What is it with the Mommy Warriors lately??

Geez-o-freakin' Pete. Did something happen on a national/global scale to set off moms and set us at each others' throats that I don't know about? Is it Global PMS Week and nobody told me? Because in the last week I've been verbally assaulted by no less than three separate Mommy Warriors, three distinct conversations on totally unrelated topics that swung into left field without warning, descending to the maturity level of a seventh grade cat-fight before I knew what was happening.  Venomous, hateful things have been said to me this week, assumptions from people who know me only by my internet presence and memories fifteen years into yesterday.

Moms who earn money outside the home. Moms who earn money from home. Moms who care for their children and keep a household running.  Dads in each of the above.  Parents who are blessed enough to have both jobs at home so they can raise their kids together.

We all work, people.

I am the first to admit that I can't do what a lot of earning parents do.  I cannot do your jobs. The challenges and difficulties of the wage-earning world you inhabit are beyond me. There are various reasons for this, but first among them is a physical disability that makes it impossible to be on my feet for more than an hour or so without prescription-level painkillers. That reality already taken me uncomfortably close to dependency issues that I never want to see again. Otherwise, trust me, we would be a two-income household before you could spit.

But my earning parent friends, acquaintances and so on? I'd be willing to bet a year's mortgage money that all y'all couldn't cope with my challenges and difficulties either.  And no, I'm not going to detail my day so that the small-minded may nit-pick and shame and criticize, because they will do so anyway. 

The point I am trying to make is that all parents work, and all parents work HARD.  Whether your job requires a uniform, a tie, a cash register, a desk, a gun, or sneakers and a willingness to play innumerable rounds of peekaboo and repeat "use your signs, not your teeth" on an endless loop, we all work our asses off to do the best we can by our families.

Shockingly, sometimes that includes turning to Uncle Sam for a little help, because in case y'all didn't notice, the bottom fell out of the economy. Not gonna get into those details either, for the same reason as before, but yes, we receive WIC, a small amount of food stamps, and Medicaid. This insures that we do not starve, and can get to a doctor instead of joining the uninsured masses clogging the ERs when someone gets sick.  That's it. No utility help, no housing vouchers, no plasma screens or new cars.  We pay our own bills, and what we have, we take care of and treat with respect, because we can't afford to replace things if they break or wear out prematurely, so our clothes fit well and our car is damage-free and clean.

We garden, fish, and hunt to supplement our budget, and spend precious dollars on a Sam's Club membership so that I can buy supplies twice a year and bake our own bread cheaper than buying it. I live on the computer because I spend my day writing articles and taking surveys to bring in enough to take a bill or two off John's shoulders, all while watching my active toddler in the living room that is set up as a giant playpen so he can roam in relative safety while I work. Once I manage to order a copy of my birth certificate (the fee has proven difficult to hold aside) and get my in-state driver's license, I'll be going to the blood bank twice a week to donate plasma, since it's not close enough to walk without jacking up my ability to move the next day. My evenings after JJ goes to sleep are spent searching for a job I can physically handle, that pays enough to actually make a difference after accounting for childcare. We have a plan, and we're making progress, but it has been about 15 months hard slog, and we're not out of the woods yet. And I defy anyone to step into our lives, with all the complexities and challenges intact, and do better.

The point, I guess, is that I am mortally sure I cannot handle your job, and I'm equally certain that you can't cope with mine. Your world would drive me quite noisily mad, and mine would doubtless send folks screaming into the night. That's why you are you and I am me. We are each where we belong, doing the jobs for which we are best suited, and if that's not always the case, it is up to each of us to change our own realities, not snipe and sneer and cut each other down for not being all the same.

When you catch yourself judging, take a breath, challenge your assumptions, grant that all may not be as it seems, and mind your own business.  And that goes for me too.



Okay, this wasn't at ALL the blogging re-entry I had planned, but... *shrug*

Because that was all kinda heavy and pointed, I close with a photo bomb... :) JJ's getting BIG these days, and cute as ever.  The feet are still huge, the smile still infectious (and now it contains teeth!), and the laughter still entrancing.  Enjoy!

He loves to spin...








This would be why the coffee table is now a toddler-sized window-seat.








The pack & play, otherwise affectionately known as "baby jail".  

He's still fascinated by his own image when I turn on the webcam... *grins wickedly* Oh, the wealth of photographic evidence of his baby cuteness I am accumulating to share with future romantic interests...

Mittens is the newest addition to our family, he was the runt of a litter that was abandoned in our yard last fall.  He and JJ play together constantly, and the giggles are abundant. :)




The Rock'nStack, which he figured out and promptly hid all but two of the rings in fifteen minutes flat. We often dig them out from under the couches, but can never find all 5 at once.

I put these overalls on him for the first time about two weeks ago, and they are OFFICIALLY the cutest darned thing he owns.













This is not a box.

And this one... well, seriously, look at that face!!

So here's the deal.

Warning, Mommy-Wars annoy me, so this is kinda rant-ish.

My son schedules himself.

If he's not maintaining his usual pattern, it's because something is wrong.

Nobody believes me.

I have friends all over the spectrum of parenting styles, and everybody thinks I'm doing it wrong.

The more mainstream types are convinced he's never going to sleep on his own because I nurse him to sleep, and any disruptions to his naps or night sleep are laid at the door of "You must not be maintaining his schedule consistently" or "Could you be feeding him too much?"

The more AP-leaning sorts say things like "It's normal for a six month old to still be waking up multiple times a night, you know," and "You know it's really hard to make a baby stick to a schedule."

Now, I'm pretty crunchy.  We cloth diaper, babywear, cosleep, baby-led weaning, homemade toys, sensory play, yadda yadda yadda.  I'm breaking ground for that garden so I can grow our veggies instead of buying produce that got sprayed with God knows what.  I'm learning to make sourdough bread from scratch, including my making own starter.

Some things, we do more mainstream.  Vaccinations and baby-entertainment gear, mainly, because there have been pertussis outbreaks here recently, and it's really tough to cut sod with a baby on my hip.

But scheduling?  Nope.  He really is that predictable, as long as he's comfy.  Everything's right with his world, JJ takes two naps during the day, of 90 minutes to 2 hours each, and conks out for the night between 6:30 and 7.  He rouses once after bedtime to top off his tummy, then sleeps until 6:30 or 7 in the morning, with one wake-up during the night to nurse, anywhere between 1 and 3am.  Takes 15-20 minutes, and he never really wakes up.

Now, if he's having a growth spurt, his gums are super sore, or his reflux is acting up, all that goes haywire in extremely short order.  But that's the point.  If he's a happy baby, he sleeps like an angel.  If he's waking me up more than twice a night, something is wrong, and because I'm sleep-deprived at that point, I usually require a little help figuring out what that something might be.

I know that most babies aren't nearly that predictable.  I get that.  I am aware that I was blessed with an incredibly easy baby for my first time out, quite likely I'm using up all my free passes on this one, and his next sibling will probably be one of those all over the map babies that's perfectly happy with random naps and being wide awake at 3am.

I can hear my mother already.  It's your turn, dear.  I hope you have a child JUST like you.

Thanks, Mom.  'Preciate it.

But honestly, folks... it seems like a thoroughly unpredictable child is considered some kind of AP badge of honor, like if your kid is sleeping through the night "too early" you must be forcing the issue, and baby being off their routine is really nothing to worry about because it's normal.

By the same token, the far end of the scheduling school of thought has a predictable baby that sleeps through the night, takes regular naps, and has planned out meal- and play-times followed like clockwork as its Holy Grail, leaving very little room for a child's individual needs or personality.  If your kid isn't meeting that standard, well, you must not be doing your job!

Lucky me, JJ does six of one and a half dozen of the other, so they all think I'm nuts!

Don't mind me, I'm just going insane over here.

Okay, enough ranting, time for baby cuteness.

A couple of days ago JJ was seriously bored and I was a little tired of entertaining him, so I improvised.

Pimento jar (baby food sized), Parsley jar, Meat Tenderizer jar.

All with a dozen or so red kidney beans inside and the lids glued on.

Little dude was FASCINATED.

They all move differently and make different sounds.  The pimento jar is glass, so it's louder and kinda musical.  Plus the pop-top lid makes it drum-y, which he loves.  The parsley jar, he mostly rolls, and the meat tenderizer jar... heh.  It's his favorite because it's just small enough around for him to get a grip on, and you should have seen his face when he worked out how to make it make noise.

*shake*  Those little eyebrows start to lift.

*shake shake*  His eyes pop and his mouth does that surprised "Oh!" thing for a second, and then he flashes me this huge wide-eyed open-mouthed grin and proceeds to make with the maracas.

*shakeshakeshakerattleshake*

It also apparently makes a really awesome chew toy.

I love my life!

DST, Mommy Wars, and Fixing What Ain't Been Broke.

Before I jump into the latest burr under my saddle, the REALLY latest burr under said saddle is Daylight Savings Time.  I hate it.  It's stupid.  It jacks with my baby's rhythms.  It's pointless, and it doesn't actually work.  I promise, people still follow their body's clock, even if the mechanical one says something else, and the disparity creates more energy usage, not less.  And farmers?  They're ruled by the sun, the rain, and the seasons no matter what the clock says.  I saw this little gem on the web last night and it cracked me up:

Seems even more ridiculous when you put it like that...

But on to other things...

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about sleep.  And sleep props.  And feedings.  And schedules.  All the stuff that the "experts", the mothers with a half dozen or more, and the ever present "they" say that I should or shouldn't be doing with my son to help him sleep, wake up, eat, and mess "on time".

What does that mean, anyway?  "On time."  From what I can gather, it means baby doing all his various activities in a schedule that fits into my life.

What with moving clear across the country three weeks before he was born, I didn't have much of a life to begin with, so there isn't really much of a schedule for him to fit into anyway.

It didn't make sense to me to expect an infant to neatly slot into grown up time-tables.  So I didn't try to make him.  Well, I did try, did the Babywise deal for about a week... made things worse, not better, so we stopped and went back to letting JJ schedule himself.  And you know what?  He did.  Entirely on his own, he settled into a cycle of wake up, eat, play, eat, sleep, naps ranging from forty minutes to three hours, and consistently sleeps at least eight hours at night, usually more like ten, and in the last couple of weeks occasionally teases me with a twelve hour night.

Just in time for the four month sleep regression, I know.  *sticks fingers in ears and hums loudly*

While many many mothers work, and thus need a more defined schedule for their little ones, I'm happy to say that if you're blessed enough to be able to stay home, a rigid schedule is NOT required.  Some babies take to it and it works for them, some don't.  I am so grateful that I can stay home with my son, and that he is the sort of baby who settled into a reasonably predictable schedule all on his own.

And yet, when people find out that I still do this or that or whatever it is they happen to feel passionately about, I hear the same old song.

"Oh, my, you do/don't/did/didn't/still __(insert parenting choice)___???  You're going to have so many problems with  ___(insert dire predictions)___!!!!"  People get amazingly bent out of shape every time they discover that some other parent did things some other way, as if that passes judgment on the choices they made, and they must now defend those choices to the bitter end.

It's amusing and confounding and irritating as holy hand grenades all at the same time.  Because while they usually have raised or are raising children, none of them have raised my child.  None of them watch him all day and all night.  None of them sleep with both ears wide open to catch his sleepy burbles and listen to his breathing.  None of them read all the books and scoured the internet with my child in mind and finally said "Ya know what? I'll figure it out.  The human race somehow survived before any of this stuff was written, it can't possibly be that hard."

Don't get me wrong, I love hearing about other parents' experiences.  What I don't like is "what worked for me" turning into "you have to do it this exact way or your baby will __(insert more doom and gloom)___"

The problem with all the different theories is that none of them work across the board, and anyone who claims that their method works for all babies all the time (if properly applied and the parents do it right, putting the blame for failure on noncompliant parents) hasn't worked long term with enough children.  Even most of the so-called experts will admit when pressed that there's no such thing as a Baby Manual.  No magic pill, no formula, no step by step or blow by blow that will tell every parent how to handle every baby all the time.  It does not exist.

Everybody knows that.

And yet somehow, everyone also seems to know that their way (or Ezzo or Baby Whisperer or Dr What'sHisNameToday) is the ONLY way that will absolutely work for my child.

I look at my precious baby, contentedly sleeping in his Arm's Reach, happy and healthy and hitting milestones.  (He's sitting up for a second or three unaided now.) I look at myself... rested, with time to myself to write or exercise or do laundry or whatever needs doing.  I look at my husband... rested, working, able to have time with the baby on a daily basis and still spend time with just me.  

I look at our family... and I figure we're doing alright.  We cosleep and swaddle, occasionally bedshare.  I babywear and cloth diaper, but use disposable wipes and vaccinate.  I drive our pediatrician a bit batty and insist on spreading out those vaccines so he gets one new bug at a time.  I gave up on baby baths and instead just take him into the shower with me.  I nurse on demand and let the baby nurse to sleep, rock, sing, cuddle, whatever works to get him down.  I use about a half dozen ASL signs daily for common activities, and will introduce more as he gets older.  When he goes down for the night, I lay there for the first 45 minutes to catch the first rouse cycle and soothe him back down if necessary so that he will sleep through the night.  I could go on like that all day, but the short version is... it's working, and I'm going to continue doing everything that works until it doesn't, at which point I will try other things until I find the new thing that works.  If I ever write a parenting book, it's gonna be...

Breast... may not *always* be best.

I'm about to crack open a subject that tends to get people all riled up and panty-bunched.

Before anyone fluffs out their feathers and prepares to do battle, that's not what I'm after here.

So breathe.  In... out... in... out...  See?  Air is good! ;)

Breast-milk versus Baby Formula is a hot topic on the baby boards.  People on both sides have excellent reasons for the choice they made for their children.  The debate can get pretty heated, and hyperbole often rears its ugly head with declarations like "Formula is POISON!!!" and "EEEEWWW, breast-feeding is gross!!"  At which point the debate usually spins out of control into name-calling and LOLcats pictures.

Being respectful of others' parenting choices goes up in smoke.

And you know what?  It's sad, it really is.  Because whether it comes from a breast or a bottle, the babies are getting fed.  They are growing and healthy and happy and THAT is what matters.  I find it disgusting that mothers who formula-feed are vilified and told they are poisoning their children, choosing the "easy" way instead of what's best for their child (which is BS, ask anyone who has to wash bottles daily), etc.  Similarly, those who find breast-feeding to be unsavory should take a hard look at their overall world view and see if they're upholding that viewpoint by eschewing all exposure to flesh in the media.  Hello, advertising.  

A significant percentage of formula moms are formula-feeding out of flat necessity.  There are myriad reasons why this can happen, from an undiagnosed tongue-tie causing a poor latch, to dietary issues in the mother, flat/inverted nipples, all the way to a straight up allergy to breast-milk (rare, but it happens).  If it's a latching or a dietary issue, poor advice from doctors relying on outdated education can contribute to the problem.  Or, for some, one day for no apparent reason whatsoever, your baby may just refuse to breast-feed.

That's what happened to me.  One day when JJ was about three weeks old, the debate over breast-milk vs. formula became frighteningly personal.  He started to scream bloody murder if a naked breast got anywhere near him.  I tried everything.  Different positions, pulled EVERYTHING out of my diet (seriously, I had the most hypoallergenic milk on the planet, folks), hand-expressing into his mouth, and every feeding session was a fight.   He was gassy and miserable, screeching that started at 4pm was a good day, and I was fast becoming convinced that my child hated me.  And then one morning he just would not latch, no matter what I tried. So we started giving him thawed breast-milk in a bottle.

Voila.  Probably seventy percent of the gas issue cleared up overnight.  My happy content baby reappeared.  Oh, the screeching banshee child was still occasionally in evidence, but it was thirty minutes before he would go down for the night, as opposed to starting up at 4 in the morning and going all day.  So I got my hands on an electric pump and started pumping every two hours around the clock.  The baby was suddenly growing faster, more content, less gassy, and John was getting to feed the baby.

But here's the rub... I was devastated.  Every time I saw JJ drinking from a bottle, I wanted to scream.  Even if I was feeding it to him, I felt somehow that I was failing.  And I didn't get to feed him that often. Needing to pump every two hours during the day and every three at night meant that I was getting less sleep, more stressed, and less and less time with my son.  I would sit hooked up to that damned machine, watch someone else feed my baby, and cry.  Let me tell you, I was starting to get severely snuggle-deprived.

Add to that, the spectre of the Dreaded Formula was looming nearer and nearer every day.  My production was not coming up fast enough or far enough, and eventually the baby would need formula to supplement what I was able to pump, once he burned through what I had stored in the freezer.  I was absolutely frantic.  I was (and still am) taking every natural milk-booster I could get my hands on, and at one point talked a doctor around to a short term prescription for Domperidone.  That's a whole other post there... effective as a milk-booster, no painful side effects but I started gaining weight pretty rapidly, so I weaned off it again before I even finished the initial supply.  And nothing was working well enough to keep that poison away from my baby.  Yes, I'm ashamed to say it, I was a member of the Formula is Poison crowd.

Bad Laura.  No cookie for you.

One Friday night, the baby was asleep, and John and I were lying in bed trying to figure out how to get my head into a place where the baby getting formula wouldn't send me into an emotional tail-spin.  I basically made up my mind that I would keep pumping, keep working at getting my supply up, but it was good we already had some formula on hand because JJ was going to burn through the stored milk before my production caught up with him.  We called it a night at that point, and still in an emotional stew I got JJ out of his cosleeper and brought him into the bed with us.  Bedsharing isn't my all-time favorite thing, kid's a wiggle-butt, but I was desperately in need of some bonding time with my son.  

The next morning, about 4 am, right when he would normally be waking me up fussing for a bottle, I woke up and found that during the night, JJ had found the breast and latched on, and was happily sucking away, still sound asleep.  I laid there and stared at him in total astonishment, joy and disbelief chasing each other through my soul.  I didn't so much as twitch for three damn hours, and when I finally did get up, it was slowly... cautiously... must not upset the baby... Of course by that time he was awake, but he was smiling at me!  He was calm!  He was happy!  He was... 

Wet.  Soaked through.  Yeah, reality came crashing back in a hurry, y'all.  LOL

That week was dubbed Nursing Boot Camp.  I literally sat on our bed and watched Ghost Whisperer.  I did all the things the sleep-trainers run from in horror... I let the baby nurse to sleep, and even then let him sleep at the breast.  For at least four days I took him off the breast so I could go to the bathroom.  That's it.  John brought me food, and the baby slept next to me at night so he could nurse whenever he wanted to do so.  By the end of the week JJ had gotten a little less clingy, and I had stopped wondering if he liked me.

It was two weeks before I let another bottle anywhere near him.  Even now it's a rare occurrence and will continue as such.

But folks, that's not the end of this story.  See, while I was in the middle of that, I was reading and researching and asking everyone I knew for advice.  And several very well-meaning people offered great ideas... while at the same time using the language of failure to describe the cessation of breast-feeding.  Oh, it wasn't intended to make me feel badly, but the fact is that I *already* felt like the worst mother in the entire damn world.  A doctor was telling me that bottles are responsible for  breast-feeding failure.  A friend was telling me that she hated to see people try so hard to breast-feed and then fail.  Folks on the BF'ing boards were urging me not to give up on giving my baby THE BEST POSSIBLE FOOD.  Folks on the Pumping boards were telling me it was okay to supplement as long as I kept pumping, because ANY BREAST MILK IS BETTER THAN NONE.  All with the very best of intentions.

And the whole time I was thinking "Yes, I know, I failed.  God designed the perfect system for feeding babies, it's practically idiot-proof, but I can't even make that work.  WOW, I suck at this."

If you know someone who, for whatever reason, feeds their baby formula, leave it alone.  Formula has its drawbacks, but it is in fact not poison.  It doesn't set babies up to be obese later, it doesn't automatically trash their developing immune systems, and it doesn't mean they love their child any less.  

If you know someone who is struggling to continue breast-feeding, please, for the love of her sanity, watch your language.  Words like "failure", "giving up", "inadequate" and so forth can be damaging to a mother already hurting over the perceived ideal of baby nutrition.  If she's determined to supplelemnt with breast-milk, get her in touch with a milk bank and find out if her insurance will help defray the costs.  Remember that stress and emotional upheaval also have a huge impact on milk supply, so rather than focusing on that supply issue, try words like "love", "food", "comfort", and for pete's sake, send the woman a LOLcat or two.  Make her laugh.  Take her out for a coffee or a manicure if you can.  Focus her attention on the happy, healthy, thriving child she is raising on whatever combination of baby milk works best.

This is the goal.  No matter how you get there.

But never, ever, ever imply by word, thought, or deed, that she has failed in her duty as a mother.

Because, I promise you, she's already thinking it herself.