Cheryl Katz

Because of the fires in San Diego, our day care center was evacuated for proximity to the fire zone and for resulting air quality. I had my daughter with me for the entirety of last week.

I’m the only person in my department, so ultimately I had to bring her to work with me to at least complete the bare minimum of keeping-my-department-above-water tasks for the week. (Which, with a mobile one-year-old around, was about all I was able to accomplish with maximum effort.)

Normally Sami and I nurse only at night and in the morning. I nurse her when I pick her up from day care, after dinner, before bedtime, once in the night, and in the morning before we get ready to go. During the day she eats and drinks solid foods at day care, and from the reports I get, she is quite the little eating machine.

But on the weekends, when we are together practically nonstop, she is not as interested in solid foods. I still offer her regular meals and snacks, but she is more likely to chuck food on the floor and ask for nursies when I am around.

So my boobs are thinking something like this:

Monday! We’ve been making milk all weekend to keep up! Make lots and lots of milk! (Where did the demand go?)

Tuesday! Aaaahhhh… demand dropping off. OK, we’ll slow down production during the day. No problemo.

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, blah blah blah.

Saturday! Arrrgggh! WTFBBQPhDMSBSQ! Where is all this demand coming from! Produce produce produce!

Sunday: Keep on chuggin.

Monday! We’ve been making milk all weekend to keep up! Make lots and lots of milk! (Where did the demand go?)

And so the cycle normally goes.

But with a week of constant togetherness, my milk production is pretty royally out of whack. So today is Wednesday. And it appears that my body is confused, because LAST wednesday we nursed all day. In fact, we nursed for pretty much nine days straight, through a cold, no day care, and a reduced solid food consumption. Getting back on our normal weekly roller coaster of nursing is proving to be difficult.

I know that it’s just time before my body catches on that things are back on more of an even keel. However, at 10 AM today I found myself hand expressing into a coffee mug, trying to find a balance between relieving the painful pressure and encouraging more milk production. I actually momentarily considered pumping milk to send to day care with Sami, but she really gets enough milk with the nursing we do all night and every morning. I fear she’ll be nursing until college if I don’t encourage her to eat big-girl foods when she is open to doing so, like at day care. Furthermore, pumping doesn’t ease my weekday oversupply problem, only exacerbates it.

So I will have to wait this one out.

I still maintain that there is nothing more disappointing to the mom of an exclusively breastfed baby than dumping liquid gold down the drain. It’s so hard to get up to production speed when the kidlet is first born; I’m still conditioned to feel as though every drop is sacred. With a toddler on the eventually-one-day-weaning track, I just have to get over that.

Being back at work has been great for me, and I think being at day care has been great for Sami so far, but I don’t consider this to be completely hammered out just yet.

I need to improve my health and fitness. I’ve been working on eating habits for a while, because those have been fairly easy to control. I’ve regulated my sleeping habits by necessity, as I get the longest stretch of sleep by going to bed not too long after I put Sami down. So far so good.

The last stand is exercise: I’m racking my brains trying to figure out where I can carve a half hour here and there to work out.

Here is my typical weekday:

5:30 – 6 AM – Day starts.

Wake up, get washed up, dressed and do Sami damage control. Last nursing, get Sami diapered and dressed, have coffee if I remembered to make it. Gather up necessary items for me and for Sami for the day, and get out the door. Hopefully Ben has moved his car.

6:45 – 7:30 – driving Sami to day care, dropping her off, driving to work. Sometimes earlier, sometimes later depending on traffic, but I am usually at the office around 7:30.

7:30 – 9 AM – most productive hour and a half of every day. Hands down. (Except now that Ben has started getting here earlier, a little bit less so.)

9 AM – 4 PM – work, work and work some more. Since I can’t stay late to finish things, I really just bust my butt all day to make sure things are being done according to schedule.

4 – 4:30 – administrative work crap; filing, uploading reports, assessing what is left to do for the next day

4:30 – 5:30 – going to get Sami and driving us both home. Blah traffic.

5:30 – 8 PM – hang out with Sami, make dinner, give Sami a bath and read books, playtime, bedtime.

By 8:30 she is usually out cold, without exception. She will probably wake up around 12 or 1, and if I’m lucky go back down until shortly after I get up at 5:30-ish. Sometimes I’m not that lucky.

I don’t want to break into the evening time with Sami, because that is essentially all of our time together during the week. By the time Sami is asleep, I am completely wiped. The thought of putting on a yoga video even for 15 minutes is incomprehensible. Given the choppy nature of my nights of sleep, I don’t see waking up earlier as an option.

So is it possible for me to squeeze out more time? (Especially moms who have made this time, tell me how you do it!)

Perhaps this is not a solvable problem at the moment; just a question of getting Sami through teething so that she sleeps more soundly, and then being less exhausted myself, and then taking that half hour or hour after she’s gone to bed.

I really need this fitness kick, for the energy boost and because I want to fit back in more of my clothes. Weekends are easy, just trying to keep my house clean and indulging my cooking/baking frenzy are a workout enough, but I also have time to play at the park with Sami and go for walks. Two out of seven days isn’t nearly enough, but something is better than nothing, eh?

My stroller wheels are being replaced, after which time I can start devising a stroller-related fitness plan.

Why do I need to replace my stroller wheels? Well, not all of them. One rear 16″ inflatable wheel, and the front 12″ inflatble wheel.

On Saturday, my mother in law and I set out to take Sami for a walk in her stroller. As we passed the neighborhood gas station, it occurred to me to add a little air to my stroller tires. I inflated the rear tire to a tender yet satisfactory pressure, and moved on to the front tire.

Said front tire exploded about two seconds into inflation. Not only were the inner tube and rubber tire blown out, but the galvanized black plastic wheel frame itself was cracked, along with my index finger severely bruised and the skin next to and under my middle finger nail punctured. (I have a picture of that nail before draining; I will assume that no one wants to see it. Gnarly.

I realized later that 35 psi in a tire about a quarter of the size of my bike tire and 35 psi in a car tire are the same, yet different. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t try to pump each tire for very long with the industrial pump. It was psst, psst, psst, done.

Well. An hour after we got home, parked the stroller behind an overstuffed chair, washed up my hand and were about to sit down to dinner, the rear tire exploded too. Also cracking the wheel hub as well as blowing out the inner tube.

I know that I certainly, unintentionally exceeded the pressure limitations of the tires. It just never occurred to me how little inflation effort is required to achieve 35 psi in a tire that small. I suspect it’s a mistake that others must make from time to time as well.

It’s not shocking that overinflating the tube resulted in the tube bursting. What I find shocking is that a) the force was sufficient to break the hard plastic wheel itself and b) that there isn’t some kind of pressure-safety release valve to ensure that parents and children are not injured making the same mistake I made.

My hand was minorly and annoyingly injured, but otherwise, no one sustained any injuries. No big deal in the end. And the stroller manufacturer, after re-iterating that the pressure limitations are mentioned in the manual and on the tire, is shipping me replacement wheels. So all will be well that ends well.

The stroller is the BOB Revolution, for those who are interested, and let the record show that I am satisfied with the company’s response, and otherwise quite happy with my stroller. I don’t recommend against the stroller, as long as tire inflation guidelines are followed.

It started for me when Sami could finally crawl – she didn’t need me to get around any more. That was a small step, so joyful and not as bittersweet as the developments yet to come.

A month ago, Sami started sleeping in her own room. After an initial adjustment period, she sleeps better and I sleep better when we are in our own respective beds. I miss her a lot; at times it’s all I can do to keep myself from bunking down in the twin bed in her room, and when she wakes mid-night, nurse her back to sleep cuddled up. (Truth be told, when she wakes for her 4 AM feeding, sometimes I do fall asleep in there. But that isn’t by design, and I recognize that it’s not the best thing for separating our sleep habits.)

Letting go affords us both a better night’s sleep; hanging on lets me feel closer to my baby for a little bit longer. I’ve chosen letting go, because I think that’s what every mom must learn to do gracefully, and because I think it’s better for us both in the long run.

Besides, if I hang on to babyhood, how do I find out what comes next? Toddlerhood looks like it’s going to be pretty cool.

Going to day care and then preschool are next steps in her growth from a baby to a kid. While I’m wistful about the transition, it’s exciting to see her take off, form relationships with other kids, and ultimately to watch the ways in which she needs me change.

She eats real food; she doesn’t need to nurse all day long. She walks, and doesn’t want me to carry her (as much, anyway.) She expresses herself through babbling, gesturing and signs, and doesn’t need me to trial and error her needs any more. She’s turning into a real little person with not just personality (she’s had that all along) but her own unique ways of interacting with and conquering her world.

Letting her sleep in her own room, letting her to go to educational environments where she can play and learn with other kids, letting go so that her world gets a little bigger; this is all practice for the bigger steps I’ll have to take, like letting her go to the mall with her friends, letting her drive a car, letting her get her first job, go to college, move away from home.

I’m just thankful these changes all come in stages, and the stages go quickly. There isn’t time to mourn the last change before a new one is upon me.

When I outlined this post in my head, it was intended to be a positive follow through on last night’s post. However, my one year old is recovering from shots and grappling with her second (and apparently final) round of teething. She goes down to bed easy as pie, but her sleep is choppy at best, and so is mine.

So above all, I have to say that the key to overcoming the general overwhelm of early motherhood and the mild to moderate baby blues is to get your kid to sleep as much as possible, as early as possible. It was so easy for me to become trapped in my own confusion when I wasn’t sleeping enough to really recharge at night.

I can say this with clarity because for about three weeks, Samantha was sleeping for 6-8 hour chunks in her crib, in her own room. The time before the season of sleeping is nearly a year-long blur, and now that I am in a period of upset sleep, I can identify just how valuable it was.

Beyond just a laundry list of the last several months and all the problems that cropped up, there is a point. Becoming a mother is a difficult transition, harder for some than others. It’s okay to admit when it’s hard and ask for help, whether that’s extra hands to get the dishes done, a sympathetic ear over coffee, or a regular monthly therapy session.

I think it can be really difficult to identify what the problem is and how to solve it. It took me nearly a whole year, because the very idea that something was wrong clashed so loudly with the mental picture I had painted of How It Was.

I’ve been keeping my head down and working on some domestic and personal problems since early July. But I’ve regained my stride and I’m ready to peek above the surface again.

When I decided to stay home full time to take care of my daughter, I was met with many raised eyebrows. I met those eyebrows and raised them some self-sustaining arguments about how thrilling motherhood is, and how I could barely imagine working ever again.

This was the truth, right up until it wasn’t, but somewhere along the way I lost track of how I really felt about it. While I was “basking” in the “glow” of being a new mom, and coming to terms with the depth and enormity that is truly loving my child, I wasn’t owning up that every minute at home was not uncontrollable bliss. It was uncontrollable, yes. But it wasn’t always bliss.

Looking back on it now, having been back at work since early July, I can honestly say that being a professional mom destroyed me a little bit. This has nothing to do with Sami, and everything to do with the critical eye I always have trained on myself. I’m torn over my feelings on the subject, because I know that the year I spent with her full time was immeasurably good for her, and we are incredibly bonded and in tune. On the other hand, I completely discounted everything that I was able to accomplish with her, and began to think of myself as lazy, unaccomplished and worthless.

This is what all those raised eyebrows were seeing, months before I saw it for myself. It is hard to come to grips with giving up a life full of quantified goals and tasks and leaping into motherhood, where problems and solutions aren’t always very clearly defined or easily solved.

I really admire women who can stay home with their children; this is not to say that stay-at-home-motherhood is for suckers. Actually, I believe precisely the opposite: staying home is a challenge that ultimately bested me. But for my own sanity and the future of my family, I need to be back at work.

I don’t claim my own destruction lightly. The damage I did to myself had an enormous impact on my family: at a rough estimate, $20,000 of debt we didn’t have before Samantha was born. I took all my exhaustion, frustration and feelings of powerlessness and expressed them through the power of my credit cards. I spent to feel better, but ended up feeling worse as I struggled to hide purchases from my husband. The hole kept getting bigger, and I kept shoveling deeper with every attempt to fill it in.

Eventually my husband found out, and the cycle ground to a halt. At first I struggled with the shopping addiction alone, feeling even more trapped by the limitations of recognizing what I had done. With time, I sought therapy, and the treatment has allowed me to learn to control my kneejerk reaction to purchase things when I am feeling unsettled.

Working – having a sense of responsibility that has tangible requirements and results – has been immeasurable. I feel that I’m contributing to the household (while in reality as a professional mom, I *was* contributing, but I wasn’t able to recognize that in my own personal case.)

For the first two months back at work, I had Samantha with me. (Our family business afforded me that temporary convenience.) I babyproofed a play area for her in my office, and when she became cranky I’d tie her to my back in a baby carrier so that she could be soothed to sleep while I still got work done. The past month, Sami has spent with her grandmother, having a blast every day at the park, and we have found a preschool that will take her in the near future

Sami is almost 13 months old now. She’s been walking since 11 months, she babbles happily, and she is a sweet, bright and loving child. She shares her binky with new and old friends alike. She’s blowing milestones away, and is healthy as a tiny horse. As far as motherhood goes, I couldn’t ask for better results. I’m grateful for the flexibility I’ve had, and the precious time I’ve been able to spend with her. (Working makes me appreciate every second a hundredfold more.)

But it’s time for me to get back to a place where I feel like I am a fully functioning member of my family and of society, and not just the devoted slave responsible for the care of my child. In the long run, Sami will benefit from a mom who can identify and meet her own emotional needs along with the material and emotional needs of the rest of the family.