My Happiest Baby is the One I Have Had the Least to Do With

When Erez was born back in February, I was a little worried. After the relatively relaxed and blissful week long stay in the hospital, we transitioned home, and he almost immediately started exhibiting colicky behaviors. He would cry for hours on end and there was little I could do to console him. I would walk/bounce him around the house, make soft shush-shush noises in his ears, give him gripe water, gas drops, and whatever else I could find that would possibly offer my boy a little solace.

As it turns out, it was a formula issue. I felt guilty enough for not breast-feeding my baby boy, having breastfed my other two kids. Knowing that formula was giving him serious issues and discomfort KILLED me. Figuring out which formula worked for Erez quickly became my number one priority.

And I DID find a formula that worked for him. Once we made the switch, it was only a matter of two or three days before my unhappy newborn transformed into a happy baby. Since then, Erez has become our HAPPIEST baby. His resting face is “smiley face”. He is always giggling and cooing, and on the rare occasion when he DOES cry, it is always for a very valid reason.

I should be thrilled, right? I mean, my baby boy is AMAZING. He is the kind of baby parents dream of having. He is the Gerber baby, only happier. He seriously has a personality that inspires me, and he is only six months old.

So what’s my issue?

My happiest baby is the one I have had the LEAST to do with.

I went back to work exactly 8 weeks after Erez was born. I felt like I had to. I liked my job, and I didn’t want to lose it. I didn’t want to have to go through a whole new job search to find a job I liked LESS.

So, as a full-time working mom, I see Erez briefly in the mornings and in the evenings, and get to spend a good amount of time with him on the weekends. I cuddle with him in my bed at night. But that is it.

With my first born, my eldest, I worked only part time and pretty much attached her to my hip for the first year of her life. I wore her in slings, held her incessantly, breastfed her on demand. With my second son, I took a year off from work so I could be with him ALWAYS.

It’s not that they were UNhappy babies. But they were not THIS happy. They were never as happy as Erez is, every single day of his life.

I know that babies are born with their own personalities and all, but this happiness situation has caused me to seriously question how much of an effect my attachment parenting had on my other two kids. Maybe it negatively impacted them? I am a huge advocate for breastfeeding, but did breastfeeding make my other kids LESS happy?

I know Erez loves me. He looks for me in a room, he reaches for my hair or my face, he smiles (of course!) from ear to ear when I pick him up at daycare in the afternoon. But I am not the center of Erez’s universe, the way I was for my other two. His life does not depend on me the way theirs did. I am not his food source, his transportation, and his constant playmate the way I was with the others.

Here’s the thing. Right now, I am at a place where I don’t WANT to be totally depended on. I kind of feel overwhelmed with momhood. I occasionally feel the urge to run away from all the responsibilities that come with being a mom. I have seriously been craving “me” time, and have been wanting to rediscover the part of me that is not a mommy, that has been pushed to the backburner over the last six years. So why, when I am craving more independence, do I still wish I was so much more important to my baby and so much more a factor of his happiness?

Like many people, I like to feel needed. I like to feel valued. I like to feel deeply loved. It makes me feel big and great and purposeful.

I truly hope I can experience those feelings with Erez. I hope I can learn to embrace his happiness, not as a sign of what I may have done wrong with my other kids, but what I have done right with all of them. I hope I can see it not as a result of me having less time to love him, but as a result of him feeling loved despite our limited time together. I hope I can take pride in his happiness, rather than using it to question my own value.

I hope I can feel all those things. I’m just not there yet.

I Discovered a New Source of Energy!

After running around on the trampoline, Emmy becomes a great source of "clean energy"! Now if only we could figure out a way to somehow hook her up to our house's electrical wiring...

Can We AFFORD a Second Child?

As exemplified in previous posts, much of my “down time” is spent thinking about whether my husband and I should try to have a second child. Lately I’ve been wondering if, as parents, we invest all of our financial, physical, and emotional resources into raising Emmy as best as we can as an only child, rather than spreading ourselves thin by giving her a sibling.

It’s a tough call. There are so many “pros” to having a second child. Em would have a playmate for life. She and her sibling would be able to learn, laugh, and grow together. Oh, I know that it wouldn’t be all roses and rainbows, and that as sure as the sun rises in the east, my two children would also bicker, pinch each other, steal each other’s toys and try to get Mama and Dada to take sides. But they would also be able to share secrets, build imaginary worlds together, and turn to one another in moments of distress.

Not to mention how much I would like to just experience pregnancy again. I know it’s crazy, but I really DO MISS the first trimester morning sickness. I miss having to eat crackers all day long. I miss chocolate tasting like tinfoil and having an aversion to broccoli. I miss the magic of watching a little spot inside my body grow slowly into full sized baby with two hands and two feet. I miss the feeling of “wow. I’m actually doing this. I’m actually making a baby.”

But then there are the “cons”, of course. And these days, with the economy being so horrible and showing few signs of improvement, the “cons” seem to sometimes speak louder than the “pros.” I mean, seriously, let’s put aside the conversation about the emotional and physical energy required in raising two children. Can we really AFFORD to have a second child?

As is, having just bought our first home, we’ve got a mortgage to pay off, as well as my student loans, and all the usual bills: gas (ugh - $100 to fill my tank? i need to invest in a great bicycle), food (yikes), utilities (blech). And then there’s Emmy’s daycare. I’ve told my husband that for the money we spend on Emmy’s two days a week of care (ONLY TWO DAYS!!), we could rent Emmy a small apartment, baby-proof it, fill it with toys, and just drop her off there FIVE DAYS A WEEK. C’mon, she’d be fiiine! She’s a resourceful 17 month old!

We’re not struggling, per se, but we’re not exactly enormously comfortable with our money situation these days either. We look around at other families who are in much worse shape than we are, but are still managing to raise more than one kid. My husband and I talk often about how the “squeeze” we are experiencing is only a temporary situation; in four years, Em will be entering Kindergarten (free!), one of my student loans should be paid off (woo hoo!), a miracle may occur and one of us may get a significant raise or promotion (let me dream, please), and we may actually finally be able to afford to go on a really nice family vacation.

That is, unless we have a second child. If we have a second child, we will be spending more money on daycare for at least another five years. If we have a second child, we will have a second mouth to feed, a second child’s medical bills, and a second child to eventually send to college (hopefully). Plans for family vacays to the Galapagos Islands may have to morph into more realistic and affordable family camping trips (don’t get me wrong, I love camping, but its not the same as visiting the Galapagos). Money will be tight not just for a few years, but maybe for our whole lifetime.

I’ve heard other moms say that once you have one child, you might as well have another. It makes no difference. Are they talking about the financial impact of having two children, or just the emotional and physical aspects, I wonder?

I’m not even sure that I will be able to get pregnant again, but on the off-chance my body cooperates and is able to play greenhouse to another little human being, I’ve got a serious question for all the mommies out there with more than one child: Did you experience a huge shift in your family’s financial “comfort” with the birth of your second (or third, or fourth) child? Would you recommend to others that they have a second child, even if it means their family’s budget would be tight?

I look forward to hearing from you!

The Best Kind of Day

I love planning. I really do. Whenever I travel to a new place, I do tons of research about the location I’m going to visit, and plan out an itinerary that ensures I will be experiencing all the “best of” spots the place has to offer. I make lists of the best (affordable) restaurants, the best (fun) museums, and other local off-the-beaten-path wonders that beg to be discovered.

Even when I am not travelling, I still like to plan ahead, and am a card-carrying member of the list-makers club. For instance, on Friday, I made the following list of things I wanted to accomplish this weekend:

·         Laundry

·         Water plants

·         Vacuum

·         Buy ingredients for cupcakes

·         Bake cupcakes

·         Go to Empire State Museum

·         Print photos

·         Send gift to niece and nephew

·         Go through Em’s toys for possible donations

·         Buy Valentines gifts for Em’s teachers

Do I ever actually get everything on my list done? Rarely, if ever.  But writing down all of my silly and serious “to dos” helps keep me somewhat focused and my time somewhat structured. I’m not a type-A personality, by any stretch of the imagination. I’d probably classify myself as a B+ (which, coincidentally, is my blood type).

But… god..  it’s so nice when days like yesterday happen.

My husband works on Saturdays, so Sundays are supposed to be our “Family Day” together. Unfortunately, for the past three months, Sundays have been spent with one us getting over a cold while another one of us comes down with a new virus, and none of us having any energy. Last Sunday, Dada and I were both semi-healthy, but we left Em with Baba and Grampy so we could go join our friends at a Superbowl party.  This Sunday was the first Sunday in a long long time that Emmy, Dada and I were all together, AND healthy AND energetic, and I was totally excited to plan something for us to do together. That’s why I put “Go to Empire State Museum” on my list of “to dos”.

So Sunday morning, the three of us woke up and started playing together in our pajamas. First we threw a ball back and forth, with Emmy delightfully playing the role of the monkey-in-the-middle. Then we had fun building a fortress out of pillows and blankets in the middle of the living room (which we discovered made Emmy fretfully claustrophobic). Then Dada and I held a blanket by the four corners and tossed Emmy and her bear up and down in the air (Emmy wanted us to do this for about an hour, but Dada and I were afraid she would end up puking, and plus besides our arms were getting WAY tired). Then we had a Sunday dance party. Then we all sang karaoke together using our x-box (ok, Mama and Dada mostly sang, and Emmy joined in on the choruses).  Then we ate lunch and napped. Then we visited Baba and Grampy, drank a glass of white wine (don’t worry, Em drank juice and ate crackers), and told funny stories and talked about the value of family.

It was amazing. I forgot about all the things I had planned to do (well, mostly. In the afternoon I still made cupcakes, but I made them with Dada and Em’s help WHILE playing Ring-Around-the-Rosie, and had lots of fun getting powdered sugar and frosting all over the kitchen). I threw my list of projected accomplishments out the window and just focused my attention on the two people I adore the most in the whole entire world.

In the late evening, with Em asleep in my arms and Dada asleep next to me on the couch, I sat back and just basked in the exhaustion of a beautiful day together. I realized, joyfully, that I had shortened my to-do list for Family Day to just one word: love.