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March 10, 2004
*I wrote this one up quick - in one day (a first for me I believe) and didn't proof read a million times, so if there are even more errors than usual, please forgive me!
First off – a huge congratulations to my good friends, Amy F and Jen H on the birth of their handsome baby boys. Like just about everyone on this site, I am praying that baby Peter is home with Amy and Dan very, very soon.
Thank you for all the incredible comments on my last entry. I really poured my heart into it, and I appreciate the kind things that everyone said. I’m fascinated by your stories of your experiences with pregnancy and birth – and seriously can’t get enough of them. Every time I talk to a woman and get a glimpse into her birth, I learn something that makes me a better doula, so keep those thoughts, stories and different perspectives on birth coming! I’d also love to hear from more people about passion, and finding your calling. I set up a poll the week after I posted my entry, please vote, and tell me where you are on this journey toward fulfillment, and where you want to end up.
Bella is sleeping right now, so I’m taking advantage of the unexpected free time to get started on this entry. I suppose after writing pages and pages all about me, it is only fair that I write just a little about her, before I switch back to self-involvement further down the screen.
We hosted Sam’s parents last week, and Bella really thrived having her grandparents around. Every time we see family I get a resurgence of guilt that we’ve chosen to raise her so far from all our loved ones – it seems we are doing everyone a disservice by residing thousands of miles away, so that they only see her once or twice a year. She loves her Grandmaman and Pépère, and they had a marvelous time together (with just a slight amount of spoiling thrown in for good measure). We traveled to the Grand Canyon while they were here (four years in Arizona, and this is our first trip – pathetic). It was Bella’s first real experience with snow. Mother Nature cooperated and gave us an overnight flurries, just enough to cover the ground in fresh, white, sticky snow. She had a grand time making snowballs and a small Bella-sized snowman. I took tons of pictures of her gleefully playing, only to discover when we got home that the film must have fallen out of the camera case at some point and is nowhere to be found. I am fairly obsessive about photographic documentation, so I was crushed to loose those photos.
Sam and I have been enjoying a new side of Bella lately, she has become incredibly affectionate, spontaneously gifting us with hugs and kisses and “I love you SOOOO MUCH Mommy!” on numerous, random occasions throughout the day. She loves “Family Hugs and Kisses” where we pick her up between us, wrap our arms around each other and all join our lips in a big smooch. She’s also become quite a little cheerleader, encouraging us through the day and being sure to tell us what a great job we are doing. Several weeks back I was stenciling her room, and through the entire project she stayed right by me saying things like, “Mommy that is beautiful work. Good job, Mommy!”
At the same time, she’s really got an attitude creeping out here and there that makes me very nervous about the future. Last week she dumped out her box of barrettes and ponytail holders all over the floor. I asked her to pick them up and she looked up at me, flicked her hand in dismissal and said in a voice absolutely dripping with ennui, “Not my job, Mom” and turned her attention to more important things. Where on earth did she hear that one? Just last weekend I took her shopping with me at Goodwill. She knows that she is allowed to walk around, as long as she stays where she can see me. I had asked her to follow me at one point, but she was so involved with what she was looking at that she ignored my request. I turned around and told I couldn’t see her and she needed to catch up. Suddenly I hear a huge disgusted sigh, and “I’m right HERE, Mom.” and look up to see her shaking her head at my impatience. I have a feeling she’s going to be a fairly impossible adolescent.
We’re experiencing a real whining problem again – and it is solely because I’ve been distracted and busy, not at all consistent in my response to her behaviour. I really abhor whining (even though I do more than my share) and so I know I need to focus and re-connect with her regarding our expectations. Having a firm commitment to Gentle Discipline means that figuring out the best way to handle behaviour issues usually takes a bit of thought. We don’t use punitive means to modify her actions, so there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach in our bag of tricks. I’ve been rather disappointed with myself lately for falling into a habit of bribes, threats and angry responses – being reactive instead of proactive. When I connect with her and try to understand the motivation for her behaviour, and then think of a positive means of changing it – I am usually far more successful. If there are any other Gentle Discipline/Conscious Parenting mothers reading, I’d love to start a dialogue on my board to share our ideas and techniques.
Okay, back to meJ
I’ve been doing a great deal of thinking lately about having another child, or rather, about my reluctance to have another child. I know we’d like to have more children, although we are not sure how many. However, I am starting to get slightly concerned that if I wait till I feel totally ready, Bella may be in Junior High before I feel ready to give it a go.
Our original plan was to begin TTC in September of last year, when Bella turned two. Neither of us felt anywhere close to ready at that point, so we decided that we would start trying in March (yea, this month). Time flew, as it is prone to do, and as March was approaching we once again reevaluated things, and pushed things back once more, with a wishy-washy date of sometime between fall of 2004 and winter of 2005.
The problem is, when I think about next fall/winter (which is really not at all far away), I really think I am going to feel the same trepidation/anxiousness about the prospect of becoming a mother for the second time. I have a slight bit of nervousness about becoming/staying pregnant, since I’ll know going into things next time the potential risks I am dealing with as a result of my freaky uterus, where I was blissfully ignorant last time. I’m not nervous at all about the rest of the pregnancy and the birth itself – it is the motherhood part that FREAKS ME OUT.
For those of you who read my diary way back when, you know that Bella’s infancy was not the easiest period for me. I don’t believe I really even truthfully wrote about what a rough time I had adjusting to the demands of a newborn. I found it really difficult, draining and all encompassing. That is not to say I hated every moment, or that it was not rewarding at all – that wouldn’t be true. I suppose I just feel reluctant to willingly enter into that crazy, unpredictable world again. There are tough parts about parenting a toddler, but for the most part I find it much more fulfilling, predictable, interesting and well, sensible, than mothering an infant. When there is a problem, I can usually figure out what it is and oftentimes (wonder of wonders) I can even fix it. With a baby, I just remember feeling as if I didn’t have any of the answers, and that most of the time; I didn’t even know what questions to ask.
All the women around me seem to go ga-ga for babies, and it took me well past Bella’s second birthday to even feel like holding one again. I had a short period this winter, after holding all of my doula client’s brand new infants, where I started to feel that urge again. However, with brilliant timing, I took care of a friend’s seven month old, exclusively breastfed, co-sleeping son for 24 hours, and that effectively killed any desire I had to get pregnant anytime soon.
Most of my friends have spaced their children three years apart or less (many have children less than two years apart) and I get a lot of grief about waiting too long. “You don’t want them to be too far apart”, I’ve been told a million times over. Too far apart for what, exactly, I wonder? My brother and I are 22 months apart, and it is no exaggeration to say that we hated each other for about 18 years. My sister and I are separated by five years, and we’ve always been relatively peaceful, and have grown into a deep and abiding friendship. The fearful and nervous part of me thinks that the older Bella is when baby number two arrives, the more sane I might be…but I could be totally off base. Will my children lose out if there is a larger age gap?
I know that a lot of this is irrational, and that I need to process it so that we can move forward. I want to go into my next pregnancy feeling the same eagerness and anticipation as I did when we were trying the first time. I’m really eager to hear from those of you out there who have more than one child about how you felt when contemplating your second pregnancy. How far apart did you space your children, was it a conscious decision or just the way things worked out? I’d also love to hear from other moms like me, who have only one child, to hear how you feel about having another.
Body Image and Weight Woes:
I’ve been really down lately about my physical condition. My diet is horrid, exercise has not been a part of my life and I’m a textbook emotional eater. I’ve gained and lost (and gained) the same 10-12 lbs two or three times since Bella was born, and I’ve recently officially topped by highest non-pregnant weight. It’s completely my fault, but I seem lacking the motivation and willpower to do anything about it. I hit a real low two nights ago, when I took out my pregnancy journal (remind me to never, ever do that again) and realized that I weigh right now the same as I did three days post-partum, and exactly what I weighed at 24 weeks of pregnancy. YIKES.
I am aware, objectively, that I am not overweight by most people standards, but weight (and self image) are very relative – and when you’ve got as many issues as I do, it can be tough to convince your warped mind to see anything different than it wants to see. I’ve struggled my entire life with poor self-esteem and very bad body image. My issues have their own issues.
I was a very thin child, and danced fairly seriously when I was younger. I grew up surrounded by mirrors, in a world where bodies are judged, and judged harshly. In a way, I’ve never stopped looking in those mirrors, and finding fault with what I see reflected back.
I know that today, it is not really rare to hear of young girls on diets, but back when I was a kid, most children were sheltered from that until adolescence at least. In the world of dance, however, I was surrounded by kids with anorexia and bulimia, and my body was the one that people wanted. I was tall, for a dancer, and very skinny – without breasts or hips. On the other hand, in “real life”, I was a toothpick, a beanpole, and subject to ridicule because of it. Kids are the cruelest creatures on earth, no doubt about it. There was a period in Jr. High where my classmates would have myself and another girl stand together, and argue about which one of us was skinner, all the while making cruel jokes and taunts about our bodies. I lived in this bizarre dichotomy; in one part of my life I was the one with the sought after physique, the one that other girls risked their health to attain. In the other, I was different and didn’t fit in. I wanted nothing more than to have hips and boobs and dimples like the “popular” girls. Talk about a recipe for issues.
Fast forward another few years. I was a late bloomer, and after a rather awkward and unattractive early adolescence, suddenly began receiving attention for how I looked (or rather, how my body looked). Overnight I grew D-cup breasts, and realized that my body was bringing me a new kind of attention from the opposite sex. Combine a low self-esteem with a curvaceous body and attention from all the wrong guys, and you’ve got a formula for disaster. For the next four or five years (right up till I met Sam), with the exception of one serious relationship and a handful of mini-connections – I thought that my body was all I really had, and so I used it, and hated myself for doing it. I could keep going here, but honestly – you don’t need to know all the ugly stuff, so I’ll leave it at that.
The year of my wedding I became ill. I lost quite a bit of weight and had to stop working. I lost over 25 lbs and was told by everyone who knew me that I was too thin, that I looked sick, that I needed to gain weight. At the height of it all, when my clothes were falling off and I hadn’t kept a meal down in days, I could STILL look in the mirror and see disgusting lumps and bumps and thinks that needed to change. I am fully aware that that is warped. I know it – but I can’t stop it, or at least, I’ve never figured out how. The only thing, I think, that has saved me from a life of eating disorders is my love of food. I get too much pleasure from eating, end of story. I am, at least, thankful for that.
The only time in my life where I was freed from this insanity was during my pregnancy. It was liberating, so incredibly liberating, to look in the mirror and like what I saw. I cried tears of joy the first time I realized it. It was a profound time for me – and one I will always cherish. I hope to recapture that feeling again when I have another child – unless, God willing, I manage to rid myself of these demons before then.
So – that is the past – this is the present. How about the future? Putting all the mental crap aside (and yes, I know I’ve got to work on that), and dealing with the physical. I do NEED to exercise and to eat right, not just for my own health – but because my daughter is learning about life by watching how I live (lets not even get into the challenge of raising my daughter to love who she is when I’ve never been able to do it). I actually went out last night and joined Bally’s with a friend. I am hoping that having someone else involved with up my motivation and make me more likely to follow through (because I have poured many hundreds of dollars in the past into a black hole of unused gym memberships). Eating healthy is even harder for me, because I do have an emotional attachment to all sorts of bad foods, and I’m not all that comfortable with cooking. We are starting to learn about organic foods, and are trying to buy very little processed foods (first eliminating anything with high fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated oils, and moving on from there).
I really, really, really want to hear from you. Are there others out there who have struggled with body image/self esteem issues? Anyone who has conquered those issues? How do you stay motivated to exercise? How do you fit in physical activity with work and motherhood? What steps to you take to eat healthy? Can you share any recipes that are quick, easy and healthy? Please, talk to me about this, I need all the help and support I can get!
Lets Talk About…..
-So, have you found your passion – tell me about it?
-Do you live far away from family? What sort of things do you do to help your children develop a close bond to relatives they only see once or twice a year?
-Share your healthy living tips! Please!
-Positive Discipline – what works for you?
-Having a second child – how did you know the time was right?
Poll of the week:
What do you think is the ideal age gap between siblings? Post and tell me why.
- I love Irish Twins – less that a year between births works for me.
- Lets get the baby years out of the way as quick as possible – having children one to two years apart is best.
- I need a bit of a break – two to three years between children is ideal for me.
- I don’t want two in diapers at once – three years or more between kids is the way to go.
- Babies are TOUGH – I think I’ll need at least five years to recover and get ready to do it again.
"It may be worth considering that ultimate satisfaction with the experience of giving birth may not be related to lack of pain."
— Sarah Buckley
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