Being a modern Mum

At coffee group today, the question of returning to work came up. A lot of our babies are older now, and some Mum's are returning to work, or at least planning their return.

I don't know about everyone else, but I was hugely idealistic about returning to the workforce before I had Vivi. I had it all planned out - I would take nine months maternity leave which would be AMPLE time before returning to work and putting Vivi in daycare. Nice and easy. Hell, I'd even been to some daycares near work and had put her name down on the waiting list.

Then I became a Mum, and Tim and I became parents.

We immersed ourselves in the strange, scary, and at times overwhelming world of parenthood for the first couple of months. We watched as our old life was stripped away, and adjusted to inhabiting a world with a little baby. We went through the trials that everyone faces: sleep deprivation, feeding issues - all the anxiety and worry that comes with the territory of being a new parent. Not to mention the relationship adjustments that inevitably have to be made. Suddenly, you don't have oodles of time up your sleeve. You are plunged into a world where EVERYTHING revolves around your baby. Can you chill out and watch a DVD together? only if your baby is asleep. Can you head out for the day to meet up with friends? only if you pack what feels like the entire car, and then make sure you will be in a situation where you will be able to put your baby down to sleep wherever it is that you're going.

Day to day life at the beginning is very much like 'groundhog day'. You gradually fall into a routine of caring for your baby, whatever that might involve. With us it is a simple routine of waking Vivi at 7am, giving her her medication, feeding her, giving her a kick around on her playmat, and then putting her to bed for a nap. In between these times there is the inevitable mountain of laundy and pile of dishes to navigate, emails to check, other random housework that needs to be done, and planning for outings that will take place that day. The days are busy, contrary to what anyone might think - just because you are at home all day does not mean that you're sitting around twiddling your thumbs or finding time for hour long pilates workouts! Being a Mum is a fulltime job in itself.

Then there is the inevitable (for some) return to the workplace.

Firstly, I would just like to point out that I am grateful that I was able to take off nine months. I know plently of other people who have had to go back to work much sooner than that.

What is foremost on my mind at the moment is that of balancing two very different roles: that of being a Mother, and a working woman.

Like of my friends in our coffee group pointed out today 'they just expect you to go back to work and carry on as normal, as though nothing has changed'. That everything will carry on as normal. I would like to know how you are meant to 'carry on as normal' when you are faced with the prospect of not only having to balance work and home life, but work, home life, and the needs of your baby. 'Carrying on as normal' involves you learning how to be everything to everyone, do don many differnet roles throughout the day. Which one are you going to prioritise over the other?

For me, being a Mother will always come first. No question about it.

I really wish I did not have to return to work. I love my job, but I love my daughter and family more. I hate the idea of leaving her in daycare all day long while I spend time elsewhere. I feel so sad when I think of all the hours that I won't be with her. What will I be missing out on? will I be at work when she is learning to crawl, taking her first steps, speaking her first word? I wish that it was possible to take more time off, but I know that it's not going to make going back to work any easier in the long term. It'll still be just as hard.

So a question I have is that why should there be the need (or expectation) for women to go back to work at all? surely being a Mother is a full time job in itself, and should be recognised as being a worthwhile occupation. I feel as though these days women are expected to do it all (and not complain). You're expected to raise a child, be a loving partner, run a household, hold down a job........ I would like to know where is the time for yourself amidst all that? why can't being a Mother be enough, if that's what you want to do?

12:51pm, 22nd February 2011

Tuesday 22nd February, 2011 is a date that will be fixed in my mind forever. It was the day in which much of my hometown was destroyed.

Tim and I had just arrived home with Vivi. It was around 2:30pm in the afternoon. We got inside and I flicked on the radio as usual, hearing snippets of 'major earthquake, devestation.....' but not really registering, thinking that it must have been something that had happened overseas. I opened my laptop and brought up the 'stuff' website, to see what had been happening in the world that day. That's when I saw the headline that made my blood run cold: 'Major earthquake in Christchurch - hundreds injured'.

My hands shook as I dialed my Dad's cellphone number. No answer. I hastily dialed Mum's cellphone -it went straight to voicemail. All the while images were flooding through my mind - devestated buildings, people injured, many feared dead. I knew Mum and Dad would have been at work in the CBD that day and I feared the worst. I rang their home number only to find that it rung twice then stopped ringing. Finally, in desperation I rang my Brother. They're ok, he reassured me, they had managed to make it out of the CBD and were at home. Relief was immediate, but I still needed to talk to them, just to make sure. I was also relieved to hear that our 88 year old Grandad was ok, and around at Mum and Dad's place.

We spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening at my sister's house, staring in disbelief at the images that flickered across the TV screen on the special news bulletin - injured people, devestated buildings, liquifaction pouring up through the streets, rescue teams working valiently to free those trapped in buildings. How could this be happening? I managed a brief phone call to my Dad on his cellphone but we weren't able to speak for long due to their power not being on. Words cannot describe how upset I felt when I heard to him refer to the earthquake as the 'most frightening experience of my life'. It turns out that Dad was at work in town at the time, opposite South City mall. He managed to get out of the building after the quake struck, and then ran through town to Mum's building as he hadn't been able to get in touch with her. No doubt he saw some truly awful things in town that afternoon as he ran through the devestated streets. Days later Mum told me about the terror she felt as she made her way out of her building that day - from the 5th floor down the stairwell, only to find when they got to the bottom of the building that they were trapped as the automatic doors were locked shut. Luckily, they managed to escape through a small window that someone was able to smash.

As I type these words the death toll from Tuesday's earthquake stands at 159 and will no doubt rise much higher. So many people have lost their lives. We are lucky as a family - no one hurt or killed, yet I can't help but think about the other families who have lost loved ones in such tragic circumstances. Especially tragic (for me) was hearing about the two little babies that had passed away as a result of the earthquake - a nine month old and a five month old. I find my eyes welling up with tears when I look into Vivi's smiling face and think of these young babies whose life was all too brief.

This earthquake has affected me deeply. I have been so worried about my family (although I was able to fly Mum and Grandad up to Wellington on Friday, although not Dad unfortunatley as he had to stay put due to being overloaded with work). I feel so helpless hearing the despair in their voices, knowing that there is little I can do from here. Their lives have been changed forever. They will return tomorrow to a devestated city and will start to begin rebuilding their lives. In the meantime, I am trying to keep the anxiety that this could happen again, at bay. I wish with all my heart that they were able to get out of Christchurch for good.

INSOMNIA

For the third night in a row now, I have been unable to get back to sleep after getting up to feed Vivi.

INSOMNIA, the inability to sleep. You lay awake in bed, knowing that time is ticking by, that you are going to be EXHAUSTED the next day, yet you are unable to drop off to sleep. Everyone around you is sleeping peacefully, yet sleep eludes you.

I haven't been able to sleep properly for some time now, and I find myself wondering how long this is going to continue? I seem to have fallen into this pattern of waking at around 2:30 - 3am, getting up and giving Vivi her food, and then finding myself laying awake until morning. It is incredibly frustrating and tiring. Trust me, being awake from 3am until 10pm each day is no picnic.

Tonight (well, this morning really , as it's 4am) I decided to bite the bullet and just get up. It's a better alternative then laying in bed watching the minutes tick by and getting more and more frustrated over my inability to sleep.

For a long time after Vivi was born I slept really well - I would get up to feed her, and then drop straight off again. As a result, I found I felt relatively normal during the day and could function.

Being a parent is gruelling. There is no doubt about it. In fact, being a Mother is gruelling. You have to learn to accept that your needs no longer come first. You go to bed at night with the knowledge that you will be up again in four hours time, no matter how tired you are. The needs of your baby come first. The reality of parenthood.

It's easy to be idealistic about being a parent before you are one. There is no way to comprehend how much your life is going to change. There is no way to fully understand the reality of having little person in your life who is completely dependent on you to meet their needs. Being a parent involves stripping away all the layers of selfishness that you have built up over the years and becoming completely selfless.

Becoming a parent is one of the most amazing, wonderful, and rewarding experiences you could ever imagine, but it is also mind booglingly frustrating, tiring, and completely gruelling.

I'm just looking at the time. It's 4:20am and I will have to be up in two and half hours time. You start to wonder if it's even worth going back to bed? a whole day stretches out before me and I don't know if I have the energy to participate in it. Yet what's the alternative? it's not like anyone else can look after Vivi for me. That's what I mean when I say you have to accept that your old life is over. You have to learn to be selfless. I mean, there really is no choice in the matter. What else can you do?

Breast is not always best for Mums?

http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/wellbeing/4680702/Breast-not-always-best-for-mums

Ok, so we all know that breast feeding is best for your baby, and gives her the best start in life, but what about those people who struggle to breast feed and never manage to successfully feed their baby this way? I found the above article an interesting read for many reasons, especially as it touched on the psychological implications of being unable to breast feed.

Why did I find this interesting? because I have never managed to successfully breast feed Vivienne.

Before we had her, I assumed that breast feeding would be something that would not neccessarily be easy, but that if I persevered hard enough, I could make it happen. However, nothing could prepare me for just how difficult it would be.

Breast feeding is definitely a learnt skill - and a big part of it is probably due to your level of exposure to it. We covered a bit of it in our ante-natal group sessions - how to latch your baby, some common problems that could occur, etc etc. Our midwife was also helpful in providing information about latching. I went into it with all the theoretical knowledge I had learnt, only to find that the reality was somewhat differnet.

Vivienne wouldn't latch onto me!

Basically, as soon as she was born, our midwife tried to establish a latch. Picture this - a Mother who has just given birth (without any interventions I might add). I was sore, overwhelmed, exhausted. Vivienne, newly arrived into the world was screaming her lungs out as our midwife tried to get her to latch onto me again and again and again. Other nurses were called in to the delivery room when she would not latch, various techniques were employed, still without success. Two hours later(!) defeat was conceeded.

Vivi spent the rest of that day strapped to me 'skin to skin' in an effort to help with the breast feeding. That night I had to sign a consent form so the nurses could give her formula, as she hadn't eaten anything.

The next few days in hospital were spent, once again, trying to get breast feeding established. I became used to nurses coming and going, hand expressing colostrum (which by the way, really hurts!) which we fed to Vivi through a tube and syringe. We saw a lactation consultant at the hosptial who put a plan in place for us for when we got home. I never once questioned that we would be able to get breast feeding established eventually, and in my mind their seemed no other option, after all 'breast is best' and we wouldn't want to be feeding her any nasty formula if we could help it!

So home we went, positive that we would be able to establish breast feeding if we persevered long enough.

What followed was weeks of plans being put in place by our midwife and lactation consultant. I was continually told to 'persevere, we will get there!' and as a new Mum I just assumed that eventually it would happen. I was determined to do it, and it had been so drilled into me that for me, bottle feeding was simply not an option. So for the first six weeks of Vivi's life, we tried time and time again to get her to latch. We used every means known to man - I recall one plan we had in place was to try for five minutes at the start of every feed to get her to latch on, even forcing her on to me. So this meant five minutes of Vivi screaming her head off while we tried to latch her on - and as everyone who has a baby can understand, five minutes of screaming feels like five hours! I got to a point where I began dreading the feeds and the inevitable battle that would arise out of them. Trying to force her onto me felt anything but 'natural' and I was finding it hard to bond with her a result. Also, her weight gains were erratic - and very slow which was worrying. One week she actually lost weight, and some weeks she gained virtually no weight at all.

The crunch came when she was about six weeks old and she started refusing to latch on to me even when I was using a nipple shield (which she had been able to latch on to after a lot of perseverence!). I suddenly realised that it wasn't worth it - that I couldn't go through another six weeks of this - or who knows how long. I conceeded defeat and began expressing milk for her and feeding her with a bottle. I still felt like a faliure, even though she was getting breast milk. Everyone else made it look so easy and I wondered what was wrong with me, and why I couldn't breast feed our daughter.

I expressed milk for Vivienne until she was about 15 weeks old, and started refuisng to drink my breast milk. We had to switch to formula as a result and once again, I felt like I'd failed her somehow.

All of this conincided with Vivi being diagnosed with having Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) which perhaps explains why she was never able to latch on initially, but I don't know.

However, I do know that since exclusively formula feeding her, I've felt much happier and I have a happier baby who is now gaining weight at a reasonable rate. This whole experience has made mre realise that what is most important, is a healthy baby and if that means a baby who is fed formula, then so be it.

I will say however, that I still feel disappointed in myself that Vivi is not being breast fed, and there is a part of me that always thinks that I could have done more, could have tried harder and done things differently. A lot of this disappointment, I think, stems from the emphasis there is in this country for women to breast feed. For example, at the ante-natal classes, there was not a single bit of information on bottle feeding. The topic was not even remotely touched upon, which lead me to get the impression that it was somehow 'taboo'. I have yet to see a brochure on bottle feeding, on the ins and out of how to sterilise equipment, how much formula to use, what type of formula is best and so on. Tim and I basically had to stumble our way through when it came to feeding Viv formula, and the only information we could find came from other Mums who forumal fed their babies. The fact that breast feeding is so promoted in NZ is fantastic, as I do believe that it is best for baby, but for whatever reason there will always be those of us out there who are unable to breast feed and the pyschological implications of this can be extreme.

I should point out as well that I had an incredibly supportive partner in Tim who stood by me every step of the way - it makes me wonder how other Mum's who are struggling to breast feed fare, if their partners are not so supportive of them.

Friday happenings

Another busy week has drawn to a close - I made a resolution this week to do something every day - be it visit someone, go somewhere interesting, or have someone over. So today it was nice to see some of the ladies from coffee group over - oh, and Lucas of course! wouldn't want to lump him in the lady category :) it's so neat to see all the babies growing up, and strange to think that when we met they were all in our tummies. I want to try to make the most of the time I have with Viv before I go back to work. Sigh.
This would have to be one of the hottest summers I have experienced in Wellington since we moved here - and that is seven years. The first summer I spent here was (from memory) one of the wettest on record. Quite ironic in a way therefore, that the summer we have a young baby in the house it is stinking hot almost every day, and as anyone with a new baby is aware, they do not like the heat, and will let you know loud and clear just how uncomfortable they are! It was quite difficult to get Vivi to settle down today for her sleeps, so I spent the majority of the day out with her in the buggy (ok, slight exaggeration, but when you've got a screaming baby every minute feels like an hour!). We did however, have a very pleasant walk together down the Hutt Valley river trail - a walk that turned into a bit of a blackberrying mission as they are all in season at the moment, and plentiful down the river trail. I picked my fair share (while Vivi slept in the buggy -bliss!) then found some time tonight to make Blackberry Jam. Alas, I think I probably overdid the boiling of the jam and in texture it now seems to resemble a rather thick paste. Hmph! I'm going to go back early next week and pick some more - but will probably freeze them next time around as my jam making skills leave a lot to be desired.....

Viv after her bath

There is something so deliciously adorable about babies straight after they have had their bath :) I really enjoy bath-time with Vivi and it's a lovely way for both of us to wind down after a busy day.
There is something to be said about just how fleeting the time is that you have with your child - in that they do grow up fast and before you know it time has gone by. And as time is passing you are eagerly awaiting the next stage of their development, yet at times I just stand back and really savour the way things are now. I love so many things about this stage - cuddling her before bed, the smiles she gives me when I'm singing to her as I wash her in the bath, the little noises she makes as though she's trying to tell us a story. There are so many moment, so many snapshots in time - too many to list here, but I'm sure anyone who has a child will understand where I'm coming from.
It is now 7:45pm, Viv is asleep upstairs in bed after a nice big feed and I'm enjoying the serentiy of the moment, staring out of the window and watching the rain and waiting for Tim to arrive home. All is well.