Lumps, bumps, and Teddy Grahams

I know I said in my last post that I don't tend to do a lot of worrying in life, so what I'm about to launch into is really going to put my credibility into question. I accept that.

It's hard for me, though, not to worry about lumps.

But they're scary for everyone, aren't they? Haven't we all been conditioned to fear that mysterious lump that seems to have just appeared out of nowhere? And to then wrack our brains as to whether or not it did just mysteriously appear at all - or just maybe it's been there for ages, creeping up slowly and steadily in size, and now there it is whispering our name ominously, and oh God... what IS that? Am I dying? Okay let's just stop and be rational, we think. Don't Google it, whatever you do, you tell yourself - except well, it's probably best if I just have a quick little Google check. I'll only click on the first few links, and I promise not to visit a single forum. And above all bloody else, I'll stick to the code and I Will Not Press the Images Button. ...Okay I did. This is bad. It's bad. ...It's bad.

And so what, then, if that little lump shows up on your child? Dare I even venture down that path to explain to you how scary to the power of one hundred it is to see a lump on your little walking, talking toddler?

It happened to us once already - a lump, ensuing tests, uncertainty; a cancer scare - and behold, benign that little tumor ended up being, rendering us utterly and completely beside ourselves with relief. But little did I realize at the time, it ingrained within me a quiet, silent and steadfast fear - or a realization, maybe - that this baby girl of mine could be snatched out from under me at any time. Finding a tumor on my daughter inadvertently had this effect on me.

And this morning we found ourselves at the doctor's office once again, this time to bring to attention two tiny lumps sitting right below Margot's bottom eyelash line on her right eye. I will confess that they've been there for what seems like an eternity - probably six months or more - but as time passed, and they didn't disappear, I decided it best to talk to her pediatrician about it. She gave us a referral to an ophthalmologist, and this morning we made our way over with some distinct level of trepidation.

I really hate taking her to doctor's appointments, in all honesty. Without fail, the mood is light while we're in the waiting room, and then the moment a nurse comes around the corner and says her name, she loses all her shit. Every ounce of it. She screams, "NOOOO!" while tears careen down her face, then clings to me like should she release her grip from around my neck even slightly, the world will implode and all of humankind will disappear into oblivion.

So this morning, pre-appointment, I was tense. I coached her throughout breakfast, though, maybe as much for her benefit as for mine.

"We're going to go to the doctor's office today, okay, babe? Everything's gonna be just fine. Mama's going to be with you the whole time; and I need you to be a big girl, okay? No crying."

But sure enough, emotions exploded out of her face as soon as it was our turn to be called. It was a long walk down that hallway, loud and disheveled, but eventually we made it; and while I like to think we achieved calm thanks to my presence, my voice and my touch, there's really no question it had everything to do with three huge stickers and a little bag of Teddy Grahams that the nurse procured.

And, after a wildly successful examination, I'm relieved once again to report that these little eye bumps are nothing more than blocked oil glands, with no further need for attention in the foreseeable future.

Maybe I'm a worrier, maybe I'm a Class-A stereotypical textbook first-time Mother. Maybe both.

At any rate, we made our way back home and rewarded ourselves with some time together, gallivanting around in our backyard. Me with my camera, and she with her tummy full of stickers on the outside, and Teddy Grahams on the inside.

Breathing room, or lack thereof

I've been issued a court-legislated restraining order from my dear darling daughter. And by that I mean Daryl just got home after a day at work, and having had received a number of texts from me containing a long list of expletives, he all but stuffed my feet into my boots and shoved me out the door so that I could take care of myself and pick up my scattered pieces. Today started out completely fine, and then transformed into an afternoon of me grasping desperately at straws in order to gather my Qi and become zen, then failing miserably, then opting out of even trying anymore whatsoever. This afternoon in its final form turned into an angry mess of noise while Margot bawled her eyes out on and off for hours, and I yelled back at her as if I was ever going to win a contest by making my voice louder than hers.

It's amazing how I can hear a voice travel through my head on repeat telling me not to let my own emotions rise up, match or rival those of a cranky toddler - and yet disregard it wholly while my heart screams back that I do not care - and it does so with great indignation - because right now I'm angry and she's angry and the angrier we are the angrier we get and yes it's very loud in here but WE'RE JUST BEING HONEST ABOUT HOW WE FEEL. And honest communication is the pillar of any good and healthy relationship, right?

And because correct me if I'm wrong, but is there anybody else in this house at this moment who's here to deal with this girl? Or to whisk me away to a cloud of pillows and feathers and billows of dry ice, then take over my role as mother and comforter and disciplinarian and supporter and teacher and nose-blower and tear-wiper and and and and and...?

And if a tree falls in the forest, will a toddler who only napped for 45 minutes today express any notion of level-headedness or rationality when there's a blanket touching her arm (the nerve) or when her sippy cup isn't placed precisely in the south-west corner of her crib? NO. The answer is no. So if another tree falls in the forest, ....no. I just don't care. It turns out that today I'm inevitably going to err on the side of extremely and overtly irrational in my response. I'll issue a formal apology later. But for now, I'm stewing and decompressing. Because I'm lucky enough to have a husband who throws me out the front door, throw a handful of cash at me, and tells me to take the laptop and sit at Caribou Coffee while he insists that I don't dare walk back in the door a minute before dinner at 6:30.

Okay. Deep breaths.

I'm still a post-miscarriage pile of crap. Did you get that notion? I'm not writing frequently enough, I'm not nurturing my heart or my soul enough, and I've essentially turned into a sedentary lump that wafts between feeling like a firefly trapped in a mason jar, and like ...like a sedentary lump.

And how dare I yell and stew and swear and frown and stomp and whimper when I share my home and my life with this person?

I blew the dust off my camera the other day and took pictures of this heart-stoppingly beautiful human being; of this little person who nuzzles into my neck and tells me of her own accord that she loves me "so muts" and who laughs and dares me to tickle her armpits and who eats her weight in yogurt as though it's going extinct tomorrow and who dances with fervor to Sia's Chandelier and Toto's Rosanna and pretty much anything by Justin Timberlake.

Being a parent is an overwhelmingly wild ride. Raising a child demands of us every fiber of energy we possess, and then squeezes us harder at exactly the moment that we start to relent. It calls us to exercise superhuman levels of patience and humility, and to show unending grace even at our very weary worst, and somehow - somehow - raises us up all the while to do every one of these things with great and tireless love.

Even when we need to put our boots and coats on and lie down in the street and roll ourselves along down the road and drag our bodies by our cold and determined fingers to the nearest refuge / coffee shop for a series of long, deep breaths.

Lifting you up, up, up when you're feeling down, down, down

If there’s one message I might walk the streets hollering out at the top of my lungs, it would probably have something to do with reminding you that I’m okay, you’re okay, and that we’re gonna be okay. I’d probably be fervently reminding you that if you’ve just had a new baby, or even if it was kind of a while ago, those feelings you’re experiencing, and that voice in the back of your head that’s taunting you to throw in the towel – they will diminish and disappear. And while I can tell you with great certainty that hours or days or weeks later they’ll resurface, they’ll always just be hills or mountains that I know you can scale.

Because even though we’re all going through different things, as mothers, we’re also all walking down the same road. Whether a mother chooses to have an umedicated birth or an elective c-section, whether she endures episiotomy or vacuum or forceps, whether she births in a birth center or hospital or at home unassisted, whether she chooses to formula-feed or breastfeed exclusively, whether she opts for cloth diapers or disposables, or whether she chooses to stay home full-time or foster her career; we are all doing our absolute utmost to raise our babies and do exactly what’s right for them and for us, all the while bending backwards until our spines nearly snap in two.

Because no matter what path we're traveling, we’re all hanging on by a thread.

The weight we bear as mothers, as we hold up our children, our jobs, our partners and every other responsibility and relationship in our lives is nearly too great to bear on any day and over the course of every day.

Motherhood is hard; and nobody gets through those early days unscathed. Pregnancy, childbirth and parenthood are altogether rewarding, exhilarating, exhausting, trying, demanding, and beautiful. But if you’re new to this, if you’re on your knees, or if you’re barely scraping by, remember two things: you are not alone, and there exists an army of women behind you who support you and love you.

The things you’re feeling have been felt and endured by scores of women before you. I am one of them. Whether you’re experiencing postpartum depression or anxiety, or battling the overwhelmingly powerful effects of postpartum hormones, remember that this too shall pass. It gets better. It gets easier. Life has a way of priming us for greater challenges; and if you reach out, ask for help, and make yourself vulnerable, I promise you will feel the pull of that army lifting you up and out of that hole.

Sleep deprivation and postpartum hormones are a lethal combination – but they’re one that we’ve all experienced, and continue to. So again, I say: you are not alone. This will pass. And you are loved.

Today sucks and I am complaining.

As I write this, there's a little storm cloud hovering above my head; I'm sitting on a chair in my dining room gorging on chocolate peanut butter ice cream and effectively nursing a throbbing wound in a self-serving pity party. There's no question whatsoever as to whether I'm being dramatic, here - I am - but I'm on Day Four (going on Day Five) of single-parenting while Daryl's demanding work schedule requires him to spend nearly all waking hours away from home and the only time we're spending together are those quiet hours where we're fast asleep with drool running down our cheeks. Either that or we're conversing for fifteen seconds over which one of us should be on Margot duty since she's just woken up and is calling out for someone to hold her, and I make a point of taking every chance I get to lie in bed while someone else takes care of her.

But I digress. The amount of whining and crying and screaming I've weathered from one tiny human who stands, like, two feet tall has been far more than I can handle today. She was being a royal turd at home all morning, so I decided we needed to get out of the house so that she could be a royal turd somewhere else for a little while. I don't know whether she's working on a new tooth or going through a developmental leap or whether she's tired or gassy or what her deal is - and might I take this opportunity to implore the good Lord as to why he didn't equip babies and toddlers with some sort of adequate signage? - but at any rate, we were fresh out of Chill Pills in this house, so we went out.

And it was worth our while! I have to confess something, actually. It's something I feel weird saying, because this is entirely out of character for me, but I'm saying it anyhow: I went shopping. I bought clothes. Now for those of you who know me well, I absolutely loathe shopping. I can't stand it. My eyes glaze over when I stare at racks upon racks of clothing and over my dead body am I up for trying any of it on. Which is why Daryl, my husband, and Ashley, my middle little sister, are my saving graces and my personal shoppers - once every year or so, one or both of them has the opportunity to drag me through a few stores, grab stuff off the rack, and go, "Here. Try this on." And I obey, I fall in love with a few basics (I mean, serious basics. My wardrobe consists of jeans, t-shirts, tank tops and hoodies. I don't do "nice" well.), and we move on. Then I wear those pieces until they're full of rips and holes, and we start again.

So today I mysteriously for some reason took myself shopping at Target. We had just been there yesterday, as it happens (uh... I go there a lot), and I had walked past some really great stuff and I remembered how much I like Target's clothing. I usually buy all my clothes at H&M or American Eagle or Joe Fresh (if I'm lucky to be back in Canada!), so Target is never really on my radar. But today, because I was so at my limit and all my patience had dripped out my ears a few days ago, I went, and I tried on, and I bought. Only three things, I should say, so for me that's going crazy but probably not for you, but I felt better! Imagine that! I understood for the first time that feeling that people get when they need to shop out their frustrations.

Today just sucks, though. I swear I'm going to work on my attitude as soon as I'm finished writing this post, but I'm just so tired. Yesterday was a remarkably hot day considering how relatively mild this summer has been, and for some reason I thought Margot's nap time would be the perfect time to mow all the grass on our property. It took an hour, and by the end I was drenched in sweat, and I got a blister on the back of each of my heels and one on my hand, and today all my muscles hurt. And I'm tired and there's still laundry to do and dishes to wash and junk to put away and vacuuming to do and I think I've already swept the floors in this house 14 times today but I'm still stepping on crumbs and dirt and why isn't sock & slipper season here yet and I know that this is a run-on sentence and that it's just gratuitous complaining but it's my blog and I can complain about stupid stuff if I want to, right?

But why do toddlers have to be so hard? I mean, really - WHY do they have to be SO HARD? I should try keeping a tally of the number of times in a day I repeat myself saying, "Margot, don't touch that." "Margot, what did I tell you? Don't touch." "Miss Margot James. I have asked you nicely. You know that's a no-no. Do not touch that!" Then inevitably, "MARGOT. DON'T. TOUCH." And my voice comes out of my mouth sounding like Zuul's (please tell me you've seen Ghostbusters and you know what I'm talking about here).

Parenting involves so much push and pull and there are days where every limb is being stretched in a different direction and today just happens to be one of those days where the demands of motherhood and marriage and keeping a home from accidentally imploding became so great that I sent Daryl a text so long that it probably took him an hour and a half to read in full, in which I said something at least once about wanting to kill everyone I know. (I did say I was feeling dramatic today, didn't I?) I think I need a hot bath and a bottle of wine with a bendy straw.

Image source: Google Images

Sleep training is not for the faint of heart. It's also not for everyone.

I've mentioned in the past (here and here) that Daryl and I ended up with a horrible sleeper for a daughter; when Margot was a newborn, I answered her chirps and her whimpers and her cries as quickly as I could get to her, and she was always satiated by breastfeeding. It was what she needed, and I was beyond happy to do it for her. To this day, if she asks, I will provide; nursing her is my joy, and I don't plan on stopping until it feels right; and as yet, it doesn't.

When she transformed from newborn to sweet, squirmy little baby, though, our habits didn't change. I knew from things I'd read or been told that maybe I didn't need to keep up with such steady nightly feedings, or that by this age or that age the contents of her stomach at nighttime should be enough to last her through to the morning, but never at any point in time did I feel even remotely certain that her mid-night cries for milk should go ignored; because who was I to say whether or not she was legitimately hungry or not? Granted, there came many occasions on which I'd put my foot down - I'd be in the throes of such debilitating exhaustion and I'd say to Daryl, "I can't do this anymore. We need to sleep train her." But with all the gusto I had mustered up, talking about it and following through with it were vastly different. And as we quickly found out, I can't stand weathering her cries.

We started sleep training her in the beginning over naptime rather than nighttime, and I did some reading and research, but generally attacked the process with a mish-mash of various techniques. I didn't know what I was doing, and I wasn't confident whatsoever. I tried sitting at her bedside, although even with room-darkening curtains, white noise, and pre-nap nursing she just laid there and screamed at me. We shed tears together, and I questioned altogether why I ever thought this was a good idea. Hints of success waxed and waned, and I became a veritable lunatic documenting every single thing that happened, and every single wink of sleep that she got. I kid you not - I kept track of everything. I still (kind of) do - I have notes in my phone that span over a year and a quarter; and although they've gotten far less detailed and I've gotten less diligent, I can't see myself kicking the habit until Margot starts sleeping through the night.

Anyhow, I digress. Here lie Exhibits A through D, demonstrating a fairly roundabout curve of how well sleep training ended up going back in those early(ish) days last summer. These are some particularly noteworthy moments - little snippets from four different days, out of close to a million of them, I'd say - and please excuse the swears. Also, don't bother telling me your madness has never brought a slew of cuss words flying out of your mouth like confetti. This happens to be an example of me reigned in.

So eventually, if it's not obvious herein, I gave up. You might have noticed how heavily me-centric these notes are - Daryl wasn't involved in this at all. Not because he wasn't absolutely and wildly DESPERATE to have his hand at it, but because a) he was always at work during naptime, and b) my maternal instincts offered a staunch HANDS-OFF-I-DON'T-CARE-WHO-YOU-ARE ruling when it came to both my limits and Margot's. Daryl has an easier time letting Margot cry, whereas I can only withstand it for so long before I'm clambering up to her room on all fours. And in the later days, when I eventually conceded and asked him to help - acknowledging there wasn't a bone in my body that wanted to do this alone any longer - there were many a night were I would either be yelling and swearing at him, or he'd literally be holding me back, talking sense into me, to keep me from running into Margot's room and undoing everything we'd been working on. 

Can I say that IT. WAS. HARD. ? That maybe I died a little bit? I hated every minute of it. And here we are over a year later, and I can't tell you with any certainty whatsoever that it was worth our time. Actually, I should give us some credit; even though Margot still generally sucks at sleeping throughout the course of a night, our efforts at sleep training revitalized naptime - and in the long run, eventually bedtime itself. Those long days trying and failing at getting her to be alone in her crib did pay off, in that they taught her that not only was she in a safe place, but she was capable of falling asleep without a boob in her mouth. It was a rocky trip up a steep mountain, but I am ever so grateful that that hardship led to her putting herself down for naps after some chit-chatting to herself rather than screaming so passionately that I'm surprised our neighbors weren't knocking on the door to make sure I was still alive.

The moral of this story? I don't like sleep training. I can't tell you whether I agree with it or not. And nobody but nobody is going to know better about your circumstances than you are. Whether your niece or your best friend's baby or even one of your other pre-existing babies were sleeping through the night after three nights of dreadful Crying It Out, or whether you're like me and spent months not knowing what was up or down and came out with a kid who kind of gets it but kind of basically doesn't, please remember that you're okay; that you're going to be okay, and that you currently are. Seek help if you need it, and rest on your laurels if that's what you need to do. So what if your baby is utter crap at sleeping? You know autopilot? That system that kicks in and makes your legs magically walk into a pair of pants and your hands mysteriously pick up your glasses and put them on your face in the morning (maybe right side up, or maybe upside down. I did upside down once.)? Autopilot. It's there for you and it works and it gets you through all those days that you look back and don't have a single memory of. 

So don't ask me what I had for dinner last night, because I guarantee I don't remember whatsoever, but at the very least I hold my head high knowing I'm doing everything - literally everything - that I can possibly do for my daughter and we're both better off because of it. 

Trust your gut. Read as much as you feel comfortable doing, listen to the advice of others, but take everything you collect with a grain of salt. It can't be stressed enough that nobody knows your child the way you do, and nobody is going to have a better handle on what your baby needs than you. Your methods and tactics and habits do not ever have to measure up to anybody else's. Those other perfect-sleeping babies are not your baby, and that's a good thing. Because they're really boogery anyhow.

Your story matters, and this isn't a contest.

I know how easy it is to feel overwhelmed. Particularly when I was going through postpartum depression, I spent so much time floundering to stay above water. It was hard not to look at my life as a big-picture piece and wonder how on earth I was going to make it through the next five minutes, let alone the following weeks, months, or the entirety of my life as I knew it. I knew it was important to take each thing as it came, baby steps all the while, but depression and being overwhelmed tended to find me compounding issue after issue on top of one another until I was roughly the size of an ant standing at the bottom of a mountain of problems that I couldn't see how I'd ever get through.

I remember being in elementary school or high school and having my parents' friends brushing off whatever it was that I was going through - like if I said I was involved in this or that, or that I was up against x amount of assignments or exams, I remember these adults turning to one another and almost laughing at one another over how petty these issues of mine were, that I was calling "problems", so to speak. They'd talk to me and around me as though it was cute that I was feeling stressed about a test or social hurdles at school, but that if I thought that life was stressful now, I had another thing coming. Because as I can only imagine they were thinking, I had no idea what stress meant until I was up against things like mortgages or marital problems or employment struggles or the like. I remember on numerous occasions feeling indignant when adults made my problems out to be non-issues, when I felt very legitimately upset about this or that.

And now that I am an adult (well...am I? I could argue strongly that I'm still six in my brain; or that I'm actually still every age I've ever been - but whatever) ...or I should say in spite of the fact that I am an adult now, I still remember that feeling so vividly. I remember thinking how unfair older generations tended to be - that just because I'm only 16 doesn't mean I'm not a real person yet, that my emotions aren't weighty or legitimate, or that my experiences are somehow lesser than anyone else's. I remember being 18 years old and making a conscious decision to always remember what it felt like to be that age; that when I grew older, I needed to fight the tendency that adults seemed to have to make light or make less of what an 18-year-old was going through, or what things are like at that point in a person's life. I chose to make note of the importance of acknowledging the personhood of an 18-year-old; or of any teenager, because it felt important to me. It still does. I knew there would come a day when my own teenagehood would slip away from my memory - and it did - but I remind myself that even though they look like puppies and often act like idiots, they're muddling their way through life no differently than I am today.

I'm referencing this because I still very much notice this tendency when it comes to parenthood; whether it's brought on by people making passing comments, or even just by my own habit of holding my situation up next to somebody else's, I realized that this still exists today. We still have the inclination to belittle certain feelings or circumstances because we're holding them up to a greater standard - to think, "Oh, just you wait. This is nothing." It can be a mother of three telling a mother of one that she doesn't know what busy or exhausted means; as though a first-time mother feels even for an instant that she's got it easy. Or it can be a mother telling a mother-to-be to sleep now - sleep while you can - because as soon as that baby comes, you won't get a wink; as though they've forgotten completely how cumbersome it is to be in the final stages of pregnancy, and how little sleep she's actually even getting at this point - not to mention the gamut of emotions she's experiencing, notwithstanding total fear at what parenthood is going to end up being like.

Why aren't we investing more energy into supporting one another, and into reminding ourselves that the hurdles we face, no matter how paltry compared to someone else's, are not unimportant?

My struggles and your struggles are real, no matter how insignificant they may seem up against another person's; and that just because one person has fewer babies or a smaller workload doesn't make their struggles any less significant or staggering. We adapt, and we adjust, and life primes us for greater issues that we'll encounter along our way. So what someone else is up against, or what you might find yourself going through in the future, does not in any way belittle where you are or what you're feeling today. Don't let anyone make you feel like what you're going through is insignificant based on anyone else's situation. Your story matters.