wonder(ing)land

I hate plastics. Very dangerous thing, plastics. I’m using the word hate here, about plastics….

This stuff is everywhere. Take, for example, my breast pump. Many relevant parts are made of plastic, including the storage bottles. All this stuff is BPA free, but a) what’s replaced this BPA and b) what other unsafe chems live in that plastic and touch my baby’s food? I was dismayed, appalled and shocked when I opened a brand-new BPA-free six-pack of Medela breastmilk storage bottles to find them STINKING on something like acetone. Chris tried to comfort me: Maybe it will go away after sterilization. Well, it didn’t. After I boiled the bottles for 10 minutes (as recommended) the water and the pot took on the smell! I was ready to kill someone. Right now, they are “airing” out, but seriously, should I really believe that airing it out will get rid of this sh!t?

Baby toys are another one. I am supposed to give my child teething toys. Let’s see, what are my options. Well, there’s the polyvinyl chloride, made soft with something called phthalates and I get to mess up his hormonal and reproductive parts. Or maybe I should stick with hard plastic, or polyvinyl chloride made hard with lead, a neurotoxin? Or I am to believe that there is a safe bladi-bla-free man-made thing out there?

I’m not buying it anymore, they lost me. I despise everything my great-great grandmother wouldn’t recognize. Period. I’ve been applying this principle to food as Michael Pollan meant it, but now I’m wondering about using it on other stuff, especially baby toys. We’ll have imagination in concert with sticks, rocks and maybe twine…. Oh, that we could!

Dearest Christian,

I adore you. The weight of your little body makes me think of heaven. Then there is your special little smell and the most kissable cheeks: they kill me. I’m all over you all the time. When you close your eyes I can’t help but stare at your face, to hell with chores and work and the telephone. My sweet.

This week you overcame a cold with fever and a runny nose. You learned to breathe through your mouth a little. And then snored. When friends came over, you laughed and laughed. And today, for the first time ever, you fell asleep for a nap, all by yourself. I didn’t intend this, but you did it all by yourself and I’m so proud of you.

Sweet dreams baby.

Christian Winter

Ten weeks later, at 2.5 months, we’re doing as well as I expected. And I expected nothing but the best. But it wasn’t without challenges. Here’s a little catalog.

Breastfeeding: The first 10 or so days were awful. Think vice grips. Christian Winter was, for a short while, renamed to Torturer. But quitting was out of question. Now we’re pros, I can walk around like an Amazonian woman with him eating in the sling.

Elimination: It’s hard to tell how things will develop, but we’ve established some grounds for potty independence. At least few times a day, the boy pees and poops in the bathroom when we take him. He’s diaper free for a part of the day and we have fewer of those things to wash or throw away. We mostly use cloth diapers though while out, we do use the disposable ones (Seventh Generation brand).

Sleeping: This is as well as it can be expected. There is now one nighttime waking around 2am during which all three of us are in state of light sleep and multitasking, Christian eating, me feeding and Chris listening if he’s needed. But I’m still as sleepy as I can be and really should be doing that now instead of this…