Setting the bar low

Two cans of ready-to-go caffeine in the middle. Two small, shelf storage containers for my coffee at work.

And a photo orientation that pretty much sums up how life is going right now. Just trying to make it in to work on the days I'm supposed to be there, and keep up with the minimum I need to do. 

If mothers were in charge

Okay, they kind of are, in many households, but I mean in the workplace. And I mean in a very specific context.

What if CEOs and policy decision-makers were all mothers? How different would our world look?

I may not be pumping milk at work for very long. Heck, I haven't even gotten the key to the first aid room in the adjoining building and I'm already thinking about whether or not to stop pumping soon (see previous post). But even if I only pump at work for 1-2 weeks, it has been a revelation.

Asking about the room options, ordering a key, getting the temporary key, going one building over to pump, and wash the pump and then to the fridge to store the bottle in a discreet but not insulated package kind of way, then going back to the office takes time. A lot of time. And it is true that just having to go to another building can make it a much harder task.

Imagine if you were told at work that the bathrooms were in the next building over. Don't you kind of expect something closer?

So it got me thinking of how a workday might look if women who had nursed were in charge.

This is not an exhaustive list, nor does it speak to all other aspects of parenthood, but here is what I came up with:

1. There would be a safe, clean, lockable pumping room on each floor or every other floor.
2. There would be 30-45 minute blocks of time for pumping, automatically. In fact, even if you're not pumping, if you have a baby, you're not sleeping enough at night, so let's just give everyone with a baby under 1 year old two 30 min. breaks during the day to rest or nap or pump. Do you know how much more functional they would be the rest of their time at work?
3. Wait, it isn't just parents of small kids. There are so many reasons we are not getting enough sleep, and I know some people who seem to be catching their 45-min. nap every single time someone gives a presentation. So, let's just make those naps mandatory for all. And since it might be better to give people time to actually fall asleep, let's consolidate them into....

Wait a minute. I think this is just the Spanish-speaking world's siesta idea.

Genius.

The end of breastfeeding

I don't expect you to understand.

And I don't say that in the common, holier-than-thou way.

It is just that unless you have actually breastfed a baby, maybe unless you're breastfed what you think or realize will be your last baby, I'm not sure what other experience I can relate it to. This sadness, this mourning that can wash over you when you even consider stopping.

I've been looking for other women's writing on this topic, this week, because baby J had a horrible time sleeping on our trip to the mountains. As in, woke up once a night. All three nights. We were destroyed when we got home (at least the two of us who were in charge of rocking or feeding him back to sleep), and I woke up the next morning weepy. Most things made me cry. In that depression, "oh my god, I'm out of toilet paper/shampoo/my glasses are dirty/look at that cloud in the sky, I'm going to cry" kind of way.

Time to revisit the idea of anti-depressants. And with those, the end of breastfeeding. Uh-oh. Wow much do you want to bet that just turned the waterworks on full throttle?

But baby J's sleep got better, even better than before the trip, in fact, and with it my emotional stability has returned.  I have a prescription for an anti-depressant just waiting in my wallet, should I need it, though. And I've been thinking about the pluses and minuses of stopping breastfeeding since last Thursday.

Pluses: M can tend to him some nights and I can sleep even more, especially to share the load if he gets sick. No more pumping (that's a whole nother post coming up) at work or when baby J gets a bottle. I can eat and cook normally again - Milk! Butter! Cheese! Garlic! Onions! saving both time and my outlook on eating. I don't have to be getting as much protein as possible every single minute of the day or taking Calcium supplements any longer. Because, teeth.

Minuses: Uh-oh.

When I thought that baby A might be our one child, at the end of breastfeeding her at 7 months I was also sad. Mourning. And now, I know we're done having kids, and so, as some mothers on other blogs have said, this is the end of my childbearing life. The end of my fertile life. The end of the physical connection to a baby. My body is now officially old, in reproductive terms.

So even though a part of me is ready, a part of me is so very sad. And pretending that other kinds of bonding will be the same, isn't right. They won't. The calming, the falling asleep in my lap, at my body, that won't happen again. In fact, it may not as big a change for baby J as it will for me.

This isn't about him, actually. It is about me. About my life story.

And I need to take the time and space to attend to this huge milestone properly. Anti-depressants and sleep issues aside, there will always be a moment when a nursing mother breastfeeds for the last time, and I think it should always be allowed to be a big deal for her.

So maybe I can expect you to understand, if this really is about a closing chapter of my own life more than just being about the act of breastfeeding. We celebrate last days of so many other things - school, jobs, lives. We are allowed to feel melancholy about them, even when other nice things are still ahead. This last day should also be included.

I hate sleep training

And yet, I'm here, upstairs at 11pm, while baby J cries and screams. I hate the crying. I hate the screaming even more. I hate the uncertainty, as a mom and baby who have always had a complex relationship to breastfeeding, of whether or not he's hungry 4 hours after his last feed. He's slept already, at 6 months, with only one feed a night and I think he can do it, but I hate not having any other way but a quick pat and a few hums of his sleeptime song, to communicate "not feeding time yet". Last night it was an hour, from 10pm to 11pm. I was in the room for about half of it.

I'm now trying to just go in every 15 min., once I've left. (I still sleep in there for my ability not to wake too much during the middle of the night feed but also because right now this family is getting more sleep with us each in separate rooms).

I hate how now, after a month of colds and complications, or ear infections, coughs, croup and teething, he's more insistent, cries louder. And that the suggestion is to have time go all night without a feed. And while training him on that, to let him cry through teething pain and cold symptoms but not serious problems like croup or an ear infection. Even if I agreed with that plan, how are you supposed to know where one ends and the other begins? Or a fever, or a dirty diaper? This is the part about sleep training I hate and may not be able to weather so well. Because although I believe it can work, and will, I think it means letting your baby cry in pain or discomfort sometimes because you're waiting him or her out. Like tonight - I'm waiting for it to be less than an hour, less than last night's crying. And if he was having real problems, it would mean I was letting him suffer those for up to an hour before actually responding.

So there, I hate sleep training because it involves the real potential for letting a sick, feverish, or soiled baby cry for an hour. Or a baby who feels hunger. That is part of the deal. And that is shitty.

It doesn't mean I won't do it, but it does mean I'll do it my way. Because the guilt is on me for this, no one else. And I don't like to sweep the ugly parts of a process under the rug so that I'm more comfortable with it. I want to to be honest about what, exactly, a process like this entails.

11:15pm. 30 minutes after waking, and he seems to be asleep, just at the mark where I would have gone in again to pat, fix his pajama if needed, smell the air, touch his forehead and hum a few bars. I expect he'll now wake between 1 and 2am to feed and I'll feed him.

11:18pm. Nope. Still awake, another wail comes out of the bedroom. My heart sinks a bit again. My body silently prays that he falls asleep. I hate this.

11:27pm. I've gone in, unhooked his hands from the crib and put him back in sitting or laying position a few times - baby J can stand now, which is what he does immediately when he wakes this week - and patted his bum, told him it is time to sleep, hummed a few bars. Hating. No stinky diaper smell, no fever. Came upstairs again to, oh cruel world, have a snack while I refuse to feed him. Yeah, feeling like a lovely human being right now. He's sounding calmed down again, but I'll wait another 10 minutes before I head back down there to try to go back to sleep. What if he is still awake and starts crying again?

That is the hardest part of this for me, not knowing my breaking point where I go pick him up and feed him. I feel very uncomfortable with "as long as it takes," because of the potential for things to go wrong. And to turn off my responding to his cries. That is the other thing this process does, makes you start to ignore baby cries and that isn't all good.

11:33pm. Whimpers and cries start again. Crap, crap, crap. Silence. What if he makes it to an hour? Then what? What do I do? What if I feed him tonight, at midnight? Another crappy thing about this process that I have yet to write about - then I feel like a failure at the process and like I've wasted his and my time maybe. And this part, the not wanting to "fail" at sleep training is another thing that raises my warning signal. This letting him cry a while longer so I don't fail at something that is made up, no one seems to know why or how it works just that it does in a real coarse way. Stupid.

11:46pm. Fuck. It doesn't seem any better. I went in again, same shit. I'm getting angry now, at the whole sleep training community. Bullshit stories of "crying an hour the first night and then sleeping through until 7am, and then sleeping 11 hours straight every night since". All I know is, 14 more minutes and I'll feed him, feel like a failure, wonder when he will ever learn to sleep better and I will get to sleep a long stretch again, and hope like hell he doesn't wake up at 3am. I hate this hate this hate this. I am not in control and I hate this.

Quiet again. But my whole body is now awake and on alert and not believing that I'll be lucky tonight, that I won't have to make the decision in 14 minutes.

12 midnight. Quiet. Shit. I mean, sure, good, but just as long as last night, if not longer. I hate this. I've been up for 1 hour 15 minutes, hated most of it, and now I need to go back to sleep and pray it doesn't happen exactly the same tomorrow night, Because 3 nights, of crying at 10 or 11pm...that I most likely my limit. I back off then, and feed him a few times a night again and wait until I'm okay letting him go all night without a feed and try again.

Going back to work

There is nothing like making a mistake to learn. And nothing like experiencing a situation first-hand to make you aware of the subtleties of the psychology surrounding it.

I’ve been thinking about how the difference between offering the option to stop the tenure clock for maternity leave and automatically stopping it affects women and the groups in which they work. About how the second option normalizes the practice instead of making it something you have to worry about doing lest someone think you are lazy or not capable enough. And about how to think about other options, in service of work-life balance, could be made standard instead of having to be sought out in secrecy (or not at all) - counseling, for instance. What if every new group member in a research group had a one hour chat with a counselor or social worker who could talk about a variety of issues, from depression to communication with the group leader or peers, to to settling into a new culture (for those from another country)?

And while I’m thinking about this, I find myself having to pump milk, during the work day, at a new job. I’m just starting to meet people, and here I am, worried about putting a bottle of milk in the group refrigerator without its cooler pack. I should have brought a paper bag for it, I realize, because putting a warm bottle in a thermos casing in a refrigerator is kind of defeating the purpose of both the fridge and the thermos casing. There is food in that bottle, so of course it can go in a food fridge, but the fact that it came from my breasts instead of from the udder of a cow makes a difference. I worry about offending someone.

Part of me thinks “well, if pin-up posters and sexist comments have happened in these halls” (hypothetically), then who cares if I make someone uncomfortable. But a bottle of breastmilk is not the same as a pin-up poster. It is food. I shouldn’t even have to justify it. And yet I’m keenly aware of feeling like I do. A jar of baby food or a box of formula would be fine - they came from other teats and from the earth, but not something of a human breast.

Hmm.

Nothing like experiencing something firsthand to make you think, “yes, there should be a dedicated pumping room, with a lock, and safe fridge in each building.” And about 2 hours ago, I wasn’t sure.

5 months along

Oh, August, you kind of just blew by us, didn't you? We have a 2-toothed, sitting and crawling bubbly boy in our household now, who likes daycare, who doesn't use a pacifier anymore (which is 3 years less than his sister), but who is still getting up to feed a few times a night. Ugh. Tired. Work starting soon and I'm tired.

An attack of head lice and the loss of my wallet (with all kids' IDs as well) has made for a busier month than I'd hoped, given that both kids are now at school some of the time. It mostly means we're not paying a babysitter for me to get bills and errands done and a nap in once every few days.

Did I mention the tired?

I was so sure I'd be rested and ready to work by now, but I've at least gotten my hair cut (and no comments from the stylist about foreign creatures in my roots...whew!). A bit of lipstick and hopefully no one will notice that I still can't remember some 5% of English words or what day of the week it is.

And then there is this mom, over there, with her baby, calmly breastfeeding. He looks around every once in a while, sometimes just pauses, looks deep into her eyes and coos. And then goes back to feeding. He tries to sit up when he needs to burp. Those two look like they're a natural pair. I'd hate her, but she's actually me. It took anti-reflux medicine and 5 months of developing, patience, being okay with half feeds and writhing and all else, but here we are. My baby boy has learned to breast feed. Just near the end of it for us. It caught me unawares, and the stares and coos still stop time and offer me this bubble of wonderful I get to inhabit once a day. It is short, that bubble, but I try to fill it out with my whole self. There will be no photos or videos of it, because they might disrupt it, and it is short-lived as it is. But I will stop and be there, as present as I can be, for those 2 or 3 minutes. Because the rest of life, in its crazy, tantrumy, sleep-deprived and never enough clean glasses glory is soon upon me again. And my little bonding moment bubble is popped.

But at least it happened.