If I were to be graded in Juggling, I would get an F.

Gosh, I'm usually pretty good about keeping this blog updated, but I've gone a week without a post!  No, I haven't been lost in a pile of dirty cloth diapers (it's going REALLY well, by the way).  Things have just been insane.  I have a feeling this post is going to be a bit raw.  It's been so hard for me to juggle everything.  Lately I've been fantasizing about being a stay at home mom.  I love my job, truly.  It pays really well and I enjoy what I do.  But a full time career plus being a mother seriously leaves me no time to do anything else.  Nothing.  It's near impossible to keep up with the housework for some reason.  Yet, I see that other moms who work have no problems.  It makes me start to feel like there is something wrong with me.  I rarely cook, thank goodness my husband LOVES to cook and prefers it, because I don't have time to do it.  By the time I get home, 100% of my attention is on Jude for 2 or 3 hours before he goes to bed between 7:30 and 8.  Then, I do just the basic things like loading the dishwasher from dinner, doing some laundry, etc. at which point I am exhausted.  Then I usually have some sort of project that needs to be worked on (like this week, writing and addressing invitations to 150 people for my in-laws 25th anniversary party). Okay, so what about the weekends?  Excellent question.  Phil is usually doing something for his 80+ hour a week career (which I wouldn't change- he is SO awesome at his job and LOVES it), so having him watch Jude while I do something like scrub the floors is impossible on most weekends, especially in the summertime when his industry goes insane.  My son will MAYBE take a 45-60 minute nap in the mornings and a 30 minute nap in the afternoons.  I guess I just don't know how to do the deep cleaning stuff like washing windows, shampooing carpets, scrubbing floors, organizing closets, cleaning out basement storage, gardening....and the list goes on and on.  How do working moms DO all this stuff???  I guess the only option I have is to use vacation time from work while Jude is at daycare.  But then that is more time I will not get with my little boy.  I'm left wondering if I'm too attached to get things done when Jude is with me.  Have a created the baby who refuses to be left in an exersaucer to watch while I'm doing things?  I know I have a bright, inquisitive baby who wants to be a part of everything, but sometimes I feel like it's because I wore him nonstop and coslept with him and allowed him to be a part of all mundane tasks that now it has to be that way forever.

 I know I'm just rambling at this point and I am not blaming the way we parent exactly.  I'm just envious of all my mom friends both in real life and in the blogosphere that seem to be perfect.  Moms who bring home a great salary, cook, clean, and entertain while maintaining the perfect body, wearing makeup, always looking beautiful, and giving their husbands just as much attention as their children.  I feel like the only part of that I even come close to is the great job and nothing else.  I feel frumpy, chubby, disorganized, unkempt and frazzled.  I need to stop complaining and just try harder, but that's easier said than done- especially when I don't even know where to begin.

Part of why I just don't feel good enough has to do with the fact that I can honestly say my mother is damn near perfect.  Growing up raising two kids two years apart, she did it all: crazy fulltime career with insane hours and a husband who traveled two weeks out of every month on average, a perfect house- PERFECT, running us kids around to all of our extra curricular activities (if you knew me in gradeschool and highschool, I seriously danced for 6 hours a day, 6 days a week, nuts), and never forgot one single permission slip, dress down day at school, soccer practice, lunch money, nada.  Most days, I'm lucky if I don't forget my breastpump or purse, let alone remember anything else.

I know I'll figure it out and maybe just try to convince myself that perception isn't always reality (but this is hard when I SEE my other mom friends doing it all).  I can do this.  I can. 

Right?

To all the mamas who have ever bedshared...

Someone shared this little poem with me and it made me melt.

A Child's Fragile Sleeping Soul
by Peggy O'Mara

They tried to steal his soul.

Creeping in,
In the middle of the night.
Waiting for the crack
Between the dreams
When he was neither here
Nor there.
When he was spinning in
His mind,
Crying out in his sleep.
When he no longer remembered
His name.

They tried to steal it then.
When he was not remembering.

But just at the moment
When they might have snatched it.
Just when his mind was lost and hungry,
Just when he cried out helplessly,

I reached over
And touched his hand.

And the evil spirits
Were once more
Cast adrift
Forever.

What kind of mom are you?

I was thinking the other day about all the planning that goes on once you find out you are having a baby. If you had asked me to describe the sort of mother I planned on being before Jude got here, the following description would probably sum it up best: Stroller walking, disposable diaper using, crib sleeping, breastfeeding for up to 6 months at the most, caffeine drinking, still maintaining somewhat of a social calendar, working mama. It wasn't a conscious thing, I didn't research anything, yet, I think I'm the complete opposite of all of that and it all just happened naturally.



Stroller: I will say we use it now more than we ever have previously. For at least the first 6 months, Jude was one of those babies that didn’t want to be put down. At all. End of the world to be out of my (or anyone’s arms). I’ve heard all my life that carrying a baby around too much will “spoil” him and I guess I believed that. But, once he was here and in my arms, I knew that this couldn’t be true. How can you spoil a child by holding him close to your heart rather than constantly at a distance? Why did holding him feel so much more natural to me than putting him in a stroller or playpen while I went about my business? In my gut, I felt that this wasn’t true in regards to Jude. So I held him. All the time. I invested in wraps and slings to help lessen the load, but for the first 6-8 months, he was attached to me (literally) constantly. And it WORKED! Jude loved being strapped to me or Phil all the time. He was always happy and smiling and content. Whether I was loading the dishwasher, shopping for groceries, or taking a walk around the block, it was good to be Jude. Once Jude learned to crawl a couple of months ago, it felt as though our babywearing chapter started to close just a little bit. I still pop him in a sling when he is having a clingy moment or I just need to carry him somewhere since he can’t walk yet. But with the crawling milestone, it is as if he is happy with a little independence and loves to explore his surroundings while not attached to me (though he prefers to have me within eyesight). So in our experience, babywearing Jude constantly in the beginning helped him to trust that the world was not a scary place as long as he was in mom or dad’s arms. I feel he took that experience and is now anxious to touch and see and hear the happenings going on around him. Maybe the opposite is true for other babies, I guess we’ll find out if/when we have another!


Disposable Diapers: I’ll admit I’m still on the fence about this one. We use gDiapers when not at daycare and Pampers for daycare. Before Jude, I thought cloth diapering meant squares of cloth with big ole diaper pins. Um, no. Cloth diapers now are pretty much the coolest things ever. And what’s cuter than a big fluffy cloth diapered baby butt? Um, nothing! Anyways, since this whole Pampers-causes-chemical-burns-and-rashes-on-babies-investigation, I’m really wondering why the hell I’m not asking more questions as to what is IN disposables? I don’t know, the whole thing makes me nervous. I’ve ordered the cloth diaper trial from Jillian’s Drawers and I’m sure I’ll be posting about our cloth diapering adventures soon! I’m kind of excited!


Cribs: Babies sleep in cribs, right? That’s what they do. There aren’t any other options. At least that’s what I thought before I got pregnant. When we started to get the nursery all set up, I was adamant about getting the perfect crib. And we found it, all right. It was beautiful and everything I imagined. Majestic and dark wood and perfection. So we bought it, took it home, and got it (after much cursing on my husband’s part) set up. That’s when I got uneasy. The nursery is the sitting room off of our master bedroom, and therefore, it was ideal. Jude would be sleeping literally ten feet away from me. I wouldn’t even need a monitor at night since I would hear him cry. As his due date approached, I started to feel more and more uncomfortable with him sleeping in another room, but pushed those thoughts aside. Then, the little mister was here, we brought him home, and it was bedtime. What if he stopped breathing? What if someone broke in his window and we were sleeping so heavily we didn’t even hear and they STOLE him? What if the cat somehow opens his door and decides to sleep right on his face? (Hey, when you’re post-partum and experiencing a severe hormonal fluctuation, ANY scenario you come up with in your head is totally plausible!) So, we set the pack and play up right next to the bed on my side, inches from me. The Mama Bear instincts in me woke up at even the slightest sound or movement he made. Jude was also the baby that was up pretty much every hour for the first four months, then every 2-3 hours for the two months after that. So bedding close to each other made things a lot easier. When Jude wanted to eat, I would just pull him in bed with me and doze while he nursed. We are now to the point where we realized that Jude sleeps better for the first half of the night in his crib. So, after about 8 months of non-use, we are now using the crib! Jude goes to bed for the first half of the night and wakes up around 1 am. I go in to his nursery, where I see him standing up in his crib with his arms outstretched for me. I grab him and take him in to our bed for the other half of the night. We have plans to stop the semi-cosleeping before 18 months. I just really love it. As a working mom, I cherish every second I can spend with him- even if it is sleeping. There really is nothing like a chubby finger stroking my face or a warm little arm encircling my neck in the middle of the night.


Breastfeeding: “Breast is best” is the classic mantra one hears constantly while preparing for baby. With that knowledge, I knew I wanted to breastfeed. I figured I would give it my best shot and if it worked out, great! I planned on weaning around six months and then going to formula, thinking it would be much more convenient at that time. I’ll be honest, the first four weeks of breastfeeding were pure hell. We had latch issues you wouldn’t believe. He would get frustrated, I would cry. I would get frustrated, he would cry. My nipples were cracking, splitting, bleeding. Everytime he latched, I felt razor blades. How could something so natural be anything but?? But with the difficulty came a sense of intense determination. We were going to get this and we weren’t going to let each other give up. So I talked to a lactation consultant and went to La Leche League meetings. Then, it clicked. I’ll never forget the nursing session that changed it all. He latched on and started audibly gulping. Wait, I didn’t feel like my nipple was being sawed off! Oh my gosh, did I just feel my milk letting down? Am I experiencing that euphoria that comes with the rush of oxytocin with the letdown? Is that my baby all blissed out and drowsy? Is that actually milk pooling out of his mouth? EUREEKA!!! From then on, I was hooked on nursing. We were a great team and there was NO WAY I was quitting at six months after all this hard work. So we kept plugging away and here we are, almost eleven months later and still going strong. My supply has really plummeted lately, but he’s also nursing less as he takes in more solids. In about six weeks, we’ll start whole milk. I’m sure I’ll be obsessing over this next chapter very soon, so stay tuned.  (Oh yeah, the caffeine part ties in here too. Before I was pregnant, I would seriously knock back like 5 diet sodas a day-gross. Once I was pregnant, I would have a Coke or so a day. I pretty much quit caffeine shortly after having Jude since I thought it might have something to do with his sleep issues. Unfortunately, it didn’t help. But I still stopped it. I’m slowly adding a coffee to my diet in the mornings now that Jude isn’t nursing as much. God, that stuff rocks.)


Social calendar: None to speak of. I’ll touch briefly on this, but I feel the need to address it in a post of its own someday soon. I am horrible at balancing “me” time with motherhood. I think if I were a stay at home mom I would be much better about this. Since I work 40+ hours a week, I CRAVE time with my baby. If I have to spend extra time away from him, I am overwhelmed with guilt. Big time. How can I be away from my baby 8 hours a day and then tack on another few hours? This pretty much rules out any dates with my husband. We’ve gone on a couple, but nothing extravagant like spending a whole night away from him. Recently, I’ve gone out with girlfriends for dinner and drinks, but only after Jude goes to bed and I’m home before his first night waking. This is something I need to work on, although I’m not quite sure how I can get over the guilt I carry around with me that daycare spends more time with my son during the week than I do.


So there it is. I’m pretty much a complete oxymoron of the mom I thought I was going to be. The “stroller walking, disposable diaper using, crib sleeping, breastfeeding for up to 6 months at the most, caffeine drinking, still maintaining somewhat of a social calendar, working mama” in my head became the “babywearing, maybe cloth diapering, semi-cosleeping, extended breastfeeding, non-caffeine drinking, no social calendar to speak of working mama” instead.


I suppose there are a few morals to this post I’m probably failing at getting across. The first is that you really can’t plan what kind of mom you’ll be ahead of time. The second time is that it’s never okay to judge someone else’s parenting choices since there are reasons behind those choices that you just can’t know. We all do what is best for our babies since each baby is such a beautiful individual. And that, my friends, is what makes parenthood so truly incredible.