Here's the thing: all the worn baby books sitting in a stack on my bedside table left out just a few details. I'm sure it's because all babies are different, that it varies, that the writers/experts can't pin things down so particularly, that they're general guides and not a manual for one particular kid.
Well, I'd like a manual for our kid. It would be nice if we'd been sent home from the hospital with 300 or so hardbound pages, including a handy index listing things like normal spit up versus call-the-doc puke, or guides to skin marks that may or may not be a dangerous/contagious rash, or a special pull-out section on adolescent angst. Perhaps it could've come with a brief companion book about my postpartum bod, with handy tips about discreetly nursing in public and warnings about the length of time this soft belly pouch will hang around. (And it wouldn't say forever. I am determined to get a six pack, like the super-buff chicks on the delightfully cheesy, possibly brain-rotting new American Gladiators show, even though I never had one before getting knocked up. A girl can dream.).
Just a few of the things that the baby books left me to figure out:
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My baby still has baby acne - or maybe it's dry skin. I'm not sure. I spend a lot of time contemplating his cheeks while he's nursing. When does baby acne go away? Is there such a thing as toddler acne? Could it be that Axel will stay slightly zitty all through adolescence, when suddenly his skin will clear just as everyone else's is breaking out? Yeah, I didn't think so.
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Axel rolled twice one day then, a week later, three times. And now, almost a week after that, he hasn't rolled again. I just assumed that, once a kid reached some developmental milestone, he'd keep on performing his new trick. But, no, not Axel. He seems to have a been-there-done-that philosophy. Why roll when you've already proven that you can? Why not, instead, pour all your energy into staring at your feet or standing up while your parents hold you under the armpits? He's waaaay too mature for rolling. Maybe this is something all babies do - get their parents all excited by reaching some milestone, and then refusing to perform their trick again.
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Spit up versus puke - Axel only gurbled out bile-scented milk every once in awhile, until a few weeks ago, when it seemed like the number of spit up incidences quadrupled. I'm pretty sure it's still regular spit-up, annoying but not worry-worthy. But maybe I'm wrong. Even though he's acting giggly and happy, I'm not sure babies are to be trusted.
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Nails: I knew I'd have to file his fingernails and he could scratch his little face or, as he did on one recent evening, his nose, giving himself a nice blood-crusted nostril. I hadn't thought about his toenails, and his big toenails are now doing this curling in thing that does not look particularly comfortable. He doesn't seem to mind, and the doctor told us to kind of push down the skin after baths and release his nail, so we can then file it. Holding Axel's foot still while we gently push down the skin and then filing at his nail, all in the post-bath madness of drying and applying lotion and re-diapering? Yeah, not quite the piece of cake the doctor made it sound like.
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How can one child pee so often? How does he seem to know to pee immediately after he's wrapped in a clean diaper?
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How in the world does he get poo from in his diaper down to his foot or all the way up his back when he can't yet operate a zipper? Who knew babies pooped so loudly and with such force? One night, while I was changing Axel, he let out an explosion all over the changing pad, himself, and my arm, waking up his father, who attributed the loud pop and my shriek of surprise to the explosion of a lightbulb, not his son's butt.
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When do mothers get that sixth sense about fevers? When Axel's fussy, I feel the kid's forehead, and it always seems to be hot. I've done the underarm thermometer - and, on one day Axel would prefer were erased from his memory, gingerly stuck the thermometer up his poor little butt - and he never (thankfully) has a fever. Do some mamas come without the fever-sensor in their palms?
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When will his hair fall out? Is there some kind of a deadline after which the full head of hair he popped out with will be here to stay (at least until he decides to shave his head at 14 or it starts thinning in his thirties)?
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Was I this cold before getting pregnant? The super-human heater my body became while pregnant may have seared and warped my memory. I remember being slightly colder than everyone else, but not to the point where I wore wool ski socks and three shirts under my cords and sweater, while my husband wears just a t-shirt and jeans. Or, is their some weird postpartum hormone thing that makes mothers' bodies turn to ice?
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Last: public nursing. I'm pro- public baby feeding, whether it be by bottle or breast, just not when the breast happens to be my own. I recently breastfed Axel in a church bathroom, with a changing pad spread over the seat under my butt, staring at the dingy tan walls of the stall and wishing I wasn't such a wimp. I can't quite figure out how to discreetly maneuver the baby and blanket and boob without more potential for nipple-flash than I'm comfortable with. I've always wished that I had no chest, like an elite runner, not the plodding turtle runner that I am, so there are probably other issues under my resistance to breastfeeding outside of my own home. I don't really want to go into deep psychoanalysis just to feed my baby. I just want to be OK with nursing him when he's hungry, even if we're in public, and diminish some of my anxious baby/clock-watching and desire to rush home whenever I'm out with him. How can I do a full feeding without any flashing?
Maybe public nursing is like jumping into the pool after getting out of the hot tub: shocking at first, and something you dread, but then, not so bad. Probably I just need to take a deep breath and Velcro a receiving blanket around my neck, and get Axel to eating, just like I need to stop looking for answers in the generic baby books and watch my boy so we can figure out our own personal manual, together.
