Tag: Asher

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Reflections

Full circle

If you can believe it, my parents still live in my childhood home. I have no statistics on this or anything, but in my experience it seems that this is becoming less and less common–especially when you factor in that I actually only had one childhood home, since that house was actually my Dad’s bachelor pad! I didn’t officially move until I was 21 years old, since college dorms don’t really count (as in, no one shuts off your internet because they didn’t process your payment correctly in their own system *squints accusingly at Verizon*). I don’t know if that has anything to do with why I super mega HATE moving, or if everyone super mega hates moving and I’m just particularly whiny about it, but there you have it.

My point in all this is that when I go to visit my parents with Asher, I’m taking him to the house that I’ve identified as “home” for the most aggregate years. I’m bringing him to the place where I learned to walk and talk and do calculus and recover from heartbreak. His Pack ‘n Play is set up in my old bedroom, and I give him a bath in the same bathtub I splashed around in as a baby.

Crazy hair don’t care!

The very first time Asher ever went to “Nanoo and T-Pop’s” house, my Dad came out to the driveway to meet us and asked if he could carry the baby inside. This was special to him, because he had carried me inside the same house for the first time 30 years before, and now it was coming full circle.

My parents’ home is only about 40 miles as the crow flies from New York City, which means that after the attacks of September 11th, 2001, we smelled the smoke for days. I have a visceral memory of an event that had global impact, and which will be 20 years in the past by the time Asher can even begin to wrap his mind around it. And 9/11 is only one of the many reasons that he and I will always understand the world differently.

Such as the fact that I listened to music on cassette tape, didn’t have a cell phone until I went to college, and had to get off the internet when someone else needed the phone line. Heck, I’m OLDER than the internet! I got Facebook when you still had to have a .edu email address, and even then it could only be from certain schools. I can’t even begin to fathom what strange new contraptions and platforms Asher will need to explain to me with when he’s home from college; I’m afraid to dwell on what terrible events are still to come that will serve to shape his worldview.

The divide between our generational life experiences will only continue to widen as we surge ahead at the speed of light. The world Asher will grow up in is not the same one I did, and this uncomfortable truth matters in some incredibly fundamental ways. I hope that I’ll be able to remember that in the future, when his opinions and choices absolutely baffle me…and I’m pretty sure that they will, at least some of the time.

All that makes it so much more precious to me to be able to share my childhood home with him. We may have very few things in common someday, but we will always have this. He may not remember these days of crawling the same floors his mama crawled, eating at the same time-worn table, playing in the very same yard, but I will–and I will cherish them.

Categories
Motherhood

Grace for dropped stitches

Well hi there! Things around here have been more than a bit hectic for the last few weeks, as evidenced by the total lack of activity on this little blog–not least because a certain young man has started to not only crawl, but also pull himself up on furniture, yank things off shelves, and just generally wreak adorable havoc wherever he goes.

Exhibit A: Dumping out the clean laundry and creating a fort from the basket.

Gone are the days when I could put him down somewhere safe with a favorite toy, and actually expect him to stay there while I emptied the dishwasher or switched clothes from the washer to the dryer. Don’t get me wrong, I am completely thrilled by his growth and development, but the more mobile he gets the more creative I have to be to keep him safe while getting life done (as a stereotypical first born, he despises his play yard on principle, no matter how many fun things are in there). What usually happens is that I scramble frantically to Do All The Things while he naps, and it’s like he’s got some kind of radar–the second I finish the last Thing, he wakes up ready to play!

Also, Asher loves both books and yarn with a deep and abiding passion. This is exactly what I wanted for our child when I was pregnant, as those are two things that have brought Dave and I endless wonder and joy. HOWEVER, I expected him to start loving them when he was a wee bit older, and wasn’t primarily deriving pleasure from things through his valiant efforts to choke on them. Mama can’t really read or knit in front of Baby when he immediately NEEDS whatever I’m holding to be in his mouth…and he can now merrily crawl over to me and retrieve the desired object in no time flat. Hashtag facepalm.

“I don’t know what she’s talking about, I would never do such a thing!”

Combine these two factors, and you have a devoted knitter and reader who has rapidly dwindling opportunities to do either…which is the reason why I was knitting a complicated pattern on Tuesday night while simultaneously reading a really interesting book. See? It’s completely not my fault that I was doing something kinda dumb. I wasn’t setting myself up for failure, I was a victim of circumstances. I had no other choice. Et cetera.

So, I’m knitting along on this pattern (which I had already repeated enough times to have memorized) and reading along in my book, and it’s all going swimmingly UNTIL, dun dun dun…I dropped a stitch. I knew it immediately, but not because I saw it happen–as we’ve established, I was being a nincompoop and not looking at what I was doing–I knew because I felt it happen. Dropping a stitch isn’t that big of a deal, as long as you notice it right away and are able to fix whatever collateral damage has occurred. Not noticing, however, can literally cause an entire project to unravel, because every stitch in a knitted fabric is linked to every other stitch, and losing one can mean losing all.

(Note to self: Explore knitting as a metaphor for social justice sometime in the near future.)

I’m a really experienced knitter. I’ve been doing it for over 20 years, and there’s so much muscle memory built up that I’m far more likely to feel a problem happen than to see it happen. And when it does, I stop, examine my work, suss out the wayward stitches, make the necessary corrections with minimal fuss (usually; I’m only human), and carry on.

That’s what I did on Tuesday night. I put down the book, retrieved the lost stitch, rearranged myself on the couch, and I was off to the races again. And then I stopped, and wondered to myself how long I would have to do this motherhood thing before I could take a problem in stride that easily. When will the day come that I can feel something going wrong even before I see it, examine the situation, suss out the wayward attitude or word or desire or whatever, make the necessary correction with minimal fuss (usually, since my child and I are only human), and carry on? When will motherhood be as simple as that?

After much deliberation, I’ve come to the conclusion that the answer is… it probably won’t. Many things about motherhood have evolved into instinct as Asher has grown and I’ve gotten more practice, and I’m actively engaged in expanding my parenting toolbox. So, I have lots of hope that I can, and will, continue to get better at being his Mama… But, maybe the day will never actually come when something as complex and nuanced as raising a child will feel like second nature, something I could do with my eyes shut. Maybe it’s not even supposed to.

Honestly, that prospect is pretty frightening for me. I thrive on mastering things, and one of the reasons that I like knitting so much is because I’m good at it–even the stuff that I struggle with feels like a puzzle to solve, not proof that I should quit. Now, on the journey of motherhood, I am being forced to learn moment by agonizing moment to give grace to myself, because this is not something I ever expect to truly master.

I need to give grace to myself when I have no idea what I’m doing, grace when I try my darnedest but still don’t get it right, grace when my own selfishness stands in direct opposition to the needs of my tiny human. Lord have mercy, I especially need to show myself grace when I do something that’s just plain old stupid.

I would like to think that at the end of the day, Asher will benefit more from a mother who has fought hard and learned to show grace even to herself, than a mother for whom the whole thing came easily. And, since that second one isn’t actually an option, I am committing myself to becoming an imperfect mother who knows how to give and receive grace.

And that will only happen one mistake, one dropped stitch at a time. Here goes.

Categories
Asher's Adventures Reflections

Pre-pregnancy jeans and newborn hats

Happy September! It’s been crickets around here lately, because Asher and I got to spend some time at a beach house down in Long Beach Island and I left my computer behind! Unfortunately Dave didn’t get to come with us, because he was home waving his fingers over his keyboard and making magic things happen. He tells me about his work all the time, and I still manage to have absolutely no idea what he does because it all just sounds like Swahili to me.

It was actually pretty cold while we were in LBI, hence the layers of fleece and wool in this photo:

“Mama, what exactly are we doing out here? It was warm inside, and there were snacks!”

And those layers are what I’d like to talk about today. First of all, you see that hat? There’s a story behind that hat. My wonderful and extremely talented friend April made it, in a class at The Blue Purl that she and I were supposed to take together…and which I, in my pregnancy-brain haze, COMPLETELY forgot about! She ended up texting me 15 minutes into the first class asking if I was coming, to which I was like, coming to what? So, because I was too spazzed out to even write down a multi-week class on my calendar, Asher got a hat–he’s lucky I have such good friends! It’s a gorgeous yarn (Madeline Tosh, I think!) that has lots of flecks of color in it, so it’s masculine without being just straight blue.

I knew it was going to be chilly when I was packing for our trip, so I decided to bring that hat along. It kept Asher’s little head warm throughout his first several months of life, when it was just so cold and damp all the time…he even wore it home from the hospital!

Stick a fork in me, I’m done.

And therein lies the problem. This gorgeous hat is newborn size. It was big on him for so long because he was born quite tiny, but I failed to account for how much his head has grown in the months since it got warm enough to ditch wearing a hat…and his head has grown a lot.

Yeah, we’re not getting another winter out of this one!

Sigh. I guess April will just have to make him a bigger one (wink wink)!

Speaking of things that are tighter than they once were…those are my pre-pregnancy jeans you see in that first photo. Now, I fit back into them by the time Asher was 3 weeks old, a meaningless feat that, at the time, felt like I had won an Olympic medal. However, they have since been put in Time Out for saying rude things about my body. I really don’t know how they managed to sneak into my bag, but in packing up the 7,364,129 things needed to take an 8-month old child away from home for more than 4 minutes, they got in when I wasn’t looking.

The jeans fit. They zip and button just fine, and I can even sit down in them…but they went in Time Out anyway, because they seem to feel that my body should still be shaped like it was before carrying and delivering a miracle, and insist on pinching and poking until they get their wish. If we can get up close and personal for a second here, I actually weigh less now than I did when I got pregnant…but the skin on my stomach is looser, my rib cage is wider, and I still have to get up almost every night no matter how much I dehydrate myself before bed.

Having a baby changed me, body and soul. Elizabeth Stone says that to have a child is to have your heart walk around outside your body, and she is spot-on–everything about me feels more vulnerable now, in part because I know there is so much I can’t protect Asher from, no matter how hard I try. But I also feel that my edges are softer than they used to be, that I am faster to empathize and to at least try to understand, because I’m practicing for the day that this tiny little person will need me to do both…probably in spades.

In many ways I’m still the person I was before Asher came rushing into the world; the basic shape remains the same. But the details are slightly different, and I see no point in trying to pretend otherwise, in trying to force myself into ways of being that don’t lay quite right anymore. So, my schedule looks different, my hair is longer so I can get it up and away from grabbing baby hands, my days are primarily spent pouring into my two guys instead of trying to save the world, and I don’t wear the pre-pregnancy jeans. In the future some, or even all, of these things will certainly change yet again, but this is where I am today…and honestly? I like the new jeans better anyway.

Categories
Asher's Adventures

Asher’s Adventures: The Beach!

Asher went to the beach for the first time this week!

Asher supervising while T-Pop sets up his special umbrella tent–it was one of his first Christmas presents!

Let’s go ahead and acknowledge that it’s weird for me to call that place with all the sand and ocean “the beach” instead of “the shore”. I’ve lived in New Jersey for exactly 80% of my life, and apparently everyone else who’s actually from here calls it “the shore” (after all, there’s a reason that awful TV show got the name it did). I have no explanation for this, and I’m just as confused as all the people who have pointed this out to me over the years–and there have been several.

ANYway, Asher went to the beach! My Dad and I took him to Island Beach State Park (yep, the Chris Christie beach), which was really special because we’ve been going to that beach since I was a little girl…after the medical waste got cleared up, that is. My parents were real squares and didn’t want their kids playing with dirty needles and used bandages. Sigh, parents.

Still trying to decide how he felt about all of this!

So, we packed up all of the accoutrements needed to take a baby to the beach (which is a LOT), and we were off! We take a super-duper back road route to get to this beach, and I’ve ridden it so many times that I can literally close my eyes and envision the entire trip.  Once we got there the three of us trudged up “Agony Hill”, our affectionate name for the sandy hill you have to climb to get to the less crowded part of the lifeguard area. It’s not nearly as agonizing as it used to be, because back in the day it really was very steep, but carrying a 16 pound person while walking up it was still a bit of an effort.

Asher had a great time, and as a result, so did my Dad and I. Asher’s little feelings were rather hurt when he grabbed two handfuls of sand that immediately ran away from him, but T-Pop gave him a cold bottle of soda to hold and that made up for the insult.

We were able to stay on the beach for several hours thanks to the wonders of babywearing–that is to say, pigs would fly before Asher voluntarily took a nap without Wendy Whale, but he was powerless against the forces of a wrap and a nice walk by the waves. He was out cold in 5 minutes flat, and woke up ready to keep playing!

This is a Solly Baby wrap and I absolutely love it, in case you’re looking for one!

My Dad and I took turns holding Asher in the water when the waves weren’t rough, and he definitely has some swimming instinct because he kicked his little legs like a champ. iPhone v. Atlantic Ocean never ends in the phone’s favor, so I don’t have any pictures of that part, but you can take my word for it–it was adorable!

Speaking of taking on the ocean, at the very end of the day our little camp setup got swamped by a rogue wave. Talk about rude! Fortunately nothing was actually damaged, just soggy, but it was a bit of a chore to get everything packed up (full disclosure, my Dad did about 93% of the work). To that end, Asher got the “job” of monitoring the bags…

He was quite pleased with his contribution to the project!

Once we were finally packed up and ready to go, we headed back down Agony Hill and made our way home. Now, you know how a lot of babies conk out the minute they get in the car? Asher is NOT one of them. He must really enjoy watching the world pass by, because he will stay wide awake for an entire hour long car ride…even when it really would be best to sleep because it’s, you know, nap time or something. However, I didn’t think he would last long when I saw this face…

And I was right.

He slept the whole way home!

So, long story short, I got to revisit one of my favorite places from my childhood with my own child. I am so grateful to be able to do this sort of thing with him, and I can’t wait for all the adventures still to come!

Categories
Motherhood

Wendy Whale for President

Just to be clear, this is not about politics. It’s about the fact that Wendy Whale is probably responsible for my sanity still being relatively intact, and as such I am her biggest fan. She was made by Gund, she’s soft and squishy, and there are little blue ribbons sown to her spout to look like water. She has a swirly button on her tale, and when it’s pushed she plays soothing, oceanic music and moves through a series of gently pulsating lights. She is very calming, and she was the breakthrough with Asher’s daytime sleeping.

This picture wasn’t posed, I went in to check on him and found them like this.

Asher has slept through the night since he was a little less than 3 months old. The fact that he was on formula by then could definitely be a contributing factor, but he also seems to just be a naturally good sleeper…at night. But during the day, he was like a different person…a person who didn’t like sleeping.

At bedtime, we go through Asher’s little routine, and barring an unusual circumstance like a tooth poking through to make him grouchy, he goes down in his crib awake and promptly falls asleep. He sleeps all night, then he wakes up in the morning and starts chatting with himself until someone goes in to retrieve him. I was convinced he would have a terrible sleep regression at 4 or 5 months, because it just seemed too good to be true, but he never did. So far, so good.

This is not how it was during the day. Getting that child to nap while the sun was out was like herding cats. Actually no, worse than that, I’m surprisingly good at herding cats (I think it’s because I understand their nervous energy, but that’s a topic for another day). Asher has fought going to sleep for an hour and a half, only to wake up 45 minutes later in a bad mood because he’s still tired. Sigh. It didn’t matter how exhausted and in need of a nap he was, he didn’t want to sleep so he wasn’t gonna sleep.

I was honestly at my wit’s end about his napping strike, and it was especially confusing because he was such an angelic sleeper at night. A number of other moms dismissed my woe out of hand, saying that it didn’t matter if he refused to nap because he was always getting a good night’s sleep. I know they were just trying to put a positive spin on it (or, let’s be honest, they were jealous), but to be harsh for a second, they were wrong. It did matter that he wasn’t napping, because he was exhausted and unhappy all. damn. day. And with an exhausted and unhappy baby, I’ll give you one guess at MY emotional state!

Then one day my Mom came over to visit, and she brought this cute little Gund whale with her. She knew I would like it because I’m a sucker for aquatic creatures, and it was soft and cuddly so Asher was totally into it. I honestly can’t remember now if it was her idea or mine, but the next day I tried putting Wendy Whale in Asher’s crib with him during naptime. This wasn’t an instantaneous miracle cure, and he didn’t become a good napper on the spot; but let me tell you, my child no longer tantrums for an hour and a half before going to sleep.

When it’s time for a nap, Asher drinks his bottle, cuddles with me for a few minutes, then I put him down in his crib and turn on Wendy Whale…and he falls asleep. Every so often Wendy Whale’s timer will end before he’s completely out, a situation I am promptly alerted to by his indignant hollering. And on more than one occasion I’ve gone in to check on him because he’s slept for so long, only to find him wide awake and playing with Wendy Whale, totally content.

Wendy Whale’s official headshot!

I don’t know if it’s the lights, the music, the shape, the color, the ribbon spout, but something about that little stuffed whale makes my nap-resistant son think, “huh, I bet falling asleep right now would be super pleasant and refreshing”. And I know it’s not just a coincidence, because I’ve tried putting him down without Wendy Whale, only to swiftly recant on my foolish decision and return her to her rightful place (indignant hollering is very effective on me!).

So, sometimes help comes from an unlikely source. After trying absolutely everything to get Asher to nap, the breakthrough was good old Wendy Whale. The two of them are happily snoozing away as I write this. I don’t know why it works, I’m just glad it does!

Have you ever gotten help where you weren’t even looking to find it? Was it as surprising as a singing whale?

Categories
Reflections

How a spoon works

“But he definitely understands how a spoon works?”

Asher didn’t have his 6 month appointment until he was a few days shy of being 7 months, because that was the soonest we could get in to see the pediatrician a neighbor had glowingly recommended after Dr. Lon passed away. Now, this wasn’t a problem, but the thing about people who are that young is that a month can make a world of difference developmentally. So, while he hadn’t officially turned 7 months yet, Asher was sort of looking like a super-baby by the 6 month old standards. He had 4 teeth already, he was not only sitting up well but was actually standing on my lap while the doctor took his medical history, and as she judiciously put it, he was very aware of his surroundings–enough to cause way more drama than was actually warranted by the situation, i.e. screaming like a banshee when the stethoscope came near him.

But the thing he wasn’t advanced on was his diet, specifically how many solid foods he had eaten. By the time of the 6 month appointment I had scheduled with Dr. Lon, Asher had tried all the solid foods Dr. Lon recommended by that age–cereals and pureed fruits and vegetables. I had anticipated discussing the next dietary steps at that 6 month visit…

And then I called his office to confirm the time of Asher’s appointment the following day, and the voicemail informed me they were “closed due to the passing of Dr. Lon”. In addition to some other very serious concerns (like the fact that there was initially no covering physician for Dr. Lon’s patients, and I had no access to medical records if an emergency happened), I also had no idea what to do with Asher’s diet. Yeah, feeding a baby isn’t rocket science, but we couldn’t see the new pediatrician for 3 weeks, and I had no one to call in the mean time if he developed a rash or his breathing got weird. With no safety net, I was just too scared to give him any new foods.

Cue the 6 month appointment that happened at nearly 7 months. I could tell the pediatrician was a little surprised that Asher was only eating solid foods once a day, and only from a very small pool of options, but once I explained why I hadn’t advanced him she was totally sympathetic. She immediately gave me carte blanche to feed him anything except honey, as long as he could manage the texture and consistency. And then, she threw me the “softball” question:

“But he definitely understands how a spoon works?”

Asher Chewing On A Spoon

“Don’t worry Mama, I’ll take it from here!”

See what she did there? Obviously he understood how a spoon worked, I had just listed all the things he’d eaten off of one! She wasn’t actually asking me that question, she was affirming how far we’d come from the days when he didn’t know what a spoon was for. Rather than making me feel bad about his lack of culinary variety, she chose to focus instead on what I had already done right.

Oh, how I wish I could learn to talk to myself like that doctor talked to me! I will discount an entire day of good mothering because Asher pitched a fit in his car seat and I couldn’t calm him down while driving. I’ll beat myself up for not immediately realizing that he’s crying from hunger, not tiredness, at what would normally be naptime. I feel awful when I lift him out of his stroller and his back is sweaty, even if he’s been serene and happy the whole time he was in there. And yes, I went into that 6 month appointment embarrassed that he hadn’t tried more foods.

I am so much harder on myself than I would ever think to be on anyone else. Heck, I’m too hard on myself about being too hard on myself! There will always be things to improve on in my mothering, my marriage, my homemaking, my professional development, really any task or relationship I can think of. But if I could learn to pause for half a second and give myself credit for what I’ve already gotten right, I bet I’d be a lot happier and calmer about how far I still have to go.

So, my baby knows how a spoon works. That seems like as good a place to start as any in recognizing what’s going well, what I’m already good at. My baby knows how a spoon works, he knows he is cared for, he knows he is safe, he knows he is loved. I’m not a perfect mother, but I am a good one.

What about you? Are you too hard on yourself sometimes, like me? If so, what are you already doing right? I bet it’s a lot!

Categories
Sunday Stitch Count

Sunday Stitch Count 8/6

Happy Sunday!

We have a new tradition in our little family of walking into town for ice cream every Sunday afternoon, and the walking part makes the ice cream part feel completely justified. However, the smallest member of our family, who has not yet been introduced to the glories of sugar, tends to feel a bit left out of the festivities.

“I really don’t think my key chain tastes as good as your ice cream does!”

Today was no exception, so if you see Asher and he feels compelled to share his woes with you, just go ahead and assume it’s about the absence of ice cream in his life. He’d probably appreciate a sympathetic sigh or two, while you’re at it.

Over in knitting world, there’s been some modest progress:

Find Your Fade by Andrea Mowry

I’ve finally moved on to my fourth color, Tosh Merino Light by Madeline Tosh in Kimil. I took the second photo to try and show the four different yarns I’ve used so far, since even in person it’s hard to tell the difference between the first two without direct sunlight. It’s harder to photograph knitting than I ever realized, and I now understand why Stephanie Pearl-McPhee always enlists her husband for help! Also, I really can’t show the changing shape of the pattern because the width is now longer than the cord on my circular needle. Sigh. Who will play me in the movie?!?

Falling Waters by Knit-A-Bit staff

I’m making some headway on the second panel, but it’s really just a bunch of cables with a small median between each, so it’s not terribly exciting at this stage. But believe it or not, when the stitches get dropped at the end it will look like that first panel on top! I photographed it vertically, just to show the effect, but the two pieces are actually aligned horizontally for the finished product. The pattern is definitely a leap of faith (the instructions don’t really seem like they should work but so far they have, and dropping stitches on purpose feels more than a bit bizarre), but the nice thing about knitting is that worst case scenario, you rip the yarn back and start something new!

And now, if you’ll excuse me, Asher would like his turn with the computer, so it’s going to disappear for a while!

Sunday Stitch Count 7/30

Sunday Stitch Count 7/23

Categories
Reflections

The healthiest baby in the NICU

As I mentioned once before, Asher had to go to the NICU for about 12 hours after he was born. However, he was born at 4:23 pm, and didn’t go to the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) until about midnight that evening. Nothing about labor/delivery/postpartum/newborn nursing has been familiar to me since college; nevertheless, I feel fairly confident in saying that this was an unusual amount of time between delivery and NICU admission.

See, Asher was pretty tiny when he was born–he only weighed 5 pounds, 2 ounces. He was born at just over 37 weeks, so while he was still technically premature, he really should have been bigger than that, thus earning himself the label “Small for Gestational Age”. SGA babies have their blood sugar checked shortly after delivery, and his was too low. I can’t remember now what the number was, but it was low enough that the nursing staff was a bit concerned (and not for the first time; I found out after the fact that his heart rate had gotten so low while I was delivering him that the neonatal resuscitation team had been called–they apparently rushed into the room at the moment he was born, heard his enthusiastic cry, then turned around and went back upstairs without me ever seeing them). So, they tried to get Asher to nurse, but probably as a result of the low blood sugar, he was too sleepy to be bothered with that much effort. To my dismay, they then whisked him off to the newborn nursery to give him formula to try and sweeten him up a bit (see what I did there?).

This was the very first photo I ever took of Asher. Look how big the newborn diaper was on him!

It worked. They wheeled me to the nursery a short time later for some much needed cuddles (much needed for me, he was too full and sleepy to care), and after re-checking his blood sugar we were sent to my postpartum room to get acquainted. This was going swimmingly, until a few hours later when my nurse came in to check his blood sugar again…and it was too low. I remembered enough from nursing school to know that wasn’t good news, because by then he should have been able to adequately maintain his own levels. It was quickly decided that he needed to go upstairs to the NICU for closer observation and possibly IV fluids. And then, for the second time in his life, my newborn baby was taken away from me.

I’m making that sound really dramatic, but at that moment it felt like my whole world was ending. I’d delivered him, had him taken away, gotten him back, then had him taken again, and I was a bit of a wreck about the whole thing (plus this had all happened a month before we expected him to even be born, and I was still in shock about that fact alone). When I was taken up to see him a while later, his nurse was giving him a bottle AGAIN, and that was the moment I knew he might never be able to breastfeed (and sadly, I was right). I remember that the Nurse Practitioner who was on call in the NICU that night was very pretty, and I’m sure she was compassionate, informative and reassuring, but I don’t actually know because I was crying too hard to hear anything she said.

As it turned out, Asher was the healthiest baby in the NICU for the entirety of his (mercifully short) stay. His blood sugar never dropped again, he never needed an IV, the NICU staff found me a hospital-issued breast pump and Dave and I got to give him his bottles of breastmilk every 3 hours, and Asher and I were discharged from the hospital together–something that wouldn’t have happened if he had needed any true NICU-level intervention. As an intensive care nurse myself, I can’t even count the number of times that I’ve had a patient in the exact same situation as Asher–really not sick enough to need an ICU nurse, but just a bit too iffy for the floor staff (who have much higher nurse to patient ratios) to feel safe keeping him on their unit. With hindsight being 20/20, it was pretty obvious that he hadn’t needed the NICU at all–but everyone was just trying to keep him safe.

But whether he needed to be there or not, he still went to the NICU. I still had to spend the first night of his life away from him, and only fell asleep because I was too tired to cry any more.

I don’t consider myself a “NICU mom”, because I would never dare to appropriate the anguish of a mother who can’t even freely touch her fragile baby inside an isolette. I never wondered if I would get to bring Asher home, only when. Nevertheless, that first night of his life was heartbreaking and terrifying for me.

As I tried to process through everything that had happened when Asher was born, I found myself in this bizarre gray zone of not being a NICU mom, but not being a non-NICU mom, either. I finally realized that, regardless of how not-sick my baby had been, I needed to give myself permission to grieve the loss of what I had expected for those first few hours of motherhood. Losing that time with Asher, and ultimately losing the ability to breastfeed him, are sad realities that I have had to accept as part of the story of my motherhood. The fact that other people had harder situations doesn’t undo the hardness of my own.

Theodore Roosevelt is quoted as saying that comparison is the thief of joy, but I think that comparison can be the thief of mourning, too. Sometimes the hard work of grief needs to happen in order to reassess and reassemble ourselves, then move forward into the new world we now face. Not doing that work because of someone else’s tragedy only serves to hamper our own progress.

I found a great deal of freedom from the weight of Asher’s NICU ordeal when I decided that it was okay to be hurt by painful things, full stop. It makes me no less compassionate for another person’s story just because I have chosen to acknowledge the low points in my own; if anything, I hope and pray that it will make me more so.

Is there pain or sadness that you’ve pushed to the periphery of your life because you know someone else had it harder, or because it could have been worse? If so, I’d like to humbly encourage you to pull it back to center long enough to identify, examine and assimilate it. Doing so may require great courage, but I truly believe it will be worth it…because I believe that weight will be easier to bear when you’re done.

Categories
Sunday Stitch Count

Sunday Stitch Count 7/30

It’s Sunday again! When I was pregnant, I was so hyper-aware of the passage of time–I absolutely said things like, “I’m 32 and a half weeks along!”–but without that looming due date by which to measure, days can easily sneak up on me. That’s why it’s fun to see what I have to show for a week, knitting-wise…one ENORMOUS difference between knitting and motherhood is concrete, tangible progress!

Find Your Fade by Andrea Mowry

I’m a little surprised by how not-different this project looks from last week, even though it’s a couple inches longer. Ms. Mowry tends to write patterns that are fairly straightforward but really let the yarn shine, so I’m hoping my next color change will really make a difference…otherwise I may end up in a dreaded shawl black hole!

Falling Waters by Knit-A-Bit staff

Now that’s progress! The irony of this pattern is that all of the panels between the cables are intentionally dropped at the bind-off, so a lot of work gets done to then be purposefully undone. It’s like a cha-cha with yarn! (How’s that for knitterly optimism?)

Fair Isle Coaster by Helen Ardley

The yarn is Cascade 220 Sport in gray, teal and cream, because once again no one over there at Cascade Yarns could be bothered to give these poor little colors a real name! It’s a bit of a travesty, really. As you can see, this little coaster is actually finished already, but there’s supposed to be 4 of them and I can’t find the one I already made (I blame the move, I can’t find my good blocking pins either!), so it’s really only 25% of the project.

And, of course, the obligatory Asher picture! He’s really starting to enjoy solid foods more and more–in this picture he had just polished off macaroni and cheese AND green beans!

Previous Stitch Counts:

Sunday Stitch Count 7/23

Categories
Reflections

Don’t sleep when the baby sleeps (and other heretical advice for new moms)

Look, I know she meant well, but the wrath I felt towards the first person who cheerfully told me to “sleep when the baby sleeps!” while I was battling a terrible case of postpartum depression and had a baby with reflux, was truly a thing of awe. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve definitely been that angry before, but usually over something that was actually meant to incite anger–not over some innocuous, if entirely unhelpful and ridiculous, platitude.

One of the potential symptoms of postpartum depression is an inability to sleep, and talk about adding insult to injury. It took many prayers, a very specific pillow setup, just the right amount of light, Dave reading to me from a particular kind of book, lavender essential oil and the blood of a virgin to get me to sleep at night. Jay-kay on the virgin blood part, but dang, I got desperate enough a few times that if it would have helped… ANYway, sleeping during the day was simply out of the question, because I physically could not do it. So being blithely told to “sleep when the baby sleeps” was a slap in the face, not only because it was dangling a carrot of something I absolutely could not have, but it made me feel like I wasn’t “doing it right” as a new mom.

So, here are my pieces of borderline heretical advice for new moms, because I really could have used some of that in the beginning!

Don’t sleep when the baby sleeps unless falling asleep is what you want to do and actually can do. If you can’t sleep, have a nice warm cup of something soothing, put your feet up, and enjoy a few moments of relaxation–don’t make yourself miserable trying to sleep if that’s not a reasonable expectation for you. Just take care of yourself however you need to be cared for at that moment.

(That’s not a trick of the light, I really had circles under my eyes so dark they looked like bruises. And awwww, newborn Asher!)

Keep your kitchen clean if that will make you feel more sane. Newborns truly are precious and miraculous and stay that small for a blink of an eye; however, it is NOT a crime to take 5 or 10 minutes to tidy things up if you want to. My baby came almost 3 weeks early when my OB had told me he’d be at least a week late, so absolutely NOTHING in our home was ready for his arrival. We’d installed the car seat, but that was only because I wanted the big box out of our cramped apartment! I was in a haze of shock and bewilderment for quite some time after Asher was born, and felt like I’d completely lost control of my life–except when I did the dishes. Washing dishes gave me a well-defined task, required only skills I was already adept at, and had a definitive end point. Nothing about mothering a newborn who couldn’t nurse and who arrived a month earlier than he was expected gave me any of those things, so the idea of ignoring the small stuff like dishes actually made me feel worse, not better.

If your child is an unlikable wretch in the evenings, it is not your fault. Asher did the very classic “witching hour” from about 5 weeks til 10 weeks–I called it “staging a coup”. He would cry relentlessly from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. every. single. night. We could have set our watches by it. We tried ev-er-y-thing to calm him, and actually only discovered the thing that worked best by accident–we made a pillow fort around him on the bed and then just sat by him while he kicked his legs and flailed his arms to his heart’s content. I still suspect that we may have been winding him up more with all of our efforts at soothing. Insert eye roll here. But anyway, when I went looking for advice about this, I kept finding articles that told me it was MY fault that he was so miserable, I clearly wasn’t giving him a good day since he was so unhappy at night, I was feeding him wrong, I was blah blah blah. It was total B.S., but I was exhausted and desperate enough to believe it. IT WASN’T TRUE. If your baby is throwing a fit every night, check with your pediatrician to see if she has anything to say about it, and then hunker down and do whatever it takes to get through it–drive around the neighborhood, put baby in a wrap and walk the halls, give her a warm bath, cry along with her, but do NOT believe that you are causing this problem. It is, unfortunately, just a thing that some babies do. And then someday, when they’re good and ready, they stop doing it. Sigh. Which leads me to my next point…

For the love, don’t Google everything! Or at least only click on the pages that look like respectable sources of information. If you want to know if something is normal, ask an actual person you trust, like your pediatrician, a friend with young children, or even email the author of a mommy blog (and I’m not just being cute there, I actually wised up and started reaching out to a couple mommy bloggers who seemed like women I’d be friends with in real life, and got some super encouraging responses for my trouble!).

And, perhaps most importantly, you don’t have to love every minute of new motherhood to love your child unconditionally and be a really good mother. I am so thankful that I was lucky enough to carry my own baby, so I love having been pregnant, but I honestly didn’t love being pregnant. In the same way, Asher’s newborn days were some of the most precious of my life, and I coo over my photos of him at that age all the time; but, they were also some of the hardest and scariest days of my life. I often got down on myself for not “loving every minute”, and I so wish I hadn’t. I love that I got to have a newborn, but I didn’t always love having a newborn–and that’s okay. Not every season can be your favorite, and there is nothing wrong with you if you don’t adore this particular one. Just take lots of photos to drool over when he or she is older, because that really is fun!

I’m not far down the road of motherhood at all, and I still have more to learn than I could dream of right now, but I have learned these things so far. If you are a new mom and need someone to just listen and say, “yeah, me too”, please send me a message or write a comment. You don’t have to go it alone, your motherhood is precious, and you are the mother your child needs.

Now go take a nap…or don’t!