Same experience!

I hear you!

For some reason I can't comment to your post, so am adding a new one. I remember when Lisa Spagnolo was pregnant 5 years ago I thought I was being being understanding and supportive, but I remember her saying to me what you just did below. She kept encouraging me to have a baby so she could have a friend who understood (thank God I did not have a baby with Steve!) After I had Ethan the Spags came to Seattle for a visit I suddenly felt exactly what she was getting at and I was so stunned by the realization that I apologized to them! I told them I should have brought them food and been babysitting or whatever I could do to help out. I get it now. I didn't then but I thought I did.

One of my child-free friends told me that she raised a puppy and so she knows what I'm going throught with Ethan. Huh. I didn't correct her. I raised a puppy too and two weeks of puppy potty training was nothing, absolutely nothing like having a baby. My closest girlfriends are both childless and out of state. One gets it (the one who flew here to take care of us the second she found out I had a C section) and the other has no idea. She never ever mentions Ethan when we talk on the phone. And my closest friends here are mostly gay men, who really don't understand baby land at all! Nor do they want to.

Your friends love you, they just don't know what this is all about and probably won't get it unless/until they go through this experience for themselves. It is a trial by fire, and I find more connection these days with strangers in the baby section at Target who are going through it too, than with some of my girlfriends. Anyway, chica, until your other friends catch on I'll be one of your friends who understands, and I love little bump!

Vern

birds of a feather

They say the best way to get help is to ask for it. What about when you ask for it, over and over again, and you get nothing? Zip. Not even an honest, "I would help, but I don't really don't feel like it." My little Bump is just about to turn ten months old -- that's eight weeks shy of his first birthday -- and all but two of my closest girlfriends have spent, all total, maybe eight hours with him. And the bulk of these eight hours are largely coincident with some "adult" social function that could easily have been Bump-less had I not brought him along. Of the other two friends, only one has continued to stay very much in my life as a friend and as a babysitter. In other words, I'm struggling with the fact that my closest friendships are cooling at a time in my life where now, more than ever, I could use a good friend.

I know my friends don't suck. They just don't get it. And why should they? They're cat owners, not mothers, and lest anybody suggest an affinity between the two I must say that as a cat-owning mother myself, the two forms of "parenting" couldn't be more different. (I can imagine putting Aidan outside for being too noisy about as easily as I can imagine one of my cats needing a diaper change at three in the morning.) Imagine how funny I find it when one of my childless friends refers to their cat "issues" as practice for childrearing. Yeah, right.

I knew what I signed up for when I decided to have this baby: my life would change in ways I knew I couldn't yet imagine. I knew my days of going to clubs, sleeping-in, and the occasional hit from the proverbial hookah would suffer a swift death. Not that I was clubbing, getting lots of sleep, and hittin' the old peace pipe all that much back then, but that's another story. It was both annoying yet difficult to avoid the endless streams of pre-birth cautionary tales from these same friends: once that baby's born, you will be an entirely different person. And, to be sure, the minute Bump was born, I was reborn. I changed from being a me-centered individual to a selfless, bloated, sleep-deprived vessel whose sole raison d'etre, at least for the first three months, was that little baby called my Bump. What the pregnancy books don't warn you about, and they damn well should, is what happens to your friendships, at least with those who don't have kids, once your baby is born.

In an ideal world, my closest girlfriends are interested in my baby. They call me frequently not only to check in on me -- you know, to see how I'm coping with this monumental life change and all -- but to see if they can visit Aidan. In an ideal world, when my friends offer to babysit, which they're very good at doing, they back it up by actually babysitting every now and then. In this world, that is, I'm able to share the crazy joys and frustrations of being a new mom with my closest female friends. The reality is that I often consciously keep my mouth shut when it comes to my baby around these friends for fear of boring them with stories about a boy they barely know.

I have a dream: Aidan, now eighteen, is chilling out with one of these friends of which I speak, getting the skinny on what his mom was like "back the in the day" and what he was like, from their perspective, during his first year of life. The reality, however, is that none of my friends really know who Aidan is. They have no idea what he's like, what makes him laugh, what scares him, how often he smiles, what makes him tick, and how truly perfect he is right now. In a few months I'll be moving from my friends, coming back to visit maybe every several months. Sad but true: my friends have (wilfully?) missed the boat.

I have another dream. Fast forward four years: one of these friends is finally with child. They ask me if I'll babysit. My response? "Sure, how about this: when the time comes, I'll babysit as much for you and you did for me."

Me? Bitter? Never!

Mush part 2

Haven't posted here in a while, because my other blog has been monopolizing my virtual life. A novel thought: cross-posting. Here's a post on that blog that speaks to your question below, Vern!

Mush!

On to solid foods! Any advice? Recipes? Ethan has had rice cereal, mushed pears, baby guacamole (avacodo mushed with breast milk) which he wasn't a big fan of, and banana. So far we are tasting not really eating. This is going to be fun! I suppose we'll be needing a high chair?

Doing it all Wrong and Loving it!

Hi chicas!

So, January was bliss -- Ethan would sleep one eight hour stretch and then do a 3 or 4 hour one right after that. I was human, optimistic, feeling like this motherhood thing was going to be very smooth sailing.

Then Ethan changed it up to waking up every two hours then every hour starting at 9:00! I was a zombie, pessimistic, feeling unable to handle motherhood. We got the books, did the sleep routine, took all advice, and got Ethan back to waking every two hours, for which I now found myself grateful.

One thing we did was I was not nursing him to sleep anymore and only feeding him once or twice a night.

For the past week Ethan has been sleeping 5 hours (officially through the night! but who are those officials who think this is through the night?) then three hour stretches after that. And I am human again. What are we doing differently? I am nursing him to sleep whenever he wakes up and he is sleeping on his tummy. He can roll over (and roll and roll) so I'm not worried about tummy sleep, and starting a week ago I nursed him every time he woke out of desperation for something fresh to try and it seems this must be what is making him sleep longer. Months of not nursing him to sleep bought me waking every two hours or hourly. Nursing him to sleep means sleep! And sleep means I'm a better mother and Ethan doesn't have dark circles under his eyes anymore. For us doing the wrong thing is the right thing.

Moving this month, lots of boxes now and changes in routine soon. We'll see what happens with sleep. Fortunately, Kevin's parents are coming from South Africa for a couple of months so we'll have help!