Why I think the baby experts can suck it!

I've been seeing a lot on of people talking about baby theories, methods, techniques and books they like on Facebook. I'm glad they work for a lot of people. I think its good to find something you and your child identify with. I personally like the Sears parenting library. The reason why I like them is because on the first page in all of their books they say that what they teach is what worked for their children and it's made up of things they've learned in 25 years of practicing medicine. It might not work for you, and never ever take our advice when you feel like something different will work. Never ignore your instincts as a parent that so many "experts" have stolen from new parents. You have to love a book that claims it might not work for you at all on the very first page. This is my experience in the 5 short months I've been a mom. I do actually know what I'm doing, I take no credit whatsoever nor can I credit any method or technique I practiced for my child's mostly good behavior, he was born that way, and all the experts out there trying to lead new moms into what they should and should not do can just go suck it.

When Tyler was born I really felt like I knew exactly what he needed and wanted but as a brand new mom in a hospital surrounded by experts, you're just too scared to speak up because new moms are constantly lied to and told that they have no idea what they are doing. This is actually true for some moms, I had several friends who just felt like they didn't know what their child wanted or how to respond to them. I think this is perfectly normal too and I'm sure as time went on they really learned what to do. We all hit our motherhood strides at different times, I might totally suck as a mother of a toddler its a crapshoot like life in general. For me, I feel like Tyler and I are really connected and we know what to do together, but like I said as a new mother you're told otherwise. In the hospital Tyler didn't take to eating right away. Deep down I knew he was fine but nurses and lactation specialists and doctors all have people to answer to and if they told me it was fine that he didn't eat and then somehow it wasn't they'd have a lawsuit. I understand their position but nevertheless it sucks when they come in every two hours trying to force you to feed your new child even though he clearly has no interest in eating. The worst for me was a nurse that came in constantly handing him to me to make me feed him. She came in at 4 in the morning pricked his heel to test his blood and he slept the entire time. then she handed him to me to make me feed him, in my head i was thinking is this a joke? he didnt wake up to his heel being pricked but you think he'll wake up if i try and shove a nipple in his mouth??? When she came back I told her he didn't eat he was just too sleepy to which she responded, "ya sleepy parents too." I've never wanted to chuck something at someone's head so much in my entire life. of course i was sleepy you idiot lady i just shoved a huge baby out of me with no medication or any form of pain relief, i'm exhausted and so is the dang baby so leave me alone. After that, every time I tried to feed Tyler I just ended up crying, my confidence was shattered. the lactation specialist had told me how i needed to fee him exactly by doing eleven minutes on one side giving him a 15 minute break and then feeding him eleven minutes on the other side. here was the problem with that "expert" advice, Tyler's never eaten more than 12 -15 minutes ever! No child is the same and my baby happens to be a get in get done kind of an eater most of the time he eats about 3-5 minutes and he is done. She also told me i couldnt let him eat too long or he'd be a constant nurser, too short and i'd have to feed him every hour and that would be a pain, follow the feeding schedule she told me.  that started the worst week ive had as a mom thus far. crippled with crazy hormones and the fear i wasn't feeding my child correctly i stressed and stressed until one day i realized no one was watching me, I could feed my baby however, whenever,  and for however long I/Tyler wanted to. Nobody was ever going to know if i was following the techniques I was reading for getting my child to eat or sleep Enter the liberating fact that i was in charge, I didnt have to listen to what anyone said, feeding my child on a schedule didn't work so we changed and did what worked.

From that point on I made the choice to proclaim I know what I am doing. Do I always get it right? absolutely not, I have trial and error and problems and somedays nothing works because babies are just human and they have sad days and happy days and good and bad days. Nothing is black or white and no parenting technique works for any one child. These expert books leave out the fact that children have emotions and wants and needs and lets face it, children come out with their very own personalities and some things you just can't change. some babies are born good sleepers and some are not. some are good eaters and some are not, some are happy and pleasant and some cry constantly and to think that any child can be completely molded by a technique read in a book is sort of a fantasy. Do they have good things to say? Sure, sometimes we do need some help from experts, sometimes in everything and sometimes in just one thing. But babies are as complex as you or me. My child actually goes through phases of sleeping through the night or not. If I was tied to a sleeping method I might feel like a failure when he starts waking up again much like i did in the hospital with the nursing My theory is the parenting books work really well when your child is already mostly doing it on their own and you just guide them a little. Its easy to think that we are the ones to be proud of when our technique of getting our child to sleep works wonders but like i always say, Im 90% sure that a majority of my actions have no effect on my child whatsoever. Sometimes he goes to bed at 7, sometimes 11, sometimes he wakes up at night sometimes he doesnt and I'm fine with that because I signed up to be a parent and I'll take all of the craziness that comes with it. i was blessed with a mild mannered baby who sleeps pretty well and eats pretty well. not a day goes by i dont count myself the luckiest girl out there.

so here it is, suck it baby experts! Do i actually know what I'm doing? no way in hell. Do i have confidence in my abilities and the way a mother knows her child like no one else can? YES! I think we need to stop telling new moms and dads they have no idea what they are doing. Stop shaking their confidence because it might not be the right way to raise a child to you, but it is to them and thats ok. I'll eat my words here a little if the parenting books work for you i say keep at it. we all need to find what works for us but as for me, I'm going to go off my instinct and do what my gut tells me. No more will I be paralyzed by fear that I'm not doing something right because its not what the doctor said. No more will I worry if my child is not on a sleep schedule or a nap schedule or feeding schedule because thats not what works for us. never again will I be guilted into thinking i'm not doing something right because my child's not fitting the mold. He's a person, none of us fit the mold. I think we often read parenting books because we want a magical pill to make our child sleep through the night or eat right or behave better but the fact is being a parent is just damn hard work. It's late nights and crying and diapers and yes sometimes having no idea what you are doing but thats what i signed up for when we decided to have a child. I signed up to work my butt off, but I get rewarded ten fold for it with the joy of having this funny little unpredictable person in my life. for me, i don't want to read anymore of what experts say. My little guy and I are just going to be who we are and do what we want because with children, whatever behavior they are doing changes in about a week anyway so I'm going with being flexible. My parenting method: do whatever the hell you want!

Pretty sure my little bundle of joy will be the death of me

I'm now about seven months pregnant and still sick and throwing up all the time. Sometimes I make dumb choices that contribute to the throwing up like eating a burrito that work bought for everyone for lunch and dinner because sometimes it just tastes so good to eat something besides white bread and cheese which you know you won't throw up. I knew I wasn't making the wisest choice when I ate it, I mean really who eats a red sauce cheesy meaty burrito which would probably make somebody throw up on a normal day when you know you get heartburn and are sick and vomiting all the time?? Well I did, I guess I wanted a sense of normalcy again. Did I also mention I ate leftover breakfast burrito for morning snack? Ya horrible combination choices. Anyway I felt sick all night. Wait let me rephrase, sickER all night so I finally just went to bed which is usually my solution of choice when I feel sick at night because what better way to deal with it than sleep it into oblivion. At about two AM I woke up with horrible pain in my upper abdomen like I did a few weeks ago and I knew the only solution that made it go away last time was to throw up. I decided not to eat this time because last time that backfired on me so I decided to just throw up and go to bed. That's right, you read that right, I decided to throw up and did it because I literally can decide I want to throw up and do it. No fingers down the throat, no gagging yourself or anything I can just do it on command. Unfortunately this didnt help me and when I realized that miraculously the burrito was still in my tummy 8 hours later and it was going to be a horrible throw up I stopped and went to bed intending to sleep it off. At 4 AM I woke up again still in pain so I decided to just get it over with. While throwing up my baby started kicking me and I thought "seriously little dude this is literally the definition of kicking a man when he's down" I found myself quite hilarious at 4 AM and it's maybe not so funny now :). This time I felt better so I went back to bed. Then I woke up at 7 AM with a leg cramp from hell in both legs. As I was writhing and moaning in bed I thought who the hell would voluntarily do this to themselves! Then when it stopped I felt my little guy kick and I remembered I really do love my baby and he's pretty great. He just might be the end of me, but I like him and I'm glad he's here to stay in just a few months. I am truely grateful to be pregnant, even if it sucks a big one!

Pregnancy and me

I'm going to have to eat my words a little on my last post because this may not be the most positive post about pregnancy. First of all let me say how grateful I am to be pregnant. I really truly am grateful that we are able to have a baby because I know so many people who can't get pregnant, lose baby after baby, lose a baby well into their 2nd or 3rd trimester or just plain struggle. I want to say that the actual growing of my baby is cool, I like feeling it move and I love our little baby. I really would rather have this pretty crappy pregnancy than not be pregnant at all and I'm very excited to be having a baby.

That being said, so far pregnancy has just sort of sucked for me. I don't know if everyone goes through this and we just don't really talk about it or if I'm just having that bad of a pregnancy. I know my sister had an awful awful pregnancy so maybe we just have bad luck. At 4-5 weeks right when we found out about me being pregnant I felt great! I was eating healthy and drinking tons of water. I was all set to have an awesome time with this. At about six weeks I started getting a little sick but it was mild and easily controlled with food. By six and a half weeks I started throwing up. At this point I threw up about three times a day. By seven weeks I had to take a day off work because by the end of the night I had thrown up about 15 times. We decided to call the doctor (even though we hadn't even met with her yet) to see if they had any medication or something that would help me not be so sick because I don't know if you've ever thrown up that many times but it's death. Every part of your body hurts and it's just depressing. By the time the doctor called us back the next day and gave me a prescription for anti-nausea medication I had thrown up 8 times and it was only 3:00. After taking my medicine I finally stopped throwing up and I could lie in bed just feeling sick instead of living in the bathroom. I went back to work the next day and even on the medication I still threw up a few times a day and just felt like crap the rest of the day. As the days went by I was back to throwing up 6+ times a day so I called my doctor and she upped my dosage from 4 to 8 mg. This helped a little but after toughing out 3 miserable weeks of work I finally had to ask to go on medical leave. I basically sat at my desk tried to work on a project, threw up, got back to my desk tried to work, threw up, tried to work, threw up etc etc. My work was great at working with me and got me set up to take medical leave. I had to get a doctors note and she diagnosed me with Hypermesis Gravidarum or a nice way of saying you have severe pregnancy nausea and extreme vomiting sucks to be you. The last day I worked I called my doctor to see if there was anything else I could take and she prescribed phenegrin. This put me in a 2 day sleep coma. Out of the 48 hours I probably slept for 44 of them and threw up the other 4. Needless to say this just wasn't going to work for me (or poor Brandon)and I went back to my Zofran. When I stopped working I basically lied in bed all day and felt miserable, tried to eat anything but usually failed and threw up. It took every thing I had to even get up to make a little bit of food or take a shower. Brandon even made a little throw up jug that I could Velcro to my nightstand because yes I was throwing up that much. I remember at one point after a bad day and Brandon wasn't home I called my mom in absolute hysterical tears and all I could get out was "I'm just SO SICK!" I told her it's incomprehensible that you can be this sick and I know it is because I never imagined or believed anyone else when they told me they were sick. I really think most people aren't as sick as I have been (or my sister). By week 12 I was finally able to even leave the house for short periods of time to go out to eat or maybe to the store but when we went to the doctor I'd lost about 7 pounds. I was down to 114 pounds which is scary little for me, I weighed that when I was 16. By 14 weeks I decided it was time to go back to work. I wasn't feeling well but I didn't feel bad enough to merit sitting home all day. Luckily I did a lot better at work than I thought I would and I have been doing pretty well since then (I'm now 20 weeks). I'm still nauseous for a pretty good chunk of the day and I still throw up a couple of times a week. If I don't keep up on my snacks or miss a meal of any sort I will be puking. I have thrown up in the car in a bag, a whole bunch of parking lots, nasty gas station and restaurant bathrooms, the kitchen sink and just about anywhere else you can think of. I have thrown up just about every type of food out there and I still can't eat at certain restaurants or certain things. As I finally started to get over my sickness every other symptom started. If it's not sickness it's back aches, constipation, headaches, bloating, leg cramps, exhaustion and the list goes on and on. I basically spent 3 months of my life feeling like I had the flu with car sickness and that I'd just run a marathon because I was constantly exhausted. Did I mention pregnancy has just been really kind of yucky for me?

Throughout this whole thing I've definitely learned a few things and learned to be grateful for a few things.
1. I'm extremely grateful this will end in a few months. I'm lucky I'm not a cancer patient who has to endure the sickness of radiation for who knows how long or that I have a terminal illness or something else of that manner.
2. Even though I prayed for it everyday Heavenly Father wouldn't take my sickness away. He did however bless me with gratitude and the feeling that it could always be worse. I was lucky to be emotionally stable and he gave me strength to not resent my baby or suffer jealousy for girls who don't have to do this. When you are that sick it's easy to be angry at the baby or at anything else for your misery. Don't get me wrong I had a few days where I just wanted to give up and I did get mad at our little guy but for the most part I was able to have a pretty good attitude.
3. If someone tells you they are sick and throwing up and average of 3-6 times a day for the love of all that is good and holy don't ask them if they have tried a freaking saltine cracker (or any other home remedy like ginger or peppermint). These little remedies are for mild nausea and really don't help. Do you also know what the thought of eating a cracker is like when you're that sick? I imagine it tastes like cardboard covered in poop, or at least that's how if felt at the time.
4. I'm very grateful for Brandon who helped me through everything and been nothing but kind and supportive.

 Now that I'm feeling better it's much more exciting and I'm excited to find out what we're having on Tuesday. Overall I really do have to express my gratitude for my pregnancy even though it really hasn't been easy. I've also been lucky enough to quickly forget just how bad it was because all ready I'm thinking it really wasn't that bad but at the time I really thought I was going to die. There were seriously a few days when I thought I just might die I was so sick and I never thought I'd even make it to 14 weeks let alone half way. Here's to hoping the second half of my pregnancy goes a little better than the first.