| Wednesday, March 28, 2007 |
| Cupcake wishes |
Being a mom has added a whole new dimension to my life. Before I got married, I was a middle school teacher. I fine-tuned the skill of keeping several steps ahead of my students. I prided myself on my ability to foresee potential problems in almost every situation. Sometimes I wish I were more oblivious. Like the 8th grade teacher down the hall. She was a slim, large-chested, bottle blonde who wore see-through blouses and an infamous cashmere sweater body-hugging mini-dress to parent-teacher conferences. Oh to live the life of a cupcake.
But no. I can see trouble before it happens and, if I'm canny enough, head it off at the pass. Fast-forward to married life. "Sure, sweetheart, I think it'd be a swell idea to spend a whole shload of money refinishing the attic for a master bedroom suite. What's that? The stairs should be the pull-down-from-the-ceiling variety? Sounds just ducky." See? If I were a cupcake, I could just giggle and coo at my husband with his clever hide-the-stairs-in-the-ceiling scheme. I'd squeeze his abundant biceps and sit back in amazement as he orchestrated the turning of our house into a treefort. Instead, I come up with, "Just how do you expect me to carry a newborn up and down stairs that pull down from the ceiling?" Way too practical.
Fast-forward again to motherhood. My troubleshooting talent has turned into a hyper-driven speed addict. Now, I troubleshoot situations overwhich I have no control. Here's a "for instance". We live on an island. There are two practical ways off the island: sea and air. Frequently we take the car ferry. A few months ago, a ferry up island pulled away from the dock as the cars were still loading. Yeah. One truck plunged over the edge. The driver was able to escape and was fine. My reaction? When we pull onto the ferry now, I sit in the back with the Hippo, unbuckle and remove his arms from the child seat and place my hands under his arms, ready to shove him into the Baby Bjorn carrier I have strapped to the front of my body just in case our ferry pulls away as we are driving on.
I have also had to limit my news consumption. All the horrid happenings in the world have become way too vivid - I find myself imagining just what I would do if something happened to my child. In my mind, I've kicked the asses of random bad guys a thousand times for even breathing wrong on my baby.
We're flying across the country on Sunday. Don't even get me started. It's after midnight and I can't sleep. This has been the case for the past few nights. By Saturday I'm going to require sedatives.Labels: worrying |
posted by Mama K @ 12:09 AM  |
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| Sunday, March 25, 2007 |
| Diaper, uh, free? |
So we've been at this Diaper Free thing for about 4-5 days seriously. Hippo has peed in his BBLP and in the bathtub several times each. He only poos every few days, so I missed his one-and-only while we were out for a walk on Friday. He has also peed multiple time on me. I don't really mind, but the laundry is piling up. Poor Daddy M (laundry is his domain).
I read the book Diaper Free by Ingrid Bauer. It was less helpful than I had anticipated. I had already done some reading on the web and found that she was saying the same thing (though I recognize that the majority of the Diaper Free web pages out there are based on her book).
I guess now we just keep at it and try to figure out the Hippo's timing. He doesn't appear to have consistent signals. The times we've been successful I've just had a gut feeling he had to go (that and with boys, their "anatomy" signals when they have to pee...can't imagine how you'd know with a girl). I have a feeling it will take months for me to be able to reliably say that I know for sure when he has to pee. In the mean time, we'll try to stay as dry as possible. I did end up putting a diaper on him twice yesterday because I found that I couldn't relax to nurse him as I was afraid he'd pee on me. Who cares abotu a little baby pee, right? Well, I'd already been peed on 3 times at that point so I was getting a little gun shy, so to speak. I figured that breast feeding in peace was more important than Pee Watching (Daddy M's term for Diaper Free) at this point. I think I was also starting to stress the kid out.
He just woke up and peed in his cloth diaper before I was coherent enough to offer him the potty. We'll try again when he wakes for his 6 am feeding. At least at night I can be reasonably sure of his schedule - he rarely pees while asleep.Labels: diaper free |
| posted by Mama K @ 4:14 AM |
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| Friday, March 23, 2007 |
| Diaper Free |
Yes, we're doing it. We're trying to go diaper free. The Hippo hasn't yet developed a horrible rash from his cloth nappies, but he has some spots that flare up mildly on a pretty regular basis. I can't remember where I first heard about the Diaper Free concept (will add links later when I'm at my PC and it's easier to do - I'm on a Mac now and Blogger hates Macs. Ok, hate is a strong word. Blogger dislikes Safari, the Mac browser.), but it seemed a little insane to me at first. The basic idea is that you can learn to read your child's potty cues and take him to the appropriate receptacle before he soils himself. Most of the time. Fast forward a few weeks. The Hippo is now three months old and is getting stronger and more clever every day. I've always felt very connected to him - even in utero I somehow *knew* how he was doing/feeling. Like most moms, I can *feel* what he needs at a given moment. So, I figured, why not give this Diaper Free stuff a go?
We started a few days ago and have been quite successful. We purchased a Baby Bjorn Little Potty designed for smaller bums and we were off to the races. He first piddled sans diaper as I was nursing him on the edge of the bathtub. Sure, I got a little wet, but that's why I have about 30 jean skirts. One down, 29 to go. That night, the Hippo woke from his peaceful slumber in our family bed (translation: He sleeps with us. On purpose.) fussing and thrashing about. He wouldn't take a breast. This was strange because the boob solves almost all of his problems at this point. He fussed for another minute as my sleepy brain tried to figure out what the issue was. Then I felt my chest getting wet. I don't leak usually and it slowly dawned on me that I'd just been peed on. Hippo was actually was wearing a diaper, but must have been, ahem, malpositioned.
Obviously I took him immediately to change his sleeper and diaper, but I couldn't help feeling enormously proud (and wet) that my boy had tried to let me know he had to pee before he went! Clever fellow! He followed that performance by pishing three times today in his BBLP (the Potty) and once in a glorious arc as I held him over the bathtub. Loving Diaper Free so far (though I did put him back in a diaper for overnight). Will keep you posted.Labels: diaper free |
| posted by Mama K @ 4:48 AM |
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| Thursday, March 22, 2007 |
| Healing |
I saw my midwife yesterday to be fit for a diaphragm. Never done this before. Not. Fun. Anyway, she's a perfectly lovely woman. She asked how I was doing (hidden implication: have you gotten over having your homebirth dreams shattered yet?). My son squirmed on my lap and I muttered, "Fine" into his silky hair and tried not to tear up.
You see, I'm a crier. Always have been a probably always will be though in recent years I've gotten assertive enough that I'm no longer easily angered or intimidated.
The midwife started talking to me about VBAC and how stats show we should have at least 18 months between births. I countered that the research I had done via Pubmed turned up only a handful of studies involving VBAC before 18 months and wasn't it a bit premature to base provincial policy on a study which included 300 women? The conversation went on until she said, "Well, you can't turn back the clock and do things differently." No shit, Sherlock. She's a nice woman, but this struck me as a) insensitive and b) unsupportive.
Why did this piss me off so much? I think, in my heart-of-hearts, that I blame the midwives for my c-section. I honestly feel that if they had informed me that being induced (I was induced for Pregnancy-Induced Hypertension) would likely lead to c-section in a first-time mom, I would've told the OBs to shove their induction...somewhere. They totally hung me out to dry and passed me off to a group of GPs quicker than I could process.
After the appointment, I made a few decisions:
1) I won't use those midwives next time around
2) I'm ready to give up being angry. I'm angry at them (the midwives) and they don't give a shit. I wrote them a letter that I'm not even going to bother sending. That's how much I'm sure they don't give a shit.
3) I need to symbolically throw away my anger and need to come up with some type of healing ceremony. I know. It sounds all new-agey and west-coasty, but it's what my intuition is telling me will resolve the anger and close the door on this chapter in my life.
What will my healing ritual be? I'm going to collect small pieces of driftwood over the next week or so. On each piece, I will write in charcoal one statement of my anger. Example: "The midwives abandoned me." or "I didn't do my research." One night, I'll go down to the ocean with my husband and my son and chuck those pieces of driftwood as far into the ocean as I can. When I'm really raging mad, I fantasize about throwing things. I figure this exercise will be cathartic, at the very least. |
| posted by Mama K @ 4:24 PM |
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| Wednesday, March 21, 2007 |
| Morning Nap |
The Hippo is asleep in his swing. I was listening to NPR this morning and they were talking about the average amount of hours per week working moms spend engaging with their children as compared to the average hours/week stay-at-home moms (SAHMs)spent with their kids in the 70s. Surprisingly, the number is quite a low 11 hours/week and is the same for both groups. The interviewee went on to speculate as to why that is, but she seemed to feel that 11 hrs/week is a lot. Huh? Did I miss something? I guess you could say that about school-age kids who are gone most of the day, but toddlers and babies? The number HAS to be much higher.
When I was pregnant, I thought of the Hippo as my constant companion. That hasn't really changed. What really scares me, though, is that when I do get the rare moment out alone (like my run to the library yesterday for the Natural Infant Hygiene Book - more on that later), I'm not constantly thinking about him. Gulp. I'm his mother, after all. If I don't think of him, who will? Now, his Grandma thinks about him pretty much all the time and I'm sure Daddy M was thinking of him (he was babysitting). I don't know. Perhaps this is silly, but the point is that it bugged me that my mind drifted away from him while I was out.
I have an appointment with my midwife today. Birth control related (I'll spare you the icky details). She called this morning to say that she may not make our appt because a woman just called her in early labor. Ugh. I don't mind the rescheduling. Not in the least. The thought of someone in early labor reminded me that,hey, I never got to labor AT ALL. I have no idea what it's like. This makes me want to cry. |
| posted by Mama K @ 9:44 AM |
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| Tuesday, March 20, 2007 |
| #1 - In which I introduce myself... |
Hmm. I've been thinking for the past two weeks about blogging. Now, of course, when I sit down to the computer, I got nothing. Let's spill some drivel and we'll see if anything interesting comes up.
I'm Mama K, wife to Daddy M and mommy to the Hippo, a 3-month-old darling of a boy. In my former life (before marriage and mommyhood - I got pregnant 4 weeks after our wedding) I was a teacher. Loved it. Love being a mom full-time now.
I had an unplanned c-section with the Hippo, something I'm not thrilled about and which is bound to come up - I had planned a homebirth.
The Hippo is right now refusing to nap and I can't type intelligently and pay attention to him at the same time, so the blog loses. |
| posted by Mama K @ 3:58 PM |
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| Monday, March 19, 2007 |
| Test post |
| hello? |
| posted by Mama K @ 11:46 PM |
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