Tamar

So this is a post dedicated to Tamar Poupko Smith, who took us shopping at Target, set us all up with clothes and strollers and car seats and bouncy seats.  You name it, she gave it.  This is a bit of an admission to her as well.  You see, Tamar is a very organized individual, and I, in my imperfect OCD complex, strive to be as good as her.  I had the baby's suitcase packed in New York the week before we left.  Well, not actually packed but everything gathered.  I boiled the n.i.p.p.l.e.s. (Our dear friend Arna, Tamar's mom, can't say the word.  So that's in honor of her.), washed the clothes, made my lists.  And then came The Night Before We Left, and we were running around try to find everything and make sure it all fit.  Plus I decided we needed two more n.i.p.p.l.e.s. and some liquid formula so I knew that we had to stop at Target again on the way out.  Tamar also convinced us we HAD to use the Playtex Drop-In line of bottles, with their pre-sterilized inserts.  My cousin Barbara, (who had divined we were having a girl from the start), a smart cookie and seasoned mom herself, told me we HAD to use Avent or Dr. Browns.  We almost switched, but decided to stick with our first purchase.  Anyway, there we are at the hospital, Gigi is born and we're ready to bring her up to the room.  They ask us to bring down a set of clothes, and a diaper.  I go to the wardrobe in the hospital room where I had set out all the baby clothes, and I realize I didn't bring any of the side snap undershirts, of which I have no less than 50 I guess sitting on the floor upstairs in the nursery in Cincinnati.  How could I have just neglected to do that?  I did have two long-sleeved ones, but all the short-sleeved one were missing.  And I didn't want to put anything over her umbilical cord stump.  Total failure.  Then the nurses kept asking about my strange bottles, wanted me to have something else. They also kept sterilizing everything for me, including the outside plastic "bottle" that holds the inserts.  I told them I could just wash that but the were insistent.  At one of the feedings, the sister (they call nurses "sisters" here) hands me back my insert holder and it is melted into an unusable shape.  Sort of like a Shrinky-Dink, for you boomers out there.  Down to one bottle, and they still kept trying to take the other away to sterilize.  I kept the misshapen one to show them why they couldn't have it.  In the end, I've been praising Tamar for insisting on the inserts.  Here in the hotel room, it would have been impossible to sterilize bottles, and the inserts have been a godsend.  The nips we wash and pour let sit in boiling water from our in room boiler, in our coffee cups, and do this a couple times each cleaning.  Then there was the poop and vomit episode for which I called Dr. Tamar Poupko Smith in the wee hours here.  Baby Gigi has been getting the hiccups a lot, which then cause her to spit up a portion of her meal.  Last night it was particularly bad.  Added to the fact the she hadn't pooped in 3 days.  This all lead to Gigi being out of sorts.  Tamar told us to do a little thermometer intervention, and low and behold today, poop.  Twice.

So we thank Tamar for all her wisdom, her phone appointments, and general good cheer.  Check out the bottle.