Thanking old me

I haven't posted anything in so long. There are many reasons. I'm busy, I'm tired, I'm somewhat disinterested, I don't feel like I need it for emotional catharsis anymore... But I've decided to muster up the strength to start recording my journey on here again.

Recently, I've been looking over old posts from years ago, and thanking my old self for writing things down. When I tell you what's been happening lately, you'll understand why.

It started in early February. The Olympics were on and, although I am a huge sports fan, I was sobbing uncontrollably at every medals presentation. Something was up, hormonally speaking. I had one internet cheapie HPT left from 2012, which I think had expired by this point, but I took it and it was positive. WTF. We were not trying - in fact, we were doing the opposite. No contraceptives, but by this point I felt like I knew my body pretty darn well, and I was tracking CM and testing OPK's to avoid doing the deed during fertile times. Well, turns out I don't know my body as well as I thought. So I was preggers.

I went to the doctor right away and got some progesterone suppositories just in case, but I figured since I had not started them right away after ovulation it would probably be too late. And it was. A few days later I took another HPT and it was negative. I started bleeding a few days later. Miscarriage #4. I'm not proud of this notch on my belt, but at the time we weren't really planning on having another child, so I had some consolation that it was "not in our plans anyway".

In March we found out that Hubbs has cancer. It's not an aggressive form, and the survival rates are very good, but it's cancer nonetheless. He underwent surgery to remove the tumour in early May and they told us he will need to have radiation to follow. Once he gets his radiation treatment, we are not allowed to conceive for at least 6 months as there is a risk to the fetus. We definitely didn't want to wait 6 months, and we didn't know what effect the radiation would have on his sperm, so we decided we had to go for it right away before the treatment starts. That gave us one month to try. One chance. No pressure!

So I did things properly this time and I took clomid days 3-7, ovulated on CD 20, and started the suppositories on 3 DPO. Moment of truth in my next post.

Someone Like You

November 2011. 

Having just come off my 3rd and most traumatic miscarriage, I decided to sign up for the 30 day yoga challenge. It's what it sounds like. You are challenged to do yoga for 30 days straight. I thought this would be a good thing to do given how pathetic my body was feeling and also because I was working crazy hours at my job and needed to do something to de-stress so I wouldn't lose my mind. 

I distinctly remember going to a yin class, which is a very low key kind of yoga where you hold a pose for 5 minutes at a time. The instructor had good taste in music and put on the Adele album to play in its entirety for the duration of the class (this was before she was really popular here and I had never heard her music before). Anyway, I was lying on my back holding a pose and Adele's "Someone Like You" came on. It was so deep and beautiful, and it caught me at a vulnerable moment. I remember I started to cry. I was thinking about the miscarriage, about my shitty job, about how everything was just too much for me to handle and I just couldn't see myself getting out of that deep hole. It was too sad and overwhelming. How did I get to this rock bottom when only recently my life was so promising? And to think that the stupid holiday season was coming up and I would have to attend parties and family events and pretend like everything was fine. 

Fast forward to November 2013. 

I am getting my hair cut in anticipation for this holiday season. Adele's "Someone Like You" comes on the stereo in the salon. I flash back to that moment two years ago where I hit my low. Here we are again in November. Getting ready for parties and family gatherings. It's so different this time. Our little girl will be there all dressed up and looking adorable. I will be starting a new and infinitely better job in December. My body feels strong and beautiful. I'm fucking unstoppable. 

What a difference two years can make. 

Let's hope November 2015 will be as happy as this one. 

Mad Skillz

When you learn about the various "milestones" you can expect your child to reach, there are the usual suspects: smiling, holding up their head, sitting, standing, walking, yada yada yada. But there are a few skills that my kid has picked up which I find equally wonderful and amusing.

She seems to figure out one new thing every week, and then she'll only do it that week. As if to say "Hey, ma, check this out". Then she's done showing off and it's on to the next thing. Here are some of the hilarious things she's done so far:

• Nodding at anyone and anything. This incessant nodding lasted for a week straight. If she wasn't sleeping, she was nodding. I was delighted to have such a positive and agreeable child... to bad it was only for a week.
• Smirking. Seriously, she would raise her eyebrows in disgust and go "hrmph!"
• Pointing. Pointing with the index finger, which then transformed into sticking said index finger into any available orifice. Pretty funny/gross.
• Making fart sounds. Enough said.

I'm excited to see what next week will bring!

Zzzzzzzzzz....

I've been sleeping rather well lately.

I mean, let's not get too crazy. I go to bed around 10pm and wake up get woken up usually between 6 and 7am.

Because I know there are sleep-deprived, red-eyed parents googling this right now, I want to be helpful. Not just by giving you hope that things will get better (they will!). Also by giving you an outline of how we got to this relatively happy place of restful sleep.

Day 1 of parenthood: Baby pretty much sleeps through the night. I'm thinking, "Of course my baby is a great sleeper - she's a kitten. This is going to be a breeze."

Day 2: Baby gets caught up on the sleep she lost during being birthed, starts feeding every hour. And by feeding every hour, I mean I feed her for 45 minutes and then start again 15 minutes later. Yeah.

Weeks 1-10: Baby continues to feed mostly at night, and sleep during the day. She is basically attached to my boob from 6pm-3am, and then sleeps until 5 or 6. Maybe.

3-5 months: Baby starts to cluster feed less in the evenings. Will go to sleep by 11pm (after 3 hours of much fussing, crying, spitting up) and feed every 2-3 hours thereafter.

6 months: I start to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Baby starts going to sleep at a more reasonable time of 8-9pm (only fusses for 1-2 hours before bedtime, feeds at 1 and 4, up for the day at 7 or 8.

8 months: Going to bed by 7:30 with occasional fussing, feeding once at 3-4 am, up at 6:30-7.

9 months: Going to bed by 7:30, sleeping through until 6 or 7. Sometimes (once a week or so) she will randomly hunger at 4am, or will get up at 5 and refuse to go back to sleep, but for the most part she sleeps through.

Here's what I've learned from these past 10 months in stream-of-consciousness bullet points. I'm sure others out there have had very different experiences and may disagree, but this is what I personally have learned, and what will probably apply to my future kids if I am lucky enough to have more:

• Sleep is very VERY important. It affects your mood, your memory, your energy levels, etc. Sleep is important and it's ok to obsess about trying to get more. Having said that, there are some things you can do to improve sleep, but many more things that you cannot change and must simply accept for the time being.
• Having spoken with enough other moms, I conclude that my baby is a pretty average to good sleeper for an exclusively breastfed baby. I think that point is very important. There are lots of people/articles out there that say that formula-fed babies don't sleep better than breastfed babies but I think that is total BS. Here's why: it's not the formula that makes the difference (though it is known that it takes longer to digest than breast milk). It's because of the BOTTLE. My baby was perfectly capable of sleeping longer. She just didn't want to. She preferred to cuddle up to the warm milk bags, and who can blame her. Some of my friends and family have suggested that I should have given her a bottle more often in order to get her out of the habit of nursing for comfort in the evenings, or that I should do that for my next baby. I will think about that.... but I probably won't do it. Comfort is what she needed. She was a teeny tiny human and still is! So that is all to say: expect that you will not be sleeping well for a very long time. Do not expect that your baby is going to sleep through the night at 8 weeks or even 6 months, because I honestly think that is rare, or that people lie about how well their baby actually sleeps.
• Following from the fact that your baby probably won't sleep all night for a very long time is this: It's ok. Accept that your baby wakes several times a night even if they're older than 6 months. I'm tired of all this bullshit of people trying to give me advice on how to get my baby to sleep through the night. I did everything the books said - took away the pacifier, put her down awake (which, btw, made things worse), fed more solids, you name it. It was useless. She decided to sleep more when she felt like it. My advice to my future self: nap more during the day, 'cause you ain't getting any more night sleep no matter what you do.
• "Sleep training" aka "cry-it-out" is something that you can try when you're desperate, but it may not work (or at least not 100%). We tried sleep training at 6.5 months and again at 8 months. It worked very well for naps, but never for bedtime. And like I said, we went by the book - no pacifiers, put down awake, bedtime routine, etc. After many nights of baby crying for 30 mins or more and then collapsing from exhaustion, I went back to nursing her to sleep and don't regret it for a second. I know several other moms with the same experience.
• A final point on acceptance. If you choose to breastfeed your baby, accept that you will have to live around the baby's schedule. I have to be home every night be 7 so that I can nurse my child to sleep. Yeah, it's a damper on my social life, but it's a consequence of the decisions I have made. I am her mother, and it's my number 1 job. The rewards I reap are far greater than anything I sacrifice. 

And now, I'm off to bed =)

Re-up

Over the last few days I have had a bit more time to myself in the evenings. This is thanks to my munchkin finally going to bed without a 3 hour screamfest (another topic for another day), and the fact that we are finally done unpacking our stuff since moving.

Anyway, with this free time I've finally gotten around to catching up on my blogs. I saw that Rosachka is back on the TTC wagon. Mo is being induced TODAY. So much stuff happening for people who I started this journey with. It got me thinking about how absolutely hopeless we were when we started. We had no assurance of a real live baby at the end of the day, so every blow felt like a ton of bricks that we would never climb over or through.

Now that we are on the other side of those bricks, we know that it can happen for us. Lately I've been thinking about going for baby #2, and while I am scared and already a bit dejected about it because I know it will never be "easy", I also know that I've already battled some pretty tough shit and come out on top.

I also know that the hardest part is the first trimester. I had a relatively easy time getting pregnant, and once I passed the 12 week mark I went off the progesterone suppositories and everything went great.

I had a great, amazing, wonderful birth experience. Although there's no guarantee it will be the same next time, chances are it will be similar and maybe even quicker than 33 hours =)

So I get excited thinking about re-upping this TTC thing. I feel stronger mentally, more prepared, more realistic, more empowered by my last pregnancy and therefore less angry at my body. I feel like I will be more connected to my next baby in utero because I know how amazing that little person will be once he/she is born. Mostly, I feel like the "next baby" is actually a think that will happen. I mean, it probably will. Maybe it will take a year, maybe two or three, but it's happened once so it could happen again.

But you should know by now that I will find something to stress about in any situation, so here's what I'm stressing about now.

The munchkin is close to 10 months old. She feeds 5 times a day, which I think is pretty high. I was hoping that by this age she would be down to like 3 feeds, and maybe 1-2 feeds by 12 months, weaned by 13-14 months. I don't think that's going to happen. She nurses not as much for calories as for comfort and closeness to me. I will not refuse her. Are you kidding? To have that little cuddly cub nuzzling into my chest and falling asleep in my arms... sigh... hormones.

Anyway, the stress factor is that I'm pretty sure I'm one of those people who cannot ovulate (= get pregnant) until I stop breastfeeding. Even then, I feel like I will probably only get my period back several months after I stop. Not to mention the fact that I've lost so much weight from breastfeeding that I probably have gymnast-style amenorrhea... but I digress.

I want my cycles to restart ASAP because I feel so ready to get going again, but I feel horrible at the thought of weaning my baby for my own selfish motives. Bad mom! Bad mom!

So, as with everything else, I try really hard to just take it one day at a time. Before too long, I'll have my boobs and my hormones back.

What is love? Baby.

The lack of recent posts is attributable to the kitten's renewed protest against sleep. I think she's a bit excited about learning how to sit up and is generally disinterested in anything else - food, sleep, bathing...

So I'm a bit sleep deprived and busy keeping her entertained. We have done some sleep training to help her settle and I will write a bit more about that later. In the meantime, I wanted to post about something that people keep asking me when I meet up with them for the first time after having a baby.

Most of my friends are not parents, and they always wonder "what it's like". Such a vague, general question. I've been trying to come up with a succinct and comprehensible answer, and today it finally clicked in my brain. Ok, it's not as succinct as I'd like, but it's pretty good for someone as verbose as me.

Yes, it has something to do with A Night at the Roxbury. You know the song? What is love? Baby...

Don't sing the rest. That's it. What is love? Baby.

You know when you first meet someone and fall in love, it is all-consuming. You spend all your free time with them. You don't hang out with friends as much. You obsess about whether you're acting right and whether you're pleasing them. That is just like being a parent. It consumes you; you obsess.

But there's another side to falling in love. Everything they do is so wonderful and the tiniest gestures from them make you so happy. You think they're perfect in every way, even when they're imperfect. That is also just like being a parent.

The last thing is, with a child, that initial period of crazy love doesn't fade the way it might with a relationship. It hasn't gone away for me, and I'm pretty sure it never will.

Ok, I don't know if any of that made sense now that I've written it out. It does in my head.

First Mom's Day, Nothing to Say

I've been trying to formulate my thoughts on this first mom's day with a real live child. I think I need to process it a bit longer. In the meantime, I found a poem that I had saved on my computer a few years ago that I reflected on today. I'm not sure I can say I'm a better mother than anyone else, but I do think that I appreciate the job maybe a bit more than someone who got it with little effort.

Thoughts on Becoming a Mother

There are women that become mothers without effort, without thought, without patience or loss

and though they are good mothers and love their children, I know that I will be better. 



I will be better not because of genetics, or money, or that I have read more books

but because I have struggled and toiled for this child.
I have longed and waited. I have cried and prayed. 

I have endured and planned over and over again.

Like most things in life, the people who truly have appreciation are those who have struggled to attain their dreams.
I will notice everything about my child.
I will take time to watch my child sleep, explore and discover. I will marvel at this miracle every
day for the rest of my life.

I will be happy when I wake in the middle of the night to the sound of my child, knowing that I
can comfort, hold and feed him and that I am not waking to take another temperature, pop
another pill, take another shot or cry tears of a broken dream. My dream will be crying for me.

I count myself lucky in this sense; that God has given me this insight, this special vision with
which I will look upon my child that my friends will not see.

Whether I parent a child I actually give birth to or a child that God leads me to, I will not be
careless with my love.

I will be a better mother for all that I have endured. I am a better wife, a better aunt, a better
daughter, neighbor, friend and sister because I have known pain. 



I know disillusionment as I have been betrayed by my own body.  I have been tried by fire
and hell many never face, yet given time, I stood tall. 



I have prevailed. 

I have succeeded.

I have won. 



So now, when others hurt around me, I do not run from their pain in order to save myself
discomfort. I see it, mourn it, and join them in theirs.

I listen.  And even though I cannot make it better, I can make it less lonely. I have learned the
immense power of another hand holding tight to mine, of other eyes that moisten as they
learn to accept the harsh truth and when life is beyond hard. I have learned a compassion
that only comes with walking in those shoes.

I have learned to appreciate life.



Yes I will be a wonderful mother.

Author Unknown