reconnecting with me, myself and I

I stopped pumping last week. If you've ever had the pleasure, or the displeasure as the case may be, to attach yourself on the regular to the machine that squeezes the milk out of your breasts like cattle, then you know it often feels like a degrading ball and chain. It's a love/hate thing, because it's also the reason I was able to work full-time and still breastfeed Angus.

And for me, this time around, I actually enjoyed my regular breaks throughout the work day, when I could disconnect from the chaos around me and reconnect, symbolically, to my little baby boy. I tried not to work during those breaks, because really, it was the only time awake that I had totally to myself (at work and at home), to collect my thoughts and just breathe.

But towards the end of the year, when I was still at my old job, I let that rule slip and started using the time to catch up on work email. I regret that now. I let my stress take over the mindfulness that had always been so important to me.

Giving up the pump has been harder for me emotionally this time. Because it means my baby boy is becoming self-sufficient and doesn't need me as much anymore. And also because he might be the last baby. We're still not sure.

On the upside, giving up the pump means regaining a little piece of myself—for myself, and for my Love. The less Angus needs of me, the more freedom we have to go on dates, to hang out, to reconnect. I'm totally fine with that. And I'm sure my Love is too.

And of course, Angus is doing the best out of all of us.

date night

2 months

Angus turned 2 months a couple of weeks ago. He's practically 2 1/2 months now. At his doctors appointment I couldn't resist snapping a photo, just as we had done 2 years ago with Amelia. Later, I looked at the two side by side. Genes are unreal. They look so alike, and yet so different. How does that work out that way? I already know they'll BE very different from each other too, personalities reflecting each one of their parents. Amelia--stubborn, dramatic, funny, strong-willed, smart, visual. She's her mama's daughter. Angus--mellow, easy going, tactile, sensitive. He's his papa all the way. After just 2 months of life, I know this about him. I feel I'm just getting to know him, and yet know so much already. And I'm completely in love.

a dose of reality

It wasn't until our daughter went to the ER for the first time for an allergic reaction that I really felt what it was like to be completely helpless as a parent. The fear was paralyzing; I couldn't think straight. I remember racing to the car with my baby in arms completely naked. She didn't even have a diaper on. It never even occurred to me to use the Epipen. The one tool I have to keep my baby safe and I'm afraid of it. How awful is that?

If you don't have food allergies, it's easy to assume they're not a big deal or that sufferers are just being difficult or "special." 

I can say my daughter was not being difficult when, not even a year old, she broke out in hives after eating scrambled eggs. She was not trying to be special when her lips swelled up after mistakenly eating nuts in a sauce at a restaurant or when she ate an energy bar packed with not one but three offenders: almonds, cashews and flax (we didn't know about her allergies at the time).

I've always been casual about health and people's "issues" with diets and food. I tend to not take them seriously, and so even though we carry Epipens and have been through more bottles of Benedryl than I care to admit, I'm still grappling with what it means to have a child with a disability around food. Not only a disability, but one that is potentially deadly. 

Ever since her food allergy diagnosis and we picked up her first Epipens at the pharmacy, there's been this lump of fear in the back of my throat that Amelia will go into anaphylaxis and I will be paralyzed and not know what to do. 

I don't do well with the unknown, the unpredictable or with things I don't understand. Like, why was she able to eat almond butter so many times before and not react? Why did she not react the time my mother mistakenly fed her flax that was lurking in a butter spread? Why did she break out in hives inexplicably after eating strawberries and carrots at school? She is not allergic to those foods.

I've been thinking about Amelia's allergies more this week, because we had our annual visit to the allergist recently and she had to be retested for her known allergies as well as new ones.

They pricked her back over and over and half of the pricks turned into hives. Amelia was screaming and trying to scratch her itchy back. The cashew one was the biggest. Eggs didn't make a hive at all.

So the good news is Amelia can have eggs now. She's grown out of that allergy. But we discovered she has environmental allergies as well: cats, pollen. We were advised to get rid of our cats and then scrub down the bedroom. Get rid of our cats? They are part of our family. But keeping them could increase her risk of developing asthma.

As a parent, we make decisions every day that are subject to second-guessing. Breast feed or not, work or stay at home, organic or not. But these are not life and death decisions. When it comes to your child's health, are you a criminal for being lax? Keep the cats and risk asthma. Go to a restaurant and risk cross contamination. Give her a piece of chocolate that "may contain traces of nuts"?

I want to care for my child, but I also don't want her to live life feeling as though she can't enjoy it. But is the risk worth it? I don't know enough yet to feel as though I have the right answer. I'm still new at this thing called parenting.

What would you do?

Allergy prick test.

In the ER with puffy lips after eating hazelnuts.

He smiles

I breath a sigh of relief. It's 11:32 on a Friday night. Col is out with some friends and I'm in bed with little A. Milly is asleep in her own bed. For once. All of the lights in the house are off. 

Up until this week, we've been leaving a light on in our bedroom, knowing there'd be numerous nighttime wakings and diaper changes. Knowing that I'd want to SEE--not just hear--the little guy breathing next to me.

So much changes in a month--and even from day to day. I'm feeling more confident. The baby is more confident. He knows more. We sleep with the lights out now. If little guy so much as stirs I simply roll over, shove a tit in his mouth and fall back asleep. 

He's started smiling at me too. And at his big sissy. I think they will be great friends. That is my hope at least.

Before Angus was born many people warned me that having two kids was harder than one kid x2. I never really understood what that meant. I still don't, and I'm not seeing this unfold. At least not yet. Am I being naive? Are we still in a honeymoon phase? If so, I want to cherish this, because it's pretty frickin' great.

little language

Amelia's first real words were banana and butterfly. When she was less than a year old, she would say "na-NA-na-na" and "BUTT-eee" with great enthusiasm. And we as parents delighted in the fact that we could understand what she was saying. That we could now start communicating together.

Now just a little more than a year later, it's incredible to me how much of a communicator our little one is.

The other day, when we were looking at the magnets on the refrigerator, she asked, "where did the hippopotamus go?" First of all, hippopotamus?? Yes, she knows what one is and she can say it, all five syllables and all. But secondly, out of 20 animal magnets, she knew that one was missing. And that it was the hippo. These days, I can't claim to have such great observational skills.

Amelia has also come to understand adverbs and uses them freely and correctly. "I want to hold Angus," she says and then adds after a little pause as though to illustrate her new skill, "AFTER he's done eating."

So yes, we are communicating very well with this little toddler, who not too long ago was a little meatloaf in my arms. But there are still quirky little things she says that just make me chuckle and I know I will regret it if I don't write some of them down. Here:

- She has a funny accent (we don't know where it came from). For some words, such as tent, it's decidedly southern "TAY-ent" and other times it sounds like she's straight from the Northeast Kingdom (she's not, though she has ties there). Her mother does not say, for example, "I CAY-n't!!" or "Right THEY-ehr!" But she does.

- She says "tock" for "top" whenever she sings "rock-a-bye baby on the tree-tock"

- The other day when she was going to the loo, she told me, "I need to hold my penis down. Like Bart." Bart is a friend at school. Imagine my reaction and the conversation that ensued. With lots of "whys" from the little one. 

- She says "why." A lot. And she likes to draw it out when she says it. "Whaa-AH-yee?" Classic.

- My favorite: she always adds "right there" when we asks what something is. And she says it with her NEK accent: "What's that right THEY-ehr?"

another day

Listen, it feels good to be saying this, but I read my last post and have to chuckle. A friend of mine made a remark recently that these times of transition are short-lived. And you know what? She was right. At least when it comes to toddlers.

After my daughter rejected me and made me feel like a failure as a parent, I made of point of spending some alone time with her and just reassuring her. I've been trying to give her hugs whenever she's having a tantrum or meltdown or whenever she seems to need it.

The hugs are as much for her as they are for me.

And then all of the sudden, a few days ago, she whimpered, "I don't want Papa, I want Mummy! Mummy and Angus!" I didn't even try to hide my excitement at that remark. To realize that she hadn't rejected me forever, that she still needs her Mummy. And it only took a few hugs and a couple of days to get here.

These days we are all wearing our emotions on our sleeves. Loud and clear. She is a toddler, I am hormonal, and Papa, well, he's just tired. It's a roller coaster of emotions all around. The upside of this of course is that with every low point, there is a high point.

And silly little distractions can help us forget why we were upset in the first place. 

I'm not trying to belittle the huge transition we're all working through or saying we're over the hump or that Amelia has completely accepted her new lot in life. That will take time. But it's just good to rememeber during those dire moments that dire is not forever and in many cases is very short-lived.

family of 4

Well, we did it. After almost 42 weeks, the little baby arrived and he is a boy and we named him Angus. We are now a family of four, which feels much more of a unit than three. It feels good in that way. It also feels strange. This will be an adjustment.

One thing people kept asking me leading up to the birth was, "Is Amelia excited to be a big sister?" I always felt it was an odd question to ask and a difficult one to answer. How does a 2-year-old feel excited about something she doesn't understand? Excited, no. Curious? Perhaps. But I knew it would be difficult for her. No, it would not be exciting in the beginning. It would be difficult. My heart was aching for her even before Angus came. I cried about it sometimes, even knowing that eventually they would become best friends.

Turns out, my anxiety was justified, in part. When Angus was a day old, Amelia came to visit us in the hospital. Her first reaction to seeing me holding the baby was to burst into tears and cry, "Uppie, Mummy!" (which means she wanted me to pick her up). My heart broke. Luckily, I had support. I handed baby off to Papa and swooped her up in my lap and gave her a toy giraffe "from Angus." This appeased her and the visit ended on a high note. But I was nervous about coming home and what the adjustment would look like.

On the one hand, to my surprise, she adjusted pretty quickly to having a new baby brother. She actually has become "excited" and fascinated with his poopy diapers, his crying, his nursing. Everything. 

Sadly, what she's not excited about anymore is her Mummy. She wants her Papa for everything--to bring her to the loo, to put her to bed, to put on her socks.

"I don't want Mummy in the room," she whimpered to Papa the other night before bedtime. My heart broke, again. But I left the room quietly, wanting to give her space, not quite sure how to deal with this new parenting challenge. 

I wasn't prepared for this. And it's breaking my heart over and over again. At daycare, her teachers say she has become very attached to her two female teachers and is upset whenever they cuddle with any of the other children.

They wonder if she is searching for a mother-figure. My heart breaks, yet again.

"But I'm here!" I want to tell her. I want to hug her and kiss her and tell her everything will be ok. And I do this, but somehow I feel she doesn't quite understand her own feelings yet. And then the baby cries and I must leave her to go and attach him to my breast for a half hour.

This is very complicated stuff for anyone to deal with, let alone a 2-year-old.

Now the difficult question people keeping asking me is, "How is Amelia doing with Angus?" The easy response is, "She's doing great, she loves him." But the stuff the trails after in my thoughts is harder to put into words. 

And I know it's a phase. I hope it is. That's what I keep telling myself. But in the meantime, I miss my little girl. And she misses me.

holding my breath

I'm staying home from work today. To rest. It wasn't the original plan. But suddenly I reached my due date and passed it. And all of the energy I'd been rounding up day after day—to get myself out of bed, get the girl fed and dressed and off to school, get to work on time and work a full day before coming home to make dinner, pass out on the couch and wake up to do the same the next day—suddenly, I couldn't quite scrounge up that energy anymore. It has completely dissipated.

And here I am lying on the couch, listless and lazy. It's a foreign feeling that I haven't known in some time. I know I should make the most of it and just BE, but at moments, there it is: the guilt. Of not being fully productive. Of not working. Of sending my girl to daycare, when I SHOULD be spending some of our last precious days, hours, as a family of three TOGETHER.

Agh.

The breathlessness comes and goes. The crampiness. The contractions day after day. Still no baby. I'm feeling impatient to get on with this next phase of life.

Where did this impatience come from? The routine of non-stop-ness? Is this the American family way? Or am I just turning into my father?

Instead of holding my breath, why can't I just breathe deeply and enjoy it?

The blissful moments when we are able to slow down are so seldom, they are SPECIAL. Last night, for example, I was tired after dinner, so I went to lay down on the couch. Mealy came to join me with a stack of books while Col cleaned the kitchen. We read together for what felt like hours (though it was probably 5 minutes) and it was lovely.

All of a sudden, she started looking around with concern and said, "I peed on Mummy."

"What?" I asked in confusion and jumped up from the sofa to discover a giant wet spot beneath us.

"Run to the loo," I exclaimed! "Run before you pee anymore!"

She ran to the loo and I ran to get some cleaner and was scrubbing up the pee before you could say, "itsy bitsy spider."

And just like that we were back to normal.

I don't read parenting books

I work with some amazing people. Many of them are full-time working parents. On any given day, you can walk into the staff kitchen during lunch and witness some of the most interesting conversations about parenting: discipline, spousal relationships, work life balance, potty training, healthy cooking, sickness. You name it. There's usually banter, since not only are my colleagues smart and multifaceted, but they're also passionate and opinionated.

Today the lively conversation was about a parenting book called duct tape something or other. I missed the beginning of the conversation and I missed much of the middle and end, to be honest, because I found myself sucked in to obversing the conversation unfold. One was trying to give advice, based on what she'd read and had success with. Another had read 2 pages and was already skeptical, based on her own parenting experiences. Here I chimed in briefly, "you guys read parenting books?!"

People read parenting books?! One time last year in a moment of sleep-deprived desperation, I succumbed to a book on sleep. I didn't get very far, before I felt completely bewildered. None of the suggestions felt right. They felt too hard, too unnatural. And my baby rejected them too. As a new parent, it took all the courage within me to set aside self-doubt (and that dang book) and rely on my gut. And my baby. 

Sure there are nougats of truth in those books, but if you're a parent searching for answers or hard and fast rules, it's hard not to take the words of the "experts" for gospel and live by them without exception. And the problem there is that as a parent, with living breathing children, you will never fully live up to that gospel. You will ultimately make a mistake or veer from the path and feel like a failure.

I'd much prefer to observe my colleagues at the lunch table and pick and choose the parts that sound good. I'd much prefer to get advice from a friend who is in the same thick of it that I am. I'd much prefer to see how my sister handles a situation, and then choose my own variation. I'd much prefer to watch my own child's cues and let her help direct our path. To get and weigh and assess feedback from teachers. And see how my husband handles working through the trials. 

And make mistakes, but feel ok about it.

The best kind of parenting

I slept in this morning 2 hours past normal waking time (till 8 a.m., people!). Col took Amelia for the first shift. (It's becoming a lovely Sunday morning routine.) I woke up refreshed and feeling mentally clean. Well, as clean as a groggy mind can feel at 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning. This statement of freshness did not prevent me from uttering a parenting criticism with the first morning breath.

"You fed her peas for breakfast?!"

"I fed her whatever that green stuff was in the fridge."

"It was peas. Why didn't you feed her fruit or oatmeal or something more breakfast-y?"

"It was the only thing in there." (Note to self: if I really do want to control everything that passes through baby's lips, must. leave. in. plain. sight. in. fridge.)

"Well, did she eat it?"

"Yup, all of it," he said proudly.

"Well, I guess it's ok to give her something savory for breakfast. We eat savory breakfasts sometimes right?" In retrospect I don't know why I cared so much. It's so silly. Why am I such a control freak when it comes to parenting? Is it because I'm the mom? Are all moms like that? Or just first-time moms? Or is it just me? 

Thankfully, I have a husband with pretty thick skin and a sense of humor. He didn't seem to mind my snarkiness.

Which leads me to my next awesome announcement of the morning: after that exchange, I put A down for a nap and went running (in my 5-yr-old running shoes that have been worn a total of maybe 15 times). It felt good. I felt strong. 

I used my run (as I always used to do) for the quiet introspection I've been looking for. It worked. It works every time. I thought about my goals and about my life and about my loves (Col and Meals) and family. I let lots of things go. That felt really good. I focused on breathing. I killed those hills. All of them. I added on an extra loop. I felt that good.

Towards the end of my run, I passed a little scene that humbled me a bit. It was a couple of young women (in their early 20s I'd say) getting in a car with a young child. One of the women looked like she had had way too much fun last night. Her voice was all raspy from too much smoking and partying. 

She yelled out to the boy, laughing, "Hey Ry, do you need some Dunkin' Donuts right now? Cause I definitely need some Dunkin' Donuts right now." He laughed back. I bet he was soooo excited to go to Dunkin' Donuts. And in that moment, I realized that this boy was happy. Even though he was being taken care of by women (mom? sisters? sitters?) who were probably not leading the best life examples, he seemed loved (from the 15 second exchange I witnessed) and he was laughing. Isn't that all that matters?

I thought to myself, "love and laughter—those are the two most important parenting skills." The love part I've got down. The laughter, which Colin always has in spades, I need to work on. Constantly. If only I didn't get so caught up with peas and oatmeal.

As the two women peeled away towards Dunkin' Donuts with the boy in the back-seat, they each flung their arms out the open windows in contentment, lit cigarettes in hand. That bummed me out and snapped me out of my rose-colored view on life.

Ok, so maybe the "love and laughter" thing is a little too simplistic. But minus the cigs and feeding second-hand smoke to a tyke, it was a sweet interaction that taught me a lesson.

And now I need to go apologize to my hubby and tell him I love him. He got Meals to eat her peas at 6 in the morning. How great is that?