My daughter “the diva” is now 11 months old, but she’ll be turning 1 in three days. About a week after she turned 11 months, she started to do a real crawl! I was thrilled because most of the other babies I’ve seen were crawling at like 8 months old. She can’t pull herself fully up to a standing position, but she goes to the tippy tops of her knees and then she get frustrated since she can’t get up any further. Sometimes I give her a little boost and she can pull herself up from that point. She now opens & closes her hands, and can also put her hands on her head. Today I looked in her mouth and the poor thing has 4 molars coming in, and 2 incisor teeth. No wonder she’s been super cranky this week. We go to the doctor for her 1-year checkup/shots ON her birthday. Good thing she won’t know it’s her birthday because I feel bad about her having to get shots then.

As for music, she still loves to sway and sing along when her dad plays guitar for her. It’s funny because my husband and I will harmonize on a song and hold the note, and she will belt out a flat note REALLY loudly and makes us crack up. A few weeks ago I was cleaning the floor, so I decided to play some music to help me deal with the chore. I was playing Nine Inch Nails (NIN) and the song “Hurt” came on. “The Diva” was playing with her toys on a mat, and about 10 seconds after Trent Reznor stars singing, she started humming and then singing really loudly. I was surprised because “Hurt” isn’t the kind of song with a strong beat or rhythm, at least in the beginning, and the vocals aren’t high pitched or upbeat. Then I remembered that this child has been hearing the band Ours and other melancholy music her entire life, so why wouldn’t she respond to that sort of music. Haha.

Since her 1st birthday is on February 8th, we were going to have her very first party this Saturday, the 6th. We never throw parties so this is a big deal. I bought all kinds of decorations, I bought lots of food for cooking & baking, I was going to order a pretzel tray, an ice cream cake, and we were going to have just family over, so we were expecting 17 people. Well, as any of you who live in the North East know, it’s freakin’ snowing out as I type this. Let me rephrase that. It’s a blizzard outside! We’re expecting about 12 inches of snow, and all of the people who were supposed to come to the party live about an hour away, and many of them won’t drive even if it’s only 5 inches of snow. I was going back and forth like crazy yesterday trying to decide if I should cancel it or not, because I never trust the forecasts. But it looks like this is definitely going to be a bad one, so I had to cancel it. I rescheduled it for the following Saturday instead, but because it’s last minute and Valentine’s Day weekend, 4 or 5 of the people can’t come to the party now. I’m annoyed with Mother Nature because I bought all this food to make like 2 big ziti’s among other things, and now I don’t need that much. Plus I’ll probably have to buy new produce since that stuff goes bad so quickly. I also heard that we might get snow next wknd also. If that happens, I’m just going to have her party anyway, and whoever shows up, shows up. Even if it’s just us three and maybe I’ll invite the neighbors to help eat the food. I’m not good with change and love consistency, so whenever this last minute stuff comes up it drives me insane. I feel bad for my little girl, but I know that 1 year olds have no clue what’s going on anyway. Hopefully having snow on her birthday doesn’t become a pattern, like that one little girl I saw in the news who is 3 or 4 years old and has never had a birthday party because EVERY one of them has been canceled due to snow. Poor kid.

I’ve held off on writing about this for awhile because it’s a sore subject for me and I feel really sad whenever I think about it. The band Live and I have a history - a long, complicated history that involves lots of late nights rocking out, drunken after-parties, “rockblocking” (I’m not naming names), and of course music. BTW, my concert road trip friend and I coined the term “rockblock” (from “coc*block”) to mean a person who intentionally prevents another person from talking, dancing, or hanging out with a rock star. For instance, you’re in the middle of dancing & talking with said rock star at an Atlantic City club, and someone grabs said rock star from the back of his shirt to pull him away from you, and starts dancing with him herself. You, my friend, have been Rockblocked. Before I became a mom less than a year ago, my total number of concerts attended was over 100. For Live specifically, I think it’s somewhere around 50 shows; I stopped counting after 30. My love of the band started when they became mainstream in the early 90s, and just grew from there. I not only loved the albums Mental Jewelry and Throwing Copper, I loved A LOT of their albums, especially Secret Samadhi. With Live, I loved the sound of the vocals, the chord progressions, the whisper to wailing, the lyrics, their high energy concerts, etc. Once I got to know the band over time, I loved the band members themselves, as people. Really nice, genuine, fun guys to hang out with. I slowly saw things change over the years: the music became softer, the lyrics became more literal, the shows became repeats of prior shows, some band members seemed bored, certain egos developed, and the passion of the music seemed to fade. When I found out that Live was taking some time to split and do their own thing, I wasn’t surprised. What did surprise me was Chad Taylor’s (lead guitarist) blog post saying that Ed Kowalczyk (singer) stabbed the band in the back by signing a hidden contract that the other band members knew nothing about. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but either way, their close ties to each other as friends and musicians seem to be over for good. I feel really sad about it, for them as individuals, and for me personally. Besides the music itself, which has been a big part of my life for various reasons, Live has been the source of many different chapters in my life. Let me explain.

Love. When I first met my husband, I wasn’t interested in him at all. He was hitting on me constantly, but I kept ignoring him. He found out I liked Live and pulled out a guitar and played a Live song. I started to like him after that. Haha. The song “Dance With You” was our “1st dance” song at our wedding. Friendship. My closest friends today are people I’ve met at Live shows. When you go to a ton of shows from one band, you see and meet a lot of the same people, and that’s how I met a bunch of my friends; a few of them are my best friends. Death. We all have certain songs that hit a nerve with us when it comes to love & death. In college when I lost a friend from a drug overdose, the music helped me deal with it. Life. Music will always be my life, and once I heard Live I wanted to learn guitar, which I did. Because of Live, I was introduced to many different bands & musicians, and some of them have even replaced Live as my favorite band. The 6 degrees of separation game can go on and on with this, but briefly…Ed Kowalczyk’s brother, Adam Kowalczyk, tours with the band as a guitarist, and also has his own music. One night after a show, Adam introduced me to his friend, Jimmy Gnecco, who he said is in a band called Ours. I checked out Ours after that and OMG, instant love. Ours is now my passion. I’ve gotten to know Jimmy over the years, along with one of my best friends, and now she basically works for them on the side. One night after a show I was telling Jimmy that there’s this awesome reality show on called Rockstar Supernova. I told him how I loved the original show, Rockstar INXS, and this one is just as good because you get to see some great performers who sing some GOOD songs, not just mindless pop. He laughed at me, thinking it was probably cheesy, but I said how there’s these 2 guys on the show that are especially good: Lukas Rossi and Ryan Star. I told him to give it a chance. Well, a few years later I’m at a Ryan Star show wearing an Ours shirt, and he noticed my shirt right away saying how he LOVES Ours and is a huge fan, and how he was trying to get in touch with Jimmy for something. A few years after that, not only do Jimmy Gnecco/Ours have a tour WITH Lukas Rossi/Stars Down, but Jimmy also performs during Lukas Rossi’s tv show appearance in Canada, doing backup vocals on Lukas’s beautiful song “Enya.” It’s an AWESOME performance:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR0lwnO2ZjY  . There’s a million more connections like this that all started from me liking the band Live, but you get the point. So that’s why I’m sad about the breakup of Live- because it was the beginning of so many things in my life, and now the band is ending. Maybe that’s why the song Lightning Crashes was Live’s biggest radio hit. It’s about the cycle of life- death & rebirth, beginnings & endings, and everyone can relate to that at some point in their life. So this is my “Lightning Crashes” moment.

Once things finally started to slow down a little bit and my baby was actually taking a few naps, I had time to reflect on what was going on around me and in my life. My daughter was almost 7 months old already, I became a stay-at-home mom when she was born, and my past life was history. And I missed it. I had a B.A. and was very successful in college, I finally had a career going at a great company, and I was a concert loving girl who would go out and party with friends at shows throughout most of the North East part of the country…and Ohio once. (I once road-tripped from NJ to Cleveland to see a Live concert, and went back to NJ that same night because I had to go to a housewarming party by 4pm the next day.) I loved the adrenaline I would get from live rock shows and the feeling of truly living life and having fun. Now, I haven’t been to a show since I was around 8 months pregnant, and I miss it. Instead, I sneak in a few moments on the computer where I can catch someone’s YouTube video of clips of a show here and there. I try to pretend I’m there, but it doesn’t really work–especially when my baby starts crying to let me know she’s up from her nap. And -SNAP- back to reality I come. I do love and appreciate my new life, and I’ve also accepted it. It’s just every now and then I’ll hear something about a band or artist I love and then it makes me wish I could just go to a show. The reason I can’t is because I’m breastfeeding so I’m literally connected on a chain to my daughter who wants to eat like every 3 hours. I could pump a few days before and leave a bottle for my husband, but I am not bringing a breast pump to a show for when I get “full” from missing a feeding. I don’t think so. Can you picture me going to a show at Maxwells in Hoboken, NJ or the North Star Bar in Philly and trying to use their single-person bathroom for 20 minutes trying to pump? Oh and then carrying around a bag of breast milk during the show? Now that’s classy. haha. Plus, my husband would freak out if I left him with “the Diva” for that long, and unfortunately no one we know would babysit and stay overnight for it.

Since I can’t go to shows for the time being, I fill that void by singing to my daughter the songs I’d like to hear at a show again. Of course I don’t do them justice, but she doesn’t know that. She laughs and “sings” along with her deep sounding, off-key “ahhhhhhhh.” She always does that every time my husband or I sing. Our little harmonizer. As for milestones, she’s finally starting to sit up on her own a little bit, but we have to do the pillow thing where there’s a sea of pillows 360 degrees around her, for when she falls back or does a face plant. She is no where near crawling yet, but I read that only 50% of babies can crawl at 6 months and by 11 months 90% of babies can crawl, if they do at all. She’s a really big baby (95th percentile in height & weight) so I think she needs a lot more muscle to carry around all that extra weight. The one issue I can’t seem to find a solution for is her eczema and cradle cap. The eczema is really bad behind her knees and it looks painful and red, but the doctor says it’s not bad enough to give her medicine for it yet and to continue using the Eucerin Aquaphor ointment. As for the cradle cap, I keep putting the Aquaphor on her head, combing out the flakes, and washing her hair with gentle shampoo, but it’s still there. I’d love some suggestions if anyone knows of how to combat the cradle cap. I thought cradle cap was only a newborn baby issue, but apparently not since my daughter is just about 7 months old.

To think that about 9 months ago I was at an Ours show dancing and rocking out to “Live Again” and now I’m talking about combing out cradle cap flakes. Times do change, huh?

My daughter’s colic was driving us crazy, so my husband and I would frantically run around the house to do the few things that would help calm her, if only for a few moments. The first thing we found that helped was rocking her while she was in her bouncy seat. We would bounce the seat with our foot constantly (she didn’t like the vibration option of the seat). The minute we stopped or walked away from the chair the wailing would begin, so we’d take turns. The other thing that would help a lot was me singing to her. Not just any song, though. It had to be “Meet Me In The Tower” by the band Ours. Is it a coincidence that this was the song I would always play to her using earbuds while she was still in my belly? Who knows, but this song made her stop crying instantly. Maybe it’s the high pitch “head voice” I would use while singing it, or the sound of the scale, but I like to think it was the song itself because my girl has an ear for talent. haha. She would sometimes quiet down from hearing the song “Dizzy,” also by Ours, but Tower was definitely the favorite for her. The problem with both of these “colic-solving” methods is that I would constantly have to rock or sing, otherwise she would keep crying. And I didn’t have any time on my hands as it was.

It was then that I discovered my favorite baby invention EVER: The cradle swing. I’ve heard people say what a great product it was and how I HAD to register for it while pregnant, so I got one at my shower. Even though most people don’t seem to use it until the baby is a little older, I was ready at 3 weeks. It was like instant heaven and I would happily put tons of money into D batteries if it continued to work as well as it did. We used the side-to-side cradle option of the swing, which she seemed to like best. This was the Fisher Price Ocean Wonders Aquarium Swing and it gave me the silence that I longed for. When she had to get the 1st round of immunizations at 1 month old, once we got home she cried worse than she has ever cried before. My husband and I were really upset and scared and didn’t know what to do, so he put her in the swing as a last resort. She instantly quieted down and fell asleep. The only issue with the swing was that it wasn’t a permanant solution since we couldn’t pack up the swing and bring it to a store or anywhere else because it wasn’t really portable.

I started looking online for colic cures, and I read that a lot of people swore by this one book, “The Happiest Baby on the Block” by Dr. Harvey Karp. I got it at the library, and I’m so thankful I did. He’s known for “the 5 S’s,” which are Swaddle, Side, Shhh, Swing, & Suck. I’ve read about a few of those methods before, but they never worked for my baby when I used each method individually. It’s the specific combination of them that brings on a baby’s “calming reflex” and the book explains exactly how to turn it on. It actually worked on my baby! So many people are turned off from swaddling when their baby fusses the first few times from it, but within a few days of it, my baby LOVED it. She would even put her little arms down straight for me as I was wrapping her. I liked using the pre-made, SwaddleMe wraps the best since she couldn’t kick out of it. The main reason I loved swaddling so much is that it allowed me to get sleep. For the first time ever, she finally slept 5 hours straight at about 8 weeks old. Before swaddling, she would have reflex movements where her arms or legs would kick/move, which would wake her up, so wrapping her up prevented this. I highly recommend swaddling, and I used it until my baby was about 4 1/2 months old. As for the “Shhh” step, I never realized how loud you’re supposed to “shhh” until reading the book. You’re supposed to do it REALLY loud, like a vaccum cleaner, which seems weird and counter-productive, but it works. Oh, and even though I was breastfeeding, I did use a pacifer for the “Suck” step since my daughter was nursing okay. (I actually started her on a pacifer at 2 weeks because I couldn’t take the crying and the pacifer made it more dealable). My only regret is I wish someone would have told me about this book sooner, like while I was pregnant. I may have gotten more sleep earlier on. The best thing about the 5’s, is that you can use them while you’re out and about. If you’re baby starts screaming at the store, pick her up and start swinging her back and forth (like REALLY swinging her) while Shhhing really loud. If you have a colicky baby, I strongly suggest you read the book and at least try swaddling for a week. If all else fails, repeat the mantra that I would say over and over again:  it’s only for 3 months or so and that’s such a small amount of time when you look at the big picture. It will be over soon. Good luck!

We didn’t waste any time introducing our daughter to live music. On her 2ndday home from the hospital, my husband treated her to her first living room concert, which consisted of him playing acoustic guitar and singing, with me harmonizing. He played a variety of alternative rock covers and a few originals, and I think it was the most captive audience he ever had. While in her bouncy seat, she didn’t take her little eyes off of him or the guitar. She seemed to enjoy the show, which for an infant basically meant that she didn’t cry. Haha. That evening I played her cds which included some of the same songs I used to play her on my mp3 player when she was in my belly. I figured it would be calming to her since it would be something familiar. Yes, who knew that Nine Inch Nails could be associated with calming a baby.  “The Frail” off of “The Fragile” album, anyone?

Over the next few weeks, my husband continued to perform little concerts for our daughter and she actually seemed to develop preferences. Besides liking the songs she was familiar with from hearing them in utero, she liked Guns N Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine,” which is kind of funny because I hate that song. I have no respect for Axl Rose or his behavior, I don’t like his voice, his dancing, or his songs. So it’s a little amusing, and annoying, that my “musically groomed” child not only likes “Sweet Child of Mine”, but also “Patience,” and”November Rain” by GNR. My husband likes those songs, so he continues to play them for her. I think the only reason she likes “Sweet Child of Mine” is because of the guitar intro in the song. I guess it kind of resembles the sound of a nursery lullaby. Speaking of lullabies, she absolutely LOVES the song “Meet Me in the Tower,” off the album “Distorted Lullabies,” by the band Ours. Because of that, I haven’t lost faith that she will develop a good taste in music, like her mom. In a future blog post I’ll explain more in how that song saved my sanity for the first 3 months of her life.

The outcome of having two musical parents is that they tend to write a lot of songs about their life, which includes their children. So my daughter already has about 5 songs about her. But they aren’t real songs. They are jingles. Really corny, kid-friendly jingles. The kind that you don’t really want other people to hear you sing, but you know that it makes your child smile or laugh, so you sing them anyway.  I’ll embarrass myself by singing to her in public about her belly button or her Love Bug toy just to get a squeal. Maybe the true test of being a parent is being willing to make a fool out of yourself to make your baby happy. If so, I passed with flying colors.

I was just about 37 weeks pregnant and the baby was still breech. People stopped saying to me that she has plenty of time to turn, because we were running out of time. The doctor mentioned that if the baby was still breech for the next appointment, then he’ll try external version which is when they try to turn the baby from pushing on your stomach (which I hear is pretty painful and doesn’t always work). My hospital doesn’t attempt vaginal births for breech babies. I began to get desperate and didn’t want to play the waiting game any longer so I started to research what I can do. I found a list of a variety of things and I pretty much did ALL of them. The funniest of which were the different physical positions, like laying on your back on the floor with your legs up against the couch sticking straight up in the air (breech tilt). Or getting on all fours and laying your arms and top-half of your body on the ground, so that your butt is sticking up to the highest point possible (cat stretch-ah, how I hope the mailman didn’t see me those days). Or laying on your back with your knees bent and putting 3 huge pillows under your butt (pelvic tilt). Or trying to do this choreographed “crawl” around my entire house on hands and knees (on hardwood floors), which gave me a lovely array of knee bruises.  I also sat on my exercise ball and would rotate my hips around in a circle for about 30 minutes at a time.

The less physical methods included meditation and focused thinking, such as picturing my baby turning; putting an ice pack on my stomach; very light self-massages in a circle motion on my belly. I would shine a flashlight on my belly from up high and slowly move the light down to where the head _should_ be; the idea being that the baby wants to follow the light with its eyes/head. I would sit at work and do this in between my work assignments. I would also do the same thing with tapping my hand, instead of using a flashlight, hoping the baby would follow the noise. My husband would talk to my pelvic area in hopes that the baby would follow the sound. But the method I used the most was playing music from my mp3 player and putting the headphones up to my pelvic area. I found myself using a set mix of about 10 songs, mostly softer-sounding alternative rock-type songs, and a few slow pop songs.  I tended to use higher pitch songs since I heard that babies seem to like high pitched voices. My song list included “Dizzy”, “Meet Me in the Tower”, and “Places” by Ours (these became my “staple” songs throughout my pregnancy), “The Frail” by Nine Inch Nails, most of the “Ok Computer” album by Radiohead, “Angel” and “I Love You” by Sarah McLachlan, “Turn My Head” by Live, “Angel Standing By” by Jewel, and “I Grieve” by Peter Gabriel. I also put some original songs from my husband on my mp3 player, one which included both of us singing, and played them to the baby down low, since she would prefer our voices over anyone else’s. One day I finally got some validation that the baby could hear the music. I didn’t realize that my mp3 player was up on full volume and I started to play a song to her, while holding the earbud down very low in the pelvic area. When the music started (very loudly), I felt the baby jump. I scared her! I felt bad, but then I was elated, because I knew for a fact she could hear. After that day I made sure the volume was on a better level.

I had read that being so far along in my pregnancy, you can feel if and when the baby turns. Some women said they totally felt the baby flip, and that it was the biggest baby movement ever. My baby had always kicked/moved a lot and you could see her moving if you looked at my belly. But during this period of trying to get her to turn, I felt nothing like a huge movement and was convinced that she was still breech when I walked into my Week 38 doctor’s appointment. I was shocked when the doctor felt my belly and said she turned! I don’t know which of the 20 or so methods did it, or if it just happened anyway, but I was thrilled! So to all those women carrying breech babies…don’t give up. And keep trying these methods you hear about, because I am one case where it DID work, so stay positive and get on all 4’s girl! haha.

My husband and I began taking Childbirth Preparation classes, aka Lamaze, which were once a week for 4 weeks. I didn’t know much about what to expect from labor except for pain, so I felt this class was pretty important to educate myself so that I’d be better prepared. On the first day of class they asked how many of us wanted a natural, drug-free, labor- I didn’t raise my hand. I didn’t know what I wanted at the time and that was part of the reason I took the class. The first class involved a lot of physical stuff like stretching and the breathing exercises that you see all the time. They also showed us different labor positions you could do, some of which are better for back pain, to speed up labor, to slow down labor, to turn a baby, etc. The second class was about our expectations about childbirth. We had to play this game, kind of like the Newleywed Game, where you see how you and the baby’s dad’s answers matched up.  One of the questions asked what would be the first song that mom sings to the baby. My husband got this correct- “Dizzy” by Ours. It’s not a baby-related song at all, depressing actually, but the music from it kind of sounds like a lullaby. Another question asked how long mom would be in labor. My husband said Two Hours. The instructors cracked up. Oh, did he have a lot to learn! 

 The class also started to talk about the different medications that are used for pain relief, inductions, and emergencies. THIS was an eye-opening class for me. I had no idea all the side effects that these drugs could cause, and how they can affect the baby during the process. I was especially concerned about the ever-so-popular labor inducing drug, Pitocin, or as I like to call it, “the Devil drug.”  I personally know at least 4 women who have been induced, only to wind up needing a C-section because of the baby’s heart rate dropping from the drug. No thank you. If I could control or prevent the chance of something bad happening to the baby, you bet I would do everything in my power to prevent it. By the time the class was over, I was convinced that I was going to have a Natural Labor. No epidural, no pain relief drugs, just breathing, meditating, focusing, and of course music. My friends laughed at me, my family didn’t understand me, and they both didn’t believe me. I’m a very headstrong person, so the fact that I felt like I was being mocked made me even more determined to have a natural birth. Who are these people to judge me? Who are they to say I can’t take the pain? I have always had a very high pain tolerance. I think it may have happened from years of dealing with severe migraines since I was 14. They would be horrible and I couldn’t open my eyes or walk when I had one, but eventually I got to the point where I hated having to depend on medicine to make me feel better, so I just stopped taking them. It was agonizing, but it made me feel like a stronger person. This is horrible, but I think it made me also start to view people who needed pain medicine as “weak,”  and this now included needing drugs for childbirth. So people laughing in my face and telling me there was no way I could go drug-free during labor pissed me off royally. Game’s on.

Anyway, all those tests came back fine, so it was time for me to have this procedure done called a Hysterosalpingogram (HSG). It’s where they shoot radioactive dye up you and take an x-ray to make sure your uterus and fallopian tubes are clear/normal. From reading online it made it sound like the procedure felt like you were in labor for about 3 minutes or so and some women said it was worse than labor. Fun. To help deal with the pain I brought my mp3 player since nothing relaxes me more than music. So now I’m laying there all ready to go, listening to “Our Final Hymn” from the Neverending White Lights music collaboration, and I’m waiting for this intense pain to begin. All I feel is what can be described as a few seconds of strong menstrual pains. No big deal. The song wasn’t even over and it’s done. I do have a really high pain tolerance, so I’m thrilled about that. The good news was that the HSG didn’t hurt. The bad news was that the results showed that BOTH of my fallopian tubes were blocked. What the??? How did that happen? I wondered if the miscarriage could have caused that, and of course no doctors wanted to answer me on why it happened. All they said was, “here’s your referral to an IVF (in vitro fertilization) specialist; lots of women have successful outcomes with IVF; Good luck!” And I’m thinking Slow Down! Aren’t there other options first? Again, no answers. They said the IVF specialist will have to answer any other questions I had.

I made my appointment with a specialist, which was a month away. For the entire month I researched on how to clear blocked fallopian tubes, which suggested everything from surgery to special massages to relaxation/meditation techniques. Since I truly believe in the mind-body connection, I embraced anything that was affordable and within reason. I got a hot stone massage, and I would do relaxation techniques every night, which normally involved some “Ok Computer,” and various Sarah McLachlan and The Cure playing in the background. Since I couldn’t afford the fancy massage that’s designed to clear your tubes (yes that actually exists for a few thousand bucks), I just massaged my own abdomen in hopes of it doing something. And of course I went to two Ours concerts because nothing makes me happier than their live shows. Even during the show I got a little psycho and tried to visualize my tubes clearing out. I had recently read the book, “The Secret” which basically says that what you visualize will occur. Because of that, I made a “vision board” which is a cork board with inspirational images on it, like babies, pregnant women, etc. I figured it couldn’t hurt!

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