Category Archives: family

The nanny search

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We decided we would hire a full time nanny for when I go back to work as opposed to putting our baby in daycare. Given that I work from home at my current company, the transition to going back to work would be less painful for me given that I could still see the baby throughout the day between meetings if we had a nanny looking after her. And that was important to me given my remote work situation. If I didn’t have to go to an office, then why not have a nanny be here with her during the day?

The search was looking up initially. I had two solid leads and one “okay” lead that we had trial dates scheduled for. But then, out of nowhere, one of them bailed and said that she couldn’t start at the end of April. The second one, within a couple days later, told me she accepted a position with a family that she had done a trial with two weeks before that she didn’t think she’d hear back from. And then I was left with my third choice, which I wasn’t that enthused by given these first two didn’t work out. So I sunk into a hole and wondered if I’d ever find the right fit for my baby.

Chris found a site called Mommy Bites where parents can pay to recommend and list their nannies who are ending with them, so I used that site and ended up finding a lot of solid leads. Around the same time, I got a new lead from the Upper West Side Moms group. Now, we have about six potential nanny candidates who all seem to fit what we are looking for: passionate about babies, interested in baby learning and development, and generally easy going and relaxed. If you can believe it, one used to be a chef in Belize, but when she immigrated here, it wasn’t that easy for her to find a job in food. So she decided that because she loved kids that she would become a nanny. All her references have raved about her energy and interaction with their kids, and they even said that she cooked for the kids AND the families. She’d whip up gourmet meals out of scraps in their fridge. And when I scheduled the trial date with her, she asked if we could leave chicken and vegetables in the fridge so she could cook for us.

Guess who I am partial to?

When six pumps a day becomes five

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Today is my fourth day doing five pumps a day, and I really wasn’t expecting to be reducing it down to five pumps a day this soon. My original goal was to get down to five pumps a day before I went back to work, with my sixth pump dropped from the middle of the night, ultimately allowing me to sleep at least 6 to 7 hours straight at night. I know there would have been no way for me to survive working full-time while also caring for my baby without a full night’s sleep, and so this was what I decided to do for myself.  Given that my supply actually went up when I went down to six pumps per day from seven, I decided to start weaning myself sooner rather than later off of my sixth pump. And after about a week and a half, I cut that sixth pump out. I was scared initially, particularly about getting yet another milk clog, but I made sure to take extra sunflower lecithin pills as well as massage my breasts thoroughly as soon as I woke up, as per the recommendation from my Cleo lactation consultant. And so far, so good. My supply has remained a similar, and if anything, it has actually increased slightly.

I feel really good at five pumps per day now. I hope to be doing this now until at least 7 to 8 months postpartum. My original goal was six months, but given how balanced I feel right now and how less overwhelmed I feel with pumping at five pumps per day, I think I can keep this up for longer. I hope I can be giving my baby breastmilk until she is one year old. I am anticipating my supply dropping once my period comes back as it does with most breastfeeding moms, but that’s okay. I have made peace with all of that.

I actually felt a little bit sad as I dropped my sixth pump, as strange as that sounds. You would think that given I had such a love-hate relationship with pumping that I would be really excited every single time I dropped another pump. But instead, it actually made me feel a little bit empty and emotional. Because as I continue to drop pumps, I will get closer and closer to the stage when my baby no longer needs breastmilk and will be eating solids 100 percent. And what this actually means is that she will be less reliant on me. There is an inner joy and comfort that I feel knowing that my body is producing food for my baby to eat. I am providing her with essential nutrients and more. And to know that eventually, this journey will come to an end makes me a little bit sad; her reliance on my body for food will eventually come to an end. One day, she is not going to need me to comfort her by having her suckle on my boob. One day, she is not going to need me to carry her around anymore. One day, she is not really going to want to bury her face in my chest or be soothed simply from the sound of my voice speaking or singing. All of these moments are going to come to an end at some point. It’s a little sad to think about it that way. All of these little moments that I love and cherish are eventually going to end.

Every day, as she gets older, she will be a little bit less reliant on me. Now, she has very good neck strength and needs just a little bit of neck support. Next, she will no longer need us to carry her around because she will be able to walk. Then, she will be able to talk. And eventually, she will be going around the city on her own and doing her own thing. She will gradually become more and more independent and less dependent on us as her parents. And this is all a journey. This is all part of raising a child and giving life. There is a time for everything, and each of those times eventually ends. I just want to sit in each of these moments a little bit longer and cherish it because it really does all go way too fast. I still can’t even believe this is her sixteenth week of life. It all just passes us by too quickly.

One year anniversary of the embryo transfer

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Today marks one year since I had my frozen embryo transfer. That tiny little embryo, that little bundle of cells that were expanding, ended up being a little baby that I gave birth to in December and now call my sweet baby Kaia. I got the photo memory on my phone this morning, and I smiled to myself while looking at it at the gym. I had a lot of hope and a lot of fear that morning when I went into the clinic for my transfer. During the transfer, per my request, they played Lady Gaga songs to inspire me. And when I went home that night, Chris and my friend who was staying with us at the time tried to send good vibes and declared me “pupo”: pregnant until proven otherwise. And so for the next week and a half, I was just that: I was Pupo. And about a week in, I started feeling a strange warmth almost like a light fire creeping up on my hips. And that was when I suspected that the embryo transfer was successful, that I was actually pregnant. And nine days after the transfer happened, I went into the clinic for my very first beta , and at just before noon that day, the nurse called with the good news that I was four weeks pregnant. I was so happy and so shocked that I immediately got choked up and started crying. It felt like an eternity – trying to get pregnant, constantly failing, going to the clinic constantly for endless appointments and endless blood tests and endless uterine scans … And finally this one bit of good news was more than I could handle.

The photo of me that came up on my phone was of me on the evening after the embryo transfer. I have a photo that the clinic gave me of my embryo and expanding as you can clearly see in the picture. I have it placed right at my belly and I’m smiling in the photo. When I took that photo, I wasn’t sure what would come next. I wasn’t sure if I would continue to get good news in the upcoming appointments. Every time I went to the bathroom, I was terrified that I was going to see blood , which would indicate that I’d had a miscarriage. It took me a really long time to not get nervous going to the bathroom. But eventually, my nerves were calmed, and I started getting more comfortable with being pregnant. It’s amazing to think how quickly time flies because those scary and uncertain times feel like they were just yesterday.

 And now today, I am still on maternity leave caring for my sweet baby. Every day, I look at her constantly obviously, and I never forget how much uncertainty and fear I had during this journey in conceiving and giving birth to her. I never for a second forget how scary that process was, and I never take for granted what I have; I know I am extremely lucky. There are endless women out there who are trying to get pregnant and not able to, and they would love to have just one chance to conceive successfully.  I feel for them every day. I know their pain intimately. So even when my baby is screaming and crying because of her pre-teething pain, even when it has made me sad that she has not been successful at eating directly from my boob, even when she blows out yet another diaper and I have to pre-soak more of her onesies, even when I get pissed at my pumping schedule, and even when Chris and I are disagreeing and arguing about something baby related, I remember that what I have today is truly a blessing, a gift for which I will forever be grateful. My baby is truly the center of my world, and there is nothing else that I am more grateful for in this life than her. Sometimes I look at her, and I think, fuck everything else. She is literally everything to me and nothing else matters. My sweet little Kaia jam.

First outsourced childcare failure

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Before becoming a parent, I had frequently heard about all kinds of childcare failures: nannies or baby nurses that just stop showing up, daycare centers suddenly shutting down without notice or sending babies home, stat; babysitters cancelling last minute, and even family members and friends who babysat having major meltdowns with the kids. I figured that at some point, something like this would happen to us. I just was not anticipating it happening this soon.

When Annie started working with us after Cheryl left, I had told her at the beginning that we wanted her to come at night. And I told her that when the baby started sleeping through the night, we would start shifting night support to daytime support, but I wasn’t certain of the number of days that we needed help with because it was so far into the future. A common way that I repeatedly started statements with her was, “We’re not sure, but…” Well, it wasn’t that far into the future as I thought, as the baby has started sleeping through the night in the last week. So that’s why we started having Annie come during the day last week. In total, she was still working four days a week with us. But given that we were shifting 100 percent to daytime support, I personally did not think that four days was needed, particularly since both of us are still on family leave. And now that I am unfortunately counting down the weeks until I have to go back to work, this has made me feel very unsettled and emotional knowing that I will no longer be able to spend this much time with my baby once I go back to work. So the thought of having daytime support four days a week, which is just one day less than five days a week when I would be working, just did not make any sense to me.  With that logic, why don’t I just go back to work now?! And so I thought that we could try doing three days a week with Annie.

Apparently, something got lost in translation, and Annie never thought that we would reduce the total number of days that she would work with us. She flipped out when we told her that we did not want her to come a fourth day this week, and she sent me a very distraught text message late at night on Tuesday to let me know that she felt that we had not told her the truth and misled her all along. The next day, we talked it out over the phone, and we both admitted that we could have been a little bit clearer about the communication. I could have explicitly told her that we eventually did not want four total days of support per week. At the same time, she could have also explicitly told me that she needed to work four days a week, and a minimum of 40 hours a week. That was never told to me, otherwise I would have said that this may not be a fit, particularly since I had interviewed other people who were more flexible in terms of the number of hours and had explicitly told me so. So, she was supposed to come this Friday, and because she was so hurt, she decided that she would rather forgo an entire day’s worth of pay rather than work with us one last day. In the end, she is losing a day’s worth of pay because it is highly unlikely that she would have found work that soon, but we also lost: we have a show that we booked for Friday night, and now, we don’t know how we are going to see it without any help. And what’s worse… In the last couple of days, our baby has been super fussy when we put her down to bed after her last feed at around 8 PM, and this is a new development. Chris is not comfortable asking anyone we know who has offered babysitting to deal with this fussiness. And it also makes us apprehensive to have a babysitter come and deal with this.

So what the hell are we supposed to do?

A grandma’s pride

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I was on the phone with my mom other day when she was gushing about my baby, her granddaughter. 

“Don’t tell anyone I said this because it doesn’t sound good,“ my mom started. “It won’t make other people feel comfortable, so don’t tell anyone. My grandchild is the cutest grandchild in the world! There is no one cuter than my little Kaia. She is just so cute! Her cheeks! Her face! Her smile! She is the cutest baby in the entire world!”

I smiled while also half rolling my eyes as my mom gushed endlessly over how cute her grandchild is. Grandparents are generally like this about their grandchildren. They are just glowing all the time, and it’s easy to understand: they get all of the glory and all of the bragging rights without having to do any of the work. They get to have a full night’s sleep every night. They get to go about their day-to-day activities and hobbies. Their everyday lives do not change. What does change is their ability to enjoy a child without having to do any of the raising of the child. And that sounds pretty glorious in itself, doesn’t it, especially since they had their fair share of time raising children.

OK, I am clearly generalizing here. My grandma did not enjoy this: she actually played an active part in raising me, my brother, and all of my cousins for that matter. For most of my friends who live near their parents, their parents played a very active role in raising them, and doing everything from feeding to changing diapers to cooking for my friends after they returned home from the hospital. My parents are not nearby to be able to do this, nor our Chris’s. I’m sure my mom would have helped out with cooking and cleaning as needed if she were closer, but I don’t think she would be physically able to care for the baby given her own health conditions; I know my dad certainly would not have wanted to at all. With Chris’s parents, I don’t have a feeling they’d want to stay up all night, either. His mom might have wanted to do it for a few days or even a couple weeks, but there would be an end to that quite quickly. Plus, as we all know, in-law support is not quite the same.

The real reason I think this is all so comical is that my mom has made and will be making zero effort to come meet her grandchild in person, and she’s using the COVID-19 pandemic, which really isn’t much of a pandemic anymore, as an excuse to not travel. She is waiting for ME to take the baby THERE. And… I just can’t wait for the drama that will ensue when that happens.

Pre-teething

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The other day, I noticed that my baby was drooling a lot more than normal. Unfortunately for us, whenever there is stuff coming out of our baby’s mouth, it is usually spit up from her last feed, which is not particularly fun for me to see. Why is that? Well, here I am, working my ass off to pump milk 6-7 times a day for the last 14 weeks, and to see that precious liquid gold get spit up hurts my heart… Or should I more accurately say, my breasts! So drool is just something a bit different. In addition to that, I also noticed that when I nursed her, she seemed to be latching and unlatching a bit weird. It was just different than what I was used to seeing. And like clockwork, my Cleo rep send me an article to prepare myself for what to expect for pre-teething.

Pre-teething tends to happen somewhere between 2 to 4 months. This is not necessarily the teething stage, which tends to start around month five or six of a baby’s life. Pre-teething, just as it sounds, precedes actual teething. Your baby’s mouth is starting to get ready for the teeth to grow in, and with that comes a lot of excruciating pain for your tiny little human. That excruciating pain is going to manifest itself in a lot of screaming and crying that is going to seem a little bit out of the nowhere. So I went and disinfected her silicone teething toys, froze a few, and offered them to her. As with most new things, she kind of looked at the first teething toy skeptically and was slow to accept it. But gradually, she has learned to suck on it. And I knew that pre-teething had really begun when one afternoon, out of nowhere during her nap, she started screaming and crying nonstop. Nothing would sooth her. Holding her didn’t help, singing and talking to her didn’t help, and she clearly was not hungry. She just needed to be soothed because of the pain in her gums. She accepted some of the teething toys for a little bit, and eventually I just offered her my boob… Because access to the boob is just comforting to a teething baby.

We have been extremely lucky so far in that our baby is always predictable when she cries. She has a specific cry for hunger. She has another cry for attention. She has a faux cry for hunger. But with teething, that would be a very different territory for us to understand and to help with. And so, the adventures of parenting continue.

My growing baby

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Being a parent, as I can personally attest to now, is most certainly a full-time job, and not a 9-to-5 job but a true 24–7 job. It is the most exhausting thing I have ever done in my entire life, but now, I finally understand why parents say that it is also the most rewarding thing that you can do. As Kaia has gotten older and now that she is over 13 weeks old, she is getting more and more attentive, active, and playful. Watching her develop every single day brings me the greatest joy. It’s almost like I can feel my heart is being squeezed. She does the most quirky and cheeky things: sometimes, when I am swaddling her, she farts and I exclaim in response, she gives me a huge grin, as though she knows that what she did is stinky and silly.  Every time she smiles when I smile, my heart melts just a little bit. And last night, when I was bottle feeding her before putting her down to bed, out of nowhere, she reached her hand out to hold my pinky finger and let it stay there the entire time. And I just thought that was the cutest thing ever.

 Lately, she has been cooing and babbling nonstop during certain periods of the day when she is very awake. She particularly loves it when I am singing to her. I have captured her cooing and babbling many times, but she seems to be picking up on the fact that I am recording her on my phone. In the last two days, when I put my phone up to record her babbling and squawking, as soon as she sees my phone, she immediately stops talking. It’s as if she is saying in response, “Get that rectangle thing out of my face and let me be!“

 I suppose that is also another reminder to me that I don’t necessarily need to record and capture every single thing that she does on photo or video, but I really should be more in the moment and just enjoy her for the time and the moment itself. But I really do love sharing these photos and videos with her grandparents and some of my friends who truly adore her and look at her like a niece. At the same time, though, I want to document her growth and development. I want to be able to share these photos and videos with her when she gets older. When I was young, I always loved it when my family showed me photos and videos of me when I was a baby. Because even though I could not remember that time clearly, it was still fun to see me, myself, at a younger age. It was also fun to be able to see how others, like my cousins and brother, interacted with me as a baby. It’s almost like you are making memories of something that you don’t actually have a memory of for your child. And I really like that.

Goodbye, newborn diapers

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Today, my baby turns 3 months old. She is no longer a newborn, which is a bittersweet thing to think about. While it was obviously tiring having a newborn to care for around the clock, it made me a little sad to realize that she was outgrowing her newborn diapers. She was teeny tiny and swimming in the going-home outfit I put her in while at the hospital in mid-December. And now, she just about fills it out. She has already outgrown the two Christmas newborn outfits I got her, the only two newborn onesies she had. Chris unpacked her Size 1 diapers last week and added them to her diaper caddy, and I immediately felt both sad and happy. It’s true what they say: the days are long but the weeks are so short. While I am looking forward to that day soon when she will be eating solids and will rely less on me for pumped breast milk or nursing for comfort, it also makes me a little sad to think she will be less reliant on me for nourishment, as insane as that sounds given how exhausting and mentally challenging that has been for me. Pumping has overtaken my life, but it has given me joy to know that my body is capable of nourishing my baby as much as it is. My baby is getting to be a bigger baby as the days go by, and it’s so gratifying to see.

Milk manager

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Since the beginning, Chris has taken the lead in managing the baby’s feeding, from her schedule to what she eats (breast milk vs. formula) to the amounts she has per bottle. He also has been maintaining a very extensive Google Sheet that documents all details of her inputs (feeds), as well as her outputs (poops and pees). Though endless apps exist to track all of these details, Chris insists that he enjoys updating this and that he wants to own the data. Each evening at around 8:30, when we are preparing the baby’s bottles for her 10pm, 3am, and 8am feeds for our night nurse, I am usually pumping or arising from taking a nap to pump, and he is at the kitchen counter, taking a look at all my pumped milk bottles, emptying them into Avent bottles for the baby’s feeds, and figuring out much more I need to pump before we can reach the ideal amounts for her to eat during each of these feeds with the night nurse (or ourselves when she’s not here). I thought about this while getting ready to pump this evening and started laughing to myself, and I told him that he’s basically the Milk Manager.

“Yeah, well, someone’s got to make sure that this shit gets done,” he responded proudly. “There needs to be data integrity and accuracy!”

He doesn’t seem to trust the night nurses when it comes to their reporting on how much the baby has eaten at a feed. This has happened a few times when we have asked how much the baby has eaten, and they have claimed she ate a certain amount, but the difference remaining in the bottles we see is far greater than what it should be if what they said was true. He also, annoyingly enough, doesn’t trust my judgment and nitpicks at me for 5ml here and there.

It’s okay. I’m happy for him to take the lead as Milk Manager. That’s just one less thing I have to think about.

Quiet moments

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Since Chris has gone back on family leave, the only bottle feeds that I do for the baby now are at 10 PM three days a week, on the nights when our night nurse is not with us. While doing her bottle feeds when Chris was on leave was stressful and exhausting on top of managing my pumping schedule, doing her bottle feeds on these evenings is actually a bit enjoyable now, if I do want to admit it out loud. These are the times when it’s just the two of us in the living room, and I am feeding her, observing her, listening to her little sounds, and enjoying quiet time together. My favorite time while feeding her on these evenings is while I am burping her and figuring out whether she is still hungry or not. I have her positioned so that her head is just over my shoulder, and I am holding her body up while patting and massaging her back. Often times, when she is full, she will start to fall asleep and get into a koala position while on me. And while I hear the sound of her little breath and feel her chest go up and down, I remember how lucky I am to have her, happy and healthy. I stroke her hair and rub her back, and I lean back to relax with my baby in my arms. And I think to myself, even though today was a shitty day in terms of the amount of pain I had in my left elbow and my right wrist, and even though I am still sleep deprived and really dying for a full night’s sleep, while also trying to reconfigure my pumping schedule down to six pumps a day so that I hopefully don’t compromise my milk supply, but also try to regain back some of my life and perhaps some sleep, I am so grateful. This tiny human is slowly becoming a little bit less tiny every single day. She is cooing and babbling, taking in the world around her and observing more and more. Her wake windows are longer, and she wants more interaction and stimulation from us. I can see that she looks for me in rooms now, and she can see farther and farther away. Sometimes, she turns when she hears my voice. And in the mornings when I am pumping and entertaining her at the same time, while she is babbling, she will stop and carefully study my face when I sing to her. These are the moments that make me unbelievably happy.