Just a day in May

It has been so long since I've written and that usually means that each day that goes by it seems like I should have something even more epic to write. But we all know that isn't how it works.

So here I am. Just because I haven't been in a while.

There are some things I think I've finally learned with the second baby in the house.

1. My clothes aren't "everywhere" for no reason. The more places I store reasonably clean jeans, t-shirt and pajamas, the more likely it is I can wear something reasonably clean even if baby J is sleeping in the room that holds my closet. Same goes for A's and M's clothing. It isn't chaos, its a PLAN.

2. You have to give things up to get other things in life - it is a zero sum game. I needed to simplify life last month, and in addition to getting off of Facebook and Candy Crush for 30 days, I finally started to clean out my closets, inspired by the recent "capsule wardrobe" trend. (Disclaimer: I'm working on a modified capsule wardrobe that does, in fact, include yoga pants and such, because see number 3 below).

3. Whatever you wear at the dining table is basically an extension of the baby's bib. Don't wear black. Or what you plan to wear to work that day. Or anything that doesn't incorporate 3-4 pastel babyfood colors in riotous print. Unless you want to change after the meal.

4. Part of simplifying was getting extra trips to the second hand store in to donate old clothes. So something else had to give. Some days, that was recycling and I just tossed glass babyfood jars in the garbage instead of taking 30 seconds to clean them. Having less clothing and toys around as a result of that time that was reallocated has made a net positive difference in my life.

5. Sleep training was useful last year, but really, apart from letting baby J cry a bit to settle into naps, we are finally getting enough sleep that it is okay by us if he still wakes once a night some nights. Or takes a bottle. Actually, this point is about the power of waiting (or rather, being able to wait because the way things are isn't damaging to health and happiness of the family) until a child is developmentally more than ready for a next step. And the calm that it brings and the minutes or hours it returns to your life. The number of times I fought with A about her pacifier, trying to get her to give it up at 1 year old, 1.5, 2 and 2.5 and 3 years old...those add up to a lot of lost time I could have just chilled out. Rested. Or had a better interaction with her. Because, when she was ready to give it up at 3.5 years, it took 2 nights of 15 min crying each. Done, easy. Trying to push a child at the first possible moment he or she is ready takes way more work than waiting when they're totally ready and maybe a bit past ready. What a difference in quality of relationship it makes!

That's what I've got today.

6. I almost forgot - conditioner. As far as my hair is concerned, the only thing conditioner does for me is make it necessary for me to wash my hair the next day because by then it looks greasy. I'm done for a while with conditioner. I shampoo and leave it. For 3 days sometimes, and it looks just fine. It makes conditioner and hair products seem like a total scam.

...and a partridge in a pear tree

If we'd only kept him home this year.

I think we would have had less sick days.

Then again, have to get them out of the way sometime, right?

So here's the current list:
rotovirus twice (this time, like yesterday and today, with a significant amount of vomiting),
5 days of pink-eye (on the tail end of a 3-day fever), two weeks ago,
3 rounds of croup,
1 ear infection,
lots and lots of runny noses,
and constant teething.

Whew.

Where did women's shoes go?

Seriously, what is up with women's shoes?

I got my annual fix of "trying on more shoes that fit than I wanted to buy" while back in the US over Christmas. Peanut butter, cranberries, Cheerios,...these goods have all made it to Switzerland. Women's shoes for a size 42/43 foot? Not so much.

My stomping grounds in America are Zappos.com, and a DSW store near downtown Chicago. Many a happy purchase has been made through each. This time, as well.

But the last few years I've noticed that more and more often, some of the purchases in a store have to come from the men's section. Not just because of size but because while men's shoes are still mostly made of leather, women's shoes are increasingly constructed of vinyl, Kleenex, cheap cloth and fruit rollups. What gives? Not only do we have to wear high heels but now they dissolve upon contact with water, mud, grass, and,....well, air.

Pair of black, lace-up boots - women's models looked like they were for playing dress-up and not for walking in. I may be missing something, but my personal car service has yet to materialize and I find myself still walking. Outside. For 10s of minutes a day.

Anyway, this is a pretty punky post for such a long absence, but I'll just say the the anti-depressants are settling into my system quite well and I'm feeling better. My fuse is longer, my reserves are higher, I sleep better, and I can even watch someone else breastfeed and not be upset in any way. Besides, with the arrival of teeth 7 and 8, little baby J has now taken to biting skin, hard, as a way to snuggle. I think. He bites, I yell "ow!", he smiles with his tongue out in a sort of mischievous way. It is cute and very thankfully not directed at any mammary glands in the house.

The reason we need more women doctors (or, things my male psychiatrists didn't warn me about)

Because, apparently, rapid weaning from breastfeeding can cause or exaggerate (wow, I had NO idea how to spell that word) depression. Yeah, so that can help explain some of what I'm still feeling. Especially, the difficulty sleeping. My anti-depressants, for which I had to wean, may have brought this upon themselves. They are definitely having to work double time.

Good to keep in mind.

Would have been nice to know ahead of time.

Thankyou...thankyou...thankyou...thankyou

I've started feeling better. So soon after starting the medicine. I'm no longer expending all my energy trying to keep from falling apart. It was as if there were 100 little strings tied improperly to each other, the knots constantly untying, to keep me together, and I was spending all my time retying them as they slipped apart. And I was a collection of marbles in the middle, about to disperse if any knot opened. And now, I'm just a solid piece of clay. The strings can fall, all of them. I won't fall apart.

Yesterday was going to be my first day of gratitude, too, with the end of breastfeeding. 

But I hadn't counted on my milk supply. My body.

Many women wean gradually, dropping one feed every week. Or at least every few days. I did that last time too, even though I was pumping exclusively, and over a month, I was done. There was a last pumped bottle before starting anti-depressants last time and the pump got stored.

This time it's different. I've been producing a lot of milk, and it is going to be an uncomfortable, sometimes painful process to stop. I need to watch that I don't get an infection, to pump only a bit of milk until things are feeling better. And it means I've been feeling like "I should really breastfeed" a lot these last two days. It is making the gratitude-by-way-of-ignoring thing really hard. I'm constantly reminded that I could still be breastfeeding if I wasn't depressed. I'm still having to spend a non-negligible amount of time pumping and throwing it down the sink. And when I go check Google for any more hints on "rapid/emergency weaning", I'm having to avoid the sites that, in the middle of all the good advice, have one bullet point like "#5 make sure you're really ready to wean. most medical problems do not require weaning and you can find a way to continue breastfeeding." Ouch. No, no I can't. I already tried my best and it didn't work.

I tried, in quiet moments, falling asleep (which I can finally do, again!), to tell my body I want it to stop making milk. But that's a lie. Sure, I've made a choice, but I don't love my choice and I can't say that honestly. And then I remembered a poster I'd seen online, which said something like "This Sucks and Thank You are impossible to think at the same time." And it gave me a little window to crawl out of, and I just started thanking my body, for all it had done in the last 18 months to produce and nurture life. For being pregnant, giving up nutrients, giving up energy, pushing a baby out, holding and rocking him, and, feeding him. And, finally, for taking to these anti-depressants so well and letting me start feeling better.

So that's where I've come to a stop. At "Thank You", especially to the breasts, whenever I can. Because "This Sucks" is also hovering around a lot right now. Just, not as much as two days ago.

Ripping off the band-aid...to put on a...cast?

Ok, that metaphor isn’t going to work. Is it even a metaphor? I kind of can’t think anymore, so I’m not even sure.

Turns out, I can start anti-depressants right away, yay! Which means I also have to stop breastfeeding at the same time, boo. But it also means I won’t have as much time to mourn the end and I’m probably mourning more because I’m not on anti-depressants. boo-yay?

Tomorrow I stop one to start the other. Tomorrow I will be all about gratitude for what I did have, and the upside of ending this phase of life. I’m good at finding the upsides. I’ve already bought pesto sauce to go with dinner because who hasn’t eaten any onions or garlic for 5 months? Yeah, over here.

But today, I’m still sad. And I still get to grieve. I’m letting myself still be sad (how is it that it is so hard to allow oneself a bit of sadness, too?), and tomorrow things will be different. And tomorrow night it may be Baby J’s turn to grieve a little. Or, he’ll drink his bottle, snuggle into my or M’s arms, and get all sleepy again anyway. Who knows.

All I know is that sad is ok. And then it is okay for me to do something extreme to make sad be over.

This is not going to be very coherent

It is time. To stop breastfeeding.

I don't really want to. We've worked so hard and it seems to be going well enough, and baby J isn't eating solids with much enthusiasm yet.

But he also isn't sleeping through the night, due to colds. And it is starting to take a serious toll on me. So here I am, a second time, ready to start anti-depressants.

I wish I wasn't here. I wish I were somewhere else. With him. With me.

But I can't sleep very well anymore, even when he is napping. My brain is just too alert. And I'm in tears a lot - once a day. That is a lot.

So even though many of those tears are about stopping breastfeeding him, the fear of being past my childbearing years, the fear of lost connection and not being able to soothe him as I have for the last 8 months, I need to do something to feel better again. To not see every day as so much of a struggle. To get a bit of levity back.

I've looked at each breastfeeding session over the last few weeks as possibly my last, so I've taken time to stop and notice and just be present. And I can tell you, that even having done that I don't feel ready. I don't feel like I noticed it or cherished it enough. It is a major milestone for me, for women who go through it, and it can feel so final, so sad, and I guess that is just the way it is.

I don't want to find any solutions for not having to stop, though, because I'm so very tired. Of all these work arounds to try to make things just a bit better, to hold on just a bit longer. And finding websites about drugs I could take and continue feeding just make me more overwhelmed and don't actually provide comfort. I need some chemical help.

So there we go. A new phase of life coming. And, as a friend very wisely pointed out to me, having gone through a similar stage, while it is the end of physical fertility for me, creativity is also fertility, and there is still a lot of that ahead. It doesn't feel like a great trade right now, at this moment, but I think on the other side of starting anti-depressants, it probably will.

Time to leap, and hope the net appears.