Quite often, he makes me get up and go check on him, whether he is still alive. To my repeated surprise, I always find a cute little baby in his bed, with both eyes closed and an angelic expression on his little face. Tom manages to produce all these sounds without moving a muscle (let alone his mouth) in his face.

	Do not disturb, I'm concentrating!

We keep trying to interpret Tommy's behavior, but we fail miserably. After we attempt (in vain) to feed him for half an hour, and to put him to sleep, we usually find that he has been crying because his diaper leaked on his back. Other times, after many pointless changing and wiping, we find he has been actually hungry (one would not guess it after having fed him already for last two hours). When we change and feed him and he still cries, we find that he only wanted to sleep, but did not know how to do that with all these bothersome parents and their intrusions. How hard it must be for him!!!

A little child is terribly inconsistent -- what works miraculously one day is smashed into ruins on the following morning. Do I get proud enough to brag to other mothers in my internet discussion club that Tom sleeps for five hours in a row? Next night he takes it upon himself to prove he can wake every hour. Do I get the impression that fennel tea works, as well as belly massages, carrying, pacifying, warming up? My mistake -- next day (or night) my head overheats from wondering, and still I won't figure what would transform a squirming, unhappy baby into a satisfied (hopefully sleeping) angel.

	An occasion of historic proportions - first time on a walk!

The only thing somehow approaching a functional solution is traveling. Either by car or in a stroller, once we're on the move, Tom turns into the happiest baby in the world (hush, I hope he did not hear this). So I try to get out on a walk every day. So far I have been rather discovering where to go around here. Once I just pushed the stroller around the block and let Tommy in his seat on our front yard, where he slept so long that I managed to rake all fallen leaves. With Sid, we discovered a park next to a grocery store (a convenient combination of shopping and little outing), and our most recent discovery is Los Alamitos Creek Park. This ten miles long trail along a creek has both paved road (for bikes, strollers, roller skaters etc.) and a sand track (for horses, runners and people who don't want to ruin their joints on a blacktop). Later it should get extended all the way to our house (land, so far managed by water district, is about to be passed over to the city, with plans at the ready, only a few millions are missing in the city's budget to finish it), and farther into the hills; overall length should be 16 miles. I am afraid that only our grandchildren may get to see it.

Walks do also good to me -- for once I don't have as many claustrophobic feelings from being shut at home all day, for second -- when I carried my pregnant belly around, my somewhat more massive "undercarriage" enjoyed some justification. Now, there's no excuse.

	Tom lifting his little head it looks like Sid holding him up, but I swear that Tom is doing this all by himself already

My puerperal period passed on fifth of December. We went through check-ups -- both Tom and I. When my doctor told me that unless there's a problem, we would see each other again in a year, I felt funny. Thanks to my problematic pregnancy I went to the OB-GYN almost more often than to our mailbox to check for new mail, and so it seemed unreasonable to make it stop so suddenly (not that I actually miss it; I certainly do not).

Tommy's puerperal check had been even better. His doctor was praising him for gaining weight. Tom weighed seven pounds (3.18 kg), simply an example of a baby. Then she also said that his ugly rash was "quite typical for newborns" and that there was nothing to be done and that it would disappear all by itself (only Tom would look "less pretty" on his first pictures. We will have to accept that). It was a great relief. In my paranoid newborn mother's mind, I had already formulated catastrophic scenarios about an awfully contagious, deadly disease (alas, I was unable to decide between leprosy and typhus), which has befallen our poor baby. Our doctor continued with a question, whether Tom also has times when he's nervous, fussy, complaining, squealing and can't get satisfied. Wow, this woman must be a psychic! And so I said yes, this has been daily on our schedule from about six to eight in the evening, and she CONGRATULATED me -- saying that all kids do this and I should be glad that he does not do it between midnight and three in the morning. To move on -- I was leaving the clinic hovering four inches above ground. It relieved me so much, the fact that I may even be a capable mother and that our infant does not qualify for child abuse!!! My only problem seems to be now that I would need such optimistic assessment about every other day (if not after Tom's every night fit).

It's hard to compare Tom with other infants. I still did not figure out how to count his age. He has been on this world for over six weeks now, but got born eight weeks ahead of his term. So how old is he? Minus two? And what should a baby, who's minus two weeks, be capable of doing? Hard to say. Nevertheless Tom already manages many useful things.

• He can beautifully latch during breastfeeding. So far he was not successful in biting through my sweatshirt, T-shirt and bra, but he can always throw his mother out of balance by pretending to be a poor, hungry, neglected baby -- even though he does not really mean it, and is not really hungry.
• Since being born, he has been able to lift his head. Since four weeks of age he bobs it when held upright. This way, he can not only amuse his parents, but also collect hairs from, and moisten all, areas in the reach of his head (and mouth). Perfect to make his newbie parents nervous.
• Tom seems to have a great sense of smell -- he rarely tries above practice on Sid, who has not been known to produce any milk.
• He is developing fine control of facial muscles - Tommy can perfectly make angry, unhappy faces and throw demonic looks, if preparations to feeding drag on unnecessarily (i.e. in case that it takes longer than three picoseconds from the moment he realized that he would like to have something to eat). Of course he does not bother to practice anything as embarrassing as SMILING at his parents.
• He can grasp many objects with his hands. Sometimes he pulls a blanket over his eyes (or throws it away when it bothers him). A firm hold is mostly used, though, to tossing a pacifier at long distance (thus immediately creating a cause for more crying).
• Acoustic expressions -- Tommy learned to very convincingly simulate choking (his favorite past time when I hope to catch a nap). His other common sound is loud smacking lips during night-time breastfeeding -- to let daddy join in and stop him from falling asleep when we are up.

Currently I have a tough task ahead of me. I shall somehow combine to care sufficiently for Tom, letting Sid go to work (and be alert, functional, and useful there), while I manage my basic life functions (eating, going to bathroom, washing myself), without losing a minimum level of sanity. Staying sane was never so difficult -- especially if Tom starts performing his "bleating burrito" number. Fed, changed, comfortably wrapped, he cries and cries. I hope that no social worker would come by then -- we resigned already and have been disposing of our bleating burrito into his crib, and while he squeals in a way that could freeze a weaker person's blood in his veins, we dine in peace, following our rule that if we did not eat, we would die miserably and Tommy would end up in a orphanage. So actually we do the best for him.

Copyright © 2003-2004 by Carol & Sid Paral. All rights reserved.