King Tom's Kingdom

Ever since Hope was born, The Civee and I have been naming her toys for her (although The Civee would probably claim that between the two of us, I do more of the naming).  We’ve tried to be creative.  Sure, she has a stuffed monkey named “Monkey,” but she also has a few friends with unconventional names.  The penguin in the picture to the left is Schmidlapp.  Hope has a stout giraffe we call “No Neck.”  And there’s some weird stuffed bear/mouse hybrid named Mouse Rat.

As you can see, Hope likes to hold on to them tightly, or walk around with them, holding them by the tail, nose or other appendage.  And without a shadow of the doubt, we can say that she knows who they are.

A few weeks ago, the three of us were hanging out, with Hope running around the living room when I said something about Schmidlapp.  Hope stopped what she was doing, walked across the room, picked up the penguin in question and brought him over to me.

My immediate thought was “oh great, now I really have to watch my mouth around Hope.”

But even though I now have to be more cautious with what I say and call things, this has been a great development.  Hope knows more than the names of many of her toys.  She can point to some of her body parts when asked.  She knows where the pictures of her cousins are in her room.

For a few months, we’ve been using some basic sign language with her. Mostly eating-related, she knows signs such as “all done,” “more” and “bib.” She’s taken well to the signs, although lately, instead of making the sign for “more” when she wants more food, she points and makes a noise similar to “mooooouhhhh.” Because her (now repaired) cleft palate meant a possible delay in speech development, Hope gets to see a speech therapist, who we meet with about once a month.

According to the speech therapist, we can count the signs Hope knows and other things she responds to as words she can “say.”  Teaching her sign language isn’t about teaching her sign language, but rather how to communicate, starting with gestures, then verbal noises and moving on to actual words.

(On a side note, we started teaching Hope the signs before meeting with the speech therapist.  When we told the therapist which signs Hope knew, she questioned why we would want Hope to know the sign for “bib.”  Hope, who was walking past the therapist as she asked the question, started patting her chest- our sign for bib.)

Since the palate repair Hope has been making all sorts of new noises and sounds.  We still have to work with her to develop her muscles to get her to verbalize more.  But now that she’s actually figuring out what we’re talking about, I’m really going to have to watch what I say.

A few weeks ago, The Civee resumed her graduate classes, making Tuesday and Wednesday nights the time  Hope and I get to hang out and do fun things like listen to Weezer and watch the Yankees.

So last night we were hanging out, laughing, running around, listening to some music, waiting for the Yankees game to start and probably doing some other things which The Civee would disapprove of when it hit me- a year ago today, all this little baby could do was hang out.  Sure, she’d “listen” to whatever background music was on, but she couldn’t laugh, run or otherwise interact with me.  Hope has come a long way in just a year.  Have a look for yourself:

People have been saying that Hope looks like me.  I think they say that because her hair is just growing in while I’m starting to lose mine.  But I actually see a lot of The Civee in her.  Her smile, her sense of adventure and her coyness all remind me of her mother.  Still, she’s her own person.  She’s coordinated.  And strong.  And smart.

Back when she was a month old, I said something along the lines that I was surprised I hadn’t dropped or otherwise broken her.  Well, thankfully, the streak continues.  Although it is getting harder to hang on to her.  She loves to run around and is starting to do more things on her own.  And as much fun as it was to hold her as a newborn, it’s just as much fun to interact with her and watch her explore the world.

Happy birthday, Hope!

I should warn you up front that this post is going to be more explicit and mature than the usual nonsense featured here at the Kingdom.  This post is about one thing.  Well, two things actually.  The Civee’s breasts.  And this whole article has been posted with her approval.

Back before we were expecting a baby, The Civee and I had a goal for our future child: to be breastfed.  There are many benefits to breastfeeding- it promotes mother/child bonding, antibodies in the milk protect the baby from infections, particularly in the ear (this will be important later on), and it costs less than formula. (However, if you ask The Civee, she’ll tell you that how each mother decides to feed her child is her own choice that ought to be supported-there are many seldom talked about trade-offs and roadblocks that make it very hard or impossible for some women to breastfeed (Can you tell who wrote this sentence?).)

For guys out there who are single and/or not fathers yet, I should take some time to fill you in on what they don’t tell you about breasts during breastfeeding:

• They get bigger.
• However, they’re also off-limits.  You’re on a strict look-but-don’t-touch basis from before the baby’s birth until a few weeks after breastfeeding ends.
• Remember the Hatch in Lost? How a button had to be pressed every 108 minutes to release energy to keep the world from blowing up?  Well, milk-filled breasts are the same.
• They hurt.

Despite all this, we decided to do it.  However, there was a complication.  As regular readers of this blog know, we found out a few months before she was born that Hope would have a cleft lip and possibly a cleft palate, which would make it difficult, if not impossible, to create the suction to breastfeed (or feed from a normal bottle). Learning that breastfeeding our daughter may not be possible was difficult for The Civee to hear. We were a little sad about it.

Nevertheless, The Civee and I decided to do the next best thing to breastfeeding- she would pump- using a machine to extract the milk and bottle it, which we would then feed to Hope.  Since Hope would need two major surgeries before her first birthday and because cleft babies are more prone to ear infections, we decided this was the best way to go.

For The Civee, pumping was not easy.  The actual act was.  But everything involved with pumping was not.  The Civee had to pump multiple times each day (it started off about seven times each day, with at least one overnight session).  Each session lasted at least 20 minutes.  For the first three months, she would get up and feed Hope at 2:40 a.m., pump at 3:00 am, crawl back in bed at 3:30 and get up at 5:00 a.m. to start the process all over again. There were multiple pump parts to clean each time and bottles of milk to refrigerate.  If one of the pump parts broke, we had to track down replacement parts online.  If both of us were around, it was a bit easier.  But if, for example, I was at work and it was just Hope and The Civee, it could be quite a struggle for her to watch a baby and pump at the same time.

In addition to all that, there really wasn’t much in the way of support.  Most mothers who pump do it to supplement their breast feeding.  Apparently, there are very few mothers who just pump.  So finding resources and information was tough.  When we were at the hospital for Hope’s birth, we met several times with the lactation specialist, a person the hospital employs to help new mothers learn to breastfeed.  However, the specialist wasn’t familiar with pumping, at one point answering our question with a terse “Google it.”

Even in the face of all that opposition, The Civee pumped.  For the first six months of her life, breast milk was all Hope had to drink. Even after we introduced formula and food, breastmilk served as the mainstay of Hope’s diet.

When we first heard Hope would have a cleft lip, we were told many cleft babies have trouble with their milk/formula intake and have growth issues (the medical term is “failure to thrive”).  There was some learning on our part how to use the special bottles, but from the beginning Hope grew.  She’s not even a year old and she’s in 18-month clothes (mostly because of her height).  She’s also very active.  The evaluators and therapists we’ve met with are very happy with her development.  And she’s only had one minor ear infection.

The Civee and I (mostly The Civee) put the pump away last month.  Hope fully recovered from surgery number two (something we attribute to drinking mom’s milk moments after she woke up from surgery). Clearly, all of the pumping was worth it.  Because Hope can’t do it (right now), I’d like to thank The Civee for doing all that work.  We have a wonderful little daughter, and The Civee’s breasts played a large part in that.