Rules I should remember

A friend of mine sent me these.

Ten Commandments for a Long and Peaceful Life
1. Thou shalt not worry, for worry is the most unproductive of all human activities.
2. Thou shalt not be fearful, for most of the things we fear never come to pass.
3. Thou shalt face each problem as it comes. You can handle only one at a time.
4. Thou shalt not cross bridges before you get to them, for no one yet has succeeded in accomplishing this.
5. Thou shalt not take problems to bed with you, for they make very poor bedfellows.
6. Thou shalt not borrow other people's problems. They can take better care of them than you can.
7. Thou shalt be a good listener, for only when you listen do you hear ideas different from your own. It's very hard to learn something new when you're talking.
8. Thou shalt not try to re-live yesterday for good or ill-it is gone. Concentrate on what is happening in your life today.
9. Thou shalt not become bogged down by frustration, for 50 percent of it is rooted in self-pity and will only interfere with positive actions.
10. Thou shalt count thy blessings, never overlooking the small ones-for a lot of small blessings add up to a big one.

Merry 1st Christmas

So here we are. Another Christmas comes and goes. This one was a bit different for Dave and I. It was our son's first Christmas.

We started off Christmas Eve with another surreal visit with my biological father and his family. Their generosity seems to know no bounds. While I appreciate it deeply, it also makes me a little uncomfortable. These are people to whom I'm related, but met just a year ago. Since the inception of this relationship they have been very open and rather generous to Dave, Nick and myself. Sometimes I worry about this. I'm not sure how to return the generosity in what is a pretty complicated relationship to begin with.

Christmas Day was nice. My mom and Dave's family took turns visiting with us. Nicholas seemed to know something was up, even though Christmas is yet a foreign concept to his 9 month old mind. He had an awesome time playing with cups and bath toys and wrapping paper.

Christmas night left something to be desired. A friend of mine who lost her grandmother last Christmas and a good friend of hers this past July, is struggling. I invited her over for Christmas at our house with the hopes she'd arrive while there were other folks present. I knew she couldn't be with her family this Christmas. I also know that my family surely isn't her family, but I'd hoped it would be a comforting substitute. Instead this friend showed up hours after everyone left our house. Instead of spending our time talking about the good tidings of the season and trying to keep it light. She lamented for hours about how Christmas sucks for her since the barrage of death this past year. How it will never be the same. How nobody understands or appreciates this situation she is in.

She's right on at least one count. Christmas is never the same after the loss of a close family member. After my grandmother died in 2000, Christmas has never felt the same to me. The first Christmas was the absolute worst. Memories of your loved one tend to provide equal, if not exceeding amounts of pain, when compared to the comfort they should provide. One thing I tried to assure my friend of, was that it WILL get better. The memories will start to seem much less painful and far more comforting. You WILL get better if you want to. You can choose to make the most or the least of the holiday season. For several years Dave and I sort of ignored Christmas. We didn't decorate much. We performed the minimum requirements to get through the day. In the last few years we slowly started to reintroduce bits and pieces of the holiday back into our lives. This past Christmas has been the best so far. Having a new person in your life can certainly give you a new perspective on things.

Having a negative relationship in your life can also shift your perspective. My friend is in the midst of what I would call a "not so healthy" relationship. I think both parties mean well, but they seem to be bringing each other down instead of raising each other up. This relationship is my friend's choice and there is not much I can do but listen and try to tactfully inject advice where I can. I want nothing more than for her to feel better and be better. But I fear it's not in the cards for her anytime soon. She seems to have no interest in NOT making this unhealthy relationship a central focus of her life. What is a friend to do....... It leaves me at a loss and reminds me how this time of year can be so very painful for the brokenhearted.

At this point in our lives Dave and I feel it is now our responsibility to make the holiday season one of good memories and family traditions. It's our duty to try our best for Nicholas. Someday, down the road, he may have some shitty Christmases to deal with. I guess the best gift Dave and I could give him is a healthy perspective to get through those particular Christmases with his sanity and soul intact.

You are what your baby eats.

I'm starting to realize that I am using this blog for more of a rant than a document of daily life. Maybe one reason for this is when it comes to my mothering decisions. I feel like I'm on an island all alone, with no tribe to back me up.

My own mother didn't really make a lot of the decisions having to do with my feeding and health. Those were left up to my grandmother. Dave's mother was very proactive with her children's feeding and health. But her and my views differ. It's not that I think she did everything wrong, quite the contrary, she did the nearly impossible in my opinion. Raised two boys to be strong decent men. But she fed formula and gave the her boys solids at one to two months old. As did my grandmother for myself.

It always made sense to me to breastfeed. I've always been of the opinion that cows milk is for a calf and human milk is for babies. I never thought much about how long I would breastfeed while I was pregnant. If I had it to do over again I would have gone to breastfeeding classes or educated myself on latch, position, duration, etc... For something that comes so natural, it can sure be a struggle to establish in those first hours and days.

Part of the struggle is the barrage of bad advice women receive. You are already tired, flabbergasted and just plain in shock. While people close to you are telling you your milk is not enough. You should supplement. Give cereal NOW! Nurse him/her less or he'll get spoiled and never sleep through the night.

Advice like this infuriates me. Thank god for websites like http://www.kellymom.com/ . If I hadn't read and put into practice the advice of such pro-breastfeeding sites, I would never have been able to say. I've breastfed my son for 9 months and counting.

This brings me to today's rant. I followed the AAP guidelines for introduction of solids. Nothing but breast milk for the first 6 months then gentle introduction of non-allergenic foods. My son loves to eat! (Apples and trees my friends..) He's been great about eating all the new things we have introduced in the last two months. His menu is short but varied and it gets bigger everyday as we find new things to try.

For some strange reason, which I am struggling to understand as I type, this is NOT enough. In the last 72 hours I've been browbeaten and verbally accosted multiple times for not feeding my 9 month old the following.....bread, cheese, tomatoes(cherry), lasagna, chocolate peanut butter ice cream cake. I can't even believe it as I type it. These aren't family members, mind you. They have learned to shut up and ride months ago. It's co-workers and colleagues who feel the need to enrich me with their idiotic advice and guilt inducing "why nots" and "poor Nicholas".

I'm not sure if I behaved in a similar fashion before I became a mom. I surely hope not. I'd like to think that maybe I just simply asked how the child was doing, not what the child was eating. It's not really anyone's business anyway.

So here I am on my own little island. I know there are other people in this world that share some of my parenting philosophies. Today was certainly one of those days where I felt like they don't exist.

Christmas brings mistletoe, eggnog and euthanasia.

Yes you read that right, euthanasia. Anyone who has worked in the veterinary industry for more than one Christmas has noticed the phenomenon of holiday euthanasia. For some strange reason I have always felt like we put more pets to sleep starting at the beginning of December. The spree of sadness usually doesn't end until after New Year's.

No, most of these pet are not Fluffys that got into the tinsel a little too hardcore. Or Rovers who need to be moved to make way for the tree and presents(not that we'd accommodate such a thing). The majority of these cases are end stage patients. For some strange reason they seem to all want to check out before the year is over.

Maybe it's the fact that it is indeed, at least in some people's opinion "The most wonderful time of the year". Perhaps that makes the feelings over the deaths more intense, therefore it seems like there are so many more of them.

As medical folks, we tend to surmise that the stress of the holiday might be the real culprit. All the running around, the noise, folks in and out, and here and there could be the final straw for a terminally ill pet. Not to say that it's the fault of the Christmas blitz that causes these pets to die. Though the craziness might speed up the clock a smidge.

I can't say for sure the cause. I just know that two Saturday's before Christmas I put three pets to sleep in a scant three hour period. Most Saturdays I work, there isn't even one euthanasia, yet alone three! Now each pet was in desperate need. Two were in kidney failure and one was old and couldn't get up and walk anymore. But I couldn't help thinking as I punctured the rubber stopper to the "blue juice"with a fresh syringe for yet another time that day .Gosh, it must be getting closer to Christmas.....

There are times I'd like to move....

I grew up in Berks County. It's the kind of place that 20 years ago could make you feel like a country bumpkin, a citified folk, and a hardcore suburbanite. All while living in the same neighborhood. Depending on where I went outside of the county had a lot to do with which moniker I felt most applied to me. When I went to college in upstate New York, the townies made me feel like I was pretty citified. On the other hand my classmates from Long Island and NYC made me feel like a hayseed chewing bumpkin.
So what is the purpose for my rant about perceptions of Berks Countians abroad? When I was younger, a person described this area as the best of everything in one small locale. City and country spaced not too far from one another. Good shopping with rolling farmland and peaceful hiking pretty close by. Now a days the shopping is eh. The farmland has tan vinyl coated McMansion crops growing out of it and some of the hiking backs up to these housing farms.
I guess I can live with this.
What I am fast realizing I can't live with, is the crime in this area. The city of Reading is a cesspool. Parts of it always have been, no matter what anyone tells you. But as the years have passed since my childhood, the cesspool has grown and sewage is overflowing into the burbs' and the country.
Last weekend an elderly woman, in an area I called a stomping ground as a child, was raped and beaten in her own home. Arrested for the crime was a neighbor of hers. His house is located no more than 100 yards away from the basement window of her home, that he broke into to commit this heinous and unforgivable crime.
I don't live in this particular neighborhood. But we are not too far away from it. We've walked it many, many times. I rode my bike there as a kid. My only care in those days, to get a grape Slush Puppy from the Chink Shop. Which was once located down the road from where this monstrosity lives. Even though the alleged perpetrator was caught. This crime makes me scared and very sad. I can't stop thinking about that poor old lady and the magnitude of the violation she endured.
I know in my heart that anywhere we move there will be crime. But lately in this area the crime is getting a little too close to home. Since I had Nicholas I have minimized my news exposure. Simply because it fuels my already paranoid state. What I need to remember is while vermin like this exist everywhere, I can't let it stop me from doing and going and enjoying. That just became a little harder this past weekend though.....

Shhhhhhh Nobody move! He's sleeping, at least for the moment

For the last 8 months and 3 weeks, every time someone asks how I am doing I always say OK. Then add the phrase "but tired". I never in my life knew sleep deprivation at the level you get to know it once you've pushed out your first offspring. OK so I didn't really push anyone anywhere, more like he was removed from me, but in either case... Sleep is a friend I don't spend much time with these days. When we do hang out, which is usually only for 2 to 3 hours at a time. Our moments together don't have the same quality that they did pre-Nicholas. I used to be fussy about how I slept. Which position and where the pillows were in relation to my head and neck. Now I am pretty convinced I could sleep upside down suspended from the back of a moving roller coaster car. Once you hit this level of deprivation, you're no longer picky.
What does this say about me as a mom. Well I breastfeed almost exclusively. My son only gets one "solids" meal a day. According to just about everyone, this is why I get no sleep. If I tank up my son on cereals and other various solids, he'll sleep for hours. Dave and I have put his theory to the test and let me tell you.....Nope! My son sleeps when he wants to, doesn't when he doesn't want to. Food plays little role in this cycle. Comfort is a bigger issue we think. My guess, and it's always a guess when you are a new mom, is that more of his night nursing is born out of the need for comfort, not hunger. Most days I can deal. But when my amount of sleep gets way behind what is acceptable for a living, breathing human being I question everything.
Am I doing the right things as a mom?
Is it his kidney issues?
Is he STILL teething?
Is he sick?
Is he crazy?
Am I crazy?
I shouldn't be co-sleeping, should I?
18 year old's don't sleep with their Moms, this has got to end sometime, right?
Maybe we should do "Cry it out"?
Let's be real Beth, you'd never survive "Cry it out".

The deranged sleep deprived mind goes in circles like a hamster riding his wheel. Somehow though we all survive, barely.... But we do.

Welcome, thanks for reading.

Everyday and every decision we make is really just a roll of the dice. We can prepare to the best of our abilities but there are greater forces at work. Basically we are all along for the ride. Nothing bears more insight into this, than the conception, pregnancy and birth of a child. For over two years my husband and I tried to have a child. We prepared, to the best of our ability, for the conception of a child. Try after try and month after month, we were unsuccessful. Finally after a health crisis of both a mental and physical nature I came to terms with the fact that we may never have children. And that would have to be OK in order for me and we to be OK. Not too long after that I had the pleasant surprise of a positive pregnancy test, 7 years to the day of my grandmother's death.
What followed was a roller coaster ridden in many different ways by many different women. My coaster took me to the threat of miscarriage with bleeding during the first trimester. Then the realization of a birth defect. When at 20 weeks cysts were discovered on my son's right kidney. Many trips to maternal fetal only confirmed the obvious, but never produced much peace of mind.
At 36 weeks my beautiful boy was delivered by c-section. After one ultrasound, then another, then a VCUG, then a renal scan. It was determined that my son's right kidney had no function and his left kidney was slow to function. The doctors assure us that one healthy kidney is enough to live and live well. This is proven over and over again by people who live long full lives without even realizing they only have one kidney, and folks who are selfless enough to donate one of theirs.
Looking at our son, you'd never know there were any issues with his kidneys. He looks like most children his age. Growing, meeting milestones, giggling, fussing, doing all the baby things. Doing them on one kidney just fine.
Here is our journey, my husband and I and our son. We are new parents. We are scared sometimes. We are amazed too, almost everyday.
We rolled the dice and here he is. It is our job to do the best we can, everyday. He deserves no less.