Sick and sicker

Oliver is sick, once again. It seems he's suffered an endless string of colds, fevers, and diarrhea since starting daycare five weeks ago. Not unusual, but challenging in the best of circumstances and even more so when mom and dad are both working and going to school, and neither is in a situation conducive to calling in sick if necessary. Fortunately, I had anticipated this and set up several sitters for different days of the week if Oliver needed to be out.

Ollie got sent home from daycare last Thursday with a fever. It was only 102, but that's high enough to have to stay out for 24 hours. He was home with a sitter on Friday (someone who, we learned last time, knows my sister and brother-in-law -- what an amazing coincidence is that). Erin is a wonderful sitter, very competent with sick ones. She even has a carseat in her car should something come up that required her to haul Oliver. She mentioned that he'd been very still on Friday, sitting with her a lot. That's very out of character for Oliver, so I knew he really wasn't feeling well.

Yesterday morning he played with less vigor than usual. But the Tylenol seems to mitigate his symptoms enough for him to be up and about some. After his morning nap, though, he was a different patient. He barely ate any lunch and spent the next 2-3 hours sitting in my lap or lying on Wes's chest -- not sleeping, just being still. He took a four-hour nap after that (from which I roused him as the evening wore on). He woke up very sweaty, so he got a bath, then ate a bit more for dinner, and was in bed two hours later.

He's showing more life this morning, but the runny nose and cough are still bothering him, and he's still on a four-hour dosing schedule of Tylenol or Motrin (we try to wait to see if he really needs it, but so far, he does). We have a date with a friend to the zoo today, but I fear we might need to cancel. He's also supposed to start his first day of his new daycare tomorrow, but I'm thinking that probably won't happen. I don't want to mix him still feeling poorly with a new day at a new place. I'd rather shell out money for a sitter than have him suffer through that, even if he's not running a fever by then.

Nobody wants a sick kid, but I must admit I'm enjoying my few moments of snuggling with Ollie. He's never been big on being held -- at least not since he could move much at all -- so I have to get my fill when he's compliant.

Gone, but not forgotten

Wes got up with Ollie this morning around 5:30am so that I could sleep in a bit, having been awake myself much of the night with a rattling cough. When I finally roused two hours laters, I sat next to them on the couch, and Ollie reached out for me. I was touched, but then realized he did so to get closer to my chest, which he was not banging his head against. Evidently, Wes had not yet given him his morning bottle.

On weaning

My mother often recounts how her first few visits to my father's family farm always seemed to fall around weaning time, when mother cows and baby calves are separated so that mom's milk (and some calves) can be sold. This event, I am told, is not a quiet time on the farm, as mothers and babies bleat for one another, the mother full of milk, they baby missing mom.

Thankfully, weaning time at our house was not so eventful. On my first day of classes, just about a month ago, I stopped nursing (and did not resume pumping) during the day. Oliver got frozen breastmilk in a bottle while at daycare (hurray for 300 ounces on dry ice that successfully moved with us from Chicag0). The following week, he got a blend of breastmilk and cow's milk, organic with DHA. I continued to nurse in the morning and at night, which proved helpful as I nursed him during night-wakings caused by his virus and ear infections. His last nursing session was at night, just a few days before his first birthday, and he drank the last of the frozen breastmilk the evening before his first birthday. My mission to breastfeed (or feed him breastmilk) for one whole year was finally accomplished.

The physical part of weaning was easier than I thought it would be. Oliver transitioned without complaint; so long as he gets his milk, he doesn't seem to mind whether it's mommy's milk or from one of the Happy Cows in California. My breasts also seemed to transition with little protest. There was some discomfort when I dropped the daytime feedings in one fell swoop, but otherwise, my body made the change with little protest. I continued to use nursing pads during the day and slept in sports bras at night, just in case.

I must admit that there's a certain freedom to being not pregnant and not nursing for the first time in 21 months. I can take medication without first consulting a physician, I can drink alcohol without mentally allocating expressed milk for specific feeding times, I can feed Oliver without my chest ending up noticeably lopsided (he did one side per feeding by the time he was 10-12 weeks). I bought two new bras on Sunday, and I rather fancy the way I look in them. It was, as my mother used to joke, an uplifting experience.

I am thankful that I was able to nurse for a full year and feel a small sense of pride in having met this milestone. It is no small sacrifice of time and, looking at the gallons of milk Ollie now goes through in a week, no small feat by my body. At the same time, I would not have felt any less successful as a mother had I only done it for a short time. Like my birth experience, it was a goal, but one that was negotiable and did not define my self-concept as a mother.

I was a bit surprised by the emotions I felt as the nursing sessions ended and the bags of milk began to disappear from the freezer. I really expected to get very emotional and teary at Oliver's birth. Maybe it was the fact that we were separated so quickly, but I didn't have that moment. I was elated to see him and hold him, but it just felt right, nothing more. I did not expect -- at all -- to be emotional about weaning or even him turning one, but I absolutely did. Ollie and I spent so much time together nursing in his first year. It was something we both struggled with at first and had to work on. It was something that made him feel better when he was hungry or upset, protected him from sicknesses now and in the future. And not unimportantly, it contributed to the 30-pound weight loss I have enjoyed since getting pregnant.

I have no doubt that I will try to repeat this with each of my children, realizing it will not be as easy to stay in a chair non-stop for a hungry infant when a heedless toddler (I dunno, who could that be?) is torturing the dog several feet away. But I hope, for all our sake, I get to try.

Should I be concerned...

that Oliver has developed the tendency to a) put his face down in his bath water and drink it and b) stand up in the tub and pee, while giggling? Seems like a bad combination.

Ollie's Journal, Weeks 37-53

Things I did:
1. Started crawling -- like a normal baby. I can pull to standing, cruise around using the furniture, go up AND down the stairs. I haven't really tried to let go and stand on my own or even take a few steps, but I'm moving around really well.
2. Moved to Nashville. Love the stairs, love the claw foot tub, love the porch swing, love the swings in the park. Not sure about the backyard (the bugs bite me every time we go out!).
3. Started eating lots of different table food: lots of veggies and fruits, Cheerios and crackers, bits of turkey and chicken, pasta and red sauce. Still getting about 30% baby food to keep the food varied, but those eight teeth are really coming in handy (and maybe getting some more).
4. Started daycare and got sick. First a cold. Then a virus. Then a double-ear infection. I had to miss daycare for five days, which gave mom her first "working-schooling-mom" headache as she figured out childcare for me while I was out. And I had to go to the doctor for the first time in Nashville and for the first time ever for being sick. The new doctor was nice, though. She let me touch the stethoscope and look at the light from the otoscope on my hand. She even gave me tongue depressors to hold while she looked in my ear. I didn't like being pinned down to have my ears cleaned out, but I didn't mind the amoxicillin at all! All better now.
5. Turned one. Not a big hoopla, but I did get a cupcake and some fun presents (and mom says there's more coming in the mail). My favorite difference in being one is getting to sit in the big-boy car seat turned forward in the car.

Right now: Playing in my crib, waiting for mom to come get me up from my nap. Grandma Martha just left :(

You say it's your birthday

And so it happened. My little boy turned one. There was no big party, no pile of presents, no cake mashed all over his face. But he turned one all the same. There was no stopping it.

We did spend the day together as a family. We ventured out to the local Babies 'R Us for some swinging baby gates for the top and bottom of the stairs (oh yeah, did I mention he fell down the stairs the other day?). Wes spent the better part of the day installing child locks in the kitchen cabinets and putting the gates up on the stairs. We did get cupcakes and put a candle on one -- and a hat on the kid -- and sang happy birthday. My mother and sister joined us over the phone. Lots of people called and emailed saying "Happy Birthday!" and "We got him a present, but it's not there yet...". And hey, that's okay, because he's one, and didn't know it was his birthday, and he doesn't need lots of presents on any birthday, and well, we didn't get him one either (can we count the baby gates as his present? Seems more of a punishment in some ways). We even started a tradition of measuring his height in the doorway of the bedroom closet. Of course, it would have been better were he actually already standing on his own, but it worked well enough nonetheless.

We have on days since received books and puzzles, including the most prized giraffe, from Grandma Martha, and a box of blocks and 18- and 24-month clothes from Aunt Jennifer and Uncle Adam. Aunt Laura has evidently found a gift so exciting that she can hardly stand not to tell us what it is.

It is a bit odd now, when people ask how old he is, to say, "He's one." I'd been saying it before his birthday (in true un-Liz-like fashion, I've never been one for labeling his life in weeks), but now it's one-plus. I went to breakfast with my mom and Oliver this morning, and there were lots of other kids in the restaurant. Instead of noticing the older ones, though, I noticed all the babies. I sometimes feel like I don't remember what he was like at that age. He still seems like a baby because I don't have daily contact with a little baby. And yet I can tell he's growing and changing. So many new skills, faces, movements.

It is now a week since his birthday. Some of his gifts are strewn about the family room while he naps upstairs. When he moves to his new daycare a week from Monday (we got a spot at the campus daycare!), he'll be in the 1-2 year room, having lunch served by the center and having lessons on fruits and textures. I'm excited about the next year and all the ones after that, but let me be the millionth mother to say it: What happened to my baby?

And then he was one