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.

I just went twozie in my onesie

Apparently, onesies are meant to fill in the gap from the lack of instruction manuals:

and warning labels:

to accompany babies.


Though I suppose they do have other purposes like stating parental political beliefs:

In any case, isn't it funny how much goes into what a baby wears? I mean, what do they care?? Don't get me wrong -- I'm the first one to stop Mo if he's leaving the house with Zia dressed in a way that I don't determine to be fit for public. My kid may be naturally cute, but let's be sure to enhance it so there's no confusion, please! 


Some of the stuff is just silly, though. As adorable as I think that many of the pockets on pants are -- take for instance cargo pants -- so cute! But what's the point of pockets on baby clothes? Is he supposed to store his pacifier in there and take it out when he needs it? Stuff in a rag to wipe his own face when he drools and spits up all over? A parent can dream! (Come to think of it, perhaps that's why they have pockets -- a parent designed them, using the 'if you build it, they will come mentality'...)


In any case, there may not be a point, but it sure is fun to get sucked into the cuteness of the pointlessness and make sure that my kid is looking as adorable as possible! Though in used stuff as much as possible, because what's the point of buying new clothes they'll wear for three months??

All hands on deck!

Pacifier overboard!!!!


That's what happened this morning. Zia's pacifier fell out of his mouth somewhere in the bed and mysteriously disappeared into the abyss. He was back in the bed for a feeding and I was about to transfer him back to the co-sleeper when it fell out and we couldn't find it anywhere! Of course, as fate would have it, we ALSO couldn't find his other pacifier. Therefore ... 


Awake baby.


Yes, folks, it's true. We have created a pacifier addict. He's going to start attending Suckers Anonymous meetings any day now. 


This was at 6:00, so it's not as bad as if it had happened in the middle of the night, but he usually sleeps until somewhere between 7 and 8. And since it was an emergency to try to keep him asleep (refer to previous posting), Mo and I were both scrambling around trying to find a pacifier, to no avail. We even cracked open the package of 6-month+ pacifiers (does it really matter??) and were prepared to start boiling them to use, but by then it was no use. We had a gurgling, happily awake baby. 


Oh well. At least he's adorable. Even with the pacifier. See?

Sleep like a baby? No, thank you!!

Whomsoever coined this phrase and thought they were referencing good sleep clearly never had a baby. Because if they did, they would know that this is what 'sleeping like a baby' looks like. At least, it's what sleeping like a baby looks like when you're talking about the baby we know as Zia. 


Step 1: When it becomes clear that The Parents are trying to get you to sleep, fight it like it's an intruder into your home in the middle of the night or the worst form of injustice imaginable.  Yell, scream, flail your arms, cry, and kick your feet stridently.


Step 2: Continue this while being bounced on a blown-up ball, with a pacifier in your mouth and something covering your eyes, music in the background, and a comfort blanket (i.e. lovey) tucked under your arm. If it's Daddy putting you to sleep, you also need something that smells like Mommy or you should yell REALLY loud.


Step 3: Finally succumb to sleep, with a few flails of arms occasionally just to keep the person putting you to sleep guessing.


Step 4: Give a few little jiggles while being carried back to the place you're supposed to sleep.


Step 5: Once put down where you're meant to sleep, open your eyes and move a little. You can opt to wake up altogether and return to Step 2 at this point, if you so choose.


Step 6: If you're willing to sleep, then this is where you sleep through a deep sleep and look extremely peaceful. (This is where 'sleeping like a baby' is desirable. Only here.) Note that this only lasts 20-45 minutes.


Step 7: Once you hit an active state of sleep and realize that your pacifier is no longer in your mouth, roll around, flail your arms, and yell for help. 


Step 8A: Once the pacifier is restored to your mouth, slowly calm down and return to Step 6. You may need some pats on the back and shushing to help you with the calming down.


Step 8B: Alternately, continue to roll around with the pacifier in your mouth, occasionally spitting it out and yelling for it again, until you have been picked up and returned to Step 2 (or a modified version of it, in the glider). 


Repeat 6-8 until you are truly awake or your parent gives up having to repeat all of the rigamaroll. Victory! You are awake and get to look at everything and get attention again!! Or, maybe you wore Mommy or Daddy out so much that you get this:

In which case, that also counts as victory because you get a warm body and a heartbeat to sleep to. Ah, the good ole days in the womb...


Makes ya think twice about saying you slept like a baby, huh? Maybe we should say 'like a worn-out parent' when someone asks how we slept and we slept especially well ...

Finding Siblings

Well, lookee here. Daddy is currently acting as Bed since the 'how we're going to wean him off of bodies' conversation scheduled for the weekend hasn't happened yet, and Mo is jealous that I get to sleep with him on me so much, which means I'm free to blog again, a mere day after the last one! Whoa!

Earlier this week, we were at our friends' house. They have a 1-year-old who is in a nanny share with another baby who is three days younger, and that family was there also. Afterward, Mo & I talked about how we want to make sure that Zia has buddies growing up, because it's super cute to watch those two babies now that they're aware of each other, interacting and crawling around. And we think it's important to raise babies in community.


Plus, if they hang out enough, maybe they can become like these twins:

Secret conversations about missing socks!

I've made lots of friends over the last few months with moms with babies right around Zia's age, so we have lots of potential to raise Zia with pseudo siblings. (And, of course, there are the gazillion friends who have had friends within the last year, though it will be a while before Zia catches up to those highly mature babies.) It's pretty funny how unaware of each other the babies have all been so far, though. Yesterday, I was on a hike with my friend Robin (of shared birth story fame), whose daughter was born a day after Zia. For about the first time, they seemed to actually look at each other from time to time, but for the most part they're far more interested in the wall than each other thus far.

Robin and I are planning to do a childcare swap starting in September or so. I'll take Eleanor for half a day a week while she's at work, and in exchange she'll take Zia half a day a week so I can have some baby-free time! Which will give Eleanor and Zia time to develop a fun little friendship like our one-year-old friends.

In the meantime, we're forcing it on them:

Clearly effective, as Eleanor found it to be an opportunity to just munch on Zia's clothes rather than her own. Baby expressions of affection!

It will be so fascinating to watch as they grow up. Who knows -- they may decide that they hate each other! Or, they'll develop a giant posse with all the other babies they get to see regularly. 

My Life as a Bed

So much for that whole 'now I can blog more regularly thing'. The last post was open in a tab on my laptop for over a month before I finally finished it and got it up. (Mind you, it WAS unusually long.) I've had another one going for over a month again and somehow just never get around to finishing it.


It's funny how time just disappears when you're staying home with an infant. I have a pretty good 'to-do' list awaiting attention, and that doesn't even include the big projects I want to get to. And yet, day after day, I'm delighted if I manage to get to the dishes. The days just melt into nights like nothing. But when Mo asks what I did all day, my report is quite short in nature, since it's basically just a cycle on repeat all day.


I keep wishing I could go back to the conversation I had with my boss and our Board Treasurer last summer, when I was about 2 months pregnant and hadn't yet told them. We were planning our upcoming 20th anniversary event and discussing the potential involvement of a board member who was on maternity leave and how much we thought she could/would do. I, of course, was saying that we should contact her to assess her interest/ability to participate, since presumably a maternity leave would apply to board involvement as well as her job. I'm just sayin'...

Yes, that's about how mad I was ...

Boss and Board Treasurer (both men -- middle-aged white men, one of significant means) immediately jumped to, 'Well, what else is she doing? She's on maternity leave. She's doing way less than when she was working!' Mind you, this was coming from someone who gets to go out in the world and stake his claim as a psychology expert in working with survivors of Gender-Based Violence. Lovely that he has no concept of sexism/feminism, huh?? But that's a whole different topic, and one on which I don't care to get started again, as I've wasted many a breath and high blood pressure on it already.


In any case, Board Treasurer, married to an Asian-American woman, commented that his wife threw their baby on her back and was back out in the rice paddies the next day (Don't get me started -- wrong on SO many levels), so surely the board member should be at our beck and call for event planning services, cuz, ya know, she's already been off a couple months already and stuff, so she can only get so many more pedicures and massages. (Okay, he didn't say that last part, but it was certainly implied.)


It was one of these moments where, not yet having experienced motherhood myself, I knew intrinsically that I was *furious* with them and that what they were saying was ludicrous, but I didn't have the specific language to respond when they asked what in the world she could be doing, particularly since the baby sleeps all day! I mean, REALLY!! Lap of luxury!!


So here I am with Baby Who Only Sleeps On Humans, unable to do much other than care for him, wishing to go back in time and tell Them Who Never Stayed Home With Their Kids just exactly what that board member's days probably looked like and why we should feel eternally grateful if she was willing to contribute any tiny amount of time at all. 

Alas, I have moved on and have zero interest in dredging up old anger spots. It just makes me think and roll my eyes. And be grateful that that is all behind me and that instead of working with people who make my blood boil all day, I now get to be greeted by a tiny person who flashes a gummy grin at me all day long. (Okay, part of the day when he's not flexing his oh-so-strong lungs. But that's a different post for a different day.)


So, as I begin to extricate myself from being a bed to him, I will get back to posting more and more. I'll just have to catch you up on the last four (!) months by integrating into the reports of the now. My head is constantly brewing with ideas to reflect upon here in the blogosphere, so be ready to be word assaulted once I get going!! Once I get done "luxuriating", that is ...