More on Mommy Guilt and Grief

Robyn’s post earlier this week really moved me, probably because I was thinking of writing something similar. I was going to write more about miscarriage, but here’s the truth about that topic–once you are a few years past it, the pain and all the feelings that go with it, fade. This is good news for those of you who have recently been through a miscarriage, though I’m sure everyone has told you that and it doesn’t make you feel any better about the loss you have just experienced.

After my miscarriage, there were days I was so resentful of mothers. I was a teacher, and I’d watch the parents of the kids I taught and think, they don’t appreciate their child. They don’t know how lucky they are to have such a wonderful little boy or girl. And I even thought that about the kids that drove me nuts.

So when I got pregnant with Baby Galen, you know I had every intention of cherishing her and every moment of motherhood. I would not take any of it for granted. And then she was born, and it was all wonderful for about 3 days. Then we took her home, and it was the worst 18 months of my life. I say this in all honesty. It was the darkest period in my life, and I have had some very dark times.

We moved out of the house we lived in when our daughter was born when she was about 18 months old, but we still live nearby. I drove past our old house yesterday, and even driving that street forms a pit of black yuck in my belly. Even if Baby Galen is sitting behind me, chatting happily, making me laugh, I drive that street and I cannot help but feel some of those same emotions of fear, depression, anxiety, despair. It all comes back.

I could say much of the awfulness of that time was due to the fact that Baby Galen was a very difficult baby. I could tell you stories…This was a baby who really didn’t want to be a baby. She didn’t want to be rocked, didn’t want to eat, didn’t want to sleep, didn’t want to lie on her back or on her tummy or her side, or sit in a stroller or a carseat or a playpen or a swing or…you get the idea. I don’t know what she wanted. I don’t think she knew what she wanted. She cried. A lot. I cried. A lot.

But the worst part if all of it–worse than being home alone with a baby who cried for seven hours, worse than being up four times a night for four months, worse than having a baby scream and meltdown every time you tried to feed her–was the guilt I felt. I hated my life. I hated it. I used to joke with my husband that I was running away to Mexico. It was sort of a halfhearted joke, because it took a lot of willpower on many occasions for me not to run away. What happened to cherishing motherhood? What happened to not taking a moment for granted? I just wanted this kid to grow up and go to school already (some days I still want that).

Everyone said, enjoy it now because it goes so fast. No, it didn’t. Every hour was like a day to me. I was trapped and unhappy and going slightly insane. Thank God I had help from friends and relatives. Thank God I went to the doctor and got some meds to help with the anxiety and depression. And thank God nothing lasts forever. Babies grow up. They become little kids who can tell you what they need, who sleep, who eat (sometimes independently), who make you laugh and even say, wow, this day has flown by!

And now I do try to cherish every day, but you know what, maybe that expectation was too lofty. We’re moms, not goddesses. We’re human.

Ever feel like you place unreal expectations on yourself as a mom and then feel guilty that you (a mere mortal) can’t attain them?

Murphy’s Law of Husband’s Leaving Town

So, my husband was gone all of last week. NBD, I thought, because we do this every year. Frankly, he gets left home alone with the kids a lot more often than I do, and he always survives quite nicely. Even I’ve survived quite nicely in the past. (Okay, so last year I blew a fuse in the kitchen and ended up making pancakes on the griddle in my living room, with my coffee maker plugged in on my desk BUT WHATEVER WE’LL IGNORE THAT INCIDENT.)

But this time, oh, this time.

Well, to start off, we’re potty training the two youngest children. I say we, there is no I in team after all, but there was an *I* this week when I was left alone to do it myself. Side note: There is no ‘wine’ in potty training either, but there SHOULD BE.

So, to start it off, I’ve got two potty training kids. Then, the day my husband leaves, Danger decides it is really cool to climb out his brother’s window. The window goes to the fenced in yard, fine, whatever, but I ended up with a FLY infestation as a result of the frequently open window. Like 20 flies in my kitchen. So I had to hang up fly strips, which is not pretty, FYI. >.>

Other than that, the weekend was okay. Enter Monday. Diva broke both pairs of glasses, Danger made the world’s biggest shaving cream mess, and the pair of them decided my creamer makes an awesome drink and every time I left the room they were pouring themselves glasses of my pumpkin spice creamer, and making massive sticky messes every time. Then Danger would jump out the window. By nightfall it was raining, our first hard rain of the year, and I discovered our new house has a massive leak in the roof. And then I did this: 

By the end of the day, I’m exhausted, and I have to get up 6:00 to get drama to school. So I fall asleep and I sleep like a rock. Until I wake up at 4:00 because the husband’s amp has spontaneously turned itself on and is emitting a high pitched whining noise that probably made our poor dog’s ears bleed. I get up, turn it off, go back to sleep.

And then at 5:00…

*scratchscratchscratch*

I wake up to that.

*scratchscratchscratch*

WTH!?

*scratchscratchscratch*

I’m all kinds of freaked out, clutching my covers to my chest in utter terror, because, let’s face it, I’m the only adult in this house and this is NOT THE MOST SECURE THING EVER. Because WHO IS GOING TO PROTECT US FROM BURGLARS!? Surely not me. I’m weak, and I have tiny t-rex arms!! THINK OF THE CHILDREN.

*scratchscratchscratch*

Okay, not a burglar. But probably a mouse. EWWW.

Unless it’s not a mouse. Unless it’s a wolverine. In the closet. CHEWING ON A CAT CORPSE. (totally not dramatic, that’s what it sounded like. Exactly. Google that sound effect if you can: Wolverine chewing on a cat corpse. I bet it is a real thing, and I bet it sounded JUST LIKE HOW THIS MOUSE IN MY CLOSET SOUNDED)

So I just gave up and got up. Exhausted, already cranky. And thus, began the longest day. But I did eat cookies for breakfast in protest of how JACKED UP the day started.

I can hardly even break it into specific incidents but it basically felt like the prisoners had revolted and the guard was under attack. Finally, I loaded everyone up and we went to town. We got Diva’s glasses repaired. And NO JOKE twenty minutes later, Danger stepped on them getting out of the fan and torqued them beyond repair. *cries*

That day, when I got home…this happened: 

Wednesday I got revisions AND line edits from my editor. Which I was SO looking forward to, but had no time to do, which, for me, is its own kind of hell.

This is that Murphy’s Law stuff. The husband goes out of town and the world explodes. (Because he’s back now and they’re acting like fricking angels and the wolverine has totally not returned, so whatever.)

It’s funny how often I feel like I’m so TOTALLY A GROWN UP NOW. Only deep down, I’m kind of not. Or maybe this is what being a grown up is. Maybe it’s not handling everything perfectly, or feeling like you just HAVE IT DOWN. Maybe it’s not so different than being a kid.  Except, now when I’m mad at life I can eat cookies for breakfast. Yes, I can. You’re not my real mom.

That’s actually one thing I love love about this blog, this group, and the greater online community. I know I’m not the only one ready to pull their hair out at the end of the day sometimes. I’m not the only one who wants to hide in a closet with the last Snickers bar because I DON’T WANNA SHARE. I’m human, and sometimes I’m immature, or tired, or worn to a frazzle, but so is everyone. And it doesn’t mean I failed. It doesn’t mean you failed either.

But if there’s a wolverine in your closet you might wanna get it looked at.

Gradual Changes

I’m the kind of person who does not like change. I don’t see why everything can’t just stay the same—except, of course, for the things I want to change. If only I were in charge of the world…

One difference between mothering an infant and a toddler/preschooler is that change becomes more gradual. With an infant, every day something is changing. With a preschooler, there are big changes, but they are slower.

Potty training. Big kid bed.

Sleeping and pooping. Throw eating in there and you have every mom’s 3 favorite (or least favorite) topics.

As with most aspects of motherhood, I went into potty training blindly (perhaps with a large dose of denial) and was under the impression using the potty was something with a sharp learning curve. Apparently not. Apparently, you can potty train for weeks and months and—please, no—years. It’s hard for someone without much patience, like me, to wait this change out. (No idea why Baby Galen doesn’t have the patience to sit on the potty for long enough to let something happen!). Especially when I told Baby Galen that I didn’t care when she was ready to potty train, but I did request that she actually be ready. None of this potty excitement one day and “no, no, no!” the next day. For a kid who can be way too decisive at times, she is remarkably indecisive at others.

I already see how this is going. She’s going to very, very slowly use the potty more often and then all by herself and then at some point in the near or distant future she will be potty-trained. It’s like watching a plant grow. It happens so slowly, you don’t even notice.

Except this plant has to be dressed and undressed and changed and have her butt wiped.

I feel a bit more in charge when it comes to the big kid bed (Please don’t laugh. I want to hold on to one last illusion). We have set the age at 3 for converting the crib to the toddler bed. We have told Baby Galen the change is coming. I am stocking up on supplies—like nightlights, clocks that are supposed to keep kids in bed, and books and toys for her to play with when she, inevitably, gets out of bed. I don’t know what to do when she realizes that we don’t actually all go to sleep when she does.

What other changes are coming—or will I be blissfully change-free for a few years?

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Shana Galen, Multitasker Mama
I’m Shana Galen, AKA Multitasker Mama (and aren’t we all?). I’m a wife, mom to a two-year-old daughter I call Baby Galen. My parenting motto is, “Keep moving. Don’t pass out. Don’t throw up.” Or maybe that’s my fitness motto? www.shanagalen.com

Sleep: The True Magic Pill

Sleep. It’s the secret to having a happy kid.

No kidding.

You want to get rid of the crankiness in your child? The distractibility? The failing grades? The moodiness or borderline depression?

Start by guarding their sleep. I know from personal experience with my three that the big problems—every single one—happened when they were sleep-deprived. So these days, we’re on it.

Sleep. It’s the buzz word in our house. It’s the cure-all that really works better than  nagging, imparting fabulous life lessons, visiting the counselor, prescribing drugs, popping vitamins, and crossing your fingers for good luck.

Here’s what kids need, according to WebMD:

1-4 weeks      15-16 hours a day

1-4 months     14-15 hours a day

4-12 months    14-15 hours a day (most get around 12 hours)

1-3 years     12-14 hours a day (most get around 10 hours)

3-6 years     10-12 hours a day

7-12 years    10-11 hours a day (most get around 9 hours)

12-18 years    8-9 hours  (ask any teenager if they get this much sleep and they’ll laugh in your face)

I’m worried about this coming school year but now that I know what I know, I’m hoping I’ll head off problems before they start. Nighthawk, who’ll be 15 and entering high school, will be going from 8-9 hours sleep a night to probably seven.  His school starts class at 7:15 a.m., and then he’ll have after-school sports and honors classes to deal with. So I’m anticipating that his schedule will be very tight. Luckily, he’s a guy, so getting ready in the morning is easy for him. Indie Girl used to need an hour or more to get ready, but Nighthawk just needs to grab a quick shower and go. Dragon, when he was home, had the most problems when he didn’t get enough sleep. His Asperger’s Syndrome symptoms—especially anxiety–would ramp up exponentially for every hour of sleep he missed.

It’s crazy that our public school system starts so early in the morning, but it’s because we don’t have enough buses. So to juggle the buses, high school and elementary schools start early and middle school starts later. It was nirvana in middle school. The kids got plenty of sleep because school didn’t start until 8:20 a.m. But it was horrible in elementary school. Thank goodness my kids didn’t have to get up extra early to catch a bus. I used to see first-graders sound asleep on the buses when I subbed at the local elementary school. It was a disgrace, in my opinion, that little kids have to catch a bus at 6 a.m. and some even earlier.

I’ve noticed that private schools around here all start at a reasonable hour, usually after 8:00 a.m. I guess that’s one reason parents pay between $7,000 and $20,000 a year to send their kids there.  It’s a great luxury starting so “late.”

But sleep is that important. I applaud the private schools for recognizing that.

We moms recognize that, too. So if your school doesn’t start at a decent hour, watch your kids’ sleep time. And take heart.  It can be made up—partially–on the weekends. For us, that day is Saturday because Sunday we have church at 9 a.m. and it’s half an hour away.  But there are sports, too, on Saturdays. So what are we supposed to do?

Be ruthless. We’ll skip church if our kids are particularly sleep deprived—that’s “breaking the rules” in my culture, but rules are meant to be broken when someone’s health is at stake. We’ll limit sports, too.  That’s a big no-no these days, isn’t it?

But nothing is more important than your child’s getting that sleep. No church sermon and no home run hit will make a valid, beneficial impression on an exhausted child!

So I recommend that you stop running on the hamster wheel of too many activities (if you’re on it) and get to the source of many of the problems your child might be having: not enough sleep.

Of course, your child may resist. Make sure there are no screens in his or her room. No phones, nothing except books. They will fight and fight and fight to stay awake!

And then enforcing these measures is almost impossible in high school. Our two oldest kids ran small offices in their bedrooms, what with their laptops to do homework and their cell phones to stay connected to their small army of peers. We generally had to leave it up to them to get enough sleep—which they didn’t, by the way, although they learned as they went along.

So with our third child, we’re preparing to make him self-regulated, too. But luckily, he saw what happened when his two oldest siblings didn’t get enough sleep, and it wasn’t pretty.  So Nighthawk’s already recognizing a potential problem, which will hopefully make it easier for him to deal with it.

But it is a problem, moms, for everyone I know. What do you do in your household about sleep?

On Milk Allergies and Trusting Your Mommy Gut

There are millions of new things to worry about when you bring a newborn home for the first time, especially when it’s your first child. You’re completely freaking clueless no matter how much you thought you prepared ahead of time. And I was no exception. I had read every book I could get my hands on, had followed all the “rules”. For nine months I didn’t have even a sip of wine, I avoided deli meat and hot dogs because of listeria, and I skipped peanut butter in the third trimester because it can trigger allergies in the unborn child (supposedly.) Yes, I was that mom, Ms. Paranoid, take everything the baby book says as gospel.

So when I brought my lovely, wrinkly newborn home, I thought I was armed with knowledge. Well, yeah, that didn’t go so well. For the first eight weeks, my baby was miserable. He wouldn’t sleep, he cried nonstop and after nursing, he seemed to be in pain, his little knees curling to his chest as he passed the most ferocious gas ever. Seriously, how could something so little be so loud? I brought him to the doctor, convinced he had something wrong and my pediatrician at the time told me, “probably colic.” Colic–code for, we don’t know what the hell is wrong with him and you’re being dramatic.

So off I went back home with my baby still miserable (and me out of my mind with exhaustion and worry.) I remember calling my mom one night when my husband was out of town and my son wouldn’t stop crying. I burst into hysterical tears along with him over the phone and freaked my poor mother out. She was on a plane the next day (even though she’d just left a week before) to come and help me. Bless mothers.

And of course, my mom, being my mom, was like–there is something wrong. I don’t care what the doctor says. This is not normal. Finally, someone who agreed with me. So off to the trusty internet I went to start researching and self-diagnosing (usually dangerous, but in this case helpful.) I found out about milk allergy and went back to my doctor to ask about it. During the visit, kidlet conveniently let one of his epic gas episodes rip and the doctor asked in shock, “Is it always like that?”

Hello! Yes, have you not been listening to me?

So long story short (well, not so short), but they tested kidlet and he had a milk AND a soy allergy. Not the anaphylactic shock kind, but an intestinal allergy which made his intestines bleed. Poor guy had been suffering any time I had the slightest bit of anything with milk/soy in it and he’d take it in through breast milk. I had to cut all milk and soy out of my diet–which is basically everything. Try finding a loaf of bread in a normal store that doesn’t have milk. It wasn’t fun, but I was determined.

Kidlet recovered and after he turned three, we were able to work some dairy and soy back into his diet. Doc declared him fully recovered, though I still had my doubts. He seemed to have problems after he drank straight up milk, so I pulled him off of it. I thought I was being paranoid, but then this week kidlet started summer day care and went from home-packed lunches to school lunches. Well, two days on milk and he’s had diarrhea for a week. *sigh* Apparently he hasn’t grown out of it. I don’t quite understand how he can now have cheese with no problem but milk or yogurt set him off. It may have developed into a lactose intolerance instead of an allergy. But anyhow, once again I’m checking labels and monitoring what he eats at school.

So, honestly, I’m not sure what my point is in this post, lol. But I know when I was looking for info on milk allergies as a new mom, it was helpful to hear stories from other moms since the doctor kept telling me “colic.” So maybe someone who needs to read this will find it. Also, it’s a lesson in trusting your parental instincts even if you’re new to the whole mommyhood thing. If I hadn’t kept pushing and researching, I would’ve continued unknowlingly torturing my child.

Have you ever had a time where trusting your mommy (or daddy) instincts got you the answer you needed? Anyone else had a child with “colic”?  Does your child suffer with food allergies or sensitivities?

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I’m Roni Loren, or as I’m called ‘round these parts, No Drama Mama. I’ve been married for ten years and have a four-year old son, who has recently been diagnosed with high-functioning autism. My days are spent writing very sexy romances (my PC way of saying erotic),avoiding all things housework, and hanging out with a kidlet who I suspect is vastly smarter than I am. I secretly dream of having a life that looks like the pages of Real Simple magazine, but would settle for Sorta Decent if could get there. My daily goal is to keep the drama on the pages of my books and out of my life–I’m successful at least twenty percent of the time. www.roniloren.com

Sleep Deprivation

Everyone knows that new parents don’t get much sleep. Babies sleep in short bursts (or not at all) and need constant feeding, changing, and comforting. No matter how many books, blogs, experts, or friends an expectant parent consults, nothing can prepare him or her for the reality that is sleep deprivation.

I’m going to be the first to admit that I didn’t like the newborn phase. A lot of you will tell me that you loved it and you love babies. Did your baby sleep? Because mine didn’t, and I hated being so completely exhausted all the time. I felt like I had a new job that was 24/7 (which I did). That was fine for about a month, but then the deprivation started to take its toll.

I remember at one point, Baby Galen must have been three or four months old, getting up in the middle of the night to answer her cries and thinking, I need to go to a hotel. I can’t get any sleep in this place. My brain had forgotten I had a baby and was operating on escape mode.

Baby Galen just a few hours old. I should have been sleeping, not taking pictures.

Another time I was sitting up with Baby Galen in the middle of the night, rocking her back to sleep, and through the walls I could hear Ultimate Sportsfan snoring. I had to make a concerted effort not to get up, grab a pillow, and smother him.

Here’s the good news for all of you new parents. Your child will sleep. Someday. He or she may sleep at five weeks. Or it may take eighteen months or five years. Some day you will get to sleep through the night again.

But here’s another truth: you are never going to get as much sleep as you did before you were a parent.

You know what inspired this blog? One morning I was up at about 5 a.m. working and I saw a post from fellow PBK mom Emily on Facebook. She was also up working and posted that she had no idea how much sleep she would give up before she had kids. I could so relate. I still can because I’m writing this at nine p.m., and I’ll be up before five to get back to work. Why do I do this? Why not hire a baby sitter, stick Baby Galen in front of the TV all day, or put her in daycare full time? Because here’s the last truth: childhood is short.

I once heard a teacher say of childhood, It’s the longest hours and the shortest days. I can’t get this special time with my daughter back. I’m lucky enough to be able to work from home. That doesn’t mean I don’t make sacrifices, and sleep is just one of many. But I know it will be worth it in the end.

Tell me your sleep stories. Did your baby sleep through the night at two weeks? Not until 3 years? How do you manage to fit sleep in now?

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Shana Galen, Multitasker Mama
I’m Shana Galen, AKA Multitasker Mama (and aren’t we all?). I’m a wife, mom to a two-year-old daughter I call Baby Galen. My parenting motto is, “Keep moving. Don’t pass out. Don’t throw up.” Or maybe that’s my fitness motto? www.shanagalen.com