The responses to my last post reminded me (yet again) why I love this community. I appreciate deeply that I can write what I wrote in a community afflicted by infertility and come out receiving....support and affirmation. Also, I enjoy the conversation. I like that you told me your stories about the ways you struggle/d in your role as a mother. You said things that were good for me to read. Things that were good for you to express. And perhaps things you needed to hear yourselves when you were where I was when I wrote that. Thank you, women. You are full of beauty and strength.
The naming of things that float in the air nameless is useful beyond measure. Like a mom friend of mine who was having marital difficulties said to me last week: "we told each other that things suck in our couple, and since then, it's been a lot better. Sometimes, just calling it helps a lot." I think that's what it was for me. I needed to call it.
Since then, as the previous paragraph would lead you to believe, things have felt easier. Naming the thing was key: I'm not sure I know who I am anymore in this new, all-encompassing role. Receiving such amazing support and knowing I'm not alone was also key. And also, it helped a lot not to be hated for saying that motherhood is hard after years of infertility. Somehow, I couldn't shake off the ungrateful bitch prototype. I know it is survivor's guilt. My friend and fellow Canadian DE mama N gently reminded me that it wasn't doing anyone any good to lug around my survivor's guild. She said I could just drop it. Point well taken, N.
Another thing that helped was Mr. A suggesting that unless otherwise specified, I should consider Sunday my day off. I can hang out with he and Gummy if I want to, but I can also spend time doing other things. We've implemented that plan for a few Sundays now and it has helped a great deal. I feel refreshed and ready to start the week with Gummy on Monday.
Talking about the struggles also helped me to start appreciating the metaphorical icing, the cake, and the amazing espresso that is served with it. Pleasantville is ridiculously perfect for raising children (and conversely, it is an infertile's worst nightmare, as I can attest to). It has great community programs, lots of parks and walking paths for strollers, an array of activities geared to caregivers and their infants. My weeks are organized around several activities, which are sometimes followed by lunch with lovely women and their cute babies. Like the other Augusta and her sweet girl. And many other amazing mamas and their sweet little bundles.
For the large part, I am enjoying this time immensely. It's been great not to have to drive anywhere out of my community, but instead to inhabit it fully. I walk downtown everyday for various reasons. Gummy and I walk up to the University to have lunch with Sattva. I talk to the neighbours, to the mailman, to shopkeepers downtown (except at the good coffee shop, where most baristas are surly and more ill-tempered if I try to talk to them).
What I love best is my time with Gummy girl. I actually have time to delight in her, and there is much to delight in. She is a barrel of monkeys. Yesterday, she figured out that her favourite little bird makes noise when you shake it. So I saw her on her play mat shaking it close to her ear. So sweet! And this morning, during the baby aquafit (where the babies are in little boats while their mamas do silly exercises in the water), she leaned back on her boat, entirely chilled out, and said with her eyes "come on, mother, swim faster." She holds on tight when I carry her in my arms, and has started to give wet, open-mouthed kisses. She is known as the smiley girl in our circle, but I'm glad I'm the one who gets to see her in all her different moods. She is miraculous, my little Gummy.
Full time motherhood is still hard in some moments. And thankfully, it is mostly wonderful. "Both ...and" descriptions are better than "either...or" when talking about humans and their workings. It seems that for me, trying to only honour one side only (i.e., motherhood is amazing) is incomplete. Motherhood is both amazing and difficult, rewarding and thankless, challenging and boring, mundane and miraculous.
Showing posts with label parenting after infertility. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parenting after infertility. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Monday, August 26, 2013
Looking Pail: Bedtime
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PAIL,
parenting after infertility,
sleep
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It has come to this, reader. Joyfully for me, and perhaps not so for you. But this is the juncture at which my blog veers off from infertility (and pregnancy after infertility) head first into parenting themes. I'm not apologizing. I'm stating it because it is so. If you need to stop reading, I understand and I'm not mad at you or sad for me. I write for me. You read for you. When what I like to write and what you like to read intersects, that's fine. When it doesn't intersect, that's fine too.
This is the extent of what I'll do for the transition. I'm not changing the blog, renaming it, changing the address, or whatever. It's a personal decision, and this is what I see as working for me. I want to continue blogging, but I may not be writing about infertility quite as much, and will be writing about parenting a great deal more.
Today, a boring post about bedtime; that magical time of day when your hands mildly start shaking because your glass of red is just so close, you can almost taste it.
For the first 5 months of life, Gummy didn't have much of a bedtime routine. It basically consisted of: 1) Going to Bed. As a newborn, sleep is the main activity all day/all night, with regular intervals of eating. Wakefulness was sparse at first, as is true for many newborns (but not all. If that's the case for yours, I'm sorry). But by the time she was 2-3 months old, she slept more at night and less during the day (and slept through the night at least one out of every two nights. You can hate me).
I had been harbouring some fears about my baby's sleep before she was born, admittedly not so much for her as for Mr. A and I. We work best with ample sleep. On my end, I tend to be a complete bitch when I'm deprived of food or sleep. Mr. A just becomes more absentminded than he already is, which amounts to forgetting more than remembering. And putting his cell phone in the washing machine.
Then Gummy arrived and she LOVED to sleep. Truly, she was an olympic sleeper. We never went so far as to have to wake her up in the first few weeks to feed her (since, you'll remember, she also LOVED sucking and ate very well), but I have on several occasions had to check to see if she was breathing because I expected her to be awake when she was asleep.
So as I said earlier, the bedtime routine used to be simple. Baby is tired. Wrap baby up. Put baby in crib* But it niggled at me. I have extolled the virtues of a proper bedtime routine for children (and adults) countless times in my job, and here I was basically throwing my baby in bed.**
Now, there were a number of things we were doing consistently that made for somewhat of a routine. Sleep works best if you can have a ritual around it, whether you're a baby, a kid or an adult. So, we always wrapped her up in a little pea pod with a zipper (I've just now learned those are called woombies). We always put the sleep sheep to the same setting (rain). We always put her on her back (of course). We put her to bed at 7pm, plus or minus an hour depending on how she was doing.
But I've noticed that with this parenting thing, one must have an idea of where things are going, so as to lay the foundation for it early on. I wanted her to sleep independently from us in her own room. That's not where I started (she was in a bassinet beside our bed), but I thought of the steps to make that happen and we worked our way to her sleeping independently in her crib.
In terms of the routine, I was thinking about her being a toddler and going to daycare. And that she would need to be bathed much more frequently than we bathed her as an infant. So, I knew bathtime had to make an appearance in the bedtime routine. We started feeding her solids 2 weeks ago, mostly at dinner time. Bathing no longer is optional when your child is squishing peaches and avocado slices between her fingers, around her mouth (what am I saying, in the general area of her head) and up her arms. This is when I started considering the eating bandana suggested by Bunny and endorsed by Bun Bun.
It seems a bedtime routine is emerging. Thus far we have:
1) Eating (and there's another post on that coming). This includes cleaning her with a washcloth afterwards where a tug of war ensues over the washcloth. She has the crack addict intensity need to have it in her mouth.
2) Bath (after several bathroom floor floods (because we were too chicken to actually put her infant tub in the tub), I bathed her in her tub inside the big tub. Nobody was injured. More eating of washcloths. Also, she plays with a plastic baby hippo, and more recently a pink pig.
3) Diaper and pyjamas.
3.5) If Mr. A is not there, this is when I go downstairs to fetch formula. If we are both home, one of us gets the formula while the other does step 3.
4) put her halfway in the pea pod (woombie) and start the sleep sheep.
5) walk around with her while telling her about all she did that day. In French. Very calmly. (this is where I would like to read her a bedtime story, but all she wants to do is eat the books. I've tried giving her a book to chew on while reading her another book, but then she wants to chew on all the books and I have nothing to read).
6) She drinks a vat of formula
7) She dozes off. I kiss her, wrap her up completely and leave her be.
The bedtime routine has been working well. Except when Mr. A tries to do it. Somehow when he does it, she freaks out from steps 3 to 5. I usually have to intervene for steps 6 & 7 to happen. He's feeling down about that. I'm not sure why she freaks out when he puts her to bed. When we talked about it last night, I said I thought maybe she likes dad for fun things and likes mom for comfort, and bedtime is a hard transition so she needs comfort. But who the hell knows? Infants don't talk***
Gummy Girl is now having a terrible time sleeping. But whatever. She has a great bedtime routine.
* We started her in the crib at 2 months. Some will say that's a bit early, but her room is close enough to ours to hear her and be cribside in about 5 steps. It was important to me to have her learn very early on that this is where she sleeps.
** Before your call children's aid, I say that as a figure of speech.
***although they shriek, as she started to do last week.
This is the extent of what I'll do for the transition. I'm not changing the blog, renaming it, changing the address, or whatever. It's a personal decision, and this is what I see as working for me. I want to continue blogging, but I may not be writing about infertility quite as much, and will be writing about parenting a great deal more.
Today, a boring post about bedtime; that magical time of day when your hands mildly start shaking because your glass of red is just so close, you can almost taste it.
For the first 5 months of life, Gummy didn't have much of a bedtime routine. It basically consisted of: 1) Going to Bed. As a newborn, sleep is the main activity all day/all night, with regular intervals of eating. Wakefulness was sparse at first, as is true for many newborns (but not all. If that's the case for yours, I'm sorry). But by the time she was 2-3 months old, she slept more at night and less during the day (and slept through the night at least one out of every two nights. You can hate me).
I had been harbouring some fears about my baby's sleep before she was born, admittedly not so much for her as for Mr. A and I. We work best with ample sleep. On my end, I tend to be a complete bitch when I'm deprived of food or sleep. Mr. A just becomes more absentminded than he already is, which amounts to forgetting more than remembering. And putting his cell phone in the washing machine.
Then Gummy arrived and she LOVED to sleep. Truly, she was an olympic sleeper. We never went so far as to have to wake her up in the first few weeks to feed her (since, you'll remember, she also LOVED sucking and ate very well), but I have on several occasions had to check to see if she was breathing because I expected her to be awake when she was asleep.
So as I said earlier, the bedtime routine used to be simple. Baby is tired. Wrap baby up. Put baby in crib* But it niggled at me. I have extolled the virtues of a proper bedtime routine for children (and adults) countless times in my job, and here I was basically throwing my baby in bed.**
Now, there were a number of things we were doing consistently that made for somewhat of a routine. Sleep works best if you can have a ritual around it, whether you're a baby, a kid or an adult. So, we always wrapped her up in a little pea pod with a zipper (I've just now learned those are called woombies). We always put the sleep sheep to the same setting (rain). We always put her on her back (of course). We put her to bed at 7pm, plus or minus an hour depending on how she was doing.
But I've noticed that with this parenting thing, one must have an idea of where things are going, so as to lay the foundation for it early on. I wanted her to sleep independently from us in her own room. That's not where I started (she was in a bassinet beside our bed), but I thought of the steps to make that happen and we worked our way to her sleeping independently in her crib.
In terms of the routine, I was thinking about her being a toddler and going to daycare. And that she would need to be bathed much more frequently than we bathed her as an infant. So, I knew bathtime had to make an appearance in the bedtime routine. We started feeding her solids 2 weeks ago, mostly at dinner time. Bathing no longer is optional when your child is squishing peaches and avocado slices between her fingers, around her mouth (what am I saying, in the general area of her head) and up her arms. This is when I started considering the eating bandana suggested by Bunny and endorsed by Bun Bun.
It seems a bedtime routine is emerging. Thus far we have:
1) Eating (and there's another post on that coming). This includes cleaning her with a washcloth afterwards where a tug of war ensues over the washcloth. She has the crack addict intensity need to have it in her mouth.
2) Bath (after several bathroom floor floods (because we were too chicken to actually put her infant tub in the tub), I bathed her in her tub inside the big tub. Nobody was injured. More eating of washcloths. Also, she plays with a plastic baby hippo, and more recently a pink pig.
3) Diaper and pyjamas.
3.5) If Mr. A is not there, this is when I go downstairs to fetch formula. If we are both home, one of us gets the formula while the other does step 3.
4) put her halfway in the pea pod (woombie) and start the sleep sheep.
5) walk around with her while telling her about all she did that day. In French. Very calmly. (this is where I would like to read her a bedtime story, but all she wants to do is eat the books. I've tried giving her a book to chew on while reading her another book, but then she wants to chew on all the books and I have nothing to read).
6) She drinks a vat of formula
7) She dozes off. I kiss her, wrap her up completely and leave her be.
The bedtime routine has been working well. Except when Mr. A tries to do it. Somehow when he does it, she freaks out from steps 3 to 5. I usually have to intervene for steps 6 & 7 to happen. He's feeling down about that. I'm not sure why she freaks out when he puts her to bed. When we talked about it last night, I said I thought maybe she likes dad for fun things and likes mom for comfort, and bedtime is a hard transition so she needs comfort. But who the hell knows? Infants don't talk***
Gummy Girl is now having a terrible time sleeping. But whatever. She has a great bedtime routine.
* We started her in the crib at 2 months. Some will say that's a bit early, but her room is close enough to ours to hear her and be cribside in about 5 steps. It was important to me to have her learn very early on that this is where she sleeps.
** Before your call children's aid, I say that as a figure of speech.
***although they shriek, as she started to do last week.
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