This post makes me wonder why I've been surprised in the opposite way.
This is hard for me to think clearly about, because I have to work hard to keep the "because I'm a bad mother" sirens from going off.
I am shocked, almost every day, at how immensely I love the Monkey. Things that, pre-baby, I anticipated would feel like hellish drudgery, are simply not. And I find myself reacting with nothing but empathy for things (i.e. toddler frustration turned whining / screaming) that, pre-baby, I feared I'd have no patience for.
But I'm also surprised at how heavy the life of taking care of her sometimes feels and how intensely I sometimes wish that I were not the main person on that job all day and night all the time. I didn't expect this at all.
I expected to hate going back to work. And it is always difficult to spend a day at the office, away from her (which I do two days per week). But at the same time, my hours at the office feel refreshing: a break. That surprises me.
I attribute my perspective on this to: high expectations (somehow thought I'd love every second?); parenting style (attachment-ish—still lots of night nursing); spouse's work schedule (lately, insanely demanding—we both hate it); and something else. Introversion? Intense need for down time?
And I don't know whether this feeling means something needs to change. I have the sense that working more is not the answer. I think I would hunger for more baby time. Division of labor is, as I have mentioned, a topic of discussion around here and something we're still figuring out. Maybe coming to a new understanding, if not a new arrangement, will help. As will getting, someday, more sleep (do I keep mentioning sleep?)
How do your expectations from before baby line up with how you feel now about how you spend your days? Why do you think it happened that way?
6.23.2006
6.22.2006
She Toddles!
She'd been taking a few steps at a time for weeks, but last weekend, overnight, the Monkey suddenly switched from mostly crawing to mostly walking. Before, she'd take a few steps, lose her balance, fall, and continue crawling to her destination. Now when she falls (which is suddenly more rare) she gets back up (via the downward facing dog position) and keeps walking.
Her pace is really slow and deliberate. A friend's baby, who's a few months older, started walking a couple of months ago and he looked like he was constantly dancing/falling as he walked, and he bopped along so quickly it looked like he was pretty much doomed for a skull-cracking fall every two feet or so. The Monkey, she takes one little shuffle at a time.
Fun. Also, now I have an easy answer for the grocery store people. What's the next question everyone asks, I wonder, after, "Is she walking?" Probably, "Are you trying for another one?", right?
Her pace is really slow and deliberate. A friend's baby, who's a few months older, started walking a couple of months ago and he looked like he was constantly dancing/falling as he walked, and he bopped along so quickly it looked like he was pretty much doomed for a skull-cracking fall every two feet or so. The Monkey, she takes one little shuffle at a time.
Fun. Also, now I have an easy answer for the grocery store people. What's the next question everyone asks, I wonder, after, "Is she walking?" Probably, "Are you trying for another one?", right?
6.13.2006
Worse than an Easter egg?
A couple of weeks ago, while I was carrying the Monkey in the backpack and getting a few little things done around the house, I ran across a half full little (capped) bottle of breast milk. It had been in the diaper bag (sent with her back from the babysitter's) since the night before, so I would have just thrown it out. But the Monkey is fascinated with milk in bottles and so, thinking it would buy me a few more minutes of peaceful backpack time, I handed it up to her and continued to putter around the house and the backyard.
When I took her out of the backpack, I realized she no longer had the bottle. I've looked everywhere and not found the thing.
So if you're curious about what happens to breast milk after long periods at room temperature and above, stay tuned. I'm sure we'll find it one day.
When I took her out of the backpack, I realized she no longer had the bottle. I've looked everywhere and not found the thing.
So if you're curious about what happens to breast milk after long periods at room temperature and above, stay tuned. I'm sure we'll find it one day.
Time Theft
What I've done since 1 p.m.:
What I should have done since 1 p.m.:
Ah, well. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, right? Now I will write for a while, drink iced tea, and find my dad a fathers' day gift. And, oh shit! find my husband a fathers' day gift! instead of beginning the daunting work project, dealing with the bunnies, doing situps, and mopping the kitchen floor.
- Eaten lunch at a quiet place all by myself, while reading this book.
- Wandered around Target looking for a basket to contain small items in the dishwasher. Did you know they keep them in the baby bottle section?
- Came home, sent the babysitter away, and put Monkey down for a nap.
- Finally bought some of these on line, despite qualms about plastic product near boobs (my bra is part polyester anyway, right?)
What I should have done since 1 p.m.:
- Eaten hummus and pita at my desk.
- Started new and daunting project at work.
- Come home in time to accomplish unsavory tasks (e.g. dispose of two roadkill bunnies found right next our car this morning) before Monkey woke up from nap.
Ah, well. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, right? Now I will write for a while, drink iced tea, and find my dad a fathers' day gift. And, oh shit! find my husband a fathers' day gift! instead of beginning the daunting work project, dealing with the bunnies, doing situps, and mopping the kitchen floor.
6.09.2006
More on That
If there were a scorecard, I'd lose points today, because she seems to be taking a decent nap.
Obsessing a little over our division of labor angst, I fished around some on a message board where I used to spend a lot of time, and right away found a thread where poster after poster (independent, smart women, all) was complaining about the exact same thing: I am doing all the work, or I am doing more than my share, or, My partner does a fair amount but I resent always needing to be the one in charge.
How can this be?
I'm a dropout from a graduate program in a social science department too smart for its own good, so I'm no stranger to the idea that we participate in systems we don't necessarily understand, and that free will may have far less bearing on how our lives turn out than we think it does.
But it confounds me that so many of us who thought we were getting into really egalitarian parenting situations are feeling so overburdened and sometimes so resentful of our partners.
And I am too deep in it to figure out what's real unfairness and what's my perception. Do I just feel like I'm doing too much because the night nursing is, well, too much? Do I need an unusual amount of downtime to feel sane? Where have we gone wrong?
One possibility is that a lot of this comes from the unnatural way that so many families (including us, so far, dammit) raise kids: pretty isolated. Without extended family really nearby to give us breaks. Without neighbors we know well to share our days with. If one thing has become clear from our family's recent discussions about this, it's that we need more community to take some of the stress off of both of us.
And then there is the larger sense in which ... hey, we are so well fed, so well clothed, and have such a delightful little Monkey in our midst. Who cares if all we can do is lie on the cat hair-matted floor while she uses our bodies as a jungle gym ... we are as lucky as can be.
Obsessing a little over our division of labor angst, I fished around some on a message board where I used to spend a lot of time, and right away found a thread where poster after poster (independent, smart women, all) was complaining about the exact same thing: I am doing all the work, or I am doing more than my share, or, My partner does a fair amount but I resent always needing to be the one in charge.
How can this be?
I'm a dropout from a graduate program in a social science department too smart for its own good, so I'm no stranger to the idea that we participate in systems we don't necessarily understand, and that free will may have far less bearing on how our lives turn out than we think it does.
But it confounds me that so many of us who thought we were getting into really egalitarian parenting situations are feeling so overburdened and sometimes so resentful of our partners.
And I am too deep in it to figure out what's real unfairness and what's my perception. Do I just feel like I'm doing too much because the night nursing is, well, too much? Do I need an unusual amount of downtime to feel sane? Where have we gone wrong?
One possibility is that a lot of this comes from the unnatural way that so many families (including us, so far, dammit) raise kids: pretty isolated. Without extended family really nearby to give us breaks. Without neighbors we know well to share our days with. If one thing has become clear from our family's recent discussions about this, it's that we need more community to take some of the stress off of both of us.
And then there is the larger sense in which ... hey, we are so well fed, so well clothed, and have such a delightful little Monkey in our midst. Who cares if all we can do is lie on the cat hair-matted floor while she uses our bodies as a jungle gym ... we are as lucky as can be.
6.07.2006
Division of Labor
The mister and I have been talking a lot lately about who does what around here.
We're both feeling pretty stretched: He works full time (and lately a lot more than full time); I work part time and have a number of big, stressful deadlines approaching all at once. It's clear we've each got to hold down our own jobs; it's the sorting out of baby- and home-related tasks we're hung up on.
Somehow, I feel like I'm doing, oh, 90% of it. And he feels like we're pretty close to a fair fifty-fifty.
It mystifies me. I don't consider my husband any sort of traditional, patriarchal, housework-shirking guy. Nor do I consider him particularly clueless about what constitutes a fair division of labor. So why does he pretty much feel things are ok, while I sometimes feel so overburdened?
The night parenting (which—long story—falls pretty much entirely to me) is a particularly heavy part of it, and I do think the constant inadequate sleep is keeping me from being very charitable about much of anything. I think that bit actually is quite unbalanced and unfair. But beyond that, it's hard to say what's really a "fair" scheme. How would we quantify it, if we wanted to make a score card? How does a half-day in the office plus ten hours of baby play / diapers / bath / meal planning / laundry balance against 12 hours in the office? Does the value change if the person at home is too tired to even throw together a meal and we end up ordering pizza? Are there extra points for vacuuming?
My latest answer is that of course it can't really be quantified, and that the only thing that's going to make it feel right is constant respect, from each of us, that the other one is doing the absolute very best they can.
We're both feeling pretty stretched: He works full time (and lately a lot more than full time); I work part time and have a number of big, stressful deadlines approaching all at once. It's clear we've each got to hold down our own jobs; it's the sorting out of baby- and home-related tasks we're hung up on.
Somehow, I feel like I'm doing, oh, 90% of it. And he feels like we're pretty close to a fair fifty-fifty.
It mystifies me. I don't consider my husband any sort of traditional, patriarchal, housework-shirking guy. Nor do I consider him particularly clueless about what constitutes a fair division of labor. So why does he pretty much feel things are ok, while I sometimes feel so overburdened?
The night parenting (which—long story—falls pretty much entirely to me) is a particularly heavy part of it, and I do think the constant inadequate sleep is keeping me from being very charitable about much of anything. I think that bit actually is quite unbalanced and unfair. But beyond that, it's hard to say what's really a "fair" scheme. How would we quantify it, if we wanted to make a score card? How does a half-day in the office plus ten hours of baby play / diapers / bath / meal planning / laundry balance against 12 hours in the office? Does the value change if the person at home is too tired to even throw together a meal and we end up ordering pizza? Are there extra points for vacuuming?
My latest answer is that of course it can't really be quantified, and that the only thing that's going to make it feel right is constant respect, from each of us, that the other one is doing the absolute very best they can.
6.01.2006
"If you could do anything in the world right now, what would it be?"
I wonder when my answer to that will stop being, "Sleep."
5.31.2006
Long Story Short(er), Part I: Last Summer
Sorry for all the false starts there. I had to put those out there, kind of like, when on your sixth chocolate chip cookie the only way to stop is to announce, "This is my last one," and then again after the seventh cookie, "This is really my last one" before finally breaking the inertia.
So, to make a long story short, the bleeding stopped and did not return and I gave birth last May to our fantastic and wholly healthy baby girl. Monkey Pants.
I feel like I'm tempting fate just by writing about it, because it's the luckiest, happiest possible outcome. An uneventful and even enjoyable pregnancy, a smooth labor (maybe I'll tell the story here some time), and a great baby girl. With bright blue eyes, a delicate little mouth, long legs and arms, and big round cheeks.
Most of last summer, the Monkey and I spent on the couch, nursing. The "My Brest Friend" took on the shape of my (still very round) body, as well as (warning! shameful housekeeping revelation ahead) accumulating a coating of milk in various stages of digestion. The Monkey was born big, grew fast, nursed a lot, spit up a lot, and then nursed some more. And I sat on the couch and nursed her and read A Fine Balance and As the Crow Flies and many issues of The New Yorker and, embarrassingly, every book I could find on the subject of infant sleep, and watched her sweet little face.
And, unlike (apparently) the babies of every friend, acquaintance, and television personality we know, the Monkey did not like riding in the car. Early on, she would occasionally drop off to sleep in the car seat after some yelling. But then there was a period of many, many weeks where a car ride pretty much meant "they're killilng me!" type screaming from door to door. So, for a while, there wasn't a lot of car travel. Except for stressful and quick runs to the grocery store or the post office (5 minutes away), sometimes interrupted by (God, did I really do this?) several nursing/comforting stops only a few blocks apart. And more than once ending in crying in the front seat as well as in the back.
Every day, though, I'd take the Monkey out for a walk or two around the neighborhood in the sling or (later, when she got more squirmy) the Baby Bjorn. She loved—still loves—looking at the trees and watching the world go by. We got to know the neighborhood (pretty new to us) so well that it started to feel like maybe we should move to a new house just to have some new walking territory to explore. Those were sweet times, those walks. People I met all wanted to peer into the sling and talk about their own babies, and almost without exception the baby was peaceful during those times. Sleeping or gazing up at the leaves.
On the one hand, the whole summer seems kind of like that: dreamy. A timeless time to just be with the baby, a time I feel so, so fortunate to have had. On the other hand, I was utterly sleep-deprived, perpetually smelled like rotting milk, and was desparate for adult conversation. The extremes of it were pretty amazing.
That was the fourth trimester around here: nursing, walking, and not driving a lot. Next up: the end of the honeymoon.
Meanwhile, a little note from the present. It turns out there is still a lot to learn about my neighborhood. I discovered this afternoon that not six blocks from our house there is a place where you can get gold decorations (for lack of a better word) applied to your teeth. This is not a dentist's office; it's more like a nail salon.
And now, while the Monkey keeps sleeping, I will zip out to the front yard and plant the big bucket of hostas that a friend cleared out from her garden and brought over this morning. Did you know you can split each plant into four pieces and each part will grow big again? How fortunate for them, don't you think, that they have such an easy time reproducing. I wonder if gardening will continue to be fascinating when I am no longer such a novice.
So, to make a long story short, the bleeding stopped and did not return and I gave birth last May to our fantastic and wholly healthy baby girl. Monkey Pants.
I feel like I'm tempting fate just by writing about it, because it's the luckiest, happiest possible outcome. An uneventful and even enjoyable pregnancy, a smooth labor (maybe I'll tell the story here some time), and a great baby girl. With bright blue eyes, a delicate little mouth, long legs and arms, and big round cheeks.
Most of last summer, the Monkey and I spent on the couch, nursing. The "My Brest Friend" took on the shape of my (still very round) body, as well as (warning! shameful housekeeping revelation ahead) accumulating a coating of milk in various stages of digestion. The Monkey was born big, grew fast, nursed a lot, spit up a lot, and then nursed some more. And I sat on the couch and nursed her and read A Fine Balance and As the Crow Flies and many issues of The New Yorker and, embarrassingly, every book I could find on the subject of infant sleep, and watched her sweet little face.
And, unlike (apparently) the babies of every friend, acquaintance, and television personality we know, the Monkey did not like riding in the car. Early on, she would occasionally drop off to sleep in the car seat after some yelling. But then there was a period of many, many weeks where a car ride pretty much meant "they're killilng me!" type screaming from door to door. So, for a while, there wasn't a lot of car travel. Except for stressful and quick runs to the grocery store or the post office (5 minutes away), sometimes interrupted by (God, did I really do this?) several nursing/comforting stops only a few blocks apart. And more than once ending in crying in the front seat as well as in the back.
Every day, though, I'd take the Monkey out for a walk or two around the neighborhood in the sling or (later, when she got more squirmy) the Baby Bjorn. She loved—still loves—looking at the trees and watching the world go by. We got to know the neighborhood (pretty new to us) so well that it started to feel like maybe we should move to a new house just to have some new walking territory to explore. Those were sweet times, those walks. People I met all wanted to peer into the sling and talk about their own babies, and almost without exception the baby was peaceful during those times. Sleeping or gazing up at the leaves.
On the one hand, the whole summer seems kind of like that: dreamy. A timeless time to just be with the baby, a time I feel so, so fortunate to have had. On the other hand, I was utterly sleep-deprived, perpetually smelled like rotting milk, and was desparate for adult conversation. The extremes of it were pretty amazing.
That was the fourth trimester around here: nursing, walking, and not driving a lot. Next up: the end of the honeymoon.
Meanwhile, a little note from the present. It turns out there is still a lot to learn about my neighborhood. I discovered this afternoon that not six blocks from our house there is a place where you can get gold decorations (for lack of a better word) applied to your teeth. This is not a dentist's office; it's more like a nail salon.
And now, while the Monkey keeps sleeping, I will zip out to the front yard and plant the big bucket of hostas that a friend cleared out from her garden and brought over this morning. Did you know you can split each plant into four pieces and each part will grow big again? How fortunate for them, don't you think, that they have such an easy time reproducing. I wonder if gardening will continue to be fascinating when I am no longer such a novice.
5.30.2006
Reason Enough
Two readers or two hundred or none, what I really want to do is write about this new and crazy life. So I will. Stay tuned.
5.26.2006
Clearing My Throat
I so want to write here again. But it's been AGES! And my whole life is different and is anyone even still out there? And what would this be, then...a post-infertility mom blog with junk about running and garding and poetry and such thrown in? And would I tell my real life friends (some of whom have great blogs of their own that are a big part of what's made me want to come back here) about it, and if so would I delete previous posts with overmuch mention of my private parts?
These are questions to ponder while I squander naptime chuckling over the funny toddler moments in {i}Waiting for Birdy[/i] instead of editing the thing I need to edit for work, or unloading the dishwasher, or pulling out all the rude little millkweed plants that are encroaching on my iris and rhubarb. For now, I'll think about these things. In the meantime, is anyone there?
These are questions to ponder while I squander naptime chuckling over the funny toddler moments in {i}Waiting for Birdy[/i] instead of editing the thing I need to edit for work, or unloading the dishwasher, or pulling out all the rude little millkweed plants that are encroaching on my iris and rhubarb. For now, I'll think about these things. In the meantime, is anyone there?
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