Serenity

I've been having thoughts about nighttimes. So many people tell me that their little ones sleep through the night, already, at four or five months. So many people tell me to feed him formula last thing at night, so I get a full night's sleep. I don't want to. I struggled for over a month, expressing eight times a day, just to get my milk supply up so I could feed my boy the stuff he needs most, and I'm not going to stop now, just so that I can sleep through the night. I've never slept through the night anyway, not even before my boy came into being, so why should I start now?

I just read this post about night feeds, shared with me by a friend. The thing that strikes me too is the serenity of our nighttime moments. Of course, they're not always serene, I'd be a liar if I said they were, but they are precious and they are meditation.

Read the post, if you wish, here.

I get what she says, this mama across the other side of the world. I love the moments at night when my boy is snuggled up, filling his little belly. I love knowing that he's having the food he needs, when he needs it. Even last night, when he screamed for ages because of his horrid cold, I rocked him and soothed him and held him, and it was good. I was in the present moment with my little boy, all other anxieties or frustrations of life gone from my mind. I also found serenity.

Contemplations on sanity

It's a fine line between sanity and madness.

I now realise it was a mistake to take on ten 'keep in touch' days with a four-month old child. He has been well looked after by myself, my mother and his father, the work has gone well, the house has been kept clean and tidy. Everything has been well managed. Everything, that is, except my own mind. Some days I have felt totally overwhelmed and miserable, angry with myself and everyone else. I have been horrible and grumpy. I have been drowning in my own tears. I have felt as if I was in a black hole ten million miles beneath the earth. I have also been taking steroids for the arthritis and don't know if these have also been affecting my mind.

I see myself as someone who can cope with anything and everything, but I now see that this isn't true. I am not superwoman. I am not perfect. I am not the best version of myself that I could be. This imperfection isn't because I can't do everything and be happy; it's because I struggle to accept that I can't do everything and be happy. I struggle to accept anything less than superwoman of myself.

These last few weeks are teaching me to let go of control (as did my pregnancy and all the time since my son was born). These last few weeks are teaching me to allow someone else to cook dinner for me, to allow someone else to clean the kitchen their way not mine, to allow someone to cuddle my son when he cries, to allow someone else to be awake when my son needs someone to be awake, to not always put myself in the position of 'the person who has to do something'. I am learning to appreciate what people can do for me (and what they make so much effort to do), rather than focusing on what they don't do from all the things I write out in little lists.

These last few weeks have also taught me that I need to be stricter with myself and kinder to others - that is, to allow others to help me rather than trying to do it all myself, in the process turning into a crazy and adrenaline-fuelled whirlwind that pushes everyone else away. I am learning to let others support me. I am learning to let others be better than me. I don't know where this need to always be the best has come from, but it no longer serves me. I don't always need to be the best. I can't. And - something I have only just realised - in my striving to always be best, I become miserable, moody and far less than the person I ever want or wish to be.

Last week I started a new routine of activity with my son in the mornings, followed by 'me' time - at the moment, for working, but once this is done, it will be for me to do other stuff, followed by a walk outside if my son cannot sleep or needs a break from the house. Right now, I am sitting outside in the sunshine, working on my laptop, while my man cleans the house and looks after our son and I find that balance has been restored to my mind.

The time came for a sanity check and I only just scraped a pass. The time has come for a radical shift in how I see myself and my place in my world. The time has come for me to learn flexibility of self-perception and role. The time has come to be kinder to myself and to others.

Yoga

Just got back from mother and baby yoga and I loved it!

A large church hall, with vast windows overlooking an old cemetery, rambling ivy, crumbling headstones and sunshine streaming onto the floorboards. I did yoga with baby boy lying next to me, with baby boy underneath me, beaming and chattering, and with baby boy in my arms, being swung around with a slightly startled expression on his face.

All in all, I've decided I like mother and baby yoga. I realised I am just as bendy, strong and flexible as other people, despite being a bit stiffer and less fit than I used to be. It's all stuff I could do at home, but the drive there helps him to sleep and then he's awake and happy for an hour and then the drive home helps him to sleep and hopefully knocks him out for his long afternoon nap. The mothers apparently go for cups of tea afterwards, but I decided to come home this time, to my own mama and a yummy chicken roast.

I'm definitely signing up for the next course that starts end of February. A happy chilled out mama and a happy chilled out baby.

Numbers

Yesterday I did my first run since pre-pregnancy and I managed 40 minutes quite easily, through park land, woodland and heath, a beautiful route and a definite zone for further exploration.

Today our boy is exactly four months old. This time, four months ago, I was lying in a bed, with a hormone drip, an antibiotic drip and a saline drip, unfeeling from epidural and waiting to meet my little boy, whose face I had not yet seen.

Today I took him for his second swim and looked into the little face that is now almost as familiar as my own. Although still not quite loving it, he was more active this time, kicking his fat little legs while I propelled him forwards, first on his tummy, then on his back, and he was lifted in and out of the jacuzzi in a splishy-splashy way. I even managed to swim four grown-up lengths, while the man splish-splashed with the boy in the jacuzzi.

He doesn't seem to mind the water in his face and, again, when we showered, he turned his face into the stream of hot water, the droplets trickling down his face and resting on his long dark eyelashes.

We finished off our day of rest by taking the boy's Bakica (my Mama) for a pizza, chocolate fudge cake and tea, three generations in one space, though the littlest slept happily through our yummy adult meal.

Baby massage

Baby boy had his first baby massage session and seemed to quite enjoy it, though I think it may have been a little too soothing for him - think he prefers more fun and activity. He seemed more interested in staring at other people, examining fabric prints (a recent fascination), trying to grab hold of and read the baby massage handout (he's terribly advanced don't you know, trying to read at four months), and trying to work out the rain makers that were placed around the room to help with tummy time.

I realise that I've been inadvertently doing lots of the baby massage techniques anyway, possibly instinctively adapting them from the adult massage I know how to do. Either way, the ones I do at home more often he seemed to enjoy more, and I shall definitely be doing more of this as a 'thing to do' with him when we have lots of awake time.

Arthritis

Well, the arthritis is getting better, with (sorry if too much information), post-pregnancy poo stoppages also improving simultaneously, along with the eczema on my hands. There are four things I am doing, so not sure which is helping, but out of interest they are:

1) Dietary change - no fatty meats, lots of fish, lots of whole grains, no refined sugars including no fruit juice, lots of fruit and veggies, with the exception of cutting out aubergine, tomatoes, spinach and citrus fruits - though I've been doing this a while with only minor relief
2) Lots of nettle tea
3) Acupuncture
4) Cutting out the anti-inflammatories and instead taking a very low dose of steroids for the two weeks prior to my appointment with the rheumatology department because they're (finally) worried about permanent join damage (why only now, I ask??)

Anyway, either way, something has helped. The acupuncture helped dramatically with the post-pregnancy poo stoppages and with muscle pain. Either acupuncture or nettle tea helped with the eczema. No idea what has helped with the arthritis, but it is easing and I am counting my blessings in every way.

Fluoride, tea and arthritis symptoms

As part of my quest for relieving the symptoms of arthritis in my hands, fingers and wrists.

Recent tweet of mine:

"Fluoride causing arthritis symptoms, with a key evil being tea - very interesting...: http://fluoridealert.org/studies/arthritis01/ and http://fluoridealert.org/issues/sources/tea/"

Being a mama

The thing about being mama is that, for the first time, you absolutely have to always put someone else first. He needs me.

Where I've needed nurturing, I've not noticed as I've been busy nurturing my precious child. Where I've been running low on energy, what energy I had left, was for him.

I've recently been receiving acupuncture for the arthritis in my hands and have been given a lengthy massage session as a gift (which I enjoyed yesterday) and all these things increase my milk flow and make me feel full of something I'd forgotten I'd needed - that is, the feeling of being nurtured. My heart is so overflowing with love for my little helpless creature, that I'd forgotten to refill it with love for myself. I'd not noticed it was depleted of care for me.

Being a mama is a massive identity shift for me - I'll never be alone again. During my acupuncture, my child was afraid and cried out for me. He wanted to feed, to be close. I lay him on my chest, my legs and the top of my head full of needles, and he fed and was comforted throughout the session. Even during my massage, which was as enjoyable as always, my mind couldn't fully empty because I could hear a tiny heart beating across town. I could feel him smiling in his sleep. A few times I thought I heard him cry. My ears and my own heart so fully attuned to him, his sounds, his movements. I wonder when this state of alertness will lessen. I wonder when the reaction will disappear to spring fully awake at the first sign of anything being amiss.

I wonder if I will ever return to the person I was before.

I realise that I wasn't prepared for this. Pregnancy did not prepare me. It has been like walking through a one-day door into another world. There is no way back.

I've been reading some things for a while on the changes in identity during motherhood (Birth of a Mother was particularly interesting), but I didn't realise how much I would crave 'me'. I don't miss the things I did, much. I don't even miss who I was (and there was definitely someone that I was before, that I am no longer). What I miss is knowing who I am.

Timing

Why is it that ten minutes into every bath I attempt to have, I end up kneeling in the water, breastfeeding the boy with his legs propped on the edge of the bath to keep them dry; or whenever I pick up my fork, of an evening, baby boy decides that NOW he's ravenous; or just as I lay my head on my pillow for a nap, the little man chooses to wake up? Why is that?

Rebirth as a mother

Wow. This article. Hit me in the heart. This is it. I can tell you that I also had a similar no-going-back rebirth when I became a counsellor. A similar, but vastly different permanent shift in awareness and self-perception.

http://www.renegademothering.com/2013/02/09/i-became-a-mother-and-died-to-live/