March Blog Carnival

Theme: Balance

Submission Due Date: February 24th, 2012

How to submit a blog: Just send me a link to your blog, along with your name, your blog’s name, and a short description of your written piece and how it pertains to the theme. Use our Contact Form to submit the info.  Put “Blog Carnival” in the subject line. Alternatively, if you happen to  know me on Facebook, you can just send me an message through Facebook with that same information.

Some ideas for writing, in case you are stumped:

• How do you balance the needs of all the personalities in your family?
• Finding a balance between facilitation (giving learning ideas, strewing, etc.) and backing off and letting them be.
• Balancing your needs with the rest of the family”s needs. How do you find time to recharge?
• Public/Private balance: Maintaining an unschooling mindset in a mainstream world (or around less supportive/less understanding family).

[Photo credit: David Feltkamp]

But you know what is different this time around?  My little sister is going through some of the same things right along with me. She had her baby just a few weeks before Baby O.

Here’s how a typical phone call with sis tends to start:

Me: Hey. You busy?

Sis: No. Just sitting here nursing.

Me: Hey – Guess what I’m doing?

Sis: Nursing?

Me: Yup. How’d you guess?

It can be so reassuring to know that someone else is going through the same things you are going through. Sis may be living all the way in New York while I sit here in Texas, but we both sit on our couch every day, gazing at our baby’s face and gritting our teeth while we look at the dust-bunnies roll like tumbleweeds across the floor, knowing that there isn’t a chance in hell that they will be cleaned up anytime soon.  We are both putting our babies ahead of our disheveled homes.

Just the other day I had to call Sis to vent about how people keep pointing out the spit-up that continually appears on my shirt or on Baby O’s mouth/lips/neck-folds/shirt. I mean, how dare they point out the unavoidable obvious, like I should be doing something about it. I’ve somewhat come to terms with the way I look and smell, but the masses haven’t.  You know who else understands this? Sis does. I love that. Then we talked about how, no matter how much we try, we can’t seem to get the spit up to land on the burp rag. Our babies seem to almost always aim elsewhere. On the arm, down the sleeve, on the neck, and the worst – between the boobs! Who else can you call, other than your sister, to vent about cold clammy baby vomit dribbling down your chest?

We are helping each other in other ways, too. Since I’m nursing my 4th and she is nursing for the first time, I’ve been putting my counseling skills to use with some breastfeeding assistance. I’m not sure if I’m always helping, but I’m trying my best. What she probably doesn’t know is how she is helping me. This is my fourth child and I think if I didn’t pay attention, I just might get lost in the stress of dealing with a household where the needs of 4 demanding children are constantly battling with my sanity. Talking to my sister as she nurses her little one reminds me that it’s OK to occasionally sit and focus on Baby O without guilt, because every baby is a new relationship. I’m falling in love once again, much like the first time, and nourishing that relationship in these early days of spit-up and sleeplessness is important and necessary.

Thank goodness for sisters.

[Thanks to John 'K' for the above photo.]

So the other night I was sitting around with DDalmost-6 and we were talking about what we might name the baby. DD started suggesting the most wonderful, magical, and sometimes hilarious names. I started writing them all down. For DD, this was about figuring about the best names for the baby. For me, it was about reveling in her mind and her world. Reading over the names again, it brings a smile to my face to imagine how her imagination works. It makes me happy to see that her world is so filled with joy.

Here’s what we came up with: Fairy Princess, Purple Petunia, Tinkerbelle, Videa, Fishy, Magic Wand, Diamond Star, Star, Pumpkin, Mulan, Rainbow, Ornament, Christmas Tree, Tulip, Tree, Pink Tulip, Glitter, Rainbow Sparkles, Moon, Waves, Sparkle Princess, Vine, Plant, Rain, Rain Cloud, Rain Rain Go Away, Rabbit, Ocean Leaf, Booger, Ocean, Dark Star, Ocean Boat, Pretty Clover, Rainbow Star, Rainbow Heart, Starlight Starbright, Autumn Rain, Spring, Fall, Valentines Heart, Butterfly, Sunshine Flower, Blue Butterfly, Rainbow Diamond, Jingle Heart, Jingle Song.

When I suggest “Soda” (a la Seinfeld), DD replied, “Well, that’s kinda crazy food. You’d eat up your name!” Evidently “Soda” is just too crazy for a girl that thinks “Rain Rain Go Away” is a great name.

We decided on a few vetoed names: Dracula, Drac, Blood, Vampire Blood.

At the tail end of the brainstorming session, DS8 came in to suggest a few: Green Vine, Belly Big, Naked Butt. Another window on another kid’s mind. Sweet.

I’m kind of partial to Belly Big. I’m thinking about how this time is probably going to be my last time with a belly quite so big. I’m looking forward to that.

[Photo Credit: miri695]

This is sort of a long-overdue update post. The last nine months seem like they’ve been some of the longest of my life, and not a lot (any?!) blogging got done. I’ll make this post a sort of summary, and see where it goes. Perhaps more detailed posts will follow…

Update #1

We left Costa Rica!  Holy crap, right? Back to the good old USofA. Something I never really imagined we would do quite so soon. We spent about 14 months in Costa Rica. Some of it we loved. Some of it we hated. All of it was very enlightening in many different ways. I haven’t blogged all that much about why we left Costa Rica and why we came back to New York, but that is a post in itself. The memories were much too raw for a very long time, so I put off writing about it and I tried to let my heart settle down and decompress. We came back to New York last May, and it’s taken almost this long to gain some perspective. Stay tuned for more on this topic.

Update #2

We just arrived in Austin Texas. And boy was it a long road to get here! Our whole family endured life in a really bad living situation. I was mistreated, my husband was mistreated, we’ve been a bit poor of money, and we lived an isolating existence for 8 months. And I thought Costa Rica was isolating! Ha! So we took a big ole road trip from New York to Texas. Interesting stuff. Stay tuned for my posts on how this Yankee is adjusting to life south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Update #3

I am a feminist.

What? You already knew that, say you? Well, here I am telling you that if it is possible to be a feminist by degree, I’ve increased my feminist identification by at least 1000%. That’s what happens when you escape a situation where  a man threatens your right to speak and uses the police to threaten you, simply because you are a woman. That’s what happens when you live 8 months in a home where you and your daughter are treated with less respect than any man in the house. It shouldn’t have taken that much to make me angry, but it did. And my story is nothing compared with what so many women face every day. I know that, and I wish I had gotten angry sooner. More details in later posts. [Note: none of these crimes were perpetrated by my always loving husband, co-blogger here. He is always my biggest lover, friend, and support!]

Update #4

I’m trying my hand at writing. Not just blogs, but fiction. And not just fiction. Romantic fiction. Not just romantic fiction, but erotic romance. Are you figgeting in your seats right about now? Well, you should be! This is hot stuff, baby. Hot.

But seriously, I think the seed for this endeavor was planted in Costa Rica, when we met a lovely friend Judy Griffith Gill, who told me a little about how she became a romance writer. I even read one of her excellent books while we stayed at her house. I don’t generally read romances. I’ve been mostly a non-fiction sort of gal for the last few years. Then, a few weeks after we came back to New York I slept at my older sister’s house and happened to grab a romance that she had sitting on her shelf. It really pulled me in, and for some reason it made me want to write. I’ve had the urge to write before, but never this strongly. And a story practically popped right into my head.

For the last 6 months I’ve been reading every romance I can get my hands on. All sorts of romance. Regency, contemporary, paranormal, virgins, babies, all sorts of types! Partly I was just researching the genres to see where my story would fit. I was also seeing what kinds of romance I actually enjoy reading and considering what kinds I would like to write. I’ve been reading hundred and hundreds of romances for months, and I’ve really enjoyed it.  There are a few genres that I most want to explore. Erotic romance, for one. I like plenty of sex, and I don’t like too many euphemisms. Give it to me straight any day! I’m also a little shocked that I like werewolves a whole lot. I think I just might do a werewolf story next. It’s kind of strange because I always saw werewolves as more of my husband’s interest. Maybe now that I see the softer side of the werewolf (or is it the harder side?), I like them, too! I’m also interested in contemporary romance.

I’m chipping away at my story whenever I have the time. My laptop died, so it’s been kind of difficult. Hopefully that will be remedied soon. I’ve got 20,000 words down on the first draft so far, and most of the rest of the novel somewhat planned out. I’m using Scrivener for Windows, and I love it. Stay tuned for more details on the writing, and a link to my writing blog as soon as I have it up and ready!

That’s pretty much it for the update. I’m still pursuing childbirth education, and my inspiring husband is working at the same for the dads with his Birth For Men business. It’s slow-going for me, faster for Arp. With Baby B still under the age of 2, I’m having a hard time carving away time to work on my business. It’ll happen eventually, though. I’m sure of it.

[Photo credit: Houstonian]

My current child is 16 months right now. She nurses most nights every 2 hours, in my estimation. I never sleep through nightly nursing sessions, as many nursing mothers can, just because I’m not capable of it. I just can’t sleep through the sessions for some reason. So I’m up over the course of the night A LOT! I am seriously touched out on a regular basis, sometimes to the point that I feel like I might just scream. Seriously. and this is not my only child that has nursed at night regularly. My first nursed every two hours at night until he was 2.5 years old (he spontaneously night-weaned when I was pregnant with number 2). and my second child nursed at night regularly until she was 4.

The most important things I’ve done to make the nights tolerable are this:

1. I make sure I’m physically in bed at night, trying to sleep, for at least 10 hours.
2. My husband is required to get up at least one hour earlier than me and take the baby out of the bed and out of the room to give me a break.

#1 is important because I have to get around 7.5-8 hours of sleep in order to be a happy mom. So if I’m up all night nursing, I have to be in bed for much longer than those 8 hours. So if that means I have to go to bed at 8 or 9 pm, I do it. For me, I’m willing to skip interacting with the husband in the evening, or watching TV, or whatever. Sleep is more important to me. If the baby isn’t ready to sleep when I go to bed, my husband hangs out with her and the other kids while I get a head start on sleep. He knows to bring the baby in when she is *really tired and ready to nurse* (sometimes he rushes it when she just starts to get cranky, and then I have to lecture him a bit!).

#2 is sooooo important because I’m usually totally touched out by the end of the night, and I absolutely need that hour or so totally alone in bed to recharge. It really helps me so much. When my husband takes the baby out of bed in morning, he sometimes just sits with the sleeping baby on his chest in front of his laptop. Or if the baby wakes up, he feeds her breakfast and reads to her and stuff.

Here’s another thing I’ve done to cope: I’ve adjusted my expectations. I know this sounds kind of simplistic, but bear with me. There were some nights when all I could think about was getting the baby detached from my breast so that I could roll over and sleep without touching her. By the end of the night, I’d spent most of the night trying to detach and feeling stressed and miserable when it didn’t work for at least half of the nursing sessions. Plus, I was exhausted and angry about it. It was bad. Then, one night, I sort of went into it thinking that I was going to make the best of it, making sure I had a really comfortable pillow for my lower back, and just trying to relax and sleep and get comfortable in the nursing position. After those nights, even if I spent equal times nursing, I realized I felt better. I didn’t realize the difference at first, until I talked about it with my husband. and then it was like, “Eureka!” So now I try to go into the night just figuring that I’m going to be attached to the baby most of the time. Not that I don’t often try to detach. But I try not to get all caught up in focusing on getting away from her. And it makes me feel so much better when morning comes. If I’ve managed to have a few hours of independent sleep, that an extra bit of coolness. If I’ve spent most of the night with a baby attached to my breast, that’s OK, too, because I didn’t set myself up for failure in the beginning.

One last coping strategy that comes to mind: Use childbirth coping strategies to get yourself by in the most stressful moments. I was reminded to use the childbirth strategies when my first was getting older, and he was sort of giving me “the willies” when we nursed (people who have nursed older children sometimes have this toe-curling sensation than can really bug you.) A fantastic unschooling parent suggested that I use coping strategies to get through the rough patches. Now I use the coping strategies when I feel touched out and really want to run away. My favorite coping strategies are listed in Birthing from Within: An Extra-Ordinary Guide to Childbirth Preparation .  They have all sorts of visualization strategies that have really worked for me. My favorites are “spiraling” and “Quaker listening”. You can use these visualizations to either distract yourself from freaking out, or you can use these things to relax. It’s really similar to childbirth in a way. In labor, you have this pain sensation. So you need to focus on other things to reduce the pain. With being touched out, the replacement for pain is the sensation of this nursling who is nursing and being in constant contact with you. We love our kids, but sometimes the sensations just become too much for us (just like in birth). There is one visualization that involves spiraling smoke from your core, which can help you to relax and fall back asleep at the same time.

I love that birth metaphor. Just like we go through the pain (and hopefully, pleasure) of birth for our babies, we sometimes have to go through some more stressful things in meeting their needs in the early years. It’s also  important to remember that we often need a partner’s support in breastfeeding,  just like we need our partner’s support during labor and birth. [This is, of course, if we have a partner in our bedroom at night. This may be more difficult for single parents!] Our partners may have no idea what “being touched out” feels like, as they may have had no idea what giving birth is like. But partners can still try to understand and help us through it. If we explain that the work of breastfeeding is just a continuation of the work of labor and birth, perhaps the partners will feel more able to give us the help we need to cope with night nursing.

[Photo credit: Raphael Goetter]