Cultural child-raising

Does it count as quality time with Baba if she's asleep and doesn't know she's having it?

Chillin' in her swing, staring at something of great fascination to her (we didn't see anything)

Maybe someday she'll have big swimmer paddles for hands, but she's got a little growing to do first

This morning I laid Zarya down for a nap in a room by herself while she was still fully awake.  Since her last nap I'd fed her, given her a bath, and carried her around a little bit while I did a few things around the house, and I figured it was about time for her to have some self-entertaining alone time and sleep.  (She had different opinions about the sleeping, but that's a different story.)  I left her in the bedroom and went into the kitchen to do dishes.  I could hear her making little noises to herself as she looked at whatever she found to be of interest and hung out in there on her own for a while.

While washing the dishes, I had the thought that I was already training her in my culture.  I'm not sure about all the details of Tanzanian child-raising practices, but I'm pretty sure that Tanzanian mamas don't tend to give their four-week-old babies intentional alone time or leave them by themselves to go to sleep.  Tanzanian adults don't like to be alone when sleeping and I think this probably comes from never having slept by themselves before (there are exceptions to this, but in general it seems to be true).  And what Tanzanian likes to be all alone in a room?  Not many!  Most homes in East Africa have lots of people and not many rooms, so people aren't usually alone much.  And why be alone when there are people around, anyway?  What's the point of that?  In my mind, it's good for Zarya to be alone sometimes - she's learning to entertain herself, learning that it's okay to be away from mama sometimes, and (hopefully) learning to put herself to sleep.  I have a feeling that while those values are important to me, they are lower on the scale of the average Tanzanian mother.

There are elements of personality that affect each person, but a lot of cultural values are learned ones, and I'm pretty sure I'm training Zarya up in American culture pretty thoroughly, even now.  Before she even knows how to talk, she's going to have preferences that Tanzanian children won't have, and vice versa.  Part of me thinks that it's a bit sad that I can't really help but give her all of this cultural input.  I like the idea of raising a child who is not so ingrained in her own culture.  But what can I do - whether I like it or not, I'm thoroughly American and have a strong cultural bias, and it's going to come through in my parenting practices.  I guess the only way to combat it a bit and raise a more balanced child would be to pack her up at a very young age and move her around the world or something drastic like that.  Maybe we'll just have to do that... :-)

3.5 weeks and very cute!

Three weeks

"So, how is it going?" people ask, and the other day my sister texted me, "When you have time, let me know how you are doing with the whole being a mom thing!"  Now, keep in mind that I call, e-mail, and text with my sister pretty regularly, so it's not like I've been keeping her in suspense for three weeks, but she, along with quite a few others, genuinely want to know how parenting is going.

I've been a mama for three weeks and two days, not that I'm counting.  Zarya is growing fast and I don't want to just survive this time and then in a few months realize I've missed her newborn stage.  Side note: she was weighed last week and came out at 10 pounds, 8 ounces (for my European friends, that's 4.8 kilos), so her days of being a wee little newborn are already over.  We've got a big little newborn on our hands...

Most of the time I feel like I'm just trying to figure out what to do - is it time for her to eat?  Do I really need to change her clothes after she spits up or just let them dry on her?  Why isn't she napping during naptime?  How can she have possibly pooped again?!

I have moments when I think that she's the cutest, sweetest, best baby ever and I have moments when I just want her to shut up NOW.  My favorite times are when I'm burping her, strange but true.  She snuggles into my shoulder and is awake, full, and - after letting out a giant belch - is quite happy.  I've discovered that infants are almost always asleep, eating, or crying, so when I get those rare awake AND happy moments, I seize them!  A few of her favorite things include baths and having clothes changed (odd, I know), so those are usually fun times, too.

Nice moments like this sometimes ...

... quickly turn into this...

... and we all love moments like this.

So in summary, it is going pretty well.  My days are now measured in five cycles of Zarya eating, having some awake time, and sleeping.  I'm trying to be realistic about my goals for the day - keeping myself and her fed, clothed, and clean, plus maybe one or two other things (like writing a blog post), qualifies as a highly productive day.  I've figured out that one outing a day is our maximum for right now, and that's okay.  She's a little trooper when it comes to traveling (she actually really likes her car seat), but it's too tiring for both me and her to go out more than once.  I am grateful for maternity leave (I get three months of leave) so I am not also feeling pressured to do translation work right now.  After a couple more months I know I'll be eager to get back into it, but I don't think I could manage to do much right now even if I tried.  But for now I'm sticking to things like "successfully took a nap today" as my productivity measures.

Swaddling??

Swaddling babies helps them sleep, "they" say.  Well, I say "they" have not met Zarya!  These are a couple of her favorite super-relaxed positions for sleeping - the flung out and the flung up options.  Super cute, I say, but impossible to swaddle!

Baby love

During my junior year at Hope College, one of my lovely VerBeek Cottage housemates was a wonder to me.  We'd be watching TV in the evenings and a commercial for diapers would come on with Huggies-clad tots crawling around and she's squeal, "Babies!"  She was just wild about any human under two years of age (she liked other age brackets just fine, but was crazy about the wee ones).  I never really got it.  (Side note: she now has three kids under age two, so I hope she is still wild about them.)

I babysat plenty as a teenager and had fun playing with kids old enough to carry on a little conversation and understand a game.  I know what to do with kids old enough for toys.  Babies, however, have always been a bit of a mystery, and not the sort of mystery that drew me in.

Several years ago in Musoma there was a family with whom I liked to spend time when possible.  They had two little boys whom I quite enjoyed.  One day I mentioned to them that although I liked their boys fine, some kids didn't really do it for me.  The father of the family told me, "You know those two bratty cats you have?  They don't talk or mature and their box makes your house stink, but you love them, right?"  I said, "Of course I love my cats!"  He assured me, "If you have kids someday, and I hope you do, I promise you that if you can love those cats, you will absolutely adore your own child."  All through my pregnancy, whenever I had doubts about being a mom to an infant, I recalled his words and was encouraged that although I might not be like my college housemate, maybe there was still hope for me.

Well, here I am to say that I'm totally smitten with Zarya!  I am fascinated just watching her sleep, I love the feel of her snuggled in my arms, I enjoy feeding her, even at 2:30am, and even changing her diapers doesn't seem like an awful chore (yet...).  She's my little baby and I'm in love.  I can't say I'm going to start cooing and squealing at diaper commercials or want to cuddle every baby I meet, but so far as my baby goes, I'm convinced she's the sweetest, cutest, most precious newborn ever.  She's way better than any cat.  :-)

Zarya's birth

Shortly after arriving at the birth center, about to have my water broken

A baby!  This picture was taken about 30 minutes after the one above.

Our lovely midwife, Nancy

For those who don't care to read labor and birth stories, don't worry about reading this blog post, just look at the pictures and then go to Facebook to look at more (thanks to Andrew, our family photographer).  And for those who do like the details, keep reading!

Early Friday morning (Nov. 2), I was awakened at about 2:30 with pre-labor contractions coming about every 10 minutes.  I could tell that these were definitely different than the Braxton-Hicks ones, but they didn't really hurt all that much, either.  I tried to get back to sleep, but having a contraction every 10 minutes doesn't really lend itself to snoozing!  The contractions stopped around 9:00am, so I thought I might be in for a few days of pre-labor off and on and got myself mentally ready for that option.  I was excited that maybe in the next few days Zarya would be born - I was anxious about going way overdue.

The contractions began again at around 11:00, but were well-spaced.  They were strong enough to convince us to cancel our lunch appointment, though, as I couldn't really sit down and carry on a conversation through them.  Around noon they got stronger and I felt nauseous with most of them.  They weren't all that close together though (5-7 min apart), and when we called the midwife to update her on where things were at (we'd talked to her a few times earlier in the day), she told us that contractions really need to be more like 3-4 minutes apart to "get the job done".

So, we kept keeping track of the timing and I started feeling pretty miserable.  The contractions were consistently 4-7 minutes apart by this point.  On a couple of the bad ones I thought, "I don't know if I can do this for like 12 more hours!"  The pain was mostly in the front of my upper thighs, of all the strange places to be experiencing it.  I was grateful that I didn't have any back labor, though - during contractions I could stand up and lean forward or walk around hunched a bit pressing my fists into my hip flexor muscles, which helped a lot.  It was the nausea that was really getting me, not the pain so much.  With that said, though, at 2:00-something I recall telling Andrew, "I didn't know contractions would hurt so much!"  But to be realistic, only about every 4th contraction was really bad.

At 3:00 we felt that the likely road conditions merited us leaving soon (it was pouring rain on a Friday afternoon, the very worst traffic time of the week.  In perfect weather and no traffic, the trip from our house to the birth center was a full hour long drive).  Contractions were consistently strong and 4-7 minutes apart.  I was quite concerned about handling the pain in the car, because I was not able to sit through them, but had to walk around pressing my fists into my thighs and I felt horribly nauseous during them.  Andrew was concerned about driving on I-5 in the kind of conditions that typically lead to stop-and-go traffic.

As soon as we got in the car we prayed and God answered miraculously.  All my nausea was gone!  The contractions continued, but they weren't quite as painful as before.  I even dozed off a few times between them.  I was a bit concerned that they might be slowing down and lessening and that the midwife would tell us to go back home again until things were serious.

Traffic was bad but not awful and it took us 90 minutes to get to the birth center instead of the usual 60.  It was one of the longest drives of Andrew's life, I think, with the pouring rain and traffic and me moaning and breathing heavily in the seat next to him.

We arrived at the birth center at about 4:30pm, hoping that I was at least somewhat dilated and effaced and that Zarya might be born that night or early the next morning.  Nancy, our midwife, was expecting us and had the lights dimmed, soft music playing, and towels being warmed in the dryer.  She checked me and announced that I was 6-7 centimeters dilated and completely effaced!  We were so surprised!  My waters had not broken yet, so she did that for me, at which point I suddenly became almost totally dilated and she told me I could start pushing.

I was taken a bit off-guard by things moving so quickly, since I'd been reading up on the different stages of labor and had imagined hours of labor and a rough transition labor stage.  I experienced the pause that is typical between transition and the pushing phase, so I guess I did go through transition, but it only lasted for a contraction or two.

Nancy told me when to push and with her coaching me and Andrew letting me grip one of his hands, after about eight mighty pushes (I'd like to think they were mighty, I can't really compare), out came Zarya's head!  When she told me that the head was nearly out, I thought, "Okay, this is the big one!"  Well, the head came out fine and I relaxed back, but then she said, "Now the shoulders, keep pushing."  I thought the shoulders would just slip out after the head, so was slightly chagrined that I had to give two more big pushes to get Zarya out the rest of the way.  It was when her shoulders came out that I tore a bit.  I guess she's already built like a swimmer with big shoulders!  Andrew, with Nancy helping, caught Zarya when she came out.  They immediately laid the baby on me and covered us with a warm towel.  I was almost surprised to see her, because I'd been focusing so much on labor and pushing that I'd kind of forgotten about the actual baby part of things.  She was born at 5:17pm, 45 minutes after we got to the birth center.

After the placenta came out (which, I have to say, felt really nice in a strange way), Nancy spent the next 35 minutes or so carefully stitching me.  It was like she was doing embroidery down there it seemed like it took so long!  But I do appreciate that she was being really careful to do a good job.  Andrew held Zarya right next to me so I could see her.  We called our families with the good news and surprised them a bit by how soon things had happened.  What could we say other than that we were surprised ourselves!

Zarya was weighed and measured and came out at 9 pounds, 2 ounces, and 22 inches long - a rather big baby for one only two days past her due date, so I am really glad she wasn't any later than that.  I fed Zarya, then Nancy washed her hair and got her dressed, and then checked me and got me up and dressed, and we were out the door on our way home at about 8:00.  There was no traffic on the way back and it was a significantly more pleasant and easy drive!  We sang along with a Chris Tomlin CD and talked about what a surprisingly good birth experience it was.  And it was - after five hours of labor, we had a beautiful, healthy baby girl. :-) God is so good!