April del Fuego’s Blog

The ONLY good thing about my daughter having so much trouble with night weaning is that I can say I told you so to all the people who claimed it would only take a couple of nights and that she wouldn’t cry for more than thirty minutes.  I said then, “you don’t know my daughter!  she is a very determined and expressive little person, I think she’ll cry more than that.”  And, unfortunately, I was right.  We’re a week and a half into it and last night she was awake and crying for 2 hours.:-(  And even on the nights when she doesn’t cry that long, she still hasn’t just given up on getting nursie in the middle of the night.  So I can say I TOLD YOU SO to all those people who said it would only be hard for one or two nights, and that she wouldn’t cry for very long.

Its tough when my baby cries.  Poor little punkin.  I love her so much, and I want things to go her way, but unfortunately that doesn’t always happen.  So I just have to be strong, do what I can to comfort her, and know that this too shall pass.  Its tough when my baby cries.

It appears that having a child makes me more susceptible to holiday mushiness. Some people think it’s uncool to be emotional like this, but I’m not so sure about that.

Background: I’m not typically Christmas-crazy, and I’m not Christian, so Jesus is not the reason for my season, and I hate shopping frenzies and the consumerist haze that hangs over many Christmas-crazy Americans. However: I do love being with loved ones at Christmas, I love taking the time to pick out or make gifts that I think will brighten someone’s life, and I have a lifetime of memories associated with the holiday (most of them positive).

So, enjoying Christmas isn’t what’s new. What’s new this season is my daughter. She’s only 7 months old, so Christmas is not a big deal to her. But her effect on me IS a big deal.

What started it was when I put her in her red velvet Christmas dress for a little pre-Christmas gathering with some of her out-of-town grandparents. Seeing her in that little dress with her little white leotards (we called them lisatards when we were kids), and her Santa hat, my eyes filled with tears of joy. I think this was one of those moments where I realized I have what I had been dreaming of: a beautiful little family! Something about dressing my daughter up made me feel like I’m living a dream come true. Of course part of it is the RED VELVET…which I love!

In the days since the red velvet dress, I’ve continued to be really, really grateful. Little moments just make me so happy. Like at 5:30 this morning, when Sonnet (who sleeps with us) woke up and starting crawling over me and her dad, and she reminded me of those meerkats: she was on her knees with her hands on her dad’s back, popping her little head up and peering at him to see if he was awake (which he was shortly thereafter!). And at dinner lately, when she sits in her high chair, contentedly chewing on the straps of the chair, looking up at us every once in a while then going back to her very important task of mauling those straps. Or like right now, when she’s standing up in her crib (which is more of a playpen, since she doesn’t sleep in there!) and she keeps smiling at me until I look up at her and smile back at her, at which point she blows me some “I love you Mama” raspberries.

In these moments, I feel a pang in my heart, and I get teary-eyed. The tears are about the deep, deep love for Sonnet that makes me so glad to be alive. So glad I decided to have faith in love and hook up with her awesome dad. Grateful that all those years ago when I thought life wasn’t worth living, that I hung on and made it through to the other side. So lucky to have had a healthy pregnancy with a healthy baby at the end of it. And so freaking grateful for the chance to be Sonnet’s mother: to have a little being who benefits so much from all of this love that I’ve always had in my heart, love that I finally get to pour into a child, and then watch her flourish from it. Wow—so, so amazing!

This is a good kind of holiday mushiness. Very cool.

How come I’m so excited and proud because my daughter started crawling yesterday? You would think I had just learned to crawl!

I guess this is just one of those parental moments where you watch your child trying, and trying, and trying to do something, and when they finally succeed, your heart soars for them. And I think there’s also a sense of the whole world opening up to her, as she is finally mobile and able to move towards what she wants, which right now is mainly our cat, Lucy. Being able to go get what you want in the world is a big deal! I spend so much time tuning in to Sonnet these days, I am awfully emotionally connected to her, so I probably am vicariously experiencing her sense of liberation. I really felt it yesterday when she SO wanted to touch the cat, and she was able to locomote towards her and actually do what she wanted to do…there was this wave of extreme satisfaction with how her body’s movements were matching her intentions. Wow! Now that I think about it like that, of course we were excited!

Of course, there are other ramifications of her newfound ability to crawl. We have to finally do all of the “babyproofing” around the house that we’ve been procrastinating about. And even though she’s mainly crawling towards us, right now, this is the beginning of her ability to get away from us, which is where we all eventually go, away from our parents, right? This elicits just a little twinge of bittersweetness, like that familiar lament, “my baby is growing up!”

Still, knowing all that, I’m still really excited for my little bunny to be crawling around the house! As typical first time parents, we already posted a video of her first crawling on her website. (see http://www.sonnetmarie.com or just click on the Sonnet Marie link on the right side of this blog:-)

Crawl on, Baby Sonnet!!

Since there’s so much to learn as a new mother, I have been finding myself turning to books more than I usually do. After college and graduate school, I had gotten so burned out on reading books by experts and scholars that for years I have avoided most things non-fiction and/or instructive. I really prefer hands-on learning now.

Well, motherhood is certainly about hands-on learning, isn’t it?! Even though I’ve been around babies and children a fair amount in my life, it really is different now that I’m responsible for our baby 24/7. So, I’ve found myself needing some help, and I’m noticing its very important to keep a balance of reading books by “experts,” and talking to “real moms.”

The other day, I was hanging out with a couple of moms, and we were all relieved that the other two were also still trying to figure out the whole sleep thang! Each of us is co-sleeping with our babies, at least part-time, and we’re all avid breast feeders, and we all are doing some form of “attachment parenting.”  And each of has been experimenting with different sleep strategies, with results that are a mix of success and frustration.

For me, I really experienced a shift between how I felt consulting experts vs. real moms: reading books by experts, I felt like I was doing something wrong, or that I needed to make an overwhelming number of changes; talking to real moms, I felt like I was doing fine, and that my daughter and I are just doing the dance that mothers and babies do at this stage.

One problem with books is that once people’s ideas are down in black and white, they are no longer dynamic, but rather they become static and unchanging…and motherhood is anything but unchanging.  In that sense, its no wonder reading books on parenting seems a little out of sync with mothering: the words on the page are too wooden and still and certain to match up with the human, ever-moving, and uncertain nature of being a mama on a day to day basis.

So, I’m really grateful to the other mamas in my life, who can join me in being real moms rather than experts.  We who are doing the dance of motherhood, sometimes gracefully, sometimes not so gracefully.  We who have the everyday wisdom of love and exhaustion and joy and mistakes and hormones and beauty and struggle of being real moms.

I’ll keep reading books by experts to get ideas about certain things, but its the real moms who really keep me going.  Thank you, mamas!