Perspective

I complain a lot about Bubba's sleep, especially how he has to be held to get to sleep and to stay that way for long (though we are making some progress lately). The other day we were out with some other moms and babies. After a while Bubba went to sleep in my arms. One mom looked wistfully and said she wished she could hold her baby like that. Turns out her daughter pushes her away when she is tired, and only can go to sleep in her crib.

They left me on a park bench and continued their walk without me because I wanted him to have his nap. At first I was annoyed because I didn't have a book along, and didn't dare set him down in the grass so I could knit. I really wanted to escape in a story or make some progress on my project. Instead I just held my son and enjoyed the closeness, reflecting on how lucky I am that I do have a cuddly baby. And then I tried to lay him down on the bench and he woke up.

A couple months ago I was lamenting the every two hour night feedings, and a mom said "at least his a good nurser." I can really relate to that because we had such a rough start in the hospital.

Okay, I'm out of steam and can't sum this up well, but really want to get a post up. I think you get the drift. For every thing I complain about there's someone saying "I wish I had her problem."

Blog Housekeeping

I originally had this blog under a different profile. I decided that I didn't want this one linked to my other blog, so I decided to create a new profile. Well, you can't really move a blog, so I had to cut and paste all the posts prior to this one, which was fine. The comments presented a problem, though. I read a bunch of help articles, but couldn't figure the "right" way to do it. So, you will see that I copied the old comments into one new comment per post. I know this isn't the best way, and I hope previous commentors understand that I'm not attributing anything to them they didn't say.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?

Speaking of phases, we're in one now where Bubba will NOT be set down to nap in the mornings or to sleep at night before my husband and I go to bed. So I haven't had time to write posts, or do a lot of other things. I'm trying to look on the bright side - I'm doing some reading while I hold him for the morning nap. Shower doesn't happen, bills don't get paid, but I haven't had time to read in so long, it's nice. I try to time some afternoon naps for while we are out driving, the truck is one place he will sleep on his own, without a fight. I've been able to park and do some knitting.

But the evenings! We had a good run with a couple precious hours when my husband and I got to talk or just watch t.v. together before bed. Now they feature one of us holding the baby. He can't be left on our bed anymore, he is too active, even with barricades on both sides, he could go off the end, or wake up and crawl off the sides. Mattress on the floor is not an option due to downstairs neighbors. We tried and tried putting him in a nest on the floor of his room but he just won't stay asleep. And forget the crib, he has to be coaxed to stay asleep with a body next to him. He was waking up so much we decided to give it a rest for a couple weeks. I successfully set him down for a nap today, though, hooray.

But today was bad, really bad, Bubba was just so frustrated all day. And that nap? I worked and worked for it. It seems like this pattern keeps happening to me: I will be thinking "wow, I haven't broken down crying in a couple weeks" or "maybe I am ready to get pregnant again", and feel like I'm getting the hang of this. This time I have been actually feeling happy for a couple days; and the other day we went swimming without an enormous temper tantrum afterwards; and Bubba actually fell asleep next to me two nights in a row (he generally must be held to go to sleep, with kicking and fighting, except in the truck). Other than dealing with not being able to leave him on our bed, things were looking up.

And then WHAMMO! We'll have a day like today, featuring me crying about what a crappy mother I am because he just cranked and cranked on me all day, and I couldn't take it. I'm trying to figure out if I'm somehow making the bad days happen because part of me is too scared to have another baby, or if I just can't let myself be happy. Or maybe when I notice I that I've had some good "ups" I just need to realize there are going to be some "downs".