Posts Tagged ‘new mom struggles’
Life is Like That Pink Song
February 8th, 2011 | 
Author: By Julia Magnusson, Staff Writer, It’s Not Like a Cat (@notlikeacat)
You know that line in the Pink song “Sober,” the line that goes, “Please don’t tell me that we’ve had this conversation / ‘Cause I won’t remember—save your breath ‘cause what’s the use?”
Today I was walking in the neighborhood with baby Ben in the stroller. I greeted another couple out pushing a stroller with a car seat in it. “Oh, hi!” the woman said. “Julia, right? And how’s Ben?”
I smiled. I had no idea who this woman was. I had never seen her before in my life. I kept smiling and finally pointed at her and said, “Hi! And you are…sorry…”
“Amy*,” she said. “From down the street? And this is my husband Bob.”
Down the street, down the street…what? I know everyone on my street. Is she being literal? Am I going crazy? Where did we meet?
“And how’s Ben?” she continued, gesturing at my stroller.
“Oh, good,” I said. How did she know his name? I peered at her baby in the car seat. “And, uh, this is?”
“Perry,” she said. Her smile was fading.
Car seat: baby must be new, right? Was this the woman I’d met at the playground who was due in November?
“When was she born?” I asked.
Amy got a funny look on her face. “August.”
It was now January.
“Right,” I smiled, wishing I had some clue, any clue, as to when and where we’d met. “Well, so, um, her first New Year’s and all went well?”
“Yes,” said the husband. “A lot of firsts, huh?”
He was being nice. This was getting painful. I had to end it.
“Yeah. So, ahhh, well, nice seeing you!” I said.
“Bye!” they said. Amy seemed a lot less friendly now.
This happens a lot these days. Well, this particular incident was pretty extreme, but I’m not exactly Miss Memory lately. It kind of reminds me of some crazy times I had in my 20s, except without all the scotch.
I’m sure it’s just a lovely combination of sleep deprivation and hormones. Fun Fact: I have not slept more than three hours at a stretch since April! That is nearly ten months!
Fortunately, I function pretty well most of the time. I take care of my children, produce good work for clients, have some social interaction some of the time, keep our family fed, stay fit and maintain something of a normal appearance (Translation: I don’t usually leave home in my pajamas, bra-less, with crazy-hair). I have not crashed the car, set anything on fire or forgotten one of my children at the grocery store.
But please forgive me if I forget that we’ve ever met or what we talked about. I do hope to be myself again one day.
Sorry, what were we talking about?
*Names have been changed. And they didn’t live on my street after all. And it’s possible she’s a woman I met exactly once, one day last summer, both of us with our newborns in tow—her first, my second, at a time when I was feeling very depressed and overwhelmed.
Mommy Must Have: Itzbeen
By Mommie V, Staff Writer, My Little Slice of Mommie Heaven, (@mommiev1)
When you’re on bedrest in the hospital for almost three weeks you have lots of time. Time to do things like search the internet for all the last-minute baby stuff you MUST HAVE. Because, you know, your nesting instinct is also kicking in about this time and you’re stuck miles away from your nest with strict instructions to only get up to go the bathroom.
This is how I came to have the Itzbeen. And I’ll tell you, I used that damn little thing for months!
It’s a great little gadget. It has four count-up timers and little buttons next to them, so you can use one for feedings, one for diapers, one for sleeping and one for whatever else you might need a timer for. To start the timer, hit the button.
It’s the middle of the night and I’m in a dead sleep. “Waaaaaaa” from the cosleeper next to me. Immediately I’m awake, but in a fog. When we the last time she nursed?
I check the timer; she’s right on schedule, three hours and counting. Hit the button to start again, nestle her in the bed next to me, snooze while she nurses.
To be honest, I used it the first few days to track diapers, sleep and feedings. Once I started to fall into a routine, I really only used it to track feedings. I was really trying to get her to eat a lot, and then get to two hours (and then three hours!) between nursings. I could keep an eye on the timer during a nursing session to see how long she had nursed, and then look at it later to see how long it had been since she nursed.
Sure, it seems silly to get a timer to keep track of that. But when you look at the clock and you can’t remember if it’s only been two hours, or two-and-a-half, did she start nursing at 1:30, or was that when she was finished? Or was that when she was supposed to nurse but she didn’t wait and we nursed at 12:30? Or was that when she napped?
If you’re OCD Mommie, you can use all four timers to track everything that’s going on. For most people that might be overkill, but you can totally do it with this device.
If you’re just normal Mommie, you probably have one thing that you’re trying to keep track of. Does the baby have a rash and you want to remember (or want Daddy to remember) to change diapers every two hours? Leaving the baby with Grandma and you want to know how long she slept when you get back?
Not sold yet? It has a bright LED light that you can use for diaper changes when you don’t want to turn on a big light. I used the light to help with latching on in the middle of the night darkness before I could do it by feel. It has a L/R switch to help you keep track of which side you last began nursing on if you are breastfeeding (and can’t tell by your fullness and leaking). It has a clip on the back so you can wear it around the house to keep it handy to refer to.
And when I headed to the doctor with my teeny little 5-pound-something baby, I could tell him exactly what our nursing schedule had been thanks to this handy little gadget. It might seem crazy, but to a brand-new, sleep-deprived mama, it was worth its weight in gold!
Posted in Mommy Must Haves | 
Tags: Breastfeeding, Mommy Must Haves, new mom struggles | 
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Why Being a New Parent Makes You Cheesy
By Sarah, Contributor, The Stroller Ballet (@StrollerBallet)
If there’s one thing parenting classes don’t prepare you for, it’s the number of times you will eat your words. Happily.
Whether you were adamant against pre-packaged foods, plastic toys or a host of other evils (evils loved by children everywhere, of course), odds are you’ve broken down and done something you said you never would over the course of your parenting career. And if you’ve managed to stick to all your ideals? You are a forced to be reckoned with. I’m scared of you.
I’ve basically violated almost every rule I set for myself as a parent. Sometimes I use the television as a babysitter, Peanut eats a lot of those breakfast bars from Trader Joe’s, we let her sleep in our bed, occasionally (for survival reasons).
And most recently? I’ve entered into the word of Cheesy Holiday Decorating.
I always thought that putting up lights and decorations and…you know…everything was just too much. I mean, we got a tree at Christmas, but beyond that? I was just done. It was a lot of effort; a lot of work. But this year? Something’s changed. I think it all started with seeing some of the people in my neighborhood decorate for Halloween. I mean, folks go all out around here. The house next door to us looked like it was about to go up in a flaming pyre of orange mini lights. And as I walked around the semi-urban streets of my NYC borough? I started to sweat. I am a parent, after all. And this is what parents do, right?
So I went to Target and loaded up on everything Halloween. I did it up; it was great. While I was there? I was able to stock up on all sorts of Christmas paraphernalia. Because it was available in October, for obvious reasons (who doesn’t want to think about the next holiday before the one we are immersed in is even finished?).
And now I’m attempting to figure out how to string ten sets of lights between two trees on my six by six patch of front lawn.
I’ve started down a path from which I can’t ever turn back. Ever.
How do you begin to prepare for the holidays?
Sarah is a recent transplant to New York from Boston. She is a stay at home mom who spends her time with her husband and daughter (Peanut), who provide great fodder for her writing. Sarah loves the urban lifestyle and treats her stroller as an all terrain vehicle. She shares her sometimes embarrassing, always entertaining experiences at The Stroller Ballet.
Helping a New Mom
By Megan M., Staff Writer, All A Bunch of Momsense (@taxmegan)
I contemplated a career change recently. Only for a minute, because the reality is that I love my job and the flexibility it provides me, but I had a moment.
You’ve been there, too, I’m sure of it. That moment where someone does something or says something and you think, “They have NO idea what they’re talking about. I could totally do that job and do it WAY better than they are.”
Sadly, the job I was watching someone do so poorly was the lactation counselor at a local hospital. A dear friend of mine had delivered her first child and wanted desperately to nurse. I had come to visit and was present for the “session” with the counselor.
I listened as my friend described the attempts made so far (baby girl was not quite 24 hours old at this point) and the soreness she was already experiencing. She demonstrated how they were latching, when, to my horror, the lactation counselor was “called away” without providing any further help, just a promise to return.
The counselor had not explained to my friend how much of the areola should be in the infant’s mouth, so the end result was a raw, sore nipple and a hungry, cranky baby. We worked on it a bit together, and her first truly successful latch happened just a few minutes later.
It made me wonder how many moms give up on nursing because of a lack of good instruction. I nursed all three of my kids, with varying degrees of success. Eventually they all got formula as well, but I was determined to nurse as much and for as long as I could. My own stubbornness along with some good guidance from friends who had experience kept me nursing the kids through an assortment of common challenges including infections, thrush, inability to latch, returning to work; we did it all. I never felt guilty about using formula, either. My goal was to make sure my children were fed; sometimes I was able to do that, sometimes I needed help.
I was glad I was able to provide some of that same guidance to this new mom. With a little more practice, she felt a lot more comfortable with what she was doing, which made it much easier to keep nursing.
What tips and tricks did you get from friends that really helped you out as a new mom? What things do you wish someone had told you? Tell us about it in the Our Mommyhood forum!
I Still Dream of Cooking
By Julia, Staff Writer, It’s Not Like a Cat (@notlikeacat)
Our fridge is bursting with organic produce from our farm share and I had finally planned ahead enough to thaw some chicken. I was excited to make dinner and amid the usual baby-tending and toddler-wrangling was imagining what I was going to throw together with all the wonderful food. Our mother’s helper* was due over soon to play with the toddler while I cooked.
Hah.
I obviously forgot to take into account the sheer unplannability of my life these days. It’s wonderful I gave some thought to dinner, but the fussy baby had something else in mind. Nonstop fussing. Didn’t quite want to nurse, didn’t quite want to burp, didn’t quite want to be put down or worn.
Grrrr.
I took the chicken out of the fridge, put it back, took it out, put it back. The baby was determined not to let me cook. The clock edged toward the toddler’s dinnertime. Hot dogs. That was all we had for him to eat. Hot dogs. The fussy baby would not even let me scramble an egg, I was sure, let alone slap together a PBJ. But I could, with one hand, heat a pot of water and drop in a (nitrate-free, organic, all-natural turkey) hot dog. And some frozen broccoli. Fantastic. Why did I even bother having a farm share and buying regular groceries? We could all just live on hot dogs and broccoli! So easy!
That plus some baby carrots, some ketchup (hey, Reagan said it’s a vegetable, right?) and some milk made up the toddler’s dinner. It could have been worse.
Sure, I didn’t get to cook him some wonderful meal from scratch. Sure, it’s nice that I forget I’m no longer able to cook most of the time now that I have a three-month-old who barely naps plus a toddler. Sure, we end up eating more of the farm share in muddy desperate stews as a means to use up the stuff before it rots instead of enjoying the vegetables individually prepared in interesting ways.
But at least we’re still eating. And most days that’s good enough for me.
* Mom-tip of the day: If your neighbor has a preteen/tween/young teen daughter—especially one who has younger siblings—ask to hire this child as a mother’s helper. Cheap, reliable help to occupy your toddler or entertain your baby while you cook or do laundry or write? It’s totally worth it (especially at, say, $4 an hour). Plus, you’re training your future babysitter.
