Instant Pot is back in action here!

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A few months ago, I discovered I made the biggest screw-up in my kitchen: I accidentally melted the side of my Instant Pot pressure cooking lid, which basically rendered the entire device useless outside of steaming, sautéing, and reheating. I was so angry at myself: I had made endless delicious meals in that Instant Pot over the last nearly four years, and to see I had completely ruined it steamed me to no end. Luckily for us, we had gotten it for free with Amazon credits, so it wasn’t the biggest waste, not to mention I had used it so much that I definitely got my money’s worth out of it.. even when it was free! So Chris suggested we upgrade to the Instant Pot/Air Fryer combination when Prime Day rolled around. Well, that happened this week, and so I decided to get the Instant Pot Duo Crisp.

The new Instant Pot Duo Crisp, which actually isn’t new, just new to me, has a lot of enhanced functions: of course, there is a second lid just for air frying, broiling, dehydrating, baking. The steamer rack has been improved in its design and sits up better; it just feels sturdier. And perhaps the greatest new feature is that the venting/sealing knob has been streamlined: now, the knob automatically sets itself to sealing (previously, you had to manually set it, and well, people forget…), and it allows you to push a button to vent. You also have the option to turn it to stop the venting completely. This prevents overcooking and allows you to control when you can safely open the lid. I didn’t completely appreciate this until I saw it in action, but it’s a really great step up. It simplifies the use of the Instant Pot even more and makes it more dummy proof.

The instructions are also a lot clearer if you choose to read them. They have charts describing what exactly is happening in the pot and when, depending on what setting you use. They even have cute little sayings in the manual like, “Turn on the Instant Pot. Go ahead: don’t be afraid! You can do it!” They do this because they know a lot of people are so excited to buy the Instant Pot, but when they finally take it out of the box, they are so scared of blowing up their kitchens that they let it sit there for weeks on end with no use. In the back of users’ minds, they are thinking of the pressure cooker that blew up someone’s kitchen counter or sent an innocent user to the emergency room.

Anyway, I’m so happy to have a working Instant Pot again. I’ve already done the water test, made dal, and steamed sweet potatoes in it just in the last two days. I feel like my kitchen is whole again.

Early exposure to allergens

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Contrary to popular belief, when babies begin solids, it’s better to expose and “test” to see how they react to common allergens earlier rather than later. On average, babies will show readiness for solids at around 6 months of age, so it’s a good idea to start gradually introducing common allergens like peanuts, tree nuts, and eggs at around this time. Kaia had already enjoyed peanut butter a number of times in June and enjoyed it. She fed herself the peanut butter right off the spoon and always seemed to want more. I breathed a huge sigh of relief at that. Today, I prepared a tiny omelet for her to eat both at her morning solids feed and afternoon solids feed. I cut the omelet into strips that had a width equivalent to two of my fingers held together (that was the Solid Starts preparation recommendation). When I placed the egg on her tray this morning, she immediately picked up a strip, put it to her mouth, and started biting on it. The nanny cut up a bunch of the egg and had it in tiny pieces for her to eat, and both ways, she seemed to enjoy it. At her afternoon feed, she fed herself egg strips. I also prepared a mix of toor and moong dal for her, which she happily gobbled up.

My tiny foodie is growing and growing. I’m so proud to see her embrace all this new food and hopefully continue to enjoy a diversified palate. She also ate a good amount of spinach today and more broccoli, so the nanny warned me that her poop may be extra, extra smelly soon.

Coming home with the baby brings anxiety

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I’m planning to come back to San Francisco at the end of August since I have a work offsite planned, and Chris and the baby are coming with me. It will be an opportunity for me to not only go for work and meet my colleagues in person for the very first time, but it will also be the first time my family will be meeting the baby. For our sanity’s sake, we’re only spending the weekends at my parents’, while spending time at the hotel that will be expensed during the weekdays since I’m in town for work. My mom called today, so I told her we were planning to go home since I have a work offsite planned. When she asked me how long, and I told her it would be just over a week, of course, she got upset.

“Yvonne, why is it so short?” she said, in her usual annoyed tone. “Why can’t you just work here and stay here longer, and I’ll take care of the baby? You should stay at least a month. Why don’t you think about me?”

It’s always about her.

My mom is delusional. She always forgets how miserable we are together when we are in the same place for longer than 3-4 days and all the fights. She has short term memory. She always imagines everything to be flowery when it is not. Also, has she completely forgotten that she herself said she isn’t even strong enough to hold the baby while standing up? She can’t even hold a coffee mug without spilling it all over the carpet at home. I reminded her this, and she responded, “Well, I can try.”

“No,” I responded sternly. “You can’t ‘try’ to hold and take care of the baby. You either do it or you don’t, and you won’t. Taking care of a baby is work, and you can’t do it.”

She wasn’t happy I said this, but I wasn’t saying any of this to make her happy. I don’t trust her being with the baby alone given all her outdated recommendations (e.g. “why doesn’t the baby sleep with a blanket?”), not to mention her lack of strength with her arms and back. I just need to try my best to be emotionally detached, being calm, managing the conversation at hand and not engaging. I’m already getting anxiety about being home, and this trip feels like it’s going to be more work than actual pleasure already.

When handing down baby items brings sadness

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A friend of mine is having a baby in a few weeks, and we offered to give our handed down bassinet to him and his wife since it’s still in great condition. Since Kaia has already transitioned into her crib as of mid-June, I told him that the bassinet would be ready to pick up anytime now. I had already washed the mattress pad cover and cleaned the bassinet after Chris took it apart. But because we’re used to the music attachment on the bassinet, we’ve still been using it at bedtime to put Kaia to sleep. Granted, it’s a bit redundant given we already have the Hatch sound machine playing soothing water sounds, but we partially just turn it on out of habit.

As I cleaned all the bassinet parts, I felt so sad to think that last night would be the last night we’d play the bassinet music for Kaia. We had many, many nights of playing this same music to soothe her to sleep, so there’s some nostalgia attached to this music maker and bassinet. This bassinet was the first place she slept in, the only bed she slept in outside of the hospital and one hotel for the first six months of her life. I obviously would be crazy to keep the music just to remember those bittersweet early days, and I know I have to give this away to hand off to my friend, but it still makes me sad and wistful. My baby is getting so big so quickly. She’s no longer a newborn. She’s a growing baby, and soon before I know it, she’ll be a toddler and then a little girl running around everywhere. The newborn phase was really hard, no doubt, but I can’t believe it’s already over.

So as ridiculous as it sounds, I was a little happy when my friend said he couldn’t come to pick up the bassinet today and would come on Friday instead. Well, I guess that’s at least three more nights of Kaia.. or well, myself, enjoying and reminiscing with this music.

Welcome to the US, where people don’t give a shit about moms and born babies

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This week, I’m attending a virtual course every morning on Crucial Conversations. There’s about 28 participants in the course, and while a lot of it is large group lecture and discussion based, we also do a good amount of small group breakouts, in groups of 2-3. When one of the first breakout sessions happened, another woman who was based in Colorado apologized to me in advance in case I heard some crying or cooing because she had her 8-week old baby sleeping in her arms, below the view of the camera. I laughed in response, as I told her I could totally relate: In fact, full disclosure, I said to her, but I was actually pumping milk and had my camera angled above my chest so that it wasn’t in view. Good thing my pump was so quiet that on Zoom calls, no one would notice! I half joked.

I noticed her baby was on oxygen and said she looked really cute and tiny, but it’s all relative since my own baby is seven months old now. She told me that while her baby is on paper 8 weeks old, she is quite small for her age because she was born about a month premature and was in the NICU. She had only two weeks of maternity leave, and though her company has an “unlimited PTO” policy, the company did not allow her to tack on any PTO to her maternity leave, which was already dismal. She was frustrated about this, since it was a big reason she took this job in the first place. So she wanted to use the skills she hoped she would learn in this course to confront her management about this.

It really hurt my heart to hear this. And while my heart hurt for her, I also just got really angry and could feel my pulse racing because of how infuriating and senseless all of this was in one of the richest nations on earth. It’s a case in point about how here in the U.S., people and employers truly do not give a shit about moms and their born babies. It’s everyone for themselves, and business is business, which means we’re all about profit and don’t care about the well being of our employers. I had 20 weeks off, and I didn’t feel like it was enough. I cannot imagine only having a tenth of that like this woman did, plus having the stress of having my baby in the NICU and needing to leave the hospital with oxygen support at home. The entire situation sounds completely terrifying, but insanely enough, that’s what’s “normal” for so many moms across this wretched country.

How did we become such an awful, cold, heartless place to live?

When you become a pumping mama resource

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A couple days ago when Chris’s parents were still here, I was hand expressing milk to “prime” my breasts for the pump in the second bedroom. I came out with the collection bottle in my hand, and Chris looked at the bottle, a little incredulous.

“You got that amount out just using your hands?” he asked. “Once upon a time, that’s how much milk you got during an entire pump session.”

Trying to conceive was a journey. Pregnancy was a journey. And breastfeeding/pumping has been its own journey full of many ups and downs. I’ve definitely come a long way not just with my output to feed my baby, but also with my knowledge of breastfeeding and pumping in general. Now, I actually frequently answer questions about pumping from colleagues as well as a neighbor friend who recently gave birth. She is about eight weeks postpartum and had a hard time feeding her baby directly from the breast. If I didn’t know it any better, I’d say we were the exact same person with the same problems. She, however, had me as a resource since the beginning, so I’d been sharing pumping resources and tips with her since before she even gave birth. She took me up on a lot of my suggestions and read through my resources, and this morning, she texted me a photo of her first morning pump, the largest one she’d ever had to date, which was approximately seven ounces (210ml). I don’t think I got to that level of output in a single pumping session until after the 12-week mark, but then again, I also didn’t have all the resources then that I shared with her now.

I’m happy to help other mothers who are struggling to breastfeed in any way I can. I only wish I had all this knowledge and help back then. But it’s one way I can “give back” to help others who are going through their own downward spirals and just trying to help their babies eat, grow, and be healthy. I know if I did this again, even though it would be challenging, I’d have a lot more experience and resources at my fingertips so that I wouldn’t be as upset as I was in the beginning of this journey. But that’s what all moms need: more support, more resources, and more help.

The magic of Jamaican blue soap

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“Have you ever used Jamaican blue soap?” my nanny asked me a few weeks ago while folding Kaia’s laundry.

She wasn’t surprised that my answer was no. “When I first saw Kaia’s burp cloths, I knew you didn’t have the blue soap,” she said, smirking. “The Jamaican blue soap is the secret to how I keep all my whites VERY WHITE!”

She’s not kidding. As soon as summer officially began with Memorial Day here, she’s worn an endless stream of white outfits to our home, and I can say without hesitation that her whites.. are blindingly WHITE. They legitimately all look brand new, as though she just purchased them the previous day. I don’t think anything I own is as white as any of her clothes. And well, I never really took the time to properly clean them outside of throwing them into the washing machine. She takes great pride in keeping her whites extremely white; she sets aside time every laundry day to separate out all her whites and hand scrub them with Jamaican blue soap before adding them to the washing machine.

We got some pretty annoying mango and apricot stains on the high chair straps (thanks, baby led weaning…), and our nanny worked her magic on them with the Jamaican blue soap and an old clean toothbrush. After seeing this, I decided to try this technique out using the blue soap on the mesh bassinet sides that Kaia used to lick constantly. These were heavily stained brownish grey. Well, this freaking soap worked: the brownish grey marks were completely gone.

This Jamaican blue soap really is magic. I suddenly got really excited, wondering what else I could use this magic soap on…

What goes in… must come out

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It’s been about 16 days of introducing Kaia to solid foods now. It’s been both exciting and scary to introduce her to regular food. I obviously want her to have a very varied and diverse palate, but at the same time, I am cognizant in the back of my mind of how prevalent food allergies are today, not to mention the potential choking risks, and so I’ve tried my best to be calm and not overly aggressive in the baby-led weaning process. So far, it seems like her favorites include peanut butter, oats, and broccoli. She’s really enjoyed the pineapple this week, as well.

Well, what goes in… must come out. As I’ve read, it’s never quite clear how much she’s really eaten. It’s easier to track with purees than with the baby led weaning process of whole foods. But… If there were any doubts as to what she was actually consuming versus just playing with and sucking, they all dissipated when I changed her poop diaper last night. As soon as I opened the diaper, not only did I notice that her bowel movement is a lot more solid and less loose, but also… the smell. Oh my goodness, the smell! It smelled like an actual adult poop! She’s genuinely getting her solids in! On top of that, she had many, many farts in the lead up to her diaper change, and I can say, without a doubt… there was NO surprise she ate asparagus earlier in the day. There were a lot of stinky farts that had a tinge of asparagus odor to them!

“Once they start solids, the diaper changes will be changed forever!” my friend warned me. “You thought breast milk or formula poop smelled? That was nothing compared to solids poop! It’s basically like OUR poop now!”

The journey to eating solids, continued

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“Experts” say that when you begin introducing solid food to babies, you should do a little at a time and introduce new foods for three days to ensure there are no food allergies or reactions. Breast milk or formula should be served first, then about 30 minutes after the main feed, solids should be introduced. This happens at about six months of age. One “solids” meal of a tablespoon or so gradually becomes two solid meals, then three. Then, at around nine months, you gradually transition from having breast milk or formula first to then having the solid food be the first meal, then breast milk/formula as a follow up. The journey continues until the point that the soon to be toddler is having mostly solids with breast milk or cow milk as a supplement or beverage.

The last two days, Kaia has not appreciated having her smock put on her, nor having her set up in her high chair. She has fussed and cried a lot, but eventually calms down a little when the foods are presented. In the last couple of days, she’s had aspargus and broccoli, whole and pureed, oatmeal, pineapple, and peanut butter. The constant seems to be that she really enjoys the peanut butter. Today, she sucked on a pineapple chunk and seemed to like it. I also filled her teetherpop with water and froze it so she could chew on it today, and she was successfully able to suck the water out of it. I may blend in pineapple to have her eat it that way tomorrow.

The eating journey for a baby is an adventure, but it’s clear that the real solids, like the broccoli florets or cauliflower chunks, scare my nanny. She’s used to only serving purees and has a hawk’s eye on Kaia when she’s gnawing on the florets, hoping she doesn’t choke. I told her not to be nervous; she can’t eat purees forever. Kaia needs to get used to different textures and what they feel like in her hands and mouth. My ultimate hope is that she’s not a picky eater and eats whatever I serve her.

The next things on my list to introduce her to are: tahini (sesame seeds), flaxseed and chia seeds in her oatmeal; spinach, lentils, black and white beans.

“When will I see you again?”

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Chris’s parents left for the airport at midday today, so I asked the nanny to stay with the baby until they left so that they could say goodbyes and get some cuddles in before their flight. I know they’re both sad to be leaving, knowing that Kaia will be growing and developing by leaps and bounds between now and the next time they see her, which will hopefully be at the end of this year. And honestly, it made me sad, too, as the days wound down and we approached today, to know that they were leaving. I really enjoyed having them here and seeing them enjoy cuddles and quality time with their granddaughter.

After the Uber left, the nanny took Kaia to Riverside Park, and I went back upstairs to get my pump set up, and my eyes just welled up. I thought about how happy Kaia was to be with her grandma and grandpa, and how quickly time flies and how all that time will be spent apart. I thought about how outside of Chris and me, Kaia really has no family nearby to love and care for her unconditionally, and that suddenly made me feel so lonely for her. I don’t want my daughter to be alone or feel alone. I want her to be surrounded by people who adore her. And those people who love and adore her and have spent so much happy and loving time with her in the last few weeks are now leaving. How much will she really know them or care for them with the distance between them? How much will she understand them, or they understand her? How much of a relationship will they really share? I’m not sure. I can already imagine her a little older, able to speak, asking them, “When will I see you again?” And I can already imagine myself tearing up at the question.

I’ve never really cried or gotten upset when Chris’s parents have left before. Of course, in past visits, I’ve been a little sad once they’ve left since they bring so much happy, positive energy to our home every time they are here. I mean, seriously… these are people who get excited over a simple, all-natural bar of soap that suds well to the point that they rave about it and then go back to Whole Foods two hours before departing for the airport just to get more! They genuinely appreciate the simple things in life that the rest of us take for granted. But this time, it’s different with Kaia here. I just had that sad, sinking feeling in my stomach when I stood at the kitchen counter, alone with my pump, after they were all gone. It’s different because Kaia’s presence is also a reminder to them and to me that they’re getting older; we’re all getting older. At some point, they may not be able bodied enough to visit us on this long-haul flight. They don’t even have access to health coverage while here, and in an emergency if they needed it, it would cost a fortune (which is supposedly covered by their credit card, but who the hell knows how much would really be covered?!).

On the other hand, I guess I also mourn my own relationship with my own parents, and Kaia’s soon-to-be relationship or lack thereof with them. As my therapist frequently told me before I ended sessions with her before Kaia’s arrival, it’s okay to be sad for what you wish you had but don’t have. As we all know, we cannot control our parents or our relationships with them. They are what they are to a large extent, especially when we’re talking about people who are just flat out unstable. It’s okay to wish you had a relationship with your parents that never existed. It’s okay to feel envious of Chris’s parents, but also be aware that you still get to enjoy them as in-laws.

It is what it is. We cannot control everything. But it also makes me wonder sometimes… what am I really living for? Sometimes, I’m not even sure what my end goal is.