Posts Tagged "baby"
Announcing…
…{better late than never}… Silas Blaze February 16, 2011 ~ 1:48 am 8 Lbs 5 oz. 19.5 inches Birth story to follow.
Read MoreReconsidering Co-sleeping
As we wait for this baby to arrive, I find myself seriously considering a crib. This may not seem very inflammatory. After all, for the vast majority a crib isn’t even a consideration; it’s a necessary purchase that requires no thought beyond what sheets to choose. However, we co-slept (or bed-shared) with our two older children. A crib feels like venturing into strange territory. In fact, it even feels like a bit of a betrayal. Not that I have a problem with OTHER people using cribs at all. It’s just for me, it feels like denying this baby some of the wonderful things we were able to give our older kids. Furthermore, it goes against my personal instincts and parenting philosophies about keeping our kids close. In a lot of ways I love co-sleeping. I love the extra snuggles in the night. I love the extra hours of closeness with my children. I love being able to hear, see and feel that they are safe. I love waking up together. I love the early morning cuddles and giggles. I love that co-sleeping makes it easier for Aaron to be involved in night-time parenting. I love looking over and seeing one of my children cradled in Aaron’s arms. There are more practical benefits to co-sleeping beyond all that lovey-dovey stuff though. Many people, including Dr. James McKenna from University of Notre Dame, claim benefits to co-sleeping like the ease of maintaining the breastfeeding relationship and the increased sleep for mom. Long-term effects also suggested include higher self-esteem in adults who co-slept as children and a new book by Margot Sunderland, director of education at the Centre for Child Mental Health in London, “says the practice makes children more likely to grow up as calm, healthy adults.” There are even studies that say that practiced safely, co-sleeping decreases the incidence of SIDS. In my own experience, I saw first hand the ways that co-sleeping made breastfeeding easier. I could just roll over and nurse a baby while half asleep, without having to get up, walk down the hall, nurse in a chair and then carefully try to get baby back in the crib (without rousing her and having to start over). We learned quite quickly to disturb our babies as little as possible in the night if we wanted to maximize our sleep. A baby that falls asleep nursing in a side-lying position is much easier to keep asleep than one who needs to be moved and placed back into a crib. Plus, because I wasn’t getting up, walking around and turning on lights, it was easier for me to go back to sleep after a feed too. The problem is I’m beginning to feel that some of those gains in the early days set me up for some challenges later on. Some examples: 1. Eventually I began to dread climbing into bed at night. I would be tired (from a long day with a toddler who usually went to bed at the same time as us) and ready to sleep but as soon as I jostled the bed or baby smelled me beside her, it would be mean another feed before I could go to sleep. Whether it was 8:30, or 9:00, or 10:00, or midnight. I could not get into bed and just go to sleep. Even if baby had only nursed an hour ago, I was in for another feed before I could punch out. 2. Increased Night Wakings. Both of my kids spent their early days in a little bassinet type bed beside our bed and only moved into our bed when they outgrew their first bed, around 4 or 5 months old. Around this time, we noticed that they were developing skills for soothing themselves back to sleep. We would hear them rustle, re-settle, perhaps suck a finger or thumb and then go back to sleep. Around this time, hours of consecutive sleep were increasing from 2 (with a newborn) to 4 or 5. By the time both children were a year old, they were waking...
Read MoreHere we go…
The PNE in Vancouver has a wooden rollercoaster that is close to 60 years old. I’m not a rollercoaster expert so maybe they all work this way but I thought it was pretty cool when I learned that this rollercoaster works entirely on gravity. The first hill is big and steep; the train is hauled up to the very top ever so slowly. It rounds the top curve and then hurtles down the slope below. From there, the ride just goes on it’s own by the grace of momentum and gravity with no mechanical help. I’ve had this unmistakable feeling in the last few weeks that my life is on a similar course right now as we wait for this third baby to arrive. The last few weeks, we’ve been getting ready for Christmas and Aaron’s birthday: organizing gifts, planning meals, cooking & baking. The year ahead has been pushed to the side but all the while I’ve had the underlying sense that we were all being firmly tugged up a long hill. And this frosty, sparkly morning, this first day of 2011, as we packed away all the Christmas decorations and wished each other Happy New Year, I felt the ride crest the hill. I find myself in that brief moment at the top, peering down the precipitous drop in front of us, giddy and terrified about the free fall that lies ahead. No turning back...
Read MoreDone Like Dinner
If you spend any amount of time online in places where people talk about pregnancy and parenting, eventually you run across the conversation where someone asks “Are you done having kids?” “How did you know you were done?” or some variation of that. In the real world, people ask “When are you having the next one?” and “Are you planning to have any more?” Oddly enough, these often come from near strangers in awkward social situations. This is particularly bizarre considering that the answers tend to be complicated. This is the thing: both situations address the same issue, but the online versions seem to acknowledge that there is an emotional component (some way of feeling done) whereas the real life one acts as though it were only a matter of logistics, not of heart. Yet, either way, the answers are far from easy. The decision to have children at all, or add more children to your family involves more than just finances. Not just can we afford it, but do we have the resources (time and energy and support)? There’s the practical, the part addressed by the idea of planning for children. But what about the emotional aspects? The idea of being done is emotionally tricky. It’s not like there’s a meat thermometer device that we can use to check if we are done. It includes our ideas about sibling relationships and what’s the right number of siblings. This includes how we might feel about only children. It includes how we might feel about having either fewer or more children than the culturally acceptable two. It probably includes some of our past experience: how many siblings did we have and how did that affect us. It includes our relationship and experience with the children we already have and with our partner. There’s also this rather nebulous idea underlying the concept of done-ness that at some point you just know. The myth is that as the last baby is placed on your chest, you look round the room at your family and feel complete, perfect, done. Some even talk about feeling like someone was always missing in their family before the last baby was conceived. This is like the ultimate goal when thinking about or discussing being done. It seems everyone secretly hopes they will get that unmistakable feeling and be ready to move on. The alternative is to be stuck with puppy syndrome which means that you might get addicted to the whole cycle of life that presents you with a newborn in all it’s soft, floppy, sleepy, sweet smelling glory. Every time your youngest gets to the point of walking and talking, you find yourself staring wistfully at the pregnant lady at the grocery store and yearning to hold a fresh baby again. You worry that no matter how many children you have, you’ll always miss having a newborn. You’ll never feel satisfied. It seems to me that while women seem more prone to puppy syndrome than men, it can still affect both sexes. Not so for the slightly more complex idea of being done childbearing. For women, the childbearing years are a particularly special time: the magic of pregnancy, the triumph and/or trauma of childbirth, and the challenges and comforts of nursing. These can be deeply rewarding and enriching times in the life of a mother. For some, it might be hard to let go of this phase of life, even when they feel they have enough children. Those who had difficult or upsetting birth experiences or disappointing breastfeeding experiences may yearn to do it one more time as a means to heal and gain closure. It can be hard to separate those feelings from the feeling that you actually want another child. Besides, moving beyond the childbearing years is also a way of growing older. Even as you appreciate your new level of freedom when your youngest heads to Kindergarten, it can be hard to admit that the baby years are behind you. It puts you on the other side. It’s the first step towards middle...
Read MoreBriefly June & July
I had been intending to do a monthly review on, well, a MONTHLY basis. But it turned out that most of what I learned in June, I couldn’t share with you all until now. So then, what I learned in June & July: 1. Old friends really are the best friends. In the middle of June, we hosted a reunion at our house for 3 of my school friends and their partners. I stressed about being hostess for 3 couples in our small house but it ended up being such an amazing weekend. 2. Prepare for the worst; hope for the best. That’s kind of how I operate. I need to worry about the what ifs and prepare for them. I understand that about myself. Fair enough but that mentality also means you waste a lot of time worrying and stressing about things that will probably never happen. In the case of our reunion, I was again pleasantly surprised by the outcome and I kind of worried for nothing. Apparently I need a little more of the hoping for the best part and a little less of the preparing for the worst. 3. What to Expect when You’re Unexpectedly Expecting. We were still on the fence over whether or not to have any more kids. Aaron was happy with just two. I have always wanted three kids. However, Noa has only recently started sleeping through the night and I’m kind of exhausted from the challenge of 5 years of back to back pregnancy and breastfeeding and night nursing. I don’t feel I have the energy to start all of that over again just yet. I can also see that if Noa gets too much older, I won’t want to go back to baby stuff. I could see the window of opportunity for a third baby closing and I’ve been working hard on being ok with that. So then we got the rather unexpected news that I’m pregnant. I cried. It wasn’t what we were planning for right now but the decision’s been made for us and in the end, it will all feel right, I’m sure. It’s definitely getting easier as the weeks go on—getting used to it, I mean. Otherwise, it’s so far been getting progressively worse with the nausea, the food aversions, the exhaustion, but I’m told that even that will get better some time soon. In the mean time, I’ve learned that in this situation: There’s almost nothing your friends and family can say that seems to be the appropriate response when you break the news. When they are happy and excited and say, “Congratulations!” wholeheartedly and enthusiastically, I thought to myself, “don’t they get it? How do they not see that the next three years are going to be so exhausting and hard?” When they (especially parents of one or two already) say, “Whoa. Really?” and open their eyes in terror while they try to smile encouragingly, I felt hurt that they weren’t happy for us or self-conscious that they thought we were crazy or stupid. In the end, Aaron and I were able to joke about it and came up with the best possible response a friend could make: a big smile and shout “Surprise!” It’s quite possible to have very mixed feelings about the little one. In fact, if I were to think hard about it, I had mixed feelings every time I got pregnant and that was ok. Embarking on new parenthood is kind of terrifying. Every. Single. Time. There are new complicated challenges to be faced each time. There’s always a steep learning curve. Somehow with our planned pregnancies, it was easier for me to accept that. This time, I feel guilty for feeling those things. As if I am rejecting the poor little bean. While I’m not that enthusiastic about multiple ultrasounds, an early dating ultrasound definitely taught me the power of visuals to help in bonding. So far we’ve been feeling kind of punched in the face with this news and I’ve been sick and tired and generally feeling...
Read More
Recent Comments
No comments to display