Tonight though, in betwixt text messages with my sister bemoaning the current state of our Not Youth, I am writing this blog entry. As it turns out I will be bemoaning the current state of sleep or lack thereof in this house so tonight is just all full of bemoaning. To spare any of you reading here the long story that is about to follow let me sum it up for you in a few succinct words: Clio says, "Ah Hell No," to sleeping through the night and I am at my wit's end with the situation.
Last night she woke up every 90 minutes. I tell you no lie. She wasn't sick except for a near constant runny nose that we have concluded is a result of allergies. She wasn't too hot or too cold. She wasn't in need of a diaper change. There was nothing wrong with her other than a decided lack of boob in her mouth. After listening for the sixth time to her wake up, whine and cry for 5 minutes before putting herself back to sleep I finally got up to bring her back into bed with me to nurse her. Usually I can stick her back into the crib after she nurses herself to sleep but last night she wanted to sleep only ON MY CHEST. Which, as you can imagine, makes it difficult to sleep for the one who is the human mattress.
This morning I woke up feeling completely frustrated with Clio, feeling utterly at a loss as to how to help the situation (we've tried a modified version of crying if out but that was a miserable failure), and feeling like a shitty mom. You know, because, I had a baby die and dammit I should never take for granted that I now have a thriving daughter to love and hold. All day today my patience with Clio's whining and fussing and squealing -Egads she hates the car seat- was as thin as it has ever been. I wanted to hand her off to Leif and run away for the day, not worry about breast feeding -girl will only take a bottle at day care and not even for her dad at home- and just be alone.
There seems to be no end to my stupidity and naivete because I thought that experiencing George's death would somehow turn me into Supermom; Capable of Surviving Indefinitely on Hardly Any Sleep and Possessing of Infinite Pools of Patience. Apparently that is not a gift that was bestowed upon me in the wake of George's death. What was bestowed upon me, and maybe all mothers feel this to an extent, is a tremendous feeling of guilt and hyper awareness of my failings as Clio's mother.
I should be grateful I have a living child. I am but just not grateful enough. I should never get frustrated or feel like I can't handle her whining anymore. But I do feel those ways sometimes. I look at Leif and think that he must never feel that way. Clio is going to grow up feeling like her dad loves her more than her mom. That is what races through my head on days like this.
So here I am hiding in the tub, partially submerged in the rapidly cooling water, writing this. Feeling sleepy, guilty and inadequate.
It's 8:30pm. I think I hear Clio crying.
Oh, dear Brianna. Although I might have to withhold a little love because of your 5'11-ness (I always wanted to be tall...)
ReplyDeleteNo, really I won't. Not even for that. And certainly not for everything else.
Maybe, from your vantage point in the bathtub, it is not so clear (as it is here) how winsomely *real* you are.
If only grief made humans ever-glad, ever-strong, ever-knowing, ever-triumphing in every other area - spurred on by pain.
But all it really does is join the pressing that is life, winding its way.
And then we still have to forge ahead. Imperfectly.
I know one thing perfectly, though.
Clio is going, even more as she grows, to think she got extra lucky in the Mom Department. Yes, Dad, too.
She really, really did.
Clio, how about some serious shut-eye? Come on, Girl...
xoxo CiM
"If only grief made humans ever-glad, ever-strong, ever-knowing, ever-triumphing in every other area - spurred on by pain."
DeleteBut why doesn't it? It should dammit.
Peace and sleep and remembering that all of these terrible and delightful and dreadful and charming phases of newborn to infant to toddler shall one day pass. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but probably really soon.
ReplyDeleteAt least that is what we are telling ourselves every ninety minutes. :)
Dead babies or fourteen living ones, I'm pretty sure signing up for parenthood means signing up for self-doubt and a head on collision with inadequacy. I've learned that dead Margot doesn't necessarily help me when quietly sharts in her underwear and then doesn't tell me about it, even though I'm holding her while she wears a dress.
Love and peace and AMEN to getting a bigger bathtub one day soon.
Stella! LOL.
DeleteHead on collision with inadequacy is a good description. I fee like there is no room for ego in parenting. Just another wake up call.
"when STELLA quietly sharts..."
ReplyDeleteum, it's hard to address the sincerity of your concerns/feelings when the preceding line contains "quietly sharts", so i will skip to more pragmatic stuff.
ReplyDeleteallergies seem plausible- i think sam has always had them too. could it also be a tooth/teeth? that makes it really tough for them to sleep, and many kids seem to need constant comfort during that time. if it gets really bad with sam, we give him a dose of baby paracetamol before bed, and that gives us all a break for a few hours. not a fan of drugging, but you know- everyone has their limits. (probably you've thought of teeth, just seem to be re-occurring villains in our house.)
anyway, it's fine to feel fed up. it seems to be all waves- up and down. no sleeping might become sleeping, but then something else comes up. over here it's discovering tantrums. major tantrums. like, teen-aged style mixed with otherwordly invaders. it's intense. but, you know- he's now giving amazingly sweet proper kisses (puckered lips, complete with sound effects). so there's the trade.
no human has infinite patience and gratitude, except maybe buddhist monks/nuns. and i bet even they have to walk away before losing their shit sometimes.
wish i could give you and hug and go out shopping with you for something pretty. or eat cake. or, you know, have a tickle fest with clio while you take a long nap. alas.
solidarity, sister. parenting is sometimes pitiful, but we've always got solidarity.
Yeah, but "quietly sharts" is pretty awesome. Josh knows how to lighten the mood for sure.
DeleteLots of good stuff here and I'll probably end up just emailing you anyway but I want to address something here too.
The coming in waves stuff makes me realize that it would be very beneficial to me if I could learn to step back and see the forest for the trees.
"wish i could give you and hug and go out shopping with you for something pretty. or eat cake. or, you know, have a tickle fest with clio while you take a long nap. alas.
solidarity, sister. parenting is sometimes pitiful, but we've always got solidarity."
Yes please. I really miss you.
Oh Brianna you are so far from inadequate. But I know how awful it is to feel so. I sat at J's incubator promising her and the Fates that I WOULD be super mom with infinite patience and good grace if only she would live. I didn't manage to hold up my end of the bargain needless to say. It's hard to feel anything other than exhausted at times and, I agree with Josh, for me parenthood and self doubt are inextricably tangled up. I doubt so many things these days, my own parenting included. But I don't doubt that I love them
ReplyDelete"But I don't doubt that I love them" I don't doubt that either...for either of us. I made some bargains too begging for George's life and I know that had he lived I would not have been able to live up to them. Just another thing to feel crappy about. We are a sorry bunch sometimes, no?
DeleteMy eyes feel like someone has thrown a handful of sand in them, so I will keep this short: me too.
ReplyDeleteSuffering (and counting my lucky stars) through every sleep deprived minute. Please sleep, baby girls.
xo
My eyes do too. Man, driving home today was a struggle. Clio, of course is currently sound asleep in her crib and messing up her night time routine because she didn't nap at day care. Sigh. It is nice to have our girls only days apart. They seem to be giving us a run for our money at the same pace.
DeleteWelcome to my world lady! Different problems, same guilt and feelings of inadequacy. Being a parent is a hard place. We have guilt and inadequacy directly because of how much we love and care for our children. The truth is, I had these feelings prior to Camille dying... Now they are just heightened with a new edge of fear. Limited sleep only intensify all your feelings of frustration and fantasies of escaping. That was me last night. I didn't even want a day, just an hour... In the next thought I would find myself wondering how if something happened to my son I how much I would want an hour back of time with him. Grief is a tricky bugger that leaves us with few options. I'm sorry you don't fit in the tub, but honestly does anyone besides a child? What you're looking for is called a hot tub. :)
ReplyDelete"Being a parent is a hard place."
Delete-Something I only knew on an intellectual level until Clio. What an eye opener this has been.
"Limited sleep only intensify all your feelings of frustration and fantasies of escaping."
-Yes! Goodness yes it does!
"What you're looking for is called a hot tub."
-Yep and a live in masseuse
This is exactly how I feel. Oh, that hyper awareness of our failings, it sucks. We too tried a modified cry it out method, which did not work even though so many friends said it would. We were in a pretty good pattern and then teething kicked in and I'm nodding off as I type this because I was up to soothe a crying baby so many times last night. Parenting is hard work, it's okay to want to escape sometimes.
ReplyDelete"We too tried a modified cry it out method, which did not work even though so many friends said it would."
DeleteWe heard the same thing too. Liars. All of them.
I hope you get some rest too.
I come at this from a different angle, like Renel, because I have an older child and then a baby who died, but my daughter is 3 and an absolute pain in the ass a lot of the times. I get impatient and angry and then have that terrible guilt, because isn't everyone telling me how lucky I am to have her? How grateful I should be that one of my kids lived? How closely I should hold her and how completely I should love her because my other baby died? Of course, I love her, to the moon and back walking, as she likes to say. And she drives me nuts, too.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that really helped me with the sleeping thing and it might not help you at all, but I will share in case. E didn't sleep much at all for the first year and I read everything - EVERYTHING - about sleep. I always thought I was doing something wrong and also worried that she would turn out badly since I was unable to figure out how to get her to sleep and every book seemed to be saying, do it this way, it will work, and if you don't do this your child will grow up maladjusted and awful. Finally, in desperation, I bought a book called sleep training for dummies. Each chapter explained a different method and why it was supposed to work and my head was spinning thinking, how can all of these methods supposedly be the one, the only, the best one? Then the last chapter basically just said: or you can accept that your child will one day sleep, that sleep personality has as much to do with the temperament of your child as it does to do with anything else, that there is really nothing you can do to force your child to sleep through the night. Somehow this freed me - I was still really, really tired because she still didn't sleep, but at least I let myself off the hook and could see that whether she slept or not was not a reflection of how good a mom I was or how good a kid she would one day be.
I know logically that loving my child and also having her drive me nuts are not mutually exclusive states of being. It is nice to hear that from someone else, thank you.
DeleteI have to say that this, "Then the last chapter basically just said: or you can accept that your child will one day sleep, that sleep personality has as much to do with the temperament of your child as it does to do with anything else, that there is really nothing you can do to force your child to sleep through the night" has given me a lot to think about today. Maybe I just need to let this idea of having a good sleeper go for awhile.
Oh, this is hard. And feeling that you should be constantly and consistently grateful, even when you can barely hold your own head up and you are faced with the impossible choice of whether to attempt to snatch sleep by letting your child wake up and cry again, or whether to become the amazing human mattress - that is just so hard to deal with.
ReplyDeleteI hope little Clio (and, my goodness, that child is adorable) gets some good rest soon. And that you do, too.
"choice of whether to attempt to snatch sleep by letting your child wake up and cry again, or whether to become the amazing human mattress" This is such a problem for me. I am ever having a difficult time riding the line between the two choices.
DeleteI've definitely feel that as BLMs, we feel like we're less allowed to complain or present a frustration about childrearing because of all that we've lost. That all of a sudden we'd seem ungrateful. When in reality, that's not true at all. Our "rainbow" children aren't perfect angels that just sprout sunshine from their behinds. They are colicky, no more likely to sleep through the night, and surely don't have to be perfect. And we're not perfect parents.
ReplyDeleteI often wonder what kind of mother I would've been to Andrew if he'd lived. Would I have been able to handle it? While I hate that my child still doesn't sleep through the night, I do feel a sense of thankfulness when I look at him at 3 a.m. in my complete exhaustion. Like, at least he's alive kind of relief. I don't know if that will change when he becomes Clio's age, but for right now, I'm surviving. I feel so out of place not feeling like I have the allowance to mutter a complaint, either.
"While I hate that my child still doesn't sleep through the night, I do feel a sense of thankfulness when I look at him at 3 a.m. in my complete exhaustion. Like, at least he's alive kind of relief."
DeleteYeah, my too. There is always that sense of relief. Of course, it occupies the same split second as "Please God why won't you just go to sleep already!!!"
"I feel so out of place not feeling like I have the allowance to mutter a complaint, either."
yup, yup, yup. Me too.
No, you don't get that sort of patience with the benefit of a dead baby. You get it, nearly, if you are lucky to have a flexible lifestyle and you are on baby number 6 and you have a dead baby and you know from 4 previous annoying babies that this bit doesn't last forever. And even then I can be ready to walk away at times.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't make you bad mum, promise. Just a tired one. People murder through lack of sleep. So you can call her still crying a success ;)
I have feelings similar to these all. the. damn. time. The "i-sucks" really creep in when I'm tired and hungry. And then just snowball out of control.
ReplyDeleteBabies are hard. Toddlers are hard. Preschoolers are hard--and, if this paradigm holds, the rest of it is going to be, well, REALLY EFFING HARD. You think you have something figured out and then BOOM! they change their behaviors/patters/moods and it doesn't matter anymore.
But throw in the added weight of deadbabyland and the guilt and second-guessing and insecurity threaten to drag me under.
You are doing an amazing job. It is OK to want to run away sometimes. You love your babies and that is clear. And it is enough, even when it feels like it is not.
xo
Sending sleepy vibes out your way.
Parenting is hard, even without all the dead-baby baggage that comes with our territory now. L was a TERRIBLE sleeper and I can remember begging her at times to PLEASE.JUST.SLEEP. It's so hard, it wears on you, it drags your good-parenting defenses down, it makes everything seem ten times worse than it really is. It just sucks.
ReplyDeleteI'll just tell you that eventually your little darling will sleep, although it may not be any time soon.
Hang in there, mama. xx