Kids Throwing up and other Sicknesses

Feelings new to touch and taste
Sundried emotions
Jump out and dance against the wall
Colors of Pluto and Neptune exploding
And I can't seem to find myself
Lost and drifting
On waves of purple cotton
Or is it blue?
Or can I say I never loved him
To find the time to not have pain
But anger is a friend of mine
And abandonment my brother
So when I find myself again
When I have figured out the wall
When I find the pearl amidst the stack
     Of papers that lay cowering on the floor
          Rejected and unacceptable
When I find it I won't sleep
I won't shake hands and I won't eat
I won't move a finger, I'll hold it tight
Then it can't leave me in the night.

- Shay Sampson, 2001

So, Eagle was throwing up yesterday, and last night both girls started.  They threw up all night, all over the place.  When my kids puke, it happens without warning.   Suddenly.  Brian stayed awake with them, washed their blankets, got them fresh buckets, got Ocean in the tub when she woke up with puke all through her hair.  These are the moments you don't think about when becoming a parent.  So today is clean up day.  Cleaned the bathroom (puke all over the floor, the toilet and up the walls), and the downstairs, where puke was on the carpet and couch down there.  The kids are starting to feel better, mom and dad are fighting it off.

So after cleaning up the basement, Brian and I were sitting down there drinking coffee while Eagle played, and Brian was juggling and being silly for Eagle who thought it was just hilarious.  And he started talking about how that was the best part of parenting, when you get to laugh and play with your kids.  You make them happy and they make you happy.  I laughed that he would still talk that way, even after staying up all night with puking kids.

But getting puke everywhere motivates me to not just clean up the puke, but to clean the whole room, so maybe even the worst parts of parenting are blessings in disguise.  And in the process of cleaning, the thought occurred to me that some of the heartache that I have been through in life has given me motivation to take a stand against injustice that I might have otherwise overlooked.  I do so in the hopes that my children will grow up in a better world than I did, with more equality, freedom and peace.

I wrote the above poem in 2001, and included it in a group of 17 poems that were to become songs, my first album.  Half of them had melodies already.  At one point I printed them all out and mailed them to myself, registered mail, a primitive attempt to copywrite my work.  I've been carrying that unopened envelope around for years!  I just opened it up the other day, and this one was #16.  I guess I finally realized that I don't need to be worried about someone stealing my work, because no one in their right mind would want to pretend they were me!  I doubt very much that anyone out there would want to walk a mile in my shoes.

Well, I hope this Tuesday finds you all well!

Dreams and Reality

What do these dreams mean?
Visions seeing through time.
In my head, whispers pound
about days gone by.
They show eternity in an instant.

Shay Sampson, 2003. 

Eagle is sick today, poor little guy.  He's throwing up.  His little 14 month old body coming up with nothing but breast milk.  In between nursing him, catching his throw up, and rubbing his back as he drifted off in my arms, I wrote this:

Innocent until proven guitlty
Is a human right all people have.
If anyone has an accusation,
The accused has the right to a fair trial.

Meaning, in the case of drone warfare,
The president does not have the right
To put someone on the hit list and kill them
Without giving them the opportunity to defend themselves

When at all possible, violence should be avoided,
and unless a violent act can be justified in a court of law,
The perpetrator of violence should have to stand trial.

Seems a strange thing to be writing while nursing a sick baby, but I got a bit of drawing done today too.  Baby duties take over, and I'll most likely be holding him the rest of the night.  Making dinner for the kids, and watching Brian get things done towards the project.  Something great, we hope will be done by the end of the week.

If you want to learn more about drone warfare, what is going on, and how innocent people are being killed, their murderers never brought to justice, here is a link to a video of a speech about drone warfare.  It is worth a watch to stay aware of what's happening in the world around you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUryRgQR0W8

Conversations with a 10 Year Old and One Rough Day!

So, my daughter turned 10 last weekend, and we had this conversation on her birthday.

She is very concerned that other kids think she is weird.  She doesn't want to draw any attention to herself because she's afraid people will think she's not normal.  I don't believe there is any such thing as normal.  We are all unique.  As we grow up, we come to appreciate others for their unique personality traits.  I used the example of a good friend of mine, Jo, who my daughter has known her whole life.  I said "Do I like Jo for all the ways that she is like everyone else?  Do I like her because she's so normal?"  When I put it this way, she could see how it is those unique personality traits that we come to love in our friends, these are what draw us to people.  All the kids her age are trying their best to try to be like everybody else, going around trying desperately to be normal, and sooner or later they're going to realize that there is no normal, and it is much cooler to just be yourself, which looks different for all of us.  It seemed like I was getting through to her.  I told her that once one person decided to stop believing in normal and just be themselves, then maybe that awareness would spread to the other kids, and they would start feeling free to be themselves as well.  This concept, I'm not sure she understood, but we both walked away feeling better.

Then today came.  I had to take my daughter to an appointment on the far side of the city.  It would take all day.  Today is day three after my miscarriage, and I am still passing blood clots and some tissue.  But such is life.  I'm not feeling too bad.  So I went into Staples first, and suddenly I felt a gush of blood.  Sure enough, there was blood everywhere, my pants were soaked, and I hadn't even brought my purse into the store.  This was the first disaster.  Feeling a bit nauseous and lightheaded, I got in my car and drove (probably not a good idea when you are loosing so much blood) to my sister's house.  No one was home.  I sat in my car outside her house, and since it was cold, I let the car run with the heat on.  Then my car started to sputter, and it dawned on me that I had meant to fuel up before leaving the NW.  Not only that, but when I looked for my wallet with my gas money in it, I discovered that I had forgotten it in Staples.  I was out of gas, and now my car wouldn't start.  Great, so now I am sitting in my car, bleeding, out of gas, with my baby sleeping in the back, and soon it will be cold.  And for those of you who don't know, I don't have a cell phone.  I pleaded to the universe to send me some help, which was all I could think of to do at the time. 

I saw a car driving towards me and thought it might be my sister coming home.  No, that car had a headlight out.  My sister would never drive around with only one headlight.  In fact, she would never find herself in this predicament at all.  No, my sister does the right thing.  She's not a space-brained mom who drives around in precarious old beaters with no cell phone, running out of gas on cold days, with her kids in the car, showing up at her sister's house unannounced with bloody pants.  In fact, it seems she hardly has any problems at all.  This, I find very frustrating.  Not that she has no problems, but that I seem to have all of them.  As I watched the one headlight car drive past me, I wondered what the hell is wrong with me, and why can't I seem to get my shit together like everybody else.

Then I remembered the conversation I had a few days ago, with a 10 year old girl concerned with being normal.  I guess that feeling affects us all to some extent.  Eventually, my sister and brother in law came and helped out my sorry ass, and I was back on the road in enough time to get my wallet back and pick up my daughter. In the end, what I hope my daughter realizes, is that her real friends and family love and accept her for who she is, including all her faults and idiosyncrasies.  Admitedly, there are some ways that I am downright weird.  :)  The biggest challenge is learning to love and accept ourselves.

What is Attachment Parenting? (My response to the TIME cover)

You know that recent TIME magazine cover with the picture of the mom breastfeeding her son?  Ever since the cover went viral, I've been getting these looks.  Cautious, suspicious, curious.  I've been noticing looks from strangers as if to say "Oh, she's one of THOSE moms."  Do I wear a sign that says "I'm an attachment parent!  Feel free to stare"?  Well, at the grocery store, I do normally wrap my seven month old up on my back using a long piece of colored fabric, so I guess that's hard to miss.  But I feel there are a lot of misconceptions out there, so I'd like to clear a few things up.  To begin with, what is attachment parenting, and why would I practice it?

The subject of the TIME article, attachment parenting, is a style covered in Dr. Sears' The Baby Book. In his book, he explains that “the seven Baby B’s (birth bonding, breastfeeding, babywearing, bedding close to baby, belief in baby’s cries, beware of baby trainers, and balance) are starter tools (remember, tools not rules) to help parents and infants get to know each other better. And families can modify these tools to fit their individual family situation.” (Dr. Sears' facebook response toTIME's article) I first heard of attachment parenting right before my second daughter was born, in '06.  Far from being extreme, the ideas just made sense to me.

I went through such a hard start with my first daughter. We had a rough birth and a hard time breastfeeding. We didn't co-sleep, and rather than trying to follow my daughter's cues, I tried to fit her into a feeding schedule, which is (I think) what Dr. Sears means by baby trainers. In short, I wasn't much of an attachment parent-er. Not because I didn't want to be attached to my kid, but because parenting was really hard. My daughter cried a lot as a baby, because I would put her in her crib and try to get her to fall asleep at specific times. I would try to feed her at regular intervals, rather than watching her cues to see when she wanted to nurse. Trying to stick to a schedule caused a lot of frustration for both me and my daughter.

I didn't want to go through those frustrations again, so when I had my second daughter, I did things differently. I tried my hand at attachment parenting. I had a peaceful birth, with plenty of skin to skin contact afterwards. I breastfed her when she made the cue that meant she wanted to nurse. I carried her in a sling, especially when I couldn't find another way to get her to stop crying. I didn't stress nap times, but instead let her fall asleep when ever she got tired. We slept in the same bed, making night nursing sessions easier. To my delight, it worked. My life was easier. My daughter's life was easier. My house was usually quiet and peaceful, no baby crying! No mama crying! ;) So not only did I find that attachment parenting made sense after reading the whys and hows, I tried it and found it worked.

To be specific, I found that it made mom's and baby's lives easier. But in reality, that's not attachment parenting's goal. The goal is to create a secure bond with our children, a relationship that will withstand the hardships that our children may face in life. It has probably become so popular (at least in part), due to so many people of our generation feeling disconnected from our parents and others in our life. Probably because we want to be deeply connected to our loved ones, our family, our children. It's important for all of us to feel loved, listened to, cared for and connected, and we want our children to feel that way, too.

Now I practice attachment parenting with my son, who is seven months old. Although it hasn't always been a picnic, I'm glad to have these practices. I can only imagine how much harder the baby stage would be without them. The thing I love most about AP (attachment parenting), is the closeness I have with the little guy. It really brings out that intoxicating baby love, where you feel like you could just breath in the smell of him all day long. In my experience, it makes for very cuddly babies.But I am hoping that my efforts to practice attachment do more than help the baby stage.  My goal for my kids is to help them reach adulthood feeling secure and confident, able to make good decisions and build strong relationships.  I feel a close knit relationship with parents goes a long way towards helping kids get there.

Midnight Hugs from the Blissfully Innocent

My five year old still sleeps in my bed from time to time.  Last night she rolled over in her sleep, put her arms around me, and gave me a big hug.  She let out a sigh.  My heart melted.

This wasn't like the hugs we have during the day, where I ask for a hug, or she does, or we show affection simply because we're standing next to each other.  This was a subconscious hug.  To my daughter, mom is perfect.  This love, in my life, is unprecedented.  Unconditional.  Unequivocal.  It scares me sometimes.  Someday she will realize just how imperfect I am.  I wonder if someday she will start to feel uncomfortable with my hugs.  I wonder if I will disappoint her, if she will grow to resent me. Surely someday she will realize that I do almost everything wrong.

Despite what my daughter thinks of me now, I am not really great at anything.  I am not a great mom.  I am a terrible housekeeper, and not a great breadwinner either.  Trying to do all three leads me to feel burnt out, which leads to depression, which leads to me just shutting down.  At that point, I often snap at my loved ones, tune out my kids and ignore my husband.  This is not the life of a picture perfect mom, living in a picture perfect world, maintaining a picture perfect blog that other moms can read and envy.

But I still get hugs in the middle of the night.  I am probably only conscious of these hugs because I have insomnia.  So last night I laid awake wondering why this child is wrapping her arms around me as if I am the greatest thing in the universe, her own personal heaven.  Her once chubby arms and legs are getting longer and thinner, and her body seems huge to me now.  She no longer sleeps with her head in my armpit, where she once enjoyed the comfort of the smell of breast milk in the night.  I see her growing up, and I'm afraid that it's only a matter of time before she sees all my faults.  This in inevitable.  I celebrated her fifth birthday last week, and at the same time, I mourned it.

Parenting 101

I never want to read another blog or article on parenting again.  I say this as I continue to write my own.  At the same time, I won't blame you if you don't read it.  Parenting blogs are very annoying.  In the past few days, I have read all sorts of information, scientific studies, and opinions of experts and lay parents (people who don't parent professionally).  Most of it conflicts, all of it is or seems to be backed up by some kind of study.  I can just picture the new mom, and even some seasoned veterans running around like chickens with their heads cut off, trying to follow the advice that the latest studies suggests.

This has been going on for a long time.  Once upon a time, it was recommended that all babies be slept on their stomachs, then, suddenly, the "experts" changed their minds.  They said babies ought to sleep on their backs.  If mothers had been connected to the internet at this time, I can imagine all the mothers in North America simultaneously running from their computers to their sleeping babes to turn their babies over before somebody saw and suspected them of bad mothering.  Then it was recommended that babies sleep on their sides, and all the mothers got up and ran to their sleepers again to turn them before they choked on spit up.

Suddenly, a study comes out that suggests that waiting till your baby is six months old to introduce solids could be harmful to your baby, or that circumsizing your boy will help prevent the spread of aids, or that sanitizing your grocery cart and washing your hands will produce healthier kids than extended breast feeding.  The list goes on and on, until a person is so overwhelmed with information that they are not sure what to believe anymore.  Only one thing is for sure, no matter what you do as a parent, somebody somewhere will tell you you're doing it wrong.

And here comes one more parenting blog to suggest one more way of making decisions.  Follow your intuition.  That's it.  Parenting is not rocket science folks.  Actually, I could probably still do it just as well if there were never any studies done on it to prove one way is better than another.  There is one little piece of advice that has influenced my parenting choices more than any other.  It is "Follow your baby's cues."  So, if your baby wants to nurse, let her.  If she wants solid food, give it to her.  If your baby is crying, there is a reason why she is crying.  Try to figure out what it is.

I am not saying we shouldn't be reading parenting books or blogs, learning or getting a glimpse of how other people are parenting.  But I don't recommend parenting according to the latest scientific research.  I  also don't recommend choosing a style of parenting simply because it is what your parents did, or what your friends do.  Guess what, Mom and Dad, you are the one that has to make decisions on how you are raising your kids.  You are the one that has to live with those decisions, and those kids.

I could tell you what I think is the best way, but I'd rather tell you that you are strong, smart and capable. You need to have the confidence to make the decisions that you feel are best, and to be able to defend those decisions without falling back on the scientific studies (because science is likely to change).  And hopefully you have a better reason for your decisions than "That's what my parents did, and I turned out okay."  That being said, please have the confidence to admit that you could be, or have been wrong.  It is okay to be wrong sometimes.  I will be the first to admit it.  I have made bad parenting decisions before.  I continue to be an imperfect mother.  I notice it.  My children notice it.  I'm sure my friends notice it.  Sometimes I tell my kids "I'm sorry, I'm doing the best I can".  I think they understand that.