Daily?

Jackie, 11.5 weeks

Well, I guess I was being a bit over-zealous thinking that I would be able to write every day. I probably could if I liked the Qwerty keyboard on my iPhone, but I just can't do it.

**I also just realized that I did write this week and totally forgot.. wow, I am really tired. I pretty much wrote the same thing I did in the last post, so here I am deleting a few paragraphs so I don't look like a psycho. Wow, I still can't believe I don't remember writing on Thursday...**

The end of the week was a bit more pleasant, and as always, she was great with my friend "S" on Saturday who has been babysitting her since 2 weeks old. I can't seem to figure it out.. all I can determine is that I smell like milk and being around has her want it a lot. When we have S over to watch her, she gets a bottle and falls right asleep. Aye, to be a mom.


My dad and his girlfriend are coming in today to visit all this week so writing may be tough, but I'm sure I can get a few posts in. Hopefully the weather will be better and we'll be able to get out in the sun with Jax. If Mother Nature is nice, those high 50s and low 60s I'm seeing and salivating over will really lift all of our spirits.


Onward and upward..

Note to Self

It seems that every day I have a day from hell, Jax gives me the next day, and maybe even the next, of rest and joy. I keep having to remember that she is a human being too and maybe on some days she has a bad day, doesn't feel well, or wants to be moody. I mean, she is a girl :)

I also have to remember that her growth right now is insane. For all I know, her crankiness could literally be due to growing pains!

Yesterday and today she has slept a lot, which in the past states that she's in a growth spurt time. Her smiles have been readily available and she's talking to all the inanimate objects in her room.. "learning" to talk. It's actually quite cool to watch, but I keep looking for things to stimulate her. All I do is watch where she is looking and explain each thing that she's looking at.

Earlier today, it was her lamp. Little did I know all the cool stuff we bought at IKEA would be a baby's playground :)

Thankfully I'm almost back to normal. I'm also fairly certain that if I get enough sleep I can deal with anything.

Although there are some tough decisions to make and work to get in action about to re-create my life, I have gotten some inspiration over the past couple days and I guess it's time to act on it.

The life of a mom.. or maybe, it's just the life of a woman.

Inspiration? What a concept.

I just saw that it was exactly a month since I last wrote. Wow. It seems like that was many, many months ago.. it just goes to show that having a newborn has you tethered to the clock and has a day feel like a week in itself.

Yesterday I was feeling somewhat desperate. This happens once and a while. Jax will be crying all day for no apparent reason, and I wonder how I'm going to get thru the day, no less the days following the bad one. So Dr. Phil comes on today (and as an aside, I know people will make fun of me for liking him and watching his show, but for whatever reason, his advice has worked for me on a number of occasions and I like things that work, so there) and show happens to be about "Stay at home moms vs. Working moms." There was this really uppity woman in the audience that was a "stay at home mom" that was very, very angry. She had opinions, but they really were judgments. She made all the other stay at home moms embarrassed and the working moms pissed off. Go Jessica.

On the show, Heather B. Armstrong was in the audience. She has a blog called dooce.com. I checked it out as soon as Phil mentioned it, as I knew it would probably be flooded with people trying to get on. I looked at the blog and found it interesting.. I haven't gone back into much of the archives, but seeing that she is an award-winning blogger, I thought it would be "more" than what I see, but again, that was just at first look.

I bring this up as she gave me the inspiration to blog on my current experience--very candidly. Maybe even daily. I have been told by a number of people how great of a writer I am, and I'm honestly not worried about being candid, etc. I also feel that I have a stance on being a mother that not many have--or maybe it's that we are scared and embarrassed to share so we stay isolated in our houses talking to ourselves or to our babies that don't even understand English yet.

I just ran this idea by a friend of mine as one of my only concerns was that Jax would see this later in life and it would be tough to read. He said if he saw a blog from his mom later in life, he'd probably have a good laugh reading it. So here we are.


I still need to write my "Breastfeeding Basics: The Real Basics" blog as I think I have an obligation to write it. There are some things in life where I feel I need to let other people know, and in this case new moms who choose to breastfeed, that they are not alone. Usually when I feel this, I did feel alone at the time and due to my research and own day to day goings on, I feel it could help others.

I will write that blog and I know I need to fairly soon as the weeks are passing by quickly and I may forget some of the juicy details. But man, were those 4 of the longest and most challenging weeks in my life--ever.

But I digress.

I know that I'll have time to blog each day, even if it's just a paragraph, as you can see from this one, I have a lot of time on my hands. This doesn't mean that I'm up, eating Doritos all day and watching TV.. it just means my baby is sleeping, I feel awake and I now can interact, even if it's on a blog or Facebook, with other adults.

I'm at a point now, at 11 weeks today, that I'm feeling isolated. I feel even more isolated than I did when Jax first came home. I think that was due to people checking in all the time, knowing that my husband and I would be on sleep dep, and generally that's the time when you really need a lot of help. I'm blessed that I got the help I did from a few people and I wouldn't trade that for anything, but what happens now?

I just completed my first mom's group last week. I had expectations that were not met, and here I am again disappointed. This happens a lot. I did meet a couple women who I'd like to keep in contact with, but I'm also old enough to know the reality of that. Unless we see each other at least weekly for the next couple months, everyone will have their lives and that will be that. I also found when I was in the group that out of 10 moms, I was the ONLY ONE STAYING HOME. Although I guess I should have expected that due to the economy, I had yet another expectation that didn't get met. In a room of new moms, I was still alone.

I just reached out on Facebook and to some past colleagues at Berklee regarding what I could do with an 11 week old that didn't include being stuck in the house. Luckily I got a response from one of my colleagues fairly quickly with some sites to review. I'm hoping there's a listing for mom's like me, because if I have to wait another 3 months before I do anything, I think I will be severely depressed. Why is it that most baby groups start at 6 months?????

Maybe writing will help me stay sane. It has in the past, but that was with the "old fashioned paper and pen method." I still like that method, but I sure can type a lot faster than I can write, so we'll stay with this bloggy here.

To close for now, a big shout out to Heather for the inspiration, Dr. Phil for having her on and having a show on moms, and my friend D for encouraging me to not care about the future so much and do what makes me happy NOW.

That sounds like a plan.

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