emergence

The remarkable thing about maternity leave is how much free time it seems like you should have, but how little free time it is you actually have.

Nina is a sweet, delicious baby (again, I note our culture's predilection for comparing babies to confectionary--however, if you've been with this baby, you would understand, she's basically a giant lump of fondant shaped into human form) but she, like all babies, is fairly time-consuming.  That, and she enjoys being held, ideally constantly, unless she's asleep.  Actually, even when she's asleep, she prefers to sleep like this, which is why I have since switched to one of those Tom's of Maine hippie dippie deodorants that--sorry Tom--barely deodorizes.  Everyone step back three feet.

People probably have different schools of thought on this when it comes to babies, but I sort of tend towards the thinking that newborn babies can't really be spoiled, and that all they need to learn at this point is that they're going to be taken care of.  So if she wants me to hold her all day long, well then, by gum, that's what I'll do--it's why I'm on maternity leave, after all.  However, it also means that I can't really do much of anything else (I do have a growing list of dinners that can be cooked one-handed while the other hand is holding a baby, the Cliff Notes version of which is: cook not anything that requires peeling or a can opener) and that's my roundabout way of explaining why I haven't updated this blog in more than a month.  It's not that I can't type, but anything that requires more typing than can be accomplished with one thumb on an iPhone is perhaps more bimanual dexterity than I have been able to reasonably accomplish recently.

Cue gratuitous baby photos...and go.

(On a related note: if you've e-mailed me in the past month or so with a non-emergent message, I really apologize if I haven't returned it.  Life is triage, and so I've been somewhat unplugged from some of my outside obligations as of late.  Lo siento, etcetera etcetera.)

I started (well, multiple times) to write about the life of an anesthesiologist, pecking away at it until my fingers were damn near bloody bone stubs, because that entry was not even half finished and it was already, like, a skrillion pages long.  But then about two weeks ago I got an e-mail from someone at the AAMC (funny trivia: if you Google "AAMC," it will ask you, "Did you mean AAMCO?" and divert you to a page with links to mufflers and transmission changes; but no, as many of you know, AAMC stands for the Association of American Medical Colleges) who is doing an article series on medical specialties, and will be featuring the noble specialty of Anesthesia in September.  So since I'm going to be doing that interview anyway, I figured I'd just link to that when it came out instead, and add bits and pieces to it or field questions as opposed to posting a dense and possibly stultifying brickwork of text not unlike The Cask of Amontillado.  Fair?

So here's what else we've been up to.

Well, school started.  Actually it started the second week of August, which seems just shy of barbaric to me, but such are the regional variants of the academic year in the South.  I think the reasoning is that they time it such that the first semester ends right as the kids are breaking for Christmas (as opposed to having the semester end at the end of January like it did for me growing up--a two and a half week holiday vacation is a more natural break point) and as another plus, school ends usually the week before Memorial Day, which enables us to do things like this.  But the downside is that we live in Atlanta, and August is monstrously hot.  So pick your poison.

The transition to third grade has been pretty good so far.  As expected, the fact that we were making this transition after finishing up first grade in full made the switch much more natural--new class, new teacher at this point in the year is par for the course, so Cal blended in with his classmates pretty seamlessly.  There is one girl in his class who towers over him by a full head, but on the whole, he's not that much smaller than his classmates (despite being one to almost two full years younger than some of them), and that has helped.  He's also making friends, which is a huge relief.  (Somewhat on-topic: I still remember when the term "playdate" entered my lexicon--growing up we just called it "going over to [insert friend name here]'s house" but my sister, ten years younger than I, was set up on "playdates" in a semi-regular fashion--and at the time, the terminology seemed overly formal, like saying that your four year-old had a pressing engagement at the sandbox.)

Veering back on topic, Cal is making friends, and while it seems that the size and age difference isn't a really big deal so far, Cal's lack of working knowledge about miscellaneous juvenile pop culture ephemera is.  "You don't know who Usher is?" one of his new friends asked Cal.  Cal did not.  Ditto Justin Bieber.  He did, however, just finish reading a biography about Albert Einstein, but somehow the conversation didn't quite take off with that one.  So maybe we should consider some remediation with respect to such topics, though honestly, I myself wouldn't know where to begin.  (Something something vampires?)

The schoolwork is very manageable so far, Cal doesn't seem to be having a problem with it (even with French class, which I was the most worried about because it seemed like the class that most needed to build logically from one year to the next and for which Joe and I are the least equipped to provide help).  But there is more homework, and it's a little more free-form and independently generated (for example, learning to write expository essays and do research, as opposed to mindlessly filling out worksheets as in first grade) and that has created some dramatic frission in the afternoons.  I'm still on leave until the end of the week so I've been able to help him get it going up until now, though I have some concerns with how he's going to handle it after I go back to work and won't be home until after The Homeworking Hours at least four out of five days of the week.  But we'll deal with those problems if and when they come up.  We have a meeting with his teacher on Thursday to discuss how the transition is working, but from all indications, he's doing well.

Mack has been on the difficult side of perfection lately.  Likely it's his age more than anything else--Cal at three and a half made me seriously consider the risks and benefits of tubal ligation--but I'm not ruling out that some of it may be reacting to being usurped as The Baby by, you know, a real baby.  But it's nothing unusual, just the usual battles over control, stubbornness, whining, perseveration on details and assorted other miscellany.  If there's a reason that siblings are rarely spaced four and a half years apart, I am convinced it is because most three and a half year-olds are nightmarish maybe 20% of the time, and what might be euphemistically described as "cheeky" another 40% of the time.  But on the whole he's a pleasure.

The thing about Mack is that, after Cal, he's just so reassuring.  Cal is, to put it gently, a little bit of an unusual child (nothing pathologic, he's just kind of peculiar--overly cerebral is probably the best description, with an overlay of quirky) and so we naturally worry about him because worrying is what we do best.  But Mack is, in contrast, the prototype of Boy In Early Childhood.  He runs and plays and pretends and makes his action figures talk to each other.  He jumps off things while making rocket blaster sounds.  He loves cars and light sabers and wrestling, and has a bin full of superhero costumes that he cycles through on a near-constant basis.  (Current favorite: a Spiderman costume with foam muscles built into it.)  He can be a stubborn fool, and he can scream very loud when he wants to, but he's our screaming stubborn fool, and he's a delight.  You know...most of the time.

I'm on call Labor Day weekend (everyone I tell this to thinks this is cruel and unusual somehow, but our holiday call schedule was actually determined almost a year ago, before I was even pregnant, and the timing is such that my maternity leave would be close to ending anyway so I'm more than pleased to fulfill that particular responsibility) so I'll be back at work bright and early on Friday morning.  I won't lie, maternity leave has been really nice.  Yes it's been nice to have a slightly different pace to my day (though I'm not really getting up much later nor getting any more sleep than usual), but mostly I appreciate having so much time to spend with Nina.  For the rest of her life, she's going to have to share me with her brothers, and I'm going to have to share her with, well, everyone.  But these past eight weeks have been, for the most part, just about the two of us being together.  And that's been really, really special.

I know that me going back to work doesn't mean I'll never see her again, and this being our third time around we have most of the larger issues of scheduling and childcare largely blocked out.  But it's still going to be hard to leave that first morning, and every morning after that.  I work full-time, take overnight call and work long hours, so it's hard not to feel (and I felt this way with Cal and Mack too) like I'm giving away huge swaths of her babyhood away for someone else to enjoy.  Is this the ideal solution?  Is this the correct balance for us?  It's hard to say at this moment, and I know that this is something that everyone struggles with, and that I'll continue to struggle with--what worked well with two kids may work differently with three, after all.  But I am lucky in that I love my kids, and I also really enjoy my job, so while my daily life does feel like living between a rock and a hard place, at least I like the rock, and I love the hard place, so finding the right space between is hopefully worth the blisters.

holly hobby

This is the first maternity leave where I haven't had a big heavy To Do list hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles.  And it feels fine, friends.

My first maternity leave with Cal, you'll remember, was three weeks into my Anesthesia residency.  So I spent much of that five weeks off from work trying to memorize Baby Miller, or at least, you know, sitting at a desk with Baby Miller open in front of me.  That was...fun.

With Mack, I had the second round edits due on my book--and this was a big edit, since the first round manuscript had the chapters arranged by theme instead of chronologically; it was basically akin to dismantling your entire house and then building it again but with the rooms all in different places, with, uh, new doors and hallways connecting them (that creaking sound is that of a metaphor becoming overly labored)--so that leave was also spent marinating in a stew of low-grade obligation and stress.

But this maternity leave, I think I pretty much cleared the deck.  I'm not even doing those speaking engagements anymore, so there's no more of that "I gotta do my slides, I gotta review my slides, I gotta practice running through my slides" that has catagorized most of last year up until the Spring when I quit traveling.

So I'm doing some sewing is what I'm saying.

Some functional stuff I made for the baby.  That blanket, based on the tutorial here, and that crib sheet, based on the tutorial here.  Both were actually really easy, so fellow novice sewers, have at it, you will be surprised and pleased.

Then I modified the measurements on the fitted mattress sheet tutorial to make a cover for the diaper changing pad here.  This was especially pleasing because I got this piece of red striped cotton fabric from the "scraps" bin at the fabric store for 99 cents.  It was just big enough for the project, which was a happy coincidence.  (Joe also thought it was a coincidence that the cover matched the alphabet print hanging over the changing table, but I disabused him of that notion quickly--THE COLOR COORDINATION WAS PLANNED, DAMMIT.)

Speaking of salvage, my new thing is sewing with knit fabrics from thrift store finds.  Woven fabrics are nice and of course come in gorgeous prints, but in making things for kids, knit fabrics (think T-shirts, stretchy pants, etcetera) are much softer and more comfortable, especially for a baby.  Even for older kids--Cal complained endlessly when he had to wear this button-down shirt for school picture day, but he will wear any T-shirt or polo shirt until it basically disintegrates.  So anyway, I found this soft cotton sweater at the thrift store--not my style, and also not my size, but appealing in its oatmeal and grey stripes.  As you will soon see, I love stripes.  So I hacked off the bottom part and hacked off the sleeves, and made these two new items, respectively.

The internet is full of variations on how to make a dress from a onesie, so I'll just point you to this one here and say that I just sawed off a tube of fabric from the bottom of an adult T-shirt just to make it that much easier.  For comfort I decided to place the skirt part up higher, like an empire waist, so that the inflexible part of the stitching wouldn't be over the baby's stomach, where her width is the widest.

The pants I made out of the sweater sleeves, which was great because I basically had only had to sew the crotch seam and the casing.  (Tutorial for that little project here--but again, the internet is full of similar tutorials and variations therein, just look around.)  The onesies I got from Rock Bottom T-shirts, who I've mentioned before and with whom I have no relationship, but boy do I love them.  (Another plug: I also ordered some polo shirts from them for Mack's school uniforms--they are of surprisingly good quality.)

Using the bottom part of a T-shirt to make a dress was so easy that I just went ahead and made a couple more for the fall.  MORE STRIPES, PLEASE.  (No pants out of the navy and grey striped T-shirt, unfortunately--I would have loved to make them, but unfortunately that T-shirt was short-sleeved.)

And just so you don't think I am totally anti-pink, this last one here, which I'm hoping will fit by around Thanksgiving.

Just an observation--your local Goodwill is where all Gap, Old Navy and Target-branded shirts (your Merona, your Cherokee, your Massimo for Target, what have you) go to die.  It's like the elephant graveyard of soft T-shirts.

Another thing that they have at thrift stores is old sweaters.  Many of them are hideous, but some of them are decent, or, barring that, made of very soft wools or cotton (sometimes even cashmere) that you can rescue and turn into something else.  I found this grey angora turtleneck sweater that I was able to turn into two things for the winter.  (I kind of wish I had taken I picture of the sweater before I started, but this was my first time doing some of this stuff so in the event that it turned out crappy you understand I wanted to hide the evidence.)  First, these pants:

Again, from the sleeves of the sweater.  The angora is really pretty soft, but wool always has the potential to be scratchy so I decided to line the inside of the pants with the remnants of another thrifted T-shirt.  I actually had used that T- shirt to make another pair of soft pants, but I screwed that pair up in that I wasn't playing close attention and ended up sewing half the seams on the outside, half on the inside.  However, all was not lost--I just slipped that whole pair of pants inside the sweater pants, sewed them together and folded up the cuffs, and behold.  Mistake rectified.

The rest of the sweater (meaning the body part) I used to make this little cardigan, and let me just tell you, I AM SO PROUD OF THIS CARDIGAN.  I'd never sewn sleeves before, you see (something about the three-dimensionality of it seemed overwhelming to me) and I'd never drafted my own pattern before (I used a 6 month-sized onesie to approximate the size and dimensions), and while keen observation would undoubtedly reveal the amateur nature of this project, it actually turned out pretty well, and, I hope, very wearable.  (I would have liked buttons ideally, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet, and I didn't want to screw up the sweater with my first attempts.)

I mentioned this was a turtleneck sweater, right?  Well, there wasn't quite enough fabric to make the sleeves long enough, so I used the ribbing from the turtleneck to extend the sleeve length and make cuffs.  YOU'RE GOD DAMN RIGHT I DID.

I also used some of the leftover ribbing from the turtleneck to bind off the collar.  My stitching has its lumpy bits, but it won't be spotted from a trotting horse.  (Remember how Ramona's dad said that about her lamb costume?  I still think about that sometimes.  That and how the older girls colored her nose with mascara.)

And this was what was left of the sweater after I was done.  Every part of the buffalo, baby.

Now you'll have to remember that I only started sewing stuff like, what, a few months ago?  So I'm fairly new at this game.  However, as hobbies go, it's pretty fun.  Someone in the last entry asked me what I thought people would need to get started, and I have a few things that I would suggest.

First: a sewing machine.  I use this one, the Brother CS6000i, because while I didn't want to get the most expensive sewing machine in the universe, I also didn't want to get one that didn't have a good range of functions.  This one is nice because it's computerized (meaning you can change the type of stiches by pushing a few buttons), has a lot of nice convenience features, is really easy to use, and most importantly comes loaded up with basically every accessory that you could possibly need.  So I would recommend it, but it's also the only one I've really ever tried--there are cheaper models out there too, but I can't attest to their user-friendliness.

I'm going to assume you have scissors in your house if you're, you know, a human being, but I would also recommend (because I use it all the time) getting a rotary cutter (basically like a pizza cutter but for fabric and paper) and a cutting mat, unless you want to be like me with gouges all over one end of the table.  Sure, you can use the scissors for cutting too, but for long, straight cuts, the rotary cutter is easier.

You can get thread basically anywhere, and if you're starting out, I wouldn't go nuts--just go to any kind of craft store and get the handful of colors that you need.  But if you're looking for more colors to match your projects, this company called Threadsrus (I keep reading that as "thesaurus" but I think it's supposed to be Threads R Us--whether the R is written backwards is unclear) offers good quality thread at a very reasonable deal.  I am not at the point yet where I am ordering 200 spools of thread, mind you, but I did order a smaller aliquot from them in an assortment of colors, and I've been pretty pleased.

Oh, one last thing.  If you are prone to jabbing yourself with pins while you work (and I don't know how I am so injury-prone when sewing but I am--if I had as many needle sticks at work as I've had at home I would live at employee health permanently) might I recommend these?  They are these little fabric clips that hold your cloth together in lieu of pins in most situations, and they work great.  Don't bother with the small pack, get the big pack of 50, you will definitely not regret it.  They are super useful, and, you know, not so pointy.

Of course there's a ton of other stuff that you can get if you're in the market and have money to burn, but for a start, that's what I would recommend.  Anyway, sewing is fun, cutting up old busted clothes to make new cute clothes is fun, so let's all do it and humiliate our children by forcing them to wear our lumpy, ill-shaped handiwork into school!  It'll be awesome!

Feel free to discuss other sewing recommendations--either for projects or tools--in the comments section, and we will all share in the goodness.  And just so we don't get too far off course into turning this into a total other species of blog, my next entry will be the oft-requested "Day in the Life" post about private practice anesthesiology, or at least my experiences in that realm.  It'll be a real humdinger!

Hope you had a good weekend.

party of five

Hey everyone.  I meant to update sooner, but you know, NEW BABY.  Always needing stuff, they are.

Nina's been doing really well.  I was afraid, after having two pretty easy babies with Cal and Mack, that we were going to strike out with Thing 3 and be granted some kind of hellion.  But Nina's much like her brothers were, in that she's a good, sweet baby who is easy to please and whose cuteness makes up for the rest.

I do think that some of it is due to her innate good nature, but I also think that our easy time of things is framed by expectation.  With a new baby, people mostly complain about the lack of sleep, and the constant neediness of the newborn--so much feeding! so much holding and rocking! where one diaper change ends, the next one begins!  And so forth.  The thing is--that's what babies are supposed to do.  And what I'm doing on my end--holding her basically all the time when she's awake, feeding her on demand, changing many many teeny little poo diapers and scanning her pee diapers with almost clinical intensity to assess her degree of urobilinogen excretion (though now, linking to Wikipedia, I am realizing for the first time that urobilinogen is colorless--all that wasted observation!)--that's what I'm supposed to do.  So I don't really think I'm having an appreciably easier or harder time than anyone else with a new baby, we're just all doing what we're supposed to be doing, and everybody's happy.

Anyway, I'm pretty firmly of the belief that if you want to sleep all night, you probably shouldn't have a baby, much the way that if you want to be well-rested, ever, you probably shouldn't go into medicine.  See, it's all about framing your expectations.

Hey, wanna see some pictures?  Most of these are on my Tumblr already, but I know not everyone is my buddy on the twitters et al.  It's fine, little technophobe, we'll just churn some butter and make some corn husk dolls right here by the flickering light of this here computer screen.

I knew that Cal would do well with a new baby (little old man that he is, I knew he would relish the expertise conferred by being not only seven years her senior but also a veteran older sibling) but I'll admit that I was a little concerned that Mack, who has spent the last three and a half years marinating in his baby-of-the-family status, would be jealous.  And I'm not saying that he's not ever going to be jealous or competitive (just wait until she starts getting mobile and his slavishly guarded collection of superhero action figures comes under siege) but so far, he is in love with his baby.

"Mom, I love baby Nina," he'll say unprompted.

"Baby Nina is so pretty."

"Can I kiss her?"

"Can I rub her and smell her?"  (He means rub her head.  We talked about the fontanelles and the importance of using his flat palm instead of poking her brain with his fingers, but then Cal was like, "She has a HOLE in her HEAD?" and then we had to kind of soft-pedal the anatomy lesson lest everyone freak out.  Mack also particularly likes smelling the baby.  I understand the appeal of smelling a new baby and much as the next weirdo, but the way Mack goes after her, you'd think she's one of those really fascinating second generation scratch 'n' sniff stickers that really really for real OMG smell like food.  Like the buttered popcorn one.  Or that one that smelled like pepperoni pizza that I was fascinated with as a child because wow, they made a sticker smell like pizza?  THE FUTURE IS HERE.)

Anyway, sibling rivalry averted for now.  Cal and Mack seem to have reserved all their petty animus for each other ("MOM! Cal looked at me!") but Nina, so far as they're concerned, is a princess.

I'd meant to post this up earlier today (because I'm pretty sure no one's going to read this now when I'm posting it, almost 11:00pm on a Friday night), but see above: baby, comma, care of.  There are a couple of other posts that I'm working on in my head to post hopefully in the next week or two when I have a free moment, including but not limited to:

• Private practice anesthesiology: a day in the life

• Breastfeeding and pumping after returning to work, my experience and strategies (warning: boobs will be alluded to though not depicted)

• More sewing projects that I done did, culled of the more embarrassing mishaps (like the time I got confused while making a pair of leggings and sewed half the seams on the outside, half the seams on the inside)

Any other post topics you guys interested in hearing about while I'm on maternity leave and have some time for such extracurricular pursuits?  Aside from wanting to see more pictures of Cooper to prove that she didn't die a year ago and I just somehow never mentioned it here?  I'm working on that post too--I'll get her to hold a copy of today's Wall Street Journal in the pictures, you know, as a proof of life.  (Not to joke about our dog dying or anything--obviously we care deeply about our dog.  But we're just no longer in the phase of life where we treat her as a child by proxy.  Rest assured that she is well loved and taken care of and just got a new memory foam dog bed that she is very pleased with.)

Anyway.  Have a good weekend, everyone.

make your own baby video monitor

Hey all.  Forgive me if this is too "uh...duh" for some of you, but I promised I would share the execution of this idea with someone at work who was having her first grandchild (hi Maree!) and am actually quite pleased at how well this is working.

Like most people, we had a baby monitor.  Actually, we only had one for Mack--when we lived in New York, I think we were actually able to hear Cal in the next room because that's apartment living for you--but it was just an audio monitor, really nothing but a glorified one-way walkie-talkie.  But it worked OK and Mack is still alive, so...monitoring success, I guess.  We still have the audio monitor, I just kind of stopped using it when I got sick of it basically being a broadcast of the kids arguing with each other in the basement of our old house.  Just share the damn toys guys, dag.

With a fresh baby though, everyone gets a little more vigilant (read: paranoid), and though I like to think of myself as laid back, it crossed my mind that a video monitor might be nice for peace of mind, to be able to see the things that don't make any noise that a monitor can pick up (blanket over face, malevolent stuffed animals come to life, what have you).  The only thing is, I can be kind of a skinflint about certain things, and it just seemed to me to be an awful lot of money to spend for something with somewhat limited lifespan and utility.  And then I had an idea.

(Again, forgive me if this is too obvious, but I was proud of thinking of it, especially since it used equipment that I had already.)


What you will need:

- A transmitter (I used an old iPhone that I saved--I was on AT&T originally but reception was crap at my hospital and I was continually paranoid about missing calls, since that's that primary way we communicate between ORs and such.  Anyway, my point being that when the new iPhone came out I upgraded and switched to Verizon--therefore I have a phone-plan-less iPhone kind of lying around that still works on our home WiFi.  But really you can use anything with a wireless connection and a camera.)

- A receiver (you can use your phone, a 2nd or 3rd generation iPad, your desktop or laptop computer, whatever.  I've been using my iPad because it's light and easy to carry from room to room, but again, it can be pretty much anything, it just has to have wireless connectivity and a camera.)

- Two Skype accounts (I just use mine and Joe's--the accounts are free to sign up for, and at bare bones, calls made over WiFi are free and unlimited so far as I can ascertain)

- Optional but helpful, depending on what you're using for your transmitter: a tripod, some creative velcro strapping, etcetera.

OK, so here's what you do.

STEP 1: Get a baby that you want to stare at.

STEP 2: Figure out where you want the monitor to be.  You're somewhat limited by the fact that streaming a video call over Skype used a lot of juice, so I would choose a place near an outlet, but more importantly, find a place where you can fixate your transmitter, be it over a crib rail or on a nightstand or what have you.  I apologize for the noise in these photos, but I was under low-light conditions for what I assume are obvious reasons.

(Here you see I have my old hobbled iPhone on a tripod and then Velcro-ed the tripod to the corner of the crib.  I don't think you absolutely need a tripod, but I had one from a lens kit that I got for iPhone photography that I rarely use and it's pretty handy in general--it also allows you to put the transmitter on a flat surface instead if that's your preference.  Just make modifications as you see fit--for example, if your baby is old enough to pull up and grab things, you probably don't want to have that phone just dangling there on the edge of the crib rail, but in that case, you know, put a table next to the crib out of reach or put the camera on a shelf, whatever.)

STEP 3: Make sure you have Skype downloaded on both transmitter and receiver devices.  There's a free Skype app for iPhone/iPad/iPod on iTunes (iKnow, this is starting to seem like I work for Apple but I swear I don't, it's just what iHave in my house.)  Log in with one account on the transmitter and the other account on the receiver.  (I use Joe's account as the receiver, and my account is the transmitter.)

STEP 4: Use one end to call the other end.  Doesn't matter which one initiates the call, just make sure you're placing a video call because that's the whole point.  Accept the call on the other end.

STEP 5: If you're using something like an iPhone for your transmitter that has two cameras, make sure that you change the preferences such that you're using the "back facing camera" or whatever they call it--that's the higher quality camera anyway, it'll probably give you a better image, and that way you're not shining that screen in the baby's face.  

STEP 6: And there's your call on the other end.  Now continue to silently and creepily spy on your offspring.