well, statistically speaking...

I've been meaning to write down some thoughts on behavioral economics and the adventure that is motherhood.  I think the phrase that I have to keep repeating to myself while learning how to raise M is that there are 'lies, damned lies, and statistics.'  Or, more crassly (which is really much easier to remember), is that statistically, every person on the planet has one testicle (half of the population are women who have 0 testicles, the other half have 2 testicles, so (1/2*0+1/2*2)/2=1).  So figuring out which statistics really make sense for the situation is difficult because, clearly, sampling the wrong population will get a useless statistical answer.  As a corollary, every child is a point in a population and it's difficult to say where along the continuum that child falls.  So it makes it even more difficult to decide whether the correct statistic is relevant to M or if he's outside the 95%.  If there's a 'fog of war', there should also be a 'fog of parenthood.'  Sigh.

toothless no more!

So this morning, Mr. Ray of Sunshine woke up at 5:40am after a 3:30am feeding.  Bleary-eyed, we started the day with just sitting in the dark so that he wouldn't get used to having activity that early.  I can't complain because the four nights prior, he SLEPT THRU THE NIGHT!  And the day before that, he cut his FIRST TOOTH!  OMGZORZ!  

It's been a really full two weeks for M.  He got his 6 month shots, had his first cold, cut his first tooth, and started 'solids.'  After a couple days of rejecting rice cereal, we moved on to sweet potato puree.  Which he'll eat about a teaspoon of per meal.  I'm thinking that this will be one of our few purees.  Bananas are up next and these I'll just cut into small pieces for him to gum to death.  More of a baby-led weaning approach so that he can learn to chew as well as swallow solid foods.  And, though the puree portion of his food adventures will be short, I'm glad we started with them.  I now know that 1) he'll eat stuff on his little spoon because he likes to chew on his little spoon; 2) if I want him to eat one teaspoon of food, I need to prepare two teaspoons because most of it will be wiped away from his face or dropped onto the bib; 3) having a food-oriented dog is a must so that you don't have to clean up the floor after ever meal.  The pug is loving all the dripped sweet potato.  He'll even eat the rejected rice cereal.  Yay!

Sitting up is hard to do

While M has been hitting his motor milestones pretty easily, we've been trying different things to keep him progressing since for most of his life, he's hated tummy time with the passion of a thousand burning suns.  Letting him play in his playmat was sure to result in the Kansas of all flat headed babies.  At almost 6 months, he's sitting up when supported but would prefer to be on his feet and bouncing (jumperoo-lover that he is).  And there's only so much time I can spend with him on my lap.  So I went looking for exercises to help him buff up his sitting capabilities.  We leaned away from the Bumbo since being BFF with the jumperoo was already enough to worry about.  We needed something safe, interesting enough to keep M's attention, and versatile.  What we found was...

... a cardboard box.  Yes, my friends, a pre-transmogrifier!  I lined the box with two blankets so that M would be nice and padded.  He gets to move around and work those baby muscles and lean back when he's tired.  I drop a couple toys in his lap and he's good to go for a bit.  An added bonus is that all the toys stay put so M gets to practice reaching and grabbing for toys.  And who knows, maybe he'll transmogrify into a dinosaur...

Mommyhood

I signed up for this.  Can't say I was warned properly.  Nothing really prepares you.  And even when the sailing's smooth, there's always the storm at the horizon of something... teething, growth spurts, sickness, scraped knees, etc.  I wouldn't trade this adventure for the world.

Daylight (and sanity) savings time

From all the books and interwebs I've encountered, I've come to grips with the phrase 'every baby is different.'  Some friends, especially those who work, have babies that have had regular schedules since they learned the difference between night and day.  M, on the other hand, has a schedule reminiscent of Plinko (from Price is Right).  We do have a loose routine Eat, Play, Sleep.  It's loose because half the time he's too full from his last meal to eat when he wakes.  So it looks more like Play, Eat, Play, Sleep.  Currently, it's working for us since it allows for tummy time with less up-chucking.  And anything that makes the much-hated tummy time more palatable is welcome.

It's difficult because I'm o.b.s.e.s.s.e.d. with M's schedule and the number of hours he sleeps in a day.  It's all recorded and analyzed in my little Excel spreadsheet.  I have complicated, nested formulas that compile, average, analyze and display his eating, peeing, pooping and sleeping.  

The hardest part of not being able to keep to a schedule is that 3 out of 5 weekdays, the hard-working husband doesn't get to see him before he goes to bed at night.  M started putting himself down for the night at about 10 weeks old.  He just went to sleep like any other nap and he'd sleep for 5-6 hours.  And his preferred bedtime was 5:45pm.  It hasn't really changed much since. From months 2.5-5, he was usually asleep by 6:30pm.  So I decided not to do anything to change his schedule at all for this spring-forward daylight savings.  Last night, he went to bed at 7:30pm.  Even if it lasts only this week and he starts adjusting back to his preferred 6:30pm, it'll be a week where the husband will be able to enjoy his company when he gets home from work.  

I've Paula Deen-ed the Oatmeal

You know how some dieticians say that you've gotta eat within 30 minutes of waking to get ye olde metabolism going?  Dieticians must never have met a mommy schedule.  I eat breakfast when M goes down for his morning nap.  And by then, I'm ravenous.  So what's a breastfeeding mommy to do? 

Well, I decided that for my health and possibly milk production, to incorporate a bowl of oatmeal into my daily diet.  While all evidence that oatmeal is a galactogogue is circumstantial, at the very worst, my colon will thank me.  What wasn't going to thank me was my taste buds.  Oatmeal isn't exactly a bowl of chocolate puffs soaked in chocolate milk sprinkled with chocolate shavings eaten with a chocolate spoon.  So I went about looking for recipes that would make daily servings of oatmeal more palatable without adding too much unhealthy stuff.

And, to warn you, I've only tried two.  Because I was happy with the second one. 

The first was Alton Brown's Overnight Crock Pot Oatmeal.  I got all the ingredients from Trader Joe's (steel cut oats, dried fruit, half and half).  I busted out our neglected slow cooker and poured it all in.  Left overnight, it made the house smell delicious if a bit burnt.  Our slow cooker is apparently a little more powerful than average since it kind of caramelized to the point of blackness the sugars from the dried fruits.  Still pretty tasty, though.  And since it was a slow cooker recipe, very little work.  But something in me didn't find this fruity oatmeal to be something I could eat on a daily basis.

And then I came across this simpler (in terms of flavor) oatmeal recipe at notmartha.  It calls for toasting and BUTTERING the steel cut oats before boiling it in water and milk.  The nutty flavor from toasting the oatmeal in BUTTAH really makes it, too.  The fact that there's no berry flavoring built in like the previous recipe means I get to add what I want on the days that I want it.  I double the recipe from Orangette and keep it in the fridge for heating.  Doubling the recipe means I have about 3-4 days worth of oatmeal that I can quickly nuke and eat.  Perfect for my ravenous breastfeeding appetite.

the fury in the sound

I sleep better with a white noise machine droning.  Or in our case, an old iphone playing rain sounds on a continuous loop.  In his 5 months of life, M has had very few nights without it.  So when a news article about white noise machines potentially damaging baby hearing came along, mothers all across the internet had the huge PANIC button in their brain slammed with a non-informative hammer.

And by 'non-informative' I mean normal science reporting.  News presenters with shabby understanding of science and even less desire to delve into the subject taking a single study and branding it as God's honest truth. But let's set aside the sensationalistic tendencies of the news to concentrate on the question of whether parents should worry about their white noise machine.

Should parents worry?
The answer is: no one friggin' knows.  It's never been scientifically tested.

But what about this Dr. Blake Papsin and his research into sound machines?  Well, what Papsin really tested was the loudness of sound machines.  They found that almost all sound machines CAN be loud enough to damage hearing (>85dB), especially if the machine is within a foot of baby ears.  In other news, I CAN drive my car over the speed limit.

I'm sure there are some parents who placed their sound machine in the crib or very close to the baby and turned it on to whatever loudness is default.  Papsin's research says to move it further away and lower the sound.  For some, this was probably a good cautionary reminder.  I definitely kept my white noise machine at shower loudness (a la Dr. Karp).  After reading the various news articles, I downloaded a sound meter app and found that I could probably reduce the loudness of M's white noise.

But even without the white noise, the sound meter was registering an ambient sound level of 50-53 dB.  Was living near a highway in Seattle (with the pitter patter of rain) damaging to my little baby's hearing?  According to Papsin, 50 dB of continuous noise was damaging.  Since Papsin's work used sound meters and not baby ears, where did that 50 dB number come from?

Well, it seems that the 50dB (A-weighted... which means higher frequencies are considered 'louder' than lower frequencies) recommendation is from preemies in the NICU.  A study found that putting ear muffs on preemies allowed them to sleep better.  So the recommendation became to keep things as quiet as possible so that the babies sleep better.  The recommendations included nurses wearing softer shoes and not writing on top of the incubator.  There are also studies showing preemies being more likely to have hearing issues... but this has not been shown to be because continuous/loudness of noise in the NICU.  <50 dB is a recommendation to improve sleep in preemies,  not to keep them from hearing loss.  So there's no scientific evidence showing that continuous noise >50 dB damages hearing in infants.

So are there any studies looking at what loudness of continuous sound harms baby hearing?  No.  The closest thing is continuous loud sound in utero (when still in the womb).  Multiple studies have shown a correlation between babies in the womb being exposed to continuous loud sounds (85 dB for 8 hours a day) and a lot of bad stuff including hearing loss.  So there's some evidence that noise levels that cause damage in adults also cause damage in unborn babies.  That's not really surprising, though, is it?  But that doesn't answer whether lower levels of continuous noise damage the hearing of already born babies.  

Will this make me stop using white noise for M?  No.  Because though we do not know whether it's damaging his hearing,  I do know it helps him sleep better.  And better sleep equals better health.  THAT is definitely known.  On the other hand, I'm going to moderate the use of the sound machine somewhat by moving the machine further away and keeping the volume turned down.