Clearing one thing up: the afterward of the afterward

Gentle Reader, it seems that one or two of the commenters in Facebook may have made a slight mis-interpretation of part of my original post about Value. If 1 or 2 people in the comments made this mistake, another 5 or 10 who didn't comment probably also drew similar conclusions.

In my original post I wrote about how motherhood changed my view on my career, and how I want Ruth to know she is valued for who she is--and for her to value me. From this, it seems that a few people may have assumed that part of my 'Value Equation' included: What is the value of motherhood? This wasn't my intention.

I enjoy being a mother far more than I imagined I would have, and this is part of the reason why I'm reluctant to return to a full time career. I want to be present in some of the most formative years of my daughter's life, and so I have her at home with me on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I also want to be available to Ruth if she gets sick at daycare or school and needs to come home early, or be an occasional chaperone on field trips, etc. for sometime yet to come.

However, my not being sure if I want to return to a professional librarian career (full or part time) is related to my uncertainty of what I want to do with my life and not to having a daughter. I think it's fair to say I was never completely happy working as a research librarian. It was okay. I liked the people I worked with, and I didn't feel like my soul was being sucked by some horrid corporate mind-set, but I didn't exactly live and breath for research methods either.

What I meant by bringing up Ruth in my original post was that as she gets older, and she looks at Andrew and sees him as a University Lecturer with a PhD, and looks me and sees an Aerial Instructor (with a MLIS), I hope she doesn't see my choice of career as less valid. They are very different career choices, one fairly traditional and brings in the bulk of our family income, the other not so much--on either count.

Although, as a couple of people pointed out on Facebook, if there's ever a Parent-Career Day Visit Type-Thing at school, kids will probably be way more excited when I explain what I do, compared to most parents.

Does this make sense? Has this cleared up the difference between Value of Career, and Value of Motherhood?

Until next time.

Ciao,

Andrea

Six months have come and gone, how is that possible?

I haven't written a post in a while.

Ruth's six months, and well, I haven't had the time. Or, perhaps I haven't had the mental capacity to focus long enough to complete a well thought out, sensible post. Also, I've been desperately trying to use what down time I have to write and edit a new manuscript, while trying to prepare another one (the first of the series) for submission.

I thought I'd mark the beginning of the second half of Ruth's first year (convoluted, I know), by reflecting on a few of my experiences thus far of motherhood.

Feeding and Weight Gain: I'm so glad I stuck with breastfeeding. The first 8 weeks or so were hard, over the next 8 weeks Ruth continued to improve. Her eating time dropping little-by-little. Andrew and I continued to check her weight weekly on our kitchen scale until she outgrew its capacity (around 3 months). Now, my little girl is a speed eater, completing a feed in about 10 minutes (both sides), and has gained her way up into the 8th percentile. It was hard to start, but I feel like my rocky start goes to show that if you really want to succeed at breastfeeding, you can.

We've now added solids into the mix. I have A LOT of thoughts on eating and meals times--which I might write about at some point. At first I had absolutely no intention of giving Ruth solids before 6 months, but she looked so darned interested when we were having dinner,...and we were curious to see what she would do. We've started with well cooked, mashed vegetables. It seemed like the right thing to try, and so far she's been more than happy to take anything offered to her on a spoon. It's pretty adorable the way she tends to lean in, mouth open, as the spoon approaches. Often after dinner she will smack her lips together like an old man who lost his dentures--we think she's practicing eating.

Napping and Overnight Sleep: Unlike breastfeeding, napping, in particular, is still a work in progress. I had several incorrect notions of baby sleep before Ruth was born. One, I had an unreasonable daydream that Ruth would nap 1.5 hours in the morning, then 1.5 hours in the afternoon, then go to bed at 7:00 pm. WRONG! I also thought that Ruth would just fall asleep (for naps) when she was tired. WRONG AGAIN! I imagined I would have so much time to myself I wouldn't know what to do. SO, SO WRONG! Honestly, I often feel defeated in my failure to get Ruth to sleep consistently.

In my inexperience as a parent and child giver, I would say Ruth is a challenging napper. She gives clear tiredness indicators (pink eyebrows, chirpy vocalizations, trying to burrow into your chest, rubbing her eyes), but I find if I don't time the put down perfectly, I wind up with a battle on my hands. Sometimes Ruth wins (and doesn't sleep), and sometimes I win (and she does sleep)--but I take little pleasure in the victory. Sometimes we all wind up crying, and I certainly take no pleasure in that either. For now I'm trying to be as consistent in my attempts as possible, and I hope we'll both get things sorted at some point.

Overnight sleep...is getting better. I understand that many babies go through a series sleep regressions, and we went through a doozy of one at around 5 months. Ruth went from getting 6-7 hours of sleep from first put down, to her overnight feed, to not even making it past midnight many nights, then waking up once, if not twice more. It was as though she'd reverted to newborn sleeping skills (or lack of sleeping skills). It was tough. I think we put up with inconsistent sleeping (sometimes good, but often bad) for about 2 weeks before I insisted we create and adhere to a bedtime routine (bath, story, feed, song), and stick to a bedtime (7:10-7:20). Things are getting better.

Growth and Development: A lot changes in 6 months. We went from a having a tiny little peanut who felt as though she would break if we held her the wrong way, to still having a tiny peanut, but one who's solid, capable of holding up her head, taking her own weight on her feet (although she's incredibly unstable), can roll in both directions, and sit--albeit wobbly, and with a hand to steady her. She's trying to work out crawling by kicking her legs and trying to get up onto her knees, but she hasn't quite figured out what her arms are for in the process. Everything she can get into her mouth goes there--she's at that age. We also expect teeth to appear every day, although there's been nothing yet.

And the Rest of the Story: I'm trying to read to Ruth as much as possible. That's both picture books, and novels (that I'm really reading out loud for my own amusement, but hey!). My favourite picture book is 'Dinosaurumpous,' which one of my brother's got for her, and I'm working my way through Jane Austin's novels--I'll be lucky if I make it through Emma by the end of my mat leave (that would be the major 3, S&S, P&P, and E). I often get to the end of the day and wish I'd read more.

Then again, I often get to the end of the day and wish I'd done...more. More what? I don't know. Just more, more everything. More playing, more reading, more encouraging, more loving. I'm paranoid, and worried, which I suspect comes with the territory of being a new mother. I want to do everything right, which isn't possible, I know, so I guess I have to settle with doing my best and hoping it's enough.

Ruth's smiles are adorable, her laughs and giggles heart-warming, these things fuel my day, and help me get over, or at least cope with the moments when she's crying so hard I cry with her. I was long uninterested in having children. They weren't my thing, I didn't know how to interact with them. I wasn't sure I ever wanted a baby.

I love Ruth more than I can say. I loved her when she was still in my womb--I wanted to meet her so badly. I feel rewarded by having brought a life into the world, and I hope I can do my best. My best to raise a thoughtful, kind, intelligent daughter, who's comfortable in her own skin, and knows her parents love her NO. MATTER. WHAT.

I love you, Ruth.

Ciao,

Mom (Andrea)

Breastfeeding: it's hard, Part 1

So after saying in my last post that I wouldn't be turning this space into a mommy blog, I'm immediately following up with a post on breastfeeding. Being Canadian, I'm inclined to apologize about this, but as a new mom who wants to share a challenging experience, I won't. To contain the size of this post I'll split it into two: 1) the challenge of the actual act of breastfeeding; and 2) the challenge of the outcome of breastfeeding, the baby's weight gain.

Before I go further, I don't mean this blog to be a resource for how to deal with breastfeeding difficulties. If you're looking for help, two online resources I've found useful are: Kelly Mom and Le Leche League. Rather, I hope that by sharing my experience, others might feel reassured that what they're going through isn't all that uncommon.

I knew breastfeeding wasn't going to be a walk in the park. Prenatally (and maybe even postpartum while I was still in the hospital), people want to talk about how a newborn, when placed on it's mothers chest immediately after birth, will wiggle it's way up to it's mother's breast and latch on. I don't doubt that this is true. I had Ruth nursing while we were still in the delivery room; however, getting her to actually breastfeed effectively afterwards was quite another matter.

I recall thinking during the second night on the postpartum ward, after I don't know how many hours into a feed, exhausted and probably in tears (Ruth was likely crying too)--"I completely understand why women give up so quickly and switch to formula. This is hard."

So, what makes the physical act of breastfeeding hard?

First, this is a whole new sensation to get used to. You need to get the latch just right, because if you don't, it's going to hurt and you're going to destroy your nipples. When I was in the hospital one of the nurses asked if the latch felt 'pinchy' (bad) or 'pully' (good) and my answer was I didn't know. I understood why there was a difference, but having never breastfeed a baby before, I didn't know which one I was experiencing. The in-hospital lactation consultant spent a lot of time with me trying to figure out what position would work to improve Ruth's latch (not football, and definitely not side-lying), and we tried a breast shield--it felt awkward too. I'm not sure I felt terribly confident heading home and facing the first night without a nurse on call.

Beyond getting the latch right there's also the fact that a tiny human is repeatedly compressing your breast, which can leave one feeling a little 'sensational.' My breasts felt tingly, and raw (at this point I'm used to it). Let's just say I was glad we didn't have any visitors at home since it considerably lowered the dress code standards around our apartment.

The second issue I had is, Ruth is a small baby, and was even smaller when she was born (6 lbs, 5oz). Now, I'm not large-chested, but there's still a lot of tissue to get in a tiny mouth (this probably didn't help with latching). Feeding in the first several weeks could take an hour or more--every feed. I was told in breastfeeding classes that babies should get the bulk of the milk in about 15 minutes of sucking, and anything after that was non-nutritive. This didn't appear to be the case with Ruth. If tried to let her feed for only 15 minutes on each side she wouldn't be full and I'd be feeding her again in short order.

It's both exhausting and boring to be feeding a baby for more than an hour. Exhausting because you're not sleeping much, and boring because you're stuck in your bed, on your couch, wherever, waiting for your baby to fill up their stomach. I didn't want to spend my days watching TV shows or movies (not that I haven't done some of that), so we purchased a touch screen laptop for me to use while nursing--I've typed most of this blog post one handed. There's not much you can do to speed a baby up either. You can do breast compressions to make it easier for your baby to get your milk, and you can try a few techniques to help increase your milk supply (again making it easier for your baby to feed). I've been taking fenugreek, and pumping after each feed (a rather unawesome experience in and of itself).

At first, getting in the pumps was difficult. I'd put Ruth in her baby recliner right in front of me, but often she'd be crying within minutes, so I'd have to pick her up. If you've ever used a breast pump, you know they're rather awkward, so I'd be trying to calm my baby, possibly feeding her milk I'd already collected, while connected to the pump. One particularly bad afternoon I had to call Andrew and ask him to come home early--I was distressed over our tiny, slow to gain daughter, and my seeming inability to feed her sufficiently. I wanted to be a successful breastfeeding mother, and in those early weeks the idea of having to supplement with formula was an upsetting possibility.

Still, for the first 6-7 weeks Ruth took over an hour to feed, and talking to other mothers, this doesn't seem so uncommon with newborns as it felt at first. Several friends have told me their children were slow eaters, and many women at the new parent support group I attend seem to have had a similar experience. I would guess in many of these cases the babies were fairly small, like Ruth--but that's purely speculative on my part. Furthering my surmise, I would say it seems like small babies just need a little extra time to sort themselves out.

Somewhere around the 7th week of Ruth's life she started to pick up her game. Her feeds dropped to more along the lines of 45 minutes, which makes a huge difference. And she seems to 'practicing eating' after some feeds by sticking out her tongue and sucking on her lips (it's really rather cute).

And people say by 6 months she'll be finishing a feed in 5-10 minutes. That will be amazing.

These are my thoughts on the act of breastfeeding--still a pretty long post as it turns out. When I write next I'll discuss the anxiety of having a slow eating baby who is also slow to gaun her birth weight back.

Ciao,

Andrea