Crazy quilt

As my life slowly regains some normalcy, it has occurred to me that life with two small children, at least for me at this stage, feels much like a crazy quilt in terms of time management.  I never know what the scraps of time will look like on a given day, though the general goal is to piece them together in a way that makes sure we get food on the table, have some order in the household, and that we are dressed and decently clean.  Getting outdoors by myself with the two boys felt impossible in the first weeks, but today I was actually able to take Eli to a park (w/Dylan sleeping, thankfully), and we enjoyed some of the unexpected 75 degree November weather.

I would write more, but I still haven’t gotten used to the time change, so I’m going to try to get the dishes done tonight before I go to bed.  Even though the rest of America gained an extra hour yesterday, what it meant for us is that Eli now wakes up at 6:20 am instead of 7:20.  But I did want to take one of the last few scraps of time today to check in on my blog – I haven’t disappeared entirely, but as you can see, it’s been harder to get time to piece together some coherent thoughts :).

 

You get out of it what you put into it

It is 9:15 pm on a Saturday evening, and both boys are asleep.  Ideally, I should probably be getting some sleep as well, but knowing that every day is different, that having a newborn means that routines and planning are only tools to make you feel frustrated when they don’t work, I am blogging while I have the chance.

Dylan is slowly growing out of his newbornness and starting to look around more intentionally.  Sometimes, I think, “Wow, he’s been here forever . . .” because 5 weeks feel much longer when you’re sleeping much less in the midst of them.  But then there are days where I realize that 5 weeks are a drop in the bucket.

My weeks are usually not that structured these days.  I try to make the bed and do the dishes in the morning, make sure we’ve all eaten (with Dylan usually getting priority because he screams the loudest when he’s hungry), and if Dylan takes a decent nap, play with Eli.  I tried pulling back from reading blogs this week, even though it’s often a nice break for me, because I wanted to engage more in the world around me.  So, this has been my favorite blog to look at this week:

Part of my afternoon routine, however, once I’ve put Eli down for his nap, is to nurse Dylan or rock him to sleep while I watch America’s Test Kitchen, one of my favorite cooking shows.  They had an episode on this past week about slow cooker classics, and discussed why they believe that most crockpot recipes would taste a lot better if you did a little pre-cooking/searing before you put things in the pot.  I tend to agree, although there are a few recipes I’ve tried that really require very little pre-treatment.  At any rate, when the pre-treatment for one recipe on the show was beginning to look a little laborious, the host, Christopher Kimball, commented, “Well, I guess you get out of it what you put into it.”

That thought stuck with me throughout the rest of the week.  It explained for me why I miss cooking most of my own meals, even though I am grateful for the meals being brought to us right now.  There’s part of me that gets something out of the work I put into making a dish from scratch.  But the thought also encouraged me when those midnight feedings or the 3rd outfit change of the afternoon seem to loom larger than what I feel like I can manage.  You get out of it what you put into it.  Midnight feedings, spit-ups, going back from room to room to keep an eye on both kids to make sure they’re not getting into anything or falling out of their bouncers, finally getting around to sleeping after you’ve remembered to take your vitamins and supplements and eat, only to hear one of your kids waking up right when you’re about to fall asleep . . . all of these things are ingredients in a recipe of life called motherhood, and as much as I’d like it to be the crockpot version, I realize that most of the time it’s more time consuming and laborious than that.  But aren’t the results worth it?

Since my last post, by the way, I’ve been able to visit a lactation consultant to see how Dylan was doing in the feeding/weight gaining department.  Unfortunately, he actually weighed less than he had the previous week.  They recommended (and I agreed) that I start supplementing w/formula after feedings.  Since we’ve started doing that, he seems to be more content, and sleeping better as well.  I feel better knowing that he’s not going hungry, but I also know that part of me will probably never feel like I did enough to make exclusive breastfeeding work.  I also don’t like the idea sometimes that a can of powder from Costco does a better job of feeding my son than I do at this point.  But then I remember that a can of powder can only go so far.  It doesn’t have arms to lull him to sleep, or a voice to soothe him when he’s crying.

3 weeks old

This is about the most un-original thing a mom of a newborn could say, but I really am sooooo tired.  I have several friends who have gone from one to two kids, but for the life of me, I don’t know how they stay organized enough to even get out the first couple of months. I keep on focusing on the fact that (hopefully) by Christmas things will have mellowed out a bit.  I also thought it was good, however, to write down the things I’m feeling, just so the next time (if there is one) I have a child, I can look back and see how yes, it really was challenging at this point in time, and things aren’t any different.  For some reason, my memory has erased most of the challenging times with Eli, and I find it hard to remember really what it was like as I go through it again w/Dylan.

Dylan is now 3 weeks old, but he still seems so tiny, so frail.  We went to his 2 week checkup this past week, and while he had regained his birthweight, he hadn’t gained as much as I had hoped, and once again my fears that breastfeeding would be a challenge like it was with my first son reared their ugly heads.  Add to that the challenge of nursing, getting a baby back to sleep, keeping his two year-old brother from throwing his laundry in our trash can because it’s “Yucky,” and that it’s been 90+ degrees in our apartment this past week, and you will understand why I got more than a little emotional by Friday.

If you are a mom for whom milk supply is not an issue, let me say that you are so lucky!!! I find myself having to pull out every trick under the sun to provide enough for Dylan, at least that’s what I feel, but others are saying that I shouldn’t get worried so soon yet.  It’s hard, though, when the only thing you want to do (aside from getting sleep :)) is to make sure your child is not going hungry. I am looking forward to seeing a lactation consultant this week when my in-laws come up for a day to help out with Eli.

Eli likes Dylan, but he doesn’t like it when I’m constantly having to hold him.  I know that this is just a phase, but it’s hard to see his big crocodile tears sometimes, especially if Dylan is screaming at the top of his lungs at the same time. I also don’t like my tone of voice as I respond to Eli’s defiant moments when I am dead tired myself.

I look over these thoughts and realize that they might come across as very complaint-oriented and depressing, but I am glad that Dylan’s here.  And there are so many good times, too, where I’ve just fed him, and content and sleepy, he curls up his fuzzy head under my chin and falls asleep.  Those are the moments that make me want to hold him just a little bit longer even though I really should be sleeping myself.  And the weekends . . . OHHHH how I love the weekends now, because that’s when my husband is here all day.  I wonder now what in the world I was doing this past summer when he was home all day every day, and I didn’t have a newborn to feed/take care of yet.  Now, it feels like a huge gift to just be able to make pancakes from scratch on the weekends because I have someone else to keep an eye on the kids.

I remember in the delivery room suddenly being told it was time to push, and the thought flashed in my mind, “Oh, ____________, what do you mean I have to push!?!”  It kind of feels the same way with the first weeks of newborn-dom.   Before you hit it, you know it will be hard, especially if you’ve been through it before, but obviously the drawbacks of the period have been erased enough to make you want to have another one.  And then the challenging period begins.  But I look at my older son, and I know things will be okay with the younger one, and one day, Eli will have a pal to play instead of compete with.

Dylan’s got to eat again.  Duty calls!

Just when I think I may be getting this “mom of two” thing down . . .

They really should have a board game for moms where you get points added and subtracted for things that either you’ve done or have happened during the day.  For me, today would have started off with a lot of “move forward ___ spaces,” – I got maybe 4 hours of sleep last night, which is more than I got the night before, I took a shower before Eli got up, I put some makeup on to complement my latest fashion style:  walking through the apartment with my Brest Friend strapped around my waist, and I even had a batch of yogurt started in the kitchen, and had both boys fed and dressed by 9 am.  So there I am, sitting on the couch nursing Dylan, and reflecting on how quiet of a morning it is, and cool as well.  Suddenly Eli walks out looking like he does in the picture above.  I would have then lost all the points I earned, but I would have then earned two extra points in the game of mom because I managed to take a picture of him while holding the baby w/my other hand, who was still nursing, and had the My Brest Friend still strapped to my waist.  But it was too much to take a picture of his room, which emits bursts of white powdery clouds as soon as you walk into it.

Does this mean I’m still ahead?

How is it . . .

. . . that something as painful as labor can produce something as soft and wonderful as a baby sleeping nestled in the crook of your neck?

. . . that being a parent can make you feel more powerful and helpless than you’ve ever felt before?

. . . that you suddenly feel like you’ve won the lottery if you got just two hours of sleep instead of the normal eight to nine?