A Working Mom's Point of View

I have been feeling the need to chime in on this working mom v. stay at home mom debate that has been making the rounds.  I find it interesting that Ann Romney, of all people, is stirring up this much conversation! 

I feel like all the talk out there is completely overcomplicating the matter.  Is staying at home to raise children working?  Of course it is.  In my experience, and granted my only experience as a stay at home mom was during my 12 weeks of maternity leave, staying at home with a baby is SO MUCH HARDER than being at work.  Your day is completely unpredictable and at the whim of a little person who doesn't care if there is no bread in the house or if the dog hasn't gotten a walk; he is going to eat and nap when he wants to eat and nap.  At work, I get to eat lunch at the same time every day and go to the bathroom all by myself.  (Moms of babies- you get why those things are awesome.)

With that being said, if I had a choice I would stay at home, even though my days would be harder.  I feel like I'm missing out on a lot and I miss Harrison to pieces when I'm away from him for 9 hours a day.  I realize that being home would bring about guilt in other ways as I don't know if any of us are really immune to it, but I feel guilty if anything or anyone commands any of my attention duing the limited time I have with Harrison during the week.  And of course, at times, other things command my attention.  There are still dishes to wash and and clothes to fold and pets to be petted.  And a husband/dad to be loved too.

For my family, me going back to work was financially not a choice.  End of story.  I think this is where the debate really started, with women who choose to work outside the home and women who have to work outside the home.  Ann Romney had a choice and she chose to stay home.  She worked- much harder than I do.  But she had a choice.

This is the third time I've said in the post, but staying home all day is harder than being at work- at least for those 8 hours that I am at work.  The two hours between the time I wake up and the time we leave the house are, by far, the hardest two hours of my day and probably rival a stay at home mom's day in terms of chaos and stress.  I just take mine in concentrated form.  The hour I get home before my husband joins us is no picnic either.  Stress.  Chaos.  I just get 3 hours a day of it rather than it being spread out over 15 or 18 hours. 

Some days I do it well, other days not so much.  This morning found me in the kitchen literally trying to do 5 things at once- drink coffee, make my husband's sandwich, put leftovers in a container for my lunch, make my breakfast, and make bottles.  Oh, and feed the dog.  So 6 things.  And since I had not yet had my coffee, I couldn't get it together enough to realize that doing one thing at a time would have been better.  So I scurried around the kitchen like a crazy person saying to myself over and over, "I can't do this.  I can't do this.  I can't do this."  And Harrison was crying in the background this whole time.

I have fantasies of what it would be like to be a stay at home mom, because I do have one morning off per week and let me tell you, it is heaven compared to the other 4 days. Harrison and I wake up at our leisure, which is often still 5:30 a.m.  But rather than throw him in his jumper seat and get in the shower, we sit on the couch together, he plays and I drink coffee and then give him a bottle.  We hang out and play some more.  He naps and I shower.  We take our time getting ready.  Heaven.  But is it only heaven because it's a change in routine, not our every day?

Maybe moms are so quick to judge each other's choices and decisions because we envy the greener grass on the other side.  I definitely envy my mom friends who get to stay at home.  They might envy the time I get to myself every day, I'm not sure...I've never asked.

Being a mom is hard work, no matter how you do it.

But don't faces like this make it worth it?

Adventures in Cosleeping

This is one of those posts that begins with the phrase, "before I had a baby I thought I would never..." And I will fill in the blank with "let my baby sleep in our bed."  I totally believe in many aspects of attachment parenting such as being attentive to my son's needs and cries, babywearing, breastfeeding, and feeding on demand.  However, I don't really buy into the concept that leaving a baby alone to sleep in a crib is somehow mean or neglectful.  Up until I was 27, when I began spending most nights with my then-boyfriend now-husband, I really didn't like sleeping in a bed with anyone else and much preferred to stretch out in my very own space.  So it made sense to me that Harrison would sleep best in his very own space too.  In fact, all of the handouts that we get from our pediatrician's office state just that: "your baby will sleep best in his own crib in his own room."

From the day we brought Harrison home from the hospital, we've broken every single rule there is about sleep. For the first four weeks of Harrison's life, he refused to be put down most of the time and especially when he was sleeping.  We slept together on the couch with Harrison snuggled up on my chest.  He has just never been a baby who conforms to the rules or the norms when it comes to where and when he will sleep.  So in a way I guess we shouldn't be too surprised to be where we're at now.

Case in point: napping on dad's shoulder!

So here's our current routine.  I do our bedtime routine, which consists of a bottle, stories, and songs.  I then kiss Harrison goodnight and put him in his crib drowsy but awake.  Most of the time he falls asleep pretty easily.  But after 45 minutes to an hour, the crying begins.  What happens next varies, but usually Harrison wakes up every hour until Jason and I go to bed ourselves.  Sometimes giving him his B settles him back down, but if not we do try to let him put himself back to sleep (read: Ferber) until we go to bed ourselves.  Once we are in bed, if Harrison isn't already in bed with us then he is the next time he wakes up.

On one hand, it is the sweetest thing to wake up in the night and have my baby right next to me.  He often sleeps with his hands stretched up over his head or with his lovey cradled under one arm, and to see him in this peaceful sleepy state reminds me of how lucky I am just to have him.  And it's much much much easier to soothe him back to sleep during his wakeups when he is right there next to us.

However, Harrison remains a restless sleeper for much of the night, and while sometimes I wake up on my own and get  to witness my peacefully sleeping baby, most of the time I wake up to hair pulling, or fussing, or smacks in the face, or fingers in my nose. Not quite so peaceful.

While I don't believe it's wrong for babies to sleep alone in cribs, I do believe that for whatever reason it's wrong for my baby right now.  I will keep putting him down in his crib because we do have a routine and I'd like to maintain it, and hopefully work on a little self-soothing early in the night.  I know how much of a comfort it is for me to have my husband (or in his absence, my dog) in bed with me when I wake up, and I guess right now Harrison needs that same sense of comfort.  When I wake up, someone is here with me.

Speaking of the dog...the long-term plan is most definitely to convince Harrison that Lucy is a phenomenal sleeping companion!  Talk about a win-win...



I Can...Keep My Head Above Water

This is always what I thought would happen if I started to blog...I would find the motivation to finally start it up, and then just as quickly I would forget to write, or get distracted, or just plain not do it.  A self-fulfilling prophecy perhaps?

That, or it's just been hard to find the time lately to put together 5 outfits for the week  that 1) are clean, 2) fit, anad 3) aren't things I already wore this week.  (Fail, on all 3 counts by the way.)  So it's even harder to find the time to blog.

But for the most part, it's been a really good kind of busy.  Harrison has always been wonderful of course, but over the past few weeks he has become such a little person.  He sees a bunch of toys and picks out the one he wants to play with.  He cracks up at the dog constantly, even when she is doing absolutely nothing other than sitting at the door whining.  If I work really hard, I can get a laugh out of him myself sometimes!  I can tell he is constantly watching me and figuring things out, and when he is awake I want to do nothing except for play with him and show him the world and engage him in everything it has to offer.

One thing that's been keeping us busy- fun with food!

Before I was a mom, I was a wife and an employee- and those things still keep me pretty busy too.  I am grateful for a new work opportunity that will allow me some more time with my favorite boy, and which in turn will hopefully start making things a little easier for me and my favorite man.  We've been talking a lot about recreating time for "just us" and how to make that happen when we have a baby who still won't sleep (more on that another time!)



So basically, time is worth it's weight in gold.  And there are days that very little on the to-do list get done.  But today I have a (fairly) clean house, a minimal list of work tasks to accomplish, and a weekend in front of me with no overnight visits or major things to do.  So here I am blogging!

I Can...Accept the Things I Cannot Change

Which, in this case, seems to be Harrison's sleep schedule.  Don't get me wrong- I have done everything I can think of to change the situation!  Just to give you a sense of what we're dealing with, this is how last night went.

He's lucky he's so cute!



6:45 pm- Started our bedtime routine which includes Harrison's last feeding, listening to music, changing into pajamas, swaddling up his armpits, reading books, and singing a song.
7:00 pm- Harrison keeps passing out mid-feeding.  I keep trying to nudge him awake.  Finally give up and change into pajamas.  Read one book instead of the ususal three.  Rock and sing songs.
7:05 pm- My previously sleepy baby is now wide awake as I am trying to put him down in his crib.  I put him down, he fusses, I pick him up and rock him some more before putting him down again.  I encourage him to suck on his fingers.  He plays with his sleep sheep and fusses some more.  I give in and give him the pacifier (his B).
7:15 pm- Harrison is drowsy, calm, and still awake.  I leave the room.
7:25 pm- Cries over the monitor.  My husband goes in and shushes him.  Harrison falls asleep.
8:45 pm- Coughing over the monitor, followed by more cries.  This ususally means a spit-up in Harrison's sleep has woken him up.  Husband goes upstairs, cleans him up, and puts him in the full swaddle.
9:30 pm- We go to bed.
11:45 pm- More crying.  I get up, Harrison eats and is near sleep during most of the feeding.  Once he is done, I rock him for a few minutes and return him to the crib.  He starts to thrash around and fuss.  Give him his B and leave the room.  While I'm in the bathroom I hear the crying begin again.  Go back in, he fusses, so I rock him some more.  When I put him down, the thrashing and fussing begins again.  I pick him up and we lay down together on the mattress we have moved next to the crib.  We doze together for about a half hour before I risk returning him to the crib.  This time it works and I go back to bed around 12:45.
1:45 am- More crying.  It's my husband's turn to get up.  We have split the night into two shifts- 9-1 and 1-5.  The early shift is by far the easier one!
Per the morning report from my husband, between 1:45 and 2:30 Harrison would sleep for a few minutes and then wake up.  Jason would replace his B, which would work for a few minutes and then he'd wake up again.  By 2:30 Jason's had enough and moves him into the rock n play bassinet- our last resort sleep crutch.  It works, Harrison sleeps from about 2:30-4:45.
4:45 am- Jason wakes me up, thinking Harrison is probably hungry. I return to the mattress on the floor and nurse Harrison while we both snooze a bit longer.  He falls asleep, and I carefully return him to the rock n play where he'll sleep until a little after 6 am.  I get up to start the day (read: drink lots of coffee!) at 5:15 am.

Now this is a pretty typical night for us, and has been since Harrison was about 2 1/2 months old.  I called him a "good sleeper" for a little while prior to that, as he would sleep from about 9:30 or 10 pm till about 5 am, getting up once to eat and going right back down.  I counted my blessings that we had such a good sleeper at a relatively young age.  I can't pinpoint exactly when this all began to change, but change it did!  We've had nights that are a little bit better than last night, and nights that are quite a bit worse, but between Jason and I we are usually up at least 3 or 4 times once we go to bed.  The longest stretch he's ever slept has been 5 hours, and that was when we left him with a sitter (curses!) If he sleeps for 3 we consider it a great night, 4 is a small miracle.  According to our pediatrician, he "should" be sleeping an 8 hour stretch each night.

A rare moment- Harrison still asleep at 7 am!

 And we've tried EVERYTHING that we know of.  We've tried swaddling.  Unswaddling.  Swaddling his lower body only.  Swaddling with one arm out.  Stomach sleeping.  Side sleeping.  White noise.  Different kinds of white noise.  Music.  Sleeping in our bed.  Us sleeping on the floor in the nursery. Nursing only before bed.  Bottle only before bed.  Nursing and a bottle before bed.  Making the room colder.  Making the room warmer.  Giving him rice cereal.  EVERYTHING.  We even tried Ferber/crying it out briefly.  This is something that, before 4 months, I thought I would never even consider.  Now I would happily let him cry it out every night if the crying period was followed by sleep.  For Harrison, it's not.  He'll cry it out for 45 minutes and then sleep for 20, only to begin all over again.

As I write this, I realize it's becoming a bit of a rant.  And what Jason and I are finding is that what we need to do is rant a bit- every morning we have a debriefing of sorts to review what happened during each of our shifts.  Then we observe that Harrison really appears to be a baby who innately struggles with sleep. And then, and this is new for us, we let it go.  We try to shrug it off, and notice all the milestones he's hitting, or how happy he seems, and we let it go.  Because we've decided that the more we fight it, the harder it gets.  And the more we end up fighting each other.  We had never had one single yelling match in our whole relationship, until just a few weeks ago when we found ourselves shouting expletives to each other in the middle of the night regarding whose turn it was to get up, or what strategy we were using at that point...I can't even remember what the fight was about now.

Acceptance is new for me.  Which is interesting, as I work in a field where I teach the value of acceptance to others on a daily basis.  But until recently, I had never learned how to use it for myself.  Acceptance has truly become the most valuable tool in my parenting arsenal.

Well that...and coffee.

A Beginning

Dear Harrison,

Yesterday you turned 5 months old, and it again occurred to me to do this.  To begin to document our adventures together in a way that will be fun for us to look back on, and maybe even fun for others to follow along with us.  You will also have something to hold over my head later when you are a teenager and are sarcastic and embarrassed by everything I do and have ever done (really Mom?  You wrote a blog about me?  Really?)

The name Things I Can Do With One Hand has a few meanings.  The first significant thing I can remember doing with one hand was making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when you were about three weeks old.  I was really proud of myself!  Since you disliked being put down EVER, I learned to do lots more things with one hand over the course of the next nine weeks.  This included tying my shoes, emailing, playing with the dog, and making lots and lots of coffee.

Then you turned twelve weeks old, and I went back to work and you started daycare.  Doing things with one hand started to take on a new meaning!  There were many mornings when I would carry you around, not wanting to put you down since I would be leaving you with your teachers all day, and with one hand pack your bag, make your bottles, and eat breakfast.

Now that you are five months old you can use your OWN hands to do all sorts of things!  You reach for your toys.  You grab Mom’s hair and Dad’s beard, and Lucy’s ears.  You haven’t tried to grab Bella’s tail yet- smart boy!  You try to hold your own bottles.  You suck on your fingers.  Sometimes when I hold you close, you use your hands to explore my face, poking at my eyes and nose and sticking your fingers in my mouth.  You reach out your hands to me in the morning and I wonder if you are saying to me “pick me up!”  I still do a lot of things with one hand because you do still like to be carried around, and I feel a little sad when I sense these days coming to an end because you can already do so much for yourself.

I think all of our sets of hands will be learning to do all kinds of new things over the next few weeks and months.  Soon you’ll be using your hands to eat real food, to pull yourself up, and to reach for all things hot, sharp, and otherwise dangerous.  I think Dad and I will develop new superhuman resources as we use our hands to try and keep you safe and happy!

I look forward to writing more about our adventures to come here.

Love you Harrison Bug!
Mom