Sleep? Who Needs It?... And What Day is it Again??

Pregnancy is not kind on the sleep cycle. Neither is a two year old child. So the combination of being pregnant and having a toddler has translated into my averaging about 4.5 hours of sleep a night, as of late.  I’ve heard lots of conventional wisdom about establishing an evening routine as a family, so that everyone can get some much needed rest.

HA!!

We have tried, I swear.

For your amusement, here’s a glimpse at our evening rituals and sleep schedule (if you can even call it that):

6:30 pm – feed “la familia.” C and I have tried to make a habit of eating dinner as a family, at the dining room table. Up until recently, we were all eating dinner around our little family room coffee table (a ritual that bled over from our pre-parenthood days), which meant that Em would be up and down, up and down, climbing on the table, and trying to play “catch” with us using various toy-like objects while we ate. C and I would be stuffing bites of food in our mouths while simultaneously feeding Emmy AND entertaining her with hand puppet shows, sticker projects, and circle games. Needless to say, it wasn’t very pleasant.

Not that what we have going nowadays is any better. While dinnertime starts out LOOKING like it may actually be a civilized meal, it quickly (and I mean within seconds) descends into chaos, with Emmy reaching her little legs out from under her high chair, kicking our dining room table, screaming “I ALL DONE! I wanna go POTTY! I wanna BIG GIRL BATH! I wanna ALL DONE! I wanna DUCKIES!”

Peaceful, it is not.

7:00 pm – Potty time! Yes, we know that Emmy is using the potty as an excuse to get down from her highchair (conniving little bugger), but we cannot run the risk (and subsequent guilt complex) of her pooping in her diaper at the dinner table when the potty is located just a few steps away. So we take her to the potty, read her twelve books, and sing “where is thumbkin?” ninety seven times while she poops.

7:15 pm - Give Em a “big girl bath”. I have heard from multiple sources that a bath is one way of establishing a night time routine for a baby/toddler. Em LOVES her bath. I kind of love the bath too, because it keeps our daughter in a relatively confined space for as long as it takes her fingers to turn into little raisins. C and I switch off on who is on bath patrol, while the other one washes the dinner dishes and sneaks shots of hard alcohol (kidding, folks. I’ve had like one beer in the past 7 months. I have, however, often DAYDREAMED about sneaking shots of hard alcohol while doing the dishes).

7:30 pm – Get Em into her pajamas, convincing her that she looks like a princess despite the fact that she is wearing flannel bottoms that are more suitable for an 83 year old man.

7:40 pm – Tell Emmy it is too late to go on her bouncy bounce (trampoline) outside. Tell Emmy it is too late to take out the blocks and build towers. Tell Emmy it is too late to eat a cupcake. Tell Emmy it is too late to start rearranging all of the furniture in our house (all this is done while trying to convince Emmy to eat the dinner she deserted earlier in the evening).

7:50 pm – Watch Emmy’s favorite Youtube music videos. Yes. Our daughter loves Youtube. Try not to judge. She is an avid fan of Mr. Mike, who sings “the itsy bitsy spider” and “baby bumblebee” and THIS video which seems to feature Hitler as a finger puppet (no, I did NOT search for “Hitler finger puppet” in order to find this gem). I spend most of my this time trying to figure out if Mr. Mike is Italian or Jewish.

8:10 pm – Brush Emmy’s teeth (thank god, this is the one simple night ritual we have actually established. Emmy seems to not mind having her teeth brushed, and sometimes actually seems to enjoy it).

8:15 pm – I get Emmy into bed, and sing her three lullabyes while she tries to sneak her hand down my shirt to grab my booby (yes, still, after almost two years, my boobies are a great source of comfort to Emmy… and I am still trying to wean her from her boob-grabbing ways).

8:45 pm – Wonder if my daughter will EVER go to sleep. She has spent the last half hour tossing and turning, talking to her Mickey Mouse dolls, and asking for 18 sips of water. Put my head down on her bed, close my eyes, and doze off for thirteen minutes…

8:58 pm – Wake up to the baby (inside) kicking me in the ribs. Realize Emmy is asleep, and try to sneak out of the room as quietly as possible.  Find husband asleep on the couch (or alternatively, playing a video game in which he is supposed to create beautiful pieces of pottery. I’m not even kidding).

9:00 pm – With thirteen minutes of sleep under my belt, I don’t feel sleepy anymore. Also, with the  baby inside me having decided that NOW is the right time to practice his routine for So You Think You Can Dance, the prospect of peaceful sleep seems highly unlikely. So I live vicariously through my unpregnant friends on Facebook, and through the crazy ladies on Real Housewives of New York City.

11:00 pm – Baby finally calms down. Restless leg syndrome begins.

11:45 pm – After shaking my legs for 45 minutes, and getting up to pee three times, I am finally able to fall asleep. 

1:30 am – Emmy wakes up and cries for mama. I wake up and stumble over to her bed, put her back to sleep. Then I fall asleep on the floor next to her bed, with my head on her mattress.

2:00 am – Emmy wakes up and cries for mama. I take her into bed with me, and we both sleep very soundly for 2.75 hours. Woo hoo!

4:50 am – Emmy wakes up and asks immediately for her Mickey Mouse dolls. I get her Mickey Mouse dolls. Emmy asks for water. I get her water. Emmy asks for a muffin.  I tell her it is still nighttime, and too early for a muffin. Emmy cries. I FEEL like crying, but concentrate on getting her to lie down next to me for at least 30 more minutes. Tactics of coercion include: snuggling, singing, and putting Blues Clues on the t.v.

5:45 am – Emmy’s desire for a muffin turns into desperation. There is no denying her a muffin. “Give me muffin or give me death!” she cries. She MUST have a muffin. And the day must begin.

So all this, my dear friends,  is just a way of explaining why, when you see me in public, and I don’t seem to know my name, and I have a toothbrush sticking out of my hair, and I can’t seem to find my car even though it is right in front of my face, there is a reason.

Embracing the Tiger

I’ve got to be honest. I’ve been rather lackadaisical about this second pregnancy. I mean, getting preggers again after only 18 months since Em’s birth has made me feel pretty “been there, done that” about this whole thing. I’ve actually felt quite guilty about my lack of nervousness and anticipation.

But now, with a little over 10 weeks to go, that famous nesting instinct is starting to kick in pretty seriously. I spend a lot of time trying to think of ways we can make our home more comfortable, more safe, more baby-friendly. I make lots of lists: lists of what we should pack in our hospital bag, lists of positions I should get into when laboring, lists of important phone numbers, lists of music I might want to listen to in the hospital (Mumford & Sons, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Eddie Vedder, Regina Spektor…), lists of important things to remember when caring for a newborn… lots of lists, to help me feel like I’m a prepared mama. And with every list I make, I get more and more excited about the little monkey’s arrival.

Well, excited AND nervous.

Quite nervous, to be honest.

If all goes well, this pregnancy will end in one of two ways: I will give birth to this baby naturally, or the baby will be delivered via c-section (my second). I’m kind of nervous about both options.

I never got to experience natural birth with Em. I never felt a single (uninduced) contraction. My water was manually broken by my midwife. I never got to see what my body was capable of in terms of birthing unassisted. So I don’t know what labor REALLY feels like. I keep giving myself pep talks, telling myself that my body is more than capable of labor, that I am strong, that women worldwide have been doing this for eons and eons. That if it is meant to be, my body is meant to deliver this baby. I think of other women who have labored naturally, and say to myself, “if they can do it, SURELY I can do it.”

If my body does not go into labor naturally, or the uterus issue which may have prevented Em from being born naturally pops up again, I will be undergoing a second c-section. I wasn’t a big fan of my first c-section. I found being numbed from neck to toe disconcerting, to put it mildly. I found not being able to feel myself breathing, due to the spinal anesthetic, more than disconcerting – it made me feel panicky and helpless. So when I think about going through the same procedure again, I give myself more pep talks. I tell myself I already know what to anticipate, which should make me less fearful. I tell myself that when I go through the same procedures and yucky feelings, I can concentrate on the positive, and focus on the fact that I will be holding my baby within minutes of his delivery.

Sometimes the pep talks work, and sometimes they don’t.

So, inspired by my nervousness about both impending scenarios, I have decided to work on a project. I am going to create an image of a tiger that I will take with me to the hospital.

Why, you ask? (or maybe you don't, but I'm gonna tell you anyway)

Back when I lived in L.A., I attended a seminar on Joseph Campbell and his writings on the mythic hero. The instructor of the seminar was wonderful, and compared mythic stories from multiple cultures, as a means of showing the commonalities between each culture’s concept of “hero”.

This was of course years and years ago, so I remember very little about the specific stories, but I DO remember one story (I think from Chinese culture) about a hero who was very afraid of a tiger chasing him, until he was instructed by his mentor to turn around and embrace the tiger he so feared. When the hero finally mustered up the courage and turned around to embrace the tiger, the tiger disappeared.

I’ve had this little story stuck in my head for years now.

It’s a story that informs my parenting. When Em is scared of the dark, or a buggy, or something else unfamiliar, I try to show her how not to turn away from the thing that is scaring her, but to face it head on, and discover that it is not actually so scary after all.

And now I have the opportunity to embrace my own tiger. I have the opportunity to not only face, but embrace my own fears, and recognize that they are a product of my own mind.

So I am going to make myself a little image of a tiger, to take with me to the hospital. When I feel myself getting nervous, I will use the image of a tiger as a focal point, as a reminder that I should run toward my fears, and not away from them. Hopefully this will help my fears disappear.

The Moon and the Stars

As I have mentioned before, one of the best things about parenting is that it gives me the opportunity to re-discover the wonder of the world through my child’s eyes. Things that I have taken for granted for years upon years now suddenly have become fascinating again, as my daughter realizes and discovers them for the first time.

For the past three nights, pre-bedtime, Emmy has asked us if she can go outside to see the moon and the stars. She has become super excited about walking around in the dark,  searching the sky for that glowing orb of light. So after bath time, with her hair towel-dried and dressed in her footed pajamas, C and I take Emmy out into our yard, and we stand together and gaze at the night sky.  Em asks for big family hugs, and we huddle together and move in teeny steps, as a unit, admiring all the twinkling above us.  

Of course, mother nature hasn’t totally cooperated – it seems the moon is currently nearing its new moon phase, and therefore (as we discovered by googling moon phases) we cannot see the moon in our night sky. But despite the moonlessness, the moments have still been unbelievable – breathing in the fresh air of the evening, listening to the crickets sing their songs, feeling the wet grass between our toes…

Last night the stars were quite bright and brilliant, and after Em was asleep in her bed, C and I went outside again to try and find the constellations that are familiar to us (C is SO much more knowledgeable than I am in this area). I was particularly interested and excited to find a certain constellation, and to hear from my husband that this constellation will be hanging directly over our roof come wintertime. It seemed like the world was giving us a gift.

Back inside, I told C how much I loved this little nightly ritual we have. C said he couldn’t believe how long it has been since he’s taken time to really look at the stars.

I remember the last time he and I stargazed together… shortly after we’d started dating, we walked to a local park, and sat together in a field of tall grass, in our hooded sweatshirts, looking at the late October night’s sky. I remember how thrilling it was to feel so in love, and loved, and how that made the world’s brilliance even more magical.

Similarly, these past three nights, it’s been breathtaking, to be in my husband’s arms, with our little girl between us, and our son in my body, re-noticing the magic of life.