Mama Tells All

In honor of August being National Breastfeeding Month, below is something that I formerly published about my experiences breastfeeding. The picture is of my boys “playing” with “Mommy’s toys.” If you’ve ever breastfed, I hope that this picture makes you smile…

A mother with perfect makeup and great hair sits lovingly holding her baby to her chest, smiling down at her breastfeeding infant that she holds in her arms. The baby is silently eating, and the mother looks like she could not be happier. Cue the soft lullabies in the background, and the sun shining in through the window…

If this is what breastfeeding really looks like, then I somehow missed the memo. Feeding your baby in sweats and a nursing tank top, wondering when you last showered, is more like it. I would like to share a few of my observations about REAL breastfeeding. Caution: These experiences would NOT be put on a Medela commercial. My experiences include feeding my first son for 10 months(a barracuda of an eater with unceasing hunger) and my second son for 9 months.

When I was pregnant with my first son, I went to the breastfeeding class offered by my hospital. It was a good class, and I would recommend taking one if you are a mommy looking to breastfeed. Bring Dad too…Dad needs to know how much work this is going to be for you, if only so that he brings you flowers or chocolate on occasion for sacrificing your body for your little cherub once again after already giving up your bodily rights for nine months.

I should say before I continue that I am a huge supporter of breastfeeding, and all of the many benefits that it is supposed to provide. Higher IQ, less sickness, easier time digesting food, less smelly poop… Without a doubt, I knew that I wanted to give that to my children. However, here are the things that I wish someone had told me before this milky journey began…

* Your boobs are no longer your own. They are functional milk-producing units that belong to your baby. You thought you were tied down by rules while pregnant? Just wait until you figure out that your little one doesn’t like it when you eat green peppers or that you still can’t take most medicines. Baby still rules.

 
* Your new best friend should be lanolin cream. This MAY save your nipples from cracking, bleeding, blistering, etc. But don’t be surprised if you are still so sore at first that you don’t want a slight breeze to blow past your chest…

 
* If you pump, you may very well hear your pump whispering things to you. Whether this is because the pump is actually talking to you, or it is just a hallucination brought on by too many late night feedings and not enough sleep, I will let you decide. However, I can tell you that my pump has told me to “let it go” and “let it out”…and most would deem me a pretty sane person.

 
* Don’t be surprised if you cannot find a bra that fits right to save yourself. Your boobs will be various sizes throughout the day, and your left lady might be bigger than your right one. Or vice versa. No guarantee that your girls are equal opportunity milk makers.

 
* You very well may “wet the bed.” I have discussed this with several other mamas (to make sure that it wasn’t just me), and here’s the sad fact. Many of you will not be able to sleep on your stomach, or even side, while breastfeeding. I once dared to lay on my side in the first few months of feeding, and woke up with a soaked top. And sheets. No one warned me about this. I thought I wasn’t going to have to deal with wet sheets until potty training! Think again.

 
* Lastly, do not be surprised if someone else’s baby crying causes torrential letdown for you…while your baby is content. I distinctly recall sitting in the emergency room (being treated for mastitis…another potential joy of breastfeeding), watching my hospital gown soak through, because a baby was crying a few doors down. Call it mother’s sympathy pains or whatever you want, but it was annoying.

I don’t tell you all of these things to scare off those of you interested in breastfeeding your kids. I am simply letting you know some of the truths of breastfeeding, so you’re not sitting at home wondering, “Is this happening to anyone else???” Yes, it is. You’re not alone. They just didn’t tell you this in class because they didn’t want to frighten you while you were still anticipating the fears of delivering a baby.

If I ever had another kid, knowing all that it would entail, would I choose to breastfeed again? Absolutely. In the midst of all the crazy stuff, there are the quiet moments of bonding that make it all worthwhile. And the ability to just “whip ’em out” and feed your kid any time, any place…that can be convenient too. There are perks. I can’t deny that. I was actually a little sad when my first son suddenly weaned himself, and when I last fed my youngest son. There are benefits and joys to being a lactating lady.

Just don’t say I didn’t warn you about the rest of it.

So this week has slipped by and I’ve been so busy being a mama that I haven’t had time to write. I’m officially declaring this week as my “summer vacation” from my blog. I will return next week! Hope you stop by to see what’s new!

So I don’t know about you, but I feel like parenthood is something that you are thrown into once that sweet baby of yours arrives. That final nurse sends you away from the hospital saying, “Good luck!” Well, thank you…we will need a lot of that luck. And maybe more than luck. Like the parenting manual that doesn’t exist. I read a lot of baby books before our baby came, but when we left the hospital I still felt a little like someone threw me to a pack of hungry bears and said “RUN!”

As you are snapping your baby’s car seat into the car (thinking ‘Am I even doing this right?’) , you are almost unable to grasp that they are REALLY letting you take this little human home. Because once you take that 4 session baby class and watch a few videos at the hospital, you are ready to be parents…right?!? You are now the expert on your little human. On your mark, get set, be a parent!

Fear not. It hit me the other day that I was once called an “expert” at something…that I actually knew nothing about. Now I’m pretty knowledgeable about it. This thing that I’m now an “expert” in is melons. (Stick with me. This will come back to parenting.)

When I was in college, I worked at a grocery store. I normally worked the customer service desk, but sometimes being the friendly, outgoing person that I am, I would find myself working random jobs outside of my normal duties. Our store had an annual “Melon Fest” during which customers could sample various seasonal melons that we were selling.

There was an advertisement at the sampling table that I was to work at that said “Melon Expert on hand to answer your questions.” As someone from the produce department was helping get me the melons that I would be cutting up, I asked who the melon expert was. He replied that it was me. I laughed, but I was handed some information cards about eight different melons and told that the information would be helpful.

So, there I was…a table full of melons to sample, and I was the expert. Seriously?! I quickly read the little cards, but kept them handy so that I could have some clue as to what to tell people. I felt a bit annoyed that I was the melon “expert,” feeling like I was a fraud. I didn’t know which melons were the sweetest, or how to tell if they were ripe or not. At least I had my melon playing cards.

But as I went about my shift, cutting up the various melons (I am now a master melon cutter after all those hours of cutting melons), chatting with customers, and sampling along with them…I actually started to figure out a thing or two about them. By the time I had done a couple shifts as the “melon expert,” I actually felt like I knew what I was talking about. Was I an expert? Of course not. But I felt pretty darn comfortable helping people figure out what melons to try and buy.

At this point, you might be thinking “What does this have to do with parenting?” Well, as I was cutting up a cantaloupe the other day…it hit me that parenthood was A LOT like my experience as the melon expert. I had no idea what I was doing at the start, and was taken by surprise that I was supposed to know what to do. This sounds like parenting.

I was hesitant at first, but quickly gained confidence as I cut up more melons and helped more people figure out what was what. This sounds like parenting as well. By the time I was done with my shifts as the melon expert, I certainly wasn’t an expert but I really did know what I was talking about and what I was doing. Call this my cantaloupe conclusion if you want: being a parent was just like my melon “expert” experience!

I am guessing that there are more than a few situations in life that transpire like this: someone is thrown into the deep end of a situation not knowing how to “swim,” but somehow he or she makes it anyways. Don’t know about you, but this melon moment that I had made me feel better about being a parent. Realizing that even though I may not have known what I was doing at the beginning, I’m doing okay now. The first time I tried to give my kid a bath, I’m not sure he even came out of the situation clean but I was somehow soaked. Now I’m pretty sure my kids are clean after I bathe them. The first time I tried to feed my kids baby food, I bet they didn’t ingest a complete tablespoon of it. Now I can trick my kids into eating veggies (mwah-ha-ha…insert evil laugh) that they don’t even know are in their dinners!

I could come up with a hundred examples of times when I didn’t know what I was doing at first, but where I came out unharmed and relatively successful in the end. So I think we’ll all be fine. The next time something happens, whether as a parent or in life, where you think that you can’t do it, remember: You will survive. You will figure it out. And you will probably come out looking pretty good at the end of it all. Maybe you’ll even be an expert.

Feel free to share your “I didn’t know what I was doing, but now I totally got this!” moment in the comments section!

I know that all good things must come to an end… but this is not an ending that I am ready to embrace. It started a few weeks back. If this has happened to you already, grab the Kleenex because you just may cry right along with me. This is sad stuff.

Until recently, perhaps a few weeks back, my older son always took a daily nap when we were at home. When he was younger, he would take amazingly long naps (we’re talking 3-4 hours) that would leave my mama friends jealous, and probably wondering if I slipped a sleep aid into the naptime bottle. (Which I never did…though tempted I was at 3 a.m. when he was wide awake.) As the years have gone by, he has continued to nap every day…up until a couple of weeks ago.

It was then that he decided that he didn’t need a nap on certain days. If he slept in past 8 a.m. in the morning…no nap. If he was in one of those awesome I-can-do-whatever-I-want-because-I’m-four moods, then he was NOT GOING TO NAP.

Some days I tried putting him down for a nap just to see what would happen. We would read our stories, I would kiss him goodnight…and then five minutes later I would hear the random singing or banging on the wall that meant that if I didn’t go get him, he was going to wake up his peacefully napping younger brother in the room next to him. I can’t have two naps die in the same day. My heart can’t handle that yet. So I swoop in and get him.

Now I know what many will say – just institute a “quiet time” in his room with books, puzzles, or quiet toys. I’m here to tell you that books, puzzles, and quiet toys are not always quiet. I love the analogy of a young child being like a blender without the lid on. If you saw the general state of my living room floor on most days(toys, books, Legos, a random Cheerio or Cheez-it…all scattered about), you would know that my little blenders run on HIGH speed. Not sure that they have a quiet mode.

When this no-napping-nonsense first started, the days where he didn’t nap led to there being a wild beast in my house by dinnertime that vaguely resembled my son through the tears, whining, and yelling. Sometimes I would look at the child melting down in front of me and think, “Where did we go wrong? That can’t be our kid.” There is no rationalizing with him when he is in this state. I’d have better luck cleaning Oreos from the teeth of a mad lion. (Or from an overtired two year old. Probably the same skill level required here.)

Now a few weeks into this sporadic napping thing (I hope that if I call it a “thing” it will make it seem temporary as opposed to it being the natural developmental progression of a child), he will have days where he doesn’t nap…and he actually stays reasonable for the rest of the day. Hmmm…what does this mean? I guess I was hoping that he would grow out of his nap by the time he went to kindergarten…but that is still a year away! Why rush things kid? Keep on nappin’ on!

I now relish the days that he does take a nap, because it gives me those moments of peace and quiet that any parent needs to make it through some of the longer days. When he doesn’t nap, I try to see it as nice one-on-one time with him while his brother sleeps.

Either way, I will definitely miss the afternoon nap. I don’t think that many baby books have this listed as a milestone: “First Time that my Preschooler Didn’t Nap” or “The Day the Nap Died.”

But they should list it. It is a milestone. It means that my little man is growing up. And I guess that’s the whole point of life, so we’ll roll with it.

Perhaps this sounds familiar.

“Mommy..I come in? I come in?” says little brother, as he sticks his tiny wiggling fingers underneath the door of the bathroom, hoping I will playfully “get him.”
“MOM…the door is stuck! I can’t get it open!” says big brother, shaking the doorknob.

Well, thank goodness! That was the entire point of Mommy locking the door. If you are a mom of young children, this same scenario has probably played itself out for you in some variation. You try to go somewhere to have a MOMENT of peace, and you just can’t find it. (Notice I said moment. Not minutes, not hours…just a moment of peace where no one else can get to you. That’s all one can ask for some days.) While I dearly love my two boys, sometimes I just want to use the bathroom without interruption. However, through my last 4.5 years of parenting these cherubs, I have figured out that there are certain circumstances in which you stand a better than average chance of going to the bathroom in peace. Here are a few of them.

1. The SECOND you have started a movie for the kids, or turned on a show…run like the wind! Or tiptoe if you have noisy floors. You just might get to relieve yourself without the kids noticing. (This only works though if watching t.v. is a moderated commodity. Think carefully about turning on the t.v.)
2. The kids went down for a nap? Revert back to childhood when you used to go on those long road trips with your family. Before we would pile in the van, my mom would say “You should at least try to go, even if you don’t have to. We have a long drive ahead.” Moms…you should just try to go. You have a long day ahead. Empty the tank.
3. And the best opportunity: when dad walks in the door at the end of the day. I’d say that it takes less than two minutes to pee, and for at least two minutes your kids are going to be excited about someone else being home. And maybe they will go bang on his bathroom door and not yours.

However, should you be unable to manage one of these feats (i.e. you have already taken away t.v. time for the day, the kids won’t nap, and dad’s on a business trip)…fear not. You can still use the bathroom. Now you just have to be creative about doing so with an audience. Yes, privacy is what you wanted, but like I tell my kids frequently, sometimes “we just can’t have what we want.”

When my oldest was potty training, I talked about going to the bathroom and showed him around the bathroom. I was hoping the same would work with my youngest…and it did, with a twist. I have my own personal potty cheerleader in the form of a two year old.

Me: Mommy is going potty.
Him: Mommy all done?
Me: (tinkle tinkle…) Yep, Mommy is all done!
Him: TA-DA!! Good job Mommy! You went potty!

Little did I know what when I was followed into the bathroom by my youngest child that I would be praised and fist-pumped for going to the bathroom. I guess if I can’t have privacy, having a dimple-faced cheering section is a close second. I have also encouraged the under-the-door-finger-wiggling game that I mentioned earlier as a way to have the door closed and have visual privacy, if not auditory privacy.

And when you’re feeling just completely annoyed with your kids for not letting you have TWO MINUTES of peace…think back to when you were a kid. Did you ever ask your mom if your favorite shirt was washed…through the bathroom door? Did you ask to go to a friend’s house and you just couldn’t wait until she was out of the bathroom so you knocked and asked…through the bathroom door? Sorry Mom. I now understand why this was NOT COOL. Thanks for still answering me.

So lay some ground rules for your kids: TRY to leave Mommy alone when she’s in the bathroom. People in this house need privacy when using the bathroom. And lastly…if the door is locked, it got that way for a reason. Shout and bang on the door all you want, but yelling never unlocked a door.

Wishing you just two minutes of peace in any way that you can find it today.