Pumping & shrieking. Not at the same time, thankfully.

Little Boy and Little Girl have made great improvements in the sleeping department, at least at night. We’ve established a lovely bedtime routine that has them in the crib around 7:00 or 7:30 at the latest. The next waking/feeding had been around 1:30 or 2:00, which works great for me ‘cause that’s right around the time that I next need to pump after my pre-bedtime pump. Now, however, they’ve taken to sleeping until 3:00 or 3:30 before waking up. They’re clearly on their way to sleeping all the way through the night, which should be a good thing, no?

This causes me problems with the timing of my pumping, though. If I wait until they wake up at the later hour I am so engorged that I can barely stand it, literally. I get teary-eyed and frantic until I can pump, which of course can’t happen until after the babies have eaten. If I go ahead and wake up at the regular time to pump, that means I’m waking up more frequently than I need to, especially since it means my next regularly scheduled pumping time is not likely to coincide with the babies’ next waking. Does that make any sense?

How do breastfeeding moms do it? I’ve read that your body will learn to not manufacture so much breastmilk as your baby starts sleeping longer at night, but that doesn’t seem to be happening for me. Maybe I’m not giving my body enough of an opportunity to slow down. It’s only been a few nights of the delayed pumping, but oy, it’s not been pretty, not at all. Trying to delay my pumping session also makes for crappy sleep. Engorgement = uncomfortable & restless.

Any suggestions?

Also, how in the world do I discourage my beautiful almost-six-month-old daughter from continuously making ear-piercing shrieks? They are shrieks of joy, but are driving me batty. I walk around with ringing ears. I hate to try to silence her vocal enthusiasms, but my, oh, my...I’m going deaf over here.

Peace, made. *Now Plus Troll!

As you know, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this motherhood thing. Trying to get to the heart of the matter, I asked myself exactly what it was that I was frightened of. It’s that I won’t be able to handle all the upcoming parenting challenges, that I’ll somehow fail. Exactly what failing would mean, I’m not sure...not meeting my babies’ needs, or tipping over the edge and becoming a basketcase of some sort, I guess.

Naming the fear has shown me how ridiculous it is. I’ve handled everything so far, maybe not always gracefully, but the babies needs have 100% been met and I’ve managed to mostly hold myself together in the process.

I can do it.

I will do it.

I may even do it well, and enjoy myself in the process.

So yeah, some peace has been made with the future, whatever it holds. Here’s hoping the peace holds.

Jumping topics here...I’ve got my first troll! See the comment to my last post. I feel as if I’ve arrived in blogland. The poster came from a child-free living message board - read the “Another clueless Moo” post, that’s me they’re talking about. My reply is above their post.

I don’t get their thought process: because I “did infertility treatments” I’m not allowed to complain about parenthood? What’s that all about? There’s plenty of other fodder demanding response in their post, but frankly I don’t think it’s worth any more effort than I’ve already spent. After all, I’m just another “baybee rabid bitch.”

Yeah...and? Your point is?

As yet unsettled...

I had hoped the issue would resolve itself by now, but here I am five months postpartum, still questioning how I feel about this whole motherhood business. Lately my thoughts have turned to the permanence of this state: I am in it for the long haul, obviously. There’ll be no resumption of my previous life, not anytime soon. I am neck deep in babies over here, and while I feel like I’m managing fairly well, I must admit that I am still hugely overwhelmed with this life change.

I miss my old life. It was a good one, except for the shadow infertility cast over it. My life now is also a good one. I have much to be thankful for. When I think of what the future holds, though, it doesn’t excite me so much as, well, frighten me. As I’ve said before, I no longer believe in the any-day-now arrival of the “it gets easier” time everyone says exists. It seems more that you resolve certain challenges, certain issues, only to have brand new ones pop up in their place. Such is parenting, no?

The thought exhausts me. I’m aware that the babies are in a pretty golden period of their lives right now. They’re immobile, they’re sleeping a tad better at night, they’re at maximum cuteness, we have a loose schedule, things are more or less okay. This stage won’t last of course, and I’m frightened at what’s to come. Little Boy and Little Girl’s imminent mobility scares the heck out of me. Discipline? I have no earthly idea how that’s going to work. It's the day-to-day details that bog me down.

Case in point...we started Little Boy on solids last week. While I won’t tell you that the pumping/bottle feeding routine we have is particularly convenient, it works for us. All of a sudden we’ve got a whole new ball of string to untangle. Any meal that includes solids takes three times as long, makes a huge mess, and is even less convenient than bottle feeding. When we get Little Girl started in the next few weeks it’ll be twice the complications, twice the mess, twice the time.

It’s a small thing, but those are the kind of issues that become mental hurdles for me. And it seems as if there are so many hurdles on the horizon. I know when the time comes I’ll deal with each and every one of them and find a way to cope, but just knowing that there’s all this stuff still to figure out exhausts me.

There’s no turning back. I’m a mom now, like it or not. I love my babies, very much so, but lately I find myself wondering all too often, “what if I’d never gotten pregnant?” My rational mind knows that I’d likely have been a mess left devastated by infertility. My marriage might have succumbed to the strain and I’d surely be clinically depressed. But that’s not what my irrational mind focuses on. Instead I dream of the freedom of schedule I had, the lack of commitment to much of anything but deadlines and my husband, the feeling of just being me, not Mom, nothing but Claudia, and knowing exactly who I was.

So yeah, still grappling over here. This identity shift is tough business. I always imagined myself being a good mother, a natural mother, and I am. I just never realized that it would come at the expense of the rest of my personality.