It’s Friday, which is always happy but today especially so because one week from today is my birthday. But don’t worry – you don’t need to get me anything. I got you something instead!
Many, many months ago (like sometime last year) I came across the most beautiful thing. [Read more…]
Have you seen that TV commercial with three moms at a playdate? It’s for something like Doritos, and they’re sitting around eating whatever it is the commercial is about while their babies sleep peacefully in their bucket seats.
I used to hate that commercial.
It was on a few years ago, around (or shortly after) the time Connor was a baby. I can think of ONE time he slept peacefully in his bucket seat. He was a few weeks old and I had come home from somewhere and he had fallen asleep in the car. And he slept for at least two hours after I got home, which I thought was just dandy. Except he never did it again.
Play dates saved my sanity that first year (inasmuch as my sanity was saved), but they were not play dates where we sat around eating chips while our babies slept in their car seats. They were mostly breastfeeding fests, and while that was great — it was nice to sit on someone else’s couch and nurse a baby instead of sitting by myself on my own couch nursing a baby — I was very aware that my baby was the fussy one.
It didn’t take a play date with other (relatively calm) babies for me to notice that. No, that was my reality day in and day out for months. And everyone else was aware of it too (though very accepting, I must say). One day I went to a baby group at the nearby public health clinic. Connor was doing his fussy Connor thing as we came down the hall, and a friend of mine yelled out, “Here comes Connor!” It was impossible to go anywhere without people knowing we were coming.
If I sound bitter then you’ll understand why I hated that commercial. Because that was not my reality. It was the reality I felt I had been promised – babies sleep a lot, right? So, sure, I’ll be able to sit around eating chips with my friends while my baby snores nearby.
Now, you should understand that I’m not quite that deluded. (But my level of delusion about what having a baby would be like really needs to be a post unto itself.) I just didn’t expect it to be SO DAMN HARD. And that stupid commercial just reminded me of how hard it was.
We’re now two months in with baby #2. And so far this is much more what I thought having a baby would be like. He goes to sleep all on his own sometimes. And he likes cuddles and sometimes needs to be bounced but not ALL THE DAMN TIME. My quads are worse for it but my mind is better.
I know this time that babies sometimes need help to go to sleep. (Seriously, I should write a post about my delusion.) And I know how to tell when they need to go to sleep. With Ethan there’s the usual (glassy eyes, yawning) but the tell-tale sign with him is that his eyebrows go red. We have a tough time getting him to nap in the morning but when we manage to hit that sweet spot (a very short window, though Connor’s was shorter) everything works a treat. The whole day generally goes well, in fact. He goes to sleep (by himself! Not on me!). He wakes up. He eats. He plays. He gets sleepy-eyed and red-eyebrowed and he goes back to sleep. Repeat.
I’m doing a mom and baby yoga class with Ethan and I’ve only ever had to pause during class once in five weeks to feed him. I would never have even taken Connor to a mom and baby yoga class because it would have seriously zapped everyone else’s zen. But Ethan is different. I can take him to a grocery store without having to leave a cart full of groceries and flee home so I can cry about my crying baby. I can even go for lunch with a co-worker and not have to stand there bouncing a baby in between frantic bites of sandwich.
Ethan’s not perfect, though. Don’t get me wrong. (No, perfect is the wrong word. No baby is perfect. “Perfect” babies — if they didn’t ever cry or fuss or refuse to go to sleep at the requisite time — would be boring. They wouldn’t grow up to contribute anything to the world (and Connor is going to be a force to be reckoned with, you can be sure). Instead let’s say this: Ethan is not without challenges.) On the days when he doesn’t sleep very well I get flashbacks (Post Traumatic Connor Disorder, we call it). At the moment I despair of ever again sleeping more than three hours at a time. And if he’s hungry and you don’t feed him right away, you had better be wearing ear plugs because, damn, that kid has a set of lungs.
But still. This time around is much closer to my own unedited version of a Doritos commercial and I’m grateful for it.
Two months in, and I think I’ve decided that it’s going to be all right.
I was browsing through my “Get Inspired” Pinterest board and came across this image. (Sadly, I don’t know the original source so can’t credit it.)
Trust your struggle.
I pinned it a year ago, according to the site. I was momentarily surprised when I saw that, because that was a few months after my darkest days. But that actually makes sense, because we can’t see the good in the bad when we’re in the dark. In those moments it’s just awful and overwhelming and all-consuming. When we’re really struggling, it’s almost impossible to think that we’ll be better for it.
During my darkest days, someone told me I would be grateful for my experience once I was past it. I didn’t agree then. I couldn’t see it. But it was true.
Some of the most inspiring (and inspired) people I know survived some sort of horrible experience and learned to love the lessons in it. Some found strength they didn’t know they had. Some appreciate life after loss. Some found their calling or figured out what’s really important to them.
My darkest days feel very long ago. Not that I haven’t struggled since then, but I have perspective now that I didn’t before and I don’t think I will ever sink so low again. And I have the lessons and the love from that experience.
I learned a lot from my struggle. I didn’t trust it at the time, but I can see it now, and I expect there are still blessings to be unveiled.
There’s beauty in the breakdown.
Trust your struggle.
I believe the common wisdom is that if you can do something— exercise, resist a cigarette, eat your veggies — for 21 days it becomes a habit. I’m not sure this same logic applies to parenting newborns.
Today is day 23. 23 days of getting to know this sweet face. 23 days of baby noises and baby cuddles and sweet baby smells.
And 23 days of not enough sleep. 23 days of feeding every two to three hours. 23 days of spitting up and diapers.
I hardly remember what life was like before he was part of it. I can’t revert back to not knowing him. But I do remember what it was like before.
I think the 21-days rule works backwards with babies. After 21 days you do what you do not because it’s a habit but because it must be done. Instead of feeling like the new freedom of carefully chosen ritual it starts to feel a little bit like chains – there, tethered, rattling.
I’ve been sick for the past 10 days or so. Just a horrible cold (with some pink eye thrown in for good measure) but the most sick I’ve ever been. The timing, needless to say, has not been great.
I’ve reached the point where he wakes up at night and I think, No. I try not to look at the clock and calculate how much sleep I might get before the next feeding. I do think about when I last changed his diaper and wonder whether I really have to do it again.
The newborn nights are tired, but they come with the sounds of soft breathing and the weight of a silky head on my shoulder. In many ways the days are harder.
I don’t do well without a routine, and a routine is something we are decidedly lacking. If any habits are being formed here, they’re bad ones – trying to sneak in extra sleep in the mornings instead of accepting that daylight has come, choosing to lie down instead of eating, getting dressed in only the very loosest sense of the term.
I’m starting to feel better (please let this cough go away soon) and am trying to force myself to do things that will help me feel better. Yesterday’s walk in the snow with a snuggly baby in the carrier was good. Getting up to eat breakfast is now on each morning’s agenda. Finding things to play with Connor so he doesn’t get bored is important for my sanity.
I know there are things about this phase that are hard. But I also know it’s temporary.
After all, it’s only day 23.
Tomorrow I will be exactly 38 weeks pregnant.
Connor was born at 38 weeks to the day, but he was breech – so stubbornly breech that we never really got into many discussions about labour and birth. Though looking back, I’m not sure it would have occurred to me that birthing a baby was anything other than contractions > hospital > decision about pain management > pushing > voila, a baby.
I had read some books and we had done prenatal courses but most of what is presented as the de facto way of birthing babies in our society is so clinical, isn’t it? So factual. You either refuse an epidural (in which case you’re a goddess) or you get one (in which case you’re being smart, because why suffer needlessly?).
Or you get a C-section.
And that’s where most of our dialogue about birth comes in, at least in my experience. And most of it is after the fact.
A C-section for many, myself included, is not the desired birth experience. It doesn’t meet our expectations for how we will bring our children into the world, as though the experience of giving birth is somehow a profound rite of passage into motherhood. The baby gets here either way, to be sure, and giving birth – in whatever fashion – doesn’t actually make a woman a mother.
But the experience is profound and the method does matter, and anyone who dismisses a woman’s grief over a C-section simply doesn’t get it.
So why don’t we talk about this more in the weeks and months ahead of our babies’ births?
I, like many other women, skipped the C-section parts of my labour and delivery books. I thought I was going to have a choice. (I didn’t, really, though four years later I still question whether there’s anything I could have done.)
In many cases, women do have a choice – they just don’t know it. How many of you became educated about labour and delivery after the birth of your first child? That’s the case for many women I know. (For me I think it really started when I saw The Business of Being Born shortly after Connor was born.) I’m not saying birth needs to be complicated — I’m really not in a position to make that sort of assertion — but I do think we need to have more conversations about what we hope to get out of the experience.
Image credit: Christy Scherrer on Flickr
Other than a healthy baby, of course. Let’s just put that out there. We all want a healthy baby (and a healthy mother) and we will do whatever is necessary in the moment to protect our baby’s health. But birth is more than that, and it’s okay that it’s more than that.
I have had midwives for both pregnancies, and while both experiences have been positive and definitely in line with what we were looking for with prenatal care I’m surprised at the lack of discussion about the birthing process. At my 36-week appointment a couple of weeks ago I asked my midwife about this, and we had an interesting discussion about how things might go. The assumption in her response was that I would avoid an epidural, or any pain relief for that matter, and simply work with my body. Which I think is fantastic and definitely what I’m hoping to do, but I’m not sure it’s safe to assume a woman will be planning that approach or, more importantly, know how to achieve it.
A couple of months ago we were at the library and while Connor browsed through his book selections I poked around in the pregnancy and birth section. I picked up a couple of things, put them back, and then came across HypnoBirthing: The Mongan Method: A natural approach to a safe, easier, more comfortable birthing
Later that night I asked on Twitter if anyone had used hypnobirthing. Expecting crickets, I was surprised at the onslaught of responses I got from women who not only used it but credited it with giving them the birth experience they had hoped for. So I cracked open the book and contained therein was not only a method of birthing but a philosophy.
For me, it wasn’t the philosophy itself that was interesting. It was the notion that a particular kind of birth experience is something we can discuss and aim for and hopefully achieve with a bit of insight and some tools to help us get there.
I don’t know what my birth experience will be this time around. I’m trying to have an open mind and accept whatever happens (though I’m already enjoying the novelty of the early signs of labour I’m experiencing). But regardless of how this next, and presumably last, birth experience turns out, at least this time around I feel better informed.
I’m interested in hearing about your experiences with birth conversations – let me know in the comments.
Just so you know: The link to the hypnobirthing book above is an affiliate link. I really like this book and am grateful to have found it, and if you choose to buy it also I’ll get a penny or two when I accumulate enough for Amazon to actually pay me.
