One of my colleagues asked, which reminded me to post...

One of my colleagues (who I think has a 5 month old) sent me this email this morning at 1:39 AM.

Shani- just thought I'd check in. How are you doing? Baby doing well?  Wld love to know how you are doing. I think reality is actually hitting me lately with the juggling act and is taking its toll... Any tips for sanity?  I told her I actually think I started this blog when Selah was 5 months.  I figured I would share my answer :-).

Hi Friend,

I'm okay.  My stress these days aren't mama-related...just work related ;-).  Baby is GREAT!  She has a perpetual ear infection so 2 weeks ago she got tubes...which was stressful, but it totally cleared out all the mucus and watering that was happening in her eyes and nose, so that's great.

How's your darling doing?  Is she sleeping yet?  I can't remember how old she is -- but somewhere between 5 and 7 months I thought I was going to lose my mind.  Selah had stopped sleeping well so I of course wasn't sleeping well.  Two things happened to help -- our doctor encouraged us to start sleep training (which led to one tough night but has been amazing since).  And then  Somewhere around 8.5 months I stopped nursing....which I felt a little guilty about, but it helped me start to regain sanity. 

It's still tough running here, there, everywhere...but I tend to leave work around 4ish so I can get Selah, hang out with her, etc.  She goes down around 7-8 PM and my hubby and I get dinner after that and I tend to work for a few more hours 2-3 hours.   I've also realized I'm not going to always be the perfect employee I want to be ;-).  I do my best but there are certainly things I hear that others are doing that I just say, "can't do it..."

Is this at all helpful???  It gets better I promise! :)  Well, or at least it gets better in spurts!

PS-- this is the blog I started around that time :) http://mamahowdoyoudoit.blogspot.com/ .  I haven't written in it in a while.

Scared to go to sleep...

...last night was one of those traumatic nights....the type of night that makes you fear the next night (as my sister Malene said, with her second child she (mom) sometimes would start crying when the sun went down). 

Selah had been a sleeping champ for the past week.  Yes--I was getting overconfident in my mama skills, attributing every single wink of sleep to some genius on my part....

• when I put her down,
• what I fed her,
• how much I fed her,
• the jazz I played when she went down,
• the perfect book I read her,

and the list of absolutely correct steps I took to facilitate her brilliant sleep is endless.

Then last night happened.Selah went to sleep a little earlier than usual at 5:45...she woke up a few times and was really hungry both times.  I gave her a night feed at around 9:30pm.  The problem is we were watching the BCS Championship and didn't get to sleep until almost midnight.

At 2AM Selah starts tossing and turning.  She's doing the quiet fuss--and I'm good at ignoring her noises in the night, so I ignored her.  Then she started yelling like her head was stuck in her crib.  It wasn't....but close.  She keeps getting stuck on her stomach.  Somehow she's rolling over on her stomach in the middle of the night, and can't figure out how to get her pacifier back and turn back over.  So I flipped her over, rubbed her back, made sure her humidifier was going, re-set her mobile, and changed her uber-wet diaper before heading back to bed....I then had to waste time on my blackberry for another 30 minutes to get sleepy again....including responding to an email exchange my friends and I are having about an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about Chinese mothers. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html

3AM, I'm back asleep and 4AM I'm back awake.  This time, again, she's screaming like she has a body part stuck in her crib.  Again she has flipped herself over and isn't able to flip back over.  She screams her head off for another 10 minutes before finally she wins and I decide to feed her.  I'm still nursing, but I had some wine during the BCS Championship so I hesitate to nurse her--even though the requisite hours have passed.  I make her a formula bottle while she continues screaming her head off.  By the time I get ready to feed her, my husband is downstairs trying to be helpful.  The only problem is he's talking to me.  "What can I do to be helpful?".  I can't tell the truth, because the one thing that's not helpful in this situation is someone talking...period.  I try to usher him back upstairs.  He goes back upstairs, but not before making a symphony of random night sounds (coughing, creaking wood, talking, etc.).  And sometime during all of this she also poops in a major way and I have to change a diaper so stinky it makes me gag.

Back to bed.  As I go to bed I hypothesize ALL the missteps that could explain this crazy night.

• is it the snow?  maybe the snow is making it so bright outside that Selah thinks it's light
• maybe it's the snow day--it threw her schedule off
• maybe I let her go to sleep too early (at 5:45)
• maybe I didn't feed her enough
• maybe it was when we had her outside in the cold for almost 15 minutes
• maybe I should have suctioned her nose more before she went to bed

Oh the reasons go on and on....I still haven't figured it out...and of course, I won't.

Selah wakes up again at 6am...but she just talks to herself.  I can ignore her talking to herself, but by 7am she's back on her belly and screaming at the top of her lungs.  Oy vey. 

Okay, almost bedtime.  Just a little scared to see what the night has in store....

11 step program for those considering parenthood (generously stolen from another blog)

My friend Demet out in the Bay Area who has a 1-year old daughter sent this posting along.  I thought it was funny--and it comes from another blog that I thought had some neat stuff...as if we don't have enough to do, now I'm adding random blogs to my life :-).  But something I'm realizing with mommyhood is sometimes I have the time to do 15 minutes of laundry--but not the energy--and so I facebook.  Or I have the energy to do something substantial--but not the time--and so I read random blogs :-).  So here's the link to the blog http://www.momblognetwork.com/home-garden/11-step-program-those-considering-parenthood and here's the cut and paste of this funny 11 step program.  Since I'm in the midst of transitioning Selah to solids, I thought #8 was particularly funny.

Lesson 1
1. Go to the grocery store.
2. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
3. Go home.
4. Pick up the paper.
5. Read it for the last time.
Lesson 2
Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already are parents and berate them about their…
1. Methods of discipline.
2. Lack of patience.
3. Appallingly low tolerance levels.
4. Allowing their children to run wild.
5. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child’s breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior.
Enjoy it because it will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.
Lesson 3
A really good way to discover how the nights might feel…
1. Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. (Eat cold food with one hand for dinner)
2. At 10PM, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.
3. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.
4. Set the alarm for 3AM.
5. As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink and watch an infomercial.
6. Go to bed at 2:45AM.
7. Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.
8. Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.
9. Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for work and go to work (work hard and be productive)
Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 3-5 years. Look cheerful and together.
Lesson 4
Can you stand the mess children make? To find out…
1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.
2. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3. Stick your fingers in the flower bed.
4. Then rub them on the clean walls.
5. Take your favorite book, photo album, etc. Wreck it.
6. Spill milk on your new pillows. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?
Lesson 5
Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.
1. Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.
2. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out.
Time allowed for this – all morning.
Lesson 6
Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don’t think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don’t look like that.
1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there.
2. Get a dime. Stick it in the CD player.
3. Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. Sprinkle cheerios all over the floor, then smash them with your foot.
4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.
Lesson 7
Go to the local grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full-grown goat is an excellent choice). If you intend to have more than one child, then definitely take more than one goat. Buy your week’s groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys. Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.
Lesson 8
1. Hollow out a melon.
2. Make a small hole in the side.
3. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.
4. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.
5. Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.
6. Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air.
You are now ready to feed a nine- month-old baby.
Lesson 9
Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street , Barney, Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokemon. Watch nothing else on TV but PBS, the Disney channel or Noggin for at least five years. (I know, you’re thinking What’s ‘Noggin’?) Exactly the point.
Lesson 10
Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying ‘mommy’ repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each ‘mommy’; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required). Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years. You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.
Lesson 11
Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while playing the ‘mommy’ tape made from Lesson 10 above. You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

Honest Mamas Say, "it doesn't get easier!"

Good news!  Selah returned to sleeping through the night last night :-).  She started sleeping through the night at 6 weeks, and then about 3 weeks ago (for all sorts of good reasons--teething, mommy and daddy got sick, she was congested, we were on the road throwing her off her routine, she went through de-swaddling, and her body started being able to do all sorts of movement that was just fun and exciting) STOPPED.  This certainly contributed to me feeling like I was going to lose my mind.

But that's not the topic.  The topic I want to quickly cover is some real, honest answers I've received from some mamas--it doesn't get any easier :-).  In some ways, this is encouraging.  When people tell you, "oh, it gets easier when they're 3 months....6 months...1 year..." you start to think YOU'RE crazy when your child hits those milestones and stuff still feels, well, hard.

Here are a few things I've heard from some mamas in the past 24 hours...all confirming that it doesn't get easier.  So if you feel like it should be getting easier and it's not, DON'T FRET!
FELICIA, my cousin (who is the mother of 3 kids--2 boys and a beautiful girl--the boys are school aged and baby girl is an infant/toddler).  Felicia has done it all (full-time job, stay-at-home job, part-time job now).  "I would like to tell you it gets easier…but it doesn’t. The amazing thing is, just when you think you can’t take anymore…that you can’t stay up and give one more bottle, or you just can’t clean another mess off the floor…you receive an inner strength that keeps you going."
My friend (who I call YOODACRIS) emailed me a very funny email last night.  She's out in the Bay Area, mom to a 3-year old daughter, and she also has her own business (life coaching).   We had this funny exchange.
YOODACRIS:  "The first year is truly the hardest. First they tell you the first five weeks, then they say the first three or four months.. Then it seems like a cruel joke as people extend it to the first year, first few years... "
ME (SHANI):   "So when does it really get easier?"
YOODACRIS:  "I hesitate to answer your question about when. I can see why people lie about it.. No one wants to demoralize a new mom. For now I'll say One year, then at Selahs birthday I'll revise ;))"
KENYA, a friend of my sister's, shared this.  "Ironic that you posted this as I JUST asked myself this question tonight and probably at the same time as I was doing my middle daughter's (of 3 daughters and the most and longest hair of the daughters) hair.  And, I thought there needs to be a sound board giving tips to moms that just keep going and pushing through all of it (work, cooking, cleaning,, wife-ing etc...).  So thank you for your thoughts.  (my girls are 8, 6 and 4) Somehow, a routine and rhythm develops and next thing you know, being a working mom just rolls off your tongue.  Enjoy all that mommy-hood brings!!! :)"  HAIR!?!??!!  I hadn't even THOUGHT about hair1?!?! :-)  If any of you know my hair, you know I should be VERY VERY worried about having to do my daughter's hair.

And finally some encouragement from my more experienced cousin down in Houston, CHERRY.  She shares, "Well because my baby is 22 I can't remember how I did it, but I had 3 and we all survived. Anyway Ladies stay prayerful and open with children..."

That's right.  We'll survive.  And I'm assuming our children will turn out just great (or at least great enough ;-)) as well.

OH!  And if you disagree and think it does get easier, comment back.  My guess is once it starts to feel doable, we go and have more kids...so maybe that's why it doesn't get easier?  Or maybe folks just find a groove that works right for them?  Hmmm....

Just visiting and want to contribute??

Hi there!

If you're visiting and want to contribute to the "mama how do you do it" community, here are some things you can do below.

1)  Visit the blog and follow it!  http://mamahowdoyoudoit.blogspot.com/2010/12/why-do-i-exist.html
2)  Submit some answers (email them to me and I can post them on your behalf).  Some of the initial questions I'm hoping you'll answer below.  Given you've got plenty going on, if you only answer a few questions, definitely don't worry!  Mamas understand ;-).
3)  Submit some questions!  As the group of followers hopefully grows, I would love to send out questions to folks and have them answer the questions and update it to the blog.

QUESTIONS TO ANSWER?
Background info-Name
-# and age of kids
-Extra kid-icular activities (where do you work?  what do you do?  where do you volunteer?  how many hours a week do you spend in your extra kid-icular activities)
How do you do it??? (feel free to answer some, none, etc.)-Who are your network of supporters? (if you have any)  How do you leverage them?
-How do you stay sane (if you do)? What makes you feel insane?
-What age has been most enjoyable?
-What age has been most challenging?
-How do you give your marriage what it needs to be sustained? (if you are married)
-How do you give yourself what you need to be sustained?
-What have you learned about what DOESN'T work?
-How have you thought about your professional and personal tradeofs and decisions?

Why Do I Exist?

....and by "I" I mean this blog.  I'm more than halfway through my first year of motherhood.  It's harder than I expected, and so I'm constantly seeking counsel, affirmation, re-affirmation, and guidance.  My mom actually didn't work the first 5 years of my life, nor did my husband's mom.  As I think about me and my friends, I think we need a rolodex of role models.  Clearly for decades and generations (and heck, ever) women have been mothering and working and wifing.  Still, I wonder how they did it then, and how women are doing it now. 

So I find myself asking other moms again and again, "how do you do it?".  I thought it would be great to capture some of these answers because often I've found some really helpful advice and support...and I just need more of it.

I also thought a diverse collection of answers would be useful because while some of the responses I get really resonate with me, others don't.  Some answers prove that other working moms are simply better than I am (e.g. "I wake up at 3:30 in the moring every morning and start my day...").  Other answers make me wonder what happened to my mommy instinct (e.g. "I just couldn't imagine going back to work after he was born").  But I know these answers are totally legit and would totally resonate with another mom....or even me depending on the day/month/year!

I figure if there is a place with enough diverse answers from diverse women, women will be able to find answers that fit with who they are, and with what their lifestyle, hopes, dreams, mental and emotional capacity are.  Or selfishly, at least I will find answers!

This will constantly be a work in progress...and disclaimer:  this work is being progressed by a mom with a relatively demanding job so progress may sometimes be slow :-).

Still, I hope this becomes living, breathing, and useful.

All the best,
Wondering Mama