Teething Bites!
Filed Under Breastfeeding, Danny, Family | Leave a Comment
Danny has been a non-stop fuss bucket for the last three days, and at first we couldn’t figure out why. I checked his mouth last night, and lo-and-behold, he’s got a tooth popped through on his top gum. Then, this morning, Dan tells me that he has THREE teeth coming through. I didn’t believe him, so I check, and he doesn’t have three teeth coming in, he has FOUR teeth coming in on top! No wonder my poor baby is miserable! He’s been really clingy, and just wanting to nurse all the time. He’ll nurse long enough, and hard enough, that I end up getting let-down three times in one nursing! He usually never nurses that strong! My poor little guy.
Blueberry is adjusting well. He does really great with the kids, although sometimes I wish he WOULD turn around and claw Maddi when she’s mean to him. Maybe then she’d understand he dosen’t like it, and she’d stop. But no, he’s too sweet. He lets her get away with it. He really likes Danny though, and curls up with him a lot. And Dan is his favorite. He curls up with Dan a lot, which is funny because Dan tries to tell me he dosen’t like cats, yet he plays with blueberry just as much, if not more than the rest of us!
School is going okay. I’m kind of losing my motivation. I just don’t enjoy my classes because they aren’t what I’m interested in, you know?
I got all of my coursework to begin my childbirth educator certification. Which, I am super excited about. I also got my breastfeeding counselor coursework, and birth and post partum doula coursework as well. I’m so excited for it!
Anways, just a short update!
Be sure to check out my review blog. I’ve got a few giveaways going on over there! We’re giving away a Medela freestyle breast pump, a woombie, a juppy baby walker, and a surprise giveaway for nursing moms!
http://www.reviews.anotherteenmom.com
Blueberry the Cat
Filed Under Family, photos | 5 Comments
Okay…. Long story, but bear with me.
We got blueberry (our orange tabby cat) after he was abandoned on someone’s porch in Indiana as a kitten. He’s the sweetest guy ever. We even brought him back to Alaska when we moved up here.
Anyways, when my mom and step-dad split, things got really ugly. I mean, REALLY ugly. Curt didn’t want to keep the cats (blueberry and lily) and he told me that if I couldn’t find a home for them by 3:30 they’d be gone. I couldn’t take them, because I was living with Curt at the time. I found a friend of Dan’s to take them, and I called Curt. It was too late for lily. He already offed her. But blueberry was still alive. I drove home so fast and got him! I almost cried when I gave him to Hannah, but she’s a really nice girl and she loves animals.
Anyways, Hannah and her boyfriend broke up in August, and her boyfriend (also named Dan) was keeping the cats. Anyways, Hannah moved to Hawaii two months ago, and when her ex, Dan found out she had a new boyfriend, I guess he started getting really mad and telling Hannah that he didn’t want to keep the cats, even though Hannah was giving him money for them. She told him to call me and Dan and have us take Blueberry because she knew we would take good care of him.
Dan B. (her ex) called my Dan a week ago, and Dan forgot to tell me. Anyways, i got ahold of Dan B, asking when i could come get blueberry and whatnot and he told me he already got rid of him. I practically begged him to ask whoever he gave him to let me have him back. I offered to give him/them twenty bucks and reimburse them for any food or litter they bought. Dan B seemed like he didn’t want to ask for him back and said it was weird to ask for them back, but he said he would. Hannah even tried pleading with him to get him to tell use who he gave blueberry to.
The next night I texted and asked if there was any word on blueberry. He said “Nope.”
Anyways, i decided to post something on craigslist looking for blueberry, and then on Dog Gone news (a program our radio station has to help people find their pets). I saw a link to the animal shelter and on a whim I thought I should call. I almost didn’t call because Dan B had said he gave them to someone, so why bother with the pound?!?
Anyways, i call, and the people at the pound tell me that they DO have a cat matching blueberry’s description at the pound and that he had been left there with another cat in a rubbermaid container. And the other cat matched the description of the other cat Hannah had. The f***ed up part was that he put the food on top of the hole in the tub and they couldn’t breathe and the other cat (not blueberry) died!!!! But blueberry managed to move the food away through the hole so he could breathe!
So, my mom and I went in the next morning. We would have gone in the same day, but I hadn’t called them until 15 minutes before they closed, so there was no way I would have made it to town before they closed. Anyways, I was so nervous. My heart was racing and my head was pounding. I almost feel silly being so worked up over a cat, but I was just so worried about him! And he’s part of our family! When we went into the shelter, the worker at the desk was actually looking at the craigslist ad I had posted for blueberry when I still believed that Dan B. had given them away to someone. She told me she’s almost positive that the cat they had was ours. I held my breath and when we walked into the cat room….
It was blueberry!!!!
I was so elated I almost cried! He didn’t see us at first, and he just looked so dejected and scared…. but as soon as he looked up, he saw my mom and he just lit up! He practically attacked the cage door and meowed at us until he was let out and then he just wanted us to hold him! It was just awesome! I can’t even describe how good I felt about it all.
Anyways, the lady at the shelter was awesome, and didn’t even charge us to take him home, which really helped, because we needed the money to get Blueberry a box, and some food and litter.
Blueberry had to fight to live for almost ten hours before the workers got there and freed him from the rubbermaid tote that became a deathbox for his friend, who died next to him. Can you imagine how he must have felt? Struggling frantically for almost ten hours, all the while, his best friend dying right next to him, and when she did die, the tote being so small, that he was forced to stand on top of her until the workers arrived at the pound and were able to rescue him?! I can’t imagine the fear, the panic, the adrenaline rush he must have been feeling.
And you have no idea how enraged I am that someone did this to Blueberry. I don’t care who you are or what your problem is, you NEVER take out your anger at another person out on an innocent animal who has done nothing to you! It’s completely messed up, and I’m sorry… But no decent person… Animal lover or not…. Does that to an animal. And why would he lie to me and tell me he had already given them away…when really, he still had them and took them to the pound an hour or two after I got ahold of him.
I’m just so glad Blueberry is okay. His claws are messed up and a couple of them are falling out, mostly likely from when he was struggling and forcing his paw through the hole in the box.
He’s bounced back to normal though. He was skittish at first… But he’s doing much better.
Staph, Strep, Weight, Adoption, Conception, Car, Debt, Oh my.
Filed Under Breastfeeding, Danny, Family, Health, Maddi, money, pregnancy | Leave a Comment
I’ve been kind of lazy about updating lately. Sorry. My bad.
Things are going better on this end. Danny is feeling MUCH better, which I am super thankful for. I was so worried about him. Turns out he had the staph AND a strep infection at the same time. Definitely not cool. I’m just glad he’s okay.
On a lighter note, my little guy has a tooth! It’s just a teensy weensy tiny little thing, but it’s still a tooth. You can’t really see it, because it’s just the tip, and its barely out of the gum, but its there! It’s exciting but it makes me sad at the same time. He’s almost nine months old. It’s about time he got some teethers going!
Maddi is speaking much better. She still has issues pronouncing things, and trying to use words (she prefers to whine and cry… which she doesn’t get away with anymore). She just has to stop being lazy. She dosen’t like using words, and it’s pretty obvious she’d rather just grunt and get what she wants… But that doesn’t float anymore, not that it did before, but we’ve become much more strict about the no-whining-and-grunting-policy.
I’m struggling with my weight again. Don’t really know what else to say on that subject. Except that I’m struggling and I feel like I’m huge. Regardless of what everyone says and what my husband thinks. I know I’m not fat, in my logical mind. But I also know everyone’s lying when they say I’m not fat. I hate these feelings. But I knew they’d be back eventually, and quite frankly, I’m tired of fighting it. I knew that as soon as danny needed me less for nourishment, that this is what would happen.
On a much happier note, Dan was working our taxes… and I’m freaking excited. We’re going to get enough back to pay off ALL of our debt, AND have some left over. Which is awesome. I’m excited. I can’t wait. We’ll be able to pay off EVERYTHING (except the house). So this means, credit cards, collections, and our car! I’m so flipping excited. This is going to make our lives MUCH easier. Maybe we can even start building up a savings.
On top of that, I’m thinking I might adopt our next child. I’ve been putting a great deal of thought into it. I haven’t decided for sure yet, but I’m thinking I will. I’d really like to. I may, I may not. We may decide to try for our own, or adopt. I know we’ll adopt eventually, but we may or may not adopt our next child. It depends on how much we’ve saved up, and whether we’re in a bigger house, or what not.
Anyways, that’s my blurb.
Dietary Revolution
Filed Under Breastfeeding, Danny, Family, Health, Maddi | Leave a Comment
Danny started being incredibly fussy when he was around four and a half to five months old. I just comforted him the best I could, and kept breastfeeding him. Around month five, I started debating giving him food, because I thought that maybe he just needed more than breastmilk, but I withheld, and dealt with the fussiness, worked on increasing my supply and nursing him more often than I had been.
Right before he turned six months, I noticed he would get more fussy whenever I had milk. It sparked an idea that maybe he has a dairy sensitivity. I talked to my sister-in-law, Tasha about it because my nephew that I babysit, Rex, has a dairy sensitivity. I thought maybe it was a genetic thing. Rex has a dairy sensitivity, and so does my husband, and one of my little sisters did too, so it only made sense that was what could be wrong. So, I cut out my dairy. He seemed to improve a little bit, but he was still fussing an awful lot.
At six months and some odd days old, I started him on rice cereal and baby fruits. He LOVED it! Everyone knows how fun it is to feed babies new foods for the first time ever! He absolutely adored it! We started vegetables, and meats too. And when we ran out of rice cereal, we started using baby oatmeal. (I had 15 boxes of unopened baby oatmeal and rice leftover from when Maddi was a baby! Good thing I saved it.) I made all of my own vegetable and meat baby foods though because frankly, all the baby foods that come in jars except for fruit, taste disgusting. And at first, it was okay, but he started getting fussier, and fussier.
He got fussy to the point he would scream these high pitched SHRIEKING screams. Constantly. He’d scream so loud no noise would come out for a few seconds, and he’d get super red in the face. And it was like this all day and all night. It was terrible, and it still is. We’ve really only had one decent night of sleep in the last six weeks. On top of the sleep deprivation, I was getting really depressed. I felt like I wasn’t a good mom, because he wasn’t just screaming, he was MISERABLE. I hate seeing my baby upset, and I hate seeing him in pain. Sometimes, when he screams like that, and nothing will calm him down, I feel like a failure and I just want to cry. It breaks my heart in a way I can’t even describe, to see him in pain.
I took him to the doctor, but that really didn’t help any. They just shrugged their shoulders and said to put him on a sensitivity formula… And any of you who know me, know I would NEVER do that to my little man. If he’s having trouble with breastmilk, there’s no way adding formula will help! And not to mention I wouldn’t feed that garbage to him anyays. So, I pretty much ignored the doctor. Some people might think that’s dumb, but Danny’s my baby. And a lot of doctors are quick to endorse and encourage formula. So, that was pretty much a wasted appointment.
I posted on a couple parenting message boards about his strange behavior. Everyone recommended stopping solids altogether and going back to exclusively breastfeeding. I was considering doing that already, but hearing so many people recommending the same thing just made me more confident in the decision. So, he’s been back on JUST breastmilk for four or five days, and there has been slight improvement.
Yesterday, one of the moms on the message board suggested a gluten/wheat allergy. And it made sense! Especially when I made the connection that he hadn’t been AS fussy when we were using the rice cereal, but got worse when we introduced oatmeal. There were some babies at the daycare I used to work at when I was pregnant with Maddi who couldn’t have gluten or wheat! And their behavior when they DID have it, was a lot like Danny’s is. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.
So, I cut out wheat and gluten starting yesterday. I tell you… It’s tough! It’s so crazy how many things wheat and gluten are in. I had a boyfriend in high school who was allergic to wheat and gluten and it drove me nuts because he couldn’t ever eat anything with me! It was so hard to find things that he COULD have, and going out to eat was even more difficult. I remember thinking, “Man, I’d hate to have to eat like him…” and now, here I am, following the same diet.
So yeah. And on top of that, Dan and I made a bet that I couldn’t go vegan for an entire month. I researched it a lot, and I really feel like going vegan is something I might make a permanent change, you know? I really feel strongly about it, and I don’t want to support a very horrible and inhumane industry. If I raised, or hunted or caught the animal myself, or know it came from a GOOD place and was respected throughout its life, then I’m okay with it. But I can’t bring myself to eat the meat of animals who were tortured, direspected and abused.
So, needless to say, I’ve been learning a lot. I made eggplant parmesan with soy mozzarella, and candied oranges and home made veggie burgers today. I can tel you, it’s definitely been a learning experience.
But yeah… The vegan part isn’t too difficult. It’s the gluten and wheat part that’s horrible.
Ahh, the things I don’t do for my children….
Salvation Army Angel Tree
Filed Under Danny, Family, Maddi, friends, money | 2 Comments
Okay. So, Dan and I are pretty freaking broke this year. So, I signed up for the Salvation Army Angel Tree program, and got approved for it, which was awesome. They sent us a letter confirming our appointment time to come in and pick out gifts for our kids, and the letter said it had to be presented in order to be allowed to “shop.” So, I put the letter in the drawer so I wouldn’t lose it.
Anyways, night before the appointment, I decided to set everything out since I’d have to get up early and didn’t want to forget anything. And then I check the drawer for the letter and it’s not anywhere to be found. I ramsacked the house. And our house isn’t that big! I even grabebd some gloves and went through five or six bags of nasty ucky trash! And I still couldn’t find it. I ended up crying. I was pretty upset.
I called them at 1 in the morning, hoping they had a voicemail and I could leave a message explaining my problem, but they didn’t have an answering machine. So, I got up around 6:30-7am (after going to bed at 3:30am) and picked up Chelsea, hung out at my grandparents for a little bit, and then sat outside the Salvation army family services office for half an hour until they opened.
While we waited, there were some Nikiski firemen there picking up boxes, so Chelsea and I helped them carry all their boxes to their truck. Might as well help someone, right? We were just sitting in the car doing nothing…
So they open at 10, and don’t get out there for anyone until around 10:30. I talk to a guy and he goes and talks to the lady in charge, comes back and tells me that if I have my photo ID, then they can do it. I was so relieved. I just about cried.
So Chelsea and I got to go through and pick two toys and a couple outfits out for each kiddo. Maddi got a hat and scarf set, and Danny got a hat. And Maddi got some bracelets, and Danny got a little wooden truck. Maddi got a doll and some foam bath letters that stick to the sides of the tub, and Danny got a wooden cube that you push little wooden shapes into, and a wooden emergency crew set with a wooden ambulance, fire truck and police car. And Maddi got a pair of shoes, and an outfit and Danny got two outfits. 
It’s not much, but it’s sooo much more than we would have had! And I really appreciate that the people in our community do this kind of thing. I felt bad accepting it at first, but you know… I can make it up later. When I have money, I can give some to the bellringers at the holidays or something, so they can help some other family who is in the position I am now in the future.
But…
I still can’t believe I dug through six bags of trash! UGH!
Waiting to Try… But pouting while I wait.
Filed Under Contemplative, Danny, Family, Health, School, house, money | 2 Comments
I really want to have another baby. I don’t know why, but for the last two months or so, I’ve just had this BURNING baby fever. It sucks.
I know I can’t have another baby right now. The first reason, is because my little guy is only seven months old and he was born via a cesarean, so obviously, I need to wait and allow my body to heal more, that way I can attempt another VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean).
The second reason, is money. We’re kind of broke right now, and debt is pretty consuming at this point. It’s not very easy to deal with and it just kind of sucks all around, you know? We need to get out of debt.
Third… I need to get my associate’s degree finished. And get better grades next semester. I did pretty crappy this last semester, which sucks… But what else can I do, you know? Between all the medical problems I had last semester (my son was hospitalized with RSV, I got the swine flu and I had my appendix out) I just didn’t do so hot.
Fourth… Space. We don’t have ROOM for another baby. We live in a one bedroom house. It’ll have two bedrooms soon… but the second bedroom is INCREDIBLY small, and long. So… We need more space before we can actually think of having more kids… Especially since we have a boy and a girl… They can’t share a room forever!
Fifth… I’m still working on certifying as a birth doula… I need to finish that training! So, it’s kind of important that I get it all done so I can start making a little money.
So, I’m coming up with goals for everything.
1. Time:
Danny needs to be 12 months before I even consider trying for another baby, and only if other goals are met!
2. Grades:
My last completed semester of school needs to have grades of all C’s and above. Hopefully chancellor’s list… But at the very least, C’s and above.
3. Money:
I need to have at least $5,000 saved up.
4. Training:
I need to finish my birth doula certification and start making money. I can’t make money to save if I don’t finish the training!
I think, if I can meet these goals then everything will go alright and we’ll be ready to try.
It sounds silly, but just typing all of this out really helped me feel better about my decision to try. And it also made it feel not quite as far away in the future as it had before I wrote it out! At least now, I have some concrete goals and a written plan that will determine when I have the go-ahead to try!
What being a teenage mother has taught me.
Filed Under Breastfeeding, Contemplative, Danny, Family, Health, Love, Maddi, pregnancy | 6 Comments
What amazes me, is how often I see girls, only fifteen, sixteen or seventeen years old who want to have babies. I’m not talking want, in a one-day-in-the-future-tense, but want as in now, and soon. And just as often, I see girls the same age, who are already pregnant and they may think they know enough about babies through babysitting, or helping with siblings, but really, they have no idea what its like.
Everyone says that pregnancy is the easy part, having the baby is the tough part, but it’s not. Pregnancy is just as difficult. I see pregnant girls, even ones in their 20′s and 30′s, slamming red bull like it’s water, and eating tuna and deli meat like it’s going out of style! Not to mention poping ibuprofin everytime they get an ache or pain. All of which can be detrimental towards the baby’s health.
These girls don’t know that having an epidural can affect your baby’s ability to breathe, or even to breastfeed after birth. They don’t know that having an epidural increases your chance of a cesarean section. They don’t know that getting induced nearly doubles your chances of a cesarean section. They think that its “safe” for the baby to be born at 37 weeks, and by golly, they want that baby out ASAP! They don’t know that even at 37 weeks, that poor little baby could be born with premature lungs and suffer immensely because they didn’t get those last few weeks in utero to help their brain and lung development. They don’t know that, in the majority of cases, it’s best to let the baby decide when it’s ready to meet the world.
I then see these same women and girls, a few months after having had their babies, popping a bottle of formula into the poor baby’s mouth, claiming they “couldn’t” breastfeed. When in reality, only 2% of women cannot physically breastfeed. So, why are almost all of these girls bottlefeeding? My only attempt at a guess is that they were misinformed. Uneducated about the subject. Sure, you see breastfeeding PSA’s on television, and the WIC office tries to encourage breastfeeding, but we need to provide more in depth education on breastfeeding. So many babies end up suffering because of this. Babies were meant to drink human milk! So, why are mothers so surprised when their babies have reactions to formula? I’ve had women look at me shocked when I tell them my son hardly ever spits up. I can count on one hand how many times he’s spit up on me in his six months of life. And it’s no wonder, because breastfed babies spit up less.
I see these girls, who before or during the pregnancy had a boyfriend or fiancee around, but as soon as that baby entered the picture, the father of that child flew the coop. Or even worse, they ditched the girl as soon as she found out she was pregnant. Often times, these same guys refuse to pay child suport, and in most of the cases I’ve seen, don’t even spend time with their child. Let alone, help care for its daily needs. The girl thought she was in love. She thought it was forever, but sadly, in most cases of teenage pregnancy, forever really means “until I get tired of it.”
I got lucky. I really did. And the funny part is, I wasn’t expecting to get lucky. I thought I’d be raising my baby alone. The pregnancy was unintended, as 80% of teenage pregnancies are. I never for a second thought he would actually marry me. After all, 8 out of 10 fathers of teenage girl’s babies DON’T marry them. When he proposed, I was hesitant. And even though we got married, it wasn’t easy. We almost didn’t make it through our first year of marriage. But, he loved our baby and was incredibly devoted to her. Again, something that isn’t very common among the men involved in teenage pregnancies. I graduated high school a few months after she was born. That’s something only 1 in 4 teenage mothers actually do. I’m in college, and by the end of summer, I should have an associate’s degree. That’s something that only 1.5% of teenage mothers accomplish by age 30. And, like 80% of teenage mothers, I had a second baby within two years of the birth of my first baby. But, unlike 80% of teen mothers, I have never been on welfare.
Hows that for statistics?
I got lucky in a lot of areas. I have a lot more support than most teenage mothers do. My husband works and provides for us, so I don’t have to. I can spend my time with my children instead of paying a daycare to raise them. I might not be a good story to scare girls away from getting pregnant, but even with all of my “lucky” things, it’s still hard. There are days I don’t want to do anything, but I have to.
When I’m sick, and puking, I still have to manage to comfort my kids who, most likely, are sick and puking too.
When I’m tired, and have been operating on only 3 or 4 hours of sleep, I still have to do my homework. And anytime I consider just saying “forget it all.” and taking an F, I get these intense pangs of guilt. What kind of mother am I if I don’t do everything possible to take care of my kids and give them the best? That includes educating myself, so that by the time they’re old enough to remember, they’ll never know we struggled.
When I have money, I can’t spend it on myself. Especially when there’s food to buy, clothes to buy, bills to pay.
I have to watch my diet, and avoid any and all dairy or my son will stay up all night with horrible gas, and I won’t get any sleep at all.
I can’t let the laundry go a day, because we use cloth diapers. If you would have asked me two years ago, I would have never even considered using cloth diapers, but when you’re forking out $250 dollars a month (that you need for food) just on diapers and wipes, it starts to be worth it…Regardless of how gross it is. Not to mention, my son dosen’t get hardly any rashes when we use cloth vs. disposable diapers.
I have to care for my children, even when I’m in pain. I had my apendix out, and the day after I got home from the hospital, I had to forego the pain meds I really needed, in order to take care of my children and make sure they were well cared for.
I had to have two medically necessary cesarean sections. The first one, because it would have killed both of us if I went into labor with her, the second because my son’s heartrate was erratic. Because of that cesarean, my ability to have many more kids in the future, is limited, unless I can successfully have a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) with my next child.
And these are just the physical tolls having children takes on you. The emotional tolls are even greater… but usually only on mothers who care.
It’s hard not being able to give your child everything. When you have your baby, you feel this overwhelming sense of love. Sure, before you have them, you know you love them, you know they’re important, but I don’t think it really hits you until they take their first breath and you realize this perfect little person is completely reliant on you. You are everything to them. It breaks my heart when I know there’s things I can’t give my kids, or things I wish I could.
I may not be perfect, but I do my best. And for now, that’s all that counts.
School & The Bottomless Pit Called Danny.
Filed Under Breastfeeding, Danny, Family, School | Leave a Comment
So, because of how crazy everything got after I had swine flu and after my appendectomy, I got kind of behind in my classes. I’m taking an incomplete in my biology class. But, the rest of them, I’m going to try like hell to make them up before the deadline (the end of this week, aka the 7th of December.) It would be soooo much easier if I had some help watching kids while I did homework, but no such luck. 
I guess I just have to try to get it all done somehow.
Danny is a complete little piggy! He went through an entire jar of baby food, and about half a can of applesauce, both mixed with baby cereal. He’s seriously a little pig! He had some peas with us at dinner too. He really seemed to enjoy those too. He’s growing so fast. He loves his boobs still, so that’s a good thing. As long as he still likes his boobs, we’re good! I’ve been pumping when he eats solids though!
Amanda had her baby. So, I guess I have a new neice now.
Anyways, I’m off to go unwind for the evening and go to bed.
Mood: Accomplished! :D
Filed Under BebeBreeze, Family, friends, sewing | Leave a Comment
Yay for being productive. Yay for being awesome.
Tonight, we bought stuff to make chicken parmesan. And it turned out AMAZING! It was freaking delicious. It was a cooperative effort between Chelsea and I. Dan helped a little, but he’d like to lead you to believe he deserves more credit than he does!!!
Then, I worked on a carrier. I started it yesterday and it was kind of exciting because it’s a new design…sort of. Same design, just a different look and layout. It turned out really well and I REALLY like it!
I love my latest carrier!
So, I finished that up, and listed it on my site. I even went through and added secondary photos to all of the listings, which I’ve been meaning to do for a while! I even got the sling listed, and edited some of the other listings! The boutique is definitely looking good! That’s for sure!
And then I got on my blog and fixed up some pages! If you click on the “BebeBreeze” page, it’s got the link to my boutique. Or you can simply click here. It’s been a work in progress for a while, but it’s finally getting to the point, I’m comfortable showing it to people!
Then, I published my milk babies page. I’ve been meaning to do that for a while too! I’ve had the draft saved on here for a few months, just haven’t gotten around to doing it, you know? And getting all the photos together for it and everything… but it’s up now. Which is, awesome! I’ll be updating it as I donate more!
Anyways, if you can’t tell from my tone, I’m feeling a whole lot better. Really motivated and determined to get stuff done!
Resolve to a Difficult Day
Filed Under Breastfeeding, Danny, Family, Love, Maddi, friends, sewing | 4 Comments
So, yesterday was terrible. Like, on-the-verge-of-tears-and-tempted-to-go-hide-under-a-rock-forget-my-name-and-never-come-out kind of terrible.
I don’t really know what started it. I just remember, I started getting stressed right before Dan left for work. I was cleaning up the kitchen, and Maddi kept getting under my feet, even though I kept telling her to go to the living room. After trying to hold a conversation with Dan, and repeatedly telling Maddi to go to the living room because she was making me trip all over her, I got really mad and I yelled at her. I felt really bad afterward, because she cried and looks down like she was scared and upset.
The house was really messy. I get really depressed and down in the dumps anytime the house is too messy or disorganized or sloppy looking. I don’t know why. I just know that if it’s too messy, it’s a one-way ticket to a crappy day for me. So, I spent most of my day cleaning.
I wanted to work on schoolwork, but when I went to log on to the system, it was down and it said it wouldn’t be back up until Wednesday morning.
I put Maddi down for her nap, and as usual, she started crying and pitching a fit. I forgot to give her the herbal stuff we use (Tranquil Child by Oregon Harvest) to help her calm down and mellow out before bed. The effects are similar to sleepy-time tea… It’s not drugs or anything, just some stuff to help her mellow out, peppermint and chamomile. Anyways, I forgot to give it to her.
Anyways, while Maddi was in bed, Danny was crying and fussing like crazy. I think he’s starting to teethe. I’m not sure, but he’s had a lot of fits recently, where nothing makes him happy. He just screams. Cuddles don’t work. Boobs don’t work. Baths don’t work. Chewing on a spoon that we put in the freezer ahead of time seemed to help for a little bit, but that was short lived. I gave him some ice cold water in a bottle. He seems to enjoy the cold water, but again, only short lived relief. So, he was SCREAMING for almost four hours. Not just crying. Not just fussing, but screaming.
There’s two things I hate about when he cries like that. The first, is that it breaks my heart to hear him scream like he’s in pain and hurting. I usually end up with watery eyes and about to cry when I hear him like that and I can’t fix it. I hate it when my baby is in pain. I love him too much to see him hurting like that. The second, is that it makes me feel like crap. It makes me feel like I’m a failure of a mom. My baby is miserable and unhappy, and I can’t fix it. It makes me feel like it’s all my fault which is depressing. I hate feeling like that.
I want to be a good mom. I really do. But I feel like lately, no matter what I do, nothing is right and I’m not a good mom. I want to be, and I’m willing to learn, but where am I supposed to learn from? I never really had any kind of stable or consistent parenting growing up. Everything I do with my kids comes from here and there, and this and that. It’s all a guessing game. I don’t like making my kids into guinea pigs. I don’t like having to test out different disciplines on them, and feel like I still have no clue what I’m doing.
I really want to get this parenting program called “Love & Logic.” It’s supposed to be really good. I’ve read a lot of good reviews on it and I’ve heard a lot of my own friends and family rave about it. I really want to get it. It’s just a matter of saving up the money for it. It’s not too terribly expensive ($70) but I don’t have $70, you know? So… It is a lot when you don’t have it. I just know I’m not happy with how discipline is in our house, and I don’t like how she reacts to our disciplinary measures. I feel like it’s going nowhere, and there has to be a better way… I just haven’t found it yet.
Anyways, back to the story. Danny was still screaming, and I just put him back in his rocker because I was about ready to start crying myself. Sometimes, you just get to a point you feel like you can’t handle it, and that’s when you just put them down somewhere safe and let them cry. Nothing I was doing was working or even helping, and you can only do so much before it starts to wear on you. So, I put him down and went to get Maddi up from her nap.
I step into the bedroom and before I even look at her, I can smell it. Her diaper is on the floor (surprisingly, clean, nothing in it.) and there’s poop smeared from one end of the crib to the other. Globs and streaks of nasty, stinky, raunchy poop. I know this sounds bad, but given a choice between the two, I’d choose Danny poop any day because Maddi’s is just disgusting and horrible. I started crying. This is the third time she’s done this since we moved into the house. It’s a pain to clean, and having to lean over the crib to clean it after having abdominal surgery isn’t an easy task.
I picked her up out of the crib, took her straight to the bathroom and gave her a cold shower. It wasn’t really cold. More like slightly under lukewarm. She hates showers as it is, and I figured, if it’s not comfortable for her, she might learn from it. She CANNOT keep doing this and I CANNOT handle the continuation of her doing this. Thankfully this time, most of the poop was spread all over the mat that comes out of the bottom of the crib. I made her help clean it. Of course, I had to go over it after, but I made sure she got to lean over, scrub it and smell it while she cleaned. She cried the whole time, but she has to learn she can’t do things like that! Poop is NOT the same thing as paint and I’m sorry, I know it’s my job as Mom, but I do NOT want to keep cleaning up her shit!!! LITERALLY!
Throught this whole shower, scrubbing and crying thing… Danny is still screaming. Maddi then refused to eat, and I just said forget it, and put her right back in bed. If she couldn’t behave, I wasn’t about to deal with it when I was so stressed and upset.
I finally got Danny to calm down enough to nurse. Which was good, because it seemed to really relax him. He went to sleep. I tried to put him back in his rocker, but anytime I moved him away from my boob, he started to whimper, so I just let him snuggle with me.
Dan came home. He brought some of those yummy Van der Kamp fish filets and a bunch of madrin oranges. Kind of cheered me up. I cooked the fish, and some peas, and got Maddi up out of bed so she could see Daddy. I felt bad for just putting her in bed, but I needed a breather.
We all ate dinner together. It was nice, and relaxing. It felt good. She even ate all her vegetables with very little coaxing. We had to help a little, but she did it! She even babbled at us during dinner, talked a little, and we let her have some of Dan’s chocolate soy milk and a mini 3 musketeers candy bar after dinner. We put Maddi back in bed, and she didn’t put up too much of a fight (after all, it was really late).
Dan had brought home a movie. “The Ugly Truth.” I liked it. We watched it together. Had a sweet night. Cuddled up together afterwards. Then, Danny woke up, and I laid down and fed him. He snuggled up on me, and just nursed and cuddled almost the entire night. Normally, he dosen’t just snuggle up. He’ll try to play or move around a ton, but not this time. He passed out on my boob.
That’s one thing I love. When he falls asleep on me like that. It just makes everything okay. No matter how bad my day is, when he snuggles up on me and just lays there with me, quiet and close, it makes everything feel to much better.
It was a hard day. I won’t lie. I cried a lot. It sounds stupid, especially since all the things that went so wrong might seem trivial, but it was a really rough day.
Then, this morning, I got to sleep in. Courtesy of my amazing husband. And then, instead of getting up in a bad mood, I decided today would be a good day.
I tried logging onto the school’s system but their outage was extended until Friday. At first it kind of upset me, but I decided, it’d just have to be okay. I went in the kitchen and made waffles for my little girl and my husband. We had brunch together as a family and just hung out together until Dan had to go to work.
I spent the day with my kids. I cleaned up the house. I got some laundry done. I picked up Chelsea from school and she came over and spent some time with us. We mad dinner. Salmon, cheesy mashed potatoes, corn and brownies. Chelsea and I made some of the mocha frappuccinos for Dan. We watched Ice Age 3. Then, we took Chelsea home, and when we got back, I sewed a few sets of nursing pads and experimented with some designs and different ways of sewing them, and I finally settled on one.
I took some photos and even added the listings to my online boutique. Speaking of which, I have been working on setting it up. For anyone who wants to take a peek at what the boutique page looks like, click here. I’ve been working on it. It’s not done, but it’s getting closer to being ready.
I think… What I’ve gathered from this… is that sometimes, it’s really easy to get worked up and wrapped up in the unimportant things that don’t really matter. Sometimes the people causing you stress and upsetting you so much, are the same people who can make you feel better and melt that stress away. And sometimes, you just have to decide you’re going to have a good day, or at least a better day, and hold yourself to it.
Yesterday, was complete and utter hell… But it got better towards the end. And today might not have been perfect, but it was better. I found some positivity in it, and that’s something special. Something to be proud of. Yesterday, there was no light at the end of the tunnel… But last night, I realized there was… I was just going down a hill, and for a moment, couldn’t see the light. But it’s still there. And I’m going to be okay.
keep looking »