Thoughts on mothering - 7 months' tenure

This mothering gig is really something else! I’m the type of person that takes each day as it comes. (I’ve worked long and hard at becoming that type of person, mind you.) So, when it came to being a mother, I tried not to have too many preconceived ideas. Even so, every day brings a new surprise.

I’m still surprised at just how many things are different than I thought they would be. Like the fact that, at 6 months of age, the baby is still in our room and has only slept in his “real crib” for naps on three occasions. Like the fact that, far from having a weekly date night (like we have time for that right now anyway), M alternates between not trusting anyone to leave the baby with and not wanting to leave the baby more than we have to for work, thus, no date nights to date. (No matter, really, since we don’t really do much more than school work. . . )

Because I have no idea how else to organize this. . . here you go:

Biggest surprises about the job: how awesome my kid’s personality is, and that I’m not nearly as anxious or neurotic about things as I feared (and everyone half-expected) I would be.

Biggest lie I was told: "Once that baby's in your arms, you forget all about the pain". Here's the truth of it: the only reason I don't remember the pain was because I had an epidural. But the pain I was in days after? The deep, muscular pain, not-to-mention-whoha-region pain? That I totally still remember!

Best shower gift I received: My Boppy has come in handy SO many times! There are things that I use daily that are really great, but the Boppy has served as a cushion for my aching postpartum tailbone, a feeding pillow for the baby, a sleep positioner when he couldn't breathe well in those winter/newborn months, a baby donut when he was learning how to sit up on his own, a cushion to keep him from bumping his head while changing his diaper in the truck, and currently is stowed around the leg of our coffee table so he doesn't bonk his noggin.

Best baby gear we bought ourselves: I'm gonna go with the pack n play. It has a bassinet, which he still sleeps in to this day. We've also used it while at Aunt T's house, on overnight trips, and while at the lake. We also bought a second one for Nana & Tata's house.

Strangest thing about motherness: the thought that he’s having a completely separate existence from me for so many hours of the day. This is really hitting home as he’s exploring his world more and becoming more aware. Something about seeing him scooting around in his walker clutched at me one day and hasn't quite let go.

His latest things: blowing raspberries and spitting (loudly. everywhere. including church.); a first tooth!; running his tongue back and forth between his lips, complete with awesome sound effects; yelling/screaming; lifting his butt up and putting his head down and bulldoze-scooting toward the tile so he can slap it; crying when one of us leaves the room- even if the other of us is right next to him

Favorite things: watching him learn new things, laughing with him, rocking him to sleep each night, studying his sleeping face, feeling his body relax into heaviness in my arms, that I'm lucky enough to get to be his mother.

~Nichole

The Kind of Boy

Dear C,

It was an interesting holiday weekend, to say the least. First, we worried you were too cold. Then, maybe you were too hot. Then you slept for hours in the Moby, in your seat, in the hotel room. Then, you threw up. Twice on Saturday night and once Sunday afternoon. You almost never throw up.

"Was it the heat?" we wondered. "Was it the cold?" "Too much sun?" "Is he sick?" "Was it the milk?" "Was it because you dropped him on Friday?" asked your dad. (for the record, you were in your carseat, and it wasn't from very high up.)

By Sunday afternoon, I had settled that it was because you are teething. Sure enough: there are two little white bumps on your bottom gums.

I missed you today when I had to go back to work. Coming home, I saw two teenage boys walking down the street and I wondered what kind of boy you'll grow to be. Will you be a lumbering, thick-bodied boy or a tall, slender boy (like your dad)? Whichever it is, I thought to myself, I hope you're a kind sort of boy, even when no one is watching. I hope you're the sort of boy who gives hugs and can talk about his feelings. For your dad's sake, I hope you like going fishing and hiking. I hope you are funny and funloving. Dada says he hopes you're smart and that you like to learn about things.

But, really, I hope you're the sort of boy that grows into a wonderful man (like your dad). Boys will be boys, but those that grow into respectable men are my favorite kind.

So, as I rocked you to sleep tonight, I kissed your cheek and whispered "I love you", then I whispered a prayer to Heavenly Father, thanking him for the beauty of my life - for you and your dad - and asking that I will always remember to spend a little time each day in the small moments of life. Like putting a sleepy boy to bed, nuzzling against the warmth of his cheek, gazing at the profile of his sleeping face and thinking on the blessing that is mine for getting to be his mom.

See, whatever kind of boy you become, whatever kind of man you grow up to be, I can already tell you are fantastic. And watching you become that boy and helping you become that man will be one of the profoundest privileges of my life.

~Nichole

A Letter

Dear Baby C,

You are 6 months old now. You weigh 18 lbs, 6 oz and are 27 inches long. You are a happy baby, always smiling and laughing. You are so easy going, but you pay attention to everything. You will walk if we hold you up and stand you on the floor. It’s so fun to see your little feet marching forward in tiny little steps. It’s your favorite activity when you have too much energy to sit still. Your next favorite thing is to be wherever we are, watching what we are doing. Lately, you’ve taken to laughing wildly if I do something funny that surprises you. I’ve started calling you “Bug”, though I can’t say exactly why.

You had a low-grade fever starting last Saturday night. The fever finally broke late Monday, but then on Tuesday you got a rash and started having cold sweats. Nana was worried it was the powder she put on you. I was worried it was from chlorine in Aunt T’s pool. Your dad was just worried. He took you to the pediatrician and it turns out you have roseola, which is a pretty common virus for babies to get. You’ve been a trooper, and only a little fussy, which we’re not used to because you’re so even tempered.

You don’t like solid foods much yet. We’ve tried butternut squash, peas, carrots, and bananas. We’ve also put grapes, apples and peaches in your fresh food feeder. There’s something about the texture of solid food you’re not very fond of yet. So, we’re taking it slowly. You munched on a pizza crust last weekend and you liked it. You like to gnaw on celery when we go to Chili’s. Dada gave you a piece of tortilla the other day, and showed you what to do with it (you were confused), but then he had to fish out pieces that broke off in your mouth so you wouldn’t choke.

Your dada is a Mother Hen (someday you’ll know what that means), way moreso than me, and he takes care of you on the days that he’s off during the week. He bathes you, reads to you, takes you for walks and shows you the food he’s growing for you in his garden. He loves you so very much. He can’t stand the thought of being away from you if not absolutely necessary. You’re so lucky to have such a dad!

You like going to Nana and Tata’s house three days a week. They love being with you and take such good care of you. They sit with you in their flower garden and you yell with the school kids on the playground across the way. Your Nana makes you hug her whenever you come or go and you happily oblige her.

I don’t like to be away from you more than work requires. Last weekend, I was helping your Aunt T with her house and Grandma was with you in the other room and you fussed a little and it was all I could do not to drop the paint roller in my hand and run to get you. I love being your mom and want to be with you every moment I can.

I put you to sleep every night. And every night I thank my Heavenly Father for sending you to me. I love you more than I can even say!

~Mommy

Goosfraba

I’m being really hard on myself today.

Somewhat about a dusty house, mounting dirty laundry, and an office that looks like a filing cabinet exploded.

But, mostly about running. Or the lack thereof.

And so I start plotting to get up earlier to get out there and do it.

Then I realize this means I’ll miss time in the early morning with my baby.

Like today, when I moved him to our bed in the early hours of the morning and fed him a bottle and listened to his breathing and watched him smile in his sleep before changing his diaper and sending him off for the day.

I remind myself this is temporary. So temporary. “It won’t always be like this.”

And I breathe in. And I breathe out.

Then I get on the scale. And view the profile of my naked self in the mirror for extra measure.

And it begins all over again. So I repeat it. Like a mantra.

As I readied myself for the day, I think to myself “there will be plenty of time for fitness later.”

Even so, I asked for an elliptical for Mother’s Day. We’re saving up for it. (Minus the freakin' cell phone bill!)

In the meantime, surely 10 minutes a day doing some planks or reverse crunches or lunges is something I could pull off, no? Maybe squats while I put on my makeup?

I am certainly going to try.

Meanwhile: “Goosfraba”
(What? Didn’t I ever tell you I live in the movies?)

~Nichole

And They All Rolled Over . . .

And one fell off. . .

The baby awoke around 1:00. I nudged M and when he said "what?" I pointed in the direction of the bassinet from under my sleep mask.

Then, suddenly, I heard a thwump and M exclaiming "oh my god!"

He had placed the sleepy baby on the bed next to me and went to pee "for two seconds".

As the baby cried, we checked him for lumps, bumps, or bruises. He calmed, settled back into a scary sleep, and we called the nurse line. While on the phone, we made an earnest attempt at waking the baby, with M checking his pupils for dilation. He looked at us, wondering why on earth he was awake at that hour, smiled and started chatting us up.

M sat on the floor, head hung low, beating himself up and said he felt like he would vomit. I assured him that it could have happened to me just as easily. It's a worst-case scenario I've imagined in my head many many times.

The nurse said "home care" should be fine, but to check him at regular intervals over the next 3 days.

The baby took a bottle and kicked around in the bed between us, finally going to sleep around 2:30.

His guardian angel was really looking out from him last night.~Nichole

Oh How I Love

this kid

~Nichole

The Mother of all Conspiracies

One Sunday in the mother’s room at church, a friend and fellow-mommy asked, in a low, conspiring voice, if she was the only one who felt distracted most of the time. At the time I thought she meant “at church” and me and L, two who can regularly be found in the mother’s room on any given Sunday, were quick to tell her she wasn’t alone. Only lately have I questioned whether she may have meant something more. And only lately have I begun to desperately hope that she did.

Because lately I live in the state of Distraction. Don’t get me wrong. I have my days – days where the sun shines through and the stars align and the cosmos smile down on me and I sit the baby up on the bed and he plays and we “talk” while I hang clean laundry, still warm, in my closet. Then, as he gets fussy and I’m finishing up, I sing to him. A hymn, no less, which calms us both. Then, I dress him for church and feed him. And he goes down for a nap while I shower and he wakes up just as I’m finishing getting ready and M arrives home from his meeting and we’re only 2 minutes late to church. And later in the day, we take a family nap in our bed. Then I make dinner and we have good conversation. And it’s wonderful.

Then there are the same days where everything turns on its head and I get to bed too late and can’t sleep (darn that nap!) and then the baby wakes up eleventy times and when I finally get to sleep, M wakes me up and asks me to check on the baby because he thought he heard snarfling noises and I huff and I puff because I justgottosleep! and I’vealreadybeenupalot! and I throw back the sheet fiercely to show I’m mad and it turns out the baby isn’t suffocating so I go back to sleep, then wake up again in the wee hours because the baby’s awake again and I finally surrender to the fact that Monday will just be a day of exhaustion, and there will be take out for dinner and I will most certainly try to get to bed earlier.

I am one of 5 new moms in my ward. I am the oldest. I am the one who jokes that I wear glasses because the bottom rim hides the bags under my eyes. I feel like the only one of the 5 of us who is constantly tired, since the others all seem to have recovered from labor and childbirth and transition to new mommyhood really well.

My labor was not as traumatic as it sounds in the retelling of it. Still, it took its toll on me. I was worn out for a full 3 weeks afterward, I was sore for at least 8 weeks, and I stayed home from everywhere but the occasional lunch date for the first 12 weeks. The most recent new mommy made her postpartum appearance at 6 weeks, seemingly unzombified and unfazed. Then there’s the new mommy of an 11-week old who, when I showed up to visit one recent afternoon, had a spotless house and a folded up treadmill she had just used and the very sight of it made me want to fall onto her vacuumed floor and sob.

So, on my worst, utterly exhausted, hanging by a thread days, I start to wonder. Is age a factor here? Does the fact that I’m 5-10 years older than these girls play a role? Or is it just me? (Silently in my head, I plead: Please let it be my age and not an inherent character flaw.)

And before you say it, let me just tell you: I know I shouldn’t be comparing myself to others. I know. It’s just disturbing me that I’m almost 6 months into this gig and I’m tired all. the. time. I could enumerate the mitigating Whys: I work full time, I’m helping hub through grad school. . . wait, that’s it? (Oy.)

Either way, survey says I’m 33. 2010 will make me 34. I’ve begun to have the most grave doubts about my ability to carry, deliver, and mother more than 2 children, even if Time were not a factor. Which is why I’m sort of glad my ticking clock is winding down with no reset button in sight. There’s a sort of relief about the thought of only having to do this one more time.

In the meantime, if one of my fellow new mommies (and maybe a few of the “old” ones) would come up to me and say, in a low, conspiring voice, “am I the only one here that’s always exhausted?” I would feel SO much better. Still tired. But better.

~Nichole

A Daddy's Lullabye

"Go to sleep

go to sleep

go to sleep my fat baby

Go to sleep

go to sleep

with a gigantic head

Go to sleep

go to sleep

you can whine all you want

Go to sleep

go to sleep

you will not win this fight!"

~Nichole

Labor Train

I recently read a post by Jen over at Baby Makin(g) Machine. She is 28 weeks pregnant, and boy, do I remember walking in those (flat, unsexy, but fit-my-swollen-feet) shoes! (Ahem. Speaking of shoes. . . )

Before I was pregnant, I made much ado about labor. It freaked me the freak out! Then I actually became pregnant and became much more zen about it. Not completely, mind you. Just more.

Had I written a birth plan in those days, given all my reading and research, it would have demanded natural start of labor, laboring at home for as long as possible, no medications, no IVs or IV fluids, ability to move around and walk as desired, freedom to labor in a shower or tub, the ability to eat and drink something, no unnecessary medical interventions, adequate private time for my husband and I to make decisions if circumstances changed, the use of a birth ball, being able to labor in any position I wanted, no episiotomy, no cesaerean, immediate skin to skin contact with the baby, allowing the cord to stop pulsing before being clamped and cut, no tugging or pulling on the placenta to “help things along”, the introduction of breastfeeding as soon after birth as possible, complete rooming in of the baby, and absolutely no bottles or pacifiers.

But, the more pregnant I got, the more I read, the more I trusted my doctor, the more zen I became about all of it. I decided to do my best, to let things play out as they would, and to just go with it, relying on my knowledge to help me make good decisions along the way.

So, what I got was natural introduction of labor, laboring at home for as long as possible, immediate placement of IV, inability to move or walk because of magnesium for high blood pressure, restriction to IV fluids and ice chips only, pitocin to kick my labor in the pants and get it going again, a sick husband incapable of helping me make decisions, laboring in bed on my back and sides, (finally!) a birth ball, back labor, an epidural, more pitocin, no episiotomy, vaginal birth, a floppy baby who could not do skin to skin because the cord was wrapped x3 around his neck, near immediate cutting of the cord to get floppy baby some help, some tugging and pulling of the placenta due to hemorrhaging, a curettage due to retained placenta causing the hemorrhaging, a baby who needed bottle feeding due to low blood sugar, who wouldn’t breastfeed, and who was sent to the nursery so his mom could try and recover some much needed sleep.

I don’t know about all women, but labor and delivery really took its toll on me. I tolerated it well in terms of experience, but not in terms of how utterly tired I was afterward. Maybe it is age. Maybe it is that the totality of the experience was more harrowing than I realize. I don’t know. (I do know it was nice to have my doc play policeman and mandate that no visitors were allowed until I went home. I really needed that!)

I wouldn’t change much about what I did have control over. (Technically, I suppose I could have kicked and screamed and denied the magnesium, which was the proverbial fork in Labor Road, but really who wants to be that PITA?) I’m really proud of making it as long as I did without an epidural given the circumstances. I labored at home for almost 6 hours, then labored at the hospital until I was 8cm before getting an epidural. Above all, I took time to make decisions.

Although not in my original “plan”, I trusted my doctor’s advice and went ahead and got an IV and was started on fluids when I was admitted (which made getting an epidural very quick), and got the magnesium which meant I had to have pitocin, which ultimately led to my getting an epidural, but I was sure glad to have an epidural when my doc had to do a curettage and stitch up my 3rd degree tears. It all worked out just like it was supposed to, and while not technically a “natural” birth, it followed a naturally logistical process that worked for me.

I think that’s the point. Every woman, every pregnancy, every birth is different. And as much as women feel strongly about their own birth experience (though, for the life of me, I can’t understand why some are so vehement about all of it), telling someone else what type of birth they should have is like telling them to go out next week and win the lottery. There are just too many variables involved to set that kind of expectation of yourself, much less of others.

(Even so, when I have #2, the only thing I want to do differently is try and get more sleep during the early stages of labor. And I have forbidden my husband from getting sick next time.)

If solicited, my advice would be to not be afraid. And to go into it with as much knowledge as possible so you can make good decisions. And not to get hung up on a “plan”.

When it comes down to it, none of us can do very much about much of anything once we’re on the pregnancy train. We may get on when we want, but when and where and how we get off is not entirely up to us – no matter how many constraints we women want to put on that process. Still, the final destination, the good ol’ Town of Motherhood, is the same no matter what.

~Nichole

Pump It Up

I was looking up something totally unrelated the other day about breastfeeding and happened on the answer to the Great Deflate (prolactin levels decrease as a breastfeeding mother's body finally figures out what is needed for production, so breasts feel less firm and full, but it has no effect on milk supply.)

I also found out that pumping exclusively can be really hard or nearly impossible for some women.

Other than the extra time and inconvenience involved, it wasn't that difficult for me. In truth, though, I was so eager to get him off of formula, I never considered whether it would be hard to pump exclusively. I just forged ahead and did it. I'm relieved I never knew about potential roadblocks before I started.

Even so, I am glad I found some helpful resources along the way.

Like this one about exclusively pumping. Or this pdf about how to establish a milk supply or wean while pumping. Or the site about, well, everything else you might want to know about breastfeeding.

~Nichole