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In no particular order...
Humidifier Parts
Enjoy your visit and come again soon...
Witness the cuteness for yourself.
That is a real sentence from the Nora Roberts novel I'm reading. I decided I need to start reading more lighthearted fare than Frederick Douglass' autobiographies. Not that Douglass' writing and narrative style aren't highly readable, but these days I need a little more fun in my quiet moments. My sister was happy to supply me with some bona fide literary fluff.
I read while Paula is nursing, if she'll settle and really nurse rather than constantly squirming, pulling off my breast, pushing up with her feet and off my chest with her arms. She hmmms, an urgent sound that can mean she feels restless, has to use the potty, or needs to burp. And then if I take a drink from my water bottle, she gets distracted by the glubbing of bubbles into the bottle and might not go back to nursing at all. She loves the water bottles.
The last few days I'm trying to read in the evenings, too, while she's going to bed. Putting Paula to bed is commonly a 3-4 hour process. She naps around 5:30, wakes up bright eyed around 7, falls asleep again around 7:30 or so, wakes again around 8:15, then usually falls asleep for good between 8:30 and 9. She is extremely restless between these naps and everything has to be kept very quiet, dim lights, non-stimulating in order for her to find her way to sleep.
I've tried a lot of things to help her settle down and sleep. I've nursed her, walked her, worn her in the sling, rocked in the glider. I've resorted to homeopathics, and given her prophylactic Motrin when she was teething. All of these things have worked sometimes, but none of them work all the time. The hard part for me is that I am already tired by this time and the more effort I put into her going to sleep, the worse I feel, the louder and higher she squawks, the more I want to tear out my hair.
On my mom's suggestion we decided to start giving her cereal in the evening in the hopes that she would be able to sleep more easily and stay asleep through the evening. So now she nurses and gets a little strained organic millet gruel before we begin the bedtime saga. She nurses again, and I put her in the co-sleeper. I really want her to snuggle up to me, to fall asleep while nursing and sleep soundly that way all night, but it's just not in her. She lies in the co-sleeper with me next to her, reading Nora Roberts, skimming past the pornographic parts and keeping an eye on my baby.
Tonight, as usual, she was feeling restless though obviously tired. She stared up at the ceiling, hooting and cawing at the shadows. I rolled her onto her side, which seems to quiet her, and she rolled back onto her back, arms out, eyes wide and excited. I took a very quiet drink from my liter-bottle of filtered water. She didn't see me. Still, I thought maybe she would like something to play with for a while and I set the big Dasani bottle next to her.
Paula wrapped her arms around it and gave me a look of sweet, sweet gratitude. Like not only did I give her my water bottle, but it was the biggest one she'd ever seen. She looked amazed and filled with unspeakable joy. She rolled onto her side facing me and put her arms loosely around the big bottle. Two fingers of one hand found their way into her mouth and soon, finally she was asleep.
Of course that was only the first nap of the evening, but it felt like a little triumph.
I just got a really critical email telling me that I have made too much of things, I'm immature and self-pitying. Okay. I'll definitely grant you immature and self-pitying. Not always, but they definitely surface from time to time. I'm certainly no saint, nor do I pretend to be. Wish to be, yes. Pretend to be, no.
But since I was just reading on Dooce.com about how people write her really unsupportive and blaming emails, it makes me wonder something. Why the pointy eyebrows? What do people gain by blaming someone who is, by their subjective standards, having a hard time doing one of the most important jobs in the world?
And I have to wonder, too, have these people never had one of life's low moments?
One thing this person mentioned was that I espouse attachment parenting yet say I feel I'm losing my mind in the midst of doing it. Yes, both true. I believe that attachment parenting is the best way for me to enjoy my daughter and give her a solid foundation in life, and yet the ways I have practiced it so far are turning out to be unsustainable. Is that a crime? Did I miss the memo that explained how to achieve perfect balance and harmony as an AP family? As far as I know, it's up to each family to figure that one out, and while Joel and I waited a long time to have a baby and laid the best foundation we could for that, no one is ever 100% ready for kids. I also am a devout Baha'i, yet often feel like my adherence to the teachings of my faith falls far short of what I would consider acceptable. Does this make me a bad person or just an ordinary person striving to make something extraordinary part of my life?
And does me going to a therapist mean I'm looking for a way out of my chosen role as Paula's mommy? I think I'm actually looking for a way to stay engaged by doing my emotional homework. Who thinks it's a good idea for any mom to stop working on herself - with professional help if need be - while raising her kids? As the child of someone who spent many years in therapy successfully overcoming depression and a severe associative disorder, I can say things definitely would have been worse if she had decided that minimizing her struggles and sucking it up were the best ways to go.
While I appreciate that someone - who chose to conceal her identity, so I hope it's not a personal IRL friend who didn't think she could approach me directly - decided to share her thoughts with me, I just have to wonder what she or anyone else gains from kicking someone while they're down. Blog friendly.
I had my first therapy appointment today and it went pretty well. M. is a very businesslike therapist who sets out a strategy and assigns homework. I like. I'm going back in a week and she wants to meet with Joel and me together. I have a feeling that finally someone other than me is going to tell him that staying up all night and sleeping in are not part of Life With A Baby. Joel's great, but there are some things he needs to hear and it hasn't worked for me to tell him.
I was concerned that the very first thing out of M's mouth would be, "You need time away from that baby!" That's what they all say, right? Well, she didn't say that, exactly, but she did say I need to start focusing on those things that bring me non-mommy-related enjoyment and find ways to do them, without Paula if need be, in ways that make sense for the two of us. I don't see any babysitters in our future, but maybe some nice daddy-daughter time with me near enough to nurse but engaged in other things.
Dooce makes me feel so grateful that my post-partum issues have not gotten so bad that I have to wean Paula in order to get mind- and possibly life-saving meds. And she makes me feel so inferior as a writer and so bad that I'm not posting great updates about Paula the way she does about her daughter, Leta.
But my heart really goes out to her, either way.
Actually, I think the reason I don't write those awesome updates that Paula will be able to read someday (or won't be able to read, actually, since I don't write them) is that I can't imagine writing them without my major insecurities working themselves in. For example, "Dear Paula, at six months old you are incredibly cute, with eyes that squint up when you laugh, just like daddy's. Your fuzzy little bit of hair is a pretty reddish brown and your eyes are green, maybe for good. I spend my time with you hugging and kissing you, trying to make you laugh by tickling you with the tip of my nose on your ribs, and wondering if you will play on the floor long enough for me to wash the dishes or go through the mail. The fact that you usually don't want to play on the floor, and start squawking loudly, drives me to distraction too often. When I look at you, so innocent and beautiful, I feel like you deserve a better mother."
Instead of keeping a written record, Joel and I are trying to take lots of pictures, but it's still probably not enough. We're doing the best we can, though. Somehow I need to figure out how to let myself off the hook. I need to try to remind myself that Paula has more than one day to be a baby, more than one momentary chance to enjoy her infancy. If not in this moment, maybe the next.
I hate writing this. It seems like it will be just more drama in my life, when Things Should Be Perfect. But they're not.
I've decided to start seeing a therapist for help with the extreme emotional lows I've experienced lately with respect to being Paula's mom. The number of times I've thought, said or written, "I feel like I'm losing my mind," should have tipped me off, but it wasn't until last night that things crystallized. We had been out all afternoon and got back around 8. Paula was way overtired, overstimulated and downright cranky. I tried everything I could to get her to sleep as she resisted, vocalizing in her unique style. It's like when a bite of hot food burns your tongue and takes you by surprise: A high-pitched, open-mouth AH! Except she sounds less surprised, more urgent. "AH! I want to tell you something! AAAH! I'm trying to communicate! AAAH-AAH! I'm hungry or tired or have to pee or cold or hot or teething or (unknown) or excited to see daddy! AAAAH-AAAH-AAAH!"
Anyway, I finally gave her homeopathic coffea cruda and handed her to Joel. I'll be damned if she wasn't asleep in ten minutes. After she fell asleep I confided to Joel that while she was squawking I had wished I could feel severe physical pain - being stabbed in the head or run over by a train, specifically - rather than hear Paula's high-pitched cawing any more.
I even wished I were dead. A friend I talked to today said that's because parts of who I used to be are dying while new parts are being born, painfully.
The stress of hearing that loud screeching day in and day out has messed up something in me, I think. I just don't feel connected to Paula the way I did before. I fear her self expression. I get angry at her for needing things and not being able to tell me what they are. I feel so isolated most of the time, but I intentionally avoid obvious sources of companionship, like my parents-in-law, because I prefer not to field advice that I find unsupportive of my parenting choices.
But obviously something has to change.
First off, I need to take better care of myself physically and spiritually. My evening routine has to include yoga and prayers, my morning routine prayers and vitamins.
I think we also need to take a more aggressive approach to Paula's interminable teething pain. Motrin(R) in the morning and afternoon, homeopathic ignatia, coffea and chamomilla as often as needed. I wonder, too, if she doesn't need to be held (or worn in the sling) more and placed on the floor to play less. She is so bright that I forget that she was premature and will need not to be rushed in her development. Either way, she tends to be calmer and to vocalize at a lower dynamic level when I'm wearing her.
More difficult is my need for more support from outside myself. I need Paula to be comfortable enough with a couple of other people that I can take a nap, walk or shower without her occasionally (I generally do these things with her). I really need a friend to come over and help me catch up on the mail I have been ignoring for about a month. On top of that I'm going to need help as I begin doing some paid work. I had planned to do it from 9-10 at night, the hour I have now set aside for prayer and yoga. Hanging out at my in-laws' house is a pretty simple way to do this, advice or no. I'll probably need to just bite the bullet.
Where is Joel in all of this? He's supportive, concerned, loving, and not sure what exactly to do. When he's hanging out with Paula and she starts to cry, I go get her from him. It's a maternal imperative or a hyper-vigilant stress response, or both. My need to keep her from getting wound up drowns out the voice of "she's okay with her dad if I'll give them a minute." He's great when she is wound up and cranky because he focuses on giving her that dad energy she loves. At other times I think he gets a little distracted when he thinks what he has in his arms is one of those easy babies.
That's kind of the crux of it for me, too, oddly enough. After half a year with Paula, I still keep hoping she'll become a quiet and mellow baby who reflects superbly on me as the perfect, most wise, loving and nurturing mother. I always thought my baby would never be cranky, never colicky, never anything but Just Right because I would do absolutely Everything Right.
Paula just finished nursing. She is over stimulated or something, maybe over tired from her nap getting cut short earlier. She was hmm-ing in a high pitched voice even while nursing, then did her latest trick as she finished. She relaxes her latch, then blows air out around my breast. It's a little annoying to me, but better than biting, so I just take her off. Just now I took her off and she buried her face in my exposed belly and I let her stay there. She continued hmm-ing, then began pressing her mouth to my belly and blowing air out. She's giving me raspberries on my tummy! It tickles but I'm trying not to laugh. Aren't I supposed to be doing this to her?
Joel and I have realized that even though we are both technically at home these days, we really spend very little time together.
I wake up at 5 or 6 with Paula, he gets up around 9. Soon after that Paula usually takes a nap, and when I'm lucky I knock out with her. Otherwise I just lay next to her and read as she nurses in her sleep. Not a good time to catch up with my man. When Paula and I get up from her nap, it's time to do housework, fix and eat lunch before her next nap hits around 1 or so.
I start making dinner as soon as we get up from the first afternoon nap because it will be interrupted by the second one. If Joel is home we eat dinner together - in front of the TV, guiltily - around 4:30 or 5, when reruns of The Simpsons or King of the Hill are on. After dinner Paula naps again from 5:30 to 6:30 or 7, and is up from then until 8:30 or 9 when she goes down for the night, with me. While she's up I do dishes and tidy up while Joel heads downstairs to practice or work on his drums. I see him next if I'm awake when he comes to bed between 1 and 4 in the morning.
You'd think we would fit some quality time into this schedule, but we basically only manage some joking around in the kitchen or discussing a) what color to paint our bedroom, b) what new drums he found for sale on eBay or c) the latest in his attempts to get his mom to clear out her house and move her and his dad into a condo. Meals are nice, and together, but most of the time I end up eating with one hand and nursing Paula as we read the captions on the muted TV because talking will bother her.
Togetherness as we knew it seems to have dissolved beneath our feet. We used to take off for long, aimless drives through forest preserves or to unknown towns. Last time we did this was when I was pregnant. We ended up at a Mexican restaurant in Joliet where a guy thought Joel was someone else and gave me some very strange looks till he learned differently. Those were the days of splurging on junk food, pancakes, those tamarind candies, Pulparindo, they sell at Mexican stores.
Those were the days of falling asleep in My Spot, nestled into Joel's side with his arm around me. Even now, on the occasional night that Paula sleeps in the co-sleeper, I don't get more than a few minutes in my spot before she apparently senses my back is turned and whimpers in her sleep. Besides, Joel and I never go to bed together.
The one time we do spend just enjoying each other's company is when he's waking up in the morning. Paula and I get back in bed to wake up daddy, and she beams these incredible smiles at him as he struggles to stay conscious. He would, of course like to sleep later, but 9 o'clock is the best I can do. After a while he takes Paula, who is reaching for him with her eyes and hands, and puts her on his chest. "Let me see my bulldog!" he says and props her up on her hands and knees. She grins dreamily and drools on his t-shirt. He holds her above him, "flying," and she chuckles deep in her throat. A big drop of drool hits him on the chin and we laugh as I wipe it off.
I've been sad, even a little weepy about Paula's new teeth. She now has both bottom front ones, little "toofies" that jut up from her previously toofless gums. Those beautiful gummy grins are rapidly becoming a thing of the past and I feel like I'm not ready for her to be a person with teeth.
When my friend Alma first met Paula at three months old, she smiled down at the baby and said, "The way she is right now is a perfect state of grace. Perfect. Enjoy it while it lasts." Alma has four kids, all under six years old. She knows of what she speaks, but I didn't. At three months Paula had just begun to emerge as a participant in the world around her. She had just begun to seem like someone I could have a two-way relationship with: Her eyes could track, she could smile at me with those gums.
That toothlessness gave form to Paula's perfect harmlessness. Her milky breath, soft skin, gray eyes that looked up at me from the breast; they were all part of this absolutely innocent, totally pre-lapsarian creature. I remember how I sang to her, "holy infant, so tender and mild," understanding at last why the Christmas carol describes the newborn Christ that way.
Now these little white stones stick unevenly out of her gums and they tell me that she is headed where we all have to go: she is gaining the power to harm, and the responsibility to choose right from wrong. Her soft, cuddly, defenseless body is growing ever so gradually into a body with defenses, a body that will prepare her to be her own advocate, a body that will take her away from me as her defender, me as her advocate.
I always thought I would feel no resistance to my child growing up. After all, that's the whole idea, right? They develop, learn, master new skills, confront new challenges. It's the stuff of life! Why would any parent feel less than great about it?
I found out last night that a good girlfriend of mine was being abused by her husband, and that it has now stopped.
It took her a little while to get out, but she did and I'm proud of her. But something inside me keeps nagging at me.
She didn't get out right away when it started. I don't know why exactly, and I certainly don't blame her. Truth is, I blame myself.
Now this is not another instance of my exaggerated propensity to take things personally or heap calumny on my head for global warming or what-have-you. No, I think that maybe I could have done something a long time ago that might have helped.
When I was a kid my parents opened our home to women who were leaving abusive relationships and needed a safe place to stay. They were usually young, usually had one or two young kids, were otherwise unremarkable. I don't remember feeling either put out or noticeably engaged by their presence in my home. They were guests who stayed for a little bit and then left.
But I think that's why we talked about domestic abuse in my family. We occasionally discussed it, and someone always seemed to speak the same refrain: "No man gets more than one chance to hit you. He uses that chance and he'll never get another one." It was just one of those things we always said.
When I was a teenager that got put to the test. One of my relatives was young and in her first year of marriage when she questioned her husband about some suspicious behavior - in retrospect it was probably drug-related - and he hit her. That was it. She moved out, they split up. Boom.
But since last night I've been thinking about this and wondering why I can't recall ever talking to my girlfriends about this back when we were all single. Why, if the subject ever came up, was it more along the lines of, "That poor woman needs help," or, "Women need to have more education and financial independence so they can leave those situations."
We were all educated, independent, strong. We didn't need any help. So why even suggest that someday one of us might find herself at the wrong end of a husband's fist? Why even bring it up, repeat the refrain. "A guy's only gonna get one chance to hit me. If he uses that chance, he'll never get another one."
Joel says it was just that we trusted each other's judgment and that there's nothing wrong with that. He says I shouldn't blame myself, and he's probably right. But I want to start bringing it up again, making it good and clear to all the women I know: A guy only gets one chance to hit you. If he uses that chance, never give him another one.
*****
I've been reading a discussion online about one of those baby training books. You know, the ones that tell you how to get your baby to go to sleep on her own, never cry, and balance a checkbook by the age of six months. A recurring theme is the idea that if you let the baby do X, she'll never be able to go to sleep without you there to provide X to her. She'll be totally dependent.
Prime examples involve nursing to sleep and rocking to sleep. That if you allow your baby to nurse to sleep every time or rock to sleep, she will never be able to go to sleep on her own without you. I mean, it's based on the real-life experience we all have of that crazy kid we knew in high school who had to be nursed to sleep every single night - and who later became an axe murderer. Yep. Nursing to sleep will only lead to no good, and anyone who does it is doing a serious disservice to their baby.
And rocking to sleep? That's another big one. It fuels the burgeoning "rocking bed" market. It's sad, really, that these otherwise normal adults have to shell out big bucks to buy the one kind of bed that will allow them to fall into a peaceful slumber. Before the rocking bed came along, you could always tell who had been rocked to sleep as an infant because they were always nodding off on the train or in those hanging ferris wheel cars. Poor bastards.
The big one, of course, is training the baby to simply fall asleep alone without complaint, in his or her own room. This, I will concede, is a major life skill that must be mastered. If you can't fall asleep alone, you're likely to become one of those people who go from relationship to relationship, never happy to be Just You, always fearing the night and wondering if you will have to invite that homeless guy outside your door to snuggle up with you because you've got that big presentation tomorrow and otherwise you'll be a wreck. It's a big deal.
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