Thursday

Note to self: Do not let your hormones dictate how you feel about weaning. Ummm...that's not helpful. I'm pretty sure that I and I alone have been sabotaging the progress we have made on the weaning front this week, and I'm pretty sure that hormones are mostly to blame. I am also pretty sure that this is how nature ensured that babies did not die in the olden days so that the human race would carry on.

Anyway.

On the "other stuff I want to do" front, I have made some progress with my volunteer placement. On Saturday, I attended volunteer orientation at Dell Children's Hospital. I have finally located a copy of my childhood immunizations, which the hospital needs before they will let me be a volunteer. Now I need to make an appointment to get the first of two TB skin tests. I am excited to do this (the volunteer placement, not the TB skin test). It will be interesting being back in a hospital setting after 8 years.

I have also begun studying for my social work license. I don't know exactly what I want to do when I decide to go back to work, but I have a feeling that whatever I do will incorporate my social work degree more than my last job did, which was not at all.

Here's to that!

I want to do other things too

I stay at home with my daughter and if there is anything in my life that I feel is 100% right, it is this. I know a lot of women feel conflicted about the decision to stay home (Shouldn't I get a job so that I can contribute financially? Am I really the best person to teach my child day-in and day-out?) For me, the answers to those questions are "Not yet" and "Yes," respectively. Love it (most of the time), love her (over the top), just love it. But sometimes I wonder if the level at which I have embraced my new role indicates something lacking deep inside. (Examples include unexpected nursing fervor and angst-ridden over seemingly mundane child-rearing decisions such as allowing my child to cry it out in her bed instead of co-sleeping and night-nursing).

I may be lacking in some areas. I want to do and be a lot of things but am one of those "I just never got around to it" kind of people. I have thought about it and decided that it has nothing to do with my Mommy title. I have always been a procrastinator, perhaps a little lazy and a little non-commital, and also a bit of a "reach for the stars" type of dreamer. For example, I told Mike when we started talking about babies that I wanted to do a yoga retreat by myself before I got pregnant. Why didn't I make that happen? This wasn't exactly a "reach for the stars" moment. It would have been different if I had said I wanted to attend a yoga retreat, take yoga teacher training, and open up my own studio - all before having a baby. No no...I just wanted to go on one out of town yoga retreat.

Anyway, there are a lot of things that I want to do that don't have much or anything to do with the life I lead right now. I still want to go on a yoga retreat...it doesn't have to be out of town, but it should be at least over a weekend. I also would love to take yoga teacher training, but that is something that will have to wait for, oh, ten years or so. I would also love to take a cooking class, or several cooking classes. One to learn how to think outside the box when it comes to cooking. I want to learn what the experts say about which flavors complement each other and how to throw them all together to make good (yet simple-ish) meals. I also want to take a vegetarian/vegan cooking class so that this type of eating can be a presence in our lives as well.

I want to learn how to sew. This has much to do with my current occupation, as I foresee costumes, rips, tears, and mends in my childrens' futures, and I don't want to always pay full price for new clothes, or even for a tailor. I think it is just good home ec.

I want to write more. This blog is supposed to be for that, but often I am too fried or too busy to write. I also worry about the quality of my writing and opt to either not write or not publish if I think it is sloppy. Tonight I am super tired but writing anyway, and I totally intend to post. I realize that I may have included too many or not enough commas, as both are my tendency. I am also pretty sure that my grammar is incorrect in several places and my sentences are lazy. I'm just going with it.

I have begun reading more, which is a great thing for me. More on that later.

I REALLY want to rediscover my own political mind again. My life has evolved quite a bit over the past few years, but has anything really changed? I'd like to find out, and when I do, I do not want to be ashamed or timid about it. I want to own it, but I do not want it to own me. I really want to believe that there is a place for dissenting opinions in our day, but it does not need to take up so much room. My political views help to shape who Iam, but do not define the whole me. Now breathe.

I want to be a better friend and a nicer stranger. I want to stress less, gossip less, judge less, and speak more positive things. I want to leave a mark in my community. Community involvement, serving on school boards, volunteering, etc.

Let's just be real...

...and admit that this has become a baby blog, or rather, a blog about my life with my baby. Obviously, it didn't start out that way since it predates my baby and my marriage by about three years. And believe it or not, there actually was a time in my life when my brain could process complex thoughts that had nothing to do with breastfeeding a newborn, breastfeeding an older infant, breastfeeding a toddler, just plain feeding a toddler, trying to get said toddler to sleep, to share, to get those teeth in already...you get the point. You can read through some of my earlier posts and see for yourself what my interests were.

But here I am, living the life that I always thought I was meant to live. It isn't always fun, it is rarely tidy, but it's mine all mine.

Short term goals for my blog are to update it more often, post a picture of my Madeline, and to get three regular readers. Long-term goals...perhaps more than three regular readers?

Madeline is up from her nap. I love her sweet post-nap singing. It is truly the best thing in the world right after her hugs and kisses.

...And just like that

Just like that, I made the decision to night wean her, which means she must sleep in her own bed. (I know there are lots of co-sleeping advocates who will tell me that we can keep her in our room and wean, but to them I say, "No, not us. It is impossible to say no to my baby at 1:30 in the morning when she is two inches from my face and crying for "Mulk? Momma...mulk?" So it is done. For four nights now, Madeline has spent the entire night in her bed. As a result, my milk supply is going WAY down. I read that this would happen, but ugh!! I feel really sad about the whole thing. I only nurse her three times now in a 24-hour period and something is telling me that it is time to wean her. She is in a really good place right now - doesn't seem to be teething too badly and is back to the extremely sweet, happy baby that I knew before those nasty teeth started wreaking havoc in her poor, tortured mouth. I honestly don't think it will ever be easier to wean, unless I want to wait until she weans herself sometime around the age of 5. (No I don't). Okay, so what to do with these emotions? I've read that nursing stimulates endorphins, so I guess I should brace myself for the anti-endorphins or something. Bah.

My Own Personal Hang-Ups vs. Reality

I have learned a lot in the course of having a baby. My first big lesson was that even though it seems like a good idea to have a plan, whether it be a birth plan, breastfeeding plan, plan for keeping up with the housework, or any kind of plan, it is a better idea to remain flexible. Okay, check. I've got that one.

The next big lesson I have yet to learn. It is this: How do I tell the difference between what are my own personal hang-ups and what is reality? The biggest example of this is our sleeping situation. My daughter does not care for sleep. Never has. She would prefer to nurse, chat, wiggle, squirm, play. Anything but sleep. Part of that could be our fault. We nurtured her love for nursing and I nursed on demand for the first year. Also our parenting practices thus far have been mostly in the "No-Cry" camp. We have done a little cry it out, and it helped get over a really frustrating pre-bed/nap routine (our daughter can now get herself to sleep without much help from us). But the current problem is and always has been frequent night-waking. The most obvious solution seems to be a regimen of night-weaning and crying-it-out-in-her-bed, the thought of which elicits a pang of guilt in my core. If I could just isolate that guilt and dissect it, I think it would really help to strengthen my convictions about which camp deserves my allegiance. I have always said that no matter what my own personal issues, I want Madeline to be raised with a clean slate (or as clean a slate as possible). I don't want my irrational fears to hold her back or to define who she becomes. On the other hand, I have read a lot about how it is natural and normal for babies in many cultures to co-sleep and nurse throughout the night for at least the first three years of life. I know firsthand that nursing round the clock is my daughter's idea of bliss. She can (and often does) wake up 5 times in one night to nurse and doesn't seem to be any worse for the wear the following day. (The same cannot be said for me...I drag). There is a huge part of me that loves the idea of letting this phase in her life play out until its natural end...I like to imagine that doing this will help her to fully grow and mature emotionally without artificial obstacles being thrown in her path. As if my stopping it will somehow throw a wrench in her development.

I also know that I truly l0ve having her sleep next to me...not because I sleep better, because God knows I do not. But I feel very insecure when she sleeps in her room, away from me. Here is where my issues enter. Which of these factors is the driving force behind my hesitance to enter the next phase? Do I really believe that by enforcing cry-it-out, Madeline's emotional health will be stunted? After all, she is almost 18 months old now. Her every need and want has been met for a year and a half, and now it is time for Mommy to sleep. Is nursing through the night really a need, or is it a crutch? If it is a crutch, so what? It's a healthy one. I am not one for removing a crutch on principle if there is no harm to having the crutch. But whose crutch is it? Mine or hers? Just because I know she will be "fine" after night weaning and crying it out doesn't mean that it is the right thing to do. Despite hardships in my childhood, I am now "fine"...doesn't mean I want to impose my upbringing on anyone else, simply because it can be survived. So what now?

Hummingbirds

Last week my grandmother died. As a child, I used to accompany her to the field across the street from my grandparents' house where she liked to throw out birdseed every morning. I remember being confused by this because I had been watching some Disney movie or another where a momma bird brings home a worm to feed her baby bird. Worms, not seeds. One day I asked my grandmother about this. Her reply: "Well, I know birds eat worms. I'm just afraid they'll run out of 'em!"

When my grandfather died more than 10 years ago, I swear he stuck around to visit me in dreams and to give me the strength to take care of some personal demons. My grandfather had big, powerful hands and feet. Or maybe I just remember them as being big and powerful because in most of my memories with him, I was a child. Now, when I look back to the time after his death and the events that occured in my family, it is the image of his strong hands and kind face that I envision.

Now that my grandmother has gone, I am searching for that image of her that will soothe me. I suppose it should be enough for me to know that she is no longer suffering, but it isn't. I miss her now, and am having trouble grasping the fact that I will never again hear her voice and will never again read another funny letter from her.

Recently, I have become interested in hummingbirds. I don't know why, and I didn't even realize that it was happening until after my grandmother died. But over the past couple of months, I have been incorporating hummingbirds into my life. There's the hummingbird feeder that we bought for our backyard last month and the background that I recently chose for this very blog. And the week before my grandmother died, I recommended to my mother a hummingbird nightlight to give to my grandmother for Mother's Day. After my grandmother died, my aunt and I began going through her apartment to pack things up and I found a beautiful pocket mirror that I had given her a long time ago with the image of a hummingbird on it.

So what gives? I decided to do a little informal (read: Google) research on hummingbirds to see what the Interwebs had to say about them. I found a lot - some of which does not apply, but some that does. I read that they are a symbol of beauty, love, joy. Also, because a hummingbird can fly backwards, they teach us that it is okay to look backwards into our past but that we should not dwell there. Good stuff. Remind me to address just how to do this in my next therapy session.

In my life, I fight a great Impatience. I am always looking ahead to the next phase of life, regardless of how precious the current one is. The one exception to this has been with my grandparents. Since I was old enough to appreciate the finality of death, I understood that I would outlive my grandparents and would one day have to say farewell. It seems that with both my grandparents, and perhaps only when spending time with my grandparents, I was a hummingbird flying in place, hovering in the moment, trying to drink up every sweet ounce of nectar they had to offer me. It nourishes me now.

Another baby step for me

Talk about feeling slightly defeated. My sister-in-law informed me today that her 7-month old is sleeping 12 hours at night now that they have let her cry it out. Apparently, Baby S is sleeping soundly and waking up happy, and momma sounds well-rested and, well, elated.

Why do I feel slightly defeated? Your guess is as good as mine. I am happy for them that they are getting rest at night, but I guess the thought that Baby S was turning out to have similar night waking issues to Madeline was a validation to me. If it's in the family (as in, hereditary), then I don't have control over it and I can finally relax and stop trying to defend myself and my choices so much.

I have struggled with this issue of cry it out versus letting M nurse on demand for too many months now. I have not had the heart or the desire to let her cry it out, but I lack the courage of my convictions to launch a solid defense of our current practice of co-sleeping and nursing on demand. Seeing Baby S respond to cry it out so well isolates me again. It leaves me feeling helpless to defend myself against those of my friends and family who like to say "Kelly you have absolutely lost your mind. You have to let that baby cry it out or else she will never learn how to sleep independently." Or worse is the person who says nothing at all because there is all that empty silence to fill and guessing as to what the person is thinking (do they approve or not approve and why do I care so much??) All this matters because everyone always wants to know if Madeline is sleeping yet...and more importantly, if I am sleeping yet. The answer is and has been for months, the same: "(Yawn)...No, not yet."


But this is just another mini-lesson in the bigger lesson that I have been trying to learn and internalize for a while now. My choices are just that - mine. Nobody else's (except for my husband's, who is thankfully 100% in agreement with me on this issue). I don't need anyone else's approval and I don't need to recruit others to our side. The fact that I feel the ceaseless urge for that deserves further psychoanalysis. But not today.