Perfection …

A good friend of mine and his partner recently adopted an adorable little boy.  He’s only a few days younger than Aiman so my friend and I have been commiserating about the struggles difficulties stresses joys of parenting.  After checking out this blog, I got the following email from him:

He looks SO peaceful!  don’t you have any of him crying or screaming or spitting up!?!?  C’mon … give us something to know everything isn’t so perfect at your house, eh?!?!

Oh man … this gave me a good laugh.  Since writing this post about what a joy my little man is and how he sleeps a ton, my boy has taken to waking up every 1.5 hours at night to eat, because it is literally impossible to get him to do more than snack a bit during  his nighttime feedings.  In addition, my darling son has decided that 6:00 a.m. is the time that he wants to be awake … he usually goes back to sleep at about 9:00 a.m., but by that time the damage is done and its time for me to start my day.  I usually try to get in an afternoon nap when he is taking his, but really I am getting about four hours of sleep a day and I am TIRED!  But of course, it is totally perfect over here!  The best part of the whole day though is when Aiman screams from about 9:00 p.m. to about 11:00 p.m.  Why … I don’t know.  He doesn’t want to eat, doesn’t care if he’s swaddled, doesn’t seem to be calmed by the shushing that usually gets him to quiet down.  No … the only thing he wants is for me to be holding him perched on my left arm swinging/bouncing/rocking him up and down and side to side for hours (and hours and hours) and just when I think he is asleep, and I lie him down, he wakes back up and wants another hour or so of the swinging/bouncing/rocking.  My left arm looks like it belongs to a professional wrestler on many steroids.  

The reason there are no pictures of these activities is because I am usually too busy trying to get the little guy to stop crying to take any snapshots.  But … in the interests of portraying a fair and accurate picture of life in my house, I made a mission of trying to capture Aiman at his screaming best tonight.  I am probably not going to win any mom of the year awards for this, but I let the little guy wail for a few minutes this evening while I giggled uncontrollably and snapped these awesome pictures of the real Aiman!

Enjoy …

 

 

  

 

 

Perfect!

Civil Rights Schmival Rights

I am self-aware enough to know that the only reason anyone comes to this blog is to see cute pictures of my perfect son, however since we live in California, I feel I must do a quick post on what has been happening in this state over the past few months.  For those of you who don’t care about my political views (which is most likely everyone) feel free to scroll to the bottom of this post where you will find many cute pictures of Aiman!  

California has lots of problems … swine flu … potential bankruptcy … failing schools … draught … strikes … and its cold today (what the eff – its Southern California for crying out loud – its meant to be warm all the time!)  With all of these problems, you would think that the California voters could spend their time worrying about something other than whether the gays are destroying marriage by … gasp … getting married!  But apparently I have over-estimated my fellow Californians.  

As most everyone knows, the California Supreme Court legalized gay marriage not to long ago.  A bunch of gay couples got married and the world stopped spinning on its axis and storm clouds began to gather!  Then, the wonderful, caring, loving, Christian folks over at the Church of Latter Day Saints came to the obvious conclusion (note sarcasm here) that gay marriage was destroying America and invested millions of dollars to put a proposition on the ballot which would amend the California Constitution to make it unconstitutional for gays to marry – did you get that – they proposed a Constitutional amendment to take rights away from a specific group of people.   Constitutional amendments to take rights away are generally a bad idea.  Anyone remember prohibition – well probably no one who reads this blog remembers it, but we all know how well that little experiment worked out.  Unfortunately the California voters, in their infinite wisdom, voted to amend the Constitution and with that vote, the rights of gays to marry was taken away.  The legality of the Proposition was challenged to the California Supreme Court and it was, not surprisingly, upheld.  So now we are left with a Constitution with this lovely sentence contained within its hallowed verbage:

“Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

Awesome.  

Did you all know that until 1967 it was illegal for a white person to marry a black person in fifteen states and it was illegal in 14 other states up until the 50’s and 60’s.  That means that only 40 years ago, it would have been illegal in nearly half the states for this to have happened:

 

In fact, in most states it was a felony, punishable by up to one year in prison.  (Yes … even in California, whose laws banned interracial marriage up until 1948.) 

You know what it took to finally wipe those laws off the books?  You guessed it, a group of 9 ACTIVIST judges on the U.S. Supreme Court deciding that it was violation of the U.S. Constitution to deny two people, the Lovings, the right to marry based on their race.  The Lovings were a black woman and a white man who got married in Washington D.C. (which did not have an anti-miscegination law) and moved to Virginia (which did).  The Lovings were arrested in their bedroom for living as an interracial couple.  The state court judge that upheld their conviction argued: 

“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, and red, and he placed them on separate continents.  And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages.  The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

Classy … and somehow vaguely reminiscent of the religion based arguments people make against homosexuality today.

A unanimous Supreme Court overturned the Virginia state court and, in so doing, invalidated all anti-miscegination laws.  The Court found:

“Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival…. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations.  Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not to marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.”

Marriage is a basic civil right huh?  Well then obviously gays must have that right too, right??  Right??  Bueller …?  Apparently not.  

Side Note:  I’ve always loved that the couple that finally got those interracial marriage laws overturned were named the “Lovings.”  I think it highly likely that the NAACP waited for a couple with the perfect name to challenge those laws.  What could be better than the “Lovings?”  It also reminds me of my college crush, his name was Matt Bliss.  I thought … how can I go wrong with a boyfriend with the last name “Bliss.”  I couldn’t!  Unfortunately he did not feel the same way about the “Herseys” of the world.  I’m not sure he knew I existed.  

That Californians would vote to strip rights away from a minority is sad, but not surprising.  In fact, in doing a little research about the history of anti-miscegenation laws, I learned that two states, South Carolina and Alabama still had language in their constitutions prohibiting interracial marriage until 1998 and 2000 respectively.  It took a vote to remove that language, a vote that passed by 62% in South Carolina and 59% in Alabama – which means that 40% of the people in the year 2000 still believed that there should be language in the Constitution banning interracial marriage.  That’s why decisions like these cannot be left to the people.  The people are bigoted A-Holes. 

So there you have it.  I am completely sickened by what has happened in California and I can only hope that we  get another group of activist judges/legislators/politicians together soon to put an end to this state-sponsored discrimination.  Besides, if it weren’t for activist judges, you would not have this:

And, therefore, you probably would not have this: 

Baby Acne

Confession time … I had horrible acne when I was a teenager, and in my early 20s, and mid-20s and late 20s.  It has finally cleared up, but my skin paid the price, I have huge pores, sun spots, scars and very low self-esteem!  So imagine my horror when a few weeks after he was born my poor son developed baby acne.  Already my bad skin genes are taking their toll!  Lets just hope he doesn’t end up with my monster nose and funky knocked knees! 

Despite the acne, he is still the most beautiful boy in history.  Witness …

The Sneeze …

Cloth Diapers …

We cloth diaper Aiman.  There, I’ve said it.  Whenever I tell people that we cloth diaper they look at me as though I’ve told them that I dance naked under a full moon smearing my baby’s poo all over my body.  (Ed. Note:  I don’t do that.)  In point of fact, I very rarely actually touch any poo (at least no more than I would with disposable diapers – which is actually more poo than I would like to touch – but I guess that goes with the job).  

To be honest, the cloth diapering thing was Riaz’s idea – I would have happily filled my quota in the L.A. County landfill with disposable diapers, but Riaz assured me that cloth diapering was better and that he would do all the work.  I now agree that it is probably better.  I, however, have yet to see Riaz do a load of cloth diapers (in fact, just today – when Riaz demonstrated that he clearly had no idea how to work the washing machine – I realized that Riaz does not actually know how to do laundry).

The way we cloth diaper is very hip and trendy, we don’t deal with those crazy prefold diapers with the sharp pointy pins.  Instead, we use fitted diapers with little snaps, there is elastic around the legs so nothing gets out and they actually are a pretty tight fit.  Plus, they are really super cute on, his little butt is just so fuzzy!  How can you go wrong with a little fuzzy butt!?!  (Ed. Note: My son is going to love reading about how I thought his butt was all cute and fuzzy when he is 16 years old.  I really think one of the main reasons to have children is so you can embarrass them when they are older … and so they can do menial labor.)  We use doublers in the diapers (extra pieces of fabric to catch the pee) and little cloth liner things that you can just toss into the toilet and flush.  Then we have these really cute polyurethane pants that go over the cloth diapers to keep everything from getting wet.  

Now that I write it all out, it seems like a lot of work, but trust me, its really only two extra steps.  We do still use disposable on some nights because Aiman hates to have his diaper changed and putting on a cloth diaper does take a smidge longer than putting on a disposable and listening to my son scream as if I am ripping off his toenails at 3:00 in the morning is not my idea of a good time.

Here is our “stash” of cloth diapers.  Aren’t they cute!

For anyone reading this who cares, we have three kinds of cloth diapers – Crickett’s Diapers, Happy Heiny’s and Loveybums.  The Crickett’s and Loveybums came with their own doublers and we also have a few Hemp Babies doublers.  We use Thirsties covers and Kushies liners.  We love the Crickett’s Diapers – though when I first got them I thought they looked huge and did not think they would fit our baby.  Once you get them on though they fit great and are super absorbent.  I just bought a bunch more of those.  The other great thing about Crickett’s is that they are fully adjustable, so they will fit the little guy for a long time.  I don’t love the Happy Heiny’s and the Loveybums, they are just not that absorbent.  The Thirsties covers are great, and I could not do the cloth diapering thing without the Kushies liners.  It really makes clean up a cinch and keeps the smell of baby poo from taking over the entire house – which is a major plus in my book.  

I do laundry about every other day.  I do a 30 minute cold water soak with detergent and baking soda, then I do an actual wash cycle and add a bit of distilled white vinegar in the rinse cycle to help with the smell (though I think I could do without this step because the diapers come out smelling fine even without the vinegar).  I am going to look into buying a Downey ball so I don’t have to pay attention to when the rinse cycle starts – I really don’t have that kind of attention span and I end up forgetting to do it 90% of the time anyway.  I know laundry every other day sounds like a lot, but when you have a baby that pees and spits up all over everything anyway, it really does not make that much of a difference.  

Now the question on everyone’s mind – Why the hell are you doing this to yourself!?!  When I think of people who cloth diaper, I think of dirty hippies who live in trees and protest the use of chemicals on cut flowers.  I am so not that person.  I do most of my shopping at Costco, I rarely buy organic, I like to buy new things that leave a BIG carbon footprint and I make Riaz buy me cut flowers which I know ruin the environment, just because I like the way they look in my house.  Off topic: Did you all see that hilarious South Park episode where Cartman rids the town of hippies using a gigantic drill.  It was awesome.

 

So why do I do it?  A few reasons:  1) Riaz is making me.  Seriously – I tried to talk him out of it SO. MANY. TIMES.  But he was really persistent, and he is rarely persistent about anything, so I caved.  2)  It is cheaper.  My baby goes through A LOT of diapers everyday, those disposable diapers are crazy expensive.  3)  It is better for the environment.  Contrary to the way I live my life 99.9% of the time, I do actually care about the environment – I drive a Prius for crying out loud!  People tell me all the time that because we live in California, which is experiencing a draught, that I am actually doing more harm to the environment because of all the laundry I am doing.  That is just crazy talk.  I could understand the argument if the only damage to the environment caused by disposables was that I was filling a landfill, but that is just not the case.  It takes a ton of energy to actually produce, transport and sell disposable diapers, not to mention the enormous amount of human waste that ends up in landfills, which tends to seep out of the diapers and contaminate the ground water!  Which means the water that L.A. does actually have is filled with baby poo!  (O.K. – I’m just making that last part up, but I have heard that the raw sewage in disposable diapers is really harmful).  It’s just gross when you think about it (obviously no offense to anyone who uses disposable diapers – See point 1. above, namely that the primary reason we are cloth diapering is that I was forced into it!)

So there you have it.  We cloth diaper our baby!  You would too, if you saw how cute your baby looked in florescent orange diaper covers!

And one with the feet … 

Sleep ….

My baby is an awesome sleeper.  I know that I will infuriate all new moms out there when I say this, but he pretty much always sleeps for three or four hour stretches at night, almost like clockwork he wakes up at 3:00 a.m., 6:00 a.m. and then again at 9:00.  He usually is only up for about 30 minutes to eat, then he passes out.  He is starting to stay awake more during the day, but still, his favorite thing to do (besides eat) is sleep.  I am totally the luckiest new mom alive.  I am actually getting a decent amount of sleep each night.  Aiman’s love of sleep means all of my pictures are pretty much all of him sleeping.  Since I know that the only reason anyone ever comes to this blog anymore is to see pictures of the new boy, I will oblige with my most recent collection of sleeping baby pictures.  

With dad …

Mittens. 

Just Cute – though annoyingly out of focus!  I’m still working on my photography skills.  

Lips.

Eyelashes.

Aiman’s Birth Story – Wherein Kristina Learns the Meaning of Exhaustion

Aiman was given a due date of April 21, I always believed that was way too early and that his *real* due date was April 27.  Sure enough, April 21 came and went and there was nothing even approaching what anyone could call imminent labor.  Even though I knew I might have a ways to go, I decided that I was no longer anything more than a big hunk of mush at work and decided to call it quits on Friday April 17.  Best. Decision. Ever.  I spent the week of the 21st, finishing stuff up around the house, relaxing, watching T.V. and making Riaz rub my feet because my days of doing nothing were so difficult on my body.  I had a doctor’s appointment on Monday April 27.  The doctor wanted to monitor the baby for awhile and do and ultrasound to make sure my fluids were in check.  Dr. Bayati informed me that I needed to go into labor now or she would have to induce.  Thanks lady … no pressure at all!  

As anyone who works with me knows, I work better with a deadline, and true to form I started feeling some contractions that night at 8:00 p.m.  They were really mild and not consistent at all.  They started getting stronger at around 11:00 p.m., but I was still able to fall asleep (I am amazingly awesome at sleeping through things), and I slept until about 2:00 a.m., when I woke to a pretty strong contraction that lasted for over a minute.  The contraction was totally manageable though and I remember thinking, this labor crap is a cinch!  I am so totally the bomb – all those women who take drugs during labor can eat it!  Wusses.  

After my own personal little ego boost, I went back to bed and continued to have contractions every 20-30 minutes, which I slept between.  At around 7:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning, the contractions were getting a little stronger and were ranging between 5 and 10 minutes apart.  Again, I was overwhelmed by the feelings of my own awesomeness.  I could have the baby right here!  All those natural childbirth books really paid off.  I am THE. BEST.  I ate some breakfast and continued to just work with the contractions.  By about 4:00 p.m. the contractions were about 3 minutes apart but were only lasting 45 seconds or so and, very annoyingly, my contractions were not all that consistent, most were about 3 minutes apart, but others came after 5 minutes or even 15-20 minutes.  All very frustrating.  

This is where I really started to behave irrationally.  In one of my natural childbirth books it talks about the “stages” of a laboring woman.  The first is “Excitement” – like “oh yea!  I’m having a baby today, these contractions are uncomfortable, but I am so Excited!”  In this chapter you see a picture of a big pregnant smiling woman – presumably she is excited!   During this phase, you are supposed to just labor at home, eat, do things around the house and just revel in your excitement.  Later you move onto the “Serious” stage – like “oh man!  These contractions kind of hurt, I really need to concentrate to get through them.  OUCH!”  The book wants you to remain in this phase for several hours or until your contractions have established themselves at 3 minutes apart and an minute to a minute and a half long before you go to the hospital.  So this is where I got crazy.  By 4:00 p.m. I was beginning to wonder why things were not moving along faster and why my contractions were stubbornly short, so I decided that I needed to be more Serious.  So I furrowed my brow and breathed heavily through each contraction thinking … You’re Serious …. You. Are. So. Serious … Be. Serious. Serious. Serious.  I am crazy.  

By about 9:00 p.m., I think I actually was feeling serious.  I was in my 7th shower of the day, my back was killing me and I felt like I needed to hurl.  This is Serious.  So Riaz called his parents, we finished packing the car and headed out to drive the treacherous 10 blocks to the hospital.  During the car ride, in which I had several contractions, I attempted to give Riaz directions to the hospital, which were (of course) wrong, so we ended up driving around in circles for a few blocks (I am so cool.)  Once we got to the hospital, we proceeded to get into the wrong set of elevators, then we tried to get off those elevators but instead we were taken to a different floor where we picked up a bunch of passengers who kept looking back at me breathing and clutching the handrail like I was some kind of crazy person.  We finally got off the elevator of death and were forced to walk about a mile and a half to the correct elevators until we finally made it to Labor and Delivery.  NOTE TO UCLA:  I understand that you cannot have security staff at every door 24-7, but since it is one and a half miles from the main entrance to the entrance to L&D, wouldn’t it be a fine idea to post someone at the L&D door all the time, women sometimes labor at night, laboring does not stop just because it is 9:00 p.m., laboring and walking are hard.  Please rectify. Very Truly Yours, KMF.  

Once in L&D they got me into my room fairly quickly, hooked me up to the monitors, did all the tests and checked my dilation.  4 centimeters!  Yes!  I was feeling pretty proud of myself for being at 4 – though when I think about it now, it really should have crushed my spirit.  I had been laboring for 25 hours at that point!  I was at a 4 after 25 hours!  But whatever, at that time I thought I was kicking ass and that is the important thing.  

By about 10:00 p.m. we were settled into the room and the contractions were definitely stronger.  The only way for me to really handle them was if I was either sitting up or standing (mainly standing) and Riaz or my mom needed to be jamming their fists into my lower back to alleviate the really painful back labor.  Here is my little note about labor – the actual contractions themselves were really not all that bad for me.  It was the ridiculous back labor that was awful.  It made it literally impossible for me to lay down during the contractions which made it really difficult to get any kind of rest between the contractions.  So I was really starting to get exhausted.  See evidence below:

Don’t I look miserable!  

At around 2:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning our awesome nurse came in and said that she was going on a break and would be back in an hour.  At this point my contractions were fairly close together and felt like they were a minute or more long.   They weren’t all that consistent though, sometimes they would be right on top of each other, and other times they would be 2 or 3 minutes apart. 

This is, again, where I returned to my crazy ways.  My childbirth book said that the final “stage” of a laboring woman is “self doubt.”  Apparently this is where most women lose it.  The book says that it is very important for the coach to tell the woman that she is doing awesome and is almost done because she really probably only has a little ways to go.  At this point,  I was in quite a bit of pain and was so thoroughly exhausted I really did not think I could do it.  I kept saying to Riaz, “I think I am feeling self doubt” … “I am really doubting myself right now!”  I still can’t get over how I could literally recite that damn book word-for-word during my labor, I clearly think way too much.  

Anyway, the nurse came back at around 3ish and I decided that I needed her to check my progress.  I told myself that if I was 7 centimeters or more then I would tough it out, if I was less, I would cave and get the epidural.  She checked and I was at 6.5 – No Contest – Epidural it was! 

Gentle reader – I know that I was all for the natural childbirth, but I really did not anticipate my “natural” birth continuing for over 30 hours!   I was exhausted!  I really believe I could have done it had my labor lasted a mere 24 or 25 or even 30 hours!  It was that final one hour that did me in – 31 hours is just too much!  

The anesthesiologist came in and administered the epi, it was a cinch, no pain at all (or maybe it was painful but I really couldn’t tell because I was practically comatosed from the 31 previous hours of labor!)  Before I knew it, my legs were numb and I was asleep.  I honestly barely remember the doctor leaving.  I was out.  

I was in and out of sleep for the next 4 or 5 hours.  Dr. Bayati arrived sometime around 8, checked me and said, “OH!  The baby is right there, you are ready to push.”  I looked over and was said, “Riaz, Riaz, Riaz!  Wake up!  Its time to push.”  I think we were all a little out of it.  I really couldn’t feel a thing.  I asked them to turn down the epi so I could feel what was happening, but I did a few practice pushes and apparently I was a good pusher so they weren’t too worried about it.  

After probably an hour or so of pushing (which was very easy because I literally could not feel a thing), out came Baby Aiman!  He weighed 8 pounds, 5 ounces and was 21.5 inches long.  

Isn’t he cute!  

They put him on my chest and he proceeded to poop all over me – which everyone thought was just hilarious.  He had a ton of hair, his eyes were wide open and he was making a few cute little cries.  He ended up needing to be suctioned out because he had some mucus in his lungs, but they got it all out fairly quickly and he scored eights on his APGARS.  

I was in good shape too, just two little stitches and I was up and walking around within 30 minutes or so. 

They moved us into recovery and we started working on bonding as a family!

 

He is the sweetest little guy.  He sleeps like a champ – sometimes up to 4 hours at night, he is eating a ton and has already gained 4 ounces.  He only cries when he is hungry and when we are changing his diaper – which he HATES with a fiery burning passion, but all-in-all we could not ask for a better baby.  Plus … just look what he lets me do to his cheeks … 

… and how big his feet are … how can you not love a baby with such big feet!

Aiman Merrick Fredericks

Born April 29, 2009 at 9:53 a.m.  

Weighing in at 8 pounds, 5 ounces and 21.5 inches long.