Sleepless nights and exhausted days

Last night was a bad night. A very bad night. It started out as a good night though. Buddy Bear went to sleep easily (!) and quickly (!!) at 9:15 instead of his usual 10:30 and he seemed to be down for the night. Yes, he was awake every hour and needed help going to sleep again, but that’s pretty normal in our house.

 

And then 1AM rolled around.

 

Buddy Bear woke up again and he was in a foul disposition.

 

He didn’t want to be in his bed. He didn’t want to nurse. And he DEFINITELY did not want to go back to sleep.

It was starting to remind of all those children’s books we read Buddy Bear when he doesn’t want to go to sleep.

This is the cutest book ever. I love it. Except for when Buddy Bear acts like the baby bear.

But when its happening in real life at 1:30 in the morning, its not cute.

 

Eventually after some cajoling by both his daddy and his mommy, Buddy Bear finally went to sleep. At 3AM.

 

And then he decided it was time to start the day at 8:00 this morning.

 

Yes, 5 hours later.

 

And then Mr. Man forgot to make the requested 8 bazillion cups of coffee I requested, instead making just one cup for each of us. I think he is a sucker for punishment. And at this point I think it would be more efficient to just eat the bean then to waste time making a second pot of coffee.

 

Have you ever been in a sleepless situation like this? PLEASE let me know I am not alone! But not that this is what I can expect for the next 18 years. I don’t want to know that.

 

So today, I broke out the big guns.

Garnier Anti-Dark Circle Eye Roller

This is my secret weapon on days when I feel like if the rings under my eyes get much darker, people will start to think Mr. Man is abusing me. (He’s not) It works, its relatively cheap, and I don’t have to fuss around with a colour chart trying to determine what shade I am. (You would not believe how hard it is to find pasty white on a foundation colour chart) I love it, and I use it most everyday.

A little trick I picked up quite by accident is navy-blue eyeliner. By some optical illusion using navy-blue eyeliner makes the whites of your eyes appear more white (and essentially less pink) making you look less tired. Sneaky sneaky.

And the age old trick of napping when your baby naps. This is one of the most popular pieces of parental advice EVER. Because it works.

 

What are your tricks for surviving sleepless nights and exhausted days?

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The thing about motherhood that scares me…

If I were  to pick one thing that scares me, do you know what I would pick?

EVERYTHING!

No surprise. After all, in the past 8 months of being a mommy, I’ve had quite a few freakouts already. Like this one, or this one…

But, those are already old news, as I’ve already discovered new things to freak out about. In fact, I have so many that I made a list. Am I the only one who does that?

 

1. That I have screwed up as a mother and created a hybrid of all of mine and Mr. Man’s worst qualities. (Needy, opinionated, self-centered…)
2. Never sleeping again. We’re in the process of stopping changing our co-sleeping arrangement and I am stalling because I remember how hard it was in the very beginning when I was up every 2 hours. I don’t know if I can do that again. Which brings me to…
3. Having more children. I can hardly keep myself together with just 1 baby, how do people do it when they have more kids?
4. The discipline and parenting part of being a parent. Until now my main job has been to feed and clothe Buddy Bear, but now I have to help him become a mature and responsible person who loves God and works hard and, and… *freakout* This is hard!
5. My baby growing up. One day, very soon my baby will not be a baby but a grown up man. He’s already growing up too fast!
6. His diet of Cheerios. I swear, some days all he eats in the solid food department is Cheerios! Yes, they’re easy to eat on the run but I have a feeling there should be more variation in his diet.
7. That I won’t be able to love our other children as much as I love my Buddy Bear
8. That I will never be caught up on the laundry. Seriously, I can work all day on doing laundry and the next day we have a full hamper of dirty laundry. For real?
9. That my children will discover that my Top-Secret-Super-Delicious-Mom’s-Special-Recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies is on the back of the chocolate chip bag…
10. Discovering that all the time Buddy Bear has spent in proximity to my laptop during our nursing marathons has given him superpowers… What? I never said it was rational!

Am I the only one that has fears like this? Is there anything that you worry about in your current stage of life?

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A fever in the night

34.5… 36.4… 37.3… 37.4… 37.6… 37.8…

If you’ve ever taken a baby’s temperature with a thermometer you know that dreadful feeling as you hold the thermometer in place (usually with a very squirmy, sometimes fussy baby) and watch the numbers continue to rise. This was where I was last night.

Buddy Bear woke me up last night at 4am, so I semi-consciously reached to pull him in to nurse (and go back to sleep quite honestly) but as my hand touched his feverish skin I was instantly awake and in panic mode. My baby was burning up! I jostled Mr. Man to wake up and get the thermometer as I held our precious little boy. As I sat on the bathroom floor trying to hold Buddy Bear still enough to take his temperature, my mind raced with all kinds of fearful thoughts.

Why was he sick?

At what temperature does brain damage happen?

Do I give him Tylenol?

Do I let nature and his body do its thing and fight the fever without drugs?

HOW CAN MR. MAN BE SLEEPING IN A TIME LIKE THIS?

Oh, no! His temperature is still rising! How come its still rising?

Why is it so hard to measure out baby Tylenol? This stuff should be easy to administer! Don’t they realize what kind of nutjobs will be using this? Crazy parents at 4 in the morning do not need to mess around with bubble in their medicine droppers!

 

As I sat with Buddy Bear on the bathroom floor and tried to get him to nurse, I flipped through my mental catalogue of The Stuff I Read Once on the Internet. Was he teething? What was it that that one blogger did when their baby was teething? You would think for all the things I read in a day, I would be able to recall something useful when I need it. But no.

But that’s why they invented Google, right?

Sometimes I wonder how people were parents before the internet. Or maybe they were better parents because they had to rely on their parental intuition and their community when their babies were down for the count, instead of the all-knowing but completely uninvolved internet…

Holding my fussy little boy I snuck back into the bedroom and jacked Mr. Man’s iPhone. If I couldn’t figure out what to do, at least I could look it up and go from there. (Yes, I was also hoping that Buddy Bear’s crying would wake Mr. Man up. If I was panicking, we could at least panic together!) Babycenter advised that a baby’s temperature naturally rose at night and gave me some numbers that I can not find now regarding when a baby technically had a fever (which were higher than the numbers our public health told me FYI). I took Buddy Bear’s temperature again, and while it was still high it was lower than it had been when he first woke up, so I tucked  him back into bed with me and decided some sleep and mommy cuddles were necessary to help him feel better.

 

Am I the only one who freaks out about everything in the middle of the night? What makes you panic as a Mommy? Let’s talk about it!

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Mommy-Town

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

One of the first things you learn as a new parent is that “It takes a village to raise a child”. This is usually followed by a crash course in selective hearing, but that is a whole other story… You see, what they don’t tell you in this little proverb is that unlike most other life situations, for the most part you get to choose who lives in your child-raising village! It’s like you’re the mayor of Mommy-town!

 

 

You choose if you are going to let the crunchy mommies into your Mommy-town.

You can decide if you want that Tiger Mom wannabe taking up residence in your Mommy-town.

Is your Mommy-town going to be filled with trendy, of-the-moment, all the newest theories and ideas mommies?

Will I let the judgy-mommies take up residence in my Mommy-town?

 

These are decisions that we as moms have to make as we learn how to love and raise our children. The people that we allow to speak into our lives will affect how we raise our children and who we become as mommies. Within the confines of loving our children and wanting what’s best for them, there aren’t a whole lot of wrong ways to be a mom.  But there are many, many different ways to mommy your child and it can get so confusing trying to sort through the million different voices to figure out what works for YOU and YOUR family.

 

So bring alongside people who can help you raise your child. Who are on the same team as you. Who you can call when you’re having a very BAD day and have them remind you that “You can do this. You’re going to be ok. No one will notice if you haven’t swept in a month. Promise…” Maybe they practice the same style of mommy-ing as you. Maybe they’re your mom, your mother in law (you both rock, BTW) or your neighbour down the street. Maybe they have 10 bazillion kids and you have just one. Maybe they live in your computer and you’ve never seen them face to face. Maybe you’ve been friends since preschool and being moms is just one of the many things you share. Maybe they believe in Dr. Sears and you believe in Dr. Spock. But most importantly they believe in you. They are there for you when baby isn’t sleeping well and checking up on you when you haven’t been to a social engagement in weeks because your child is a terror whenever you leave the house. They’re a part of your Mommy-town and without them, being a mommy just wouldn’t be as fun or as sane.

 

Who’s in your Mommy-town? Has it been populated naturally or have you been intentional about the people that live in your Mommy-town? Do you live in anyone else’s Mommy-town?

 

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