She knows

It seems obvious that bilingual baby knows something is going to happen. She knows because we talk about it. I make many promises that once the baby is born, mami will have milk again. That alone could be what wakes her up in the middle of the night. So, yeah. She’s been waking up in the middle of the night. Up for a couple of hours. She nurses for a while and then we turn to books. It’s so early we can’t actually see anything so we have to lie there and say the parts of the books we remember.

Last night was the funniest so far. I couldn’t see the book she had picked out so I pulled it close to my face to figure out what I was seeing. After that, every page she turned to, I’d ask if she could see and she’d pull the book close to her face and we’d start laughing. This went on for a while. I think she pulled out another book but it was early…

At some point, she just curled up next to me and fell asleep.

Clickity click click

I have been thinking a lot but not blogging a lot. I have been reading a lot of other people’s thoughts. Here are some I’d like to share with you until I can come up with something else to say. Go on, click on the link and read what these people have to say.

Mojan’s recent post on Motherhood

She talks about how being a mother amplifies, on some days, her own inadequacies. She finally faces her “mirror” and realizes that it reflects back the most when she is looking into it the most. Very honest. Very sweet.

Arun’s post on what he and his family did during Earth Hour

They did some star gazing with the help of Stellarium, a program that helps you figure out what you’re looking at. Arun’s blog is a great one! He’s sincere and lighthearted while sharing what he’s learning about being a dad.

Susan’s post about healing after chemotherapy.

This is from a strong woman who won’t let cancer change her desire to be healthy, happy (she’s completely full of life!), and spiritually dedicated. She has also shares her drawings of flowers, a beautiful addition to her recovery.

Enjoy!

Random thoughts converge

Yesterday was a big cleaning day. I had been meaning for a while to clean the tub and the floors in the bathroom (something that I overlook when doing a quick-clean there) and we had accumulated a bunch of stuff on the floor of the rooms- plus I wanted to vacuum. After we had breakfast (bilingual baby ate a whole egg and 3 homemade pancakes- yum!) we got to work. We also were doing laundry (which had been neglected all week) as we cleaned. Once the rooms were picked up and vacuumed and the bathroom was spotless, I had this urge to purge. I wanted to go through some photos I had uploaded to a yahoo account years ago. At the beginning of this year, yahoo merged with flickr so all photos were now on a flickr page. All I had to do to retrieve them was to delete the ones I didn’t really want until I got to the ones of my Baha’i pilgrimage, which I had lost on an old computer a couple of years ago. I was deleting when I realized I couldn’t even see the set from Haifa. I tried to recall any downloading sessions that I might have done months prior to no avail. They weren’t there.

After those first couple of minutes of panic I calmed down and thought about what these photos represented. To be honest, I never feel like any picture I take fully captures the whole moment. Regardless of whether or not I would be able to find these pictures (I only made one print of one picture- my favorite) I had still gone on pilgrimage. I had still been in the Holy Land for 9 days, still been to the Holy sites, still prayed in the Shrines, still taken the sherut more than once to visit Bahji. Through this process I regained the feelings that I came back with after my pilgrimage- a real gift if you ask me.

I had an amazing dream a couple of nights ago that I can’t tell you about. It’s the sort of dream that you have that once you open your mouth to tell someone else you almost loose the dream. What I can tell you is that I have never had a dream like this before. It was so tender and yet so sad, though I didn’t wake up crying. Let’s just say I’m moved.

I read a pretty incredible post from Enjoy Parenting. He says that the best way to parent is to enjoy doing it. He sets up his static post in a question/answer format. The first question is: Are you saying it doesn’t matter how I parent, so long as I enjoy it??? He responds with: “I’m saying that enjoying IS how you parent when your parenting is most successful.” A bit of it goes in circles which, I think, is meant to help the reader reconsider how she was thinking in the first place. His response to the question: How can I learn to enjoy parenting under any conditions? is answered by inviting us to signing up (for free) to the website. By signing up, you can browse other topics he writes about. He also does one-on-one and group coaching so he is looking for clients. On the whole, it’s a great site. He blends together the ideas from the Continuum Concept, Unconditional Parenting and Attachment Parenting. Let me know if you find it useful. It’s definitely making me more aware.

Parenting is like…

I’ve been reading the book, Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn. In it is a quote I’d like to share with you:

“When you come right down to it, the whole process of raising a kid is pretty damned inconvenient, particularly if you want to do it well. If you’re unwilling to give up any of your free time, if you want your house to stay quiet and clean, you might consider raising tropical fish instead.”

There’s more to be said about this book. I like it. It’s challenging and is making me really consider why I say the things I say, rather than just go along with whatever I blurt out.

Doesshesleepthroughthenight?

Ok. Mothers. How many times has someone asked you this question?

At first, I always feel like saying, “She’s a baby!” and laughing. (Honestly, folks, she’s a baby. She’s not old enough to sleep without waking up and nursing or peeing.) When I react this way, I get the funniest looks. As if my answer didn’t answer their question. So then I proceed to say that she does. I’m then countered by the follow-up question, “She doesn’t wake up at all?” Then, I talk about the fact that she does wake up to nurse but falls back asleep pretty easily unless there’s something else going on with her. “What big eyes” comes next.

So, really, the “doesshesleepthroughthenight” question is a springboard for the next comment or set of comments. It doesn’t upset me to get the question and I’m not rude to those that ask it. It just amazes me how important a small baby’s sleep is to others. I’ve heard that in other countries what a baby is eating is the question that replaces the sleep question. It’s interesting that Americans are so concerned with sleep- which makes sense since this is quite the overtired population. We do too much, don’t slow down and when we do, we think we should be doing “something”. Milk every minute, you’re lead to think. In that case, wouldn’t Americans be more interested in whether a baby nursed during the night (bad pun but I’m trying to make a point here ) and used every essential resource to its full capacity? (have I gone too far?)

For the record: On a typical day bilingual baby falls asleep between 9:30pm and 11pm (yeah, big window, but you get used to it) and then wakes up between 7am and 9am. So, really, she’s in bed for about 10 hours every night. She nurses during the night (and how) and takes a couple of naps during the day. When she’s had a great couple of daytime naps, she sleeps better at night. The opposite is true, too. On a recent flight out west, she got two 1-hour naps during the whole trip. She was happy as can be and was alert and social (as is natural for babies…LGG) until 11pm- and that was crossing a couple of time zones. She had a rough night (didshesleepthroughthenight?) and woke up at 6am the next morning.

Anyway. I don’t want to bore you to tears telling you about my baby’s sleep patterns when you’d rather hear about her first steps. In the end, I’d rather not get the question after seeing people’s eyes gloss over when they hear me avoiding the typical ”yes” or “no” response. There ya go.

Praise vs. Less talk

I read a book called The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff and I’ve been trying to figure out a way to explain it to people- which I haven’t (really). This concept didn’t strike me as “out there” or so incredibly wild that I couldn’t see how it works. Rather, I just saw in how many ways I’d have to trust my instincts more. On Liedloff’s website she gives a list of practices that are in tune with the continuum concept, as well as describing others that she finds “a baby subjected to modern Western childbirth and child-care practices often experiences,” like…

sensing (and conforming to) his caregivers’ expectations that he is incapable of self-preservation, is innately antisocial, and cannot learn correct behavior without strict controls, threats and a variety of manipulative “parenting techniques” that undermine his exquisitely evolved learning process.

The way it reads within the continuum is: “sensing (and fulfilling) his elders’ expectations that he is innately social and cooperative and has strong self-preservation instincts, and that he is welcome and worthy.” This idea that babies/children are innately social and cooperative is one that, if you think about it, you may find that you agree with BUT you may not practice. When we praise a child for being social with someone, in a sense we’re telling them that we don’t expect them to be social. When we praise them (or show how amazed we are) at their “sharing” behavior, we’re telling them with our words, tone of voice, and body language that we don’t expect them to want to share. When we tell a child (this one’s the hardest one!) to “be careful… I don’t want you to hurt yourself/fall/etc” we’re telling them that we don’t expect them to have any self-preservation instincts. We will be watching the whole time and we will pull them away when it gets dangerous.

We have a propane-fueled “wood stove” heater in our living room and it can get pretty hot. Before reading the Continuum Concept I kept bilingual baby away from it all the time. I kept going over and telling her how it would be hot in the winter. First off, I couldn’t reconcile the fact that she knows only the present, so this “it will be…” made no sense at all. After reading the book, I’d let her pat the front of the stove thinking that it would make much more sense to teach her hot vs. cold when there actually was a difference to show her. The day came when the heater turned on. She was so intrigued by it. She went up to it (with me right behind her) and slowly moved her hand toward it. She kept looking at me to see what she should do. I kept telling her that I was there. Nothing else. I didn’t want to tell her that she’d get burned because if she really did have “strong self-preservation instincts” she wouldn’t. I didn’t want to tell her to be careful because she was being careful. Any knee-jerk comment I would have made would have been pointless. She eventually did lightly touch the glass of the stove but she didn’t put her whole hand on it and she didn’t put her whole weight on it nor did she leave it there for more than a mili second.

She has now taught herself how to be careful around the heating stove. I kept myself from telling her that she had done well or that she was a “good girl”. I really just kept thinking that I was there for her to explore and I wasn’t going to blow extra air out my mouth to say anything more than “I’m here”.

What would you do?

Here’s a link to the Parenting Pit giving 5 reasons to stop saying “Good job”.

Nursing pictures

I have seen a number of pictures of babies and children breastfeeding and I have to say I love them. Even though I’m currently planning on extended nursing and doing a child-led weaning approach I feel like the nursing phase of our relationship will feel short lived. So, I’m trying to get photos of the two of us nursing. We’ve tried and it’s hard getting a shot of a wiggly baby doing her gymnastics and yogi poses while nursing on the sofa. It’s funny but difficult to get the shot. Oh yeah, and babies love grabbing at cameras so it gets funnier when you try to take a picture and she leans forward to try and grab the camera out of your hands. We have a couple of pictures and we’ll keep taking them so that I can remember.

I also learned at our local La Leche League meeting that children eventually forget how to nurse. They have “nursing pads” in their cheeks (that make them so edible) but once they lose them they don’t know how to nurse anymore. What’s great about breastfeeding (another great thing) is that the muscles they develop while nursing help them with speech development as well as toning and strengthening the facial muscles.

Elimination Communication, Part IV

… continued from yesterday.

How did we deal with a Potty Pause? Or, How we stumbled onto Part-time EC, joyfully…

We had been going about our EC life so well. I mean, we had our misses but nothing like this. I wasn’t even seeing her cues anymore. Was I wrong to do this? Had I lost my mothering touch?

Here’s a comment made by an EC’ing mom from the big EC list:

… 10.5 months is *classic* pause age. My first DD paused from about 10-16 months. 10-13 months was near 100% cessation of cooperation with pottytunities and I really felt all the effort in EC during her first year was a total waste. Then from 13-16 months she started cooperating more once I started offering her pottytunities outside. But it wasn’t till she was about 15-16 months old that she started saying “poo poo” and started signaling for pee’s (even then it was only about 50%). And about 17 months she was 100% reliable for independent pottying while nakey butt. During her 10-13 month total pause it was tremendously difficult for me to continuously offer pottytunities every day only to have her refuse and prompltly go in her pants. But I really think that the persistent offerings help to reinforce the potty and that it is a part of daily life whether she participates or not.

Pauses are really hard to cope with sometimes. Know your limits. Diapers are okay during a pause while you and baby figure out the new communication. Investigate diet, it may be playing a part in it. But often times, at 10 months you need a healthy dose of ambivalence about pottying for the both of you to make it through till she can be more independent and responsible for her pottying.

Hang in there, there’s a ton of us that have survived a pause and figured out all the nuances of our kids’ preferences.

Reading about experiences like this one really helped me be a little more “ambivalent” about the whole EC thing. The EC forums were a great help when I needed some support or needed to read about someone else just a couple of months past a pause who was getting back into the swing of things. Bilingual baby did always let me know if she needed her diaper changed so I suppose that was something to hold on to. Part-time EC probably seems more accessible to a newbie than its full-time counterpart anyway. It also seems like more families would see EC as an option if they knew that there are no strict rules about it. Flexibility, creativity and patience always help. For me it’s an extension of parenting. I think that in the same way that a mindful doctor will treat the mother of a sick baby, a mindful parent would treat themselves (with a dose of what the parent needs) before trying to “fix” their child or correct their behavior. Are we so sure that what our children are telling us is not the better way?

Anyway, that’s getting me onto another theme that I think of a lot. I’ll save it for later. We’re out of the potty pause now (for the most part), though I use timing based on baby’s patterns. Sometimes I rely on intuition. While we enjoyed the time when I didn’t have to diaper bilingual baby, now I’m fine with having a diaper on her all day and all night. She usually stays in the same diaper all day (and sometimes all night) but we’re back to having some misses. We’ve even started ECing overnight lately – quite a shift from before the pause.  Basically, I learned that I had to help her relax and also not be too sure of myself. I have some more stories and tricks from this stage but with the permanence and availability of the internet I think I’ll stop there. I’ll just say that there are a ton of resources online where these kind of conversations are normal. Check out the links page for those and other resources. I’ve added a couple more sites – one has a pattern for sale so you can sew your own baby underwear.

EC is really a journey and I feel it’s worth “all the trouble.” Try it. See what works.

Elimination Communication, Part III

… continued from yesterday.

Once we got the hang of reading her body cues and taking her in time, we really rode the EC hay ride. This was what started our golden period. Nothing could stop us. It was a beautiful dance between nursing toileting and sleeping. I really could see the benefits of the communication we had. We slipped from one of my daughter’s needs to the next and she hardly cried (for needs being met, that is. She did cry but that’s another story.) On top of that, we’d use 1-2 diapers a day and washed maybe 4 or 5 poopy diapers in 4 months! It was wonderful.

How did I go out with an EC baby?

The first of the two tally marks congratulating us for EC’ing out of the house was at the neighborhood baby store. We went for a sling class they were offering and at some point I asked bilingual papi to take her to the toilet. It was the first time. He took her and came back a couple of minutes later with a huge grin on his face. I didn’t need to ask. Our daughter just looked calm; like she just expected all of what we were doing to happen.

The second tally mark was after our local monthly La Leche League meeting. Every month we’d hang out around Lincoln Square with a friend and her son, go to lunch, nurse in public, take a baby to the bathroom- you know, the usual. This friend was really supportive of our doing EC. She was the one that encouraged me to take my daughter to the public bathroom (adding my 2nd tally mark to the “in public” section). When we’d be out in public (and especially when I’d be wearing my daughter in a carrier) I had a heightened awareness of her need to go. More often than not, she would make use of public bathrooms. The best bathrooms were always the ones that were a single stall (or family bathroom- they have these at the Boston airport, I now know) with a changing table in it. Without the changing table we’re lost since I still put diapers on bilingual baby. I guess once she’s walking and we’re using training pants we won’t be relying so much on the table, but until then I know where the changing tables are in town and how long it takes to get to each of them. Most of the time when I don’t know if I’ll find a changing table at a store/restaurant bathroom, I just put an All-in-One or a Pocket diaper (see The Diapers we use) on her to make it easier.

This built my confidence so much I stopped putting a diaper on my daughter. I knew when she’d go and I’d take her. So why diaper her? It was still winter so I’d put a long sleeve shirt, a sweater and some baby legs on her to keep her warm. I even bought her some EC pants. I’d have misses (when I’d miss her cue) when we had people over so in those cases I just diapered her and changed her as soon as I noticed it was wet. Then came teething. That really threw me for a loop. I read on the Mothering.com EC forum about how teething can cause misses. As could starting to crawl, learning to walk, learning to talk, and any other developmental stage. What was I supposed to do now?

Tomorrow read about dealing with a Potty Pause… Or, How we stumbled onto Part-time EC, joyfully…

Elimination Communication, Part II

…continued from yesterday. See my previous post to get the gist of what is Elimination Communication.

How did I start?

I remember noticing her cues before I knew that I could do something about them. I would ask bilingual daddy to change her diaper, telling him that I had the feeling she had peed. The first time he’d check it would be dry. He’d wrap her up in her diaper again. A couple of minutes later, I’d ask him to check again. He’d think I was crazy- he had just checked and it was dry. He’d check anyway and sure enough it would be wet. We’d do this to no end.

The afternoon after meeting the woman who EC’d her young daughter (see previous post) I tried to “catch” my daughter’s pee. I had noticed my daughter’s cues but wasn’t quite sure how to go about catching. So, the first couple of times I tried taking her nothing happened. Then, after checking out some ideas from different websites on EC (check out
my EC links) I had a couple of tips to try out. Being an in-arms baby at the time was perfect to start EC. When a baby is that close to you, it’s easier to notice their cues- be it hunger, sleep or a potty break.

When a baby is very young, the amount of time you have from their cue to actually going to the bathroom is short, and gets longer as they get older. So, even if I didn’t make it to the toilet I’d consider it a success because I had read her cue. I had to remind myself that EC is about communication and not just about the “catch”.

After a couple more tries, I got it! You’ve got to remember that you get pretty good at reading baby cues when they’re this little because they cue you all the time for their few needs (eating, sleeping, toileting). To help me build my confidence, I started a tally. For every success I had in reading her cues and making it to the toilet, I’d mark a tally on the refrigerator. After some time, I had 100 tally marks and was feeling pretty good about it. At one point, we were so happy we had two tally marks for taking her to the potty when we were out of the house.

How did I go out with an EC baby? Tomorrow read some things I learned during our golden period …