Parenting

“My Family Loves Me”

August 9, 2016 by Vanessa 3 Comments

We have had such a fantastic summer. Really, really great. One for the books. We’ve had some big adventures and the kids really hung in there with all the traveling and driving. They did beautifully.

It was in between all these awesome trips that I felt like a total mom failure. Prepping for each thing whether it was swim lessons or driving to South Dakota or cooking dinner took a Herculean effort. Not because it is super hard to put on sunscreen and get towels or pack some clothes, but because it takes foooooreeeeever to do anything with all the kids at home. For the love of all that is good and holy. These kids have all banded together to make me sure I don’t get to cross anything off my to-do list.

I know life isn’t about being super efficient and accomplishing all the things but I’d like to be able to wash one load of laundry and fold it within a 12 hour span. Or I’d like to cook for a solid 5 minutes before needing to step away to mediate a dispute or pick up a crying baby. I’m not asking for superhuman efficiency, I just need one or two little housekeeping victories everyday to keep myself from going crazy.

In between all the fun trips, I have felt like a dragon that is always grumpy and spitting fire when someone spills their milk. I get so angry over the smallest thing. And then I hate myself for being such a jerk.

Even with all this, I had really high hopes for this last week of summer vacation. We were going to live it up. We were going to sleep in, go swimming, have ice cream. All the summer favorites.

Tomorrow is the first day of school. Ask me how many of these things we did.

Oh, I’m glad you asked. Zero. None. Nada. I couldn’t even get us to the pool. It’s just down the street. Like one block. Actually we have 3 pools within 1 mile of our house. Didn’t happen. Between school supplies and uniforms and shoes and getting our house ready for school, I have been actively working toward getting ready for school for a solid 2 weeks and I still have a ton of things to do tonight for tomorrow.

I get so little done during the day. I know that’s the name of the game for moms, but sometimes it’s so maddening. After I freak out at the kids I tell myself to chill out. It’s just laundry or dishes or sweeping. It’s not the end of the world. And then I see all those stupid posts that say, “Don’t worry about housekeeping while you have little kids. Kids don’t keep. Dust will.” Yeah, but the mental clutter that it adds to my life drives me insane and leads me to scream at my kids because, yes, I’m ignoring the dust, but I just need the toys picked up at the end of the day. My soul needs those toys in their bins. It does feel like the whole world depends on it. Which is stupid, I know, I know.

And here we are the last day of summer and I feel like a terrible mom. Everything the kids do gets on my nerves. I yell all the time.

Then Olivia showed me her journal entry for today (summer homework, don’t get me started):

“My family loves me and we have a good time together. What could be better?”

I almost sobbed. Thank God she knows we love her. I feel like I’ve been doing an awful job at loving my kids. But I realize that motherhood is playing the long game. I know I’ve been sucky but that’s not the end of the story nor is it the whole story. Motherhood is complicated with lots of ups and downs and we have to forgive ourselves. We’re not going to be able to handle life the way we want to all the time. We’re going to suck and then we’ll realize it and do it better and then we’ll suck again at some point. But we’ll keep learning and keep adjusting. Not because we’re going to ever get it perfect but because we love our kids. And that’s really all they need to know.

Issues With Our Mothers

January 31, 2014 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

At some point or another, we have issues with our mom. Maybe it is universal — men and women — but I know that for daughters, most of us have a period where we think our mom and maybe our grandmother, too, is wrong about everything and all we want to do is be different from them.

With the Lily Myers post from yesterday, I’ve been thinking a lot about the development of my relationship with my mother and my grandmother. I can remember for a time in my life pitying them. Thinking they weren’t strong women. Thinking they weren’t “liberated”. Thinking that I understood the world better. For me, as a woman, this phase was necessary. As a young child I grew up being obedient to them and not reflecting too much on what they did or taught and just taking it at face value. Then when I moved away to college, it gave me some distance. It gave me some time to look at the matriarchs in my family through the lens of the outside world. The pendulum had to swing the other way. I needed to see them with this hypercritical eye.

But for me, especially after I had kids, I understood La Lupe and my mother much better and understood the strength and the sacrifice necessary in motherhood. Those traits that I saw as weakness turned into love and dedication to their family. Of course, they’re not perfect, nor am I, but after becoming a mother, I see how much of our life has to change to grow a new life around us. How much our behavior, our goals, our desires have to change. And while we strive to support our husband and kids, we know that the line between sacrificing for the family and continually developing our own self and faith is a hard one to walk.

It reminded me of a time when I was taking a feminist theology class in college. Class had just started and a student walked in the door fuming. On her way to class she took a different route and passed a statue of Mary with baby Jesus sitting on her lap that she hadn’t seen before. The words “Seat of Wisdom” were engraved on it. “That’s all Mary is to the Church? Furniture. A chair!”

Even our Mother, the Mother of God, is not exempt from our growing pains. Mary’s seeming passivity and meekness makes her seem a very frail character. But being the Seat of Wisdom is anything but weak. In order for the Word of God to be born through her, Mary had to have unparalleled faith and wisdom to accept the Wisdom of God. She is the strongest of all humanity to be chosen. Being the seat of wisdom is being the seat of power. Not the power to force people to do what she wanted, but she was endowed with the power to do the most amazing thing of her whole life — accept God’s will and raise the Son of God.

Being a mother, I know to expect this kind of reaction from my daughters. I know one day they will think they know so much better than me, they’ll think they understand the world so much more, they’ll think I’m not doing or saying the right thing, they’ll think I’m weak and small-minded. Part of maturing is giving them the space to reject what they know and trust that they will come back around. Most of us do.

Recently during a homily, the priest told us that above all we must love our parents and respect our parents. We have no idea the kind of sacrifices they made for us.

It’s true. We don’t really know what is going on in our parents’ lives. Maybe they have some real struggles that we don’t know anything about. Just like this student and Mary, we may think we understand the big picture, but really only God does. And when we take closer look at our mother, we can probably see that most of what they do comes from a place of love and a place of strength.

Cry It Out

June 16, 2010 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

Image by Sam Pullara via Flickr

We have no other recourse.

As much as I talked about how much I hate baby sleep books in the last post, we bought one more. Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Baby by Marc Weissbluth. I know whenever I get a sleep book I am confident and eager to see it work and this one is no different. Except that if this doesn’t work there is seriously nothing more to do.

This is complete and total cry-it-out. Put her in the crib and don’t get her out til morning. We did some practice runs last night and for naps today and the real problem is that the Squeaker doesn’t give up and lay down. Tonight for example. She cried hysterically for 10 mins and since then intermittenly every 5 mins. Why? Because she falls asleep standing up holding on to the crib rails and when she starts to fall she wakes up and cries hysterically again. She just won’t sit down or lay down. And she knows how to. She pulls up and sits back down on her own all the time. The last month we have been showing her how to sit down and lay on her side. But she won’t do it. Ack.

This is what prompted this method of sleep training. Everything that we have tried to teach her how to sleep has been completely ineffective. She still relies on us totally to fall asleep. She’s only going to learn if she does it on her own. Eventually she’ll get so sleepy she’ll fall backward on her bum and hopefully lay down and go to sleep. That or she’ll go crashing into a crib rail which I hope really won’t happen because then we’ll have to start the process all over again.

It’s a little ridiculous how much we have fought this. We have literally tried every play in the playbook. We’ve tried Sears, Pantley, West. All different schools of thought, all different methods and all failures. Ok, we haven’t tried Ferber but at this point we just need this done. The whole gradual thing doesn’t work. It’s been gradual for 9 months.

So here we are. Me glued to the video monitor (which our friend graciously lent us) hoping that the next time O cries she will plunk down on her butt and go to sleep. Kraft coming in and out of his office to look at the monitor. And O so so sleepy fighting a battle she can’t win.

Saint in charge of sleep problems, pray for us.

Weaned, ER visit, Down with Sleep Books

June 9, 2010 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

Image via Wikipedia

It has been crazy around this house. Lots to tell.

I had posted about the first couple days of sleep training. It got great really fast. Amen. Alleluia.

Until Day 8 or 9.

The Squeaker started teething. Damn. We couldn’t get back on the sleep train since then. She teethed (toothed?) for a couple days. Then I realized that O was not eating very much. She wasn’t nursing as much and not eating as much solid food. Then her diapers became lighter and she seemed to not be peeing as much.

Is my milk supply decreasing? Yup. I tried to pump about 3 hours after last feeding her and could not even get an ounce out. Damn again. I’m guessing the night weaning we did was too drastic of a change for my milk supply and when O stopped eating at night my milk decided to stop, too. That just shows how much milk she was drinking at night.

Ok, we need to buy formula. My friend sent me a link to Dr. Sears’ formula comparison chart. After reading that I decide that buying a toddler formula that does not contain corn syrup was the best thing to buy. For some reason I guess that Whole Foods would not carry a formula that contains corn syrup so we go there. They only had two formulas. One was for toddlers and one was a regular organic formula. I try to buy O organic stuff and it had a DHA supplement which the other one did not contain, so we go with Earth’s Best Infant Formula.

We get home and I make O 4oz of formula. She guzzles it down no problem. I tried for about 20mins to get her to burp with no luck so I stick her in the exersaucer. Five minutes later she projectile vomits, not just the 4oz of formula she just ate, but everything in her stomach. I didn’t even know a kid could hold that much liquid in their body. Brandon picks her up and whisks her off the the bathtub. I’m not sure what to do so I call a couple people. While I’m on the phone with my mom and pouring water over O I see that see is covered in very red and raised hives. O has eczema so her breaking out in a rash isn’t super alien to us but hives that are actual welts is totally different. I hang up on my mom and run for the baking soda to put in the bath water that a nurse told us soothes skin reactions. O is scratching furiously.

Kraft calls the after hours nurse line and we answer a gazillion questions. Short story, give her Benadryl and take her to the ER because if she has an anaphylatic reaction it will happen in the next hour.

Off we go to Dell Children’s. O is fine but starts falling asleep in the car which worries us so we’re both singing at the top of our lungs to keep her awake. Probably just the Benadryl but we know you’re not supposed to let people who get concussions fall asleep, I thought that might be good advice to follow at the moment. We get there. All the staff is super calm and very nice.

Again, short story, Dell Children’s is wonderful and O just had a super allergic reaction to that specific formula. The doc knows she is not allergic to lactose because she has been breastfeeding this whole time but we have to give her Alimentum formula just in case since we don’t know what she is allergic to.

O was fine and the hives were slowly going away. After seeing her doc a few days later, we were told to see an allergist to find out exactly what she is allergic to. Phew. But overall, O is doing fine and guzzling down that formula. She is also almost 100% weaned. Only nurses when she wakes up and she is increasingly getting annoyed with it because she gets such little milk. Will probably not even offer it tomorrow. Her appetite is great now. Eating a surprising amount of solid food. Poor kid, she was hungry.

After all this you can guess her sleep is ridiculous. We tried to get back on the Sleep Lady’s schedule which was working beautifully at the beginning but now is a total nightmare. After all this commotion it started taking a solid hour of screaming/crying to get her to sleep for naps and nighttime.

We continued in this horrendous pattern for a week until last night when I had a total meltdown. I can’t spend 3 hours a day trying to get her to sleep and have her screaming at me the whole time consistently. We tried to get her back on schedule for about a week with absolutely no progress and if anything her sleep was getting worse. She was starting to wake up every couple hours at night instead of sleeping at least until 1am as usual.

Last night I declared a big F you to the Sleep Lady and said obviously O and schedules do not get along. I vowed to just watch her very carefully all day and only put her down when she was sleepy and not try to make her sleep hour-long naps. My very wise mama friend today told me that she’s always done this. She doesn’t go by the clock but by what her daughter needs and her daughter has been sleeping wonderfully for months.

And today, O has slept great. Sure her naps were only 20mins and 40mins long but then she went to sleep for the night in 8mins. You can’t argue with facts. I have half a mind to pitch all these sleep books out the window. Them and their bossy, condescending advice that haunts you at night.

Last night in our misery we looked up sleep training problem solvers and found some really great links that are hilarious: Train Wreck and this one we found very interesting about too much attachment parenting and whether crying-it-out is actually harmful like Sears says it is: Baby Sleep Training Re-examined.

Moral of story – don’t follow the advice of a “pert, blonde social worker” and just trust your gut and your baby. You’ll both be much saner and much happier.

I will at least give Kim West a thank you for getting us to put O in the crib consistently and for night weaning. I am actually very happy to not be breastfeeding anymore, but that’s for another post.

Kim West is a Moneychanger

May 31, 2010 by Vanessa 1 Comment

Cover of "Good Night Sleep Tight: The Sle...

Cover via Amazon

So we are on Day 8 of sleep training. At the end of it I’ll give a summative evaluation of our progress which should be like day 14 or so.

But for now I am pretty pissed at Kim West or the “Sleep Lady” as she likes to call herself. So let’s put aside that she calls herself the “Sleep Lady” and that her method is called the “Sleep Lady Shuffle”. And let’s put aside that parents that have been sleep-deprived for over half a year have no patience for cutesy little titles, they just want their baby sleeping.

When it comes down to it, she is a moneychanger. You know, like the people that Jesus overturned their tables and kicked them out of the Temple. Yeah, she’s one of those. She exploits the desperate. I don’t mind at all paying full price for books or whatever but she wrote her book with the express intention of making more money off of it. She is a licensed social worker or something so I’m sure she is worth a hefty price for her private consulations. But you can call her for private over-the-phone consultations. For one hour it is $150, for her full services it is $450, and to join her online forum just to ask a few questions in public, it is $40. Gimme a break. Who can pay that? I’m sure few can pay it but many make the sacrifice because they’re so desperate for help.

At one point we were actually desperate enough to entertain the idea of paying the $450 because the Squeaker is such a tough case and then we came to our senses and just bought her book.

But, the thing is, she writes just enough in her book for you to get the basics of the method but not enough to actually get you through it. All the other sleep books I’ve read definitely answer as many common questions as they can think of. Kim West doesn’t. And I’m not talking specific questions like:

What do I do when my daughter has asthma and was 6 weeks premature and my husband smokes and we have a cat in an efficiency apartment?

I want the answer to very common problems that have come up that everyone I’m sure has. Like:

What do we do when she wakes up from her nap and has not slept a full hour? Do we just chalk it up as a bad nap or do we put her back down and start over?

What happens if she starts teething in the middle of the training? Do we have to stick to whatever routine we’re doing that day or can we back up a few days and be a little closer to her crib?

How does the method change when you live in a one bedroom apartment and her crib is in your room?

She kinda touches on these questions but doesn’t explain the answers in enough detail to actually give you an answer. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt but in this case I’m pretty sure she doesn’t fully answer these questions because she hopes you’ll need to pay for her private services.

I really think that the method of sleep training she figured out is good and effective but I think she is manipulating vulnerable parents. She’s a moneychanger.

Sleep Training: Day 1 and 2

May 26, 2010 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been leading up to this for awhile. We started sleep training the Squeaker on Monday night. We decided to do everything in one fell swoop – training her at night to sleep in her crib and also her naps in the crib and night weaning her. I know, big shock to poor O but I’d rather be completely miserable for a few weeks than kinda miserable for months if we separated each thing.

We are following the “Sleep Lady Shuffle” which means for the first three nights we sit on a chair by the side of her crib and stay there until she falls asleep. We can talk to her, pat her, but no picking her up unless she is hysterical. No nursing to sleep, just putting her down “drowsy but awake.” We have yet to reach hysterical but we have definitely gotten super pissed and completely dejected from O.

Brandon bravely did night 1 duty. Thank God. It was much easier for me to deal with her cries when I was in the next room with the door closed watching TV and eating dinner. On the first night it took O 42mins of crying to fall asleep. We had yet to see O stand up in her crib from a laying down position. Come to find out she can do this, and very well I might add. This has made sleep training almost unbearable. She pulls up and just cries and screams in our face. After a while when we don’t pick her up, she just lets her head and arms go limp and slumps over the side of the crib while still sobbing. It’s heartbreaking. Truly heartbreaking. Well, this happened to Brandon on the first night and he laid her down a couple times because she can get up but does not know how to get back down. But eventually he just let her stay standing to tire her out. She fell asleep standing up slumped over the crib rail. Ugh. Poor thing. Brandon said he laid her down and she didn’t even flinch.

Day 2 I had to do naps and sleep time training which was rough. That’s too much heartache for one day. It’s too hard to hear your kid cry that much in one day. The only thing that kept me from caving in after a day of crying was that all this misery would be in vain and we would probably just have to start over at a later date.

Naps are the worst and so hard to get her to do. She takes 2 naps a day. For her morning nap she cried 20mins and slept almost an hour and a half. Pretty good. For her afternoon nap she cried 48mins and slept 36mins. Damn. But then she only cried for 8mins when I put her to bed at night and she slept for a little over 6 hours. Tough day so thank God the progress is pretty quick.

Night weaning has been the hardest part for her I think. She has woken up both nights in the 1-2am hour and the 5-6am hour because these are usually the times she not just snacked but had an all out feast. She basically cries for these hours but hopefully it’ll get better. Her doctor has been telling me that she doesn’t need to eat at night since she was 4 months old so I know she can get through the night without eating.

Even though I can see her improving very quickly, ugh, this is just torture. I’ve been walking around with the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach for the last 3 days. This is what I felt like in the days leading up to my first day of teaching. Nervous. Sick. Nauseous. I know that we have to teach her how to sleep and I know we have to do this for the sake of the whole family but man, it’s hard. Having to see her sobbing and confused and angry and tired and pressing her little face against the crib slats literally make me sick to my stomach.

But we’re holding strong. And praying a lot. Dear God, just get us through another night.