My left arm and all my nicest shoes for sleep

When you're getting as little sleep as we are over here, your mind starts to work against you. For instance, I'm obsessed with all the people who also recently had babies and claim that those kids are sleeping four and five hour stretches at a time.


It's easy to wonder what you're doing wrong or different that if you just change would add up to the magic that would lead to Naveen snoring through the night.


What is magic though, is how little sleep you can actually function on when you have to.


Someone said to me a week or so after I had the baby - when is that baby due???? Even a full night's rest doesn't take the sting out of that. The poor woman felt terrible when I told her that I had the baby and he was out in the car with my husband.


Exercise and weight loss aren't even on my top 20 priorities right now. I think about how nice it would be to fit into some of my regular clothes but am making do with the post partum outfits I've put together. You'll notice I haven't posted any pictures of myself lately. The other day on an outing I asked Shaune if the dress I was wearing made me look still pregnant. He looked nervously over at me, swallowed and barely audibly said no.


Convincing.


I tried to find a picture of the two boys together where they were both looking at least content. But this was the best I could find. Deaglan does want to hold the baby all the time but it ends up with Naveen looking like this.


And Deaglan's reaction is to ask: what's the baby saying Mommy?

Probably something like: hey why are you letting this spaz-case hold me Mom? But I always say something like: Oh he's saying how much he LOVES his big brother!

Letting go and reluctantly letting God

At breakfast this morning, I promised Deaglan that if he ate his cinnamon toast he could have some Pez candy afterwards. In my defense, it was either send him to daycare on an empty stomach or a sugar high.

And yesterday when he refused to come out of the jungle gym at McDonald's playland, feeling completely defeated I coaxed him out by lying that I had seen Gramma and Grampa out in the parking lot. Sorry Bill and Fran but I tried everything else from threats to bribes. I probably should have let him play first and get the sundae afterwards.

I find letting go to be the most difficult part of parenting. Letting go of ideals - the kind of parent you swore you'd be before you actually had kids; letting go of judgements - the I can't believe they let their kids do that kind of thinking and the hardest letting go - letting go of your kids when they are ready to break away from you bit by bit.

If you've read even two posts from this blog, you know that until recently, Deaglan was the centre of my universe. And with the addition of his brother in our lives, the relationship between my first boy and I has shifted in a way that has sometimes left me heartbroken.

I know as a fairly well-read person that all the changes are normal given the new family dynamic as well as his stage in development. Like how he lets me know that he doesn't want to see me at the end of his visits with his grandparents every Saturday or that he seems just as content having Shaune read to him before bed when that used to be 'our' thing. I'm trying to take all of these changes in stride, trying to keep my ego out of it.

I've been telling myself that even though some of these changes feel really really uncomfortable, I accept them. That there is a larger story unfolding here. The story of our lives. The story of my life, and of their lives.

Oh and while I'm making a very good case for why I will definitely NOT get mother-of-the-year award, you should also know that last week when he bolted away from me at the park - me with a three week old in the stroller and still aching from the c-section - and I finally caught up with him, I instilled a fear of "the bad man" in him that makes me cringe with shame everytime I think back on it.

The second night and the period of purple crying

Yesterday while we were driving, Shaune reached over and touching my chin said: hey your face is losing that chub.

As you can imagine, this was not well received by me. He tried to back out of this comment by saying that if pregnancy and giving birth were his responsibilities, we would be childless.

No kidding.

I notice people say lots of things about pregnancy, birth and babyhood in general that aren't necessarily true. When I had Deaglan, the second night in the hospital was really tough. He cried the entire night and I was a wreck. Some people said that he was that fussy because I was a nervous new mom and he sensing this was reacting.

Not true.

The hospital staff on the second day of Naveen's life gave me a pamphlet entitled The Second Night. It explained that after the first 24 hours, babies begin to realize that they are no longer in the womb. This is why they have such a difficult next few days. The nurse taking care of me that day explained that she wanted to prepare me for the night ahead, that I should know it was perfectly normal for the baby to be unsettled and that there was likely very little I could do to soothe him.

I can't tell you what a blessing that preparation was.

During Deaglan's first three months, for about three hours every evening, he cried and cried and we could do nothing to quiet him. It was frustrating. We were always asking other parents for solutions - maybe it was gas, or maybe I wasn't nursing right, maybe he was suffering from some mysterious internal ailment.

Before we left the hospital this last time, we were asked to watch a 10 minute video called The Period of Purple Crying. The video which is mandatory to watch for parents of new infants in Ontario, explains how most babies will cry unconsolably for a few hours every day and this is perfectly normal. The video and and accompanying pamphlet are meant to decrease shaken baby syndrome.

Wow. What a difference a little education and preparation can make.

I know that people will always have their opinions about pregnancy and babyhood. Most of this is based on their own experiences. Sometimes I take it with a grain of salt and other times I embrace it.

I can tell you that Shaune is not an insensitive jerk by nature. And boy did I make him sorry he ever uttered that comment.

Whining

I don't remember ever being this tired before. I'm trying to do all the recommended things - sleep while the baby sleeps, take naps when Shaune can care for both kids - but I'll tell ya, this is no picnic!

Deaglan is in daycare for three days a week until the end of July and Shaune's parents take him out one day a week. This has been a great help.

I know that this phase too shall pass and I'm trying to enjoy the aspects that I can. I find that if I try to make my day as normal as possible - showering and doing my hair, cleaning the house a bit, getting out if I can - my mental health remains fairly normal.

I do like being this busy, it removes the extraneous crap that can act as a filler to my day.

Trying to train a newborn to sleep during the night feels like the hardest task in the world. The nights are so long. I've forgotten what control of my body feels like. If I'm not nursing, or changing diapers, I'm trying to get cuddle time in with Deaglan who has regressed in several areas. He's getting up more during the night and taking a lot longer to fall back to sleep. He seems to want to snuggle with me all the time which I love except that I am feeding the baby most of this time. On the other hand, he is really acting up, taking out his frustrations on Shaune and especially me.

Shaune and I are both on edge most of the time since neither of us is getting much rest. I know from past experience that this first few months is a survival game. This poor baby was in utero for almost a year and was used to getting all of his needs met without asking. Now he must cry out for everything in a world where the other humans don't speak his language.

I'm also trying to ignore the extra 20 pounds that isn't budging. I gained a total of 50 and know that eventually I will get back to my pre-pregnancy weight. However, I have to remind myself that I need to let my body heal from the surgery before I can start exercising.

I know, I know, whine, whine, whine. I'm hoping that writing about it will get it out of my head.

Backlash

The other day I grabbed myself a bowl of cheerios and took a well deserved break on the couch to eat it. Deaglan noticing this said: Mommy, no eating on the couch! Do you want a time out?

Sheesh! Hasn't this kid ever heard of double standards??

Father's feast

Tell me if you think this is worrisome or a case of genetics. Deaglan, Naveen, the cat and I gave Shaune a couple of live lobsters for Father's Day. When Deaglan saw them, the first thing he said was: Mmmmmm, I'm hungry.

Genetics right???

Happy Father's Day to Shaune and Grampa and Papa!!

Unfinished

When you lose someone suddenly- when that person has left this place of their own volition -you find yourself in a state of confusion and remorse but most of all everything feels unfinished.

I knew him but I know I didn't. He had a completely separate life in Toronto among his friends. He was someone else there, someone I wish I had been privileged to know, someone I wish I had made more of an effort to learn about.

After he was gone, I began to recall every phone call, every email, every text. What did I miss? What could I have said? Why didn't I take things more seriously? Why the hell didn't I do something???

Why didn't I take more pictures of him?

Desperate little prayers run through my head - please God don't let it be true that he's gone.

Yesterday when I logged onto Facebook, there he was at the top right corner and the message said: Reconnect with Matt. It made me want to vomit. But I couldn't bring myself to unfriend him. His hundreds of friends are still writing beautiful condolences on his wall. It would feel like losing more of him.

Lately Deaglan is in the habit of asking the whereabouts of friends and family. While playing with a truck Matt had gifted him, he asked: where is Uncle Matt mommy?

Wincing I replied: In heaven.