Never ending chaos

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Friday night Kurt decided to clean the oven. Yep, that’s the exciting life of thirty-somethings with a seven-week-old baby. He’s had the instruction manual for using the self-cleaning mode out for about a week. And for a couple months, I’ve intended to clean the oven along with getting some of my cast iron pots degunked in the same million-degree process, but I just never got around to it. The self-cleaning mode takes about four hours and I wanted to pick a time when I wouldn’t be in the house. Well, Kurt turned it on and my cast iron never made it in. Damn it! And with in minutes the whole middle floor of our house was filled with smoke. *grumble* So we open the windows on the middle floor and watched movies while locked upstairs in the master bedroom. Four hours later the oven beeped to let us know it was done. It remained locked for the cool down period, which I think was another hour. Once the cool down period was over the oven beeped again, but remained locked and was displaying an error code. We hit the off button to stop the obnoxious beeping and referred to the manual for the error code. Call the service center. FUCK! And the beeping stated again. Hit the off button. Three minutes later more beeping. Damn it already! Unplug the stove and plug it back in again. Still locked, still has the error code and – beep beep beep. GODDAMNITALLTOHELL!

We kept the stove unplugged for the night and called the service number in the morning. They’re only open on weekdays. Bastards! After a weekend of cooked meals that required us to plug the stove in and hit the off button every three minutes to control the incessant senseless beeping and eating out with an infant (she’s actually really good if the timing is right) I called the service number on Monday. I went through the press one for Spanish phone maze down to press three for repairs I was directed to a live person who then asked me not what the problem was but what is my name, address, zip code, and phone number. Damn data collection crap. Now I’m probably going to get calls about winning a point one percent discount on a plasma tv after answering a “short” survey that winds up eating into an hour and a half of my life. The woman finally asks me what the problem is. I give her the error code that the stove is giving me and so she asks for the model and serial number. I had the manual with me so I told her the model is one of the these two – and rattled them both off to her. To make a long story somewhat shorter, a general, “it’s one of these two” just wasn’t good enough. I found myself on my hands and knees on a kitchen floor that hasn’t been cleaned in an amount of time I don’t want to discuss and reading numbers from inside the drawer under the oven. The only light side I can see about the whole situation is, at least I wasn’t nine months pregnant.

After all that the woman at the service place asks for the error code again. “hhmm, did you try unplugging it?”
“Yep”
“Well I guess we’ll have to send someone out there. The soonest I can do is next Wednesday.”
“NEXT WEEK? How much will it cost?”
“$55″
“And that’s just to have the technician come out?”
“Yes”
“I’m going to have to think about that” CLICK

Since my cast iron pots weren’t trapped inside I didn’t have to think about Jack Shit! Waiting until the day before Thanksgiving for a technician to come out just to look at it is wholly unacceptable. “Just use your microwave” you might say. I don’t own one. Anything that can turn the outside of something into molten lava yet still be completely frozen in the middle is evil. As a side note I also don’t usually eat things that come in packages with “microwavable” on the label. Cause if something needs a package and can’t be identified without a picture and or map – It ain’t food.

Monday afternoon I got home from my “Living with baby” group and Kurt and I went shopping for a new stove. We figured it might be a good selling point for when we put out house on the market. We also bought a new dishwasher to replace the twnty-year-old suds producing hot water consuming semi sanitizing dish-holding unit. I should be getting the stove today. YAY! The dishwasher we have to wait on because we are going to have them install it for us. I’m sure it would be easy enough for us to install ourselves, but when the sales person asked if we wanted it installed Kurt pondered, “hhmm do I want to deal with the hassle of installing it?” “No” I corrected him “Do I want to deal with the hassle of you installing it?” Ask me sometime about the bathroom that we couldn’t use for two years. He finally finished it July of this year and it’s gorgeous, but TWO YEARS under construction!

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Two questions for you

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Can someone please tell me why it’s necessary to wipe a baby girl front to back when she can poop with such force that it comes out front of her diaper thus making the front poopy?

And what is it about white onesies that cause diaper blowouts? This is the second time she’s had a blowout and both times she was wearing a white onesie.

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Papers are in order

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A couple weeks before Sophia was born Kurt and I went to see a lawyer about ensuring paternity rights, drawing up our wills, and creating a trust for our spawn in the event Kurt and I die of spontaneous combustion or we go out on a date without the kid and develop a severe case of road rage and the S.W.A.T. team is required to take us out Bonnie and Clyde style. Anyway, we signed our wills on Wednesday and none of you gets anything so even ask. Although I may allocate a boot to the head to a few special people, one of them being my ex. Sit down this might be a long story.

My ex and I have been legally divorced for NINE YEARS. We parted as friends and didn’t use lawyers for our divorce. We were stupid and thought that because we were parting on good terms we wouldn’t need them at all. Stupid stupid stupid! We agreed on everything as far as who would keep what and who pays which bills. We filled out one of those “do it yourself” divorce packets, filed it with the court, and $130 in filing fees later that was it. The problem is that we had and STILL have a house together. In the divorce decree the house and all the bills associated with it are his, but no where in those do it yourself papers did they have a place for me to write in a deadline for when my name should be removed from the title or the LOANS. We removed each others names from the credit cards we kept and have since sold all the vehicles that were owned by us jointly, but the house, the fucking house is still in my name.

We bought the old 1930′s home as a fixer and intended to uumm fix it up. It wasn’t in bad shape when we bought it. There were a couple highly fixable oddities, but it was livable. Not the case anymore. While we were together, he upgraded all of the single pane windows. He also ripped out all of the cloth wiring, which meant insulating and adding sheetrock as well. It still needs the sheetrock, doors for the kitchen cabinets, siding on half the damn house, but that’s not what makes the place unlivable – oh nnnnooo. It’s the dry rot from not finishing some of the outdoor type projects, the dead 60 year-old tree next to the house that is so infested with termites that they spread to all the trees on the property and the house, and the transients he lets store all their crap all over the place and live there rent free. Now according to our divorce decree the house is his and he has been making all of the payments, so I really don’t care who lives there or what condition the house is in, but my name is still on the title and the loan. That means two things to me. If one of the many people or their kids get hurt in the house of perpetual construction or anywhere in the half acre landfill junkyard it sits on and they sue the owner of the house…that includes me! Also the three late payments to the house affect MY would-be pristine credit.

I’m ex military but he isn’t and we took out a VA loan. I think if he had been military it would have been as simple as dropping my name from the loan through VA. However, the actual loan is not through VA it’s been shuffled off to a mortgage company just like everyone else’s home loans. You may sign the papers at a local bank but they often sell it off to some other company, so the fact that it started out as VA is moot now. I’ve called VA and they tell me to do a “quitclaim deed” – oh hell no! That means I have no interest in the property, but I DO! As long as my name is on the loan and my credit is affected you had better believe I have a very real interest in that property. VA said that I need to go to the mortgage company to find out how to take my name off the loan. I call the mortgage company and they say that HE must refinance and qualify for a new loan, and here is where the big problem lies. How the fuck do you drag an unwilling adult to the mortgage company?! And the really big question how do you get a mortgage company to agree to give a loan to the person who has been making all of the house payments by himself for the last NINE years when he has no actual job? That’s right, legally, on paper, he has no job! He’s paid under the table for construction work.

So sell the house ye may say. Nay says he. We tried that route about two years ago. I brought out my real estate agent (I keep one in my pocket at all times). I gave her full warning about the property before I had her meet with my ex. We set up a day for her to come out and view the place for pictures and a value assessment, and afterwards she privately said to me, “You know what this is right? This is a practice house for the fire department”. I’m not kidding, that’s really what she said. Of course, before she said that she said she legally had to ask me, “Have there ever been any drug ‘cooked’ there?” I really have no idea, but I don’t think so. I was so ashamed to be associated with that property. She knew but I had to tell her anyway, “That is not how I live”. He has made that house THAT bad.

He found a sucker in one of his friends and we and came very close to selling. He wanted to make the purchase without agents and I reluctantly agreed, but he didn’t qualify for the loan. I should have seen that one coming, so that was it. My ex didn’t really want to sell for the price my real estate agent gave. He has put WAY too much money into that shit hole and for some fucked up reason he thinks he can get much more and actually gain a profit from the sale. Across the street from the house is a fourplex that sits on the exact same size lot. I was hoping that she could give a number that he would like by focusing on contractors wanting to build apartments, but the property just isn’t worth it when you factor in demolition of the house and such.

This whole ordeal is what finally ended my friendship with my ex. Actually, it ended when he called me a “stupid bitch”. So enter the lawyer stage left. When Kurt and I first talked to our lawyer about getting my name off this house, he made it seem like something definitely could be done and that it might not take much at all. After I sent him my divorce decree and we talked on Wednesday – he doesn’t seem so eager for the job. He said I would have to submit a revision to the divorce decree, but the way he said it sounded like that sort of thing isn’t approved often, or it would somehow be very difficult. I didn’t ask for details as to what had to happen to make that happen. He said he would look over the decree again to see if there might be another option.

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Life sucking colic

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Kurt went to his first appointment with our doctor. All three of us now see the same one. It’s nice having a family doctor that knows and sees all of us, because we can give him updates on Sophia without having to make a separate appointment for her. Unless of course we describe something that he needs to look into further. Kurt told him about Sophia’s screaming sessions that seemed to have started at two weeks of age. fussy babyShe cries to the point of shear exhaustion (of us and herself) every night from about seven to eleven and sometimes one in the morning. She’ll turn beet red and cry with all her strength, complete with tears running down her face, and appears to be in excruciating pain. Before the doctor’s diagnosis I felt like the most stupidly inept first time mom because I couldn’t calm my own baby and so I cried right along with her. Kurt is able to calm her down better than I and that made me feel even more inept.

In the beginning, figured it must be something I was eating as we noticed that she would stop screaming after a good fart and then start up again minutes later. I couldn’t think of where to begin cutting things out of my diet, and in the “Feeding your Baby” class I took at the hospital the nurse made sure to state that breastfeeding moms don’t need to avoid any foods at all except on very rare occasions (caffeine and alcohol being the exceptions which need to be limited according to your doctor’s instructions). It would be just my luck that Sophia would be one of the rare ones. Because this was happening everyday, it seemed logical to me that it would be something I ate EVERYDAY and nothing came to mind. Plus it didn’t appear to be gas every time she cried with such force, so we though maybe the fartty gas was just coincidental.

Then there were the confusing growth spurt times. I had finished feeding her within the last half hour, so would try everything but that to soothe her only to feel like a complete ass for denying my baby food for thirty minutes or more while I fumbled around swaying, shushing, holding her like a football, and wrapping her in the plushest soon-to-be soaked in spit-up blankets. I know about following the threes and sixes for growth spurts (three days, six days, three weeks, etc.), but I think her highness has her own chart graphed out for how things work in the kingdom of Sophia.

We also thought that maybe I wasn’t producing enough milk since she would sometimes become very fussy when I knew she was hungry. She would latch and suckle for a bit and then unlatch and fuss, sometimes screaming. I started pumping milk and then I had so much milk that in the mornings, I was in pain and the first am feeding started to result in milk coming out of her nose. I just recently learned that had to do with oversupply and a forceful “let down”. I also learned that the laying side-by-side nursing position is probably one of the worst to use when that occurs since the milk ejection reflex will practically force it down her throat and apparently out the nose.

Two things seem to consistently calm her, car rides (those will actually put her to sleep for as long as the car is moving), and holding her while bouncing on a yoga ball. I can only bounce for so long though. Just like car rides, the minute I stop, she starts up again. Despite the classes we took that told us, “You can’t spoil a newborn” Kurt was beginning to doubt it. I don’t think it’s possible to spoil a newborn; there is a big difference between an infant is trying to tell us something and one that just wants attention. Sophia does start crying if I stop bouncing on the yoga ball, but she doesn’t stop fussing just because she has been picked up (except when she’s been fussing for a basic need like food)! Besides isn’t attention/affection a basic need as well? Anywho The motion must be doing something for her, so at least for now when she cries I’m going to do whatever I can to soothe her. Swaddling also seems to help a lot, but again, Kurt is the super star swaddling hero. So if I’m having a rough night – it’s just going to be a long night.

Now her fits of screaming red-faced rage also happen during the day. Oh lucky me. I have of course heard of colic and I have a vague idea of what that means, but I also know that sometimes babies just cry. I didn’t know about the rule of three’s for this condition:

  • baby cries up to three hours a day
  • baby has long crying episodes three or more days a week
  • baby is between three weeks and three months old

So we weren’t entirely sure if this was just normal crying baby behavior or something else until the doctor said that it sounds like colic. It’s funny how you’re temporarily relived to hear the doctor give a diagnosis right away. At least it’s not our fault we can’t cure the crying. Then all hope is lost after a brief internet search seeking the easy fix remedy. I did find that the reason Kurt is better at calming her – he’s a frickin’ furnace and warmth on the belly is one thing our books, Pregnancy Childbirth and the Newborn: The Complete Guide suggested. Although last night I bought a hot water bottle and that did nothing for her at all. I’ve read some sites that say colicky babies only appear to be in pain but really they’re just fussy – For our case I’m going to call Bullshit! Last night between shrieks of what they say isn’t pain we clearly heard loud gurgling sounds from her belly followed by a very wet, squishy “productive” fart. Of the sites that say foods might be the cause each have their own list of things to avoid. One site listed cabbage, spicy foods, and beans. Those three particular things are the bulk and staple of EVERYTHING I eat! In my search for “the cure” I’ve found that everyone has their option about what food may cause or increase colicky reactions, and if I follow them all I’d wind up eating nothing but white rice. The only list of foods to avoid that I found credible is from the Medela site. Yep, the breast pump manufacturer.

Research has identified some possible causes for colic. One common cause is lactose overload from switching breasts before baby gets to the high fat milk. If baby is often fussy, try offering one breast at each feeding. Sometimes colic can be caused by an sensitivity to a food in mom’s diet. Rarely, babies can be allergic to a food that mother has eaten, and which may appear in minute quantities in her milk. If baby is crying due to food sensitivity, fussing will begin within a few hours of eating the offending food and may last up to 24 hours. If you can avoid the food that causes the crying, baby’s symptoms should cease within 3-7 days. The most common allergy-causing foods are cow’s milk, eggs, wheat, and peanuts. If you decide to wean to formula, it would be wise to pump frequently for 3-4 weeks so you have the option of resuming breastfeeding if baby’s colic worsens. It can take this long for a formula allergy to become apparent.

They got their food list from this study, “Effect of a Low-Allergen Maternal Diet on Colic Among Breastfed Infants: A Randomized, Controlled Trial“. Published in Pediatrics. Published online November 1, 2005 PEDIATRICS Vol. 116 No. 5 November 2005, pp. e709-e715. The same online journal published another study in 1991 dealing specifically with a protein from cow’s milk causing colic in breastfeeding babies. I only have access to the excerpt of that one, “Human Breast Milk Contains Bovine lgG. Relationship to Infant Colic?” PEDIATRICS Vol. 87 No. 4 April 1991, pp. 439-444. The only surefire proven remedy for colic that all sites agree on is time. SHIT! I hate waiting.

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Apple Crumb Cobbler Schedule

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This was Kurt’s first week back to work. Monday went pretty well for me. I got a reasonable about of sleep Sunday night so I was able to give her a bath and managed to get a shower for myself before heading off to our second “living with baby” group date. The group is, well, it gets me out of the house. The facilitator/teacher/whatever of the group is annoyingly sappy. There are lots of hands outs for the group and she doles out a lot of information, which is great, but the nursery rhymes…I just don’t do the gooey baby talk stuff with silly songs. Sophia is just going to have to settle for her dad singing show tunes to her. No, he’s not gay and now (after eight and a half years) I have living proof (yes, Sophia is really his kid)!

On Sunday, I went grocery shopping all by myself. That was the first time I spent anytime away from Sophia. It was great. I love you Sophia but I needed a break from your screaming and by the way, you’re destroying my boobs. Not that I mind going from a large “A” / small “B” cup to a definite “D” but the red stretch marks emitting from the areolae caused by that growth make my boobs look like large eyeball props for a Visine commercial. And my nipples hurt from your milk extraction process. The length of time it takes for you to extract milk is annoyingly long as well, but I digress.

I spent an hour and a half buying groceries for the week and on Monday, I tried out a new recipe for stew. I’m throwing that recipe out. It sucked, but we had some leftover apple crumb cobbler from Sunday night. This isn’t just any old cobbler. This stuff is so sweet I imagine a child’s reaction to it would be similar to that of a cat that has had pot smoke blown into it’s face. I’ve never done that myself, I’ve just heard stories. No, I’m not going to be a puss and say I’ve never inhaled (Sophia don’t do drugs). I just never shared it with a cat. I digress again.

Monday night after dinner Kurt and I are sitting on the couch with our crumb cobbler and tiny baby Sophia is in between us propped up with her Boppy pillow. Kurt thought her so cute at that moment that he was compelled to share a taste of cobbler with our spawn. He swiped a bit of the filling from his plate onto his finger and rubber her gums with it. I freaked, “Don’t do that!” He got mad at me thinking I was merely opposed to the copious amounts of evil synthetic high fructose corn syrup that must be in this stuff, “Oh give me a break!” I’ve been trying to fight the uphill battle of eliminating the high fructose corn syrup from things in our kitchen that shouldn’t contain it at all like ketchup and bread (read the ingredient list, it’s used as a preservative) and the stuff that is sweet enough without it like jams/jellys and pancake syrup (there is nothing natural about Mrs. Butterworth’s). I was successful in those ventures only, not so much with peanut butter, which I have promised him I have given up on. You make keep your beloved Jif extra crunchy peanut butter. *eye roll*

That night our baby Tasmanian devil AKA The Nipple Shredder kept me up till one in the morning and woke up three or four times during the night as opposed to her usual one to two times, and during one of the wakeup calls there was one instance of projectile vomit. It’s hard to say if that was actually vomit or if she just spit up A LOT and the force due to a simultaneous cough, but either way I blame the sugar! She also stayed up all morning and didn’t really crash until Kurt came home that evening. She wasn’t awake that whole time, but she didn’t sleep for more than an hour at any point during the day.

Kurt had given Sophia pure cane sugar on her tongue once before to cure hiccups, which actually did work. I didn’t mind that because it’s just one ingredient, and it didn’t have the effect that the cobbler seemed to induce. What really bothered be (prior to the projectile vomit) was that the cobbler consists of multiple ingredients and we have no idea what may upset her system (high fructose corn syrup). As I put it to Kurt coldly when he arrived home from work and asked me how my day went, “There is a reason babies first foods are strained peas!” Maybe I was too harsh on him but I feel somewhat justified since I’m the one that has the all day milk shift. I also didn’t really want to introduce her to sweets until much later, like age three or four. I want her to learn to eat healthy first, then she can start with the candy. This might be another uphill battle with Kurt. *sigh*

Wednesday Sophia was still way off her typical schedule, which annoyed me because I wanted to leave the house and run some errands during the day but couldn’t. When Kurt came home he asked how my day went. I simply said, “Your turn!” “That bad?” “YOUR TURN!”

Thursday Sophia was back to her regular schedule, but that was the day she decided to introduce me to the world of diaper blowouts. Three cheers for motherhood.

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Baby’s first major blowout

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My day started out well. I was allowed to eat breakfast and take a shower this morning. After my shower, Sophia started to wake up and I was contemplating weather to change her or feed her first. As I took her out of the swing/mom’s best babysitter friend, my day took a detour to not so good. I noticed that her white pants were all yellow. She peed on the swing, so now I have to figure out how to take the cover off to wash it. The inside of Sophia’s pants were all poopy so instead of heading out to run errands it was bath time for baby because there was no way I could take her out of her clothes and not get poop on her face – damn onesies!

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Fuzzy sleep deprived logic

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I’ve decided that if I stay up really late I won’t have to wake up as many times in the “middle of the night” to feed the baby. Today is Kurt’s first day back to work, so last night we went to bed at ten instead of popping a movie in to watch. I was staying up anywhere from eleven to one am, so I only had to feed Sophia once in the “middle of the night”. – three am. Now, if I keep with Kurt’s bed time schedule it’ll be two to three times a night.

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Un-fucking believable Bumbo

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Has this ever happened before? Has there ever in the history of recalls been a recall on a product that functions perfectly when used according to the manufacturers instructions? What dim-witted dip-shit thinks that gravity ceases to exist when they put their darling in a Bumbo seat? For those that keep an eye on their child while sitting on a raised surface – kudos. But to those whose famous last words were, “I just turned my head for a second”. I offer thee a swift kick in the pants.

They’re recalling the Bumbo because it’s dangerous when misused, no shit. Tons of things are dangerous when misused. Cat’s don’t come out well when you dry them in the dryer – even if you set it to “fluff”. And haircuts just aren’t the same with a lawn mower – if you don’t believe me go ahead and try it.

Serious Head Injuries Prompt Recall of Bumbo Baby Sitter Seats – New Warnings and Instructions to Be Provided To Consumers

Please go and get your new warning stickers lest your child receive a head injury from properly sitting in a chair.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following consumer product. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed.

Yes, you must stop using this chair because without the new warning stickers that are being issued that chair is a hazard to the human race and maybe even the whole planet. It could go off at any moment.

Name of Product: Bumbo “Baby Sitter” Seats

Units: About 1 million

Manufacturer: Bumbo International, of South Africa

Hazard: If the seat is placed on a table, countertop, chair, or other elevated surface, young children can arch their backs, flip out of the Bumbo seat, and fall onto the floor, posing a risk of serious head injuries.

Incidents/Injuries: CPSC has received 28 reports of young children falling out of the Bumbo Baby Sitter seat, including three skull fractures, which occurred when children fell out of chairs that had been placed on tables.

Description: The bottom of the children’s seat is round and flat with a diameter of about 15 inches. It is constructed of a single piece of molded foam and comes in yellow, blue, purple, pink, aqua, and lime green. The seat has leg holes and seat back that wraps completely around the child. On the front of the seat in raised lettering is the word “Bumbo” with the image of an elephant on top. The bottom of the seat has the following words: “Manufactured by Bumbo South Africa Material: Polyurethane World Patent No. PCT: ZA/1999/00030.” The back of the seat contains the following “WARNING” – “Never use on a raised surface. Never use as a car seat or bath seat. Designed for floor level use only. Never leave your baby unattended as the seat is not designed to be totally restrictive and may not prevent release of your baby in the event of vigorous movement.”

Did you notice that? In the description it says there is a warning on the back of the chair already…is it not big enough? Do they really think that if they make the letters bolder or something *that* will force people to read it? Actually I think it’s the wording. No one lacking in common fucking sense understands what a “raised surface” is, and I think all warnings should being with, “Don’t be a fucking dolt!”

Sold by: Target, Wal-Mart, Sears, Toys R Us, Babies R Us, USA Babies and various other toy and children’s stores nationwide, and various online sellers, from August 2003 through October 2007 for about $40.

Manufactured in: South Africa

Remedy: Consumers should never use the infant seat on a table, countertop, chair, or other elevated surface. Consumers can contact Bumbo to obtain new warning label stickers and instructions, free of charge. The new warning label will state: “WARNING – Prevent Falls; Never use on any elevated surface.” Consumers should use the Bumbo seat at ground level, but should never leave a child unattended.

Consumer Contact: Contact Bumbo International at (877) 932-8626 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET Monday through Friday or visit the firm’s Web site at www.bumbosafety.com

That is a stupid remedy. First of all the original warning was much more descriptive and therefore better in my opinion, with exception to the “raised surface” bit. If they just used, “Never use as a car seat or bath seat. Designed for floor level use only.” from the original warning that would make perfect sense. But changing raised surface to elevated surface – dumb.

Other blogger posts about the Bumbo recall.

My past post on a diaper pin warning.

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