First of all, before I complain, I shall post a really, really ridiculously cute picture of my baby.
I just want to get some worries out on paper so that I can stop churning them around in my mind:
I think I must produce bad milk. Soren seems to have 5 stomachaches a day. Also, he spits up a lot. I occasionally think about switching to formula so that I won't poison him anymore with my horrible poisonous breastmilk.
I let Soren cry himself to sleep tonight. He only cried for 20 minutes, but it was a very long 20 minutes and I felt like a horrible louse. But he seems to have discovered recently that he gets to stay up later if he cries when I put him in his bed. And that's no good. I gave him a massage, I played him Enya, I read him a story, I swaddled him, I rocked him, and I put him in bed. And then he cried. And I let him. This doesn't make me a bad mother, does it? This won't cause him permanent psychological damage, will it? I'm also planning on letting him cry if he wakes up in the middle of the night. The child weighs 20 pounds. Surely he can sleep for twelve hours? Or will he waste away? Will he fail to thrive? Will our mother-son bond be broken forever?
Along these lines, my little guy has been quite cranky as of late. If things don't go JUST HIS WAY, he lets me know. Loudly and with passion. Many times a day. He's a little young for the terrible 2s, but sometimes I feel like I'm living with an onery little preschooler. And I worry and worry. I worry that I'm not filling his needs; I worry that I'll be encouraging whining if I do whatever I can to make him stop crying. I wonder if he needs to be held more often; I contemplate the possibility that he needs more opportunity for independent play. I think perhaps he's understimulated; I wonder if I've overstimulated him.
And now, as I type, an hour after he finally stopped crying and went to sleep, my baby is crying again. And now I'm faced with the awful dilemma: To go comfort him? Or make him go to sleep by himself? He sounds so sad. And I wonder if something's hurting, or if he's got a dirty diaper, or if he's terribly hungry. Maybe I should go feed him.
OK, I'm back. I lifted my baby out of his crib and kissed his salty tear-stained cheeks and smelled his beautiful baby smell and nursed him until he was limp in my arms. There's a red scratch on his cheek that he must have inflicted himself while flailing his arms around. (It's really difficult to clip his nails, so they become clawlike at times.) Now I feel really awful. I just don't think I have the stomach for this if there are other alternatives. Perhaps I will go to Amazon.com and order "The No Cry Sleep Solution."
Nobody ever told me how hard being a mom would be. Probably because it is impossible to express in a way that an inexperienced person would understand. Or maybe it's just me. Maybe it's just me that finds it to be the most excruciatingly difficult thing I have ever done in my life. Give me 48 hours of labor any old day. That's a cakewalk compared to being a 24/7 Mom. Here I am, the owner of a hand the rocks the cradle and therefore the world, and I feel so inadequate to the task. This is part of the reason I hide in an office for several hours of a week. I'm good at organizing and counting and compartmentalizing. It's very straightforward. Nobody's emotional health hangs on the decisions I make at work. I just keep the books and do a darn good job at it. It's a heady release from my other job, my real job, the one in which there are no straight answers, from which there are no real breaks, and from which spring very real, perhaps even eternal, consequences.
6 comments:
Rachel, you are a great mother! Don't get discouraged.
As for your milk, you could try eliminating things from your diet to see if it helps Soren. I can't eat legumes or Daniel goes nuts the next day. Other common culprits are cow's milk, broccoli, onion, garlic, cabbage, cucumbers, peppers, and chocolate.
And the crying to sleep thing - I hear you. I just went through this with Dan-o. I even talked to my pediatrician about it this week. He says that at this age they should be going to sleep on their own and sleeping through the night. It's ok to let them cry themselves to sleep and they won't think any less of you as a mother. When he's tired but not exhausted start your bedtime routine (bath, massage, stories - whatever you choose that to be) and get him in bed before he's asleep. Yes, the first couple of nights he will scream bloody murder and you will feel terrible. If you want to, go in and comfort him every 10-15 minutes with just your voice. Usually touching him, picking him up, etc. will make it harder for him to fall asleep. If he wakes up in the middle of the night don't pick him up - just talk to him if you need to comfort him. I know it's hard, you will feel like an abusive mother. Just keep telling yourself that this is for his own good, because it really is. The more consistent you are with this, the quicker he'll get it. I've done this with all three of my boys and in less than a week they have all figured things out. It's so great to but Daniel in his crib, have him flash me a big grin, roll over, and go to sleep sans crying.
I bet you weren't expecting all this unsolicited advice! Sorry, I can't help myself. Good luck with your little guy!
I feel you!
I decided I could be a better mother if i slept at night, so I let Reub cry for a week. Then, like a miracle he just wimpers now, and goes back to sleep. I don't know that I am better mother, but I'm not as exhausted. My parents didn't make me sleep in my own bed, and made sure I was alseep before they put me down, and I have to be read to in order to fall asleep... to this day. Thats the thing with mothering, both choices are wrong... I have to decide which consequences I want my son to live with.
As for the weening thing... he's a year and a half and I can't get him to stop lifting up my shirt.
I agree with your other friends-- it sucks, but it'll be over soon if you don't give in, and it'll be SO WORTH IT! The thing about motherhood is, it's impossible not to second guess nearly every decision you make.
Right now we're trying to get Evie to sleep in a big girl bed. We're doing it gradually, inching out the door a little quicker each time, but she still cries and hates it. The thing is, though, she's made a TON of progress, so even though this week it's easier to lay by her like she wants us to until she falls asleep, if we don't give in, next week she'll be a much lower maintenance little girl, and with another baby coming any day now, that's a really good thing.
Don't think you're a bad mom. Babies cry. We let Andrew cry a lot as a baby, and I'm pretty sure even at three he doesn't remember it.
Dear Rachel,
You are whiz-bango on target! Sometimes my mind feels like a cyclone, with questions going round and round and round at a thousand miles an hour and I never come up with answers, just keep cycling. Why are there so many women like that? Is it our culture? Does our society make us question ourselves too much? I think of Abe (and JAcob) who just calmly do their own thing without stopping to question the ethics or long-term consequences....and the kids sleep.
All I can say is, God sure steps in. I would have been hash by now without him. I would have been mush. And I'm not even that good about asking for his help.
Oh, you beautiful women! Thanks for your words of wisdom and support. It's nice to get advice from real moms who can actually remember how they've dealt with these issues.
(My mom and sister both claim that they were so sleep-deprived during those years they can't remember what they did.) I have now been given the courage and strength to march onward and upward along the valley of the shadow of crying it out.
I am not a mother, but I think you are a really good one. When you were going to the bathroom at Ming's, Loriann and I were discussing your talent for mothering...
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