Motherhood is Teaching Me

Not only am I blessed to have my beautiful, docile little boy, but he has also taught me so much:

• I have learned patience! Lack of patience has been one of my biggest faults for a long, long time. I thought he'd cry and I'd lose it, but I've never even been agitated by his cry; only responsive and calm.
• I have strength and determination! 
• Tomorrow is always a new day.
• Flexibility!
• How to be okay with a loss of control -- I don't need to control everything
• How to depend on others and create a social support system. How to be more independent and knowing when to accept support and how that doesn't make me dependent.

Sleep Training

Derek has been consistently waking at 3 or 4 AM and not napping during the daytime (or snatching cat-naps only). After suffering through weeks of this, I decided it was time to start a schedule and do some sleep training (with some encouragement from Jon). We decided to move him from co-sleeper to crib in his own nursery.

Day One.

Started with a few naps in his crib. I used the white noise machine and the sheet from the co-sleeper that is flannel. 

For the night: I put him in his crib at 8 PM. He only kind of talked/fussed going down. I noticed he was quiet if I sang lullabies. I sang him to sleepiness and then left the room. He was asleep when I left at 8:30 PM.

He woke at 12:30 AM but I did not go in because he wasn't crying, just talking to himself a little, quietly. He must have gone back t

o sleep because he didn't start getting loud until 2:30 AM. I fed him. Then he went back to sleep until 5 AM! I fed him. I put him back and he talked to himself a little bit until 6 AM when he started really fussing and we got up for the day.

He never cried during any part of this process.

I can do 6 AM.

I cannot do 3 AM.
 

Day Two.

 

We had a busy day so the napping schedule was borked. I had been trying to do a morning two-hour nap and an evening two-hour nap. 

 

Night 2 did not go as well. Derek woke up after four hours and started to cry. I fed him and he went to sleep but woke a couple more times - the last time at 4 AM when I brought him into bed and must have dozed off and nursed for an hour. Tried to put him back in the crib but he was having none of it. So we had to get up for the day. One step forward, one step back.

 

Day Three.

 

Three strong naps during the day. Solids for breakfast (pears and rice cereal) and dinner (peas). Some fussing and crying before naps, but I soothed him by humming while organizing his closet or laying near him for a nap myself (yay me, multi-tasking)!

 

Went to bed around 7:30 PM. Woke around midnight but only fussed a little and I didn't go in. Woke again at 2:30 AM and I went in to feed him. Went back down like a champ. Woke again around 5:00 AM and I fed him. Went back down again and slept until 8:00 AM (okay, 7 AM with the daylight savings today but it still counts)! He did amazing! I had to wake him up for fear his diaper might explode!

  

Day Four.

 

Bananas for solids breakfast this morning. Napping now at 10 AM (9 AM with time change). Hoping this is the start of something good for all of us! 

 

Woman, Wife, and Mother: The Ingredients

I think about the way my life has changed so drastically in the five months since I've had my son. It's forever altered my identity in a way no other experience possibly could. I am Mother now... and still trying to find the pieces of Woman and Wife in the aftermath. It's a new job that is at once amazing and terrifying. It is also a journey -- the quest for Mother's Wisdom is a long one and the path can change in a matter of days.

What seems like it might last forever changes in a matter of weeks, sometimes a matter of days. When you feel like you cannot possibly go on, somehow you manage. Even if you have to count the hours, the minutes... you manage to survive. And at some point in time... I can see it lurking over the horizon... this will become the new "normal." I will find Woman and Wife and they will blend with Mother, and I will be the better for it.

The enormity of this baby did not hit me when I decided that I was ready. It did not hit me while I was pregnant. It did not even hit me in the hospital when he was born. It hit me in a quiet moment, looking into his brand-new eyes at home, the two of us alone... and then real fear was born. Suddenly, I had something to lose that was greater than myself... far greater. A piece of perfect clay, ready for my touch to shape it. I have to make it perfect, keep it perfect, pristine, I thought to myself.

This is not possible. This piece of clay will end up a masterpiece, but it will have chips and dents and scrapes. And I won't be able to stop all of those. Nor should I. It will hurt him more if I do. The core of the piece will collapse and the entire thing will fall.

It's so easy to see this in black and white, so difficult to absorb it into my heart. If somehow, someone made a road map... and if I followed the map... then I stood a reasonable chance of reducing the amount of dents and chips. So I read. And read. And followed every rule. And I felt guilty for any rule that my child did not fit. My fault... somehow... always.

And my darling son is an easy baby. A soft, calm temperament, a quiet cry rarely used. Predictable most of the time. Happy. Healthy.

The truth is that there really is no map. There is the way an individual family did it. There is the way another individual family did it. But there is no One Way. I need to internalize this.

So this is my goal: reduce the anxiety through cognitive behavioral therapy and exposures. This will help both Baby D and I in the long run. And I need to remember that it may get worse before it gets better!