Category: Mothering without a licence

Crazy mornings

We’re early risers around here. Most mornings I’m up somewhere between 5:30 and 6:30, and at least one of the boys is up around the same time. I can’t remember the last time all of us weren’t up by 7:15 with the exception of Beloved, who would sleep until tomorrow if we let him.

Even so, it takes us a while to get going in the mornings. I nurse Lucas when he wakes up, put on a pot of coffee, make a pre-breakfast snack for the big boys (this is a holdover from the old days when they were wee, and they probably don’t need it anymore but we are nothing if not creatures of habit around here) and read the paper for a bit before nursing Lucas again on the other side to take off the overnight milk pressure build-up. By then it’s time to shower and do my morning ablutions, get the boys dressed and breakfasted, and get Beloved up. Lucas likes a wee nap in the morning, and usually gets held by one of the grownups while he’s doing so. Yes, he’s spoiled rotten. I know. I’m okay with that. He’ll wake up for a bottle around 9:30 or so, which takes the best part of a half-hour to drink, and then get him dressed. Three mornings a week I sneak off to the gym and leave Beloved to tend to the boys, but nobody else gets dressed and goes anywhere without a major effort. We’re ready to face the day in public by 10:00, maybe 10:30.

We live close enough to the school that I can hear the schoolbell ringing. Each morning for the last month or so of school, I’d hear the bell ring for 9:00 and suppress a little shudder. Starting in September, we move from our leisurely both-boys-in-school-afternoons-only to both boys in school mornings and Tristan in school all (gasp!) day. How the hell we’ll get all of us out the door and across the street for 9:00 am has been a puzzle I’ve been worrying for a couple of months now.

I found out today just how ugly it will be. Without even realizing the foreshadowing, I’d enrolled Tristan in an all-day arts camp and Simon in a mornings-only camp at his former nursery school. The chaos of getting everybody out the door was nothing short of insanity, but it’s now not quite 10 in the morning, Lucas is sleeping in his car seat on the bathroom floor with the exhaust fan on (his second most common napping place, after our arms – don’t judge me, it works!!!) and I have both a hot Tim’s coffee and an entire blog post at my fingertips.

This might work out after all!

The question now is what on earth will I do with myself all day with only Lucas to take care of? For at least the mornings this week, with Beloved home the parents outnumber the kids!! How did we ever find just one child so difficult to manage? The silence (aside from the hum of the exhaust fan) is blissfully deafening.

The next plague: mastitis

My vexatious breasts are at it again, finding new and horrific ways to cause me grief. I suppose I should know better than to tempt fate with a question like “what’s next.” The answer is a rocking case of mastitis. Fever, chills, wretched body aches, and it feels like I have a ball of hot lead tucked into my right breast. Good times.

What really surprised me was how fast it came on. I had a bit of tenderness Tuesday night, and Lucas was being fussy feeding on that side. I figured I would have another blocked duct by morning, but had no idea how quickly it would become an infection. By midmorning yesterday I knew I was in trouble. Luckily, my GP saw me last night and I’m already on antibiotics. Yeah, lucky me.

Mastitis has always been my personal boogeyman, something I’ve been terrified of throughout my breastfeeding years. And as Stephen King observed, while the monster exposed can never be as frightening as the monster in the closet, it’s still pretty darn sucky. One more experience to add to my mothering portfolio. Pass the Advil, willya?

Solids: now or later?

As I mentioned, we had Lucas’s four-month checkup this week. He’s doing great! He’s maintaining his string-bean physique, bang-on the 50th percentile for weight, but 90th percentile for height at 14 lbs 12 oz and 27 inches long.

He’s still on the twice-daily rantidine for reflux, and still spitting up quite a bit. The ped asked me if I’ve considered starting him on rice cereal yet, as it must just help with the reflux. While I had considered it, I had pretty much decided to wait — but now I’m waffling. And now a certain influential person in my life has opined that Lucas might fuss less during the arsenic hours around dinner time if he had something to “stick to his ribs” and observed that I was on pablum at eight weeks and turned out okay. (Hi Mom!! *wink*)

Six years ago when Tristan was born, the wisdom of the time said start them on cereal at four months. By the time Simon came along two years later, “they” were advocating waiting until six months before starting on solids. I ended up starting him on apple sauce at four months anyway, because we were starting him on zantac for reflux and we sprinkled the contents of a caplet onto the applesauce.

I have also heard that the prevailing wisdom now says you start them on fruits or veggies first, then cereal. The ped said this is mainly for exclusively breast-fed babies, especially in families where allergies may be an issue, as there is formula in the rice cereal which can exacerbate milk allergies. We’re already supplementing Lucas with formula and have no known (touch wood) allergy issues, so he said to go ahead and start with the cereal when we do.

I may start him a little earlier, around five months or so, but he simply doesn’t seem to be ready to me. And, rather selfishly, starting solids is just one more extra bit of work and time in what’s turning out to be an incredibly busy time for us. That should start improving soon, now that Beloved is almost done for the summer. And watching a new baby eating from a spoon for the first time is one of mothering’s great pleasures, isn’t it?

(Ha, it occurs to me as I’m typing this that there may be psychological issues behind my reluctance to move Lucas on to the next phase. Think if I keep him off solids forever he’ll stay the cuddly, cute, bright-eyed little bundle that he is now for the rest of time? Never mind Lucas, it’s ME who isn’t ready to move on yet!)

Just curious — what did or will you do with your babies with regard to starting solids?

You should have seen the look on her face

Lesson learned: three things you should never say in the fitting room of a clothing store:

  1. Are you looking at me? Do you see me? (and, in a really, really bad Robert De Niro) Are YOU lookin’ at ME?
  2. Lookit those cheeks, you chubby thing!
  3. Peeky-peeky-peeky, I see you!!

I’m sure the woman in the next cubby has never been more relieved to see a woman emerge from a fitting room chattering at her baby.

The look of love

There are a lot of wonderful things about mothering a baby not quite four months old. It’s fascinating to watch his personality emerge, bright-eyed and curious and more than a little stubborn. (Fancy that! Who would have guessed it?) It’s equally fascinating to see him growing before my eyes, gaining folds and bursting through footie sleepers each time I blink. And the quest to make the baby laugh has turned into a competitive sport around here, with Beloved as the champion but closely followed by me and even the boys. Lucas loves to laugh, and often at the simplest of gestures.

Considering he’s not quite four months old, he has a pretty impressive arsenal of communication tools. He coos up a storm, talking happily to himself or his hands. He cries with an impressive bellow, and it melts my heart when he sees me coming to give him the attention he is demanding and immediately smiles through his tears. And I had forgotten how much I love the “stick out your tongue” game. I remember playing this with Tristan if not Simon, but Lucas seems to be the champion, and I’m still astonished that it’s a game that can be played with such a young baby. If you stick out your tongue at him, he immediately sticks his tongue back out at you. He’s become so adept at this that it’s become a bit of a salute; when he knows he has your attention, out comes the little pink tongue in a drooley greeting. It’s clear from the sparkle of delighted accomplishment in his eyes that the exchange is intentional, and understood by him as such. I don’t remember how long this phase lasts, but I hope it’s quite a while!

But my very favourite part of mothering this lovely little boy of mine who still wants to be held all of his waking hours and many of his sleeping ones as well? It’s the look, that adoring, worshipful gaze he bestows upon me when I least expect it. He studies my features with intense concentration, as if burning each freckle into his newly-firing synapses, and then a smile sweeps over his dewy face like sunshine on a summer day, and I truly fear my heart might burst. All the injustices of the world are forgiven, all the wrongs are righted, and the universe is a place of blissful joy when I am bathed by the glow of that loving gaze.

How can anyone ever recover from such love? In all my long years of being loved, and I am lucky to say I’ve been loved by the best, nobody has loved me with the shining and silent adoration of my four-month-old son.

Lucas

Doing it right

Chris over at Smartmouth Mombie tagged me for her most excellent Mother’s Day meme. She said:

I think the Moms/Mommies/Mamas in the blogosphere spend more than enough time admitting our shortcomings and not nearly enough time celebrating our strong points. So, I’m suggesting that on Mother’s Day, or the day after, or at least some time in May, you take a moment and make a list of three things that you do well as a mother and either post it in the comments here or in your own blog.

She’s so right. We really have to find more time to celebrate the things we as mothers are doing right. Confident as I am in my mad mothering skillz most days, I still found it surprisingly difficult to write this post – and not only because I am trying to write it while stuffing the soother back into Lucas’s mouth every two minutes while he fusses on the swing beside me. Three things I’m doing right, in no particular order:

  1. I’m fairly consistent with rules, routines and discipline. I set limits and impose structure, and stick by them so the boys always know where the lines are drawn and even what to expect from daily routines. I’ve recently begun to perfect my hairy eyeball, a gift from my own mother, so that I can often convey more effective threat of consequences with a single look than I could with 100 words. But I strive to be reasonable, and try to see things from their perspective before meting out discipline.
  2. The boys know they are loved, by me and Beloved and their extended family and friends. I never miss an opportunity to tell them how much I love them and how wonderful they are. Tristan and Simon both made Mother’s Day ‘stories’ in their classes with fill-in-the-blank statements like “My mommy’s name is” (Simon said, “just mommy”) and “My mommy’s favourite food is” (Tristan said “coffee”). Both of them ended with a variation on the same sentiment: I love my mommy because: she loves me.” Reading that, I felt like I was doing a good job as a mother. Come what may, I promise to always love them and always stand behind them.
  3. I let the boys play, and I play with them — sometimes. I think I strike a pretty good balance between letting them entertain themselves, inspiring entertainment (nothing like the sudden appearance of fresh bubbles to improve an otherwise boring afternoon) or joining in on the fun. I like adventures as much as they do, and love family walks, visits to the museum, the park or the pool.

Phew, that was harder than I thought. First, all modesty aside, I thought I wouldn’t be able to narrow it down to three — and then once I got going, I found it hard to find three good ones!

Now it’s your turn to share with the class. Consider yourself tagged and play along, either in the comments or back at your place. Name three parenting things that you do well.

(Edited to add, after two days with ZERO comments: Really? Nobody can think of three things they’re doing well??)

Lucas at three months

Lucas loves the bathtub the way some people love roller coasters or horror movies; his eyes reflect both delight and abject terror, and he watches me with obvious trust. “This is fine, mum, as long as whatever you do, do NOT let go!”

Three months old

Three months of age is the beginning of the fun stage of babyhood, IMHO. Lucas smiles and laughs, and is beginning to interact with the world. He’s discovered his hands, and is starting to be interested in looking at toys and other things. And today, as a three-month-old gift for me, he slept for an hour in his cradle.

Happy third month, big boy!

Random bullets of stay-at-home mothering

So I survived my first few days full week week and a half (it’s taken me a long time to finish this post!) of being at home full time with all three boys, without daycare. Barely. Even if I did have time for a full post with proper paragraphs and segues and actual, you know, thought, I don’t have the brain cells any more. Bullets is the best I can do for you.

  • My overall impression? What the hell was I thinking. Three? Why didn’t you stop me? Or warn me at least.
  • Seriously, it’s not so bad. It’s worst when the baby is fussy or needy or being fed, which is only about twelve hours of the day. The sleeping times are good.
  • What the hell is it about the arsenic hours of 4 to 7 pm? If a day is going to go sideways, it’s going to happen during the arsenic hours. And it does — often.
  • Earlier in the week, I had my first genuine fight-or-flight moment. I’ve never been closer to bolting. No joke, for a delicious minute I seriously considered just dropping everything and walking away for good. A new parenting experience to add to my resume.
  • I feel much better now.
  • As if simply getting through an ordinary week weren’t enough, this week Beloved worked late three nights, leaving me to fend for myself with three at bedtime, the neediest time of day.
  • Thank god for my mother and pizza delivery, or else we all four might have starved.
  • Now, just getting through an ordinary day at home with the boys seems like a breeze.
  • Because I love a challenge, this was also the week I decided to volunteer for “Snuggle Up and Read Day” in Tristan’s classroom. Lucas was a celebrity on par with Hannah Montana in the six-year-old girl crowd. The boys seemed nonplussed.
  • It was, in retrospect, prolly not the best week to implement my new “less videogames and computer and TV” policy. But I stuck to it, sheerly because I am so damn stubborn.
  • I remember a time when I used to use my stolen moments to read a book, or a magazine, or even (gasp!) sneak onto the Internet. Now I use my stolen moments to empty the dishwasher or (gasp!) fold the laundry.
  • After two weeks of stunning warm temperatures and sunshine, the weather this week has been nothing but cold and rain. We’ve visited the grocery store with the free drop playzone (twice), the mall with the $4 drop-in playzone and Ikea.
  • I heart Ikea madly. You simply cannot beat an hour of free childcare in the ball pit during which you can leisurely browse Swedish ingenuity with a hot coffee, followed by lunch for four for less than $4. I knew we couldn’t stay broken-up forever.
  • Next week, we’re planning on two trips to Ikea and at least one to a McDonald’s playland. And Costco. Staying at home may just be as expensive as daycare after all.
  • I really, really have to get Lucas to start napping in his crib, or in the swing, or somewhere other than in my arms. Thank goodness he’s amenable to a good snooze in the car seat.
  • I’ve also discovered that if you run the dishwasher and the exhaust fan over the stove and put the sleeping baby in his car seat in between the two, you can drown out the sound of just about anything and pretty much double nap lengths.
  • I’ve also discovered extended amounts of white noise make me twitchy.
  • Or, that might be the boys who are making me twitchy.
  • I really, really like staying at home with the boys. But I really, really miss having intervals of longer than two minutes to myself.
  • This is going to be a stellar summer!

The diaper debate

We’ve talked about circumcision and strollers, breast and bottle, slings and baby carriers. So far, though, I’ve avoided the cloth versus disposable diaper question because for me, it was never really a question. I’ve always used the disposables, and thought I always would. I’ve always suspected that even from an environmental perspective, the disposables weren’t as evil as they are made out to be. This past week, the NY Times called it a draw:

The heated debate over the environmental costs of diapers, a roughly $5 billion business, goes something like this: on one hand, the 25 billion or so disposable diapers used per year in this country are bad because they are made with petroleum-based plastics, account for more than 250,000 trees being cut down and make up some 3.5 million tons of landfill waste that won’t decompose for decades. Cotton diapers, on the other hand, now enjoying a resurgence in popularity, cost less over the long run but require vast amounts of energy from the production of cotton, the washing and the distribution. Environmental and industry groups brandishing rival stats and studies have effectively declared a draw. Even an outspoken group like the Natural Resources Defense Council declines to take a trenchant position (“six of one and a half dozen of the other,” a spokeswoman says).

I’ve always found disposables plenty convenient, and my mother swears that the cloth ones back in the day gave me wicked diaper rashes, so I was happy enough with my choice.

Last week, a friend told me about gDiapers. They have the same cloth shell and plastic liner of cloth diapers, but there is a disposable absorbent insert that you can remove and flush down the toilet. It’s fully biodegradable in 50 to 100 days, instead of 500 years for a disposable. You can even compost the pee diapers in your own garden compost.

The only part that makes me hesitate is the fact that you have to remove and tear open the disposable insert before you flush it, to help it from clogging up the toilet. And then you have to maintain the outer shell, of course. It seems like a lot of intervention, and I’m basically a lazy person addicted to convenience. I’m all about simplifying my life right now, using any shortcut I can.

They’re a little more expensive than disposables, but seem like an environmentally conscientious middle ground. Have you heard of them or tried, and if so, what do you think?

Pacifier wars

Binky. Sucky. Nuk. Soother. Dummy. Paci. Pacifier. Suss. It has a million names, because it is legion. It is evil.

I have a love-hate relationship with the soother. Back in the day, when I was ignorant and childless, I decided that I’d never give one to my child. “You take an adorable baby and stick a hunk of gaudy plastic in the middle of her face. Who would do that?” Who indeed, grasshopper.

My boys have all been suck junkies. I held off for a couple of weeks with Tristan on the advice of our ped and numerous lactation consultants, because of the sorry mess that were my nipples due to questionable latch. For those weeks, Tristan pruned our pinky fingers while we pretzelled ourselves to accomodate him. He was three before he gave up his soothers, using them to “buy” a Gordon tank engine from a very understanding and patient Toys R Us cashier one memorable day. For years after, he’d look at family photos and point out all his favourite soothers. “Look, there’s the blue one. I loved the blue one.”

With Simon, even though my nipples were more shredded than ever, he had a soother in the first couple of days. I cursed my mother for bringing one into the house, then praised her sensibility when it bought me an extra 15 minutes or so of sleep at a time. I specifically bought the fancy Avent ones not so much for orthodontic concerns but so we could easily distinguish them from Tristan’s. At the time, Tristan was still using his at bedtime and I didn’t want him stealing soothers – which he often asked for and was refused during the day – from the baby. Simon was closer to three and a half when he finally gave it up a little less than a year ago. (!!) Seems like forever ago, and just yesterday.

So this time, I capitulated to the suck demons and had bought not just two but four soothers as part of the preparations for Lucas’s arrival. And the damn things are driving me bananas. I don’t remember this with the other boys, but Lucas is two and a half months old and still can’t hold the soother in his mouth. Every time I wrestle him into sleep (this is a child who does not simply “fall” asleep, he has to be wrestled and thrust into sleep with much jiggling and shushing and wrapping tightly of arms) I have to use one arm to support and jiggle him, one arm to pat his back, and one arm to hold his soother in place until he falls asleep.

If you can do the math, you can see my problem.

If he’s particularly frothed, we play the “I want the soother GIVE ME THE SOOTHER what the hell is this thing in my mouth GET IT OUT what are you doing I WANT THE SOOTHER” game. In and out, in and out. Not particularly fun during the day, and downright crazymaking in the darkness of night.

Speaking of night… I’m loathe to admit this one. You know how sometimes a parent will admit that for the first four months they were so desperate to sleep that they would do just about anything to get the baby to sleep, like sleeping on the recliner with baby draped across them like a sash, and you nod sympathetically but are thinking to yourself, “Sheesh, just put the baby down already. He’ll sleep when he’s tired.” You can call this my comeuppance. I now fall asleep every night perched precariously on the edge of my bed, my arm stretched across the gap to the cradle at my bedside and threaded through the rails so I can hold the baby’s soother in his mouth until he falls asleep. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve woken up thinking my arm had fallen clean off, so profoundly numb it was. There have been nights that we have wrestled for more than an hour over the soother: in and out, in and out. I can’t sleep without it, I can’t sleep with it. Talk about crazymaking!

He’s got a new trick now. Little bugger has figured out which neurons to fire to turn his head (damn developmental milestones) and so he takes the soother while turned toward me, and before I can push my thumb up against it to keep it in place he flings his head to the side with such force that when he expels the soother he sends it flying over the cradle rail where it lands on the floor and takes a wonky bounce, never to be found again.

I can’t tell you how many hours of the past two months have been spent pretzelled into various positions as I try to hold that traitorous soother in place, whether with my back pressed against the driver’s side door in the car (one hand on the steering wheel and one hand snaked over the headrest and the canopy of the car seat) or crouched beside the cradle or swing, hoping hoping hoping that he’ll settle into a nap that doesn’t involve using me as a piece of furniture.

I’m always a little bit perplexed by parents who say their baby never took a soother; it’s a concept beyond my comprehension and just a little bit unnatural, kind of like elimination communication. Soothers are as essential to baby care as are diapers, at least in this house.

It seems like Lucas shares my love-hate relationship with the soother. Moreso than with the other boys, there have been times when I’ve wondered if I should just do away with the darn thing now as it often seems to irritate him more than soothe him. Likely because there is no milk coming out of it, I imagine. (I’ve really got to get a few more cuddling positions in my repertoire, because when I assume the “here comes the bottle” pose, which is coincidentally the same as the “here comes the soother” pose, and the “oh for the love of god, just go to sleep already” pose, he gets a little, um, ticked off when no milk is forthcoming.)

But other times, I can’t imagine how we’d do without it. His little eyes practically roll up in his head in blissful relief when I stick the plug in his mouth some days, and his limbs will stop flailing and relax completely the instant his lips close around it. For about two minutes. Until he spits it out. And starts rooting around for it. And then starts wailing for it. And the wails turn indignant when I try to put it back in his mouth. So I take it away again. And the wails turn hysterical with desire for it. Until I give it to him.

Repeat, ad infinitum, all… day… long.