Posts Tagged "Parenting"
Rested 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...
Read MoreIdentity Crisis
For a very long time I was a student. After I left school, I worked various jobs. Nothing I would call a career, but jobs I liked and excelled at. I had a circle of friends at work and the jobs were, inevitably, part of who I was. I also read The Georgia Straight, went to movies, read books, listened to music and went to a lot of concerts and shows, saw a lot of DJs. I went hiking in the Coast Mountains on the weekends with co-workers. Then we bought a school bus and every spare moment was spent on the monumental project of converting an empty steel hulk into a livable space. We stopped hiking and camping. We went to fewer DJ shows. We gardened and went to Home Depot. Then we had a baby. There went movies and concerts and reading. The first year living in the bus was like the first year of parenthood. It is so hard, so different and so all encompassing that at the end of that year, you come out completely different. There is so much to learn, so much to adapt to, so much work to do that a lot of your old self drops away. The loss of former identity markers (though coupled with some disorientation) resulted in the forging of new ways of identifying. I became a “bus person,” a mom, and I suppose, (though I find this term a little silly) a birth junkie. I started my home birth supply business and threw myself into learning everything I could about birth and maternity care advocacy, about web design, about entrepreneurship. I was immersed in this world of living in a bus, of raising my son and of spending every spare minute building my birth store. Old interests were replaced with new and part of me was happy as I’ve always thought that we are more than our jobs, more than what we do. I felt excited about the prospect of self-definition coming from relationships, from who we are and who we love. Then we moved away from the City, away from our family, out of Eliza. We live in a little house and Eliza sits empty in a friend’s yard, forlorn and lonely, and sadly, unfinished. Then I made the difficult decision to close my business. I have spare time again. I’m knitting. Reading novels. Enjoying cooking and baking. But I am not a student. I have no career. I am no longer a bus person or an entrepreneur. I am not actively involved in the birth community as I was through my store. I have also come out of that fog as a new parent where your life is wrapped so tightly around the day to day necessity of being mom to a helpless infant. I am more than mom, more than wife, more than supporting actress. Right? In the same way that a home-maker might feel a little at a loss when her babies leave the nest, I feel that my other babies (my projects) just flew the coop too. And well, what does that make me now? Other than a bird sitting on an empty nest? I am letting myself exist in this space for a bit, knowing full well that I need me some renewal and some time. I am reading The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal, keeping tabs on the Mama Renew blog and waiting for whatever comes next. The next phase will probably start without me realizing it and in the mean time, I’ll be...
Read MoreSix Week Check-Up
Do you have new first time parents in your life? You’ve probably gotten them a gift and visited to meet the new wee one. You’ve probably puzzled over what a new family needs and how to help out. There are lots of great ideas out there. Here’s one I particularly liked as it really rang true for my experience as a new parent. To take it one step further, I’d like to challenge everyone out there to do the Six Week Check-up. That is, make a point of checking in with the new mom as her baby nears the six week mark. Why Six Weeks? Do you remember the six week check up after you had your first baby? Do you remember what else was going on for you then? Maybe you haven’t had kids yet or maybe your kids are older and now that you’ve left the sleep-deprived haze, those early days are all a blur. Let me remind you: The first few weeks were all bliss, staring at baby in awe, proudly presenting her to family and friends, feeling totally bonded to your partner for producing this perfect little angel. But now? Dad has gone back to work. The whirlwind of out-of-town visitors is slowing or they’ve all come and gone. Friends and family have all met baby and are back to their regular lives: working, house renos, family vacation. The new baby celebrations have all ended: the baby shower or meet the baby party was a few weeks ago. Friends are no longer dropping in with a cute onesie or yet another handmade blanket. The email congratulations have tapered off. In short, everyone else’s excitement has worn off. For them, now it’s business as usual. For mom? She’s home alone with baby and the reality of her new life is finally starting to hit her. This likely means getting used to the isolation of maternity leave. The first few weeks felt like a well-deserved vacation, especially after the aches and pains and fatigue of working while pregnant. But now, she’s kind of bored. She’s surprised by how much she misses talking to adults when she’s staring at the four walls and nursing AGAIN. She’s surprised by how much she misses the noise of the office (or the restaurant or the store or wherever it was for her) when she realises how quiet it is at home alone while her friends and partner are at work. When she sees her friends, she realizes she has surprisingly little to talk about now that she can’t talk about her work. She wonders what to do with herself and she misses that productive self, that woman who excelled at her work. It’s lonely and she feels a little lost in a culture that defines people by the work they do. After the standard first few weeks rest and recovery, she was feeling great and tried to get back to her normal routine, only to find that she’s still exhausted. Mama’s beginning to realise that her plans of continuing life as before with baby in tow might be a little unrealistic. Her thoughts of tackling some of those crafting projects gathering dust during her “year off” seem laughable now as she struggles to sleep enough, keep the house clean, shower and eat lunch. By 6 weeks, the new family is likely out of the extra freezer food they prepared before the birth and friends are no longer dropping off casseroles. Offers to throw a load of laundry in or pick up groceries while new mom grabs a nap have petered out. Mom’s learning to navigate the grocery store with baby (and all the baby gear) now. Every day is a list of laundry, nursing, diapers, nursing, napping, nursing, dishes, nursing, more laundry, more nursing, more diapers. She’s surprised at how little she accomplishes and she might be starting to get run down around the 6 week mark because she’s trying to do too much. Back to regular life? Not exactly. At 6 weeks, baby often goes through a growth spurt (also...
Read MoreConnecting with your Community
Parenting can be lonely. Your lifestyle changes drastically. Perhaps you are the first in your circle of friends to have children. Perhaps you are surprised by the isolation of maternity leave. Perhaps you long for a real connection with other parents rather than those conversations where you pretend it’s not as hard as it is. Perhaps you find the playground intimidating. Most parents agree that parenting is both the hardest and most fulfilling job they’ve ever held. You can try your hardest to prepare yourself but no amount of reading, observing and talking to other parents can prepare you for it. Parenting transforms your life to the place where you can’t imagine your life before children. And suddenly you find yourself relishing conversations about the minutiae of raising children. It just isn’t the same without a community to share it with. So what can you do to foster that need for community? Check out these articles on community: Finding Your Tribe: Feed Your Soul while Feeding Your Kids – an article from Mothering Magazine on creating a parenting community for yourself. Longing For Community – Natural Parenting guru and former Mothering Magazine editor Peggy O’Mara’s thoughts on community. Create a Date Night Group Join up with 3 other families and start babysitting each others’ kids. Each week one family watches all the kids. The other 3 couples get date night. So 1 Friday per month you might have a mad-house full of kids—the other 3 Fridays you get to be alone with your partner! And as the years pass, the kids will entertain each other and all you’ll have to do is make sure they are safe. Start a Book Club or a Knitting Night Find a group of parents and read parenting books to discuss at a potluck. Have older kids? Start a book club and invite the kids like the Mother/Daughter book club The Page Turners in the November/December 2008 issue of Mothering Magazine. Always knitting? Start a knit night with other moms. Rotate meetings so each family takes a turn hosting. Team Up Commit to regular check ins with another mom so you can encourage and support each other with your parenting challenges and triumphs. Agree to call each other once a week just to see how it’s going. Find a parent with older kids who is willing to act as a mentor to you. Check in regularly (once a week or once a month). Read the book The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal and if you’re in BC join a Mama Renew...
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