The Not-So-Divine Secrets of -Motherhood-

Where's Jenn?

If you have been wondering where I have been, well, so have I. I mean, every day is like a blur. Hayley is sleeping so-so. Some nights she goes down without a fight and others it is an hour long affair. She is up with the roosters every morning (even though we don't live near any). What happened to the child that slept from 7:30 every night until 6:00 am every morning? Now she wakes around 5:15 every morning and I think I am going to die. On a side note- I can't remember if I posted or not but we had our twenty week ultrasound and all is good. We didn't find out what we are having but Hayley can say "sister" pretty well. Now there's a real scientific method for you.

Work is going great. Still working lots but we have hired more people and they are through the learning curve so that's good. I'm dying in the desert heat. I don't remember it being this hot last pregnancy but I know the summer won't last forever even if it feels like it.

Last but not least- I am counting my blessings as my heart is breaking for one of my employees. She had a miscarriage at about seven weeks pregnant- just two days ago. All of my experience with unexplained infertility and my friends on Babycenter that experienced losses did nothing to prepare me to help her. Because here I stand, 22 weeks pregnant. She will have to come back to work and I can't even hide it. I feel self conscious- I don't want to say anything that would magnify her loss and yet even saying nothing isn't going to hide the fact that I am still pregnant and she is not. I am reminded just how tenuous a healthy pregnancy can be. Beth at www.ishouldbefoldinglaundry.com experienced loss around 20 weeks. She already felt her babies moving, the same as I feel mine. She had names picked out and dreams of their futures. My employee was early in her loss but that doesn't make it any easier. Loss is loss. I am scared that anything could happen. Life and the miracle of pregnancy are not ours to control. I guess in the mean time I am going to celebrate each day and not think of all the terrible things that could happen. My heart goes out to those that don't get that same simple pleasure. I will be back online one of these days to give you the latest adventures of Princess Hayley. Every single day with her is so exciting and fun. I love that she is talking and you can understand her for the most part. I need to post some updated pictures too- my chore list is growing longer as I type. Alas, I can't do much right now though as I am sitting with a head full of goop all in the name of beauty- waiting for my color to set and my stylist to come back and wash, cut, and wax me back to beautiful again. More another day.

I spoke too soon...

Apparently I spoke too soon. After enjoying five nights of our beautiful normal routine of Hayley going right to sleep she has decided to revert to hellion Hayley. Tonight it has been an hour and a half and she still is not asleep. My husband has been up there for the last forty minutes because I have told him I am not doing it.

I'm going to post this real quick and then Big Bad Mommy is going in to put an end to playtime. I'm sorry but at nine pm I draw the line. Especially since she is just going to be up at 5:30 tomorrow morning anyway.

The Ferber Method

If you would like to know how things have been around here for the last four or five nights, well, they have been amazing. Beautiful. Life is back to normal. So let me tell you though, Sunday night was ROUGH. Since she didn't nap on Sunday we made sure that she got good and tired. We played in the pool for two hours solid, came in the house, ran around, and generally kept her moving.

Bedtime was a breeze. She fell asleep halfway through the first sleepy cd song and I was in heaven. Of course, I couldn't go to bed right away because I had a million chores to do. I went to bed around ten pm. Bad call on my part. She was awake at 11:43. I thought, she must be teething, I will grab her a dose of Tylenol, rock for a bit, and we will all go back to sleep.

Yeah right. She got the Tylenol. And the rocking. She fell back asleep. I laid her in the crib and Hayley's evil twin sister came awake. Screaming, crying, so I grabbed her back out of the crib. I figured I was already awake, give it one more shot at rocking. This time I waited until her little body was totally lifeless before I laid her back down. She woke again. This happened three or four times, until I looked at the clock and realized it was already 1am.

Beaten I crawled back to my room and tagged my husband for a turn. I think he lasted about fifteen minutes. Collectively we decided to give the Ferber method a try. We decided that going in every five or seven minutes was for younger babies. We opted to wait fifteen minutes in between each comforting. We went in three times. Forty five minutes later she was still screaming bloody murder and I decided we weren't going back at all.

The crying didn't stop altogether but it did come with longer and longer bouts of silence in between so I figured she was falling asleep. My husband seized the ten minutes of quiet and actually fell back asleep. At 2:15 I heard through the monitor "Mommy, I poop". She's a smart one she is. She knows I'm not going to leave her in a poopie diaper. I went into her room, gave her a sniffer check and determined she hadn't pooped. I put her back in the crib and the fit became so intense I couldn't help it. I grabbed her back out of the crib, changed her diaper, told her sternly there was no poop and that was the last time I was coming in. I laid her back in the crib and this time although she was awake she didn't make a peep. Maybe she knew that Mommy was totally unglued and she better just concede the battle. I went back to bed, and apparently, so did she.

My husband and I woke on Monday morning looking and feeling like we had been hit by a truck. We decided that we would take turns sleeping one night out in the casita each so we could still function. If she wasn't going to sleep it didn't make sense that we all suffer.

Monday night I came home prepared to battle. We did our normal bedtime routine but I must have told her a million times during the routine what was coming next. "We are going to read one book. Then we are going to rock to one song. Then we are going to give BIG HUGS. Then you are going to lay in your bed" I repeated myself over and over again.

We read one book and she wanted another. I stopped at one. We rocked for one song and she fussed when I went to give her a hug. I stopped after rocking one song. We gave big monkey hugs for bed, I laid her in the crib, and walked out. I didn't hear a peep. Downstairs my husband asked if she fell asleep that easy, and I knew she was still awake so I didn't want to say one way or the other. Turns out, she did fall asleep all on her own.

The next night, the same. Last night, the same. Tonight, so far, the same. Now, I am not going to give the Ferber Method one hundred percent credit. I had a child that was a perfect sleeper before. But I will say, for parents at the end of their rope, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. If you remember any of my old posts you will remember that I am not Babywise. I couldn't stand to let my baby girl cry herself to sleep. There is a difference between letting a three month old cry themselves to sleep and letting a nineteen month old have a tantrum.

However I will note that I have received lots of good advice. I think we are going to try the toddler bed sooner rather than later as Yvonne did. I'm glad to hear I wasn't the only one with a two hour battle- and Julianne was right- the next battle was definitely easier. And as far as naps go- Lisse is right- I think maybe it is time to let her have quiet time instead of insisting that she sleep during it. Once or twice she has spent the best part of an hour amusing herself quietly in her crib so I would think that would work. Dianne is probably right too- if I am forcing her to sleep during the day likely I am also disrupting her need for sleep at night. Robin- don't you wish this on me all over again- I am dreaming that my next child is going to be picture perfect when it comes to sleeping and tantrums! So all of those things are most definitely things we are going to consider. And  I will let you know  just how it all turns out.

As for me right now, I'm going to watch tv in bed. I have this crazy addiction to watching "Jon & Kate Plus Eight" lately. Real quick I will tell you why- I have only one kid, they have eight. My life is nowhere near as crazy as theirs and yet I can still identify. The very first episode I ever watched I heard Kate tell one of the kids "Mommy is done". I say the exact same thing when I am completely unraveled! And one episode Kate left Jon at home to watch all eight children by himself while she was out interviewing nannies. He had all of them running wild while he was working on programming his new phone. Totally reminds me of my husband sitting in the recliner with his laptop. Hayley is off doing her own thing and he just chimes in "mmhmm" every now and then. So if anything the show actually makes me feel like we aren't the only parents out there that aren't perfect. I can't compare myself to them with their eight children- oh my- but at least I know that other parents have short fuses sometimes and sometimes don't have a one hundred percent attention span either.

What's the deal?

I, for one, would like to know why my toddler who used to be the perfect sleeper has turned into holy terror whenever it comes time for a nap or bed. Seriously. It used to be that we would turn on the "sleepy" cd, rock together in the chair for the first song (usually about six minutes) and then we would give two hugs and it was nite-nite. (whether she was asleep or not). She would lay down, sometimes watch the fish show that we have still attached to her crib and she would go to sleep. All by herself.

The last two weeks have been, well, hell. To put it mildly. Naps? Fugheddaboutit. Bedtime?Not without a glorious fight. I can't stands no more. Now when we rock for one song we wind up rocking to another,and then another. Sometimes she falls asleep, only to wake with a scream and her back arched the second you attempt to lay her in her bed. Some nights the bedtime fight drags on for the better part of two hours. And she stands in her bed crying "Mommiieee, mommmmieeeeeee". What's a mommy to do?

I mean, I have read about the Ferber method. Go back in at preset intervals, slowly spacing them apart and eventually she will learn to go to sleep on her own. I have also read the success stories (puhleeze people). It's like the people that lose weight dramatically- like forty pounds in a month and you see in the fine print "results not typical". So what I'm saying is, I am at the end of my rope.

Today I was literally crying after battling her for two hours to take a nap. TWO HOURS. And she won. It makes me angry to be the disciplinarian. My husband says to me "well, if she doesn't want to sleep then what are you going to do?". I'll tell you what I am going to do, I am going to parent her. I believe there is a time and a place for a child to be allowed to be a child, but at nineteen months old if I start letting her make all the rules we are really going to be in for it. Of course she doesn't want to nap, she's nineteen months old.

It isn't just the napping thing either. She goes to bed an hour to an hour and a half later every night and wakes on average an hour earlier every morning. She has reduced her night time schedule from a solid eleven hours to maybe nine and a half. Plus trying to skip naps?Mommy don't play that.

If I sound frustrated, well, I am. Not to be a crazy pregnant lady or anything but this just isn't working for me. And of course, my husband really loves to push my buttons. He keeps saying "And YOU wanted another one". I keep telling myself it is a stage, she will grow out of it. But in the mean time I am literally sleep deprived and my fuse is growing shorter by the day. I am hoping that she grows out of it very soon.

GRRRR. The computer ate my blog.

I just spent twenty minutes blogging a wonderful tale about the teething monster, my knight in shining armor coming to my rescue, and how the fairy tale will hopefully end with everyone getting a good night of sleep and wouldn't you know that the stupid computer navigated away from the post before it was saved. To be fair, it did ask me if I knew what I was doing, but I wasn't paying attention, got in a hurry, and clicked yes before thoroughly reading the stupid thing.

Arrggghh. Now I don't have the luxury or the brain cells of another twenty minutes to remember what I posted the first time and it likely wouldn't be as witty the second time anyway. So I will just leave you with this. Three nights of three hour sleep "intermissions" each night are killing me.

The thought of dying

If this sounds morbid, well, it is. But now that we have one child with another on the way we realized we needed to be responsible and get our affairs in order. Affairs. Like we are somebody special. I would say "estate" but we don't really have one of those either and it sounds just as snooty.

So anyway, we ran through the long list of our family members that we know and love to try and determine who we know and love enough to entrust the care of our children should we both be gone. Have you ever done this? I mean, really, really done it? As in committed it to a black and white will at the age of 32 or younger? Because it is enough to crush your heart.

It sounds simple, in theory. You choose someone that you know would take care of your child and then you tell your lawyer and they draw up papers. Except when you start thinking about what your child's life will be like after you are gone. Will the new caretaker know that your child loves to give not one but two hugs every night before bed? Will they know that your child gets rocked every single night for the first song on their sleepytime cd? Will they do those things even if they do know them? Your child will never be able to call out "Mommy" and have you answer, will they someday call their new caretake mommy in your place?

I am heartbroken. I am sitting here, crying all over again, because I pray that NEVER EVER happens. I want my children to grow up as I did, loving their parents, hating them at times, but always knowing them. And the thought that we could both be gone at the same time, well, I can't even imagine it. Because of how deep this has cut my heart I have realized how very short my time with my child (soon to be children) really is. It hits me almost every single day since we started talking about this in earnest. Not one day has gone by where I haven't thought about how terrible it would be for our children if both their mother and father were gone.

So in the mean time I am going to live every single day without regret. I am going to try my hardest to be more patient, more kind, more understanding, more gentle, and just overall more involved in my child's life. Heaven forbid if there ever is a day where I am gone from her life I want her to know exactly how much I treasured every single moment.