That Baby is Trying to Break You Up

This seemed so fitting after the conversation we had today (which I'm still laughing about).

Ever feel like your marriage has taken a direct hit because of the baby?  Read this.

You'll probably have days like this, where you're pretty sure your sweet baby is running some sort of torture exercise on you.  She's trying to break you both down.  Driving a wedge between you.  Trying to break you up.

And since directing all those negative emotions at a baby seems ridiculous, you have to find someone else.  Entre The Spouse.

Here's the best part about that article: I can laugh about it now.  That means I remember those feelings, and can completely relate.  But I don't feel them anymore.  Or, at least, not most of the time.

A Letter to a First-Time Mom

A friend of mine sent this to me when Jack was about six months old, and I thought it was beautiful.  It also helped me of feel better more than once.  I thought you might like it, too.

Dear Mother of Only One Child,

Don't say it. Before the words can even pass your lips, let me beg you: don't say, "Wow, you have nine kids? I thought it was hard with just my one!"

My dear, it is hard. You're not being a wuss or a whiner when you feel like your life is hard. I know, because I remember having only one child. You may not even believe how many times I stop and reflect on how much easier my life is, now that I have nine children.

All right, so there is a lot more laundry. Keeping up with each child's needs, and making sure they all get enough attention, is a constant worry. And a stomach bug is pretty much the end of the world, when nine digestive tracts are afflicted.

But I remember having only one child, and it was hard, so very hard. Some of the difficulties were just practical: I didn't know what I was doing, had to learn everything. People pushed me around because I was young and inexperienced. But even worse were the emotional struggles of learning to be a mother.

When I had only one child, I truly suffered during those long, long, long days in our little apartment, no one but the two of us, baby and me, dealing with each other all day long. I invented errands and dawdled and took the long way home, but still had hours and hours to fill before I would hear my husband's key in the door.

I cared so much what other people thought about her, they had to notice how beautiful she was, they had to be impressed at my natural mothering skills. I obsessed over childhood development charts, tense with fear that my mothering was lacking, that I hadn't stimulated her enough, or maybe had just passed on the wrong kind of genes. I cringe when I remember how I pushed her, "a little baby" to achieve milestones she wasn't ready for.

I lived in terror for her physical safety (I once brought her to Urgent Care, where the doctor somewhat irritably diagnosed a case of moderate sniffles) fearing every imaginable disease and injury. In my sleep-deprived state, I would have sudden insane hallucinations that her head had fallen off, her knees had suddenly broken themselves in the night, and so on.

My husband didn't know how to help me. I didn't know how to ask for help. My husband had become a father, and I adored him for it. My husband got to leave the house every day, and sleep every night. He got to go to the bathroom alone. I hated him for it.

When I had only one child, I told myself over and over that motherhood was fulfilling and sanctifying and was filling my heart to the brim with peace and satisfaction. And so I felt horribly guilty for being so bored, so resentful, so exhausted. This is a joyful time, dammit! I should enjoy being suddenly transformed into the Doyenne of Anything that Smells Bad.

I loved my baby, I loved pushing her on the swing, watching squirrels at the park together, introducing her to apple sauce, and watching her lips move in joyful dreams of milk. But it was hard, hard, hard. All this work: is this who I am now? I remember!

So now? Yes, the practical parts are a thousand times easier: I'm a virtuoso. I worry, but then I move along. Nobody pushes me around, and I have helpers galore. Someone fetches clean diapers and gets rid of the dirty ones. When the baby wakes up in the middle of the night for the ten thousandth time, I sigh and roll my eyes, maybe even cry a little bit for sheer tiredness, but I know it will pass, it will pass.

It's becoming easier, and it will be easier still. They are passing me by.

I'm broken in. There's no collision of worlds. We're so darn busy that it's a sheer delight to take some time to wash some small child's small limbs in a quiet bath, or to read The Story of Ferdinand one more time. Taking care of them is easy. It's tiring, it's frustrating, but when I stop and take a breath, I see that it's almost like a charade of work. All these things, the dishes, the diapers, the spills, they must be taken care of, but they don't matter. They aren't who I am.

To become a mother, I had to learn how to care about someone more than I did about myself, and that was terrible. But who I am now is something more terrible: the protector who can't always protect; the one with arms that are designed to hold, always having to let go.

Dear mother of only one child, don't blame yourself for thinking that your life is hard. You're suffering now because you're turning into a new woman, a woman who is never allowed to be alone. For what? Only so that you can become strong enough to be a woman who will be left.

When I had only one child, she was so heavy. Now I can see that children are as light as air. They float past you, nudging against you like balloons as they ascend.

Dear mother, don't worry about enjoying your life. Your life is hard; your life will be hard. That doesn't mean you're doing something wrong, it means you're doing it right.

Sleep (part 2)

This is the second post from when Jack was six months old.  It was really the time when his sleep was at its most challenging and I wasn't sure how I would survive.  

Jack is now just over six months old, and much of the time, I am still obsessed with sleep.

Here's an update on our situation.

The Positives

Sometimes it's hard for me to focus on these (especially when I'm tired) but they are there.  Jack will now nap in the car, in his stroller, and (miraculously) in a swing.  Maybe even bigger is that out of the last 3 nights, twice I have been able to put Jack to sleep in his crib and have a blissful 45 minutes to myself.  Then he's back in my arms.  Now we just have to deal with that damn first 45 minute sleep cycle... 

He usually has three naps a day (two longer and one shorter).  Each one comes after he has been awake and playing for about 2 hours.  He is a champ about bedtime.  He has a routine we follow every night, and he gets it, so there's almost no fussing or crying at all (but that took time).  His nights usually go from 7 pm to 7 am (give or take) but he still wakes up ever 2 or 3 hours to nurse or just be soothed back to sleep (about 5 minutes each time).

Areas for Growth

At first, I was going to call this "The Negatives", but that doesn't really help anyone feel good, so I renamed it with wording from my report-card writing days.  The biggest one is that sometimes I have a hard time not second guessing myself.  When I'm my most tired and unhappy, I start to feel like I've created this problem, and could have had a baby who slept perfectly if I hadn't screwed it up.  Truth is, Jack is who he is.  He came this way, and I've done the best I can to figure him out as we go.

He's still sleeping in my bed every night, though I would like that to change sooner rather than later.  He has also been going through a phase (off and on) for the last month where he has nights (often many of them in a row) where he is wide awake in the middle of the night and wants to play.  Not cool, small boy.  In the last week or so, I've found a way to deal with him that helps me stay calm and not get frustrated [I can't remember what my method was, but I think this was when I decided just to get up and watch tv with him in the middle of the night until he was sleepy instead of spending and hour and a half actively trying to get him back to sleep when he was WIDE awake].  Jahn is also an amazing support when I've reached the end of my rope.  

The last two months have been hard,

Sleep (Part 1)

I've had these next two posts just waiting for you, but when Ruby was such a good sleeper, I figured you might not need them.  Then when I saw your email about hitting the classic 4-month sleep regression, I thought I should publish them so you could see you're not alone. 

Actually, when Jack was Ruby's age (or just a little younger), I opened Google and started to type in "4 Month Old" and the first thing that came up was "Sleep regression".  Ugh.

Up until he was 4 months old, Jack used to sleep in until 8:00 or 8:30 every morning.  That sounds great, but in reality, the two hours between 6:30 and 8:30 was the best sleep I got all night...

And then he hit 4 months.  Literally THE DAY of his 4-month birthday, he woke up at 6:00 a.m. and was up for the day.  I cried.  I prayed it was a blip.  But that was the end of the 8:30 sleep in.  The time between 4 and 6 months were the hardest for sleep.  So below, you will find the account I wrote when I was in the middle of it.  This isn't meant to scare you at all.  Ruby and Jack are very different babies, so I'm sure she will chart her own course completely.  But hopefully, when Ruby is screaming before bed, or waking over and over, this can help you feel that you are not alone.  

I'll admit it: I'm obsessed with sleep. And the less I get, the more I think about it.  I think about it a lot.  So far, three-and-a-half months into parenting, I have absolutely no advice on sleep. Maybe by the time you need reassurance, I will. Or, then again, maybe you'll be blessed with a baby who sleeps long and peacefully right from the beginning. But in case you're like us, here's where we are with our battle with sleep (or the lack thereof) with our almost four-month-old.


Naps: Jack has two or three long naps a day (or sometimes one long one and a few shorter ones). He still hates to sleep by himself, so his naps are pretty much all in my arms. If we're out, he naps in my wrap, and now, thankfully, in his stroller or carseat. If I nap in bed with him, sometimes I can get up after a while and he will stay sleeping, but that doesn't happen often.


Night: my biggest struggle. Like I've told you, Jack started sleeping in our bed the first night he was home from the hospital. He was so little and had always been near me, so it seemed completely normal for him to want to be in bed beside me (though, until he was here, it was never my plan). I was also so sore from giving birth, that it was easier for me not to have to get up to get him when he cried.


But that was then. Now, four months later, he is still in my bed (which I'm mostly ok with) and still waking to eat every 2-3 hours (which I'm not as ok with). In my heart, I know he's still very young and that this time with him will be over before I know it. But the mornings that I am the most exhausted and I get up to find on facebook other moms celebrating their babies (often younger) have slept 7,8,9 hours in a row, I want to cry. Ok, let's be honest, sometimes I do cry.

I have never been this tired in my life.  Every night , I hope tonight will e the night he miraculously sleeps for longer than 3 hours, but I'm starting to think that's not going to happen on its own.  Or maybe ever....

Mine Never Did That

Babies are hard work. Luckily, they're also beautiful and you're so totally in love the hard work seems way more manageable. And, like everyone is so fond of saying, one day, you'll forget the hard parts. And I'm sure that's true. But since everyone seems to believe we forget some of the roughest patches of parenting, what I want to know, as a new mum, is why so many people are willing to tell you (with seeming absolute certainty) that their own babies never did what yours is doing.

Are you sure? Maybe you've just blocked it out.

So when you need someone to commiserate with, I'm your girl. Because you know what? My baby probably did whatever yours is doing that's driving you crazy. Even if I don't remember.

This Too Shall Pass

Here's a piece of advice everyone loves to give a new mom: this too shall pass.

This particular piece of advice used to drive me nuts because I felt like people were taunting me. Like they were saying that whatever struggle I was facing with Jack would pass once I figured out what was wrong or that it would pass once I fixed things.

But that's where I was wrong. People literally mean what they are saying. Babies are strange little creatures, and you can't always figure them out. They'll do something that seems to make no sense (Jack would sleep in his carseat in the car, but once I moved the carseat into the stroller, he would lose it and scream until I rescued him), and then one day, out of nowhere, they change. They stop doing the thing that was driving you crazy without you doing anything different.

Knowing something will pass doesn't always help in the moment, but what did help me was remembering that I was already doing the best I could, and that sometimes, all you can do is take a deep breath and keep going. Because the way things are now may not be the way they are tomorrow.

So. Tired.

"I'm soooo tired!"  I hadn't really noticed how often people throw those words around, though I know I've said them many, many times in my life.

And then I had a baby.

And then I understood what tired was.

For a lot of Jack's infancy, I was more tired than I had ever been in my life.  Before Jack, when someone told me they were tired, I might have been able to give a supportive "aww, that's too bad." But once Jack came along, I was more inclined to punch them  (unless, that is, they also had small children). I'm sure it was mostly the sleep deprivation talking, but I wanted to tell people I actually didn't care how tired they were, and that unless they were being awoken every two hours all night, every night, they didn't really know what tired was.

The thing is, you can't really understand what that kind of sleep deprivation feels like until you experience it.  Once some of the newborn fog lifted (ok, actually I think it was around the time Jack was 7 months old) I came to the realization that sleep deprivation doesn't feel like tired -- it feels like crazy.  I can say that I completely understand why it would be used as a method of torture.

I know all these things.  I know how awful it is to feel like no matter how much sleep you need, you just aren't going to get it because you're a mom and there is a tiny person who needs you.  So after we talked about Ruby's sleep the other day, I hung up and then felt like I hadn't been a very good mom friend for telling you she was doing great with sleep.  I mean, she is doing great for how old she is -- she sleeps in her own bed, only wakes up once or twice, and already sleeps some longer stretches -- those things really are great.  But when you were telling me how early she was up, and how tired you were, you probably didn't need me to say she was doing great.

You probably needed me to tell you I understand.  I know how you feel.  I've had many a morning where I cried because Jack woke up too early, and all I could see was how the day had suddenly gotten a hour longer, and how I would have that much less energy to make it through.

I just wish I had thought to tell you all those things at the time.  So I hope hearing them now is better than never.