Arwen/Elizabeth

Camilla Confesses

We haven't had a video post in a while.  I think it's time.

It's a testament to how much I love you all that I deliberately did not edit out the really weird shot of me that gets captured at the end.  I want you to feel good about any less-than-flattering pictures of yourselves that might be out there.

Please don't mention how much my child needs a bath.  I already know about it.  And I promise I will bathe her sometime soon.  Maybe after the grumps are over.  I'm pretty sure what's causing them: tooth number six, which is in that awful halfway-through-the-gums stage.  Excruciating, for all three of us.

If I do say so myself (and shouldn't), she's still darn cute though.

Things I've Developed as a Result of Being a Parent (Some More Desirable Than Others)

1.  A previously unparalleled ability to Hold It.  We were running a quick errand at the grocery store this morning and I discovered that nature was calling, hard.  The bathrooms at this store are gross, so I rushed through the rest of the errand and was home within ten minutes.  Whereupon I proceeded to unload the car, shut the windows and turn on the air conditioning, and wash my hands.  I was heading downstairs to switch a load of laundry before it occurred to me that I was uncomfortable, and had rushed home from the store for a very particular reason...  I'm so used to tending to Camilla's needs first that I often forget about my own, even the most basic.

2.  Equanimity in the face of another person's most unappetizing bodily fluids.  A few weeks ago Milla was sitting on my lap when she starting making this weird hacking noise, then gagged and threw up all over my arm, my pants, and my parents' carpet.  My first reaction was alarm: what was choking her?  That resolved, my second thought was for the carpet, which needed a rag and some baking soda, pronto.  Only then did it occur to me that my own person was covered with vomit.  I assure you that a year ago, my priorities would not have stood in that order.

3.  A better relationship with my body. I've always had a pretty good relationship with my body, having been blessed with a healthy group of friends during my adolescence and a amazing husband.  (One time he heard some statistics on the radio about the prevalence of eating disorders and was horrified - he considers it his personal mission to ensure that I, along with any daughters we have, do not fall prey to our society's toxic strain of thinking that makes eating disorders so common.)  (No, I'm sorry, you can't have him.) 

Our period of subfertility damaged my relationship with my body.  My healthy body image was eclipsed by the fact that I had lost trust in my body to do what it was supposed to do.  The blessing of my pregnancy was a first step toward restoring that trust, my successful (if uncomfortable) gestating was a second, but it wasn't until I got through the pain of labor and pushed that baby out that I felt like my body "had my back" again.  (Heh.)  I'd been unsure I'd even be able to get through labor, to manage that horrific-sounding feat of helping another person travel from the inside of my body to the outside of it.  When it worked, I was amazed and grateful and suddenly trusted my body in a way I'd never done before.  And being able to rise to the physical challenges of motherhood, most notably finding the strength to keep pulling myself out of bed and doing what needs to be done no matter how exhausted my body might feel, has helped me even more. 

4.  A tendency to grind my teeth.  I was so nauseated during my pregnancy that I canceled my routine dentail cleaning, and since I didn't go I didn't schedule the next one, and then I had a baby, and with one thing and another I didn't go to the dentist for a year and a half.  I have very cavity-prone teeth, and they'd been hurting me for a while by the time I managed to make an appointment and get there, so I was expecting to hear that my teeth were full of holes.  But no - they were not holey, they were simply disappearing, due to the fact that I'd apparently been grinding them against each other constantly. 

I blame motherhood, definitely.  I think I'm a fairly confident parent, but there are still so many things to stress out about, from day one's Is she latching correctly? to today's Oh no she can't be waking up from her nap already, she's not going to sleep AT ALL tonight!  I carry my tension in my jaw, and apparently my jaw had been happily transferring that tension to my teeth.  So now during the nighttime I wear a very attractive bite splint.  It is not exactly the kind of thing that reminds my husband why he married me but on the other hand, my teeth don't hurt anymore.  That's life: constant give and take.

5.  A constant temptation to bolt my food.  Anyone with a fussy newborn has been there: either the baby is sleeping, or he's being held and comforted by you, or he's crying.  When Milla was younger Bryan and I had to take shifts eating dinner if she happened to be awake when it was ready, and I think that built the bad habit in me of trying to shove my food down as quickly as possible so that I could give him a chance to eat.  Now I find that if I don't watch myself, I'm always the first one finished with my meal even in relaxed settings.  It's certainly not necessary anymore, I just can't break the habit.

6.  New confidence in my own abilities.  I always did pretty well academically, so in high school and college I felt good about myself and what I could accomplish.  Following graduation, I took a job that was both a dysfunctional working environment and a bad fit for me personally.  I was already borderline depressed, and the situation fed and was fed by my depression, so that by the time I quit about a year before Camilla was born, I was so down on myself and my abilities that I wouldn't have trusted myself to write a one-page report on the complicated process of counting to ten. 

Having this baby and being her mother has changed that.  I'm not sure what else I may or may not be cut out for - and maybe I'll find out in the future - but I do know that I can do this.  I can care for Camilla and nurture her, and while there are a lot of good moms out there, I know I am the best mother for this particular child.  That is a remarkably heartening thought.

What about you?  What has parenthood given you?

Blushing with Shame at My Former Arrogance

I have a real confession to make, something I'm actually ashamed to admit: I used to be one of those people, the ones who are the bane of my existence now that I'm a parent myself.

I used to hear about a ten-month-old still sleeping in her parents' bed and secretly be horrified that they were spoiling her in that way, and besides, wasn't having a baby in their bed bad for their marriage, and why didn't they just make the kid sleep in her own bed?  I used to see a baby crying in the grocery store and wonder what was wrong with the parents that they couldn't keep an infant happy.  I used to think slings looked uncomfortable and must certainly be unnecessary, because didn't they make car seats that you could use to carry your baby around?  I thought nursing a toddler was a sort of weird and crunchy thing to do, and I would certainly never be attempting that craziness. 

Then I met the Internet, and did a lot of reading, and realized that I'd been both nutty and judgmental, and adjusted my thinking.  I dropped the judgmental, but retained some of the nutty, apparently, because I thought that if I did decide to co-sleep, or use a sling, or nurse extendedly, it would be for philosophical reasons.  Surely I would have a perfect baby who would sleep beautifully in a crib, never cry and play happily in the car seat for hours, and wean herself obligingly the moment I decided nursing was cramping my style.

Ahem.  I don't believe in karma, and I'm not superstitious, but dang.  Our ten-month-old has slept in our bed her whole life because from the very beginning we could not get her to sleep anywhere else.  When she was younger she cried where, when, and as loudly as she pleased, and we literally could not have survived without the sling.  And I've got no time line at all for weaning, because I've got no idea when the princess will decide that the idea of anything less than constant access to mama-provided snacks is not an threat to her sovereignty.

This scenario would have horrified me in my pre-baby days, and yet I'm not at all unsatisfied with it now.  Having a high-needs baby has been a blessing to me in ways I couldn't have anticipated - there are worse things than inconvenience and exhaustion, it turns out - but that's a post for another day.  My point today is something entirely different.

Parenting choices are one of the most potentially inflammatory subjects in existence: I've rarely seen hackles raised higher than in debates on some of the parenting sites I read.  And yet if you talk to any mother in a non-debate setting, you'll discover that no matter how strong her convictions, she's got doubts about the choices she's making and the way she's raising her kids.  Being a parent is such a huge job that it can be terrifying to think about all the ways it's possible to mess it up.

And you know what?  It really is possible to mess it up.  There are a lot of messed-up people out there, and many of those people's parents played a big role in the messing.  But I'm guessing said messing was not a result of those parents' choices regarding sleeping arrangements, food, or transport for their kids.  Real neglect and abuse are not being done by people who are agonizing over weaning or sleep training or the daunting task of finding a carrier in which the baby will be happy. 

"Do what works for your family" sounded like relativist, cliched drivel to me in my pre-motherhood days.  But I've learned since getting on the ride myself that it's true, in that annoying way cliches have of proving themselves true just when you'd like to discount them because of their cliche-ness.  Short of actual neglect or abuse, doing what works for your family is a remarkably good solution.  I'm a happier person since I realized this and embraced it.  And if people sometimes say, "how will she ever learn to self-soothe?" or "isn't that uncomfortable?" or "is she still nursing?" - I can remind myself that a younger, childless version of me would have said the same thing, and I can give them the benefit of the doubt, shake it off, and keep on keeping on.

With what works best for us, naturally.

Just to Prove This Blog Is Not Yet Actually Defunct

I've recently learned that it's considered rude to apologize for not posting on one's blog; you are instead supposed to act humbly as if you believe that no one cares a whit if you post.  I'm not sure how I feel about this; I blog to share my life with other people and have a share in theirs, so pretending that we don't really give a flying whatever about each other seems odd.  However, now that I've learned of the rule I'm loath to openly defy it and give the appearance of rudeness, thereby causing people to think my mama didn't raise me right, when she most certainly did.  So apologizing for not posting is out.  On the other hand, once I've gone for nearly two weeks without posting, beginning a new post without an apology feels weird and wrong, like entering a room while speaking the middle of a sentence.  Result: impasse.

Happily, Tracy has saved me from the to-apologize-or-not dilemma by asking if I am okay.  I can now post without giving anyone cause to cast aspersions on my parents for raising me to be A) conceited or B) rude; I am merely answering the question of a friend.  I must post!  I have no choice!  Neat, huh?

There are roughly one million things I've not mentioned here that have happened fairly recently.  Due to the baby's unexpected and INSANE state of awakefulness between three o'clock and six o'clock this morning, I have lost the brain power to give any sort of organization or coherency to my listing of these things.  In random order:

1.  Camilla learned how to crawl.  This happened exactly one month ago yesterday, when we were up north at Bryan's parents' condo.  (Also, incidentally, the place where Daniel first crawled.)  She'd been working on it for a while, flailing on her stomach and scooting backward into walls and furniture, but on that particular morning we cleared a space for her, put Bryan's watch (shiny! also waterproof!) on the floor a few feet from her, and watched as she hesitantly coordinated the movements to get herself over to it.  A month later she is a master crawler, and now pulls herself up on things as well, although she hasn't figured out how to sit back down gracefully and gets unhappy every time she plops awkwardly onto her bottom. 

The bottom in question

We are currently conducting an experiment on exactly how little babyproofing we can get away with and still have A) a living child, and B) an intact house when Milla starts kindergarten.

2.  I have figured out how to nurse Camilla in the car without pulling over and taking her out of her car seat.  Yes, that's right, I can now nurse her while she is firmly buckled in and I am also buckled in, albeit a little less firmly because the act requires some terrific torso twisting.  (It goes without saying that I can only do this if Bryan is driving and I'm sitting in the back seat of the car; if I ever figure out how to nurse from the driver's seat I will be applying for a Nobel Prize.)  I'm not sure why - the achievement not being particularly notable - but I am extremely proud of this.  Giving birth, eh.  Keeping a child alive for almost ten months, eh.  But nursing in transit?  I'm ready to give myself a medal.  Parenthood is weird.


Also weird is the fact that we appear to have spawned a lizard child

3.  My brother is home from the Coast Guard!  After seven months in California learning to be an electronic technician, he's got a few weeks of leave before he leaves for his station in the far north.  It's great having him here, and we've been getting in as much family time as possible.  (Not that I'm making excuses - just kidding, I totally am - but this has contributed greatly to my lack of posting.)  I have the best family ever.

Best and goofiest

4.  I finished Harry Potter!  It took me about three weeks to read all seven books, and I was in agonies waiting to read the last one, especially after it arrived in the mail.  But I'm so glad I read them as a set; I think I got a lot more out of it that way.  I loved the ending; I thought the plotting was brilliant and there were just enough surprises.  I really liked CJ's post on it, and this review by Orson Scott Card is awesome too.

Maybe now that she's done with those books, my mother will start paying attention to me again

5.  After nine months of feeling pretty good about how much sleep we were getting around here, I've finally hit a breaking point.  I've never expected the girl to sleep twelve consecutive hours per night - and still don't anticipate that she will for many months - but the number of night wakings seems to be increasing rather than decreasing, lately.  I can handle three or four or even five, but eight or ten has me really dragging the next day.  So we're working on it.  I've read The No-Cry Sleep Solution and we're using some of Pantley's ideas and some of our own to gently encourage Camilla to sleep for longer stretches without needing to nurse back to sleep every time she wakes.  We'll see how it works.  We feel pretty strongly that the cry-it-out method and those kinds of "sleep training" are not for us, so I'm really hoping we're successful because this is kind of our only option.  At any rate, she won't always be a baby and she will eventually sleep through the night, so no matter how rough this is, it's not permanent.  Right?

If worst comes to worst, I'm planning to petition Bryan to become a full-time baby mattress

I'd love to hear about any get-the-baby-to-sleep ideas that worked for your family.

This will become an endless entry if I don't watch out.  More later, I promise.  (Uh, not that you care.  I'm not by any means suggesting that you care.)

You should care that my parents dress me like a street urchin, though.  Sheesh.