I'm back

So I can't believe a week's gone by already.  We've been busy everyday, although thinking back it's hard for me to remember what we were doing.  JC was introduced to Santa for the first time and he was so cute and well behaved.  We even managed a picture with a half smile.  He's also been napping in his crib a lot better, although I find that I still want to rock him and continue to cuddle with him while he sleeps.  Each time he falls asleep in my arms it's an inner battle over whether I should attempt the transfer.  The "no" side usually wins.  Heck, I figure he's only so small for so long; why pass up an opportunity to hold him for 45 min?

On the other side of things, though, I've found myself missing work over the past week or so.  I love hanging out with JC, but there are only so many cycles of eat, play, sleep, repeat that someone can do day after day before it starts to get tedious at times.  I feel that if I had a few days during the week where I did something else, I'd be more likely to appreciate how wonderful the JC time is.  But unfortunately with my mat leave payments I can't actually do any work without losing out on pay.  So basically I'd be working for free and somehow that doesn't sit well with me!  I'm also guessing that this minor boredom is also temporary.  JC is already starting to play with his toys more and once he can sit and play by himself in an exersaucer or something, life will get a lot easier and I'll probably be dreading going back to work!  So I'll stick it out now and focus on the present moment, not what I'm missing out on or what things will be like in the future. Right now I have a beautiful baby cuddled into the crook of my arm as he sleeps.  Truly, I can't think of much else that's better than that!

It's the most wonderful time of the year?

So it's the Christmas season again.  Bar none, this has always been my favorite time of year.  The baking, the family time, the decorating, the singing, the movies, the traditions that only your family has (e.g., at my parents place we always decorate the tree listening to the Beatles' white album).  All of it brings on a warm feeling in my heart just to think about it.  Unfortunately, for the past five years I've had conflicted feelings about Christmas because my husband is Jewish and I ended up converting to Judaism.  In so many ways Judaism fit me.  I loved the emphasis on learning and understanding scripture and traditions within the context of real life.  I also loved that I would share a religion with my husband (which wasn't the case for my parents), and that we would go to synagogue as a family.  I loved the idea of being Jewish for 11 months out of the year.  But when December would roll around, I would get a heaviness in my heart about things that used to be so uplifting for me.  Now that I was Jewish, I couldn't celebrate Christmas anymore.  Well, couldn't celebrate it in my home (we still went to my parents' place), because I had a Jewish home and Jewish homes don't have Christmas trees and manger scenes.  I tried so hard to rationalize that celebrating at my parents' house was enough, but year after year, the sadness and feelings of being left out grew.  Now my husband has been wonderful and we've made compromises throughout the years -- putting up blue and white lights outside (Israel's colours), decorating for the season with sparkly but not red/green decorations, etc., and in some ways that helped.  But in other ways it just reminded me that I'm not really allowed to celebrate the way I want to.  Probably not surprisingly, this year it's intensified to an even greater degree.  With JC's arrival, my old traditions have become so much more important to me.  And not only Christmas, but the religious traditions I was raised with as well.  With my wonderful husband's blessing, I started going to church again about a month ago, for the first time in 8 years, and I found I felt so much more at peace.  Not because I believed everything that was being said (I actually don't exactly know what I believe in), but because it was so familiar to me.  It felt like home.  So I've been going to church on a regular basis, and I've come to the realization that I still see myself as a Christian.  I love the Jewish traditions, and with time they're sure to become my traditions (some already feel that way to me), but I always felt like an outsider in terms of the cultural piece (even though every Jewish person I met acted as if I was an MOT (member of the tribe)).  In the church, I felt like I belonged and that's why I've made the difficult decision to return to being a Christian, making my marriage an interfaith one.  True to his nature, my husband has been very supportive of this transition for me, but he is understandably concerned about what it means for how we raise JC, as am I.  At this point I feel like I want JC to experience going to church, although I don't know how or if that's even possible and have him still connect with Judaism.  Because it's all up in the air at this point, and because these are very important emotional decisions, we're looking into finding some interfaith counseling.  We're certainly not the first interfaith couple, and there's no need to trail blaze without some guidance.  I’m hoping that others have figured out ways for both sides of the interfaith couple to be relatively happy.  No, it won’t be perfect, and I recognize there will need to be compromises on both sides, but we do have our mutual love and respect for each other going for us, and I think we’ll be able to sort it out.  Making the decision to return to calling myself Christian has at least alleviated the heavy feeling I had about Christmas (now it feels like I’m allowed to celebrate it again), although I still feel I want to tread carefully in terms of decorating, etc.  But this is just the first year of trying Christmas in our home, and I hope that with time it becomes the happy season for all of us that it was when I was growing up.  

Hey, I know you!

"You will get to know your baby and what he needs." I heard it many times throughout my pregnancy, but I don't think I really believed it.  How would I be able to discriminate between a hunger cry and a tired cry?  Maybe other mothers can do it but not me.  Well, turns out (again) that they were right.  I CAN indeed tell the difference between JC needing food and needing a nap, and I have to say that it's one of the best feelings when I'm bang on with my timing.

Take this morning, for example.  JC was up fully awake at 5 am.  After a few minutes of trying in vain to coax him back to sleep ("please don't make me get up before the sun does!  Don't you know I'm on mat leave?"), I gave up and started to play with him.  It was laughs and giggles for twenty minutes or so when I suddenly noticed that his laugh was just slightly flatter than it had been, his movements minisculey slower.  I never would have noticed these changes back in august, but now, 3.5 months in, I'm tuned in.  In a split second I had him into his sleep sack and nestled into the crook of my arm.  Within the minute, he was passed out and I eased him onto the mattress and the two of us took a beautiful 45 min nap together, with me feeling like mother of the year for reading him so well.  It doesn't happen like this every time, but it does happen more and more often as the weeks pass and we get to know each other better and better.  What a wonderful thing motherhood is!

Hungover

So I partied mom-style last night.  I went to a stitch-n-bitch party, where I learned to knit, drank water, and chatted with some other lovely moms.  And I was out till ... 10pm!  I mean I didn't even get home until 10:20 and after I pumped I got into bed at 10:30!  Nowadays this is the equivalent of being out at the club till the wee hours (in my former life).  Boy did JC make me pay for it though.  First he decides to wake up at 1am, and then he proceeds to wake up every two hours from there.  Totally unlike him and tough for me without having taken advantage of most of his first six hour stretch.  I'm definitely feeling it today. Still, the event was fun enough that I'll do it all again the next time ... I can take being (extra) tired for a day.  Hmm sounds like a familiar refrain from my early university days.  Of course then I wasn't partying with yarn!

By the way, I'm totally into knitting now!  I'm making a blanket and will post early pics as soon as JC gets up from his nap.  I'm hoping that my mom genes will fire strong enough that I'll actually complete the project.  Many a half-finished project was cruelly abandoned by me in my youth.  But I'm much more mature now.  Right?  Right.

To sleep, perchance to dream

So here's a question for the ages...why don't babies like to sleep?  Or if many babies do indeed enjoy slumberland, why doesn't my baby??  Now, I should say he's pretty good at night.  Tends for fall asleep pretty quickly after his last feed and stay asleep for 6-7 hours.  Then it's a feed, back to sleep for 2-3 hours and then a morning cuddle/feed/nap for 2-3 hours.  But as soon as that sun rises, he wants to be fully part of the day!  The problem with this is, he NEEDS his naps.  I know this as his mommy but as much as I try reasoning with him ("Sweetheart you're upset because you're tired.  That's why I'm asking you to nap."), it's a struggle.  As I've said, I've taken to rocking him to sleep, and he's been going down quicker and quicker (yesterday he had a record four naps!), but this morning he fought me.  Granted it was only about ten minutes before he was out, and I think he was just overtired (imagine being overtired at 8am!), but I just don't get why he fights me at all.  Sleeping is so wonderful.  Pretty much from teenagehood onwards we are searching for ways to sleep longer, and yet, infants and children, who apparently need their sleep the most, fight tooth and nail to avoid it!  Now, I guess I get it with children from about age 3 to 10, because their daytime lives are pretty darn good: all they need to really do all day is play with their toys so who would want to miss out on that?  But what is my little guy missing out on really?  Our play time is him listening to me (poorly) sing him repetitive songs and staring at me making silly faces at him.  Not things I'd find hard to pass up!  And yet each eat, play, sleep cycle, he often fights me on the third piece.  I guess it's really my own fault though...when I was a baby I never napped!  In fact, at daycare I actually had to sit in the coatroom during nap time because I would disturb the other kids.  Naps were for bozos I thought at the time.  So maybe I shouldn't be so hard on my little guy.  At least he does end up going down most of the time, and that's more than my mother could say for me (however, she did drink 7-8 cups of coffee a day while she was breastfeeding me so maybe that has something to do with it).  In any case, if anyone has any advice they can give or if they just want to commiserate, I'm all ears!

She's crafty

I don't know what it is about becoming a mom but I'm suddenly into all these "mom things.". On Wednesday I'm going to my first "stitch and bitch" party so I can learn how to knit.  And yesterday I got it into my head that I'm going to try making the curtains for JC's room!  I haven't sewn anything since I made a summer dress when I was in my teens, but I'm doing something really basic (using sew on hem tape and hopefully sewing the seams next time I'm at my parents' place and can use my mom's sewing machine).  I was inspired by a blog entry on www.younghouselove.com, and there's something about having a child that all of a sudden spurs on this confidence in my ability to be domestic!  When I was looking or fabrics yesterday, there turned out to be a small remaining remnant, and now I have it in my head that I'm going to make a matching pillow for the glider!  If you knew me, you'd know that this is totally out of character.  I was like a bull in a china shop at the fabric store and had to go back to the cutting area three or four times.  First I only bought enough fabric for the large window and forgot the small one!  Then I bought the wrong type of piping (which I'm using for the ties).  When I got home I realized that what I thought was a perfect colour match was just off enough that it looks a bit weird.  But I don't care about any of this because I am a mom now and I can do this!  I'm even thinking of asking for a sewing machine for Christmas, but I actually don't think I want to wait that long and may just pick one up myself.  What a change!

It's funny though.  I have all this newfound confidence in my ability to tackle these projects but I haven't really thought through WHEN this is actually going to happen?  It's not like JC is going to be fine with me sticking him in his swing for a few hours while I gussy up his room.  Hmm, I'll have to think on that.

But one thing's for sure.  I was truly happy as I was driving home with my new purchases (I also bought a bunch of christmas stuff as this is the first year we're putting up our own tree (more on that to come)) and my beautiful baby was sleeping in his carseat.  I could get used to this!

Growing

We had another lovely day yesterday.  Friends of ours came over in the early morning with their two beautiful daughters (ages 4 and 18 mths), and then we visited our cousins who have a darling 6 year old girl and rambunctious 4 year old boy, and I found myself getting excited picturing what JC will be like as he grows.  He's already so easy going and can now happily sit in his swing and entertain himself by watching us, whereas not too long ago he wanted to be held all the time.  I can only imagine how great it will be when he can play with toys, crawl, walk, or talk!  And to think that it really won't be all that long until he starts doing these things (God willing).  I know that I already miss how his babyness is disappearing, but at the same time, I think I love each new phase even mire than the last!  I've heard that things just keep getting better and better (well at least until the teenage years) and that certainly seems to ring true so far.  Right now I'm watching him sleep in my arms, and it hurts my heart to think that there will come a time when he's too big for me to do this. But then I think that at that time he'll be able to hug me and tell me he loves me back and that will make growing all worth it!  For now though, in going to snuggle into him and enjoy these wonderful moments with my little angel.

Breast is best

Breast is best.  It's what the standard thought is in the health community, although not uniformly adhered to, it turns out.  But it's definitely a belief that I hold and I'm so glad that I have had the privilege of being able to feed my baby this way.  I say privilege because breastfeeding can be beyond difficult for so many women, including yours truly.  I was once told at a breastfeeding support group that "breastfeeding is natural but it rarely comes naturally.". I think the fact that there are so many breastfeeding "support" groups speaks to how challenging it can be.  Although JC latched well right from the start, I seemed to have a problem with low milk supply bc he wasn't gaining weight as quickly as the docs wanted.  Now I say "seemed" bc looking back, I think his birth weight was probably inflated by the iv liquid I was given during delivery, my milk was a little slow to come in bc of the traumatic birth, and I had a sleepier baby bc of the epidural.  Unfortunately, I had a healthcare team (doc, public health nurse) that got very concerned about his weight gain and really pushed formula.  I resisted for over a week but it was incredibly stressful (as at the time I was also dealing with a whackload of hormones) and this probably slowed my milk production moreso until I finally gave in and, at the advice of the third lactation consultant that I saw, I supplemented with formula using a lactation aid (a little tube that delivers the formula while the baby is nursing). I cried so hard the first few times and felt that my body was letting both me and my beautiful baby down.  I was so jealous of these mothers who have an abundance of milk, and I still am.  Fortunately, I got in contact with a private lactation consultant soon after I started supplementing (my fourth!), and she was so easy going that I started to relax and things slowly began to improve.  It was incredibly hard at times (still is), and I often thought about quitting, but there's something so wonderful about feeding my baby with my body that i kept pushing through and its been weeks since I've used formula.

So interesting though that the more I tried to control the situation, the worse it got, whereas when I accepted what was happening but did not let my thoughts spin out into negativity, things began to improve.  As a psychologist, I see this all the time with my clients and in other aspects of my life (e.g., sleep training issues), and this situation just reinforced the idea all the more.  Now at 3.5 mths in, I'm much more relaxed about my milk production and it seems to be more abundant as a result (incidentally, I also started praying for more milk and that has helped too).  Our minds are so tied to our bodies that the way we think can actually affect us physically, both in positive and negative ways.  Mieka Forte at miekaforte.blogspot.com recently wrote about the fact that we can only hold one thought in our minds at a time so we might as well make it a positive thought, and I'm in full agreement.  Now this isn't often easy to do by any means and sometimes we will dwell on the negative.  But for me, the more I think positively, the more milk I produce, and the more I get to watch my beautiful son grow and know that my body is responsible for it.  I truly feel proud of myself for persevering and proud of my body for coming through for me...once I let it do it's thing and stopped trying to control things so much.  It's a lesson I keep on learning, as I have a tendency to want to fix things.  But I know that counterintuitively, I can only "fix" things by accepting what is happening and acting in ways that move me towards my values and goals, while trusting that doing so will get me where i want to be.  So many of the psychological problems we struggle with (e.g., anxiety, depression, substance use, eating disorders) stem from our attempts to control our negative feelings, and the behaviors that result from these efforts become the symptoms and further intensify our negative feelings.  Instead, when we accept our feelings but act in ways that move us towards our goals, things improve.  Instead of worrying about my milk supply, I accepted the feelings that come with the challenge, but I acted like a person who wasn't worried about milk supply (feeding my baby whenever he looked hungry even though I didn't think I had anything to give him), and over time I realized that I had more milk than I realized.

I hope that this post will be helpful to those of you who may be struggling with breastfeeding.  I really encourage you to stick with it as much as possible and trust in your body because things do get better!  I wouldn't have believed that 13 weeks ago but it's true.  Good luck!

A labour of love

So JC is almost 3.5 mths old.  Probably a good time to write down his birth story before my labour amnesia gets too bad.  My liitle guy was due on July 28, but that day came and went without any movement.  So did the next 3 days after that, during which time I tried every old wives' tale I heard to induce labour.  For those who believe in these things, the night before I went into labour I had spicy Indian food, drank raspberry leaf tea, and had sex with my husband.  Then, at around 7am on aug 1, I started to feel cramps and I just knew this was it.   Once I started timing them though, they were coming every 4 minutes, and lasting for at least a minute, which was the criteria my doc had said I should go to the hospital with.  After a couple hours of this, I started to worry that maybe I'd be one of these women who progressed really quickly and don't always make it to the hospital.  I was not in the mood to be one of those stories so we decided to get checked out at the hospital.  Turns out when we got there that I was 100% effaced but only a fingertip dilated.  So my husband and I walked to Starbucks and came back to the hospital 2 hours later.  By that point I was 2 cm, so we decided to go home to labour there.  My doula came over, and I have to say that the contractions were painful but nothing unbearable.  I just used yoga breathing through each one and before I knew it we were off to the hospital at 5 pm.  I was 5 cm at that point and in two short hours I was at 9.5-10 and was ready to push.  Honestly that time flew by and I was thinking to myself, "hey, I'm through transition, and now I just have to push this baby out!".  I thought it would be done in 30 min!  Well, 3 hours of unmedicated pushing later, the baby was still stuck inside me!  His head was too big for me to push out. At this point the doc suggests that they use a vacuum to help get him out, but to do so, I'll need an epidural.  So I finally say yes but can't believe after laboring for 15 hours with no drugs that I would need them for the homestretch...or what I thought was the homestretch.  Turns out the epidural didn't take for over an hour but I was still having pitocin strengthened contractions that I now had to breathe through!  Finally after an hour I tried pushing again and after two more hours the doc came in, gave me a huge episiotomy and yanked for 30 min, and my beautiful son was finally placed on my chest.  If you're keeping track, I started PUSHING at 7pm and delivered him almost SEVEN hours later!  I have never felt that exhausted but I also have never been that happy!  He fortunately took to breastfeeding right away and my bond with him was strong right from the start.  It certainly wasn't the delivery I had pictured, but the baby I ended up with is so much better than I ever could have imagined that it was all worth it!

On trusting my gut and my baby

So here I am again typing a post on my iPhone with one hand while my beautiful baby sleeps on me.  We've graduated from the sling to an ergo cocoon (which is what he is swaddled in at night), and I'm upstairs in his room rocking him in the glider.  Over the past week we actually had some success with JC napping in his crib, but it's just so much work to get him to sleep there that I've gone back to letting him sleep on me.  I figure, we're in his room, close to the crib, and he's falling asleep pretty quickly so 
maybe these will all become sleep cues that will help with naps later.  Oh and I've made a resolution to stop reading baby to-do books (e.g., the no-cry nap solution), because they only end up stressing me out!  My baby needs to nap but he onlydoes so for 45 min at a time.  These books, however, would have me believe that any nap under a 90 min is useless.  What?  Since I can't force my baby to sleep, short of drugging him, I've decided to just stop paying attention to generic advice about the average baby and instead raise my baby according to my gut and what I know about my unique son.  He's a happy-go-lucky kid in between naps so things must be going okay!  Has anyone else experienced this (or a sleeping pattern that deviates from the norm)?  How's has it worked out for you?  It's funny because he was sleeping great at night last week, then I got it in my head to read some books on sleep and his sleep actually got worse as I started tracking it.  I finally gave up the monitoring two days ago and he's slept great since?  Go figure!

A wonderful day

So having a baby can be really hard.  There are days when I'm just exhausted, and I can't seem to get him down for a nap.  Or many many car trips where JC is just having none of the car and is freaking out in the backseat and I'm helplessly stuck driving, not being able to comfort him (and this always occurs when I'm stuck in traffic and there's no way to get home quickly).

But then there are days like today.  It was just a great day from the start.  JC slept from 7:30pm to 5am straight, and then I took him into bed with me for a feed/nap/cuddle until 8am.  Then we just hung out feeding and cuddling, and he actually allowed himself to fall asleep for a morning nap in his playpen, giving me the chance to plan out a few meals that I could make and freeze, and create a grocery list.  We then did the grocery shopping and ran another errand, and JC was happy the whole time: in the car, riding around in the grocery cart, in other stores.  He was a total dreamboat!  Plus, I recently put up a mirror so that I could see him, and this allowed us to trade smiles the whole trip.  When we got back, JC was in a great mood for the rest of the afternoon and I was able to make three of the meals in between feeds (my husband was home and could hold him while I cooked).  To top it all off, we got JC to sleep at 6:30 (an hour early), and I have my fingers crossed that he'll sleep till 5am again (should do, according to the Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child book I've been reading).  It was just such a positive day, and, although I know there will be tougher days in the future, I just wanted to mark down today in writing so that I can remember that these days do happen and they're such a delight when they do.  I wish you all happy days with your babies too!