IrishOboe

This morning Joseph and I went to our first PEKiP course.  PEKiP stands for Prager-Eltern-Kind Program, which means the “Prague parent-child program.”  Someone here recommended it and when I found out it’s 1 ½ hours of naked baby time and that there was a class starting up soon I signed up without too much further research.  I don’t know if that smart or not, but here we are.  There are six ladies and their babies in the class but only five were there today.  Three are second or third time mothers and have done PEKiP before.  We mostly got to know each other today so I can’t judge yet how it is.  The instructor spent quite a bit of time watching and learning about each child.  We’ll see what happens.  Of the two ulterior motives I had for taking this class, one is shot out of the water.  I wanted to get to know local Swiss mothers and have a natural setting for practicing Swiss German but at least three of the other four mothers are German!  That’s good news for my High German, I guess.  The other ulterior motive was getting 1 ½ hours of diaper free time and seeing how others dealt with elimination needs.  I mentioned this and it turns out they don’t bother watching signals.  They just clean up when a mess occurs.  I think I’m going to bring my “potty” along anyway because Joseph consistently became fussy before he peed (three times) so it shouldn’t be too hard to at least give him the opportunity to go when he becomes fussy.  Otherwise he was happy to be naked in a warm room (I was sweating like mad!) and only really cried at the end because he was ready for a nap.  Unfortunately, I didn’t learn any great ways to keep yourself from getting peed on or not worrying about when the baby will pee.  I couldn’t watch too much since I was focusing on Joseph, but mostly they just kept their babies on the towels on the floor and held the towel around them if they held their babies.  I just got peed on, but that’s starting to bother me less and less . . .
So, it’s good observation time, but won’t be good for support.  I need to find a Swiss EC group.  I wonder what EC is in German.

Yesterday Joseph had his 2 month appointment.  He’s still at the top of the charts for weight (6.780 kilograms, 59.5cm, 41.5cm head at 10 weeks).  (That was quite obvious at PEKiP this morning.  He was one of the bigger babies but one of the youngest!  The babies are between 2 and 4 months.)  The doctor asked if we’d cut Joseph’s hair.  I said “no” and he said “It looks funny.”  Other than that he was very encouraging and impressed with Joseph’s progress, especially with head control.  And his hair does look funny . . .

I’m not sure we fully appreciate how good Joseph is to us.  Yesterday we went to a friend’s wedding and he did a wonderful job during the hour plus drive and during the service.  He was awake but didn’t make much noise as he smiled and played.  He’s starting to not want the breast all that often and drinks deeply when he does nurse so he can go longer between feedings.  He only just started to fuss at the end of the trip home.  He did a great job with all the noisy people at the reception.  He even fell asleep for a bit.  Maybe he’s starting to recognize noisy people as background noise.

Last night he went to be around 8 and only woke up to feed at 1am and 4am.  I got two three-hour stretches of sleep!  He was up around 6 with a wet, but clean diaper and proceeded to deposit a massive amount of waste right into the potty while breastfeeding (Mommy’s figured out a thing or two about how to work it).  It’s soooooooo nice to know that there’s one more diaper explosion I don’t have to clean up after.  In general we catch at least one pooh a day but I’ve not made much progress in identifying signals of need.  I’m fine with that.  The most important thing for me is that I don’t stress about it but take it as it comes.  I hope to get better at reading him, but if you focus too hard on it you can’t see anything.  Being more relaxed about this and other various aspects of baby care help me to enjoy Joseph and the time we have together much, much more.  What blessed parents we are!

This weekend was the best weekend yet with little Joseph.  We got to be together as a family the whole weekend and we got lots done and had lots of fun!

We no longer sleep in on Sunday morning for obvious reasons.  Joseph is always ready for some entertainment much earlier than we would like, but it has the added benefit of leaving us with lots of time together before church.  This time we went up the hill behind our apartment and watched the Basel flight club launch and fly gliders.
We didn’t have time for a ride, though . . .

In the picture below you can see our apartment and the pool I swim in.  They almost fly over our place!  (More)

And some days I think that I can’t make it.  Everyone talks about labor being hard, but somehow life after gets lost in the fuss.  Thanks to all my wonderful supporters!  I couldn’t be the mommy I am without you all!

But I started this post saying some days are wonderful – and they really are!  Today was one such day so far.  It’s the little things that make life so exciting.  My daily run is starting to have a very positive effect on my energy level and emotional stability.  It’s starting to be my favorite time of day not just because I can work up some energy, but also because it means swimming time!!!  Joseph has picked up on the pattern.  He smiled big smiles when I put him in the trailer this morning and he smiled big smiles as I undressed him for bath time.  He knows what’s coming!  Grossmutti arrived just in time to see Joseph swim and she got to see how excited he was to go in the water, too.  (And Joseph doesn’t yet have stage fright.)  She also saw how Joseph is learning awareness of his bodily functions.  I always give him a chance to go on the “big potty” i.e. the toilet (I hold him over it – he’s not sitting yet . . .) and he had a little pooh and started to fuss.  I thought that meant he was done so I took him away and he screamed bloody murder.  Ask Grossmutter.  He was one mad little boy.  I put him back on and sure enough he had to pee and afterwards was perfectly content to come off the potty.  Now, if Mommy can only learn the difference between “I’m fussing because I have to go” And “I’m fussing because I’m DONE WITH THIS STUPID POTTY!”

No new pictures up yet, but here's a teaser.

Joseph is very good to me in that he is happy to be in his bike trailer while I go for a run.  It’s a great break for me and it’s wonderful to be running again and it feels great to be getting some exercise.  After running we take a bath together and practice swimming.  Joseph had bath time with daddy while I was recovering and learned to love playing on his back.  Whenever he’s in the water now he throws himself back so that he can lie down in the water like he does with daddy.  I can now hold just his neck and he will happily balance himself in the water, smiling and giggling.  What fun!  I’m excited to start the swim course when he’s three months.  I haven’t tried putting him under the water yet.  We’ll practice a few other games before I try that, but maybe someday I’ll get up the courage to do it.

This morning Joseph had his first month checkup.  He did wonderfully!  He slept as I got ready to go, he slept on the way there, he sat happily listening to the music box and batting his arms and moving his legs as the doctor inspected him, he got a little fussy at the end but was stilled with a finger until I could go nurse him, and he slept all the way home!  The doctor was very happy, and even though I wasn’t nervous, I somehow feel better with the doctor’s affirmation.  It’s as though someone from the outside has said “You are a good mother. Stop worrying.”  Not that I worry all that much, I just wonder if I shouldn’t be doing more or doing something I don’t know about but have no excuse not knowing about or . . .

He weighed in at 5.450kg (at the top of the curve), has a big head and is right in the middle with length.  His eye has cleared up (he just had a little ‘sleep’ that can mean various things with babies) so that’s fine and everything else the doctor checked was “tip top.”

Now for an afternoon with Grossmutti!

Joseph does more than poop and pee and it’s about time I wrote about it.  He’s growing quickly and can hardly be thought of as a newborn and it’s only been five weeks!  He has smiled since birth but for the past week he has been consistently smiling directly at people.  Daddy gets the most – he loves playtime with daddy!  I get a few, but mostly I have the privilege of seeing him smile when he nods off to sleep.  He might fight sleep vigorously since he always wants to watch what’s going on, but once he does start to fade often the first sign is a big, bright, beautiful smile.

He also loves to look at the ceiling no matter where we are.  It’s not just a matter of his head falling back.  He purposely pushes his head back so he can look up and then stares with big eyes.  He insists on doing this even while in the Moby Wrap, so usually I have to have one hand supporting his head and I’m still one-handed unless he’s a sleep and then I can tuck his head away and work with both hands – a rare privilege these days.

He gets better and better about holding his head up when on his tummy.  He kicks like crazy and if you put a hand behind his feet he’ll launch forward since he often holds his head up and kicks at the same time.

He still only sleeps 2-3 hour stretches even at night, but at night he’ll go right back to sleep after the eat/change, so that is a great blessing!

It’s fun to watch him grow and change!

Nope, life isn’t much more than “pshsh” and “bthth” right now.  After a frustrating evening of doing everything to calm fussy Joseph and not succeeding for three hours (and only surviving because Valda was visiting and could help me out – but so much for girl time) I decided to brave my fears of pee spraying everywhere and poop exploding in inconvenient places and try some diaper-free time this morning.  After his morning nap I spread out the mattress protector on the floor and put on grungy clothes and decided not to care what got dirty.  I was pretty shocked that we went for over an hour without any misses.  I breastfed him and felt like he was working on something so put him on the potty and he peed and pooped.  I continued feeding him and was burping him when he got fussy and I put him on the potty again and he peed.  It seems crazy that he has such an awareness of his body.  We spent some time on the floor looking at bits and some time resting on my shoulder and each time he was calm I didn’t worry and when he got fussy I first tried the potty then went to a new position.  The last half of the hour I put him on the potty a lot (I’m still scared!) to no success.  At the end he got fussy and wouldn’t take anything.  Maybe I should have held him on the potty longer because he did then pee, getting his pants and some of mine, but mostly on the mattress protector.  Is that what I was so afraid about?  We decided to finish diaper-free time and I put on a diaper and nursed him to happy sleep.

At the very least it’s more entertaining for me . . .

The title should warn those not interested in the subject . . .
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Yesterday was Joseph’s first month birthday already!  We celebrated by saying goodbye to grandma and spending the day all by ourselves. L  I’m certain that part of why Joseph was unsettled was because the apartment was so empty.  We were so blessed to have daddy home so much and grandma with us for a month after the birth.  Joseph did eventually calm down and let me get a two hour nap (that’s a nice birthday present)!  In the evening we went to Valda’s for dinner with friends, which was lovely.  Last night Joseph made up for not sleeping much on his birthday by sleeping a 4, a 3, and a 2 hour stretch – lovely!  Sleep is a beautiful thing.
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I borrowed a book from my sister on EC (Elimination Communication) and read it a month or so before Joseph was born.  It sounded like fun and possible to try as much or as little as desired so I was excited to try it.  The book recommended not bothering to think about EC in the first week, but I thought “Why not?”  Ha!  I didn’t even think about not giving EC a thought in the first week.  In fact, I didn’t even change one diaper the first week (yeah husband!).  It wasn’t until Joseph’s third week that I gave it a thought and made few feeble attempts at putting Joseph on his little potty, though it must be said that since he has a habit of pooping and peeing during a change we’ve been given the “cuing” sounds so he has been getting at leas some sort of correlation between the act of peeing and pooping the their respective sounds (pshshshsh and bththth or something like that).
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Warning:  This is a long post.  Here’s the short version: It was long.  It hurt. Joseph was born.  We’re very happy.

Just a few weeks is enough to start altering the memory, but here I will recall as best as I can the story of Joseph’s birth.

In the weeks leading up to the birth the baby occupied little of my mind.  I was frantically studying for the Goethe German C1 test that I’d failed to back out of in time and I thought I had at least a week after all my obligations were finished to focus on getting ready for Baby.  I’m very grateful now that I still made a point of getting enough rest each night despite studying so intensely.  Of course because I’d dropped everything to study my German, after the test I had to cram in practice for the harp piece I was playing for Cornelia’s wedding the day after the test finished.  We all had a lovely time at the wedding and thought we did well by leaving early and in time to get home by midnight.  I relaxed into bed thinking I could now finally take it easy and finish the preparations for the birth.  All the major stuff was done, but there were still plenty of nesting tasks I wanted to complete.

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Joseph is eating like crazy (which is great because I have a lot of milk for him) and starting to plump up.  Today he found his thumb, though often it means an index finger in the eye as well, poor guy.

 

Recovery is slow but steady.  I've been on a few walks and can get a bit of work done during the day.  It's amazing how much time and energy a little baby needs!  It's all paying off, though - he gets cuter every day!

There's new life for this blog!

For an introduction and photo see this blog post by my wonderfully supportive husband.