Oh god. I am writing about sleep again. That means I haven’t been getting enough and that this post will be more of a vent (with some WARNING swear words) than anything else.

M has not been sleeping very well for close to two months now, maybe longer, truth is I haven’t really been counting it just feels like FOREVER. We have been traveling a fair bit and then there was that cold that lasted for weeks and then he was teething…all recipes for poor sleep for everyone, but especially for me. Why? Because I am the one he calls out for when he is sleepy, who nurses him to sleep (and back to sleep in the middle of the night).

I have been happy with the way we have “done sleep” so far. We have only practiced very gentle techniques to help M go to sleep (i.e. he has not been left alone to cry ever). This is the only method that is a possibility for me. It’s not for everyone but it is for me. He has a very positive association with sleep, he asks for naps and night-nights. He hops into bed and waits for me to come to nurse him to sleep. And he wakes up at least once a night, sometimes three times, sometimes more when he has a cold or is teething or when he jumps on a trampoline right before bed (like last night). That was all good but now I am ready for some more uninterrupted sleep. Yes, I am. Why do I feel guilty for just saying that? And how the fuck am I going to get more sleep???!!! I am officially tired. Exhausted. But man am I good at being exhausted and still functioning. It has been two years since I slept through the night. I could handle it, most of the time; but over the past few days I have been thinking about how it might be time to start getting some more sleep…but how?

I have read EVERYTHING that there is to read about sleep: the importance of sleep (fuck off), the detrimental effects of having not enough sleep (again, fuck off), normal infant sleep patterns (the range is only 8 hours so essentially there is no normal), sleep training techniques (one hundred million), the positive and negative effects of every given sleep training method (both scientific evidence and anecdotal). This is my summary of hundreds of hours of reading: there are many methods to try, no one method works for everyone, if it doesn’t work stop doing it, and don’t try anything you aren’t comfortable with. I thought this article by Isabel Agranic was a pretty poignant and honest summary of the hoards of sleep information out there. But as good as the article is, it doesn’t help me to sleep more.

Since I am comfortable with more gentle methods I am going to try on this little number by Dr. Jay Gordon on how to change sleep patterns in the family bed. We are going to start implementing this method as soon as we return from our current adventure and I will write about how each stage goes. Stay tuned…

As my son gets older and less dependent on me (he is 20 months) I find I am thinking about the future of ME more and more. What do I do when my son no longer needs me (as much)? As we loosen our talon-like grip from each other where will I go?I am not talking about empty nest syndrome, no no, I am just able to see this little light in the nearish future where I can concentrate on investing in me again (just a little bit).

The thing is by the time M was just a few months old I knew that the path I was on before was no longer the right one to be on despite it being my “dream job”. My career kind of fizzled out after only a few years in. I am not sure what happened but I know it wasn’t just one thing; it was a culmination of a whole whack load of things that don’t really matter anymore. All I know is that the dream job is no longer that and since I have the opportunity to change my direction at this point in time I am going to jump on it.

I am so passionate about the health and well-being of babies and their caregivers. This fire has been inside me since I was a little kid but since I had M it has grown to gargantuan proportions. I read and think and write and talk about child-rearing nonstop. I started a Facebook group called Parenting Between the Lines so I could talk about it even more. I am obsessed with improving humans, period, and I feel like focusing on bettering the very beginning of life is the right place for me to start.

So I have a pipe dream and these are the bare bones of it: I would like to start my own business to support families, specifically women and children, by offering products and services that optimize their physical and mental health. Vague I know, but that is all I am willing and able to share at the moment. The prospect of having my own business is daunting on so many levels – money, time, fear of failure, etc. But putting my dream out here to you is my first step in actualizing it.

Since my last post I have been having a really hard time coming up with a good post topic. That is why I have not written anything. I guess the bigger issue has been that I have been really wondering where I want my blog to go…or if I want to continue with it…

I read a lot of great blogs written by moms – their posts are long and filled with research and they post at least once a week. I don’t really have the passion or focus to write that often and in that amount of depth. I am more into writing journal-style, just riffing my thoughts out there into the ether and allowing myself to question who I am and what I believe in; to be vulnerable. I question whether I feel the need to share this journal online, I waver back and forth with this. I am not sure I want to share all the things I want to write about. The things I am willing to share my thoughts on are limited, (like breastfeeding, parenting styles, etc.) and I am not sure many people want to hear from me over and over on the same topic. So do I want to have a blog? I don’t know.

Recently I have been looking at pictures of the birth and first few weeks of my son’s life. The pictures of the birth make me feel proud and giddy that I was able to make it through the toughest physical task I have ever had to do. Even when I see this photo of the obvious and unjust dichotomy of experiences being had by myself and my husband, I feel a sense of wonder and joy.

But the pictures and memories of the first weeks after M was born are not so good – we were struggling, we were barely treading water, we were STRESSED and full of anxiety.

Dark thoughts and feelings creep up when I see them. There is nothing obviously terrible in any photo but I remember how terrified I was. I remember how awful I felt, how ashamed, how guilty, how insane. At times I though my son’s life would be better without me in it. I was convinced things would never get better, that he would always be a newborn, and that I would never leave the house.

We had some real hurdles in the beginning, mainly that M would not latch onto the breast and so I had to express my milk and we fed it to him via finger and tube.

This was heart-breaking for me and logistically difficult and exhausting for me and my husband. I felt like SUCH a failure. I read everything I could read about successfully breastfeeding and getting a good latch. I read, read, and re-read the same things every day and sent myself into an anxious tailspin of obsessive thoughts. The pivotal change point came from hiring an IBCLC (lactation consultant) and she helped a lot to calm me down and focus on the small wins we achieved – M was getting my breast milk, just not from the breast, we had to wait for that part. Relaxing was key and so was sticking to good information sources that said the same thing as one another.

When I look back at pictures of me in the early days I see hidden pain and I feel ashamed. I was shoving down my feelings and instead putting on a ‘happy’ show for everyone. I was experiencing intense postpartum depression and was in total denial. With all the experience I have with depression this is still quite shocking to me. What took me so long to google postpartum depression and say to my husband, “I think I have PPD”? Why did I not express what was truly going on in my head to my support systems, like my psychiatrist at the reproductive mental health clinic at BC Women’s Hospital?

Ugh, regrets…

Well just like with breastfeeding my PPD did get better. Time did not stand still, each day was better than the last. I did reach out to get the help I needed. If you or someone you know is experiencing PPD I encourage you to check out these fabulous resources.

http://postpartumprogress.com/

http://www.postpartum.org/

I hate Kale. HATE. But I know it is the healthiest thing on the planet so I try to hide it in meals as  often as I can (once a month). I just discovered a great way to eat it; with bacon! Everything is better with bacon.

So this is what I did – chop up a whole pack of (nitrate free, organic, free-range) bacon; slice up some fingerling potatoes; and chop up a bunch of kale in 2″ pieces. Mix all three ingredients together in a baking pan and roast at 400F until everything is delicious and crunchy. Essentially the kale just gets crunchy and disintegrates in your mouth and tastes like bacon. I am sure the nutritional value of the kale just plummeted but it tastes great.

When I get some time to myself, which is happening more and more these days as M reaches one and a half years old, I like to do things I love to do and/or that will make me happy but that I hate to do (like tidying a room in the house).

One of my favourite things to do is cook. I love to experiment and take whatever is my fridge and make something tasty. We are lucky to have lots of free range, organic, and local food around us so that is my starting place. Full disclosure, after I had my son I did not cook for many, many months (maybe even a year). I was tired and lacking the inspiration I needed to enjoy cooking. I used every resource available to avoid cooking (thank you mom).

Some notes about my cooking style and consequently my recipe relaying skills: I freestyle and never let a recipe get me down – if I don’t have/like something in the recipe, I substitute for it. I always go by taste – not by the amounts they recommend. This is why I am generally a terrible baker. I promise that when I post a baking recipes I will make sure to write down the amounts – after all – baking is a science and there are rules in science.

I have a recipe to share that we had last week that was delicious and easy, I promise.

SESAME GINGER CHICKEN SALAD – serve warm or cold

Components:

1. Shredded poached chicken
2. Sesame ginger dressing
3. Salad greens of your choice
4. Green beans or asparagus (blanched)

How to make poached chicken:

1. Find a big(ish) pot
2. Chop an onion in quarters (with peel)
3. Chop some celery (include ribs and leaves)
4. Put chicken breasts (as many as you want – make extra for another meal), onion, celery in the pot
5. Put some herbs and spices in the pot (thyme, rosemary, bay, parsley, garlic, pepper etc.)
6. Cover with liquid (either water and a bouillon cube or stock)
7. Bring to boil – reduce heat to simmer and cover pot. Cook for 20 minutes. Remove pot from heat and keep covered for one hour or just cook it for longer (that is what I do when I am in a hurry)
8. Done! (you can shred, cube, dice, julienne your chicken and use it in whatever you want)
9. For this recipe shred your chicken (it soaks up the dressing better this way) – simply take a fork and scrape the chicken breasts and little strings will just fall off.

How to make sesame ginger dressing:

1. Grate fresh ginger, about 2 tablespoons
2. Toast some sesame seeds, about 2 tablespoons
3. Chop some scallions or green onions, about 3-4 sprigs
4. Mix sesame oil, tamari or soy sauce, rice vinegar (approx. 1-1-1 ratio) in a medium bowl
5. Add ginger, sesame seeds, and green onions and stir to mix together

How to assemble the salad:

1. Place salad greens on a plate
2. Toss beans or asparagus in the dressing to lightly coat and put on salad greens
3. Place all the shredded chicken in the dressing bowl and mix well so that all the strands of chicken are nicely coated
4. Put the chicken on the salad
5. Sprinkle some sesame seeds on top, maybe some more green onions
6. Eat it

Tips: Make enough to eat tomorrow, you will want to as this salad is good.

Sometimes I feel a bit of a liar for saying I had/have PPD when in fact I have dealt with the big D all my life. Whats the difference between PPD and plain old D? That’s what I have thought about in the shower these days. So I have come up with PDPPD – my acronym that stands for Pre-During-Post Partum Depression. I have been thinking about changing my diagnosis from PPD to PDPPD for a while now; it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue but I feel it is more accurate.

How do I feel comfortable disclosing any of this out LOUD and putting it out there for all* to read? Well let me be upfront and say I have butterflies in my stomach as I type. But they are the good kind of butterflies, the take a leap kind of butterflies, the vulnerable falling in love kind of butterflies. It feels right to be fully open sometimes.

So how has my depression affected my experience as a mother so far? I have most certainly felt unskilled and anxious about being a mom – but I feel confident that most, if not all, first time parents feel this way too.

What makes depression unique to being a parent is the cataclysmic reaction one has to these emotions. At times, especially in the first 6 months, I felt so frightened, in so many ways. I was so overwhelmed by the change, by the chaos, and by my overwhelmedness in itself. I was scared out my mind, quite literally, that life would stay this way. A few times I was even convinced that M would be the first infant in history to never grow up; that I would be stuck with a newborn forever. I know, crazy. That is how I felt sometimes. CRAZY.

PPD is a bit different than regular D for me. The symptoms were much more intense (because of the hormonal increases, the lack of sleep, the demands on my body, the world-flipping identity change, the increase in responsibility, etc.) Looking back, I think to myself…ahhh how good it feels to be out of the eclipse and back into my regular old D.

What helped me come out of the dark was sharing my thoughts with those who care about me, those who were having similar experiences and with experts who could help me be more gentle and understanding of myself.

*I, by no means, think that all people on the planet are reading this but acknowledge that this is “open to all” just by being on the internet. But thank you ALL for reading and if you are experiencing any form of D – there is lots of help out there – drop me an email if you need help finding it.

It has been a few weeks, maybe even a month since I posted last. It is the holiday season and life has been crazy; good, but crazy busy. I am taking a few minutes away from friends and family to write down my most recent internal thought battle on sleep.

Yesterday I watched a series of videos of a presentation done by Dr. Wendy Hall on infant sleep. Dr. Hall and her colleagues have researched infant sleep patterns, behaviours, and problems at UBC and they have gathered the most recent and well-regarded studies into an interesting 90 minute preso. If you are interested in learning more about her work I suggest you watch the videos of her presentation. My intention is not to critique her work or the presentation (I am not qualified to do so), I just want to explore my reaction to the videos in more detail…

The general points I got from the presentation were: infants who don’t sleep “well” at 5-6 months don’t sleep well at 5-6 years (I put well in quotations because I am unsure whether she meant total hours of sleep achieved or number of night wakings or the ability to self soothe as her measure); sleep deprivation is a very serious issue with dire consequences to brain development and emotional well-being; your baby must be able to self soothe; there is no hope if your child does not sleep well (my own catastrophised conclusion).

So as I watched the preso outlining what are considered sleep problems and why they are potentially harmful to development I became more and more critical of my nighttime parenting routines. I also became worried and guilty that we were screwing M up. All the techniques we use to get M to sleep she said not to do; I nurse M to sleep, stay with M until he falls asleep, co-bed, random and irregular feeding times, etc.). I felt terrible. I felt like I should immediately stop doing everything I have done for almost 1.5 years and quickly adopt her recommended techniques (which I couldn’t find).

Luckily I had the opportunity to have a chat with a friend of mine about my feelings after watching the video. I started off by saying I felt awful and was convinced I had sentenced M to a life of miserable sleep and poor development.  Then we got talking about our routines and why we do we what we do. I remembered we don’t do what we do randomly. My husband and I have thought critically about how we put M to sleep just as we have thought about our other parenting techniques. Our practices are not just based on our child-rearing philosophies; we have figured how to adapt them to our little sensitive dude and his needs. I started feeling better.

One of my skills is intuiting what people need and I have employed this skill with M to figure out how to give him what he needs at night. One of my “talents” is also doubting everything I do and losing confidence in my self when someone talks about doing it differently. I recognized that’s what I was doing in this instance and started to unravel the crazy thoughts to find out what was true and what was false (using my CBT training from therapy aka decrazying your brain).

Here is where I got to:

I don’t think M’s sleep problems (regular night wakings) would be classified as sleep problems by Dr. Hall. Yes, he wakes up a few times in the night but goes back to sleep within a few seconds with a little nurse session or if we are very lucky a little pat on the back or a whispered “shoo-shoo” in his ear. Night wakings are not ideal; I would love to have uninterrupted sleep, but because we have chosen to share our bed I quickly fall back asleep (if I even wake up). He is getting the hours of sleep he needs (according to the experts’ research, including Dr. Hall’s) which means I am not screwing him up and his development is not being impeded upon; Hallelujah!

This morning, someone forwarded me this blog post from babble.com which I thought was absolutely brilliant in answering the question, “it really my fault that my kid isn’t sleeping”? I felt so much better after reading it, there is so much comfort in knowing I am not alone.

I sometimes find myself paralyzed in an internal thought battle for days on end. What? You aren’t familiar with the term ‘internal thought battle’? (Some call it a thought loop, or intrusive thoughts). If you continue reading my blog you will come to know my unique language descriptions. I am not one to follow language conventions. I describe ‘internal thought battle’ as two opposing thoughts that I battle back and forth, back and forth, back and forth; seemingly forever. Either thought seems true to me depending on the mood I am in. One thought is usually self-abusive and demoralizing while the other one is much more forgiving and sensitive.

Before becoming a parent these thoughts would often have to do with self-image. One internal thought battle that is often fought in my head these days is about my “goodness” as a parent. For example, I was at the park the other day with M watching him navigate the playground obstacles. I found myself berating myself with this thought: “I am not providing Marley with enough excitement, opportunity, and interaction and therefore he will end up being under developed, depressed, and angry with me.” To counter I thought, “I am doing a great job. I let him play and create his games alone without mama interrupting or taking it over”. I believed both of them to be 100% true as I flip-flopped back and forth between the two ideas. I couldn’t decide which was right and which was wrong; probably because I knew I didn’t have to, nor did I want to. I just wanted my head to shut up and enjoy the day with my son.

In this instance, my gut, and two weeks worth of time to ponder this, tells me that the sweet spot is somewhere in between. I want to be present and have M see me as such; that is very important to me, it is one factor that enables me to gauge my success as a parent. I want to let him play alone and create his own games when he wants to and engage and entertain when he looks for my interaction. On a clear day, I listen to my gut and there is a peaceful resolution to my internal battle. But on more difficult days, the ceasefire does not last long and the battles flare up again.

My research into this subject (level of parent interaction/interference in child’s play) has come up with a wide spectrum of results – typical of any internet search on parenting issues. And of course each way of doing it is hailed as the best and if you don’t do it that particular way you are damaging your child.

So instead of searching and searching for the right answer on this particular issue, (which will never appear due to my incessant over-reading of internet articles and blogs), I am going to look into the meta issue: why am I so concerned with my ability, or lack thereof, to develop my child? And why is my ego so huge that I think his development hinges on every single action I do, or do not?