I answered a question on Quora, “What is it like to have an epidural” and thought I’d share it here:

I am glad that it was available to me, but if I have another child I will try not to have an epidural. It was necessary in my situation so I don’t regret choosing it, but I do believe that it contributed to the fact that my labor ended in an emergency C-section.After doing a lot of reading about the natural process of labor, I decided I wanted to try for an unmedicated birth (something I never thought I would do!). Unfortunately, fate had me stuck with a dr. and nurse who did not respect my body or my wishes (I know now I should have asked for a different nurse, regret #1). Despite repeatedly and clearly stating that we would like to keep the Pitocin as low as possible, the nurse cranked it up when we weren’t looking. None of us realized it until my contractions were out of control, one on top of the other and I was only dilated to 2 cm. I was too out of it and didn’t understand what had happened until later, so I didn’t demand that she turn it down (regret #2). Instead, I begged for an epidural, thinking that was my only choice.

The only thing that I found scary about it was that I was unable to hold still while the anesthesiologist was inserting the needle. He had to ask the nurse to turn down the Pitocin and I had to squeeze my husband as tight as I could to stop shaking. I don’t want to freak anyone out so I should mention that I do not think that is normal. As far as I could tell, it was due to the irresponsibility of the nurse who didn’t take note of the way the drugs were affecting my body.

I have heard that the needle looks scary, but I didn’t look at it and I’m pretty sure my husband didn’t see it (I’ve heard stories of fathers nearly passing out). I’m also not afraid of needles, though, so I just didn’t think about what he was doing. I just knew it was important for me to hold still. Also, my labor was so strong at that point that I’m pretty sure it would have overshadowed any other sensations. I felt nothing as he inserted it and if he numbed the area beforehand, I don’t think I felt that either.

The epidural was effective very quickly. It was pretty amazing. The only problem was that I could still feel every contraction in my left butt cheek. It wasn’t extreme pain, but it was hard to ignore it because I wasn’t able to move around or get in a good position to deal with it. Lying on a bed in pain is so much worse than being able to move around, sit on an exercise ball, etc. I kept pushing the button to turn up the epidural, but it wasn’t helping so I asked about adjusting it (regret #3).

Let’s go back a little. When I first got the epidural, my son’s heart rate dropped. Suddenly, the room was full of people telling me to get on my knees (really hard to do when you’ve had an epidural!), squirting something in my mouth that gave me a temporary headache, inserting a monitor into my son’s head, and who knows what else. They got his heart rate back up and things calmed down.

BUT, when the anesthesiologist adjusted the epidural to ease the pain in my left butt cheek, my son’s heart rate dropped again. They tried to raise it again and it worked, but then it dropped again and my dr. felt uncomfortable letting me continue to labor and suggested a C-section. At that point, I was scared and probably would have agreed to anything.

During the C-section the anesthesiologist told me that usually they are not able to fix the epidural when something like the pain in my butt happens. Overall, he was great and a super nice guy (which was a refreshing change from the nurse and dr.), but I really wish I had known that because I would have just dealt with the pain in the butt. I also wish someone had told me that an epidural could lower the fetal heart rate. I felt like it was sold as something with rare side-effects that they just have to tell you about for liability. I don’t know how often it affects the baby in that way, but since talking to others about my experience I have gotten the sense that it is not uncommon.

Here’s some info I just found regarding an epidural lowering fetal heart rate.

I’m not sure if this was related, but the next day I vomited a few times. The nurses kept offering me drugs to stop the nausea, but I was sick of being pumped full of drugs and refused until I missed my son’s first visit with a pediatrician because I was hovering over a puke bucket and I realized that the nausea was not going away soon. Once they gave me even more drugs, I was fine. I suspect this may have had to do with the morphine they gave me before the C-section because they weren’t sure the epidural was working well enough, but I’m not sure.

Like I said, I’m glad that the epidural was available to me because I’m not sure I could have made it from 2 to 10 cm with the labor I was experiencing, but I also feel confident that I could have done with out it if the medical personnel attending my labor had respected my wishes and paid attention to what was happening with my body. Despite having a disappointing birth experience, I did feel empowered once I realized that the labor I was experiencing was the same most women go through during transition and usually only lasts a couple of hours. I experienced it for about an hour before the epidural so I do feel that I could have gotten through it without drugs if it had been a normal labor and I was further dilated.

Something has frustrated me and it’s more than just a personal issue. It’s part of the epidemic of mommy guilt and an unfortunate side-effect of patriarchy, although it may not be immediately obvious that they are related.A comment was left on a friend’s Facebook feed congratulating her for being a good mom, but then followed up by bashing moms who “don’t work”, but still drop off their kids at daycare. It wasn’t overtly stated, but rather implied that these mothers do not enjoy their children and the phrase “to get away from them” was expressly used. Later it was mentioned that such moms are dropping off their kids for “shits and giggles”.

Maybe I’m especially sensitive to such judgmental statements because I am a stay-at-home mom whose son goes to daycare regularly. Or I could be reacting so vehemently because I recently had a conversation with a friend who is struggling through post-partum depression. She feels like she has to do everything and can’t keep her house in the condition she would prefer. I spent so much time trying to convince her that she needs a break. That her son would be fine with another caregiver once he was accustomed to it. That there’s no way we can do it all and there’s nothing wrong with taking time for ourselves for “shits and giggles”. In fact, for most of us it’s necessary. Thank God she hasn’t read the previous mentioned conversation. The last thing she needs is more guilt and judgement weighing on her.

And that is why I felt the need to write this post. How many women out there were silently reading those comments and convincing themselves that their deserved breaks make them bad mothers? That they are slacking on the job. That their kids won’t want to be with them when they’re older. That they shouldn’t have had kids in the first place! (Yes, that was mentioned too. Seriously? Now we’re touching on eugenics because some mothers supposedly can’t hack it?)

Or maybe I was especially irked by these comments because I had a difficult time with my adjustment to motherhood. As gruesome and horrible as it sounds, I remember suddenly having new perspective on the horror of mothers who hurt their children. (I feel the need to proclaim that I would never hurt my son. But I do now understand how the complex intensity of motherhood could drive someone insane.). Simply put: The work Does. Not. End.

We don’t get lunch breaks. We don’t get coffee breaks. We don’t get to enjoy a commute to and from work (yes, enjoy! What I would have given to be stuck in traffic BY MYSELF, listening to music and just…driving.). In fact, many of us don’t get a break to get a full night’s sleep (my son is almost two and still wakes many times at night).

Let’s do some math here: There are 168 hours in a week. A person who works a full-time job works generally 40 hours/ week leaving them with 128 hours for leisure time (I’m including sleep in here). Full time daycare is generally 50 hours/ week. Therefore, if a stay-at-home mom drops off her children full time she gets 50 hours/week off from her job. I’m not including sleep in there because for many moms that is time when she is on-call. Even if we did include a full eight hours of rest each night, she would still have only achieved 106 hours off of work as compared to a full-time worker’s 128.

Now, clearly these estimates are full of flaws. Many husbands* do help out with some housework, but some do not. Some kids sleep through the night consistently from a young age, many do not. Some couples have family nearby who take the kids occasionally for date night or “shits and giggles”, some, like my husband and I, do not.

The point is, don’t judge. You don’t have that woman’s kids. You don’t know how much they wake at night or how long it takes to get them back to sleep. You aren’t married to her husband or trying to maintain her home. Most importantly, you aren’t in her head and her kids are not your kids.

Whenever I get down on myself for not being able to accomplish something others seem to find easy, my therapist reminds me that different people have different abilities and thresholds. There are things I can do easily that I take for granted.

If you are able to work 168 hours/week raising your five kids and you love every single gosh-darned minute of it, good for you! You deserve a medal! And you know what? So does the mom who “got rid of her kids” for 50 hours a week because she was wise enough to know that she needed that time so that she could function during the other 118. Maybe it makes her an incredibly attentive mother during those other 118 hours while you are plopping your kids in front of the TV so you can do the dishes and cook dinner while balancing laundry on your head.

Or maybe not. Maybe she’s juggling everything as much as you are the rest of the time. And maybe you are still handling it better and more attentive to your kids. So what. It’s not really any of your business, is it? Is she neglecting or abusing her kids? If yes, than by all means speak to her about it! If not, really, does it have anything to do with you?

Which leads me to my last point. They aren’t your kids. That’s right. Not your kids. Guess what? They are her kids. You know what that gives her the right to do? Raise them in her way and ask as many people for help as often as she wants. She can choose to be the sole source of their emotional, physical, and spiritual development or she can follow the philosophy that it takes a village and since we don’t really have much of a village these days, a daycare it is.

There has been a lot of talk lately about women’s rights being under attack. Once again, the issues of unpaid housework and childcare are absent from the dialogue. Of course, working women ragged for no pay nor benefits doesn’t make the news because that is how it has always been.

My hope is that these issues will make their way to the forefront as we continue to struggle, but that hope wanes when I hear hard-working women attacking each other for addressing their needs in a way most men wouldn’t hesitate to address them and no one would question it.

The only way we begin to get there is when we teach our children that it’s ok for moms to take care of themselves too. And as a bonus, when we take care of ourselves, we have a greater capacity to care for our children and become better parents.

*Please note: “husbands” is meant to imply any sort of co-parenting relationship.

What do you do when those around you judge your need for a break? Do you have any tips for tired moms trying to navigate their way through judgement-infested waters while balancing home, family, meals, friends, and possibly work outside the home?

I have had a nasty bitter taste on my tongue for weeks. Actually, it has been months off and on. It comes for a few weeks, goes for a couple months, and then it’ll be back again for a few weeks.

No, it’s not a metaphorical bitterness. There is literally a gross taste in my mouth whenever I’m not actively eating, chewing gum or if I haven’t brushed my teeth (and tongue) in the last half hour.

I’ve searched the internet various times on a whim: “bitter taste on tongue”, “bitter taste water bottle”, “bitter taste tongue coffee”, “bitter taste dying”.

I thought it was my new hand lotion. I stopped using it. I was careful not to chew my nails. But it was still there.

I thought it was my water bottle. I switched to a different bottle. I soaked the lids of all my bottles in vinegar and washed them a few times. But it was still there.

Then I thought it was my coffee maker. I just recently ran it through with vinegar so it should be clean, but maybe I didn’t rinse it well enough and the acid in the vinegar is reacting with my coffee to give me super-acid-angry-tongue.

This morning I decided to test this theory. Rather than stumbling into the kitchen, concentrating hard to avoid burns from scalding hot coffee, I stumbled straight into the shower and concentrated on staying upright.

It was two and a half hours before I made it to the coffee shop for that first cup. By the time I got there, I felt like my head was being squeezed in a clamp in a serial killer’s super secret workshop. And the mental fog…Oh boy.

I feel like a cliche. I’ve never experienced this much withdrawal from caffeine before. I guess my intake has greatly increased since The Great Child Takeover, also known as the day my son was born.

At the cafe, I didn’t put the lid all the way on my cup and spilled coffee all over my boob. Then the baristas tried to explain their 10 coffees = free coffee system to me and I had to tell them to give up because I couldn’t follow anything yet. They were very understanding.

I still feel like a dork sitting here with coffee stain on my boob. Somehow it’s more embarrassing to have stains on my clothes when I don’t have a toddler actively clinging to my legs.

The result of my experiment? The bitter flavor was lessened, but it was still there even before I had that first cup of coffee. Perhaps the bitterness of the coffee is simply exacerbating another problem.

The search for an explanation and cure for the bitterness continues. Hopefully, I’ll be updating soon claiming, “mystery solved!” With any luck, it will be something horribly embarrassing and incredibly entertaining so it will make a worthy blog post.

Until then, please comment if this has happened to you. What was it and how did you fix it? Or if you have any ideas. Am I chewing on grass in my spare time? No, but feel free to ask.

My husband pointed out a blog post about breastfeeding on Ask Moxie in which she was asking readers to comment with their “it gets better” stories. A while back, I began writing a series of posts on my adventures in breastfeeding, but haven’t made much progress lately. The comment I made on Moxie’s blog summarizes it probably as concisely as I ever will. Devoid of details that I’ll hopefully add in future posts, here is my “it gets better” post about breastfeeding:

Things seemed to start out well despite one cracked nipple and scabbing on the other. I still wasn’t willing to give up nursing when he would not stop crying his second day. I resisted supplementing until I finally got so depressed that I couldn’t get out of bed to care for him. He went to the nursery so I could sleep off my traumatic birth and heal from my c-section, but I still had to wake up every two hours to pump.

I was so determined to breastfeed that I wouldn’t even give up after he rejected the breast because of the bottles they gave him at the hospital. My husband and I woke up every two hours so he could bottle feed our son while I pumped for the next feeding. Then the doctor told us our son was still losing weight.

I wouldn’t even look at the bottles of formula the hospital sent home with us. Instead we went to visit the most amazing lactation consultants ever and they taught us how to use a nipple shield and syringe to coax my son back to the breast.

That was the beginning of a couple of very long days when each feed meant another struggle. My husband wielded the syringe, I wielded the breast, and my son wielded his stubborn resolve. The first few times it took an hour to get him to eat, then 45 minutes, soon he was eating after a half hour and so on until he finally accepted that the nipple shield was similar enough to the feel of a bottle.

A couple weeks later we were ready to do away with the shield. I was terrified, but I just wanted to be able to whip out my boob and feed my son without any contraptions. Sometimes he was ok without it, sometimes he accused me with his cries of trying to starve him. Finally, he started to accept my nipple without the shield more often than with it and eventually I could toss it into a box of baby stuff we hope to never need again.

Boy, we had a hard time. But wait, there’s more! I noticed a little white bump on my nipple, consulted the internet and discovered I had a (very painful) clogged nipple pore. Every time I’d discuss it with friends they’d say “oh man, plugged ducts are so painful!” and I’d clarify, “no, this is not a plugged duct. I’ve had those. A plugged duct is nothing. This is searing pain IN MY NIPPLE EVERY TIME I NURSE on that side.”

The lactation consultant told me they take a few weeks to go away. Mine took more like six. Before every time I nursed I would soak in hot water with epsom salt while my son wailed. After, I would lather up with nipple butter; sometimes I wore breast shields that made me look like Madonna so my nipple wouldn’t rub on my shirt. Every time I nursed, I would curl my toes under and curse my husband for suggesting formula.

I did not get mastitis. There’s the part that went well.

Here’s the good news. At eight weeks, my world changed. I healed. My son was nursing well and gaining weight like a sumo wrestler. And I was on a high that can only come from achieving something that was oh so very hard to achieve.

Now my son is 13 months old and nursing is my favorite thing I do every day. I LOVE it and I thank my stubborn past-self for not giving up. I see moms around me weaning their kids left and right and I’m overjoyed that my son seems to have no interest in weaning. I know he’ll want to stop one day, but I hope to make it to two years. It’s really up to him, though. I wasn’t ok with him quitting when he was four days old, but now that we’ve hit one year, I’ll reluctantly give it up if he wants.

What is your “it gets better” story?

Last week my playgroup had a playdate with a discussion about juggling and self-care. I wasn’t able to attend because I was juggling an appointment with my therapist into my schedule so I could do some self-care. The plan was to read an article about balance before the playdate in order to fuel the discussion.

I wanted to participate in the talk despite being unable to attend so I wrote an email with some of my thoughts. Well, it ended up more like a blog post. I share it here with minimal edits:

I just read the article and found it to be very insightful. Something that has been bothering me every since I started this whole parenting experiment is all the advice to take care of myself that actually made me feel more stressed.

Nap when baby naps?! Are you kidding me? I’m sure that works for some people and that’s great, but early on Siddhartha switched over primarily to 20 minute naps. Even when he was taking longer naps, I never knew which was going to be the big one and it was more painful for me to finally fall asleep only to be woken by a crying baby minutes later. Talk about a headache. Literally.

In addition to mommy, I’m also a writer. Ever since Siddhartha was born it has been a struggle to try to find time to write and it leaves me feeling like I’m unable to achieve something or be a productive part of society. But every so often I catch myself and think, “WHAT?! I’m raising a little human. I made a new life!” Really, what could possibly be a greater achievement? How could one produce anything greater than life?

I’m convinced that Mom is the most under-appreciated job out there. Not that I expect Siddhartha to understand. Even when he’s older, he won’t remember this time or understand how hard I worked for him (until maybe he has a child of his own). I’m referring to the social perception. When we go to dinner parties (’cause we do that so much these days, right?) and talk about what we do, how do people react when one says “full-time mom”, “stay-at-home mom” or “homemaker”? If you do work outside the home, do you say “I’m a mom” first and then add “oh, I’m also a [insert profession here]“?

My intention wasn’t to go off on a tangent of how under-appreciated moms are. My point is that it’s hard to avoid stressing ourselves to achieve balance when it doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of respect for just being a mom.

Some days I do feel like I need a break from trying to find time to write. Sometimes, I want to spend Siddhartha’s naptime reading a book or knitting or doing nothing. Sometimes I want to just sit there and feel for a moment like I don’t need to be doing anything. Sometimes I don’t want to throw in a load of laundry while watching over my shoulder to be sure Siddhartha’s not getting into anything. The problem I have is that I need to feel constantly productive and watching a baby play or sleep simply does not feel productive.

I think what we really need is to be honest and LOUD about the fact that what we’re doing is hard work! No more sugar-coating it because we feel guilty and afraid that it might sound like we don’t appreciate our kids. Of course we appreciate them and love them and would never give them up for anything. But raising them is still hard work!

Once we accept that our job is hard, it’s easier to be nice to ourselves and find that flexibility that the author writes about in the article. I just wrote a blog post recently about learning how to just hang out and have fun playing with Siddhartha without thinking about what “needed” to be done.

What do you feel can be done to put respect back into the role of Mom? Do you have any tips for a healthy acknowledgment of how challenging parenting is and putting pride into the work that goes with it?

I put a lot of thought into how to be a happy mom. I’ve been seeing a therapist regularly for years to work on my tendency towards anxiety and depression. I had made a lot of progress. So much so that she told me at one point that she thought we could consider stopping my therapy if I weren’t about to become a mother.

I was fortunate that I was able to spend time in therapy during my pregnancy discussing my fears about parenthood. Would I mess up my kid? How could I give him the skills for good mental health when I felt like I was just learning them? She told me it was important to make sure I was taking care of myself because it would be much harder to take care of someone else if my needs weren’t met.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, in the beginning I was just trying to get through it. It was hard to make sure my needs were met while caring for a newborn. I couldn’t get all the sleep I needed and it was hard to find the time to eat when I was hungry.

Now the stress and urgency have eased up a bit. My husband generally doesn’t leave for work until I’ve had a shower and something to eat or at least that first cup of coffee I need to feel like I can start the day. My son is less demanding most days so he will play on his own nearby while I cook or start a load of laundry.

If you saw how my situation had changed, you’d see the world of difference and might think, “she must be so relieved and happy”. But I wasn’t happy a lot of the time and sometimes I’m still not. Why not?

Well, have I mentioned that spending time with a baby can be really boring? I love spending time with my son, but I do it nearly 24 hours a day. He could be the most adorable, funnest baby in the world (and of course I think he is) and it would still be reasonable to want some variety in daily activity.

Now that he’s a little more independent I try to do other things while he plays nearby, but I’m limited in what I can do. I’d love to write or read a book, but neither is interruptible enough or allows me to keep an eye on him. Instead, I spend my time doing housework and occasionally I get the chance to reply to an email.

But just like playing with a baby, there’s only so much time one can spend on rote tasks like housework. Plus, Siddhartha needs and deserves some interaction. The problem comes when I try to just unwind and play with him. All I can think about is what else needs to be accomplished. All I can feel is unproductive. I hate feeling that way. I hate that it’s so hard for me to relax and just have fun with my son, completely focusing on him.

I am honest with myself in knowing that I will never feel like everything is accomplished. I know that there will always be something that “needs” to be done and, because of my anxiety, even if there weren’t any tasks needing attention, I would feel as though there were and possibly invent something.

I shared my conundrum with my therapist. She told me these were the times to practice mindfulness, to notice the colors of Siddhartha’s clothes, the beauty of this smile, feel the softness of his hair and notice the metamorphosis of his babbling as it worked its way toward intelligible words.

It hadn’t occurred to me that one could practice mindfulness anywhere, at any time. I had been thinking it was a shame I could not meditate because I very rarely have quiet moments to myself. In my mind, meditation practice was only achieved through sitting with body and hands in a specific position while counting one’s breath. Of course, the irony of thinking of it as an inflexible activity hadn’t occurred to me.

Now, after I’ve thrown in a load of laundry, done the dishes, and both Siddhartha and I are fed, I sit down on the floor and practice. I hear the washing machine stop, feel the impulse to get up immediately in order to switch the load to the dryer, stop myself and return my attention to my son. In this way, we have fun.

Have you ever felt bored hanging out with your kid(s)? What do you do to enjoy your time with them?

Am I happy being a work-at-home mom (the term I prefer to stay-at-home mom)? It is by far the most stressful job I’ve ever had and I do have a difficult time with the constant vigilance. There is no time that is my own anymore. Even when Siddhartha is napping, I have to drop what I’m doing on a moments notice when he wakes up.

It does seem to be easier as he gets older, but it is still exhausting to have to be constantly 100% aware. Sometimes I’d like to just zone out and think.

I got to thinking the other day when I saw two women enjoying dessert at a cafe. I felt a small twinge of jealousy before taking a trip back in time.

Before my son was born, I was bored. Sure I could meet a friend at a cafe and it was fun, but most of the time I didn’t do that. I still had days when I was too tired and too depressed to leave the house. In fact, it happened more then than it does now.

I remembered feeling that a lot of my actions were pointless. Now, everything has a purpose. The most insignificant things are exciting because Siddhartha has never experienced them before.

I remember the first time I brought him out in the rain. Imagine seeing and feeling rain for the first time! Water falling from the sky! I noticed the feeling of the drops on my skin because I knew he would feel them and wonder what that sensation was.

I’ve also started eating better because it’s easier to eat some of the food I’m making for him. His favorite foods right now are broccoli and spinach. As a result, I’ve discovered the taste of broccoli again. Not broccoli smothered in cheese, salt or butter. Just plain, lightly-steamed broccoli.

I do miss having time to write almost whenever I want. It’s hard to feel the desire and know that I can’t sate it at the moment. I feel a pang of loss whenever I hear friends have finished a story or submitted something to a contest or journal. I envision myself seeing a friend’s book in the window of a book store while I rush by chasing a toddler.

But again, there are a few things I have to remind myself: I am still writing (I wrote this!), I just have less time for it and am often interrupted. When I was writing full time, I was never actually writing full time. Sure, I had productive days, but I was rarely able to get myself to focus for hours at a time. I always mixed it up with housework, errands and wasting time online. And, of course, one day my son will grow up. The role of mom will still be a big one, but he won’t need me nearly every minute of the day like he does now.

Sometimes I do wish things were a little more balanced; that I could take a few hours for myself every day and know that when Siddhartha is a teenager he’ll still want to give me hugs and smile at me every few minutes. All I can do is try to keep my life as balanced as possible now and try to raise a happy kid who won’t be embarrassed about loving his mom, even when it’s not cool.

To answer my question, Generally yes, I am happy being a work-at-home mom, but I do wish that I could appreciate the grass on my side. I’m so focused on the things I want that I can’t have, that I forget what it is that I have.

I’m working on it, trying to follow my therapist’s advice to exercise mindfulness while I enjoy time with my son. But I also know that it’s unrealistic to expect myself to be happy all the time and cherish every moment. The challenge is to appreciate what I’ve got and be ok with myself when I feel frustrated.

How do you find time to do the things you love while raising kids? What are some ways you noticed your life improved after they came along?

Sometimes I have a feeling the universe is trying to tell me something. A while back I was writing about a man I once observed while riding the bus. He was the obligatory crazy man that all buses seem to have. I was straining to remember the details, not of the words he spoke to himself, but rather the way in which he conversed with himself. Did he answer questions no one was asking? Did he yell out random words and phrases? I couldn’t remember exactly, so I just embellished a little. After all, what I was writing was fiction.

Well, a few days later I was at Costco and I heard a voice approaching me from the aisle perpendicular. I knew that voice from somewhere. Seconds later, the “crazy man”, the very same man with whom I had ridden a bus two years earlier, the same man I had just written about, crossed my path.

I didn’t hear the words he was saying as he passed me, but I did note that he was having a complete conversation with himself. He would state an interesting fact and then marvel at how interesting the thing he had just heard was, as if it were the first time he had ever heard it.

I could chalk it up to a fascinating coincidence, but I’d rather assume that the universe put us both there at the same time for a reason. Maybe it’s a sign that I should continue writing about him?

I’d love to hear a story about a shocking or funny coincidence in your life.

One of the benefits of being a new parent is learning to trust my momstinct. No, I haven’t developed a new smell after becoming a mom (at least, if I have, no one has told me so). That’s what I call my mommy instinct. It’s amazing how dead on it can be.

Back when Siddhartha was almost seven months old, he got sick for the first time. As is often the case, it started in the middle of the night. I knew something was wrong because he had been asleep without waking for four hours. He was normally waking every three hours at night at that age. But that week he had been waking every one to two hours because we were traveling and he was cutting a tooth.

So how did I know that he had been asleep for too long if it was the middle of the night when I was also asleep? My dream told me.

I dreamt that someone told me that I had had a baby years ago, before Siddhartha was born. It was back in college and for some reason I didn’t remember being pregnant, the birth, or what happened to the baby. I was horrified that I wasn’t caring for my child. The rest of the dream was spent trying to find my child and reconcile my failure. Then I woke up.

Right away, upon waking, I knew something was wrong. I looked at my watch and realized Siddhartha had been asleep for four hours. As I often do when he has slept longer than I expect, I checked to be sure he was breathing. I can’t say that it was abnormal for sure, but it didn’t seem right. Dave thought it was normal, but I felt it was slightly more shallow and rapid than usual. I still don’t know if it was or if my momstinct was kicking it to convince me something was wrong.

Then I felt his head to discover it was too warm. At that point, I thanked me from the past for thinking to pack his thermometer. Sure enough, he had a 102.9 fever.

Throughout that next day we gave him baby acetaminophen every four hours to keep the fever down closer to 100. When it got close to time for another dose, his fever was right back up to 103. It scares me to think that if I hadn’t woken his fever might have gone dangerously high, but then I remember that I did wake up.

Maybe we’re lucky because we co-sleep. Maybe having his little body so close to me meant that I could feel that he was too warm or that he wasn’t stirring as much as he normally would. One thing I know for sure is that my momstinct works even when I’m asleep. It was a reminder to trust myself, not only as a mom, but in general. There’s more wisdom in my intuition than I give myself credit for.

Tell me about a time when your intuition came in handy. Do you trust yourself more after becoming a parent?

This week my son will be nine months old. Somehow, nine months became a major milestone to me. Now, Siddhartha is a grown up infant, almost a toddler. Soon he’ll be walking and he’ll say his first word. (If he hasn’t already. We’re still unsure whether he understands that it means something when he says, “hi”.)

In his first few months, the minutes felt like hours, the hours, like days. When people say that they grow up so fast, they fail to mention that you have to get past those first few months first. At that time, we wanted nothing more than for our son to be older. We were insecure, sleep deprived and we felt panicked. Also, he cried. A lot.

I don’t know if it’s the hormones or if it’s a result of feeling the weight of an immense responsibility coupled with new parent vulnerability, but hearing your newborn cry has the effect of being stabbed in the stomach with a needle filled with parasitic worms. It hurts and then it feels like something is swimming in your belly. All you can think about is making it stop, immediately.

Something else people will rarely admit. Newborns are an immense amount of work for very little return. Suddenly, you are committed to giving conscious attention every second to a project that will not let you sleep nor eat and you can’t back down. Your interactions with the baby are routine. You feed him, change his diaper, and try desperately to calm the crying hoping that he’ll finally sleep. You start to wonder, when will he reach out for me? When can we go to the park? When will he smile?

Then, sometime in that first few months, he smiles. At first, you’re not sure if it’s real or just gas, but then he flashes a big one. And then he giggles. After months of feeling down, you’re on a high. But then he wakes every hour that night and you want to cry again. So it goes.

Now that Siddhartha is almost nine months old, I’m surprised by how fast we got here. There are still rough times: food sensitivity is still a problem, his naps are mostly 20 minute cat naps, it’s takes some effort to get him to sleep (a lot for anyone except me…and sometimes a lot for me too), and I’ve mostly given up the idea of anyone but me getting him to sleep at night. But he’s fun! He’s the smiliest kid I know and every week he’s doing some exciting new thing like throwing a ball or pointing at things.

These days we’re basking in the light rather than desperately searching for it in a dark tunnel and I’m starting to see how watching my son grow could be bittersweet. He needs me more than anyone ever has and it’s exhausting, but on the days when it’s gets to be too much I try to remind myself that one day he won’t want to hang out with his mom much. All too soon, he’ll stop reaching out for me and falling asleep in my arms. Tiring as it may be, I’m going to soak it up while I can, before I blink and my nine-month-old is eighteen.

When did your kids begin to want to play with their friends more than with you and how did you handle it? Do you have any strategies for making the most out of his or her early years without getting burned out?