I have a week and a half left of maternity leave, so of course now is when I would start to feel really comfortable going out and doing things with Mo. We have our schedule more or less in place, with three naps a day, so now if she misses one nap, I don’t feel like everything is going to go to shit. So that gives me a 3-4 hour window in which I feel comfortable going out.

Yesterday I took Mo for her first trip to the big city to go meet Jay for lunch. We visited his office so all his co-workers could meet her and marvel at how adorable and alert she is, and then ate in Millennium Park while the CSO was practicing. Pretty nice! Today we went shopping with my mom and tomorrow we have a playdate. It’s nice to not feel like a shut-in anymore.

I do think I’m ready to go back to work, though. It helps that I think the nanny we found is so amazing, and she’s coming to our house, and she will handle Mo’s schedule exactly how I tell her to. And maybe wash some bottles and do some laundry while she’s here. I probably wouldn’t feel the same if I had to send Mo to a daycare center. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, and we may have to do that at some point… But for now, I am really happy that Mo will be in her familiar house, getting one on one attention.

Not that I don’t love spending time with Mo, but being with her all day, every day has made me a bit neurotic. I obsess over the stupid mundane details, like when is the EXACT right time to put her down for a nap or how much time should I spend directly interacting with her versus letting her play on her own or why did she eat half an ounce less than she normally does? At work, I can control all the little details, but babies are so unpredictable. I think if I can take a step back and let the nanny handle the tedious stuff, I will be able to enjoy Mo even more than I already do.

I do wish I could work from home more than just one day a week, though. It would be nice to be able to step away from work for a few minutes at a time to visit her… Or take her on a walk at lunchtime. It would also be nice to not have to spend 2 hours a day in my car. Oh well… A girl can dream…

A friend from college came by this week to meet Mo for the first time. Now, I know better than anyone that people without kids sometimes have a hard time coming up with things to say about new babies. I’ve been there. I am not a baby person, and I have never pretended to be. However. I would think that it would be obvious that “She’s not pretty” is a completely inappropriate thing to say to a new mom about her baby girl. I don’t care what kind of backpedaling, feminist bullshit excuse you try to come up with, it’s just not right. Friend, if you’re reading this, I forgive you but you need to seriously work on your tact. But you know this already, right?

And yesterday, my mom was babysitting while I had a doctor’s appointment. She tells me that while she was feeding Mo, she sneezed or coughed or whatever, which startled the baby. Mo doesn’t like to be startled, so she cried. This happens often, especially when Mo is groggy while eating. My mom, however, thinks that Mo needs to toughen up, so she decided to randomly BARK at my daughter while feeding her, to get her used to loud noises. I mean, it’s a wonder I didn’t end up a serial killer.

Kane County Chronicle | Breast-feeding rally draws crowd in DeKalb.

Ugh. That shop owner is horrible. Forgive me if anything in my last post seems to support that lump of crap. There’s nothing sexual about breast feeding, and if he sees it that way, it’s clearly his own personal perversion.

And property rights? Gross. I can’t believe I came out on the side of a libertarian. I need to go wash out my brain now…

Public breast-feeding – Chicago Tribune.

So, I am totally on board with women’s right to breastfeed in public. I don’t mind seeing boobs, and I think people who do mind are sexualizing something that is not at all sexual and should generally shut the fuck up.

However. As a bottle-feeding mother, I’m not sure what series of events would have to happen to have me bust out the formula in the middle of a small business. Who wants to eat their lunch in the middle of a used record store? Not Mo, I know that.

Perhaps the owner didn’t object to the boobage as much as he objected to the loitering… You are taking up valuable space in the owner’s business while your kid eats lunch. Should we just all bring sack lunches while we shop? Picnic at the Walmart? Do you really need to shop for used records so badly that you can’t take a lunch break for your baby?

Like I said, I’m not against public breastfeeding. But I think this lady maybe should try to be a little more sympathetic to the shop owner. A shop, after all, is not necessarily a “public place.” It’s a privately-owned place, where someone is trying to make a living…

I finally called the nanny’s references! Thank god they turned out to be glowing recommendations, since I have to go back to work in a little over 3 weeks, and I’d be in serious shit if I had to start over on the nanny search. Especially since I love ours so much – it would be tough to live up to my expectations.

One of the few bright spots in not being able to sell our house is that we can afford a nanny for Mo instead of sending her to a daycare. Obviously I don’t have any problem with daycare centers, but if you can get one-on-one attention for your infant, I think that’s the way to go. When she gets older, I’ll want her to socialize with people her age, but for now, I’m happy having her at home. And a nanny will follow our feeding and naptime schedule better. And maybe do some household chores.

That last part was definitely not a requirement for a nanny, but ours seems eager to help out around the house, and who am I to argue? I know better than anyone how boring it can be to watch an infant. Especially one that naps for 5+ hours a day. (Note: whenever I mention Mo’s excellent napping, she immediately wakes up and cries for an hour. Some kind of voodoo.)

Aaanyway, we found our nanny through Care.com. There is a monthly fee, but it was totally worth it. I could browse through hundreds of potential nannies or post a job listing. We never posted a job – just contacted a few who seemed good. I initially contacted 3 women, and only 2 wrote back. We had interviews with those two, and chose the second one. Care.com ran a background check and attempted to contact the references. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to reach the references, so that part was kind of a bust. I’m not sure how hard they really tried, since both references called me back within an hour. I probably would have wanted to call them myself anyway. (That’s a lie. I hate calling people, especially people I don’t know.)

It sounds pretty bad that we only interviewed 2 potential nannies, but the one we found was so perfect, interviewing more would have been a waste of time. She’s a 50 year old Polish woman who was a nurse/midwife in Poland. She is friendly and loves babies and likes to do housework. It’s costing us a buttload, but it’s still cheaper than that mail order bride I was looking at…