The Fingernail Monster

A quick moment for the absurd...


There are small things in parenting that you had never thought about that you would have to do. Cutting fingernails and toenails is one of them. It's hard to do something on someone else that you're so accustomed to doing on yourself! There's something about the angle that makes me feel like I'm writing with my left hand or driving on the left side of the street (like when you parallel park on the left side of the street on a one-way street) ... you get my drift. It's just awkward. 


So, add to the odd angle the fact that the baby doesn't know what you're doing and doesn't appreciate having their toes and fingers sequestered, so is working very hard to extricate them from your grip. 


Then, add the fact that there is a Fingernail Monster living in each and every finger and toe. Yes, it's true!! The Fingernail Monster sits, lurking, waiting for you to cut the fingernails, and then, within moments, gives a little shove so that they're out there, all nice and long -- and sharp and pointy, because it's impossible to cut them cleanly with all the above-mentioned factors at play -- ready to be cut again, immediately!!

Seriously. It's true. See?? It exists!!


I feel like I'm cutting his fingernails EVERY DAY. I get done, and then a few hours later, I'm feeling his daggers cutting into my arm, lip, cheek, scratching away.


Maybe I just need to stop taking my vitamins??!!


(Haha!! Because you never know what you're going to find in the world of the internet, when I Googled 'fingernail monster', hoping to find some fabulous image (which, of course, I did, because it's the internet!), and look what I found: http://www.michaeltenn.com/2010/05/17/fingernail-monster/! Another parent blogging about the Fingernail Monster, except that they refer to themselves as the Fingernail Monster ... I guess I better write him and set him straight! The Fingernail Monster is not out cutting nails and spreading love -- He is thwarting efforts at cutting them and thus spreading frustration!!!! This guy has it ALL WRONG!!)

Our Little Guy

We have a little pipsqueak. From the time he came out of me at 7 pounds, 4 ounces, I haven't quite been able to wrap my head around the fact that I produced a small child. It just doesn't jive with my worldview or what I expected from me, a Hymans, of the ice cream eating clan. I just forgot to factor in how much those small Kashmiri genes would wield their power over him. He will be the biggest Kashmiri and smallest Hymans ever!

Imagine my surprise at Zia's last appointment when we discovered that he was only in the 10th percentile of weight! (I'm quite certain I myself have NEVER ranked that low! Does Not Compute) He was, however, in the 70th percentile for length/height ... way to go, Hymans genes! Mo's mom always wished he was taller, so I guess she'll get it in his son.)

Discovering the fun of the paper at the doctor's appointment, displaying his skinniness

The doctor seemed utterly unconcerned, even mentioning that we are lucky that he's so light to carry around. Though I am not one to be worried comparisons with other babies (okay, fine; sometimes I do, but for the most part, what's the point? They're all different!), I nonetheless couldn't help but come home and think, 'Fatten this boy up!' Cuz it's kinda weird to have a skinny baby. They're supposed to be chubby. Luckily, we had only been feeding him 'solids' (i.e. solid foods cremated down into almost-liquids) once a day and discovered that he was supposed to be getting them three times a day, thus creating instant calories. Hopefully. (More on feeding him to come in a later post.)

The doctor also said that some moms' breastmilk just doesn't have as many calories as others. It was hard not to look at her incredulously and exclaim that it was simply not possible for MY breastmilk to be one of those to fit into that category, as I have never imagined myself to be described in any way as low-calorie.

But who knows. Stranger things have happened, I suppose. I guess I better eat some more ice cream to fatten up that breastmilk!!

Though Mo seems to be more concerned about our little guy being skinny, I'm going to go ahead and appreciate the fact that he's easier to carry around for a while and figure that we're feeding him what we can, so he's developing just as he's meant to be. 

Lights, Camera, Action!

Now that he's sleeping, we're starting to learn more about what Zia's like, since he doesn't have to be all cranky now from lack of sleep. Not that he was always cranky, but he certainly seems now to be happier on a more regular basis than previously. 


One of the things we've discovered, inadvertently, is that he's most definitely a super-extrovert who likes to be in the limelight. 


I know, I know -- shocking. How could the child of Katie & Mo be extroverted?! It's so not what you expected. Haha. So it's not that we're so surprised in general, but what is surprising is the way in which it shows up. It was most abundantly evident last week at the strike Mo helped to organize.

Mo & I had had intense negotiations about how long Zia and I were going to go to the strike. Mo started with eight hours; I countered with two. We both stayed strong for several rounds, not wavering, until Mo countered with twelve. Then fifteen. Then sixteen. 


You can understand why he's a union representative/organizer.


Negotiations being one of his strong points (obviously) and not mine (again, obviously), I finally settled on, "We will come after his morning nap and stay as long as he stays calm."


Which, as it turns out, was endless. We finally left after seven hours. Not including transport time there (walking, Kaiser shuttling, and BARTing, both ways) and back -- even on the way back, he was still charming the woman in the seat behind us! So we were gone for over nine hours in total all day. Crazy!


This boy is THRILLED to be out in public. Audience? No problem! In fact, delighted! Now I'm energized, happy, and able to carry on with my day. At home with only Mama to give me attention? Boorrrinnnnggg. I need my adoring audience!

We were seriously shocked at how well he did. He basically just bounced back and forth between Mo and me, getting passed around among the nurses, smiling the whole day. He was especially delighted when Papa put him up on his shoulders and danced with him. (Yes, there was dancing at this strike. It wasn't exactly your usual strike, with angry, scowl-faced people making demands. Put some nurses in charge of a strike, and they've got everything from 'Celebration' to Lady Gaga rockin' it and are doing synchronized dances with picket signs to make their demands.)

This trend has continued. When we take him to restaurants, he's delighted to sit in his little highchair (yes, he can do that!), play with a spoon, and look around at the room, watching the action, staring at people until they smile at him and/or tell him how cute he is. No fusses, just enthusiasm and love.


Yeah, he knows how to work it. We *may* have created a monster!!

Take cover!

WARNING: This post is not about sleep. I know you may not be able to wrap your head around that, so I thought I should let you know ahead of time so that you're not trying to read between the lines, trying to figure out how it relates to sleep, since that's pretty much all I've talked about so far.

Zia finally has a room. Yes, he's technically had a physical room all along, but it's finally set up to look like his room, rather than a dumping ground. It's very exciting.

As I was finishing it up the other day, he was sitting on the floor playing with toys. I had to vacuum the futon because it had plaster from my belly cast on it. (Zia's room is also the guest room; hence, the futon.) The vacuum was right next to him on the floor, and one of the things he was playing with was a soft fabric block. As soon as I turned on the vacuum, he put his head straight down on top of the block. Like an ostrich putting his head in the sand.

I turned off the vacuum to make sure he was okay, and he brought his head up. So, I went ahead and turned it on again. What did he do?? Head straight back down on the block! Hil.ar.i.ous.

I decided to be nice and finish it up with him in my arms, since he was clearly traumatized by the vacuum's noise.

Once I finished that, I set him up on the futon so I could vacuum the floor, figuring he'd be okay since he wasn't on the floor next to it. 

What happened??

This photo doesn't capture the heart of it. His little hands were up next to his ears, plastering himself against the futon like he was in a stick-up. 

And what did his loving mom do each time? Laugh.

And then tell his dad about it, who proceeded to help me recreate it so he could see it. (That's where the photos come from, which is why they're not as good as the original moments.) Great parents, huh?!

He's a funny little guy. So much for the vacuum calming babies!

Best of Both Worlds

I'm sure you're dying for an update on how crying it out is going!


Well, it turns out that Zia has the best of both of his parents: Mom's ability to learn new things quickly, and Dad's doing things in extremes.


He continued to get to sleep quite quickly every night but became increasingly difficult to get back to sleep the rest of the night. (We were trying to build up crying sessions in the night and not have him do it all night right away.) So, we had another session with our trusty sleep consultant, who said that he sounded like he was ready to push it and go through the night crying. We also needed to get him sleeping in his crib, in his room, and she said to just go for it all at once! 

Getting used to my crib!

So, last Wednesday night, we did just that. We were both nervous, not knowing what was going to happen. (Especially Mo, since he had to leave at 4:00AM for work the next morning.) We didn't anticipate the sadness of climbing into bed and not having him in the room with us; I actually teared up a little.


He still woke up every 1-2 hours, but he always stopped crying within 10 minutes, so we just left him. I was worried about if he was hungry back there since he was used to getting fed every 2-4 hours throughout the night, but I figured he'd cry like mad and let me know when he was hungry.


By 3:00, that hadn't happened, and we both felt like we were pushing it making him also not eat that long, so I went back and fed him when he woke up crying. (And let me tell you, I had SUPPLY by that time!!) He woke up crying one more time and was then just happily awake at 7. And didn't seem to hate me when I came to get him up -- *whew*!


The next night, we were curious to see how much the crying sessions would extend out, and drumroll, please ....


HE DIDN'T CRY FROM 7:30PM TO 4:30AM!!!!


What?!?!


He also still didn't seem to need to be fed at 4:30. By 5:30, when he was lightly crying for the third time in an hour, I figured he was ready for some food. But then he ate so much that he didn't go back to sleep. 


Oh well. We're learning. 


So, he learned super fast and did the extreme of crying often one night and not at all the next night! It was also hilarious, because he managed to get himself from one end of the crib to the other in about 10 minutes after we put him down last night. (We've now observed that he does this not by rolling but by putting his feet up on the side of the crib and pushing himself around the edges -- it's hilarious to watch!)


Then, when I went in to make sure he was still alive (because, remember, he'd never slept more than four hours at a time, and that happened rarely), he had found the corner of the crib where I had a blanket hanging so that he could cram his head into that corner, which was cozier than the other corners that only have the super-thin bumper covering them.


Babies are funny, aren't they?


His sleeping-through-the-night trend has continued, and he's now taken to sleeping with one arm behind the bumper, like he's cuddling it. He's his daddy's boy. :) I want to take a picture, but I'm afraid I'll wake him up, and after all this work to get him to sleep, we're not taking that risk!! 


Now Mo & I just have to figure out what to do with all this time on our hands since we're no longer spending a huge chunk of our day wrangling with him to get him to sleep! Such luxury! And I have to retrain my body to sleep continuously. I can already feel the difference in my demeanor, and I still haven't slept longer than a few hours at a time!


Hooray!!

The Laugh It Out Solution

Well, so far the joke's on us. 


We finally started 'crying it out' two nights ago, at our wits' ends with the bouncing, rocking, walking, driving, and other madness that was ensuing, taking upwards of 1-2 hours to get this boy to sleep. 


We did the extreme of hiring a sleep consultant to help us sort out what method was going to work for him and to help us craft a plan. I know, I know -- a sleep consultant?? Yes, you can do anything for work and be an expert in anything these days! But let's be real -- sleep is clearly not something that comes naturally and getting oneself to sleep is a learned skill. Zia clearly needs additional help with it, and we were getting tired of sorting through the stacks and stacks of conflicting advice about how to get your kid to sleep.


Enter sleep consultant.


Who was SO worth the money so far!! Why?

First of all, she explained a ton to us about Zia's temperament that really helped us to understand him and how to approach him. That right there was worth talking to her in and of itself. She also helped us make a plan for the daunting work of letting him cry himself to sleep, because again, there are as many opinions on how to do it as there are people who have written books about sleep. And, really, we just needed the confidence and reassurance to do it.


She said that most kids will take 30-60 minutes to cry themselves to sleep in the beginning stages, and that kids with temperaments like Zia's are likely to be persistent and take longer. (This had been our suspicion all along; hence, our hesitation to get started with it. Remember: Zia doesn't cry; he screams bloody murder. So contemplating over an hour of bloody murder is not exactly my vision of a pleasant evening -- on repeat for a week, or multiple weeks!)


Her recommendation was to let him cry for 1.5 hours and if he was still wailing, pick him up and do what we usually do to get him to sleep. 


So, Mo & I were 100% prepared for 1.5 hours of tortured screaming. We had things out to distract ourselves and prepped ourselves for the emotional drain.


We went in after 5 minutes, as instructed. It was hard. I got teary-eyed. It's not easy giving your helpless little infant reassurance that you love him and support him in his struggle when he's *clearly* MISERABLE and hating what he's having to endure. We were to go back 10 minutes later, but not if it was de-escalating.


Which it unbelievably did!


Mo & I sat, staring at each other in wonder -- could we be hearing correctly? And sure enough ... how long did it take altogether??


15 MINUTES!!!!


What??

We figured it must be a fluke. So, the next night, we put him down even earlier because I couldn't get him down for his usual third nap and he'd therefore been up for five hours, which is way too long for a child of this age -- and was thus clearly overtired.


How long the second night?


6 MINUTES!!!!


Unbelievable.


How much are we kicking ourselves for the pain we've been causing ourselves to get him to sleep?? 


Alas, all things in time. We clearly weren't ready before, and maybe Zia wasn't either.


Tonight was also 6 minutes. And might I also add that he's needed our assistance to stay asleep far less than usual after getting him to sleep in the first place. Hallelujah!

The next step is going to be trickier, though, because it involves letting him start crying it out during his (MANY) night wakings. We tried that last night when he'd already been up for 1.5 hours and I'd fed him, bounced & rocked him, Mo had bounced & rocked him, and he was wide awake. So, we thought, either we take him for a drive at 3AM, or we let him cry it out. We figured, why not? It's been going well so far! How bad could it be??


Really bad.


When it was 4:20AM and he'd been crying for 1 hour and 20 minutes and I'd been up since 1:00AM and we couldn't even be in our bed since we're still working on putting together the crib to transfer him out of our room (a whole different saga for a different day), I said, 'Enough.' Fed the boy, he fell asleep, and we were done with that. 


Hopefully, the night waking crying it out won't continue to be so hard, but man, are we laughing at ourselves for being so scared of, um, well, nothing, it turns out. 


Ah, parenthood.

A Difficult Confession

A friend recently posted this on Facebook: "People keep saying 'aren't you loving being a mom?' I'm tempted to say 'No', hand them baby & walk away ... but I may be the only one amused by that." One of the responses talked about all the cultural stereotypes and expectations we have of mothers, inferring that loving every moment is what a mother is supposed to do. 

One of my biggest struggles with this motherhood business has been coming to terms with admitting that this is hard. I mean, really hard. And there are times when doing just what this friend joked about sounds like a fabulous idea. 

Now, don't get me wrong, of course I love this little guy and his full-mouthed toothless grin, expressive face, soft hands that stroke me and grab my fingers, and funny antics. I adore him. He makes me smile and makes my heart melt.

And, sometimes he drives me absolutely batty. It's HARD spending so much of my day fighting with him to get him to sleep. It's HARD having to be at his beck and call, 24 hours a day. It's HARD to get anything else done. It's emotionally draining to deal with his frequent freak-outs during which he doesn't so much cry as he screams like he's being tortured to the point of busting your eardrum if you're close enough. Our upstairs neighbor closed their sliding door today in the midst of one -- I wished I could do the same! I was exhausted!

And it's hard not to be hard on myself for how I respond to him sometimes. Because, in addition to the pressure to love every minute of it, there's also immense pressure on moms to be able to do it all, and to do it perfectly lovingly. So when I'm not constantly developmentally stimulating him, cooking, cleaning, straightening up, running errands, remembering birthdays, working on my list of projects, and whatever else I'm "supposed" to be doing, while also responding to him in ways that promote him growing into an emotionally available male human being, I tend to beat myself up. Which just makes the whole thing worse. Because I should be responding to him with care and compassion, encouraging him to express his feelings and showing him that they are valid -- not getting irritated to the point of anger and sighing and wishing he would stop/listen/do what I want him to do, trying to shut him up and therefore invalidating his feelings. 

Ah, that word -- should. It's amazing the damage that one little six-letter word can do, isn't it? 

And poor little guy -- he knows not what he does; he's just a little baby trying to make sense of this crazy world, and he has very limited means of how to communicate. It's just hard to remember that when in the midst of madness. (But when I do, I thank him for his very clear communication and lack of passive aggressiveness, haha.)

It's a pretty major identify shift, moving into motherhood. And even more so doing it as a stay-at-home-mom. See, I never aspired to stay-at-home-motherhood. Mo and I always said that he would be the one to stay at home with the kid(s). But then I got fed up with my 7-year-run of nightmare bosses and failing organizations and needed a 'break'. And who are we kidding -- workaholic Mo wouldn't last a week without work outside the home.

So here I am, trying to make sense of my days and find a balance between caring for him, getting him to learn how to sleep and tending to his needs, and getting to go do things for my own self-care to make sure that I don't lose my marbles. Eventually, I'll hopefully find time to actually dig in further to my own personal growth and do some soul exploration to discover what my heart's calling is. In the meantime, though, I generally just have the energy to escape and watch TV. Which, again, leads me back to beating myself up further because this certainly isn't the life I envisioned.

This challenge doesn't gel well with my steely Midwestern persona. It's very much internalized within me that things are fine, I can handle this, and no, I don't need any help, but if you need help, I'm here for you! Battling this beast to allow me to succumb to the difficulty of the situation and embrace that it's okay for it to be hard is, like, well, battling Zia to get him to sleep. Or enduring his tortured freak-outs. They are one and the same.

So motherhood is a journey of self-understanding. And it is also generally fraught with challenge in facing oneself as one really is, as opposed to how one perceives oneself to be. Which is a good thing. It's good for me to learn how to be more present and aware and in the moment. It's good for me to face the demons that lurk within me and become more intimately familiar with my shadow. And learn that anger isn't necessarily an enemy; it's just another emotion that we all experience. But it all contributes to the hardness of the situation.

Hard is okay. Hard is good. It's just my personal challenge to learn to embrace that and be okay with it. And to feel okay saying it -- saying that this is hard and that I don't love every moment of it. It doesn't make me less of a person. In fact, maybe it even makes me more whole.

I'm getting there.