It's official

Bat Girl is now crawling. I think we're in trouble.

Remembering

I finally got around to watching the Kellie Coffey video everyone's been talking about. I pretty much agree with everything Jody had to say, and the commenters too--the song itself is nothing special, and the lyrics are totally banal. The abortion/adoption bit in the first verses, along with the "something she would regret" reference, set my teeth on edge right away. And speaking of whiteness, Jody, did you notice that the only non-white people in the whole video were the interracial (black man/Asian woman) couple--like, heaven forbid they show either of them paired with a white person!

And yet.

I cried. I totally cried. It was the signs that did it--button-pushing, yes, but such a simple, powerful visual (if you ignore all the pregnant teenager/abortion stats in the beginning and the "gave up my career"). They made all the pain and heartache and frustration of infertility--feelings I haven't felt in a long time--come flooding back.

I have to confess that infertility is not a place I live anymore. Often, I am simply too caught up in the day-to-day of caring for an infant while working full-time to dwell on what it took to get here, other than, nearly every day, snuggling Bat Girl close and being thankful to have her--but I'd like to think that I'd feel the same way even if I'd gotten pregnant instantly.

The IF blog community has been so important to me over the past 3 1/2 years, and I still try to keep up with everyone--but looking at my blogroll, I realize that nearly everyone on it is now either a mother or is pregnant (which is an amazing and heartwarming thing). I would like to add some new TTC bloggers to my feeds and continue to give back some of the incredible support I have gotten over the years, but since people who are still TTC are, for obvious reasons, not likely to be hanging around commenting on my riveting posts about baby poop, nor on the new-mom-after-IF blogs I frequent, I don't often come across new bloggers. I love everything that Mel is doing to bring our community together, but I just don't have the time to click through her long (amazing! so well-curated!) list of blogs, reading and discovering, the way I used to do with Julie's big list.

And, to be brutally honest, even when I do click through to a new blog, it's sometimes hard for me to relate. I am not swimming in that bitterness anymore. I do still sometimes get angry when I see pregnant women, but more often than not it's not because they are pregnant, but because they are out walking the streets enjoying life while pregnant, something I never got to do. But the wrenching disappointment of the BFN, the canceled cycle--I understand it, but I don't feel it the way I used to. I still consider myself infertile, but let's face it--I've got the prize. I have what I wanted for so long, and so for the most part, the wounds of infertility have healed.

But watching the video made all those feelings rush back. And I hope that I never completely forget what it was like, no matter how healed, how whole, I am.

What my life has come to

The better part of my week was devoted to getting Bat Girl to poop. Something--perhaps the dehydrating effect of last week's hot weather, perhaps Bat Girl's overenthusiastic consumption of mango coupled with the introduction of applesauce--caused her to get all backed up over the weekend. It happened gradually, until Monday she was emitting what my husband said resembled fishtank gravel in size and texture. Poor thing. It didn't seem to bother her much, but it can't have been comfortable.

I talked to the pediatrician, who suggested prunes, or apple or pear juice diluted with water. I considered the Q-tip trick. But prunes were what did it--E@rth's Be*st Prunes and Oatmeal, eaten once a day at first (just a few spoonfuls), then twice a day in large portions. (Large for Bat Girl, anyway, meaning half a 4-oz jar.) Luckily she enjoyed them.

We had switched to size 3 diapers about a week ago, even though they're a little big for her, because the size 2 were starting to give her enough of a plumber's butt that I was worried about their ability to contain her output. And so this morning, when my phone rang at work, the first words out of my husband's mouth were, "If she hadn't been wearing a size 3 diaper..." Carnage contained, baby at peace, hallelujah for prunes.

And I just wrote a whole post about poop. At least it wasn't my own poop, this time.

Milk made

This morning, like always, I got up with Bat Girl around 6 am, changed her, fed her, and played with her until I had to get ready for work. I usually put her back in her crib and make silly faces at her while I brush my teeth, then she plays by herself (plays! by herself! I never dreamed the day would come!) while I shower. Whenever she's had enough (usually after about 5 minutes), she squawks until my husband gets up and comes to retrieve her. Today, though, as I was getting undressed, she decided she didn't feel like playing alone and started crying angrily. I went and got her, soothed her, and put her in bed with my husband. Then I looked down and saw...little droplets of milk on my nipples.

This isn't the first time this has happened. Every now and then, I still get the familiar tingling letdown sensation, usually if I've been rolling around on the floor with Bat Girl for a while or if she's upset about something. And I can still squeeze out a few drops if I try hard enough. It's not much--not even enough to soak through a thin T-shirt--but it's there.

Just to be clear: Two and a half months after weaning, I am still lactating. What is up with that?

Bloglines question

OK, I've finally joined the 21st century and gotten a Bloglines account. Am slowly adding feeds for what is apparently the hundreds of blogs I read. (In addition to my blogroll here, which I only update once in a blue moon, I've got a million blogs bookmarked.)

Those of you who are more experienced Bloglines users, maybe you can help me--why do some of the feeds display the whole entry and others only the first few sentences? And yes, I made sure the default posting length option is "display entire posting" and even went in to some individual feeds and changed it, but it still won't give me the whole entry. And the whole point of doing feeds is to make fewer clicks for myself, after all.

I could get used to this

Bat Girl turned six months old on Sunday, and I can finally say that this baby business does seem to be worth it, needles and 7 am wandings and five months of contractions and bedrest and all.

At six months old, Bat Girl is, if I may say in my totally unbiased opinion, an absolute delight. She rolls over, grabs for toys, sits unassisted (that one she's just been able to do in the last few days), and every chance she gets she pops up on her hands and knees and rocks back and forth like crazy, as if she could take off by sheer willpower alone. (We haven't done a shred of childproofing yet, so I'm hoping she holds off on crawling just a little bit longer.) She's still not 100 percent on board with solid foods, but when she likes something (avocado and banana are the current faves) she lunges for it with gusto. We had a golden week where she slept from 7 pm to 6 am straight through every night, but now that she's trying so hard to crawl that she's practically crawling in her sleep, we're back to once-nightly wakings. I'm not complaining, though--once a night is pretty damn good.

She's incredibly social and loves new people--when we go for walks she smiles and kicks her legs at every new face, and if someone comes up and talks to her (which everyone does), she squeals and giggles. When she laughs I laugh too, from pure joy. But in addition to her happy excitability, she also has a thoughtful side. I know it's weird to say that an infant is thoughtful, but there is something in her face...several people have independently said to us that she looks like she has an "old soul."

My husband and I often say to each other that we wish she could stay like this forever. She is a perfect baby. Except that if she stayed like this forever, we'd never get to see her grow up, and I suspect she will be a formidable young woman. And won't that be a sight to see.

(You know, it's funny, when I try to write about how special and awesome my baby is it just sounds like she's any old baby. Mommy blinders, I guess!)

Life isn't perfect by any means. I'm still having a lot of trouble making time to take care of myself--even to have a half an hour to sit in front of the TV and vegetate. We've yet to leave her with a babysitter or even a relative for more than an hour, so with the exception of when we were at my in-laws' and went out for ice cream after Bat Girl went to bed, we haven't had a date since...I can't remember. But we'll work that all out.

I just can't believe how lucky I am.