Sayin' Is Believing

I'm really looking forward to how easy things are going to be this time around.

Now a confident mother, who isn't concerned she could potentially kill her newborn with one sideways glance, I won't need to keep vigil over the baby monitor minute after minute, night after night.

Having successfully kicked my old nemisis 'worry' out the door with no signs him returning, I won't feel compelled to work through every potentially morbid scenario and develop a plan of attack just in case.

Surviving a colicky baby and coming out on the other side with more love in my heart for my little man than I knew existed on earth in total, I'm now armed with every nursury song, swaddle technique and bob and sway known to womenkind, so I'm eons ahead of myself last time around.

And having mastered breastfeeding to boot...

How could it not be easier this time (she says with the blindly optimistic attitude she is known for)?

So with that, I've set my sights even higher.

I'm going to take advantage of having Paula here, and go to the gym the minute I'm cleared to do so. I'm going to sign up for classes to take with Ben: music and Bubbles and maybe even dance. I'm going to go out with hubby and get trashed, more than just one night every six months.

It feels liberating, and exciting, to welcome this little babe to our family...who still has no name, no room, no clothes, and potentially no ride to the hospital.

We've got it nailed this time, I'm sure of it :)

Thoughts brought to you by the soon-to-be-skinny, well-rested new mother of two...

Close Call

We had a pretty good scare today - Ben, Stella and I - while out for our morning run.

I wrote the story, but decided not to share. No need to recreate the visual. In brief, we had a very close encounter with a car and it's nothing short of a miracle that we all walked away completely in tact.

Which we did. Thank God.

I share for a couple reasons...my immediate reaction really surprised me, as did the events of the rest of the day.

First, I FREAKED on the guy. Like crazy lady, out-of-body-experience freaked out. F bombs all over the place, arms flailing, insane. Ordinarily I hate conflict and find myself apologizing for things I haven't even done.

In this case, I was like one of those mother birds on National Geographic when a predator approaches the nest - wings fully spread, feathers puffed out, going bonkers, squawking.

Second, it wasn't until we were all home and settled down that I actually started processing what had occurred. And my mind shifted from wonderment and gratitude to really terrible what-ifs. Then I cried and started giving Ben life-threatening hugs every 5 minutes.

And as the morning went on, I found myself drowing in worry (my dear old friend worry). I was so consumed by it and couldn't turn it off.

I contemplated designs for a full-body rubber suit for him to start wearing every day. I wondered if we could successfully abandon the world and become recluse. Seriously.

It is so easy (for me) to see how one could literally go insane with worry.

Thankfully I think my mind is finally ready to stop running through all the potential scenarios, but man, everything is just so different now. I can almost guarentee if the same thing had happened while I was out alone I would have been pissed for 5 minutes, and then never thought of it again.

Master of the obvious, I know. But these little people change everything.

Colds Descend

Well after the high of the marathon, all the fans hit a speed bump. Ben woke up with a runny nose Monday, bounced back on Tuesday when I started feeling it, and by Wed everyone was in bad shape. Compounded by an unusually bad week at the office, we're left with bleary eyes, stuffed up heads, laundry and dishes piling up around us, Stella' s still limping, and germs, germs, germs.

Hubby is on the road, which is actually good. Hopefully it will break the cycle of spreading. Even Paula is sick. I've alcohol-wiped everything in the house and still turn to find Ben's fingers unexpectedly poking in my mouth and then immediately in his own. Alas, this is a losing battle.


Worst of all, this dumb cold has invited my worry demons back. You may remember "the worrier" which kept me up most of the night for the first 16 weeks of Ben's life? I literally have just started sleeping with the light off the monitor at night and now this.


As I stare at my little camper in his crib, tossing and turning, sniffling and coughing, I fight with the worrier to manage the freak out. Mostly recalling this stupid, stupid, stupid book I read while pregnant where the woman's baby died of the flu (don't even get me started, it seemed a quick, innocent read when I picked it up, I never saw it coming - trust me I never would have read it). I know I should be happy he is building his immune system, and of course he woke up smiling and laughing today even though his face was a mess with mucus. But the stupid worry. Ugh.

Anyway, we will all survive. God bless us that this is our biggest challenge with all that is going on with those around us. I can't even believe I'm typing this post now that I think of it.

I promise to put up some pictures in the next 48 hours. I have tons of cute ones (obviously) from the weekend.

Stay tuned!!

The Worrier

It's time to come clean on a couple things.

First of all, I'm a worrier. Have been for as long as I can remember.

My sis would leave the house to walk the dog in high school and after about 10 min my mind would start cooking up impossible scenarios. With 20 min passed I'd be fearing the worst and wondering when I should alert my mom and call the authorities.

Needless to say she always returned unharmed, but the worry came back again next time she walked out the door.

I've been caught countless times with my hand on hubby's back in the middle of the night, checking to be sure he is still breathing (he laughs at me). And if Stella hops down from bed and disappears, I'm convinced she is getting sick downstairs (this one is actually true more often than not).

It is one of the (if not the) worst character flaw of mine. It fills me with an anxiety I am ordinarily without. It is completely unproductive, and the more I try to stop it, the worse it is.

Don't you worry, it doesn't consume me. Rereading that, it sounds like an ad for anti-depressant meds. It isn't a constant state, happens most often at night and I realize it is irrational. That said, as I'm sure you can imagine, adding Ben into the mix hasn't done much to calm me down.

Like I said, I mostly worry at night. In the light of day (thankfully) these concerns seem as ridiculous as they probably are. But at night I now find myself losing sleep over Ben. Mostly with thoughts of him getting stuck somehow in his crib and not being able to breathe.

There. I said it.

At this point the second confession becomes more relevant: Ben is a tummy sleeper. A full post on this will follow but for now, know he is sleeping on his tummy. Though I had the same sleepless nights when he was sleeping upright in his swing too, just now they seem more valid.

And just like Nancy' Reagan's "This is Your Brain..." campaign scared me from trying any fun drugs in high school/college, the SIDS "Back to Sleep" message haunts me while I try to sleep at night.

Statistically speaking, odds are in his favor. 1 in 1,1500 babies die of SIDS and from what I can tell it is most often in homes with young, poor moms who didn't have good prenatal care, smoke in the baby's bedroom, etc. However you can't aattibute all the cases to those scenarios and regardless of who you are, it does happen.

So now it is 2am (or 3, 4 or 5am) and I am staring at the monitor, watching Ben's back for signs of breathing (when we were in the same room, I was actually getting up several times a night to touch him). Even writng this is now I'm embarrassed to admit it, but it is what it is.

Perhaps I should be grateful that I've contained the worry to this alone, rather than being overwhelmed by every possible scenario. Regardless, it needs to stop because I'm driving myself crazy and missing out on the success tied to longer nights of uninturrupted sleep from the little guy.

Surely some amount of worrying is to be expected and comes with the territory. But as is the case with most things in life, balance is key. We will all be better for it in the end.

And then I can get busy worrying about Ben falling off his bike and getting good grades...

(Forced) Change is Good

From the start I said I'd want "the baby" out of our bedroom as soon as possible. That was before "the baby" was Ben, and before I really understood all the complexities that go into being a mom.

There is the worry (entire post coming on this shortly), the reality (of still feeding him 1-3 times a night), and the comfort (of having him close - which kind of ties with worry but also lives alone).

He started in our room b/c his nursery is in the basement and we sleep on the second floor. Logistically there was no other way. But as he begins to sleep longer through the night (thank God), the question becomes when does he move out of the nest?

Hubby has asked, thankfully not in an accusatory tone, mostly because he misses reading before bed, and I've put him off blaming the feeding schedule.

How do you know when the time is right? I'll miss the little guy. I get up a half dozen times a night to look at him (also addressed in "the worrier"), and love listening to his grunts and breathing.

As is often the case, change was forced upon us. With the warmer days comes the uncomfortably hot sauna that is our bedroom in the summer. Even with the air on full blast, and three fans going, the upstairs never really gets very cold. Last summer hubby bought "R2D2" - this giant eyesore of a portable airconditioner - just to make it tolerable to sleep.

But with a hot night suddenly prompting a full sweat, there wasn't time to dig the machine out of hiding, especially given Ben would ultimately move downstairs regardless.

And so we took the plunge. Really hubby spearheaded the effort with the appropriate calm air, while I was running around confused and a little freaked out. We have a "system" upstairs. How will we transition everything tonight?!

The little guy went down without noticing anything different (we've been doing daytime naps down there so it is familiar), and had a great night, followed by a huge nap later in the day.

Last night he had his best sleep ever - going down at 7:30pm, up to eat at 2am, and back down until 8am.

Truth be told, we made the move too. Hubby and I took to the spare bedroom next door. Partially to be close to Ben (me) and partially because the temp is so much more comfortable downstairs (hubby).

And you know what? The whole thing has been pretty liberating. Granted I only slept an hour the first night, the rest of the time was spent staring at the monitor which I had laying on my pillow. But last night I had one of the best night's sleep I've had in awhile. And everything was OK when I got up (the worrier).

With this I feel like something has shifted. Hubby and I have our night time routine back, just us. Ben seems to love it and (time will tell) also seems to be sleeper better during the day. With my return to work rushing closer by the second, it seems like the timing couldn't be any better.

Stella hasn't yet made the move. I found her sprawled out, big as can be, in our bed by herself last night after I was up for Ben's 2am feeding. Happy as a clam.

Given the path I was on, I'm sure hubby would have been prying Ben out of our room six months from now, with me in tears, if we hadn't made the change now.

Ten weeks. That isn't too terrible, right.

And it feels really good.

Thanks hubby for being your even-keeled self, helping me through the first of many times we'll have to loosen our parental grip slightly.