Currently viewing the tag: "parenting"
Greetings from the front lines. It is full-on newborn time in here. Every day is another battle in the long war with sleep.
Last night we hit our first firefight and we’re down to a single diaper, but I still wanted to give a little update to let you know we’re alive and basically well.
The last weeks of pregnancy are no fun, but you have to live in this kind of denial. You want relief, but you know as soon as you get it you’re just signing up for a different kind of torture, one that involves sleepless nights and sore nipples. But at least you have your waist back, right?
So far my recovery has gone amazingly well. (And I’m not exaggerating. At 1 week out I’m already doing better than I was 6 weeks out last time.) It’s a good thing because there’s plenty else to deal with and worry about.
I am breastfeeding. Which is both a big triumph and a constant pummeling of my will to live. Graham was a big fat breastfeeding disaster, so I approached it this time with hope and trepidation. Tessa has fed quite well from the beginning.
I say she’s fed quite well in that she has been able to latch from Day 1 and is gaining weight properly and has required only minimal supplementing. So objectively, she’s doing great.
Subjectively, on the other hand, I have once again found breastfeeding to be fraught with emotional drama. If I can’t get her to latch for 5 minutes, the world has basically come to an end from my perspective. My value as a person is only as good as my last feeding. I know this isn’t true. And with so many feedings a day it’s not remotely rational, but it is mentally exhausting.
(In related news, why do babies have arms? They can’t use them for anything and they are constantly getting in the way of everything. Babies should be born arm-less, or in straitjackets, or something. Because sometimes I feel like I’m breastfeeding Bruce Campbell’s hand from Evil Dead 2.)
As far as sleep goes, we are dealing with a classic conundrum: the baby will not sleep unless she is up against a warm body. We got her in her bassinet a couple times her first night home, but no such luck since then. Mostly Eric and I take her in shifts during the night, leaving my Mom to sleep and then take care of Graham in the morning when we’re wasted.
She makes it look so easy
Co-sleeping isn’t a great option as Eric is a heavy sleeper and our bed is too soft. I do take her out sometimes and sleep on the hard guest bed in Graham’s room, though I always wake up with my joints stiff as my body refuses to move at all while the baby is next to me.
Complicating all this is that I’ve come down with a cold or allergies or some combination of the two. I have an itchy throat, watery eyes, swollen lymph nodes and a headache. It sucks. Especially since my sickness coping technique is usually a lot of sleep.
Last night when Tessa wouldn’t comply when I tried to feed her it was full-on meltdown time. I’m actually pretty proud of myself that it took me a week for a meltdown. After Graham they seemed to happen daily, I was a constant fountain of tears and craziness. Eric stepped in and made an executive decision. He stayed up with the baby for the night. I pumped so he could feed her. And then I slept for 6 hours. My boobs were sore when I woke up, but overall I felt a lot better. And then I let Eric have his own stretch of long (ish) sleep.
As frustrating as our system can feel sometimes, it seems to be working well day to day. Of course, we only have a week left with a third adult here. So we’re working hard to try and solve Tessa’s sleep dilemmas to make our lives a little easier.
I have made extensive use of my friends over at Isis. Having a lactation consultant you can tweet for advice is pretty great, I have to say. It helps to have a cheerleader, since even successful breastfeeding means you get to celebrate with razor sharp pain inflicted on a regular basis throughout the day. And a lack of sleep means that the most you can muster when you feel really proud of yourself is a half-hearted “yay.”
I haven’t lost my brain all together. I have read an astonishing number of books in the last few days. But there’s not much else to do when you’re on the 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. stretch. I knew it was getting rough last night when reading became more of a chore. I’m really glad I took that extra sleep.
Despite the trouble, we are enjoying little Tess. She’s a lovely baby and though her hair is darker and she lacks Graham’s monster overbite, she has a definite resemblance to her big brother. I also feel like her eyes are going to be brown… or maybe I dreamed that… it’s kind of hard to say sometimes.
The Bug and his Grammy and his therapists are doing well. Graham will now touch Tessa on the hand and takes great interest in her noises and whether she’s awake or asleep. Eric and I are able to spend some time with him each day between napping and feeding and such.
If only things could stay just like this for a few months, I think we could handle this all nicely. But for now I’m trying not to think about what happens when my support staff is all gone. For now it’s just making it until the next nap and the next feeding and going from there.
Speaking of which, it’s about that time again. Back to the battlefield.
Related Posts:
The first thing everyone wants to know after they ask us if we’ve slept (answer: no) is how the Bug is adjusting to having a new baby in the house. Despite our preparations, we had no idea how Graham would react.
There’s something about the role of big brother that gets a parent all mushy inside. I’m always looking after my Bug, the thought of him looking after someone else in his little boy way is crushingly sweet. Eric and I were talking about how strange it is now to have Graham and Tessa in the same room. With Graham we see a little boy with a personality, with Tessa we see mostly just potential. But knowing that they have a lifetime of sibling-hood ahead of them makes us really happy.
So far Graham is managing surprisingly well. We’re lucky that he still has therapy going 5 days a week so his schedule is staying normal and he has plenty of adult play and interaction. He’s been noticeably hyper, lots of running back and forth around the house, and a couple of extra tantrums. Those are the only real changes. If anything, his day is extra nicely regimented since my mom is handling most of his time. (She is also keeping the house running. I am hoping no one gets too used to it because she makes me look bad in comparison.)
Otherwise, he’s in a good mood, always excited, and with his Mom, Dad and his Grandma in the house, and with therapists coming in and out, he’s always got someone to say hello to.
When Graham came to see Tessa in the hospital he didn’t seem too interested. He saw the baby. He identified her as the baby. And then he played with the trucks Kathy got him.
Since we brought Tessa home, he’s been interested in her much like he would be had we brought home a cat. He always points her out in a room. He comes up to her and looks at what she’s doing. He describes all her actions. (Mostly that she’s awake, asleep or making a noise.)
So far he’s not interested in touching her (same as with a cat) but he enjoys it when she’s around. He calls her by name. He shows no signs of jealousy that Eric and I spend so much time holding her. Basically, it’s going about as well as we could have hoped.
The thing that kills me is that he fishes out his old baby toys and sets them down on top of her when she’s all swaddled up and being held. Graham’s been going to playgroups for a while now, and while he’s not so possessive that he takes toys away from other children, he has never given a toy to another child. He’s happy to show his toys to his therapists but he doesn’t exactly give them away. It’s the first I’ve seen of this kind of behavior, and the fact that he gives her baby toys specifically is just too cute to handle.
So yeah. So far so good. Our brother/sister team are happy with each other. At least, Tessa seems to be happy. She opens her eyes sometimes and looks at Graham. He squeals happily. I know it probably won’t always be this cute. But for now I’ll take it.
Related Posts:
January was a lot like December. Positive improvement. Increase in vocabulary and language skills. Good temperament. We got his articulation test back and it put him well within average for his age. He had an IFSP where we spent most of our time remarking on his improvement from his last IFSP. We visited the developmental pediatrician who gave us our diagnosis nearly a year ago and he’s very pleased with the Bug’s progress. He made it clear that he thinks the Bug will be a happy, high-functioning kid who will require less services as he gets older. Basically, our Bug is kind of a poster child for early diagnosis and intervention.
As has been the case for a while now, there’s been lots of reflecting on how the Bug has changed. Yesterday we were looking at the little book the Bug was given when he left his playgroup in the early fall. It has lots of pictures of Graham and other kids playing. But I was struck by the pictures. They’re similar to pretty much any picture of the Bug before recently. They generally look like this:
May, 2011. Vacant (though adorable) face.
November, 2010. Vacant face.
Pretty much as soon as we hit toddler-dom, we lost the baby face and went to this zoned-out look that was pretty much all we saw for a long time.
And then there is now.
February, 2011. Action shot and a big smile.
This isn’t just a kid who’s learned to say “cheese.” This is a kid who smiles regularly. It’s nice to see.
He is still doing his typical conversational style, where he notes something and repeats it, waiting for you to say it back to him. But he’s also making more complex sentences. And you can tell all the positive reinforcement from therapy is kicking in. Here is a typical conversation we have when he wakes up in the morning.
Bug: I hear the heater. Hear the heater. I hear the heater.
Me: You hear the heater?
Bug: (in sing-song teacher voice) That’s right!
The funny thing about all this progress is it’s starting to scare me. Not that I don’t want him to do well. But we just started our IEP. And I worry that the school district will say he’s doing great, needs no services and that he won’t get into a preschool.
He is doing great. He’s also getting 25+ hours a week of therapy. (We now have therapy every morning and every afternoon, except for Thursday afternoon. It’s seriously a full-time job being the Bug.) I hear horror stories about regression and I don’t know what will happen when the Bug can only get therapy through our insurance instead of as an Early Intervention kid.
I want him to continue to do well. I want him to get weaned gradually off of the help he’s getting now. But I don’t know that that’ll happen until he’s in a more structured classroom setting like 1st grade, not so much the play of preschool.
I try not to worry too much. He hasn’t had any of the evaluations yet. There’s no point in me worrying until we get there.
We are in the early stages of working on discipline. Definitely relying on incentives and they generally seem to work. The biggest obstacle is just toddler distractedness.
One thing I’ve been paying a lot of attention to in the past couple weeks is that he’s turning back into the little perfectionist he was before therapy. Everything has to be JUST SO and if it’s not he freaks out. This doesn’t really surprise me much, knowing who his parents are, but I am trying to keep it from leading to bigger outbursts.
The other day our Early Intervention worker complimented me on calmly talking him through one of these small episodes. It was nice to be complimented. But I do feel like some of my parenting attitudes have a lot to do with therapy and a lot to do with the fact that it doesn’t matter much to Graham if I raise my voice or get upset. Back in the day, it wouldn’t matter what I said to try and calm him down so I just stopped getting upset. There was no point. Now it’s serving me pretty well as I feel pretty able to handle him calmly.
Oh, and have I mentioned he likes to count? He doesn’t always start at one, but he does pretty well when he’s in the mood. That Sesame Street is kicking in pretty fast.
Related Posts:
Recently I’ve found myself wishing we’d moved to Boston before we had kids. We could’ve had a cheaper one-bedroom in a neighborhood of the young and hip. We could’ve been car-less city-dwellers. We could’ve explored and taken advantage of everything the city has to offer. It seems there’s always festivals, parades, tours, something fun and free.
I’m not saying I don’t want the kids. Just that it would’ve been nice if the timing had worked out a little differently somehow. Now we are here in Boston, and the longer I’m here the more I realize there is to discover. But as time passes I have less of a chance to discover it. It’s a nasty little paradox.
Silly babies. They make having a social life so hard, don’t they?
I’m not working now so hypothetically I could be out and about. The Bug is a good enough companion most of the time that we can manage visits we couldn’t before. (When the new wing opened at the MFA, the Bug wasn’t trustworthy enough to go without the stroller, and he was still in that phase where the stroller could never stand still or he would freak out. We speed-walked through the exhibit and I saw very little of it.) We’ve finally reached a point where we can go on cool outings… and I’m too pregnant to be able to do it.
With my lack of ability to stand for more than a couple minutes I can’t go to any of the cool Museums I’d like to wander through. I am missing the MFA’s Degas and the Nude which makes me so so sad.And the Studio Ghibli film series. Can’t buy any advance tickets for that. I still haven’t been to the ICA. The Isabella Stewart Gardner has reopened and I can’t enjoy it.
Even without the Bug, I’m not much for night life either. Eric’s birthday is next week and while I’d like to go out and do something together, I don’t know that it’s very likely. (This is kind of an ongoing theme for us lately, given our not-exactly-celebrations of our anniversary and my birthday late last year.) Today there was an online deal for dinner for 2 and a half bottle of wine at Four Burgers, which I’ve really wanted to try.
But what if the baby comes early? And even if she doesn’t come early, will we be able to get it together enough to find a sitter on a night that Eric is actually around? And is it a total waste to get a half bottle of wine when I can have half a glass AT MOST? The deal expires in mid-March. And what are the odds that Eric and I can get out to dinner in the month after the baby comes? Do we want to bring the baby with us? (Really??? We are not those people. I know many people are. But we are not. It’s possible things will be different with the new baby, but given the Bug’s infant tendency to be fussy whenever we took him anywhere, it wasn’t a habit we got into.)
And then there’s a multitude of blogging events coming up over the next two months. Unless it involves sitting down to eat, I haven’t been able to go to anything for a while already. (Thank goodness for my Brunchers, who meet on the weekend when I can usually manage a couple hours out while Eric stays home with the Bug.) I’m turning into a blogger hermit! And now I’m out of the picture for a long time to come.
Yes, I know people exist in the world after they have babies. But I can’t make any plans. I don’t know how my recovery will go. I don’t know if I’ll be successfully breastfeeding. I don’t know if I’ll have a mellow baby or a colicky one. So maybe I can make plans eventually but I can’t now.
And then there’s the week off Eric has at the beginning of April. It’ll be only a few weeks after he comes back from his paternity leave. Usually we use a week off like that to take a little jaunt up to Maine. And yesterday I saw a deal for an inn right in the area we usually stay that would be perfect.
Except… will we want to go anywhere? As we are not generally kid-takers would we be comfortable leaving them? Would we be comfortable taking them? Will we be too exhausted to leave our house? Will we sit there in semi-vegetative states for the week?
It’s impossible to say.
I know it’s healthy to approach the post-baby days with flexibility. But it’d be nice if everyone else just stopped doing cool stuff for a while.
As for me, I am making one tiny plan. I asked for a membership to the Isabella Stewart Gardner for my birthday. At some point, I shall load Tessa into a carrier, strap her to my chest and we shall walk through the museum and take our time and maybe even eat in the divine little cafe. That will happen. Maybe not for a few months, but it will.
Related Posts:
A few months ago our lead therapist was transferred off the Bug’s case and replaced by a new one. Our new therapist told us he’d seen our old one recently and the first thing she asked was, “How’s he doing with food?”
Not a surprising question. But I bet she was surprised by our new therapist’s reaction, he seemed kind of puzzled. “He’s doing great!” We’ve reached some big milestones lately and I thought we’d cover how we got here.
Eating can be an issue with any toddler, so I don’t think this is isolated to autistic kids. The kid who eats anything and then nothing is an age-old tale. (My brother only ate peanut butter sandwiches or spaghetti with clam sauce for most of his childhood.)
At 12 months the Bug was a reliable eater of solids. He ate pretty much anything, including my Mexican Casserole. He got lots of veggies, especially zucchini and carrots. And he already had his abiding love for raisins. It stayed that way for a while.
Around 17 months this changed. A lot. The Bug became a grazer.
There were two major contributors. First, the Bug became very picky and wouldn’t eat many foods he would have accepted before. I don’t know why this happened, but it did. Second, we ran into some serious communication problems.
It was around this time that I started worrying about the Bug’s communication, which ultimately led to his autism diagnosis a couple months later. The Bug began to get picky and wanted specific things to eat. But he had no way of letting me know. He wasn’t yet pointing. He wasn’t talking. He would stand at the gate to the kitchen and get more and more upset as I tried to find what he wanted.
It was brutal for both of us. I compensated by putting out little bowls of almost everything. I couldn’t give him raisins all day (which is probably what he wanted) but he had no way of understanding when I told him ” no more raisins.” For several months, much of my day consisted of ever-escalating crying and screaming from the Bug as I helplessly tried to meet his requests.
Eventually we began introducing some new foods and saw a little improvement. Cereal, crackers and frozen go-gurts became staples. But mostly we continued to work around his temper.
When therapy started, there was a heavy focus on communication. Once the groundwork was set, we focused on responding positively to his requests. If he asked for food, he got it. Sometimes he would ask for something particular. Sometimes he’d go into the kitchen and point. So he was still a grazer, eating what he wanted when he felt like it. But he was eating something and he wasn’t as upset. We took it as a win.
Around the time Graham turned 2, we focused on having him eat one or two bites of one food before he could get another food he liked better. It didn’t go too badly, but we found out from the pediatrician that Graham was underweight. I had a few explanations for this. Graham had stopped drinking whole milk and mostly requested water when summer came. Plus he would sometimes forget about eating all together when he was caught up in play. So we went back to his grazing style, though we started to incorporate more foods to try and made sure he was getting plenty to eat.
One thing I did that made a lot of the communication-focus period easier was finding foods I could feed the Bug quickly once he asked for them. Fruit was great (apples, bananas) so are the fruit/veggie pouches. Granola bars. Cereal. Cottage Cheese. Applesauce. Frozen waffles. Frozen chicken. Brown rice. Anything microwaveable had to be ready in less than a minute. It made the system a lot easier when he got his request met quickly.
As time passed, this became less urgent. I started giving him pasta, which he had to wait for while it cooked. He didn’t like waiting, but waiting was one of his programs in therapy so it was a word he understood. He started to understand the concept of getting food “hot.”
Finally we found ourselves with a Bug who was back at a healthy weight and who could request any of his foods. It took several months but now he specifies what granola bar he wants by the color wrapper. (Orange for peanut butter, purple for oatmeal raisin, etc.) He knows an orange must be peeled. He will request some foods hot.
So what was the next challenge?
Now that we’d overcome communication and made food something the Bug knew he could access, it was time to add structure.
My new attempts started last week. I was a little ambitious and decided to add 2 things at once.
First, I wanted to get vegetables back into his repertoire. Every couple months I try and fail, but this time I felt like we have the vocabulary to talk it through. I also suspected he’d eat more than he let on. Another advantage of his time in daycare this fall was that I saw what he ate every day and got good reports that he’d eat his food. I suspected he avoided new foods in part because he was at home where he knew he could get what he wanted.
Second, I wanted to institute more formal meal and snack times. Therapy is often interrupted by Graham’s requests for food, so I decided he would now have Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. And a snack in the morning and afternoon. There are already meal time pictures for his visual schedule so it was easy to get that started.
When it’s meal time I call the meal by name. Sometimes I choose items for him, sometimes we talk about what he wants. If he’s getting a treat I let him choose it. Or if it’s a granola bar or cereal he can choose which kind. At meals I serve him two or more items and a drink. The biggest challenge right now is trying to contain mealtime within 30 minutes. He is constantly up and about.
I’m hopeful that as he gets more used to it that we will move meals to the dining room (right now he does them at the table in the living room where he does therapy). The eventual goal is to have him eat dinner with us when possible. That would be a great improvement over now, when we can never eat until the Bug’s gone to bed.
As for veggies, I started simple with green beans, peas, corn and carrots. For ease and simplicity I’m using canned for now. At our first attempt, I used green beans and the Bug eyed them warily. He ate all of his chicken but couldn’t be bothered to touch the beans. I told him he could have his “treat” (I believe it was one of his granola bars) if he ate one bean.
The Bug is quite the actor and he did a good job of picking up a bean, inspecting it, putting it down, putting a bean on a fork, moving it toward his face, putting it in his mouth, and then pulling it right back out. But eventually he ate the bean. And then he ate all the rest. As I suspected, it was all about the first step.
Since then he has requested veggies at lunch in addition to having them at dinner. We’ve been successful with all 4 veggies. Our one hiccup was when I gave him peas & carrots, which he finds disturbing for reasons I can’t discern as he likes both peas and carrots. (Perhaps he will be one of those my-foods-can’t-touch kids?)
So far it’s been a great success despite a couple bumps in the road. I’ve ordered a booster seat so Graham can sit at the dining room table (once we actually set it up…. that’s another story) and I’m planning to continue to expand his palate.
What I’d love to hear from you is how you got your picky toddlers to turn back into normal food-eating kids. In particular the Bug needs more protein in his diet and I’m curious about which meats or beans I should introduce him to and how to do it. I still rely heavily on foods that take minimal preparation and plan to keep it that way for a while so I don’t mess with a good thing. Perhaps one of those microwave-egg things? He used to eat lots of scrambled eggs but hasn’t taken to them lately.
Any tips you can share about getting your toddler to eat meals or new foods?
Related Posts:
I am not usually the wrap-up-the-year type. But 2011 was the year this blog actually came together instead of just being a place for me to post cute pictures of the Bug for friends and family.
The blog was a huge source of comfort for me this year. It started as a safe place for me to talk about my concerns about the Bug before his diagnosis. I took my time about it. I slowly walked around the subject. I’d already been in the thick of worry for 6 weeks before I brought it up on the blog. But once I crossed that threshold it became easier and easier to talk about it. And because of the blog and Twitter I found so much support and community.
Of course, one thing I mentioned only casually on the blog at that time was just how bad I was feeling in general. Not just the autism stuff. No, we’re just talking good, old-fashioned depression. I had a rough time after Graham was born. Not the immediate PPD kind, but around 6 months things were tough. Eric was interviewing for residency, he worked long hours, the Bug seemed to get harder as he got bigger, and I was working out babysitters for my work schedule. In April 2010 or so I started seeing a psychiatrist. At least, I did until we moved in June.
By the time 2011 rolled around it was really important for me to see one again. I’d quit my job. My husband was gone almost all the time with a high-stress job. My child was developmentally delayed. I was living in a new place with no family or friends. It was not pretty.
A year later, I still have that psychiatrist. I got a job, and then left it. My husband is still gone almost all the time with a high-stress job. My child is still autistic. And we ended 2011 on a very very rough patch.
But still… my feelings about my life at the end of 2011 are so much better than they were at the end of 2010.
I know the New Year is kind of this arbitrary time we all sit and reflect. But there’s nothing wrong with reflecting. And when the last couple years have been this crazy, I think it can help. We seem to be heading upwards. And I have little reason to doubt that 2012 will be a better year than 2011. That certainly isn’t how I felt in 2010 or 2009. These last few years have been so overwhelming, so consistently full of change and trouble.
But there’s a bright forecast now. And I owe so much of that to this blog. Having this place to work things through and all of you to work them through with is invaluable. Plus I feel like I’ve been able to make this blog just what I want it to be. It’s never a burden. I never sit there thinking, “Ugh, what am I going to post?”
It’s kind of crazy how optimistic I am. I am kind of in denial about the whole new baby thing. I had a rough go last time. I have no reason to expect things to be different. Maybe it’s silly for me to feel so good about it. But I do. I guess it’s been the theme of this pregnancy. We weren’t planning another baby quite yet. Not that I wasn’t thinking about it. In fact, I wrote my post to the non-existent hypothetical baby after the actual-existing non-hypothetical baby had already been conceived. Whoops!! Just goes to show those pregnancy hormones kick in early and I had big-time baby on the brain. Still, after we recovered from our surprise at learning of the baby’s existence, we’ve been really happy and optimistic about everything.
So I guess it’s not just 2012, a baby on the way kind of stands for hope, doesn’t it? We really needed some hope this summer, halfway through the year, wondering how Graham’s therapy would go, wondering how we’d juggle two jobs and our household. But everything shifted. Our whole perspective just changed. And I feel like that change has penetrated every corner of our lives.
We started heading upward right around the time this baby announced her presence. So I feel like there’s no reason to think we won’t keep going right on up.
Of course, I wanted her to be a mellow, quiet thing. The last couple days she has kicked so hard she makes me gasp. So….. maybe not. But I’ve managed my pregnancy better (not that it’s been easier, per se, but I’m handling it better) and we have the baby girl we wanted and I am so looking forward to the 4 weeks Eric has on paternity leave to just enjoy our little family and all our visiting family.
Maybe 2012 won’t be as great as I hope it will. Maybe I will lose my mind in the craziness of having two children. Maybe I will decide that I want to go back to work, but not be able to find a job. There’s still a lot up in the air.
But I feel good.
And that’s something.
Related Posts:
Find the Mess
About Me
Jess is a procrastinator, a former working mom who is suddenly staying at home, a Dr-Dr's wife, a non-practicing lawyer, an Autism Mom, a devoted reader, a penny pincher, a coupon clipper, a new New England-er, a low-key agnostic, a nice girl, a top-notch speller, a hardcore blogger and a Twitter fiend.
The blog covers everything from coupon tips to Autism support to adorable toddler pictures to hilarious tales of my daily grind with the occasional review & giveaway thrown in for good measure.
My Networks
