Good Excuses

Okay, so it's been awhile.  I knew this blog thing would never be a major priority for me, but more of a chance to put my thoughts down when I needed to.  But I do have a very good reason for dropping off the face of the planet: morning sickness.  Yep. The wonderful joys of morning sickness for 8 long and brutal weeks.

But it has finally passed and now I can excitedly tell people that yes, we are expecting and I'm not just filling up on cookies during the Holidays.  I mean...I AM filling up on a cookies, but that's not why I suddenly have a huge gut.  This little one will be joining us at the end of May or the beginning of June.  Depends how big of a rush he/she is in.  So currently I'm about 17 weeks along and starting to enjoy the whole pregnant thing.  It really is fun once I'm not feeling nauseous 24/7.  And I'm just starting to feel movement too, which I absolutely love.  It gives me such a sense of security and joy. 

I do have to report that I have noticed a substantial decrease in bad pregnancy symptoms compared to my pregnancy with Little Miss.  My nausea was less and I threw up less.  I didn't get the breast tenderness or as much cramping.  The exhaustion was still there, but I have a good reason for that too:  I'm still breastfeeding Little Miss.  And it's going pretty well.  I thought once the morning sickness hit I would want to wean her, but it was the best thing ever!  1) I'm pretty sure the breastfeeding is what decreased my morning sickness and 2) when you have a toddler who never sits still EXCEPT for when she nurses, you certainly don't want to give up that time.  I would let her nurse as much as she wanted just so we could sit and snuggle when I felt my worst.  It also meant I didn't have to dig through the fridge as often for food for her.  She would tell me when she wanted food, but having breastmilk fill in the calorie gap really took a load off my shoulders.

I really have no idea what the next step is.  I don't have any desire to wean her (although we did wean at night and last week was rough and I DID have definite thoughts of weaning), but we'll just see.  She may wean herself as my milk changes and decreases.  I just don't know.  We are constantly in uncharted territories.

I suppose all parenting is uncharted territories though.  Even if you've done it with one kid, every child is different.  It'll be fun to see who this little one will turn out to be!

The Me I was Before

I suppose most people look back at their younger selves and feel they hardly know that person anymore.  They look back at choices they made and wonder what they were thinking, but for me I'm stunned by even the personality of the girl I used to be.  Some of the change has to do with age and experiences, but I attribute most of it to my health.  More specifically to my extreme nearly 15 year vitamin D deficiency that has since been remedied.

My deficiency was so extreme that I struggled with constant pain and pretty severe depression.  I was constantly on one or more medications, desperately trying to function in college.  Really, I think at times, I was more just trying to stay alive.  And you know what?  Pain and depression will make you do a lot of things.  I was desperate to feel happy and accepted for even just a short time.  Fortunately, God protected me from many things.  I came away from that season of life with a few regrets, but none that really continue to haunt me.

Now a few years into being healthy, I barely know that girl I was.  My brain and emotions process the world so differently now!  I almost feel like my life didn't begin until I was healthy.  Before that, it was just a blur of a swinging pendulum of emotions.  Everything just felt so out of control.  Now here I am.  A different person.  And life still feels out of control at times, but I don't.  I get sad, but I'm not depressed.  I get sore, but I don't struggle with chronic pain.  I have days when I can't get motivated, but usually there's a reason (like a teething toddler who doesn't want to sleep anymore!) or it's just a bad day which I think most people have.  But the bad times don't just go on and on with no end in sight.  I don't just have to grit my teeth anymore and accept that depression and pain are a constant. 

I wouldn't go back and change anything.  There's part of me that wishes my life had been different.  That I had been different.  But God had a plan for my life and obviously the vitamin D deficiency was part of it.  I learned a lot.  About God.  About myself and the wrong views I had of God and the world.  About others.  About sympathy.  About providence.  About the soul vs. the mind.  About my health.  About, about, about.  God used those experiences to make me who I am today.  Those health issues led me down paths that I would not have picked had I been a healthy young adult.  But those paths were the right ones for me in the plan God had. 

I'll do a post soon about how I eventually got my health figured out.  It was a long hard road, but well worth the fight.

Beyond a Year

I never started out to breastfeed my daughter beyond a year.  My mom breastfed me and my sisters to a year and anything beyond that sounded ridiculous to me.  Even gross.  I could not wrap my head around why ANYONE would want to breastfeed past a year.  I wasn't even sure how someone could justify it.

But then we went through colic.  And I began breastfeeding on demand.  And we decided to do child-led solids which meant Little Miss wasn't getting many calories from eating regular food.  I read somewhere that a child's diet should be 80% breastmilk at a year.  80%!  How could I possibly wean my child off of 80% of her diet?  So as a year approached, I realized that neither of us were ready to wean.  I had been responding to her needs for the past year, and I couldn't imagine suddenly saying no to those needs.

Now many people say, well, you must not have struggled.  And in many ways, you're right.  I didn't struggle as much as other people, but we definitely had struggles.  We had the nurses in the hospital doing everything possible to sabotage my breastfeeding.  We had major difficulties with a good latch because of said nurses.  I suspect now that the colic was because I had an oversupply which caused her to get only fore milk which upset her stomach.  She didn't sleep through the night until 10 1/2 months.  She got her first 2 teeth rather early and bit me.  Hard.  Multiple times.  We went from 2 to 8 teeth in 2 weeks and spent the next 2-3 months trying to figure out better positions and getting a good latch.  I got mastitis a few times.  I had cuts in my nipples from her adjusting to her teeth.  She still nurses at least 8 times a day, but for short amounts of time. She's currently getting molars and has slept through the night twice in the last 2 months. And I'm sure we'll have more struggles.

But ya know what?  It's been worth it.  I love that she is getting the food that is designed for her.  I love when she kicks and smiles because she is that excited to nurse.  I love when she decides that nursing while standing on one leg would be fun to do.  I love when she has to stop to point out my belly button for me.  I love when she has to stop to point out her belly button for me.  I love how she has to investigate my mouth and teeth while nursing.  I love when she decides to give me a raspberry and giggles!  I love when she snuggles up next to me at night and falls asleep nursing.

I never thought I would love nursing a toddler.  I plain never thought it was even a possibility for me.  I have no idea how long we'll nurse.  Hopefully to 2 years, at least.  She doesn't show any signs of stopping now, which gives me hope that we'll reach that goal, but who knows?

I suppose I'll just have to let her take the lead.  Just like she's been doing for the past 16 months. 

Procrastination as a Style

Hi.  My name is Megan and I'm a procrastinator.

I'm actually procrastinating right now. Yep, this very moment.  I should be cleaning for an appraisal of our house tomorrow, but instead I'm writing a blog post on procrastinating.  Amazing how the guilt doesn't push me back to cleaning, huh?

A little background:  in school I would never do the homework until the day before it was due.  Sometimes the day of.  And studying for a test never occurred too far in advance either.  I used to feel horribly guilty about it.  I would beat myself up and hate myself every time I was down to the last minute again.  I'm stunned looking back at the amount of self-loathing that occurred because I didn't get things done ahead of time.

After a particular rant against myself and my procrastinating ways, my counselor asked me one day if my grades were suffering because of my procrastinating.  Well...no.  In fact, I was a straight A student.  He suggested that maybe this was just my style:  I merely needed that extra motivation and pressure to get things done.  I was still getting things done, done well, and on time, so why was I beating myself up that a certain project wasn't done days or weeks in advance?

Talk about a light bulb moment.

You have no idea how freeing this was!  Suddenly the guilt was gone.  I wasn't a lazy bum.  I wasn't a slacker.  I just had a different style to accomplishing things.  This realization even allowed me to work on things ahead of time, knowing that I didn't have to finish it right then.  I could just do the prep work for that last push at the last minute.  

So yes, I'm a procrastinator.  And I'm not trying to change.

On Being Thankful for Colic

Before our daughter was born, my husband and I tried very hard to keep from drifting into the "parenting is going to be ALWAYS wonderful" land.  We did our best to remember that there would be sleepless nights and rough times.  But nothing could prepare us for our daughter.  She screamed.  A lot.  She cried.  A lot.  She refused to sleep.  She demanded to be bounced 24/7.  The first four months of her life are still a tear-filled blur.  Now, I'm not saying we didn't have amazing times with her.  We didn't want to give her back and we loved her more than we thought was possible.  But it was rough.  Rah-ah-ah-heally rough.

At first, we tried to get her to sleep in her own bed.  That's what good parents do, right?  But she ended up in bed with me every night.  She demanded to be held constantly so I looked into babywearing.  She would actually sleep when I had her in the wrap.  *bliss*  At first I tried to nurse on a schedule, but she was always hungry and nursing seemed to be one the few things that calmed her.  I started nursing on demand.

I did everything that "good" parents are supposed to do in our day and age and it just plain didn't work.  And ya know what?  I'm so very very glad.  I'm glad that our daughter forced us onto a different parenting style.  Co-sleeping.  Babywearing.  Nursing on demand.  Nursing beyond a year.  Our high need daughter led us down a path we never expected to take and I'm grateful.  God definitely knew the kind of child we needed first: one that would shock us into parenthood.  Shock us into doing things we never thought we would.  Shock us into turning away from mainstream parenthood.  Shock us into a way of parenting that we resisted and now love.

As hard as those colicky days and nights were, I'm so thankful for them.

But I still hope that our next one is a better sleeper.

Interrupted Traditions

Traditions are inherited patterns of thought or action, but what happens when that inheritance is rejected? When the tradition is interrupted?  When all those things our great-great grandmothers would have taught us have been thrown aside for a more modern approach?  Should we even bother with all of those things deemed “old-fashioned”?  Or must we always be moving forward and looking for the next best thing?

I always thought of myself as fairly traditional in certain aspects, but much more modern in other ways, but I find the older I get, the more I discover that the modern ways aren’t necessarily better.  In fact, I’ve also found that many of the things I considered traditional are only one or two generation traditional.  In the past 50 to 100 years we’ve turned away from the traditional lifestyles that people held to for thousands of years.

So here I am, trying my best to get back to that interrupted tradition.  I’m not sure all the things I’ll cover here.  My interests go far and wide and random.  But for now, I mostly want to share what I’m learning through this journey into the traditional.