My baby is three months old today. Happy birthday, little guy!
His father and I were talking today on the way our lives were different now, and how things seem to be now as they have always been. But I'm going to try not to go all Dooce on you.
Instead, I'm going to tell you about the baby monitor.
I hate the baby monitor. It somehow manages to magnify every sound in a three block radius, while at the same time picking up in the background a country/western radio station which fades in and out like a message from the outside world in a B-quality monster movie. Tonight I was in the kitchen baking cupcakes, and I could hear the baby's dad snoring in our bedroom (via the monitor) louder than I could hear anything going on with the baby himself.
This, I tell his father, is the reason why I bring the baby into our bedroom every night to finish his sleep in the co-sleeper next to my head. But it isn't true.
In fact, the other night, the thing I dread most actually happened. I was asleep in my bed with the monitor sputtering and hissing and twanging away next to my head, and to my room open and the door to the baby's room also open and right across the hall. And the baby started to cry, as babies do. And I didn't wake up.
His father had fallen asleep on the sofa waaayyy downstairs, and finally, after who-knows-how-long, the crying got loud enough and scared enough that it woke him up. He came upstairs, fed the baby, changed him, comforted him. And I didn't wake up until he woke me up by handing the baby to me. You cannot imagine how bad I feel. This is, in fact, the exact thing I had dreaded and the reason I have always resisted putting the baby to bed in his big crib in his own room. And now, of course, not by my own planning, I have the very excuse I need to keep him in our room a bit longer - probably until he hits the 20lb limit on his co-sleeper, in fact.
But none of this is the real reason I want him sleeping next to me.
Here's the truth: The baby wakes up at more or less 4:55 am on the dot every morning. His father and I have to get up at 6am anyhow, so I bring the baby across into the bed with me and let him nurse for an hour or so while I sleep. I never really thought I'd be able to fall asleep with someone sucking noisily and joyfully at my nipple, but such are the strange ways of motherhood, I've found.
So the alarm goes off at six, and dad goes off to get in the shower. Usually around this time baby is asleep again, and I disengage from him, stretch my hip, and maybe give him a kiss or whisper in his ear. And he wakes up.
And he looks in my face, the first thing he sees every morning. And he smiles at me ... one moment his face is the model of post-sleep confusion - where am I? What time is it? Why am I awake? ... and the next this expression of pure joy spreads across his face like beams of sunlight creeping into the room, and I am afirmed for the rest of the day.
In not to much longer, baby boy will be too big for his co-sleeper, and he'll sleep through the night, and I'll no longer have an excuse to keep his father from leaving him in his crib (all alone!) all night. Morning will come, and he'll wake to the mobile and the froggy and the blue sky. And I'm sure he'll smile at me when I come in to collect him to start his day.
But it won't be the same.
No poop today that I'm aware of. Poop yesterday (and Evan's Daddy made me clean it up, the rat bastard - what does he think I am, the mommy or something??), but (blessedly) no poop Saturday while we were on the road.
(someday I will tell you the secret of why this poop tracking is so important, and why cleaning it up is a job more noxious than poop duty is for most parents.... But today is not that day.)
I'm afraid that I am a bad liberal.
I was considering how bad a liberal I am this evening as I was buying certified organic milk in a real glass bottle, and was paying through the nose for it.
You see, left to my own devices, I would buy much more organic and whole food than we normally have in the house, but Evan's Dad feels the expense and difficulty of doing so doesn't justify the end product, so the compromise in our relationship is that things that I buy that only I will eat (like this whole milk I'm gleefully drinking, or most vegatables, or Ice Cream) I can buy organic so long as I pay for them. Other stuff, or anything he buys, however, will be whatever he feels is the best value at the time. He understands that once the Little Guy is old enough to eat food, that food will probably be as much organic as I can get away with, at least at the start, and I think he's ok with that.
But then there are the diapers. We were given a starter set of GDiapers when the Little Guy was born, and I love them and use them when I can (although I find they don't work well for overnight). But I'm reluctant to foist flushable diapers on our daytime caregiver (she has other babies in the house and the changing station isn't set up near the bathroom), so he spends most of his day in disposables. For that purpose I would prefer to buy and use Seventh Generation diapers, but...
(and here's where the Bad Liberal part comes in)
... the Little Guy's Grandmother buys us a package of diapers (usually Huggies brand) just about every week. They are retired military and as such get to buy stuff at the base commisary at a greatly reduced price. So in the nearly three months since the Little Guy was born, we've yet to buy a package of diapers, and we do, in fact, have a ton of diapers sitting in the closet awaiting use. I've even given away a bunch of unopened packages of newborns and size 1s to the local women's shelter, as the Little Guy outgrew them before we had a chance to open them.
Now, were I a Good Liberal, I would do one of two things:
+ I would look a gift horse in the mouth and ask her to buy Seventh Generation instead of the brands she's buying us now, or...
+ I would donate all her gift diapers to said women's shelter and spend my own money on the diapers I prefer.
I have not, however, done either of these things. Partly I don't
want to rock the boat - the ones she buys are name brands that work
well, and are inexpensive for her - how rude would it be to say "Hey,
thanks for the gift but I don't like it, can you keep doing it but buy
this other brand instead"?? And, partly, its that we're cheap broke - we have less money than we used to have, so spending money on something I don't need to buy is a luxury I don't have right now.
But another part - a big part - is simple inertia. I know the two
brands I mentioned above are better for the earth, blah, blah, blah,
but I'm not committed enough to the "cause" to put my money where my mouth
intstinct is. In this way I am no different than most other
typical Americans. Sure, I do what's easy - for instance, we've
stopped shopping at Wal-mart, because it was pretty easy to do
so. But turning down free diapers is hard.
So, while spending $3.00 + on a quart of organic whole milk today I realized that I am, indeed, part of the problem. Just another lazy American willing to let the planet go to hell in a handbasket all to save a couple of bucks.
Good lord. Next thing you know I'll be voting Republican. Oh. Wait....
Damn.
