NaBloPoMo

Yes! I am going to do NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) again this year.

For the uninitiated, NaBloPoMo is an event where bloggers the world 'round - despite the "national" descriptor - attempt to post in their blogs every day in November. It's a spin-off of the famous NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, where would-be authors hunker down to write 50,000 words in the month of November. Both events feature networking tools, message boards full of support and comisseration, and prizes.

I completed NaBloPoMo successfully last year, but I'm thinking that this year might be a bit more of a challenge. Let's review:
November 2007: three months pregnant.
November 2008: mother of a six-month old.
November 2007: 'working' at a job that practically guaranteed me four hours of uninterrupted web time daily.
November 2008: staying at home with a baby who practically guarantees me no time to myself whatsoever. (And supposedly, this is not 'work' ...)
November 2007: my main computer is located in my 'work' office, which I share with no one. Entire days go by when I don't see another human being.
November 2008: my main computer is located in my kitchen, where I am constantly distracted by ... pretty much the entire world.
November 2007: the ability to pontificate and ponder at great length about my pregnancy and my future as a parent.
November 2008: the inability to string two coherent thoughts together due to sleep deprivation.

It's odd, of course, that the busier and fuller your life is, the more you have to blog about, and the less time you have to do so. I seriously don't know how real bloggers do it.

Nevertheless, I'm going to give it a shot, renaming it "NapBloPoMo" in honour of the time when I will be composing the bulk of my posts. Wish me luck!

Raising a Girl

From the time I started seriously considering having kids, I knew I wanted a girl. I told anyone who would listen that, in fact, I would only have daughters. After trying (and failing) to take care of two teenage boys, I felt the Universe owed me some feminine energy. I’ve heard all the arguments about why and how boys are easier in the long run – girls have hormones! it makes them crazy! – but ultimately, I’ve ­been­ a girl. I’ve had those hormones. I get it. A daughter would probably never believe me, would no doubt sigh and yell and slam doors in my face, but at least I would understand her while she was doing it. A son would want to blow things up and take things apart and just generally act like the alien being he is, and that didn’t sound so easy to me. I wanted – and felt I deserved – a daughter.

Be careful what you wish for.

Since becoming mother to a daughter, it has struck me that there is a whole other side to raising girls that I didn’t think about. The fact that Gwen will someday slam her door on me and tell me she hates me, I’m prepared for. The part that breaks my heart is the near certainty that someday, she’ll hate herself.

Girls have it rough, is what I’m saying.

Gwen will worry that she’s too fat or too thin. She’ll worry that she’s too tall or too short. She’ll worry about wearing the right clothes. She’ll worry about how to make the popular girls like her, and how to make the cute boys notice her. She’ll feel pressured to dress older than her age, including makeup and piercings. She’ll feel pressured to dumb herself down in order to appeal to boys. Years before she’s even in high school, she’ll be exposed to enough media images to make her seriously question her physical appearance, which will in turn make her question her worth as a person.

How do I know? Because I’ve been a girl. I get it. Even so, it breaks my heart to think of my daughter – who is surely the most beautiful, amazing, and perfect daughter ever to be born – feeling these things.

And that’s the easy stuff! What about rape? What about abuse? What about misogyny and sexism and being treated differently by everyone from primary school teachers to potential employers? How on earth do I prepare my daughter for this world? How can I protect her?

There is so much I want to teach her, and I don’t feel even vaguely qualified. She might be just like me – a frumpy, unspecial girl with the wrong clothes and a great brain who didn’t get any social skills until the age of 17. The type for whom the elementary school playground is a particular kind of hell. I’ve reflected often on the fact that I don’t want Gwen to repeat my mistakes. I want her to grow up with confidence, with a strong sense of who she is and the utter conviction that who she is is great. But I don’t know how to teach her how to be that girl, because I’ve never been that girl. On one level, I can’t teach her how to wear makeup or style her hair or choose the right clothes, because I’m thirty-three years old and I still don’t know. But on the deeper, hopefully more important level, I don’t know how to give her the unshakeable faith in herself that goes beyond makeup and hair and clothes, beyond freckles or glasses or braces, beyond big feet or unusual names or funny accents and fills her up so full that she’s buoyant with the sensation of self-acceptance.

Dear Gwen: Month Six

Dear Gwen,

Yesterday was our last day at the 0-6 month drop-in, which we have been attending quite faithfully since you were about six weeks old. I remember our first day there as being quite overwhelming (in a good way). I remember looking at the older babies, the ones who were getting close to six months old, wondering at their size, their skills, their personalities ... and feeling completely amazed that the little lump on my lap would someday be one of the big kids.

And now here you are. Next week we start the "big kids" group for those who are 6-12 months old. And sure enough, you have grown in size, in skills, and in personality!

You can do so many things. You like to stand and play in your exersaucer, and are very competent with all the exciting toys (your dad swears that you are pushing the button for music with full intent, that you completely understand what you are doing). You can roll over from back to front, and somewhat infrequently from front to back. You can roll over in your sleep, and that's not just a glib expression. You can pick things up with your hands and are starting to understand what your opposable thumbs are for. Your favourite toy is Sophie the giraffe. You love people, especially other babies and kids.

This past week, we started feeding you rice cereal, which you seem to enjoy. Despite my feeling that you weren't going to be "ready", you have taken to this new way of eating fairly well. The next few weeks will be even more fun as we introduce more new foods and start encouraging you to feed yourself.

It's been a big month for social activities. First of all, you got baptized just before you turned five months old, and many friends and relatives came to be with you on that special day. Then a few weeks later, we travelled to Victoria so I could complete a half-marathon and we all had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with our close friends Mike, Jenn, and Zoe. Since you are becoming more and more social, both of these events were very enjoyable for you, and you brought a lot of joy to those around you. I know Mike and Zoe are very happy to be your Honourary Uncle and Cousin.

It's only been in the past two weeks that it finally began to feel "normal" that I was a mom. That is a nice feeling, exciting and yet peaceful at the same time. Finding our "new normal" means that I feel confident getting out and about more with you, and we are finding lots of great activities to do together: swimming, storytime at the library, and even Baby Boot Camp. You are just so social, and love being around people (provided they pay attention to you!) and exploring different environments. Your social calendar is getting quite busy, and I can't even imagine at this point having the time to go back to work. That's something I try to think about as little as possible.

You seem to be shifting from a two-nap pattern to a one-nap pattern: taking a long (2.5 to 3 hours) nap in the late morning or mid-afternoon. This isn't what The Experts say you should be doing, but it seems to work pretty well for you, and it does allow us to spend more time getting out to all those fun activities. You have also recently decided that the swing - once beloved and cherished - is now a torture device, and you will not deign to sleep there no matter what we do. That's all well and good, since you will be growing out of it soon anyway, and it's high time we made your nap routine more consistent with your bedtime routine. It does mean, however, that if all our "go to sleep" mojo seems to be failing, we can't just throw you in the swing with perfect faith that a nap will be forthcoming. There's no more Plan B, and that's a little scary sometimes.

Nighttime sleep has been kind of off the map lately. You tend to wake up 2-3 times a night (sometimes more), with the first wakeup being anywhere from 20 minutes to 6 hours after you go to bed. There was this one night you slept for 9 hours, but sadly, that has not been repeated. We are starting to work on encouraging you to fall asleep on your own, building your confidence in your own abilities to let you know that you don't actually need to be nursed, rocked, shhhed and so on back to sleep every time you wake in the night. This is a long and painful process, but I know we will get there, and we will all be happier (and better-rested!) when we do.

Your personality is fantastic: you make your dad and I laugh all the time, even in the same breath as we express our frustration with you. You have this new habit when we're nursing, where you blow into my nipple as if you were trying to blow bubbles through a straw. I'm not really sure what you hope to achieve with that, but it's pretty funny. You also hum and babble and squeak to yourself quite a lot, which is greatly amusing to those around you. And when you do get fussy or upset, we just make fun of you, so that's amusing too.

We love you so much, Gwen: you bring us so much joy and we just can't imagine our lives without you. We are so glad you chose us to be your parents.

Love,

Mama

Gwen Eats!

So, you're all sick of hearing about Gwen's (lack of) sleep, right? And how these habits impact her parents' (lack of) sleep?

Right about now, you'd really love for me to talk about something else, right?

Or maybe post an unedited three-minute video of Gwen's first experience with solid foods? Is that what you're after?

No? Hmm. Too bad, that's all I've got for today.

(Sorry for the uneditedness. I have some nifty software that is supposed to help me edit videos, but so far all it does is crash my computer every time I open it, which is very unsatisfying for me and not at all helpful for you the viewer/reader. I hope you enjoy the video anyway.)

(This was taken last Friday. Gwen is eating powdered rice cereal mixed with breastmilk. This Friday she will be 6 months old and will start getting "real" food and also the opportunity to play with it and feed it to herself.)

Sleep Wars

Two nights ago, Gwen's Angelcare alarm went off. This is the monitor that has a sensor under the crib mattress, sensitive enough to read her breathing movements. If there is no breathing for 30 seconds, the alarm goes off. This happened at 2:45am.

EVERYTHING IS ABSOLUTELY FINE. But at the time, it was without a shred of exaggeration the most terrifying moment of my life.

Gwen was on her side pressed up against the crib bumper (more on this in a minute). Chris started unswaddling her, saying "Wake up baby, wake up" while I turned off the monitor. By the time we got there, though, she had already started breathing on her own: the alarm wasn't sounding anymore. And despite Chris's pleas to wake up, she was already awake, blinking in confusion at the light and the sudden appearance of her frazzled parents.

She was absolutely fine. She didn't even cry. Chris finished unswaddling her and then we took turns holding her to make sure she was alright, and sitting down to encourage our heartrates to return to normal. I nursed her for a while. Chris gave her a bottle he'd already had waiting since it was supposed to be his night to take the night feedings. Gwen showed no interest in sleeping, but then again she'd slept for nine hours before the alarm woke her up.

(NINE HOURS. SOB.)

We were up for a couple of hours at that point, too anxious to get back to sleep. We finally got Gwen back to sleep sometime around 5am, and I made Chris move her from our bed back to the crib because there is no Angelcare monitor in our bed.

At 6:30am, the alarm went off again.

I'm ashamed to say that this time, I barely reacted, except to spit out some choice expletives. (It seems that the more I actually care about something, the milder my language is: the first time the alarm sounded, all I could say was "Oh my goodness" over and over.) Chris went into the nursery and found Gwen flipped onto her tummy. He brought her back into our bed to nurse.

So, here's what we think happened.

The Angelcare sensor rests on a piece of plywood that is, for some reason, not quite the entire size of the crib mattress. At 2:45am, Gwen had rolled over far enough to be off the plywood, thus out of range of the sensor. She didn't stop breathing at all.

At 6:30am, however, she was smack-dab in the middle of the crib and thus fully in the sensor's range. We think she actually did stop breathing briefly, because she had flipped herself onto her front and her face was pressed into the mattress. Why babies don't just open their mouths in cases like this is beyond me. But I guess that's why products like the Angelcare exist.

(Yes, I do feel like the ultimate crappy mom for responding to the first (false) alarm and not the second (true) one. I suck.)

So, to sum up sleeptimes recently:
Tuesday Oct 14 (swaddled, in crib and sometimes swing): 3 hrs - 2 hours - 2 hours - 2 hours
Wednesday Oct 15 (swaddled, in crib, and with a serving of rice cereal for dinner): 6 hours - 3 hours - 2 hours
Thursday Oct 16 (swaddled, in crib, and with rice cereal for dinner): 9 hours, alarm goes off, 1.5 hours, alarm goes off, 1 hour
Friday Oct 17 (unswaddled, in crib, rice cereal): 2.5 hours - 1.5 hours - 2.5 hours - 2 hours

Anyway, last night Gwen slept all night in her own crib with no alarms sounding, so we are fairly certain we've correctly decoded the events of the previous night. So here is our dilemma.

When Gwen is swaddled, it is more difficult for her to roll onto her tummy, but she can still do it. However, if she does roll onto her front, she cannot roll back again. (She has a hard time rolling from front-to-back even when fully awake - it's a very rare occurence.)

On the other hand, if we leave her unswaddled, she is more likely to roll from her back to her front, and had only a slightly improved chance of being able to roll back over again. Oh, and also, she sleeps like crap.

After two full days of sleep logging (we're only supposed to do one, but the alarms going off inspired us to start from scratch the next day) the one thing I'm sure off is that Gwen is getting super-resistant to sleep. She is taking longer and longer to "put down" either for naps or for bed - sometimes three hours or more. I keep telling her that this is unacceptable, but she's just not listening.

(Yes, we need the crib bumpers, because before we put them on we would often find her with her leg through the bars or hear her crying from bumping her head on the wood. We reasoned that since she is old enough to roll over, she's old enough not to get herself in stupid situations. Yeah, not so much.)