Sleep

Paige is two days from 10 months. In these last 10 months, she's slept through the night only a handful of times. Flukes, I say.

In my life, I've always written to help me understand, to flesh out my feelings on any given topic, from guacamole to my relationships. (At least, I've orally examined my evolved feelings about guacamole.) Now, here I am, 10 months into motherhood, and I've written very, very little. I've also understood very, very little, but I've recorded most of that confusion in the Notes app on my iPhone in a note simply titled "Baby Timeline." When will that note become more evolved? I don't know, but it's been my handy journal to mark the milestones. And those questions I've had can be traced in my google searches. Most of the time, I'd read enough that I'd settle on an answer and not need to find my own place in it.

But sleep. That's a different story.

Paige cries if I even hint at putting her in her crib for a nap or bedtime. She wants to be nursed to sleep each time. If she wakes, she stands--now that she can. And this week when she wakes in the night, she wants to nurse and she wants to sit. She wants to be awake. She wants to be held. She wants to be with me.

But I need sleep. And Paige needs sustained sleep. So I read. I read about crying it out, about fading out, about no tears methods, about sleeping through the night as a developmental milestone like walking that can't be rushed, about the fact that babies can't form bad habits and about the fact that if babies don't learn good sleep habits they will be affected for life. Our pediatrician said to try fading it out, where you put her down and let her cry but go in every few minutes (in increasing duration) to pat her back and eventually she'll go to sleep and won't need you. We tried for three nights and made no progress.

Every answer is right, and every answer is wrong. Do we know too much science? Do we have too many theories? What is the ancient wisdom, I want to know. I want to know what a mother instinctually knew before she was told what science knows. Before the internet, what did a sleep-deprived mother do? In the middle of the prairie, how did a native mother soothe her child so as not to draw the attention of predators?

A quick google search says that preventing crying in the first place is the goal (and ancient wisdom).

Here's more wisdom: Feng Shui (and many other holistic traditions) tell that diffusing a balanced blend of six drops each of pure lavender and pure chamomile essential oils into the nursery at night will provide not only a pleasing scent but will calm and quiet baby too. Of course that same blend can be added to a quarter cup of olive oil and massaged on the bottom of baby’s feet to get that same serenity producing support. The trick here is to massage from sole to toes in flat, firm strokes. This will appease the autonomic nervous system and will pacify a persnickety little one. 

Five months in

Paige has discovered Scooter, the large living, breathing being in our home that doesn't look like her mom or dad. She studies him, she grabs for his nose, and, tonight, she squealed at the sight of him catching popcorn Phillip tossed to him.

She's starting to laugh, straining to sit up, bringing her toes oh so close to her mouth. She is such a happy baby. My joy.

As she grows, we're outgrowing our sweet cottage. We love this house, its charm and its surprise, but it's not functional now for how we use it, with Aunt Darla here during the day with Paige, with Jack part-time sharing her room, with Phillip spending his second and third shift weeks downstairs. So we're painting and touching up. We fenced in the backyard, and we're renovating the bathroom. The house is going to be just the way we want it right as we're leaving it.

But we're looking for our next heart's home that we can make our own.

Decisions

When the baby naps, you must decide from among the following in the 15-45 minutes you may have to do any of the following:

• Take a shower. This is optional on days off. The world will have to forgive a disheveled first-time-mom. 
• Eat. With two hands, your options multiply. But what is on hand, sounds good, cooks in under 5 minutes, and can be eaten in 10? I'd feel more productive if I ...
• Do chores, like laundry, dishes, vacuuming. Doing chores makes you feel like you're accomplishing something, so this is an attractive option. 
• Leave the house. This you must plan before the nap begins--can you predict if she will be asleep or at least content in the car seat for the duration of the outing? 
• Work. Whether it's work-work or volunteer work, this option takes a calm, steady mind that is often difficult to achieve in such a short window. You will most likely save this for later, after she's down for the night, but by then you're too exhausted to have a calm, steady mind and will mostly likely opt for sleep.
• Watch Gilmore Girls. Sure, you watch this when you're nursing, but do you take the time to relax and watch without the little one in you're lap? You're in the final season, and you're annoyed with the plot and some of the characters (never Rory), so you just want to get it over with already. 
• Bake. Stress baking feels good. Sugar tastes good. 
• Write. This, again, takes a calm, steady mind. Or maybe it doesn't, and you should just write when you're over-tired because your filter may be off and you need to authentically capture your first days as a mother. Your sub-options are to get somewhat creative and write a blog post that your mother will read or write in your journal with all of your unfiltered feelings. Because you feel pressure and accountability from others and never yourself, you will most likely choose to blog. 
• Read. On your phone or iPad maybe, but a print book feels too luxurious right now. Almost as luxurious as a ...
• Nap. Ha ha. Just kidding. This is not a real option. It has never happened.

8 weeks

Our girl is growing, faster than I can grasp. The change is so gradual you don't notice as it's happening, but I think back to a week, two weeks, ago, and I am in awe of how far she's come.

She smiles a lot. A LOT. She just beams up at you, her mouth open wide and her eyes squinty (like me) so that the smile is her whole face. And she's so close to laughing--you can tell she's trying.

She's strong and has been since birth. She's stronger than I knew a baby could be. Sometimes she fights me when she's nursing, rears back and throws her hands at me (I don't know if it's aggression out of excitement or frustration).

One of my favorite things is her dramatic stretching, particularly on her changing pad after a nap. She  stretches out those legs, stiffens them, grunt-squeaks, kicks, and does it again.

She's just the best. The best there is. How was I me without her?

I finally started feeling like a me again, like I had a semblance of control and understanding of this new way of life, around six weeks. Now I'm back at work for the first full week on Monday and hoping that I can pull of a fully-there work me and a fully-there home me and feel like I'm whole. There's a lot to manage from all angles, and I'm having trouble making space for to-do's. I'm relying heavily on lists and reminders and still leaving out chunks of life (like communication with friends and family). I am struggling to stay un-anxious when Phillip is on second and third shifts, particularly when he's here but asleep or here but not here. I am struggling to give Scooter the attention he deserves and is used to when I have new demands and priorities. But I am loving motherhood, even if it's going to take months to get used to saying I'm a mother, to not feel silly saying Mama when I talk to my daughter, to saying This is my daughter.

I have a daughter. All I want to do is build her up, give her every early opportunity to learn and grow through play and song and stories and art. I'm going to show her the good of the world but also how she can make it better. She will know her voice and how to use it. And I can't wait to hear what she has to say.

Paige Eleanor

Eighteen days ago, Paige Eleanor Mailloux came into our world. It wasn't easy, it wasn't quick, and it wasn't what we had envisioned, but our girl came out beautiful, healthy, and glowing.

When the terrified of labor phase hit around eight months, I was convinced that because my pregnancy had been so easy that the labor would be hard. The doctor said that was highly unlikely. But my blood pressure was high going into week 40, baby was estimated at eight pounds, and my body was not dilating or softening for labor. The result was this--in abbreviated form because I'm processing it and will be for some time: 48 hours of induction with no progress resulting in a c-section and our "It's a girl!" moment at 2:15pm on Friday, October 16 when Paige was born.

But the other thing was that on the morning we went to the hospital to induce Phillip found out he had Shingles. And because he had Shingles that could be transmitted to immune-suppressed people at the hospital and, namely, babies, the head of infectious diseases said he couldn't be at the hospital. And because he couldn't be at the hospital he couldn't be present for his baby's birth. And because he couldn't be present for his baby's birth his mom took his place with me and Facetimed him in the operating room, trying to keep him involved since he was at home a mile away but so far, far from where we were. It wasn't until Sunday when the medicine had dried up his lesions that he got the okay to come to the hospital and be with us, his girls. Again, it's still too fresh for me to tell the whole story, to tell you how it felt to watch my husband leave my hospital room when I was lost in my first childbirth experience and process the fact that family would see and hold our daughter before he would.

In the end, we came home on a Monday after five days in the hospital. We came home together. We cried through challenges with breastfeeding and sleeping in the night and pain at standing upright, and here we are at day eighteen with a little girl who's growing measurably by the day and revealing her strong and sweet personality and making us love her with all that we are. We are incredibly blessed and excited to watch her grow.