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The 26th we (mom, dad, Matt & Andrea and kids, Joel, Gwen, and I) spent the day with Grandpa and Ruth, where I got my turkey fix for the holiday season and we got some great pictures, including four generations of Friedemanns and Grandpa Walter with all his great-grandkids.

Tuesday morning Dad drove us to the Milwaukee airport so we could pick up the rental car and drive to Carroll. We generally budget ~7 hours to drive from Madison to Carroll (including a stop for lunch), and Milwaukee is another 1.5 hours east of Madison, so we were gearing up for a long day. It really wasn't so bad, though; we got out of Milwaukee around 10:00am, and into Carroll around 7:00pm, with stops in Madison (for two bottles of New Glarus's raspberry tart), Platteville (for lunch at Culver's), and Cedar Falls (gas). Gwen was good and slept most of the way.

The rest of the week was busy, with eye appointments for both of us, some shopping, lots of computer help from Joel to his mom, and going through things that we have in storage. We now have about 50m^3 of boxes plus three pieces of furniture set aside to be shipped to us; we (mostly I) also got rid of a huge amount of stuff. Every time we visit Bernie & Rita and we go through things in storage we find things that we don't need any more (this time it was a lot of kitchen appliances: they all work just fine and are things we used to use, but we're pretty much sure we're not going back to the US any time soon, so it makes sense to get rid of things that won't work on European power), but it never seems to make a dent. This time, we made a dent; there are visibly fewer boxes than there had been.

We got more pictures there, including one of all the Uckelmans in the world (when Joel's grandfather, Joseph, emigrated, he dropped the 2nd 'n'. All the relatives still in Germany spell it Uckelmann. Joseph had only one son, who had only one son, so that means the 5 of us are the only ones in the world, so far as I know, that spell the name this way). I also got enough baby clothes to clothe Gwen for the next year or so! We barely got everything into our bags (though we did, including space for a box of Nutter Butters and a bag of frosted animal cookies, the latter of which I am currently eating from for breakfast, yum).

Joel is in DC now until next Tuesday, so I get to be a single parent for a week. I'm going to use this week to see if I can't get Gwen onto a bit more a schedule than she has been (she was pretty regular before our trip, but the trip disrupted her quite a bit, and I'd like to try to get her sleeping through the night more). This week is a good time to do so because she's the right age (7.5 weeks) and since Joel is gone if she cries more than usual, it won't bother him. After reading what other parents feed babies her age in a single feeding, I've started giving her more (150-180ml rather than 100-120ml) at a given time. I'm hoping that this will get her to eat more during the day and hence need less at night. I think it sort of worked; she slept from 19:00 to 22:10, 22:40-2:00, 2:45-6:00, and 6:00-7:15 last night. (Two chunks greater than 3 hours! Not up until after 7:00! It was great!)

Tomorrow is her 8 week check-up. I'm really interested to see how much she's grown; I'm guessing she's up to ~5.5kg and has grown ~2cm. The first outfit I tried on her when we got home was short by about 1cm, and it had fit just fine before we left. The box of outgrown clothes is slowly filling.

I'll close with my favorite picture of Gwen to date, asleep in the car on the way to Grandpa & Ruth's:

Boy, it was already a week ago that we gathered hauled all our stuff to the train station and took the train to Brussels. Our flight to Chicago left Brussels on Saturday early enough that we couldn't get an early enough train Saturday morning, so we decided to go over Friday morning and spend a day wandering around the city. We got in to our hotel about 1:30, dumped our things and tucked Gwen into the sling and headed out. It was cool and somewhat drizzly, so it wasn't the nicest day for wandering around outside, but it was still relaxing to just walk without having any clear destination. Our hotel was near Brussels Noord, and from there we walked to the center of the city, stopping in a few clothing stores, salivating over the smell of waffles from all the waffle stands, and regretting our decision to pack and eat sandwiches for lunch when we reached a Christmas market with a stand selling the most delectable choucrute. We then went to the area around Notre Dame du Sablon, since Joel had previously had mussels at a place near there, and it's also home to a concentration of chocolatiers, one of which, Pierre Marcolini, Joel had brought me back some chocolates a few years back, some of the best chocolates I've had. We stopped in there and bought ourselves a Christmas present of some chocolate-covered vanilla marshmallows (this is what marshmallows are supposed to be like) and a selection of caramels, which we haven't tried yet but I'm really excited about. We couldn't find the restaurant Joel had had mussels at previously, but decided we'd be able to find something on the way back to the hotel where we could get some. But it was a bit early for supper so we stopped in a cafe for some hot beverages, and also to put Gwen down because even swapping her back and forth in the sling she does get heavy. By and large she did really well -- she cried and fussed some while we were walking around, but only for a little while and otherwise slept. When we were at the cafe I laid her down on the bench next to me, still in her sling, and she slept the whole time.

We got a bit lost headed back to our hotel, but while we were getting back on track we passed a restaurant that just smelled delicious. We decided first to go and get waffles, since we'd been smelling them all day, and we wanted to make sure that we got some before the stands closed. It's always a pleasure when the taste of something lives up to the smell -- they were great! Joel then decided that he didn't really need mussels, we should go back to the restaurant we'd passed, so we did -- and it was also a great choice. He got a delicious choucrute plate, and I satisfied my desire for gobbets of meat in sauce by getting some Flemish-style pork. Gwen woke up soon after we got there, and I fed her while I ate, and she was, again, remarkably good, no fussing.

It wasn't too late when we got back to the hotel, but we were both really tired, both from walking around (that day was the first day since she was a week old when I could really feel that I'd given birth in the recent passed...that was more walking around in one day than I'd done in awhile, even counting all our trips to IKEA, and, yeah, rather sore) and from the whole "parent of young child" thing. We'd brought the mattress from Gwen's basket along and just put that on the floor, and she slept as well on that as she does at home. We were up a few times through the night, as usual, but I was always able to get her bottle made before she fussed too much.

Saturday we wanted to get to leave the hotel around 8:00 to get to the airport around 8:30, but when we got to the station we found that the back entrance was closed, so we had to go around to the front, and we just missed one train so we had to wait another 15 min. for the next one, and eventually we got in around 9:15. Our flight was at 11 so this wasn't a problem, but we then stood in line for awhile and by the time we eventually got to the front they were calling for passengers for Chicago, as boarding was closing soon. Still, we had enough time to check our bags and get through passport control (where we handed over three passports, and the agent didn't bother to confirm that we actually had a baby; she was in her sling and the sling was over my shoulder, and in that position you can't really tell that it isn't just an ordinary bag, until she starts making noises, and then people are always startled!) and to our gate. Because we booked our tickets so late, and since Joel had a different itinerary than me since he's going to DC for a week after I head home, we hadn't actually gotten seats next to each other; luckily, as we boarded the person who was in the seat next to Joel's (he had a center seat, I had an aisle seat two rows back) was just settling in and so I asked her if she minded swapping two rows back so we could sit together and she happily moved.

Gwen was so good on the flight. She was crying when we were getting settled, but it was just because she was hungry and I couldn't get a bottle made fast enough. After she ate, she slept most of the entire flight -- she'd sleep a few hours, wake, I'd change her diaper and feed her, and then she'd sleep again. There were quite a few other babies on the flight, and every time one of them cried Joel and I would look at each other and say "not OUR baby!" Even taking off and landing didn't bother her at all, she slept through that.

I didn't sleep at all on the flight over, which surprised me since I was tired and it would've been a perfect opportunity, but I wasn't actually so exhausted as I normally am when I fly. I watched Crazy, Stupid Love twice; in the genre of predictable romantic comedy, I have to say, it was really good. I laughed out loud a number of times -- and, as noted, had to watch it a second time.

When we landed I was supposed to text Amy to let her know, but we had trouble getting cell service in the airport; luckily, by the time we got through immigration (having a baby gets you bumped up to the front of the line, especially if the baby is fussing...at this point she was getting a bit out of sorts, understandably, but now she's got two stamps in her passport, a real world traveler!) and baggage claim my message eventually went through to her, and it turned out that she and Phil were already waiting at the airport. So we met up with them, got our stuff shoved into their vehicle, including the car seat which took quite a bit more time to figure out how to install than you would've thought, and had a fantastic drive up to Mom and Dad's place (along the way I got just about the best news that I've heard all year. It still makes me squee inside when I think about it). I hadn't seen them in more than a year and a half, and Joel hadn't seen them since we'd move to Amsterdam. I'm so glad it worked to meet up with them this way! So much better to have a few hours in the car to catch up with each other rather than trying to steal an hour or so from family holidays to meet up at some diner for a meal, which is what I thought we might have to do if we wanted to see each other.

We stopped in Milwaukee for some food, and then Mom and Dad had ordered Chinese so we got a second supper when we arrived there. Andrea and Matt and their kids were already there and so there was a huge rush to ooh and aah over Gwen; Leah in particular is very happy about her little girl cousin. :) I don't actually remember much of the day after that -- I think we set up the air mattress for us in the office, and Gwen's little mattress next to it, and soon after that I was asleep.

Christmas Day and the day after deserve a post of their own, so I'll stop here in the catch-up.

Gwen is still on a pretty regular up-every-three-hours schedule at night, except it's messed up in the morning in that after the 4:00 or 5:00am wake-up, she's often up again around 6:00 or 7:00am, which is rough. So this morning when she started fussing around 7:00am after having been up last at 5:00am, I knew there was a good chance she was up for the morning. I asked Joel if he could get up and take care of her and let me sleep a bit more and he said sure, but by the time he'd found his fleece pants and was ready to get her out of her crib she was crying pretty loudly, and Rita came and asked if she could do anything to help out -- so he handed her off, and came back to bed. We got another 2.5 hours of sleep -- together! -- while Grandma fed her and played with her. It was great.

And this is generally because I get greedy. At night her feeding pattern is either 11/2/5/8/ or 12/3/6, or thereabouts, and after the last feeding I always want to push for one more 2.5 hour stretch of sleep before I get up myself. Sometimes it works, but often it doesn't; she'll be up and fussing about half an hour or an hour or so after I've put her back in the basket, and it's frustrating because I know she's fed, dry, clean, etc. Sometimes it's just lowgrade fussing and I can doze a bit in between replacing her pacifier, but sometimes it becomes all out crying and that's at the point in the day when my patience is at its lowest ebb and I have no reserves for doing anything, especially when I know that what will probably work is picking her up, wrapping her in her afghan, and cuddling/rocking with her. Any other time of the day I'd love to do that, but at that last stretch of the night before it really becomes morning, all I can think of is "please let me sleep just a little bit longer". Yesterday, I didn't get that extra sleep, and was I on edge all day, even though I did get a two hour nap in the afternoon when she also slept. This morning, she didn't fuss too long before Joel said he'd try to calm her. I think they curled up in bed for awhile, but honestly, I'm not sure what they did, because I fell back asleep soundly for another four hours or so. It was wonderful.

When I was up and dressed and settled on the bed with my laptop, Joel brought her back to me so he could go shower and start making the waffles, and he put her in my arms and it was so nice to be so happy to see her (compared to my utter apathy bordering on loathing that characterizes my sleepless state towards her), I had a huge smile on my face, and then I got my reward (on top of 4 hours of sleep!): one corner of her mouth crooked, and then the other, and I got my first genuine, caused in response to some interaction with me, happy smile. It was adorable. I've gotten other things previously that were certainly variants or close approximations of smiles, but this is the first time I've picked her up, smiled at her, and gotten a smile in response. Nice that she was as happy to see me as I was to see her.

I believe I mentioned in an earlier post how Joel and I didn't decide on Gwen's name until nearly an hour after she was born.

It sometimes still catches me by surprise, and I find it strange, that I have a daughter named Gwendolyn. I was one of those kids who picked out the names (first and middle) of all of my future children (both natural born and adopted; I think the total was up to 14 or thereabouts at one point) from fairly early on. The names slowly shifted over time, and many of the names I had picked out as a teen would definitely not make it onto a list of possibilities now. But still, there always was a list, and it was always populated by at least a handful for each gender.

Gwendolyn was never on the list. In fact, I'd never really liked the name, because it's not a "real" name (one of my primary, though amorphous, qualifications for a name for a child of mine). And there was also something else about it -- pretension? I'm not sure, I've never been able to put my finger on it -- that put me off it. When Joel first suggested Gwen, I liked that right away; it's a real name (even though it's most commonly known as a nickname, it's a standalone name in its own right), it has a nice Welsh connection, it's a single syllable (we wanted either a one or three syllable given name to go with the three syllable last name). The only issue with it was that it didn't go well with our choice of middle name, Rose, which we had basically never deviated from; we did briefly consider Maria, after Joel's great-aunt who died in spring, as a middle name (because I wasn't keen on it as a first name; it's a bit too old-fashioned for me, and it's the name of one of Andrea's most important childhood dolls). When Joel put Gwendolyn forward, a few weeks after suggesting Gwen, I'd already had a chance to get used to, and like, the idea of a daughter named Gwen, and I could reconcile myself to the choice of name because it had Gwen as a nickname, and we both agreed that that's what we'd most commonly use. But since Gwen is a real name in and of itself, and we were planning to use that, why not just name her Gwen instead of Gwendolyn? The only thing against this, for me, was that we'd lose Rose as a middle name, but since Grandma Rose's name was already being used by Gwen's cousin Rinnah, who was born in June, I found I minded this less than I thought, especially since we had another relative to honor with the middle name if we went with Maria.

But then Joel mentioned Gwendolyn again a day or two before she was born, and again after she was born, and since we didn't really have any name other than Gwen that we both agreed on, and he'd regularly vetoed one of my favorites (Stella), and he really seemed to like the name, he won me over; I found, as we sat with her during that first hour and realized that we needed to make a decision, that I really liked the idea of her having a name that Joel picked out, and that maybe I didn't dislike Gwendolyn as much as I thought I did.

And since then I'm totally sure we made the right choice. First, I can't really imagine her having any other name. Second, there's a passage in one of the Anne of Green Gables books (Anne of Avonlea, I think), where Anne complains that her name smacks of "bread and butter and chores", and Diana responds that she always thought that the name was "stately, like a queen", but that she'd think any name that Anne was named was beautiful, even Kerenhappuch, because it was associated with her, and Anne comments on how wonderful that sentiment was, to live in such a way that you beautify your name. I keep thinking about that passage when I think of the name Gwendolyn. In the abstract I may not have been a big fan, but in the particular I find I really like the name, because it's the name of my daughter. And third, something I really didn't expect, since she has a name that is not any name that I ever imagined giving one of my kids, I don't have a lifetime's worth of imaginations and fantasies tied to a kid having that name. The realization came over me a few days after she was born that Gwendolyn is a stranger; that she's really her own person, separate from any daydreams and fantasies I may have had; that "Gwendolyn Uckelman" is someone I'll have to get to know. I feel like I'm not quite articulating this well; but the fact that I never dreamed I'd have a daughter named Gwendolyn helped me from the very start see this strangely named being as something distinct and separate and self-contained. I look forward to finding out who she is!

While my recent posts have all been heartfelt, they haven't quite told the whole story. So here's some of the other side.

This semester I've run a Latin reading group for two MoL students; we meet twice a week except when one of us has a conflict. I canceled seminar the week after Gwen was born, but since then I've just brought her along (so she was 10 days old when she first went out to university). I have a fleece sling (basically a big bag), a hand-me-down from a friend. People often don't realize there's a baby in there until she starts chirruping, and then they're always surprised (and of course want to know how old she is, if she's a girl or a boy, and then tell me that she's "mooi" and "leuk". :)). They're always impressed at how young she is. One fun exchange I had at a tram stop, a gentleman asked how old she was (11 days) and said that he was 80. I've found that the very old find the very young fascinating -- at another tram stop a few days earlier, when the three of us went out to Raul and Lena's defense party, another gentleman stared at me for awhile and then asked if I had a baby under there (she was in her fleece suit and I had a blanket over that, so it wasn't entirely obvious).

She's a good traveler; since we moved, to get back for seminar I wake up around 8:00am and get dressed/shower, and usually around then she wakes up too to eat. We're on the road by 9:00 and she'll fall asleep in the sling and sleep all the way until we get into Amsterdam around 11:00. Then she'll eat again, and then fall asleep on my shoulder while we're translating. After lunch I feed her again and then she'll sleep the entire trip back home. This time after lunch we didn't head straight back to Tilburg but first swung by the Consulate to pick up her certificate of live birth abroad and her passport. So we are all set to go home for Christmas!

Hard to believe it's been 4 weeks. People say the first 6 weeks are the hardest, so either we're in the home stretch, or we've got two hellish weeks ahead of us, because, honestly, these haven't been so bad. (Maybe I'd read enough horror stories to set my standards really really low). It hasn't been all sunshine and roses -- I see my cousin's FB status posts about her daughter, and marvel because I certainly don't want to freeze time, nor do I find myself awake at night just to stare at Gwen; part of this is just the difference in personality between Surbhi and me, but part of it is that I just don't enjoy infants all that much -- but it hasn't really been all that bad.

4 weeks and she's now old enough to not need to be held any time she's not sleeping. Witness:



She happily lay on the floor in the kitchen for about half an hour while I chopped things to make a double batch of dahl. Hurrah!

Right now, Joel is on the phone with United, booking our flights home for Christmas. I'll pick up Gwen's birth certificate and passport from the consulate in Amsterdam on Monday. The house is about 75% unpacked and organized, maybe more. I think Joel made it through the day without going to a single hardware store. I made my first trip outside without Gwen, left her sleeping in her basket while I went to the grocery store and that went without incident. Now if only she would start sleeping longer than 2.5 hours at a stretch at night...

I really liked the lactation consultant who came by today, Jacqueline. She heard my litany of problems and was properly amazed that we're still willing to give a try; she said she rarely sees people more than once, and here she's the third consultant I've seen (and she knows one of the other ones I've seen and has high respect for her), an expects that we'll probably be working together for awhile to get things to work. I really liked her commitment to working with me as long as necessary, and the fact that she will try to arrange things so I can see her for as little cost as possible; she said she felt bad that I've already paid so much for help!

Her diagnosis for dwindling supply was the stress and disruption of moving (which makes perfect sense as Tuesday I didn't pump as often, and then Wed. I developed the blocked duct), compounded with what was likely mastitis Wed. night until Fri. morning (hence the SO COLD and SO HOT nights I had -- hello, fever. Of course, I only found the box the thermometer was in this morning). She wants me to work on building up supply again, by pumping at least 6 times a day, and seeing a GP about getting a prescription for domperidone. Only after that is better, then we'll working on getting Gwen to latch. So I'm cautiously optimistic about things.

Oh, and she said, water in NL is of good enough quality that I can just use warm water from the tap to mix formula. Whoo!

Joel went back to Amsterdam yesterday to finish cleaning the apartment (when we left on Tuesday, we had almost all of our stuff out, but wow was there a lot of cat hair...6 years worth in some nooks and crannies!), go to the PhD defense party of a friend that evening, spend the night, and come back today. Cleaning apparently took more time than planned, since I last heard from him around 7:30pm and he was still working on the kitchen, so it'll probably be pretty late before he gets back. Before anything else, let me say here and now that I am so grateful that he's doing this. Even in the best of circumstances, cleaning an apartment after moving out is just something I'm not very good at, because my level of cleanliness is not as high as it needs to be, and I just find it irritating. So I am so glad and thankful that he was willing to take all this on by himself.

I've been surprised at how well we've gotten along yesterday and today on our own. I did manage to do some unpacking yesterday, but not much, and today almost none -- though I have done two loads of laundry and kept up with the dishes, and managed to eat 5 real meals (even though one of them involved ordering in pizza and Ben & Jerry's...I figured that was better than nothing!) -- and instead Gwen and I have spent a lot of time hanging out in the bedroom and cuddling. She hasn't been sleeping as well in her basket the last few days; she doesn't appear to be sleeping as deeply and is a lot more vocal. So there's been a lot of sleeping in my lap and sleeping on my chest, and I've found it very relaxing to just sit and hold her. In this quiet and peaceful and relaxed setting we've tried nursing again a couple of times, all of which have resulted in a few half-hearted attempts to latch which quickly end in tears of frustration on her part. I'll be seeing lactation consultant #3 tomorrow morning, and this time she's coming here rather than me going there, which I'm hoping will help in terms of getting practical advice for my precise situation -- we can try out all of the chairs and pillows, etc., that I have until we find a combination that works. I hope. Pumping output is now down to less than 5ml per session, so at this point she's basically wholly on formula.

It also helped some that Joel was gone for the night, because then when she was awake and fussy at night, I didn't worry about her disturbing his sleep. Instead, I could just do whatever I needed to do to calm her down. I also didn't sleep particularly well myself last night either (two nights ago I was SO COLD all night long; so cold that I slept all curled up and when I woke in the morning my legs hurt like crazy from being so tight and taut for so long. Last night, I was SO HOT that at one point I took off the t-shirt I was wearing because it was damp with sweat, eew), so we basically spent the night trying to be comfortable rather than trying to sleep, which was easier to do than it would've been if there'd been a third person trying to sleep in the same room (or even in the same house). That's part of the reason why I didn't do any unpacking today, but rather spent most of it just relaxing in bed.

I still wish she'd sleep as well at night as she does during the day. She last ate around 4:30 and then fell asleep while I was burping her and amazingly didn't wake up when I put her into her basket. Around 7:00 she started yummering and I made a bottle, though I didn't expect her to be hungry yet, but by the time we got back upstairs she was asleep again, and she's continued sleeping for the last two hours on my chest. Why can't we get these four hour stretches at night?? We pretty routinely get 2.5 between when we're both back asleep after a feeding and when she wakes up next. Not so fun.

Here's hoping that Joel gets home before it's too late, and that tomorrow's meeting with the lactation consultant brings any measure of success.

We've successfully nursed three times since Thursday morning, and it's not for lack of trying. In the meantime, I've been pumping, 10 min. per side after each time she eats, and supplementing with formula. It's so frustrating and inefficient. I feed her what I pumped the previous time, and then, instead of getting to cuddle with her and enjoy her awake time, which usually happens after she's done eating, I have to put her in the basket and pump. It's bad enough when she's lying in the basket awake and alert, since she doesn't spend much time awake and I want to be interacting with her when she does, but it's worse when she's lying in the basket crying and there's nothing I can do about it because I'm tied to the pump, whereas if we'd just been able to nurse then I'd still have her in my arms. And with pumping and feeding from a bottle, when she's done eating I have to get everything washed, and what I've pumped into the fridge, and that's more time not spent with her.

I don't see any way that this is going to work. Every time we try to nurse and fail makes it less and less likely that we'll ever figure this out. And it's only going to get worse; I've noticed that my output while pumping has been steadily decreasing, and I don't see any way of stopping this trend. If I make it a month before she's on formula exclusively, I'll be amazed. And it is so hard not to feel like a failure. I know all the benefits, for both of us, for breastfeeding. I'd always intended to do it 9-12 months, depending on how long she was interested. That seems increasingly unlikely. This is the first thing I've ever attempted in my life where persevering and trying and practicing doesn't seem to make any difference towards my ultimate ability to master the skill. And of course this skill is way more important than riding a bike, or painting, or writing a dissertation, and it's the one I fail at.