Swappin' Spit

Two weeks ago K.T. and I joined a Parent/Baby Group at our hospital.

On Thursday of every week, parents and their 6 to 9 month old babies get together and talk about, what else, baby stuff.

Let me tell you, I should have joined a looooooong time ago!! I remember the staff at the hospital telling me about it right after we had K.T. They actually let you join the 0-3 month group for free.

At the time, I thought that I would be too overwhelmed to get out of the house. While I was right, it was hard to get out and about, I realize now that I would have learned a lot if I did go. It would have totally been worth the hassle.

Anyways, it was great to go and hear how all these other moms are having the same issues that I am. I guess you could call it a support group of sorts. It helped me relax a little bit. I realized that I am not going insane. That it's just par for the course.

Another cool thing is that K.T. gets to hang with other babies. Some of the little tikes are already crawling. She really likes looking at the other babies and interacting with the ones that crawl by for a visit. Her first week she played with another little girl and petted her on the head like a puppy. This past week she met a handsome gentleman by the name of Matthew. She's such a flirt.

The room gets pretty noisy with all the babies in there. They scream, cry, babble, coo, giggle all at the same time. Sometimes, the discussion leader will stop and have the group sing a song. I remember thinking to myself, "Yeah. Like a song is really gonna stop this racket." Well, sakes alive, as soon as we started to sing ALL of the babies (and I do mean ALL) stopped what they were doing and listened. It was the weirdest thing.

I also breastfed semi-publically for the first time. All the moms in the group just seem to whip out their boobs and start feeding. I mean, they are really good at doing it without showing anything. I decided to give it a try and did a feed behind some chairs. K.T. wasn't very cooperative. She kept grabbing at my shirt and pulling it up so that the whole world could see my boob. Ha, ha. Very funny kid.

On our first day of the Parent/Baby group, we were invited to join a local "playgroup". Last week was our first date. We packed up and headed out to another mom's house. There were about 6 other moms there with babies in tow. Most of the kids were in the 7-9 month range, with a few that were a tad bit older. K.T. got to play with all the kids and I got to get out and interact with adults.

It was weird to be part of this mommy club and I tried to be as 'normal' as I could. Most of the moms just put their kids down and talked the entire time. I'm not the most outgoing person in the world and I really find it hard to insert myself into conversations. So, I tried to keep the nerd in me at bay, but it snuck out every now and then. Instead of gabbing about teething, I was too busy putting the stuffed doggie in the dump truck to go for a ride. Beep, beep! Woof, woof!

Our next playgroup is in April. The mom who is hosting is having a Mary Kay lady come to give us all facials. I don't think I have ever gotten a facial in my entire life. I didn't want to come off as weird, so I told them that I couldn't wait. You know, sometimes it feels like I'm the dork spying on all the cool kids.

A funny thing happened this weekend. K.T. came down with her first cold. Hmmmmmm. I wonder why? Could it be that she swapped spit with about a dozen other babies in the past two weeks? Sigh. I guess it was inevitable.

She's pretty miserable. Saturday night, I was up pretty much all night trying to get her to sleep. She can't breath out of her nose, and this means that she can't suck on the binky. She uses the binky to fall asleep. I would have to say that a horrible time was had by all.

Last night, I just put her in her swing all night long so that she was upright. It seemed to work out okay. She ended up sleeping for about 11 hours.

The good news is that right now she is sleeping in her crib with her binky.

The bad news is that my throat hurts.