walk and roll

A couple of pictures from last weekend:








I tried to give Cal some naked time just to let his butt breathe. In the ten minutes he was diaperless, he peed three times and pooped once. Yes, on the floor. Cooper was like, "See? See? He does it too!" Thank god for hardwood floors.


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Call last night was pretty quiet, though women started streaming in after the fireworks ended. I was up with a C-section until about 4am, after which point I managed to get a little sleep.

Arguably the best thing about working on L+D is that we're only two floors up from the Neonatal ICU, which means that when I pump at work, I can go to an actual lactation room with actual chairs and an actual lock on the door. Such luxury I have never known! I feel like a Hilton sister!

People are getting to the point where they're like, "You're STILL pumping?" but the thing is, there was never a natural break point where I thought, "OK, now's a good time to stop," so I just sort of kept going. And now that Cal's almost one, I feel like I have to at least finish out the one full year of breastfeeding, just to say that I did it AAP style, you know? I mean, breastfeed for eleven and a half months? That would be like dropping out of college with only one credit to go until graduation. Or something. Anyway, with the fancy pants pumping digs I have access to now, after eleven months of pumping in what is essentially a toilet stall, a few more weeks is no skin off my back.

Now the hard part is going to be figuring out how to wean him. Honestly, the thought has crossed my mind to just transition him to cow's milk during the day, but then continue allow him to nurse if he wants before bedtime. However, at that point, I don't really know if I'm doing it for him more or for me. One of my attendings told me that she ended up nursing one of her kids for two years, mostly (she realizes in retrospect) because she felt so guilty about working. I don't really have a grand plan here, so I'm just going to wait until his first birthday and then play it by ear. Our no-plan plan seems to have worked well enough so far.

Currently reading: "Survival in the Killing Fields." After reading that other book, I was interested in learning a little bit more, since I realized I knew absolutely nothing about that whole piece of history.

born on the fourth of july

I don't really have a topic in mind as I'm writing this, all I know is that I need to keep that freaky ventriloquist dummy picture from being the first thing that people see when they load this page. HE WILL EAT YOUR SOUL.

I'm on call for OB today. I thought that there'd be a million pregnant ladies beating down the door of the hospital so that they could have their baby on the fourth of July, but this has turned out to be not the case. No one loves America.

Anyway, as I mentioned before, it's almost Cal's birthday, so let the loot pour in. His newest toy? THE BALL ROOM.






It's called MEGAHOUSE, and it's basically this nylon house called that collapses down tiny but unfolds to monstrous proportions. It's made up of a bunch of little pods connected by tunnels. As apartment dwellers, we had to unhook the third pod and one of the tunnels so that we would, you know, have room to LIVE, but still, it is big. And the best part? It comes with a big bag of BALLS. And if you want to exponentially increase your fun, as we did, you can go in for the accessory BAG OF 100 BALLS. Then you will have a total of 150 BALLS to put in the BALL ROOM, thus transforming your living room into a Chuck E. Cheese. Happy birthday, boy or girl.

Seriously, the kiddie toys are taking over our whole house. Aside from THE BALL ROOM, Cal has also been gifted a little red wagon, some building blocks, and a tricycle. All this and no suburban garage to store all the stuff in. We're in trouble. At some point, I may have to sit down and examine whether or not the over-exuberance of birthday gifts is going to warp him and turn him down some dark path of growing up to be a spoiled brat, like those kids on that VH1 show, "The Fabulous Life of Celebrity Kids." Or worse yet, "My Super Sweet 16." (Hate those girls. HATE.) Yes, some time soon, we're going to sit down, Cal and I, and talk about values and materialism and all that kind of thing. But for now, I'm having too much fun playing with all his toys.

Currently spying: On my old patients in the SICU. I've been off service since Saturday afternoon, but I can't stop myself from checking up on them, at least from afar.