Raincity Mama

I got the word at work that the “possibly/maybe” busi­ness trip has turned into a ten­ta­tively sched­uled busi­ness to Toronto in the begin­ning of March. Part of me is excited for the prospect of the learn­ing events and I get really, really excited at the prospect of sleep­ing alone in a bed for hours at a stretch. Giddy in fact.

Then I feel guilty about feel­ing excited in the first place. The kids still nurse at night, they co-sleep with us. If I’m going to go away for five days/four nights I have to get them night weaned and I need to get them to go to sleep with­out me nurs­ing them to sleep or being in the room. It feels impos­si­ble. It feels like I should have fig­ured this out long ago. I have a ten­ta­tive plan. I’ve been read­ing Dr. Gordon’s plan and an arti­cle by the Sears’ and both seem like plans with will work for our kids. I know that they are capa­ble of sleep­ing with­out nurs­ing, I’m just dread­ing their com­plaints about chang­ing their routine.

In the time it has taken me to write this post I’ve been upstairs three times to set­tle the kids back to sleep. Now, granted one has a fever and the other is get­ting over a cold so I expect that is why they are unset­tled, but it seems crazy that I’ve had to go up three times in an hour and a half.

The first step in our plan is to get the kids’ room ready. They have a room, they’ve just never slept in it. When they were new­borns they slept in a co-sleeper attached to the side of our bed. There was no way I was going to wake up and trudge down the hall to deal with two babies. I still enjoy co-sleeping with the kids but I’m unsure of how suc­cess­ful we will be in night wean­ing if they stay sleep­ing  by my side. I’m also wor­ried that mov­ing them to their room will be too much of a change to  be added to by the night wean­ing. That said, I’m plan­ning on sleep­ing in there for the first few night to get them used to their new room.

So when do we start? We were hop­ing to drop the kids off at my par­ents tomor­row so that we could clear out all the stuff we’ve been stor­ing in the kids’ room but if the child with the fever is still fever­ish tomor­row I don’t want to make my par­ents deal with a sick kid. Once the room is cleared out we will put the spare queen sized mat­tress in there and get them used to their new room.

Crap, I hear a cough­ing kid. I hope this cold or what­ever it is goes away soon because there is no way I will start night wean­ing sick kids. Wish me luck!

My son is 21 months old and doesn’t speak. We had his hear­ing checked and it is fine. We’ve gone to the Speech and Lan­guage Pathol­o­gist and she says that his lan­guage acqui­si­tion is fine but he is sig­nif­i­cantly speech delayed. What this means is that he under­stands most of what we say and points and grunts or signs to get what he wants. He does not say “mama”, “dada”, or “Elmo”. His twin sis­ter says all these things and more. When you com­pare how many words they know they are pretty much on par for recep­tive lan­guage. On expres­sive lan­guage he lags behind just a tiny bit only because we are strug­gling to learn signs at a pace that meets his needs.

The SLP doesn’t want me to teach him signs for every­thing. She thinks that by giv­ing him signs for every­thing we are remov­ing the need for him to express him­self orally. She wants me to teach him the spo­ken word for an item and not the sign so that he will need to use the spo­ken word to get what he wants. I feel con­flicted about this. Once we started teach­ing him signs for things like “cracker”, “apple”,“milk”, “book” he had so many fewer tantrums. It was amaz­ing! So many tantrums were just about him not being under­stood and I’m feel­ing resis­tant on not teach­ing him a sign just see if I can “make” him speak.

I am learn­ing that there is very lit­tle value in try­ing to “make” my kids do cer­tain things. I can’t make them sleep or eat and I’m begin­ning to think that mak­ing them speak needs to be added to the list. I could refuse to give him a book to read unless he says “book” but I see that turn­ing into a bat­tle of wills. While I would love to hear him say “more cracker please” I’m con­tent to repeat the signs and speak the words back to him and keep him stocked in crack­ers and see him gig­gle with glee when he sees that I do under­stand him.

I  still nurse the kids to sleep but for my daugh­ter it is a 50/50 shot as to whether or not she will actu­ally go to sleep with­out fur­ther inter­ven­tion. This post is about what get­ting her to sleep looks like.

We lay in the dark and she flaps her arms and unlatches. She rolls over and rubs her eyes and starts to chat­ter. We came upstairs to bed because she looks exhausted but for some rea­son her body wants to stay awake. My son is asleep so I pick her up and take her downstairs.

We enter the dark­ened liv­ing room and she says “pick a boook and read?” as I start to pace across the rug. I set­tle into a com­fort­able stance and she puts her head down but it pops right back up. “A nurse?” and I sway as I pace the room. I am silent and con­fi­dent that I can help her go to sleep.

She puts her head back down and I feel her hand fid­get. She moves try­ing to find a com­fort­able spot to set­tle in.

Sway, sway, sway.

“A boook and read” is more of a state­ment that an request and she barely lifts her head. I feel her legs flex­ing and her hands open and close as her body fights off sleep. I’m tired myself, bed­time has been going on for over an hour, I just want her to go to sleep. I stay quiet but I start to dis­pare that she will never go to sleep.

Sway, sway, sway.

Her body sinks into me as she starts to drift off to sleep when sud­denly her body jolts as if giv­ing one last effort at keep­ing her awake. I feel a spark of hope.

Sway, sway, sway.

Sweat start to form on her head and her breath­ing slows and deep­ens. I stand on the rug sway­ing with her in my arms. I watch check the clock. I’ve been down­stairs with her for 35 min­utes. My feet are cold and my back aches but if I try to take her up to bed right now she may wake so I stand there for a few extra minutes.

As the min­utes tick past I find myself feel­ing frus­trated that this is turn­ing into our rou­tine. It’s only upon reflec­tion that I can see that this won’t last for long. That one day she will refuse my embrace.

After five min­utes pass I creep across the floor and start up the stairs. She barely stirs in my arms. I pad into the bed­room and crawl onto the mat­tress. My son is still asleep, he has barely moved. I gen­tly lower her body and she sighs as I pull my arms away.

My arms feel weight­less after hold­ing her for so long. She is grow­ing so fast, they both are. I watch them sleep for a brief moment before I slip out of the room. I feel happy that  I was able to help her get to sleep. We won.

There is noth­ing like an unan­nounced absence from a blog right? The only thing bet­ter is the lame-ass post giv­ing the excuse. Well, see, the thing is my grandma died and then my grandpa was hos­pi­tal­ized and then hol­i­day depres­sion got me in its grip. I was feel­ing sad and lonely and since this blog is so new I didn’t think that any­one was read­ing it reg­u­larly and there­fore no one would miss me. The thing is that I missed writ­ing. And with that, I’ll get back to post­ing semi-regularly.