The GGA Project -- Day #93 "Nana Magic"

If you are a mom, you know that one of the most prevalent pieces of advice given to new moms is to "nap when the baby naps."  The idea is that most new mothers are bound to be at least a little sleep deprived; taking advantage of the time when the baby is sleeping to catch up on her own much-needed rest allows a mama very necessary refueling time.


Most moms find this to be an impossible concept..great in theory but tough to execute.  There is so much to do during the brief periods of baby down time that to snooze on through them just feels like a waste.  I never once took a nap when Monkey was an infant.  It's not that I didn't want to.  Talk about a waste of time: I used to daydream about napping instead of doing it.  But I just couldn't relax knowing there was so much I could get done when I didn't have a baby attached to me.


Now that Monkey is older, he naps even less than he did when he was an infant, so napping is completely off the table for me.  I'm not complaining about that.  I was never much of a napper to begin with.  I usually avoid it just because when I sleep in the afternoon it takes me at least an hour to climb out of the post-nap fog, and then I can't get to sleep later that night.  Best just to leave the afternoon zzzzzzs to the baby.


But then last night happened, a strange one indeed.  I was wide awake with no sleep in sight until at least 2:30am, mostly because of having changed the clocks for Daylight Savings time.  This was disconcerting enough, given that my alarm was set to wake me at 5:30 for work.  To add a layer of poo to the restless night, Monkey woke up just as I was about to drift off, and he was instantly and stubbornly wide awake in the middle of the night as I have only seen him on one other occasion.  And not only was he awake, he was super irritable because of the incisors he's got breaking through, and he wanted nothing but to climb all over me, seeking some kind of comfort and reprieve from the pain.


This went on for the next 2 hours.  I did everything I could to make him feel better, but in the end he was still clearly feeling pretty bad.   At my wit's end I eventually turned on Nick Jr. and we sat through two episodes of bratty Franklin, up to no good as usual.  I finally fell asleep around 4:30, and I don't know when Monkey finally dozed off, but when I awoke at 7:15 (whoops) I was dazed and exhausted and feeling pretty useless.  Remarkably, Monkey was pretty much ready to get going with the day.


I rarely lose my patience with anything, and even more rarely when it comes to my son.  Thankfully he is pretty agreeable so far, so he doesn't do a lot to try my patience.  Also, given that he *is* my son and I am so thankful for his presence in my life, my heart is a soft squishy mess when it comes to him.  I don't have a problem saying "no" and setting boundaries, but to see him upset or legitimately suffering pretty much guarantees levels of patience to emerge in me I didn't even know I had.


That said, today was kind of a strange exception.  Having been awake almost the entire night and spending a good part of that time listening to him cry beyond consolation (mostly the extra grating, manufactured kind of crying as opposed to genuine tears), I was at the breaking point when late morning rolled around his emotional state hadn't changed.  I kept telling myself that he was truly in pain and feeling bad, and I did what I could do to try and comfort him, but still I felt very much opposed to the thought of spending any more time listening to him by then.


Nap time, which is usually a breeze with him.--he just puts himself right to sleep--was looking to be a big challenge.  The second I put him into his crib he started screaming and wailing (this time for real...he soaked thoroughly the blanket he was clutching), and he simply would not stop until eventually I took him out and came to find my Mom.  In that moment, I'm positive my face was begging for help, searching her eyes for advice and wisdom and that Mama reassurance that says, "I've been here, in this place where you are right now.  And I know just what to do."


And she did.


When my Mom watches the baby on my workdays, they have a nap time routine wherein the baby hangs out on his Nana's lap with his pacifier in, wrapped in his blanket, and just chillin' in her soft, warm Nana lap.  She tells me he often falls asleep that way and she then carries him to his crib.  When I'm home we don't do the Nana routine, and he's never seemed to mind in the past.  But today, Nana's love was just what he needed, just when he needed it.


She took him from my arms, gathered him and his blanket up in her lap, and let her deepest, most patient and understanding Nana love shine through.


Today's New Activity: Giving in to the Comfort of Mom/Nana


I can't overstate how lucky I feel to have my parents nearby to help in the raising of my son.  I don't know how I would have handled what was going on between last night and today if it weren't for the willingness of my Mom to step in a lend a hand.  The baby, once comfortable in her lap, almost instantly fell asleep.  And just knowing he was finally relaxed and at peace, I fell asleep too...right there on the couch next to him and my Mom.  I'm not sure how long we napped together, but the sleep was obviously much needed for both of us, and whatever amount of time it was was enough for me.  The peace of mind alone that came from knowing he was calm and comforted would have been enough itself.  Having the chance to revisit the days of my own childhood--when my Mom was all that was ever needed to bring peace to my own heart--was just icing on the cake.

The GGA Project -- Day #76 "Hold Everything, Hold This Baby"

When I came home from work today, I found the monkey at home with my Mom, droopy-eyed and sad looking, as he had been the day before as well.  He hadn't eaten a solid thing all day and could scarcely be coaxed into doing anything other than to sit in the laps of his caretakers and make a tiny, miserable grunting sound.

As I mentioned a few times this week, the baby is getting (it seems) ALL the rest of his teeth at the same time.  He's been hanging in there with his 8 front teeth for a number of months now, but all of a sudden there are four molars breaking through, as well as the beginning hints of incisors.  It's a shudder-inducing thing to look in a baby's mouth and see the four point edges of a molar broken through the gums, knowing that the bulk, the entire surface of the tooth still has to bust its way through.  What torture!  Common with teething, Monkey also had a fever, and he was just all the way around out-of-sorts.

Normally, like clockwork, I put the baby to bed at 8.  Once he's had dinner, taken a bath on bath nights, put on jammas and read books and said goodnight to everybody, I carry him into our room, where I turn on the lava lamp.  This is his cue to reach down and press play on the CD player, starting his instrumental nigh nigh music.  At that point he practically dives into his crib, and I generally don't hear a peep out of him...he just zonks himself out.

While I appreciate how easy it is to get my baby to sleep--as I know it can sometimes be a challenge with kids his age--I sometimes miss the days when he would let me hold and snuggle him for a while, singing "Goodnight Sweetheart" before putting him to bed, or even more cuddly...the days when he would fall to sleep while I nursed him.

Well anyway, tonight was nothing like normal nights on account of all that teething madness.  Tonight the baby wanted me nearby well past his bedtime, so when I laid down on my bed, he put himself into a froggy squat position on top of me, laying his head down on my chest and letting out his quiet sounds of suffering...about a half an hour passed this way before he fell asleep.

Today's New Activity: Bedtime Wake-up Call

Every parent out there with kids at least 5-years old will tell you the same thing: that the time spent raising kids goes by in the blink of an eye.  So far, I hadn't felt that sentiment.  While it's true that I look back on monkey's baby pictures and can hardly remember him having been so small, it doesn't exactly feel like the time since then has flown.  What's more, the fact that an entire separation and half a divorce has transpired since then can sometimes make his infant days seem like a lifetime ago.  And given that I've had the privilege of working mostly part-time since he was born, I feel I've had the chance to truly live and appreciate ALL the stages of his young life that have come and gone.

But then tonight happened.

I'd really really wanted to go to the gym tonight.  I just got back on track after 2 weeks away, and I was eager to experience the near-empty Friday night gym haunt after the baby went to sleep.  In tonight's bedtime moment though, monkey sleeping on my chest, finally and totally at peace, and completely dependent on me, it finally hit me.  It finally hit me that these moments will only get fewer and farther between.  It will only become less likely that my boy would rather be snuggling in my arms than running, playing, or doing anything else in the world that makes him feel like a big boy and not a little baby.  I will very soon be longing for these moments, wondering where they'd gone, and questioning whether or not I'd honored and appreciated them as completely as I could have when I had the chance.

I decided to stay with the baby and breathe and live and feel that moment as deeply and fully as I could.  I forgot about the gym, about all my plans to read and catch up on Glee.  I left my computer and my phone in the other room, and I just lay there with him for two hours, listening to his breath and rubbing his back when he got restless and moved around.

I tried to imagine our life five years from now, narrating softly in his sleeping ear the hopes and dreams I have for us, for our joy and fullness in a life so unlike the one we originally set out living together.

I tried to imagine how his face will change as he grows and loses more of his baby fat, how tall he'll be by the time he starts school, what his voice will sound like when he starts reading beginner books to me at bedtime.  I sang him Joni Mitchell's "Circle Game" and put myself in the shoes of a mother at all those stages in his life: the 5-year-old catching bugs, the 12-year-old on ice skates, the 16-year-old behind the driver's seat, the young man setting out on his own.

Mostly, though, I just was.  Just there.  All his for those two hours in the quiet, in the lamp's pink glow.  All his, for as long as he'll have me.