Five Months to Firm

May 9, 2013 By 23 Comments

I firmly believe people won’t quit something or start something or stick to something (like quitting a bad habit or starting a new one) if they’re not ready to do it. And that’s about the only thing I’ve got right now that’s firm.

on Connor's first birthday

on Connor’s first birthday

The other day I saw a picture of myself with Connor on his first birthday, when I was about 30 pounds lighter than I am right now. And a day or so later I looked in the mirror and sucked in my tummy and thought, “If I really suck it in it’s not too bad.” And then we went away for a few days and I got some perspective and decided that being in a state of not-too-bad-but-only-when-my-tummy-is-sucked-in is not okay.

I was happy with my body before Connor was born. I had a small crisis when he was about three months old and I had to buy some in-between clothes and I almost cried because I thought I was going to feel flabby forever. But thanks to a baby who needed a lot of bouncing and a very active maternity leave I did lose the weight and a few extra pounds to boot. But when I started antidepressants some of that flab came back and hasn’t left.

I didn’t actually get weighed regularly when I was pregnant with Ethan, but my best guess based on what I think I weighed before is that I gained about eight pounds. And I’m now about two pounds below what I weighed when he was born.

Are you feeling disheartened yet? Because I am.

I’m just sick of it. I’m sick of stuffing my face with crap because I’m bored or tired or just plain old in the habit of eating badly. I don’t want to have to hang my jeans to dry so I don’t have to hold my breath for the first couple of hours of wearing them after they come out of the dryer. And I didn’t want to have to buy shorts in a size larger than what I’ve been wearing recently, but that’s what I had to do. It doesn’t matter that they’re pink and summery and we finally have weather that requires shorts. I just don’t want to see that extra flab in the mirror anymore. And now I’m finally ready to do something about it.

So I solemnly swear that I quit. For the next month I’m going to cut out all the stuff I’ve been eating because I think it will make me feel better. No Coke, no chocolate, no ice cream. Bye bye Blizzards. Farewell fries. I’m going to keep up with the exercise I’ve been doing and try to add more, but my eating habits really need to go back to where they were.

I’ve got five months until Ethan turns one. I may not get back to where I was on my first child’s first birthday, but I’d like to at least feel better about myself when I see the pictures.

PS I’d like to offer a shout-out to Miranda from Not Super… Just Mom whose State of the Weight Wednesday series has contributed to my resolve.

 

Filed Under: Hello, Inspiration Tagged With: ,

Say What You Need to Say

April 14, 2013 By 30 Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot about resentment lately. I suppose that’s normal when your entry into motherhood is a crying-filled, sleepless smackdown and you subsequently have a second baby who offers you the sort of experience you expected to have when you became a mom. At least it’s normal for me.

“This isn’t the experience with motherhood I wanted you to have,” I remember my mom saying to me one day while I cried on the phone to her when Connor was a baby.

It wasn’t the experience I wanted to have either. It’s not that I thought having a baby should be lullaby perfect, but I didn’t want it to be filled with quite so much despair.

The moment my mom said that to me is a milestone in my motherhood journey. From where I stand now I see that moment like a marker stabbed into the sand on my path, noting what came before and what would follow after. This is how the beginning will always be for you, says the sign next to it. You can’t relive those earlier months and your motherhood picture will always be shaped by this experience. You don’t get to do it again and have it be easier, more fulfilling, more fun.

No, I don’t.

But do I resent Connor?

No, I don’t.

***bench-and-blue-sky

I danced with Ethan this morning.

He was full of smiles when I went to get him out of bed to start the day. I fed him and then he played happily in his high chair while I had breakfast. He splashed in the bath, experimenting with what happens when he kicks his feet.

We’ve been working on sleep lately and this morning, not for the first time, he had a nice, long nap. He woke up, pink-cheeked and laughing. I fed him and then thought he might like some play time on the floor, but he didn’t. So we danced.

“Say what you need to say,” sang John Mayer, as I held Ethan around the waist and placed my hand in his small chubby one. He put his nose in the crook of my neck and leaned his cheek against mine. He let me sing and he stuck to me as I swayed, breathing him in.

***

If Ethan had been my first baby, I wouldn’t have spent so much time bouncing a screaming baby. I wouldn’t have logged hours in his room trying to get him to sleep and wondering at what point my sanity would actually break. I wouldn’t have been anxious about doing errands or shopping for groceries in case he had a colossal meltdown in public.

I would have been able to go to play dates without dreading having to go home and deal with him by myself. I would have had more hot meals. I would have had more meals, period. I would have cherished the time and his laugh and those slobbery, open-mouthed kisses without wondering why the lovely baby stuff had to be overshadowed by so very much hard stuff.

That sign in the sand is right. I don’t get a motherhood do-over, though my experience with Ethan has given me a glimpse of what might have been.

With a different baby, my early days of motherhood might have been more peaceful. They might have been more fun. They might even have been diaper-commercial sweet. With a second, very different baby, I can see it now.

***

Do I resent Connor?

No, I don’t.

I don’t resent him, neither the baby he was nor the boy he is now. But do I resent my introduction to motherhood and wish it had been different?

Sometimes. A little bit. I do.

Say what you need to say.

 

Filed Under: Hard things, Motherhood Tagged With: , , ,

The Fuck-You Fours

December 9, 2012 By 25 Comments

4-on-fireA friend of ours noted that it’s not the Terrible Twos parents have to worry about, it’s the Fuck-You Fours. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

The word “fuck” is not one you will see me use often on this blog, but in this case there’s really no other that quite does the topic justice, because lately pretty much everything Connor does seems like a gigantic Fuck You, Mom. I don’t think it’s a result of adjusting to a new baby; I think this is just the phase he’s in right now. And I don’t like it.

Let me pause to say that I hesitate to write this for fear it’s going to be taken as a post, accessible online for all eternity, saying I don’t like my child. But I’m pretty damn sure most parents go through this sort of phase with their kids sooner or later, so let’s just acknowledge that we all love our kids and get on with the rant, shall we?

Four is not a fun age. Two wasn’t bad, and in fact, while we had our challenges, there are many things about two-year-olds (or mine, at least) that I thought were just awesome. At the time, everyone told me three was worse, and while three had its own challenges it really wasn’t awful either. But four. Oh dear lord. Some days I want to lock him in the basement.

Connor has always been very much his own person. We learned early on that if he wanted something he would do everything in his three-foot-tall power to get it. And if he didn’t want it? You’d better have been prepared to have it thrown back at you. Something about this attitude must have worked for him, because as a four-year-old this is now very much his MO.

I’ve thought a lot about our interactions with him and whether we need to be taking a different approach. And honestly, sometimes we do. Some of his behaviour is because he’s bored, and some is because we don’t give him enough time with something, or enough warning that it’s time to stop something, or enough autonomy. And some of it is because he’s hungry. Or tired. Those issues are all theoretically easy to fix and, at times, practically impossible.

I will admit to not having done a lot of reading about parenting philosophy. I don’t have the attention span and I find too much “should”ing counterproductive. But a large part of it is due to having come across so much advice that I just don’t find useful.

Proponents of “gentle parenting” seem to be everywhere these days. I get the concept, and a lot of it I agree with, though the amount of condescension in much of it leaves me blinking in disbelief. (This gentle parenting article is especially annoying. The first three paragraphs, which assume that some people either completely ignore or rudely yell at their children, make me really quite cranky. If there’s a gentle parent out there who has never lost her patience with her child I would like to meet her and find out what medication she’s on.) But some much-touted gentle parenting practices are downright farcical when attempted on a child like mine.

The classic “give him a choice” approach is a perfect example. This is how it tends to go in my house [not an actual conversation, but the typical outcome of many real ones nonetheless]:

“Would you like soup or a sandwich for lunch?”

“I want a hog dog.”

“We’re not having hot dogs today. You have a choice of either soup or a sandwich.”

“I want a hot dog.”

“That’s not one of your choices.”

From here his response goes one of two ways:

A: “Well, that’s what I’m having.” [Feet stomping, pout big enough for a bird to land on.]

or

B: Meltdown that makes Chernobyl look tame.

Giving him a choice is not a parenting or communication strategy that works.

I still try. It’s not as though, having been unsuccessful with this approach, I instead turn to dictatorial parenting. I try to determine what he actually needs (as opposed to what he says he wants). I work hard to summon my patience from the reserve tanks when my (admittedly limited) supply has run out. I try to remember that he’s only four.

But, oy. Four. I do love my child, and most of the time I really like him too. But to Four I really have only one thing to say:

Fuck you.

 

Filed Under: Conversations with Connor, Hard things, Motherhood Tagged With:

Write On

August 21, 2012 By 53 Comments

I got another email the other day, this one from a friend-of-a-friend sort of person. She had found my blog thanks to Reader’s Digest naming me one of Canada’s top mom bloggers (and yes, that was unexpected, but what I was especially happy about was that it was my writing about postpartum depression that they highlighted). The email was of the thank-God-I’m-not-alone types from someone who previously dealt with postpartum anxiety and is now struggling with antenatal depression and just really isn’t sure where to turn.

When I got the email I was just closing my computer to take Connor out for some fun with my sister and my dad and he was getting impatient. But I saw the name and the subject line and I paused, hoping I could put the excited child off a moment longer.

I keep every email like this that I receive – the ones that say thank you for sharing and for being so honest. The ones that say can you help me? And the ones that say I just didn’t know and I thought it was just me.

Because I know. I know what that feels like and I know how sometimes it’s impossible not to reach out and say thank you (like I did with Katherine after I found Postpartum Progress). And when I get those emails it affirms that it’s okay to write about these things, which is a reminder I sometimes need, especially lately when I’ve been feeling like I lost my words.

I’ve been feeling a little bit vulnerable. Before the Reader’s Digest thing, but especially so since. I’m so, so honored, especially given some of the other bloggers on the list. But that’s the sort of thing that tends to get spread around. I posted it on my own Facebook page (and I rarely share blog content or related things there) and it got shared by my family and some friends. Which is how the friend-of-a-friend thing tends to happen.

In this case it actually went beyond that. I work with my brother who, evidently, is friends on Facebook with a bunch of other people we work with. Who now know about my blog. Some of them said, “That’s cool! I’ll have to check out your blog,” (and I thought oh god…). Some of them did read it and said only nice things like, “It’s great that you’re so open” and “You’re a great writer.” Which are lovely comments, but there’s always a part of me that wonders if they’re really thinking, wow, you are messed UP.

But you know what? That’s okay. Some days I’m totally messed up, but so are most people in one way or another. And I’d rather be messed up and working on it and, better yet, helping others in the same boat than holding it in for fear of what others think. I did that for too long and it backfired, making me more messed up in the short term and causing this to be more of a long-term problem than it would otherwise have been.

So I’ll write and whoever wants to can read. And if one of those readers finds something helpful here and sends me an email, so much the better.

Write on.

 

Linked up with Just.Be.Enough

and Things I Can’t Say

I’ve also got a post on Just.Be.Enough today about some awesome lyrics by a great Canadian band. Come visit!

Filed Under: Better world, Postpartum depression, Writing Tagged With: , , , , ,

Passing On Pink

June 5, 2012 By 44 Comments

Somewhere deep in our basement, in a box that’s still packed, is a small book. It’s pink, mostly, with an angelic baby face on the front. It’s about baby girls.

I bought this book when I was in my last year of high school. Some friends and I had gone to Vancouver to shop for grad dresses and I came across this book in a shop. I’m not sure what possessed my 17-year-old self to buy it, but I did, because I always assumed I’d have a girl and wanted to start soaking it in then and there.

I found that book again when we were packing to move last fall, and I paused for a moment when I saw it again. A short moment of regret ringed by a sliver of hope. At that point, Connor had been talking about his baby sister for months – before I was pregnant, before we had really started trying, and certainly before we had talked to him about the idea of a sibling. He brought it up unprompted and spoke of her as though she existed. “My baby sister.” He was so sure.

I was pretty sure too, because I always thought I’d have a girl. Not because I wanted a girl, but that’s just what I saw myself with. She felt like a real presence to me. I even wrote her a letter.

I was so sure.

When we found out Connor was a boy, I had a little cry. I couldn’t imagine myself with a boy, which is why we decided to find out at the ultrasound. I figured then that if we were having a boy I’d rather have time to adjust to the idea. Which was a good thing, and I did adjust. And then, of course, when he was born he was mine. He was so clearly the baby we were meant to have that I didn’t even think anything of it anymore.

And now here we are with number two.

I had sworn I wasn’t going to find out whether this one is a boy or a girl. I wanted a surprise. I wanted something to be “traditional” about the birth in case I end up with another c-section. I wanted something to be what I imagined this time and figured a delivery-room announcement of “It’s a… ” would do the trick.

But Connor was so sure “his baby” was a girl. He had my mom convinced. He had my sister convinced. He had me convinced.

And I worried that a delivery-room announcement of “It’s a boy!” would lead to a never-intended and always-regretted moment of disappointment.

So in the end I caved. We found out, in spite of the fiasco of not having the information provided to us as promised. (The universe didn’t take my husband’s determination into account when deciding to mess with us.)

So it won’t be a delivery-room announcement, and we won’t be keeping it a surprise. Instead, I will announce it here:

It’s a boy. 

I know this child is just as much meant to be ours as Connor is. I know he will be a great big brother to his little brother. I know there are so, so many good things about this.

But just for a little bit, I’m going to grieve a baby girl I carry in my heart and thought would be in my life but who apparently doesn’t exist.

Filed Under: Hard things, Motherhood, Pregnancy Tagged With: , , ,
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