The Mommy Moment

I've been planning to write this post for awhile but of course mommy life delays occurred.  One of them being Elizabeth's 2nd birthday party.  Oh well. 

So I want to begin by admitting that I never really felt like "a mommy".   When I was pregnant, I just felt like me but pregnant.  When I gave birth and then held this tiny precious baby; I just felt like me holding a baby. I've even had a lady at work ask me if I had any baby wipes because she knows that I have a small child and she thought I'd have some in my purse.  But of course I didn't.  I didn't even up-grade to a bigger purse for the longest time.  I kept a purse that I used day to day for work and then when I went anywhere with the baby I'd take her diaper bag too. 

Don't get me wrong; I mean I've felt like "Mommy" when Elizabeth's pulling on my leg yelling it over and over while I did the dishes but I didn't feel like a mommy...that is until I had the mommy moment. 

It came when I was at work one day last month.  I get to my desk and I open my purse to get something out and what did I find, actually what 2 surprise things did I find... First was her little Dora the Explorer snack trap.  At some point I'd taken it from her diaper bag and put it in my purse then I forgot to take it out.  No big deal; it made a good late afternoon work snack.

But then the second thing I found was the clincher. It was a phone.  Not my cell phone but the actual house phone handset!  Chris had it with him in the front yard while he was raking and when I got home with the baby I picked it up, stuffed it in my purse with the snack trap and took all the bags inside.  Then the regular dinnertime, bath time, bedtime happenings unfolded and I never checked back to take everything out.  Chris even asked me where the phone went that night and I had assumed that Elizabeth took it to play with and it was stuck in the couch cushions.

It was at that moment standing at my desk, when I really felt like, "whoa, I have turned into a real mommy."  I have just experienced the rushed, disorganized, scattered-brained mommy haze that went beyond finding a couple of stray crayons at the bottom of my purse from dinner at a restaurant. 

Wow. I really am a full fledged M-O-M-M-Y.  Now when do I get the eyes in the back of my head?

Short Days and Even Shorter Years

I don't know if it's just the combination of her 2nd birthday coming up, Mother's Day, the birth of my new tiny little nephew, or what it is that's been causing the perfect storm of my emotional Empty Nest Blues but whatever it is has really got me projecting into the future.  It doesn't help that every time the darn Subaru commercial comes on where the dad is talking to the little girl version of his daughter as she prepares to drive on her own, my parental angst is fueled. How do people with older school age children do it?  How do the parents sending their kids off to college do it?  How did my own parents do it sending me off to the Army?  Then to Germany?  

I look at Elizabeth today and it already feels like its been too fast.  When did she learn to put her own shoes on?  And on the right feet never the less?!  She's brushing her own teeth and even spitting the water out now.  She's picking words so fast we can't even keep track.  My mom, dad, and husband have all asked, "Did you teach her to say that?"  And we are all surprised that none of us specifically taught it to her but she just picked it up.  Like a sponge they say but it's mind blowing when you see it day by day.  She's probably saying 3-7 new words a day if we could actually keep notice.  Last week she was saying white tail deer after watching Diego. Then it was Owl, next day it was Giraffe, then Friday she was saying shrimp and Slinky.  Saturday she was saying circle, square, and triangle.  Sunday she was saying Dillon, the name of her little friend that came over to play. Today it was "cow neuw" (sticky rice in Thai) and Umi Zoomi after the TV show (I admit we aren't one of those no TV for the baby kind of families. But she's really learn a lot from her programs and it shows).  

It starts with the talking then next she'll be driving away in the Subaru.  I'm not ready!!!  I don't think I'll ever be ready.  She's my baby and while I'm proud that she's learning to do all these things herself (I don't think I'll be sad to see her use the potty by herself though) it hastens her that much closer to not wanting the snuggles or tickles.  To some day going in her room and just shutting the door behind her.  I put her folded clothes away in her dresser and saw things that don't fit her anymore and had to take them out for the 'to be put way' bag and I can't believe that I just did that with a bunch of stuff a few months ago.  This sounds bad but I look at other people with kids older than Elizabeth and think, "Man, that sucks.  I don't want my baby getting that big some day."  

Alas, the relentless march of time will forever push on, no matter how much we hate for it to.  Usually, people feel that way about themselves aging but I wish my Elizababy could stay just that.  This is the perfect age is what I've been told recently.  So then how do I freeze time? Or slow it down?  How do I make these days, these frustrating, amazing, funny, wonderful days last forever?  All I can do is remind myself to enjoy them now to the fullest instead of lament over the future and miss them completely.  Oh, here's to the beautiful Elizababy days, as fleeting as they may be.  

To all the mothers out there that keep going and do their best - you're amazing.  Happy Mother's Day.

March 16-18: comes in like a Lion and goes out like a Lamb

So the weekend started out with another poop watch reaching critical mass.  

I left work on Friday to pick up a particularly fussy Elizabeth who had been holding back from pooping again after 4 days.  Now we'd been upping her veggie intake (crazy baby actually likes asparagus and broccoli over fruit or cookies) and supplementing with the stool-softener so we thought it was just a matter of time.  But what should have happened naturally days ago had become a battle of wills between Elizabeth and her little body.  I bring her home thinking that Chris would come walking through the door minutes behind me since he said he'd be leaving work shortly after we'd spoken when I left work.

The whole way home she fussed and cried and pretty much from the moment we got in the door she was wailing.  I tried rubbing her tummy, bending her legs, walking her around while her shows were on the TV and still nothing would stop her crying.  This probably went on for a good 25 minutes when I decided to call Chris and see how far out from home he was.  To my horror, he hadn't even left yet!  He'd decided to stay and get some more work done.  Not a call or a message to let me know during the hour it'd taken me over at my parents house and driving back. But that's not the point.  The point was that I knew what I'd have to do. 

So I take the baby upstairs and get the dreaded suppositories and handled it all on my own.  Not an easy task considering that I hadn't been the one to apply it before and when we had used it there had always been an extra set of hands to hold a very unhappy and squirming Elizabeth.  Somehow I got it done with the least amount of tears possible on the part of both mother and child. And  then the waiting game began as I unknowingly hoped that Chris would not hit traffic and be home in record time.  Unfortunately, the start of his weekend was just as...poopy.  He calls me back to say that his car wouldn't start and now he'd be waiting for his co-worker to give him a ride home (complete with a pit stop of his own). 

Everything begins to move along and I've already changed 3 poopy diapers on my own by the time Chris is home.  Saturday, he gets to leave to go deal with his car that ended up being left at work then towed to the shop, while I'm alone with the baby for most of the day.  I'm not sure how it happened but our usually good system of "it's your turn to change her" ends up with me on duty to change all the poo-filled diapers in a row over 3 days even when he was home.  That's Ann 7- Chris 0.  That just reminded me that Elizabeth, age 1 and half, already knows way too much about her own bodily functions. Poor kid.

Back at Christmas, she got a baby doll complete with all the gear from my cousin.  As soon as we opened it up, she was doing all the things we do to take care of her.  She started rocking the baby in her arms and sang to it.  She put the binky in it's mouth. Then she fed it a bottle and gave it drink from the little sippy cup.  She handed it the teddy bear. It was so cute and everyone says that it's because that was all the things we did for her.  Then the next day she proceeded to take off all the baby's clothes and tries to stick things up the little hole in the baby's butt.  This was not something I had wanted her to learn but it was unavoidable.

Just a footnote about the rest of the weekend,  Chris and I were able to make it out to a movie on Sunday night.  We just hustled out the door as Grandma and Grandpa were agreeing to watch the baby.  We had to make it out quickly before we felt bad for leaving her and decided to stay home like so many other weekends before.  (The last movie we saw was Captain America, probably a good 9 months ago now.) As it was Chris heard her calling, "Mommy! Mommy!" when he was walking out the door and almost nixed the movie. Good thing I was already in the car or it would have been over for sure. We ended up seeing Friends with Kids  because that was the only non-horror movie playing within 15 minutes of the time we made it to the theater.  I guess that's our new selection method.  Works for me because there's never a movie that we both really want to see; only ones that either of us will tolerate. It was actually very funny and had Chris laughing out loud.  There were a lot of parts that we could definitely relate to. Let's just say, explosive diarrhea and leave it at that. And so goes the mild end to the chaotic start of our weekend.                                      

Daylight Saving Time

I forgot that it was the start of Daylight Saving Time yesterday.  I hate to "spring forward".  And if I had remembered ahead of time, I would have scheduled a vacation day today. 

It's not just that you lose an hour, you also gain an hour.  How you say? Well, you gain an hour when your child decides that regardless of what it might say on the clock, she is not tired and now stays up for an hour past her bed time.

How are you suppose to get a 1 year old to understand that her bedtime is the same according to the clock even if she's not tired and her body says play more?  If I could have remembered, maybe I would have prepared her throughout the week. But unfortunately, I didn't get the reminder until I logged onto my computer yesterday and it showed 10:30am when all the clocks in my house still said 9:30. 

So we even tried to tire her out throughout the day.  Running around in the yard, going for a walk, pushing her own stroller around.  It seemed like a good plan when she went down for her nap an hour earlier without fuss.  We even tried to feed her dinner and get her bath done 45 minutes earlier. Seemed like it had the potential to work until we tried to put her down for bed and instead she decided it was time to bounce around. 

12:30am I think it was when she finally went down.  Somehow, she had managed to stay up an extra hour longer than when she would have usually gone to sleep. I hate daylight saving time.

Guilt

So I read an article that summarized my back and forth struggle with guilt. Guilt that I work and don't spend as much time with Elizabeth as I'd like. Then guilt that when I am home I'm busy doing things around the house and not playing with her. Followed by guilt that when I do get around to playing with her, that I'm not doing things for me and my health.  To be then followed by guilt when I do something for myself that I haven't been spending quality time with my husband.  (Unfortunately, you see where he falls on the list of priorities. Only by circumstance, honey, not choice.)

Early on when the baby was born, I read something very thoughtful: Guilt results from a choice you made knowing full well the consequences while remorse/regret is from a decision made with the best judgement you had available but no actual knowledge of what the outcome would be.  So I guess for now I don't have remorse.  That's reserved for when Elizabeth becomes a teenager and then I regret what I did and didn't do with her. 

That leaves me with guilt now to guide my choices and sacrifices.  I choose to work (actually it's a necessity so not much of choice there) but how much I work can lead me to guilt.  When I choose to go to a lunch function or get called into a lunch meeting instead of having lunch at my parents house where I can see the baby makes me feel guilty.  When I'm home with her in the evenings and trying to get dinner on the table instead of pick her up when she's tugging on my leg makes me feel guilty.  I even tried putting her in the sling when I washed the dishes but she's getting too big to be toted around.  So I tell myself that these things can't be avoided and that overall it's better in the long run. I don't think I buy that completely though.  

I tell myself that by working I'm making money to support her, get her the things she wants, and save to send her to college.  True it does put food on the table and a roof over our heads but right now the thing she wants is me and my attention.  She wants me to play with her not to make money to buy toys for her to play with.  So much for that justification. And yes I can save up for college but we're probably going to fall at that point where we make just enough to not qualify for financial aid but can't afford to pay for everything on our own so she'll still have loans. Again the guilt. Why is it that you can always make more $$$ but you can't always make more time? You can get $ back but you can never get time back...you might not always lose money but time will always be used up...these are the profound things that should be a daily reminder to me in the choices I make. 

This week, I was feeling particularly tired and went to bed early while Chris stayed up with the baby.  (Extreme guilt on this one because he was trying to catch up on some work at home.) But I also missed a cute display of her making him put each pair of new socks we'd just picked up for her (5 for $5) then taking them for a test run around the room, pulling them off and making him put on the next pair and repeating the whole process.  Guilt Guilt Guilt.  or should I say regret. 

I've been reading a book called Things Good Mothers Know: A Celebration, and in it the author says that in order to be a good mother one needs to be happy with ones self and fulfilled in your own life in order to model that to your child.  And I think about all the articles in Parents magazine that I've read where working moms talk about how they need the work outside of the house to make them feel fulfilled and validated.  That they choose to make sacrifices at home in order to work because it rounds out their life as a mother and wife.  I can only wish I had that opportunity to find out if that was what my sense of wholeness would derive from.  But somehow, reading it is supposed to make me feel like I'm fulfilled already.  How would anyone know that without living the alternative in order to make the comparison because right now I sure as heck don't feel that way.  I just feel full of guilt. 

I feel like I come up short in all areas; mother, wife, worker. They say that you should devote 100% to whatever you are doing at the time and that will mean you have done all you can in that role.  Easier said than done. But I guess that's all you can ever hope to do and some how that will alleviate the guilt.  So for now I choose to skip date night with my husband to spend family time with the baby. I don't like sticking her with the grandparents to sneak in some personal time since I already don't feel like she gets enough of my attention.  In Parents, there was an article by their writer Shawn Bean where he was talking about his daily commute to and from work being his daily personal time just for himself and his thoughts.  Well, it doesn't just apply to dads because in those 15 minutes between dropping off and picking up the baby from work, I can listen to the radio as loud as I want and have the windows open as much as I want.  And in the personal space of my shower I get my me time for now.  Like now, when I wake up before everyone else on a Sunday morning, I have me time.  Guilt free, do what I want, me time.  

Not Enough Time in the Day

So it's funny how for some things there isn't enough time in day but for others I can't figure out how I've managed to eek out enough minutes in a row to get something accomplished. Like for work, I can always find time to stay late, go early or cut lunch short. Also, trying to string some time together to post on Facebook or make a blog entry is a miraculous feat with my baby who insists on keeping teenage hours. 

Then there are the other things that I look at in passing and always think to myself, "That has to get done today..." The laundry, the dishes, the vacuuming, grocery shopping...play with the baby more...bathing.  I have a habit of taking on things that I would like to do but then have trouble figuring out how to balance it with time to do the things listed above.  For example, watching how much $$$ people save on Extreme Couponing has made me try my hand at it.  While I'm not trying to cut my family's grocery budget in half or get hundreds of dollars of product to donate to charity, I am trying to save a little here and there.   My goal is to either get something for free or cash/credit back just once.  That doesn't seem like too lofty of a goal.

But I'm discovering that it is way harder to do than it looks, especially in Los Angeles where there is no double coupons, limited # of online coupons that they'll accept and multiple store fliers to sort through while trying to match up the deals.  I'm finding that I've only been able to use my coupons on a big shopping trip about once a month and that means that a good portion of the coupons I've clipped have expired.  (If anyone is active military and can use them past the exp date, I'll be more than happy to send your way.)

On the other hand, I have been able to find time to work on planning a baby shower for my soon to be born second nephew.  Also, its the middle of Feb. but I've successfully compiled all the decorations and supplies I'll need for Elizabeth's 2nd birthday party; did I mention it's in late May?  I guess it's all a juggling act and a matter of prioritizing what's most important with my time.  So off I go now to play balloon fight with my husband and Elizababy.

"What's best for the baby..." part 1

Everyone says that your life changes when you have kids...boy is that an under-statement.  My parents always did things based on making a better life for me.  They moved to America!!!  So naturally I've adopted the same principal.  I've done things that I never considered or thought were important before Elizabeth came along.  (Like I've made my living will and bought life insurance.) I think Chris gets it but doesn't get it.  I know sometimes he thinks its over-kill (like searching through ratings and descriptions for the car seat that has the highest rear-facing weight capacity and safety score). But being the dutiful husband he is, just goes along with my whims under the premise of "what's best for the baby".

The first thing we did with this in mind was move out of our cozy 2+2 second floor apartment and into my old bedroom with my parents.  This was what was good for the baby because at the time I was leaving my horrible old job without a new one in sight and we could save tons for getting our own place.  So we said good bye to all our stuff and put it in storage for the next year.  This would prove to be a stressful time for us as new parents but it was also good to have the help. 

The next big "What's best for the baby" came days after her birth.  The average hospital stay for a natural vaginal birth without complications is 2 days.  We, however, spent 5 days 4 nights in the hospital; not because there was anything wrong with the baby, because I had something called a spinal headache.  I'd never heard of this before it happened to me.  I went into the hospital praying that they wouldn't need to do a C-Section because everyone says that it's very painful and the recovery sucks because you can barely do anything to take care of the baby.  And I wanted to be there, to be present for everything with her.  Little did I know...

The spinal headache is caused from spinal fluid leaking out of your spinal column and causing you to basically not have enough to cushion your brain in your head. This was caused from the epidural I had nicking the sack surrounding my spine.  The morning after giving birth, they removed the epidural needle and I started to get the worst headache of my life.  Every time I went past a 30 degree angle my head throbbed and spun.  The couple of times I got up to go to the bathroom was torture and I tried to make it as quick as possible because it felt like I'd pass out.

It was the most miserable I'd ever felt and not because I'd just pushed out another human being.  I felt like it was taking me away from my baby. Poor Chris was not only taking care of her all by himself but he had to take care of me too. And for the first 2 days they didn't even realize what the problem was. So when our night nurse finally figured out what it was we talked to a doctor who gave us our treatment options: 1. Wait for the hole to heal on its own. Possibly taking up to a week. 2. A Blood patch where I have them go back into the area and inject my own blood to form a clot and patch the hole. Neither sounded like great options but being that messing around in my back had caused it in the first place I wasn't exactly excited for option 2.

I chose to wait it out with IV drips to help keep the fluid levels up while I stayed down.  So another day went by with no change and no end in sight.  It was awful. Late the 4^th night, miserable and depressed, I decided that staying like this was pointless.  I was completely useless to Elizabeth and I needed to do what was best for the baby.  We paged the nurse and told her to let the doctor know that I wanted to do the blood patch.  Frustratingly though, we’d have to wait until morning. That morning Chris and the baby had to leave the room when the doctor came with two nurses.  One nurse held me up while the doctor worked on my back and the other nurse took blood from my arm.  It was excruciating just sitting up let alone having the blood injected by my spine.  But I kept telling myself that this was “what was best for the baby” and I could do it for her.  

To let the blood clot properly, I had to lay motionless for at least an hour.  It worked and afterward my head felt much better but my back was stiff and sore.  When the doctor came back to check on me, she said that it would hurt because it was basically like a strained muscle but I could go home anytime. After a few more hours, we took our baby home. So what do you do when you have a strained muscle? At home that night, my back still hurting, I laid on a heating pad for awhile.  Little did we realize that of course this attempt to relieve the new pain would lead to the return of the spinal headache because it was dissolving the blood clot.  A day latter we headed into see my OB/GYN to confirm that the headaches were back. We headed back to the ER for another 8 hours to get a new painful blood patch.  "Whatever was best for the baby." 

So long story short, after an absolutely miserable first week with my baby I permanently have what Chris calls the constellation of needle punctures on my back to show for it. But whatever was best for this beautiful baby.