Mommy-and-me virgin no more: Tips and observations

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1. Pat-Pat-Clap...
...does not mean you're about to break into We Will Rock You. The time you spend lamenting this truth and singing the Queen super-hit in your head will completely distract you from whichever nursery rhyme you're suppose to be pat-pat-clapping to.

Similar, yet deserving of its own bullet…

2. Repeating "hush" twice in a "hushed" voice is not a tribute to Deep Purple. Again, very distracting from baby rhymingness.

3. Those short people are thieves.
My husband and I are only children, which means two things: (1) We don't have siblings, nor do we have nieces or nephews, and (2) we have the personalities of only children. So, our son hasn't had a lot of experience with other children.
His first? A toddler who stole the toy he was playing with. (This is merely an observation, not a complaint. Little Winona Ryder's mom handled the situation flawlessly.)

4. Do not overdress. No one will like you.
There were baseball hats, workout clothes, cardigans and jeans. By that measure, I fit right in. By another, however…

5. Makeup, the great divider
I spoke to one other mom at this slobbery shindig: the other mom who dared to line her eyes. She even wore--not gloss, not Chapstick--honest-to-God lipstick, IN PLUM. What a hussy.

6. Protect your crack.
I must credit my fellow make-up-wearer with this bit of advice.
"I found an extra-long tank top to tuck into my jeans because I knew I'd be doing this," as she reached out for her daughter from hands-and-knees.
Noted, wise one.

7. Book Babies is not puppy class.
When our Treeing Walker coonhound/beagle mix was a four-month-old wild man, we attended a puppy class that began with the dogs freely running around the room. It was social, spirited, energy-zapping and unbelievably entertaining, maybe even for the dogs.
Any thoughts I had about mommy and me being a similar event were quickly quashed.
The experience was completely sanitized by the moms' concern over toy stealing, accidental hitting and God knows what else.
Classify this behavior up there with peanut-free classrooms, sports where everyone makes the team and Gaylord Focker's 6th place trophy.

Crying it out, both of us: Night #1

 Photo credit: _Nezemnaya_ via photopin cc

The so-called crying-it-out method of training a child to soothe and put themselves to sleep is as hotly debated a topic as it comes. It's Saharan. It's a topic on a hot tin roof.

The concept can be traced back to a book published by Dr. Emmett Holt in 1895, but was popularized by Dr. Richard Ferber in 1985.

"Ferberizing" involves leaving your infant (four months of age or older) safely in their crib and returning to the room after increasing amounts of time until the child is asleep. For example, let him cry for three minutes, return (but don't pick up), five minutes, return, ten minutes, etc. Theoretically, the child is crying because they don't have the ability to soothe themselves--because they've always used some "crutch" such as cuddling, nursing, a bottle, etc.--something which the method strives to teach. Three-to-seven nights crying-until-he's-sleeping is supposed to deliver a child who is able to lay down at bedtime and fall asleep, sans drama.

Someone opposed to Ferberizing might argue that the method works not because of a profound psychological discovery, but because you are pushing the child to the point of sheer exhaustion.

Other fears surround long-lasting effects of not responding to the child when they need you.

If you listen to Erik Erikson, this point of a child's life strives to resolve "trust vs. mistrust": Either the child will learn to trust based on having their needs met (are fed when they cry, for example) or the opposite.

This last little tidbit echoed in my mind and rattled my soul for the better part of my son's first year. Then, circumstances changed.

The following is stream-of-consciousness writing that occurred during the first night of my son's cry-it-out training.

It was the night when we both cried it out.
My son is currently screaming his face off, standing up in his crib while "learning to put himself to sleep".

How did we get here?

There was no way, no how I was ever going to employ the methods of "cry it out" (or CIO on mothering message boards)…until two weeks ago.

For 7 1/2 months, we had a so-so sleeper.

He's never slept through the night. (Thank you, Facebook friends, for bragging about your alien newborns who sleep for seven hour stretches, by the way.) He would wake one-to-three times per night, and I was okay with that. My body rhythms had adjusted to these wake ups, and anything seemed better than CIO.

Then came the eight month sleep regression. Regression is, in fact, a misnomer. Regression implies that his sleep returned to some former degraded level. No. It sank to an all-time low. He woke up with every sleep cycle (every 90 minutes) all night, every night.

The only remedy for a quick return to sleep each night was bedsharing.

Don't get me wrong. I am deeply connected to our son, and bedsharing only added to that mother-son intimacy; however, it woke my husband more than was acceptable for what his job requires, which landed me and baby in bed and my first love on the couch.

The first week was cute. It was warm, cuddly and everything I'll probably look back fondly upon when our beautiful son and his hormones are rolling his eyes at me.

And then, it wasn't quite as adorable.

The novelty had worn off for both of us, and his previously deep, comforted levels of sleep were replaced by tossing, turning, head-flipping, kicking and hair-pulling, waking both of us up all too frequently. Not to mention, my 6'5" husband on our 6'3" couch.

Some mornings I was an utter zombie, or, at the very least, was using huge amounts of energy to keep my crabbiness to a minimum and my patience at nearly normal levels.

Plus, husband time had taken a serious hit. Our two nightly hours of time to ourselves was replaced by entertaining an over-tired eight-month-old, and nights of cuddling my head into my husband's chest were a distant memory.

The benefits I thought I was giving our son by not "teaching him to soothe himself" (by crying it out) were now far outweighed by his need for sleep, my need for sleep and his parents need to…not always be parents.

I was doing him absolutely no favors with the current set-up.

So, here I sit. Night number one of crying it out.

He was "drowsy and awake". He ate a fat-kid helping of organic vanilla yogurt with homemade pureed pears.

I can't even write that sentence without second-guessing myself.

My child is (still) screaming, nearly 45 minutes into this "method", while I sit idly by, but I bother with organic yogurt and homemade baby food because I'm paranoid about BPA, pesticides, antibiotics and growth hormones? Should I just throw in the towel entirely and feed him Mac 'n Cheese tomorrow?

What a fraud.

No, Abby, you aren't a fraud. You're teaching him to get a much better night sleep than he has been getting. Your Montessori lessons won't do much good to a fussy and tired child, and you'll be the best mother you can be if you're well-rested. Oh, and you'll have a full conversation with your husband again.

Yeah. That's it. That's why I'm doing this.

My body feels like it's shaking a bit. It's not (I checked), but it feels like it. I can feel my heart beating against my rib cage.

My phone is vibrating with 42 alerts from all the Facebook cloth diapering co-ops to which I belong, which is nothing other than irksome.

Again, cloth diapering. I'm bothering to use cloth diapers to avoid the chemicals that otherwise rub against my little angel's skin, to help the environment (and to save a few bucks)…and my baby is screami…

Wait a second. It's quiet. HE'S quiet. Fifty minutes. We survived.

Now, if he doesn't hate me in the morning…

For the record, he didn't.

Correcting the half-truths of new parent advice

There are the things you're told about being a new Mom (Yes, proper noun.); There are the things you aren't told; And then, there are the things you're told but fail completely in their quest to represent reality.

This list is to correct those lies by omission.

1. Baby clothing sizes are just as whacked as the sizing of women's jeans.

There's teeny three months, huge three months and "three months years". 

The only thing left to do is change the lighting in Carter's to make you look like total crap.

2. Newborn diapers are suitable for 5-8 lb. babies…who make very little urine.

When my "early term" (read: almost premature) baby was still a feathery seven pounds, he began to literally pee through newborn diapers. Each diaper-soaking was, in fact, a complete costume change, until a lightbulb when on: Try a size one.

Size one diapers made my son appear to have quite the badonkadonk, but a dry badonkadonk it was.

3. Each lactating breast has a unique personality…and then they switch.

Like a set of menacing twins, this formerly seductive pair seeks to astonish and confuse. Just when you become accustomed to Leftie behaving as the Niagara Falls of milky cocktails, it then takes coaxing and empty promises to do its work…just before you rename it Cybil.

4. Follow your gut. "Mom" and "Dad" are credentials unto themselves.

On day nine of my son's life, I had a melt down: He was not pooping on schedule. His rectum had not read the text book, and it sent my stress level into the stratosphere.

My husband calmly asked me, "Do you honestly think there's something wrong, or are you freaking out because of what a lactation consultant told you?" The truth was in the latter part of his question, but I didn't have the confidence to trust myself or even him.

I was completely wrong.

There will come a day--and that may be on day one--when your baby cries, and you know exactly why. It isn't necessarily because of the tone of the cry or because "he acted this way the last time he _____", but just because you know.

It's the privilege of being present since this being was a cluster of cells. Trust yourself.

5. Stock your pantry with healthy foods…that can be prepared with one hand.

Buy healthy foods, they say. Cook meals ahead of time, they say.

"Breastfeeding burns more calories than growing a baby."

"Eat several small meals throughout the day."

The parrots who assault our eyes and ears with such advice said nothing about accessibility.

Our house was filled with uncut and unwashed veggies just after our son was born, as were blocks of celebratory cheese ("celebratory" because they were "illegal" in the prior nine months) and honey wheat pretzels that were kept under the padlock of an unopened, noisy, cellophane bag.

At 4 a.m. with a sleeping newborn nestled in the crook of your neck, an unpeeled carrot might as well sing nah-nah nah-nah nah-nah in your unwashed, haggard face.

Want to help new parents? Yeah, the lasagna is nice, but the more practical, appreciated option might be a large container of washed/peeled/cut veggies and fruit, cheese and any other healthy, easy-to-eat option for the 4 a.m. blood sugar plummets.

6. The back pain while pregnant is nothing compared to the back pain with a newborn.

Whether breastfeeding or bottle feeding, the Cirque du Soleil-like contortions of your upper body know no bounds.

If you are breastfeeding and your nipples look as though someone walked over them in cleats, the initial few seconds of each feeding inspires all sorts of subtle and overt clenches that would send any yoga instructor into convulsions.

Before you know it, your jaw is clamped down so tight that it feels like you've eaten five tablespoons of peanut butter; You've hiked your shoulders up so far toward said peanut butter mouth that severe scoliosis would be an improvement, and, generally, you look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Keep calm, and remember that you can now take ibuprofen.

7. Your baby's clothes will fit for approximately five days.

After heeding the advice of the Moms who came before me, we owned only two newborn outfits, with an eye toward several 0-3 month ensembles.

Despite our son weighing over seven-and-a-half pounds, he positively swam in many of the 0-3 month outfits, leaving his feet curled up to his chest while the legs of his fleecy sleepers dangled below him like the limbs of a cheap puppet.

Magically, several weeks later, these outfits fit: The elasticized wrist bands met his delicate wrists and the footies, in fact, held his tootsies. (Because, several weeks after the birth of your child, you will talk like this.)

You bask in the glow of how cute your little bundle looks in his now well-fitting wardrobe. And, a handful of days later, you'll go to bed, only to wake up to 12 pairs of socks whose heel pockets lay at the middle of your baby's foot and footed pajamas whose fibers are holding on for dear life with every baby stretch.

In short, your baby will look like Harry Potter dressed in Dudley Dursley's cast-offs for huge portions of his first few months.