For Crying Out Loud

I’m not sure if our grandmothers in “days of your yore” (I’m not exactly sure when exactly “the days of your yore” were) dealt with different “camps” of mothering as we do today.  When I read literature, I see that there were certain hard-held beliefs that even crossed women then.  Nursing, and the lowness of it as seen by a culture comes up in literature.  In the last book I read, there was a lot of questioning the judgment of a woman went to a hospital to give birth after her previous 11 births had delivered stillborns.  Maybe there is nothing knew under the sun.  Maybe we mothers have always judged each other.  Modern science has sure not helped the judgment issue with mothers.  Mothers expect each other to be up on the latest research, and modify themselves to do what the research says, or you must not want what is best for your child, and therefore, you don’t love your child enough.  This is why I hate “studies say…” comments.  The sheer volume and ability to get this research over the internet doesn’t help matters either.

I feel isolated sometimes, with my lack of ability to fit neatly in any of these camps.  Take for example the Cry-It-Out (CIO) camp, and the (I’m not sure what to call it) Attachment Parenting (AP) camp.  The mothers who let their kids cry to sleep, and the parents who will not.  You’d think with it being that black and white I’d fit somewhere pretty easily.  Well, maybe I do, but my kids don’t.

Silje got to a point where she needed to CIO as a baby.  I would rock her until she was drowsy, and then gently lay her down.  Just like the book said.  Maybe it was because she stopped nursing around 6 months.  She didn’t mind formula, or a pacifier.  However, it got to a point where rocking her made her mad.  Her paci made her mad.  She wasn’t sleeping and she was mad about it.  At that point my belly was beginning to grow David inside.  Sometimes I was able to get her to nap in my arms, but then I would be held prisoner in the rocking chair for almost 3 hours a day because if I dared to lay her down, she would wake up and I would pay for my selfishness for the rest of the day.

It reached a point, where Knut and I decided something needed to change.  I was struggling with PPD at the time.  The very sight of the rocking chair got her screaming.  I couldn’t nurse her because my milk dried up due to me getting a terrible bout of the stomach flu for a few days.  She liked the paci, but felt tricked by it at naptime.

It took 3 days of CIO and then we had a sleeper.  Each of the 3 days got easier, and naps became quiet.  She was happier.  I was happier.  Neither one of us looked hazed and exhausted at each other.  In my mind, my daughter needed something, and I gave it to her as difficult as it was.

Then there’s David.  He was colicky.  I was not about to lay down and let a baby cry who was in pain.  After we discovered gas drops, our world changed and he began to sleep.  I got into the practice of laying him down and letting him “fuss” at a younger age than I started with Silje.  He didn’t scream his lungs out, and never cried past 30 minutes or so in the beginning, and then he didn’t cry at all when I laid him down.  He more just laid and complained for a few minutes and then he was done.

Then Elias.  He was a whole ‘nother story.  2 major things were different with Elias: hospital stays and baby-wearing.  First, he was a preemie.  We were separated from birth for a very long time.  After birth I did not get to hold him, and I only got to see him after 3 hours.  After we had our meeting and he was stable, he left in a helicopter for a bigger city with a NICU unit in their hospital.  I stayed overnight in the hospital we gave birth in, and cried my eyes out to the nurses.  Meeting him again in the NICU unit, he felt so foreign to me, but I still felt so almost violently protective of him.  The poor NICU nurse who had to deal with me and how I wanted things…

Pretty much I didn’t like anything she did and we had to get mediators…more than once.

Mama bear showed up.

At night I did so much research online to try and figure out how Elias and I could recover from our separation at birth that was very evidently (to me) having an affect on me.  It didn’t feel like it did with the other kids.  I learned a lot about kangaroo care, which led to some research on baby wearing.  I made myself a ring sling and took him with me everywhere once we were home.  Where I was, he was.  We were inseparable.

Not only that, but as he was getting bigger, a simple cold would put him in the hospital for a few days.  His lungs were still weak, and he would need oxygen and monitoring until a cold passed.  It wasn’t until he was 2 years old that he was strong enough to handle a cold outside the hospital.

We had our fair share (Elias and I) trying to fall asleep in strange-jail-looking-metal-bars cribs in the hospital, and I got a system down quick.  It worked great except when I would spend 45 minutes getting him to sleep and then 5 minutes into his nap a nurse would come in, flick on the light and say “time for a blood draw!”  Ugh.  I’ve learned to hate hospital protocols.  I mean, I like what hospitals do and all, but I’ve seen the dark side of chucking reason out the window and making your legal butt covered.

So I got a lot of practice putting a sick fussy baby to sleep without upsetting him as much as possible.  When he was home, he was in the sling pretty much all the time.

Ironically, he was my first baby who never needed to cry it out.  It got to the point where I could lay him down at nap time when he wasn’t even rubbing his eyes, and he would giggle to himself as he fell asleep.  The world was funny and sunny to Elias.  He loved naps.  I’d get a good hug and snuggle from him, an enormous smile, I’d lay him down, and he’d draw from some funny memory of the day, and giggle himself to sleep.  I’d never seen anything like it.

His naps were legendary.  They still are.  He’d take a 4 hour afternoon nap, and be ready for bed at 8 with the other kids.  Now that he’s almost 3, his naps are sometimes as short as 2 hours.

With Solveig, she had a normal, term birth, however I had really gotten attached to the idea of “wearing your baby.”  It was so much easier!  My collection of baby carriers grew to include a faux-Moby wrap and an Ergo, which I pretty much use all the time.  I wondered to myself if Elias slept so well  because he was held all day, and not in spite of it.  I wonder if I was feeling up to the brim a baby’s need to be touched and loved, and therefore anxiety about being left in the crib weren’t an issue.

I don’t know if my theory is correct, but Solveig has not had a problem sleeping either.  Well, she’s not quite as easy going as Elias.  I have had her “fuss” for a few minutes when she’s all swaddled up and doesn’t want to lay down.  It’s never exceeded 10 minutes, though, and it’s often less than 3 and even more often…not at all.  She also fusses only when she’s been overstimulated by being out of the house and at a party or some other get together for an extended amount of time.  So basically, she “fusses” every few weeks or days, depending on the busy-ness of our family, and even then, for 2 minutes or so.  She doesn’t laugh herself to sleep like Elias.  I often nurse her to sleep, and no longer care if it’s “the right thing to do.” 

So what am I?  Am I in the CIO camp, believing that you have to let a baby figure it out for themselves and cry bloody murder, and just get over that hump?  Do I believe you should rock your baby to sleep and avoid crying at all costs, because it raises the stress hormones in their bodies which has an impact on brain development, and therefore I should always wear my babies and never put them down because crying is the worst possible scenario?

See?  I don’t fit in the camp.  Here is what I am…it’s my own camp:

I am my kids’ mother.  I see their needs and find solutions.  

I’m in the “Silje, David, Elias, and Solveig’s mother camp.”