The Trixie Update

Is Isabel going to make it all the way to the Triangle? The weather here is still beautiful, but I’m starting to get worried. Trixie has been yowling and acting restless all day, and now she’s crawled under the couch, whimpering.

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Actually, it’s true. This morning hasn’t been too bad. It’s before noon and both of us have had a shower or a bath, but for different reasons. Without naming names, let’s just say that one of us needed to wake up and that one of us released a turgid flood of poop all over her feet.

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After a spectacularly messy diaper (category 5) that eventually necessitated a full-blown tub bath, followed by a quick trip to the milk bar, Trixie finally collapsed into a heavy sleep. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that she’ll stay down until at least Thursday or Friday.

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Boy howdy, it’s been a rough day. Trixie won’t stop screaming. Hungry? No. Wet? No. Gassy? No. Exhausted? I would think so, but no, she still has plenty of energy available for more screaming. Today also marks a pitiful milestone: Trixie now appears to have functioning tear ducts, and her weepy eyes have been welling up with tears all morning.

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It’s hard to predict how any given breast-feeding session might unfold. Weeks and weeks ago, before Trixie learned to comfort-nurse, it was hard to get her to feed for more than five minutes at a time. Once she decided she had had enough, she would just sloooowly lean back and freeze. Her eyes would still be open, bright and warily observing Jennifer, but her body would be totally stiff. Now this defense mechanism is successfully employed against predators by many animals, such as possum and lizards, “But really, Trixie, we can see your eyes are open. We’re staring right at you.”

We don’t see much of that anymore. Now-a-days, when she’s full, we get a lot of her sluggishly rolling around, “No, really, I can’t possibly eat another bite.” But just as often she’s content to latch on for hours and hours with a “No, that’s OK. I’m fine right here, thanks for asking.” And occasionally she just goes to sleep after a good feeding.

Sometimes, however, she pretends she’s starving and settles in to nurse for a few minutes. She then becomes frenetic, thrashing around like a shark tearing into a seal. Growling, spit-bubbling, limbs flailing, chomping and shaking her head from side to side, she violently attacks Jennifer — only to wear an innocent, perplexed expression when abruptly pulled away.

Sitting her down face to face, Jennifer demands, “Trixie, WHAT is going on!?”

Trixie just sits there, staring back wide-eyed. Then she leans forward, squints her eyes and grunts, “HEY! Trying to nurse here!”

Then Trixie will pretend to be hungry again and that THIS TIME it’s for real and that she promises to calm down and nurse right, but of course 60 seconds later there’s a fresh Trixie attack. This behavior has lead to more feedings by bottle where’s there less chance of Jennifer getting mauled.

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Sorry there haven’t been a lot of posts lately. The lack of sleep has pretty much turned my brain to mush, and it’s become very difficult to string together coherent sentences. Don’t worry though, it’s a new week, and fresh content is on the way.*

* if Hurricane Isabel hits North Carolina then there won’t be any new posts until power is restored.

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Here’s the new set of visual images created for Trixie. They were designed bearing in mind her preference toward faces. There are representations of the three of us, as well as a couple of cats and a robot thrown in for good measure. Is there any chance she’ll recognize us? Doubtful, but maybe she’ll express a preference toward a human face over a robot. Or maybe she’ll still just be drawn to the images with the strongest figure-ground relationship, namely the black cat and the robot.

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Trixie possesses some kind of remarkable internal mechanism, perhaps acute temperature sensitivity, a barometric prowess or the ability to detect minute variations in magnetic fields, that wakes her within ten seconds of laying her down by herself. She can be absolutely sound asleep in your arms or strapped to your chest, and it might appear that you have successfully transferred her to the Pack-n-Play. But usually before you are out of the room, her sensors trip and she’ll wake.

Because of this uncanny ability she currently sleeps with us. However, given the weight differential among the three of us, Trixie doesn’t have enough mass to stake out her own space in the bed. The situation is similar to a small celestial body trying to escape massive gravitational forces; we risk pulling Trixie into our individual gravity wells [see below].

This has lead to a sensory mutation of our own. It’s what I like to call the “don’t-crush-the-baby” sense. It’s an amazingly effective adaptation that results in a sort of sleep paralysis. No more stretching around the bed or rolling over; we wake up in the exact position that we went to sleep in and Trixie remains safe and secure.

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I realize now that some of the belly button images from our previous story might be a little graphic, especially since they were presented without any context. Not wanting to appear sensationalist, here’s a little bit about the images.

1) Hard to believe, but that gelatinous yellow blob is the umbilical cord. I cut it. It’s made of an incredibly tough, resilient material, sort of like a garden hose. Please note that there is also a large, yellow, plastic clamp visible in the picture.

2) The blob was cut down when they brought her back to us and Trixie sported the reduced stump for about two and a half weeks. In this shot you can see the thin plastic clamp that had been crimped to the stump after the blob was cut down. We cared for it by wiping with alcohol once a day.

3) This next picture was taken right after the stump accidentally pulled off during a routine diaper change. It looks raw and painful, but it didn’t hurt her, and it only took a day to 4) visibility improve in appearance. Over the next three weeks it continued to 5) reduce in size and 6) tuck in. And that’s where belly buttons come from.

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It took a couple of weeks, but Trixie now officially has a cute little “innie”.
Note: the next post provides some context for this image.

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