They
May 24th, 2012 § 1 Comment
Dear They:
I never realized being a mom meant having you in my life as much as you are. For months I have been clinging onto your words of advice as if they were a lifeline taking me from new mommy hood to sanity. I read as much as I can so I am up to date on your words of advice and then, when my family and friends ask how I am doing, I barf back your pearls of wisdom as if to justify why I continue to try and get a screaming baby to sleep in his crib or why I become neurotic with each trip for vaccinations.
They say to delay the MMR vaccine.
They say you just have to stick with breastfeeding.
They say the hardest time is the first three months.
They say you sleep when the baby sleeps.
They say this time moves really fast.
I have never met you face to face, I imagine you have your hair pulled back into a tight bun and wear an expression as if you just bit into a lemon. You probably carry a briefcase and a calculator and armed with a litany of information should anyone challenge your advice.I’ve listened to you for months, trusting that you would deliver me from angst and worry. But, as more time passes, I realize instead of bringing peace, you are driving me insane. I tried to listen to you They, when you said not to let my baby sleep in his swing. For weeks I have stumbled through the darkness with my eyes half-open after an hour of sleep only to be greeted by a baby that was screaming at me as if I had prematurely told him there was no Santa. Against your advice, I let him sleep in his swing, They….and guess what I did it all night long. Yes, They, I let my baby swing in his little swing with glorious melodies chiming out of the music box for a full 8 hours. And you know what, They, he slept for a magical 4 hour stretch each time. I know you warn against such horrible judgement and strongly believe it will make my baby dependent on a swing to fall asleep, which is when I reminded myself that I know not one grown adults with a swing in their room, and those I do know with one are not likely using them for sleeping purposes.
You told me They, that if it hurt when I was breastfeeding, I was doing it wrong. For weeks I agonized over your words. I tried, day and night to get the perfect latch and each time it felt like hot daggers being driven through my boob. I trusted you They, I trusted that it must mean I was doing it totally wrong. You told me to keep trying, to stick with it, that it was a natural thing and many people just gave up too easily. I cried over what you said to me, They. You made me feel like less of a mom because I struggled to get my baby to latch painlessly and couldn’t get through any feeding without saying the F word. It was only after a painful 6 weeks that a lactation consultant told me I was doing everything correctly but had pain because of an infection. Where were you then, They? You still haven’t apologized for leading me astray.
They, you preach quite a bit about vaccines, what my baby should be doing from week to week. You pretend to know everything about how to raise the perfect baby. You tell me what to do, when to do it and how it should be done. They, you make me worry when my baby isn’t grasping or tracking objects during the week you say he should be. You worry me that he is sleeping too little or too much. They, you have given me advice on how often to breastfeed, how many times I should bathe my baby during the week, that I shouldn’t use white noise too often, that I shouldn’t eat certain foods, you tell me what is normal only to make me feel abnormal and a failure as a mom.
I would like to formally break up with you They. Instead of listening to your advice and “tricks” I am choosing to listen to him. When he cries, I will feed him, even if it has only been 45 minutes. When he sleeps better in his swing I will let him. If he misses a nap, I won’t consider my day doomed, when he sleeps for three hours instead of five I won’t get upset. There is no room anymore in my relationship with him for you, They. From this day forward I choose him over They any day. Thanks for the advice, but I think it’s best to listen to my instincts instead. That’s what They say to do anyway.
The Deprivation Tank
May 2nd, 2012 § Leave a Comment
I remember reading in a psychology class at some point in my life, about a man who stayed awake for a week straight. A few days in he began to see spiders crawling on his arms and started flicking them off. Days after that he went into full mental breakdown. Hypothesis, a person will go crazy without sleep. Conclusion, YES.THEY.WILL!
Logan had two amazing nights of sleep. Six hours. SIX HOURS, which in the baby world is amazing. I reveled in my six hours of uninterrupted sleep. I had dreams and they were good dreams. Not just the crazy half awake half asleep dreams. You know the ones where you’re doing chores around the house only to wake up and find while you are tired from doing a load of laundry, when no effing laundry actually got done.
For the past week or so, my little sweet baby boy has been sleeping for 3 hours and then for one hour stretches for the rest of the night. This means I get about 3-4 hours of sleep each night, which means I am a horrible person to live with. Oddly enough, it seems the more irritable I get, the more quality time he wants with me. Mind you, he doesn’t want to be held or to hang out and talk about the cool dream he just had, rather he wants to eat and use me as an over sized pacifier. I have no interest in being a pacifier. I spent good money on actual pacifiers to free myself up from that type of employment. I have reasoned this with him, but guess what, he is not interested in reason.
Today I’m grouchy. And not the cute kind of sitcom-y grouchy that makes for quippy sarcasm and a full laugh track. I am the kind of grouchy that wants to punch you in the baby maker when you make sarcastic comments about me needing to get use to not sleeping for the next 20 years. Lack of sleep and a crying child will do that to even the best of people. There is a reason why Mother Theresa didn’t have biological children, otherwise she would just be plain ole’ Theresa.
I love my child, he is an easy child and I feel blessed that he spends most of his time sleeping, smiling and eating. There are however moments when he let’s out this monstrosity of a cry that hits a certain pitch which makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It’s in that moment I believe he is trying to break me down so that he can rule our household. I’m not talking the way in which he already does, I’m talking he wants to tie his parents up in the closet and order pizza, which he will loudly gum to death on the couch while watching rated R movies in his diapers.
Having a child is like surviving a hazing. Just when you are pushed to the brink of tolerance you find another plateau within that you never knew existed. The first week home from the hospital I vividly recall staring at my reflection in the mirror wondering who the crazy lady staring back at me was. Even on my hardest of partying nights, I never looked that disheveled. Now I was expected to look at myself looking that horrible….sober! My skin was pale and clammy, my stomach churned with acid and my stomach looked like a helium balloon four days after the birthday party. That moment was my first plateau. I truly felt I could not go on. I could not continue to care for this child who seemed to never sleep and wanted to eat every hour. But I survived, each night got a little better than the next and soon I hit my stride and felt that we were settling into a nice routine. AND THEN IT DIDN’T…
Paul thinks that maybe we should just let him, “cry it out.” I would love to think I had that sort of endurance. The kind that allows you to tune out your sweet child’s ear piercing rain dance screams and ignore the pins and needles in my boobs that are pooling with milk with every cry he releases.
But on days like today, just when I am contemplating escaping to Mexico and changing my identity, Logan wakes up and he flashes me a cute little grin and makes a little this little, “agooooo” sound that I am powerless against, and the dance starts all over again.
Logan’s First Photo Shoot
April 27th, 2012 § 1 Comment
We were lucky enough to hook up with the very talented Christie Hobson who came to take photos of Logan. He was exactly 10 days old, and on the brink of being too awake to tolerate 4 hours of photos BUT he was a champ that day and Christie was amazing with him. Being a new mom drenched in hormones, you surely want a photographer that is patient, loving, careful and did I mention oh so careful? with your new baby, Christie was all that and more. We are so thankful we invested in amazing photos of Logan, ones we will surely cherish forever.
