Rub-a-dub-dub

I gave Astrid a bath late in the afternoon after coming home from a shopping spree.

I took her shopping with me to buy her a few outfits and other baby items such as bibs and socks. (She's already outgrown some of her newborn clothes.) Ross is thee place for deals on baby stuff. I got 3 nice bibs for $1.99. Most of the outfits were in the $3-$7 price range. The pricier ones being the two piece outfits. Can't beat that.

When we left the house it was still hot outside (think July/summer heat wave in LA), but I know from past experience that they pump out the air conditioning in stores and it's absolutely freezing indoors. So I dressed her in a long sleeve cotton onsie and brought a warm blanket. In the car I turned up the air conditioning so she'd be comfortable but she was still wet with perspiration when we got home. So I ran her a nice bath which she loves.

Uwe took this pic. I like that you can see all our hands. His holding the tub and mine scooping the water, and baby Astrid's too.

Uwe gave Astrid her first bath. In the first couple weeks after bringing her home I was too scared to bathe her. Thank goodness Uwe is fearless and had experience bathing his niece, so in the tub she went. I would watch Uwe in sheer awe that my husband could bathe such a slippery, fragile little creature all the while keeping her head above water. He would encourage me "come on, here's the wash cloth you wash her and I'll hold her head" and ease my fears "it's not that hard, you just have to hold her here" and "there's a step here that she sits up against so she won't slide down." Then one day I got up enough courage to bathe her myself, when I was home alone with her. I found that it really wasn't that difficult after all. (And kinda fun once all the angst was gone!)

I'm so lucky that I have a husband who didn't think I was a freak for having none, I mean not one iota, of experience caring for a baby. I had never bathed, fixed a bottle, or even changed a baby until I had Astrid. It's been Uwe who has been the trailblazer and a great teacher.

On a side note, Astrid did have a little accident in the tub today...another first for us. She went to the bathroom. As soon as I saw what was happening I immediately took her out of the tub. Not a big deal but being a first time parent all the firsts are met with "oh my gosh...honey come look".

As I was dealing with the situation and cleaning up, I was thinking about an experience I had read about on a blog. There's this woman (another mom) who wrote about her ordeal with constipation after the baby was born and how after 7 days of not being able to go and being in so much pain her mother bought her an enema kit and told her she couldn't wait another day. This was after 7 days of eating tons of fiber and taking stool softener tablets, etc. and nothing worked. For whatever reason the urge to go would disappear everytime she sat on the toilet so she ended up going in the bathtub. This woman's sweet husband rinsed her off, towel dried her off and cleaned up the mess in the tub (using bleach). I thought...Wow! What a testament of love.

I sent the blog entry to Uwe and after all the questions of "why the bathtub?!"...and shivers running down his spine...he said he would have done the same for me but he would have replaced the tub. No question about it. He said there was no way he would have taken another bath in the same tub.

Well after Astrid's accident in the tub...Uwe was thinking about the same blog entry. I cleaned up the towels (and Astrid of course) and since he's got the bigger muscles...asked him to dump the tub contents into the toilet. There was a lot of water in the baby tub, so of course some of it spilled over into our tub. What would happen to our brandnew, Kohler, extra deep tub, that we spent a grand to have installed before we moved in?

Half an hour later Uwe shouted "Rose? Call the plumber. We have to replace the bathtub." My heart sank. I shouted up the stairs, "Are you serious?"

Seconds later I heard a sarcatic "Yeah right!" and Uwe laughing. Just goes to show you that having a kid changes you.

For those of you interested in reading the blog entry I mentioned I'm attaching a link. She starts out by talking about her husband and then compares his "slight" constipation with her ordeal.
http://www.dooce.com/archives/daily/04_15_2005.html