Posts Tagged "baby"
Stages of Motherhood
I have been surrounded by mothers of babies at a few recent events. Play groups. La Leche League meetings. Now that my youngest is coming up on two years old, I’m definitely not a mother of a baby anymore and around these moms chatting, I find myself falling silent, receding into the background and just listening. It’s become obvious to me why we tend to gravitate to mothers whose children are the same age as our own. Sure, it’s partly because they play well together and we can commiserate about ages and stages and share tips. But it’s also because we mothers are at the same stage of development. Here are some of the stages as I experienced them: The Bi-Polar Stage The first 2 months with a newborn hold wild swings from low to high. They are the days of being on cloud nine, elated and blissed out by this new being, by this new family unit you created. They are the days of utter and bewildering lack of confidence, of feeling completely out of your element and overwhelmed. You have no idea how in 3-36 hours your former life disappeared forever. You feel completely turned around and your emotions swing like a pendulum as you try desperately through a fog of sleeplessness and round the clock feedings to regain your footing. These are the days of questions, always questions. Questions for the midwife, for the lactation consultant, for your mom, for every parent you know or meet. The False Confidence Stage When your baby is about 6 months old you come out of your shell. You get talkative. You have opinions. You’re more confident about mothering and feel that you just might know what you’re doing. You’re getting the swing of it. But you’ve also had to eat your words on more than one occasion. You’ve found yourself doing things you swore you’d never do. You see the other side of the fence now so you’re also quick to talk about being more accepting of other parenting styles. You freely admit how wrong you were and you make an effort to be less judgmental. You know now how hard it can be, how motherhood doesn’t always line up neatly with your expectations, how intensely unique a baby’s personality can be from day one. All the while, you don’t quite realise that you’re going to get knocked on your ass a few more times before you get less vocal. You’ve come through the honeymoon and down the other side so you think you finally have it figured out but you don’t realise that you’re still residing in the baby realm. You’re stoked to share these moments of personal growth, these lessons because they were so profound, but nevertheless you mistake the journey of the last six months for a much longer one. You still don’t realise how much more awaits you. You feel like a weathered mother when the reality is that you’re still very green. Very green indeed. I’ve gone through both of these stages twice. I’ve done all of those things and I’ve watched other moms go through them too. Yet, it seems easier to identify the stages after you have passed through them than it is to pinpoint where you are at any given moment. As I watch these young mothers, I see my past self distinctly. I was there once. But it is a past self, which is why I tend to recede into the background when they start talking. They are getting support and nourishment from others at the same stage, and I am no longer there. Now, my children are 4.5 and almost 2. I’m struggling with discipline issues and sibling issues. I’m struggling with scary identity issues now as I begin to get more freedom again and as I face the possibility that my childbearing days are over. I’ve realised that though it seemed I learned so much and came so far in the first 6 months of parenting, it was just a blip compared to the learning associated with having...
Read MoreStop The Cycle – Cry It Out pt. 2
Last week at my local La Leche League meeting the topic for discussion was adapting to motherhood and one of the questions was “What did you to do to help your baby adjust to life outside the womb?” A young mother of a 2.5 month old baby responded by saying that she had let her baby cry and that it had been the good thing for him because now he is sleeping well. She went on to say that it had been terrible and that she herself had cried the first few times but that it had been the right thing to do. Considering the group, which was primarily made up of proponents of attachment parenting, the resulting discussion was incredibly supportive, thanks to the stealthy handling of our leader. She steered the conversation away from the specifics and toward the need to recognize that every baby is different, that every mom knows best what her baby needs and that we need to support each other in that. One of the other mothers piped up to say that she too had used sleep training with her baby and often felt judged for it. Some others brought up that they felt judged for going to their babies when they cried, and for not sleep training. Everyone reiterated that mothers know what is best for their babies. I was impressed with how the situation was handled but I sat quietly through the entire discussion. I am fervently opposed to crying-it-out (and you can read why here). I don’t believe it’s one of those minor parenting differences that we all have to accept each other on, like whether we cloth diaper or use disposables, whether we breastfeed for 12 months or 24, whether or not we use rewards for behaviour modification, or for that matter whether or not we use sleep training methods on older babies. I don’t believe that letting a 10 week old baby cry-it-out is just fodder for the mommy wars. The cry-it-out (CIO) method is not a choice that families come up with of their own accord. I am fairly certain that if every family were left to their own devices, to trust themselves, to trust their babies, the cry-it-out method would die out because it goes against our very instincts. Every evolutionary biological maternal instinct we have tells us to go to, pick up, and soothe a baby who is crying. This young mother said herself that it was terrible and she cried the first few times she tried the method. An article I read while researching this post reiterated that point: The first night I cried for over an hour, long enough that my mom finally had to take a break and walk around the neighborhood while my dad kept watch. Anecdotally, I hear that over and over from moms, even those who are huge supporters of CIO. We all seem to think that parents and babies have to toughen up, that if they all just suck it up for a few days (or weeks) they’ll be the better for it, because someone wiser and more experienced said that this is what we are supposed to do. The only reason we continue as a society to use this method is because of pressures coming from outside the walls of our homes and I am beginning to think that we have a responsibility to stop this insanity. You think it’s harsh to call it insanity? Try this perspective: Leaving a baby to cry is a method that was popularized by doctors and paediatricians from the turn of the 20th century. This was a time when influential men like Luther Emmett Holt (1855 – 1924) and Truby King (1858-1938) were telling mothers that a strict schedule of feeding and sleeping should be kept. Their advice included encouraging regular bowel movements from the time the baby was younger than 2 months old by holding the baby over a basin and inserting soap suppositories, rubber tubing or an oiled cone into the baby’s rectum at the same time every day!! This...
Read MoreNot For Us – Cry It Out Pt. 1
Last week I ended up in a group setting where I sat quietly by as a new mother explained that she had let her 10 week old son cry it out. I had no idea how to respond. Mere hours before I had posted the following on my Facebook page: Young babies cannot tell time. They have no way of knowing that it’s been only 5 min or 5 hours since they last saw you. They also do not have object permanence which means that if they can’t see, touch, smell or hear you, it’s the same as if you don’t exist. When they call for you and you don’t come, they have no way of knowing that you are still there but in the other room. Talk about terrifying: to be helpless and your primary caregiver no longer exists. No wonder their little brains are flooded with stress hormones. BBC News – Crying-it-out ‘harms baby brains’ news.bbc.co.uk Dr Penelope Leach says recent scientific tests show high levels of the stress hormone cortisol develop in babies when no one answers their cries. I should be clear here that I am talking about young babies. Newborns. Infants. Babies under 6 months old for sure (regarding the reference to object permanence). Newborns cry because they are hungry, cold, tired or need their mothers. They do not cry to manipulate. They cry to tell you they have needs that must be met. For older babies, over 6 months, over 1 year, various methods of sleep training is perhaps an issue of personal parenting choice. I personally still try to avoid it but I can see that modified versions of cry-it-out, like crying-in-arms or Dr. Jay Gordon’s advice can be helpful, especially for working mothers. I concede that willingly. Older babies can learn to wait occasionally (ask any mother of more than 1 child). Older babies do need to be taught that sometimes they have to go to sleep when they would rather play. Older babies can be taught sleep associations that do not involve wearing out her mother. But a 10 week old baby? No. That baby is crying to tell you something. There are plenty of articles and studies out there that discuss why CIO (cry-it-out) is harmful. This one discusses the history of the practice and offers an alternative: crying in arms. This one discusses attachment theory. These articles are only a drop in the bucket on the subject and both are well researched and referenced. I wholeheartedly agree with Dr. Leach that leaving a young infant to cry is damaging to the brain as well as to the baby’s emotional development, and to the relationship between mother and child in terms of the child trusting that their caregiver will respond to their needs, requests for help. Crying is the young infant’s primary form of communication. They need to trust that you will respond to them when they communicate and that trust is vital to ongoing attempts to forge a bond of attachment. I don’t use this word attachment in a fluffy way; I am talking about the attachment that psychologists study in humans and in animals as being necessary to our very survival. Perhaps the main reason for the persistence of the CIO method is the misunderstanding that it works. Certainly, many babies do eventually stop crying and sleep, but unfortunately, this is often cited as being linked with the baby becoming so stressed that he or she simply shuts down as a means of coping with extremely overwhelming negative emotions, similar to victims of post traumatic stress disorder. These babies pass out from exhaustion and fear, from crippling levels of stress hormones in their tiny developing brains. They do not go to sleep because they have learned to self-soothe. Given the new body of sophisticated, cross-discipline research on attachment and brain development outlined in this article, it is clear that a baby’s willingness to accept sleep training after reportedly brief periods of protest is no less than a cycle of hyperarousal and dissociation responses that is damaging to...
Read MoreTrick of the Light
The other day, when I dropped Rain at preschool, he unzipped his coat, found a hook, hung it up, placed his boots neatly underneath and marched confidently off to find something to do. The teacher got him set up showing a younger boy how to use a set of plastic gears. I was amazed at how big he was, how tall, how grown-up, how helpful, how knowing. That night, he had a bad dream. I heard him crying and went to his room. In the dark, I held him. His little body shook and his voice broke with sobs. How like a baby he still was! I smoothed the curls on his sweaty forehead and offered him “a pinch.” His still-dimpled hand found my forearm and methodically squeazed the muscle, just as he used to when he was nursing at 10 months old. How strange that in the dark, in the night, he was still my baby, still clinging desperately to me as I whispered that he was safe. I have this same experience every day with his younger sister Noa. As she giggles and runs after her older brother, how cute and big she seems. How stubborn and determined when they fight, when Rain takes her toy and she defiantly shouts “No!” How like a little girl she is in the day-to-day moments of life. Walking, talking, climbing. Sit down to breastfeed and it’s another story. I trace the curve of her nose, marvel at the downy hair on her cheek, the pout of her lower lip. She sucks contentedly and I try again to memorize her face, just as it is. Suddenly she seems to be my baby again. Her face innocent and newborn-like, despite that her wee head is at least four times bigger than it was the day I first craddled it in my palm. One moment so big; the next so small. Is it a trick of the light? How is it that one moment we’ve finally gotten used to the fact that they are growing up and the next we are once again brought to our knees by the utter tiny-ness and dependence of them? Something shifts and we see how tightly they are still tied to us and then just as quickly the veil is drawn aside and they are running from us, laughing. I am often astounded that children can seem to suddenly cross into a new developmental stage all at once. I’ve seen this in my own children and in my friends’ children. Overnight they seem to shift from floppy newborn to chubby baby, from squirming toddler to running, jumping full-fledged boy. It is breathtaking and always provokes a complex reaction in me: part pride, part shock. There is always the sad surprise that I’ve had to part with the last stage without being asked, without preparation. Suddenly, it’s gone and I’m loving the next stage. How grateful I am to discover that just as suddenly there are momentary lapses into the previous stage. Would it be too unbearable to watch the speed with which our kids grow up if it weren’t for these tiny reprieves? I savour these as best I can. I record them with my senses, in my muscle memory, the weight of their bodies in my arms, the smell of their hair, the whisper of their breath on my cheek. I pack them away, knowing that quickly, suddenly, the light will change and the baby will be gone again. Time gently grants us this fleeting grace as she marches forward. A minute here, a minute there, a ray of sunshine as our babies walk confidently out of our...
Read MoreRested Mama
Being a parent of more than one child poses a rather repetitive problem: how to balance the (often competing) needs of each child and feel like you’re doing at least a decent (good enough) job most/some of the time? I’ve developed a cold and awful sore throat just in time for the holidays so this problem has been magnified exponentially for me this week. Lots to do and desperately in need of rest and two little ones to care for. Sleep. Rest. This is a challenge for most parents in some way, isn’t it? We co-sleep. We co-slept with our son until he was about 3 and then we gradually transitioned him to his own bed in his own room. At least half of the time, he still has a sleep partner in his room or in the living room. He rarely comes into our bed because four is just too many (even in a King size) for me to get any amount of sleep. We chose co-sleeping for a variety of reasons (and that’s probably a separate post) which were still valid when our daughter was born and thus, we did it again. However, I have found that both of my children were/are persistent night-wakers and had/have a serious habit of needing to nurse back to sleep. Was this because of co-sleeping? I don’t know. Perhaps they would have done that anyway and co-sleeping allowed me at least a bit of sleep. Or perhaps they were so used to the accessibility that a bad habit developed. I can’t really go back and answer that question. What I do know is that after 18 months of night-waking (for the second time round), I definitely feel like I need some good quality sleep. Of course, this is underscored now due to my being sick. But I digress. I do not believe in letting my children cry-it-out. Again, for a lot of reasons. Read some here. And here. It’s been important to me to try night-weaning in a gradual gentle manner. With my son, in the end, it wasn’t as gentle as I might have liked but having returned to work, I was getting desperate and overall, I feel that we did the best we could. Yes, there was way more crying than I would have liked. But it always occurred in someone’s arms. My son was never left to cry himself into a panic of puking and exhaustion-stress-caused sleep. We are trying now to night-wean my daughter. I am trying to be gentle and patient with this. One of the graces of a second time parent is the insight that things do indeed change. As a result, I am much more patient with sleep struggles with my daughter than I was with my first-born. I have the awareness that it will pass even when it feels like it will take forever. I am much more willing to applaud the small steps forward and wait it out. But I am beginning to wonder if I really have that luxury. Preschoolers are infuriating at times. Age 2-5 used to be my favourite age…until I had to live with a child in that bracket. My son is four and right now, he is pushing and challenging me like I have never been before. He needs every bit of patience, consistency, re-direction, repetition and love that I can muster. And as a person chronically sleep-deprived, I do not have those qualities in me in the quantities he needs. Daniel Siegel, author of The Mindful Brain and Parenting From The Inside Out talks about being mindful and aware in our reactions. I am paraphrasing here but in general, this involves the ability to step back and see the situation and be aware of our intentions and other’s intentions before reacting. He described it as the ability to dive below the surface where the water is calm. From that place of stillness, you can look up at the storm raging above, realise it is there but not be affected by it and not choose to have...
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