Maia is finally one. Who knew that the year would be both the longest and shortest one of my life. At moments it seemed like she would never hold her own head up, sit up or crawl, but all of a sudden she was walking! It's been a truly tough year but in retrospect here are the things I wish I could have told myself when she was first born:
1) No one has all the answers
2) Cry it out wont work and it feels bad- don't bother- just go with your gut
3) Family support is irreplaceable
4) When anyone offers to help in any way ignore your pride and say YES!
5) It's okay to be scared
6) You will be lonely and exhausted and you will have breakdowns
7) You are a good mother even if you have moments where you hate doing parts of it(i.e. diaper changes, night feedings, rocking/jostling/singing/swaying)
8) You will get through it even if you can't see a way through now
9) She will sleep, smile, sit up, crawl and walk in her own time
10) You will need every skill you have ever learned in school, work, and life to get you through the toughest job you have ever had which includes being on call for 24 hours and no lunch or bathroom breaks but you have ALL of the skills you need to do it!
We made it. Were all here and Maia is thriving.
A waitress at the restaurant we took her to lunch for her birthday called her "little sunshine"- its true she is full of joy and excitement, she is friendly and she loves people. She is beautiful (inside and out) and she is brave, strong and completely amazing. I am lucky, and for a moment I am going to honor my work and say- I worked very hard at that- creating an environment filled with love and support and encouraging her to be herself, not restricting her and appreciating her personality completely.
I am lucky, and I am a hard worker.
Happy Birthday Baby. You are the love of my life.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Panic attacks at 11 months old?!? FUCK!
So this travel thing has been tough. Mat and I have been
stressed and at moments each at what we like to call our "edges" but the
worst has been the development of anxiety attacks in Maia.
I have never seen a child have an anxiety attack before. I didn't even know they could.
During the packing up of the apt and the errands that led up to our move mat and I tried to keep things as "normal" as possible. We had playdates and took her to the park and played at home and kept a loose meal schedule and did baths and bed times. We didn't get rid of her crib till the night before we left and we co slept with her because she was waking up crying.
The last night she woke up and could not get back to sleep- she was crying and wanted to walk around the apartment checking things out. She also seemed to notice the cats were missing.
So we take the Amtrak from LA to Chicago and the first night she slept for 10 hours with no waking! Wow! Awesome. Maybe we should move onto the train!!
Short lived.
She began getting restless the next day and woke up a few times that night. When we get to Chicago she seemed upbeat. The hotel seemed to be exciting- she was laughing and running around. Great! This is going fine...she had thai food, ate cucumber and broccoli fresh, went to the Children's Museum and she had a blast.
Then we changed hotel rooms.
This is where things changed, she couldn't get to sleep, she was looking around confused and had what I can only call an anxiety attack. She was crying and gasping- looking around frightened- even when I was holding her she seemed to not completely register that it was me. She woke up 6 times crying.
TERRIFYING
As a sufferer of panic attacks since I was 15 there is nothing that I could ever fear more for my daughter.
We stayed calm comforted her and got through the night but at random times it happened again. It happened at the airport, it happened on the plane, it happened on the car ride home, it happened this morning when she was in the tub.
Google offered me no help- no information about anything except seperation anxiety- ok yes she has that and has for months- but she has recently been doing better and she has never displayed a "panic attack".
I know the move is stressful for her, its stressful for us! But I am concerned. Do 11 month old bounce back from stress?
A womyn at the hotel in Chicago was telling us that her 2 1/2 year old was pulling his hair out of his head after they moved to another state and in the end she had to choose meds or to shave his head- she shaved his head- and he got through it. But maia is 11 months old and even with trying to explain things to her there is no way to know what she understands.
So we comfort her, co-sleep, tell her "you're ok- we're here- we love you- your safe" we get close to her face and say "its mommie- its daddy- we won't let anything happen to you" we smile, we play, we distract her but we have no idea if what we're doing is right.
She is currently having the longest nap in the world and I am hoping she will wake up refreshed and feeling more like herself.
Any feedback is welcomed.
I have never seen a child have an anxiety attack before. I didn't even know they could.
During the packing up of the apt and the errands that led up to our move mat and I tried to keep things as "normal" as possible. We had playdates and took her to the park and played at home and kept a loose meal schedule and did baths and bed times. We didn't get rid of her crib till the night before we left and we co slept with her because she was waking up crying.
The last night she woke up and could not get back to sleep- she was crying and wanted to walk around the apartment checking things out. She also seemed to notice the cats were missing.
So we take the Amtrak from LA to Chicago and the first night she slept for 10 hours with no waking! Wow! Awesome. Maybe we should move onto the train!!
Short lived.
She began getting restless the next day and woke up a few times that night. When we get to Chicago she seemed upbeat. The hotel seemed to be exciting- she was laughing and running around. Great! This is going fine...she had thai food, ate cucumber and broccoli fresh, went to the Children's Museum and she had a blast.
Then we changed hotel rooms.
This is where things changed, she couldn't get to sleep, she was looking around confused and had what I can only call an anxiety attack. She was crying and gasping- looking around frightened- even when I was holding her she seemed to not completely register that it was me. She woke up 6 times crying.
TERRIFYING
As a sufferer of panic attacks since I was 15 there is nothing that I could ever fear more for my daughter.
We stayed calm comforted her and got through the night but at random times it happened again. It happened at the airport, it happened on the plane, it happened on the car ride home, it happened this morning when she was in the tub.
Google offered me no help- no information about anything except seperation anxiety- ok yes she has that and has for months- but she has recently been doing better and she has never displayed a "panic attack".
I know the move is stressful for her, its stressful for us! But I am concerned. Do 11 month old bounce back from stress?
A womyn at the hotel in Chicago was telling us that her 2 1/2 year old was pulling his hair out of his head after they moved to another state and in the end she had to choose meds or to shave his head- she shaved his head- and he got through it. But maia is 11 months old and even with trying to explain things to her there is no way to know what she understands.
So we comfort her, co-sleep, tell her "you're ok- we're here- we love you- your safe" we get close to her face and say "its mommie- its daddy- we won't let anything happen to you" we smile, we play, we distract her but we have no idea if what we're doing is right.
She is currently having the longest nap in the world and I am hoping she will wake up refreshed and feeling more like herself.
Any feedback is welcomed.
Guess that's a wrap 41612
So it took a FULL two weeks to pack and ship and clean and
and and.... were on our way to union station in LA. Maia has no idea
that this is our trip away from everything she has known for the last 8
months. Maybe its a good thing but I can't help feeling like she has a
right to know that everything is about to change. Maybe she already
does. She hasn't really been sleeping or eating well. She's moody and
tired. She hasn't had play dates everyday like she was and she has been
seeing both mommie and daddy everyday (albeit a stressed out and
generally grisly version).
I have to remind myself that like everything else from taking this job in CA and relocating across the country with a 4 month old to staying home full time with her to starting a mom group to leaving everything has to be for her good and leaving is without a doubt the one way to save her family.
Its much harder on the other side of the place we called home for the longest 8 months of my life. Granted the womyn I met sustained me. The play dates were life savers, but nothing replaces partnership when raising a small child.
All that said I wonder if there will be a fall out for her? Will she wake up one day and realize- hey that park we used to go to is gone and hey what happened to Ona and Leroy and Addison and Chloe?!? Should I rush to find her new playmates and hope she won't notice? I doubt any of them could be replaced. I can't imagine finding a better group of moms anywhere either.
Trying to be positive. Don't focus on it. Just keep moving. Hardest 8 months of my life I won't miss you at all...but the people I met during that time are lifetime allies.
I have to remind myself that like everything else from taking this job in CA and relocating across the country with a 4 month old to staying home full time with her to starting a mom group to leaving everything has to be for her good and leaving is without a doubt the one way to save her family.
Its much harder on the other side of the place we called home for the longest 8 months of my life. Granted the womyn I met sustained me. The play dates were life savers, but nothing replaces partnership when raising a small child.
All that said I wonder if there will be a fall out for her? Will she wake up one day and realize- hey that park we used to go to is gone and hey what happened to Ona and Leroy and Addison and Chloe?!? Should I rush to find her new playmates and hope she won't notice? I doubt any of them could be replaced. I can't imagine finding a better group of moms anywhere either.
Trying to be positive. Don't focus on it. Just keep moving. Hardest 8 months of my life I won't miss you at all...but the people I met during that time are lifetime allies.
Monday, April 9, 2012
Recently
on two seperate occasions at the park I was reminded that there are
going to be some serious challenges to raising this amazing person.
The first experience involved a group of "older" girls- in the context of this blog "older" will generally mean over 5 and under 10. These girl were probably 7 or 8 and wanted absolutely nothing to do with maia. They began playing a game of chase and then proceded to weave a storyline around it. "The witch is coming!! RUN!!! Hurry, there's the witch!!" To their credit the "witch" was a boy about 9 or 10. They continued this witch chase game for a while integrating fear of evil spells and boats to help them sail away... it occured to me at that moment that raising maia as a wiccan was going to be hard. Not hard because I have any doubt about the good kind heartedness of the practice or because I have discomfort about it or even the term "witch" but because she would eventually be forced to confront a situation like this and have to make the choice to correct and call out girls like this or not. Ugh. Ignorance is a huge part of childhood so I can't completely blame these girls for their ingestion of stigma around witchcraft and probably some crappy julia roberts movie, but I realized at that moment that at some point maia would have to make that choice and in turn run the risk of getting her feelings hurt or her family talked about.
The second experience involved two of the same girls from only days before. This time they were playing patient and doctor, one of them pretended to be pregnant and the other the doctor and over and over again one girl would lie down and the other would pretend to open her stomach and give her a tiny doll saying "here's your baby". FUCK! Already?!? I realized that by the age of 7 or 8 girls have already internalized that birth of a child occurs by a doctor cutting you open and handing you a baby. Something is seriously wrong with that. No wonder so many womyn are afraid to even think about natural child birth, birth centers or even gasp home birth. Ugh.
Finally the Easter coming made me think of another dilemma- are we going to lie to maia and tell her about a fictional rabbit that bring candy and hides eggs? And a big fat guy in a red suit bringing toys? Or is she going to be the weird kid who tells every other kid those characters don't exist? Hmmm....
On to the next adventure.
The first experience involved a group of "older" girls- in the context of this blog "older" will generally mean over 5 and under 10. These girl were probably 7 or 8 and wanted absolutely nothing to do with maia. They began playing a game of chase and then proceded to weave a storyline around it. "The witch is coming!! RUN!!! Hurry, there's the witch!!" To their credit the "witch" was a boy about 9 or 10. They continued this witch chase game for a while integrating fear of evil spells and boats to help them sail away... it occured to me at that moment that raising maia as a wiccan was going to be hard. Not hard because I have any doubt about the good kind heartedness of the practice or because I have discomfort about it or even the term "witch" but because she would eventually be forced to confront a situation like this and have to make the choice to correct and call out girls like this or not. Ugh. Ignorance is a huge part of childhood so I can't completely blame these girls for their ingestion of stigma around witchcraft and probably some crappy julia roberts movie, but I realized at that moment that at some point maia would have to make that choice and in turn run the risk of getting her feelings hurt or her family talked about.
The second experience involved two of the same girls from only days before. This time they were playing patient and doctor, one of them pretended to be pregnant and the other the doctor and over and over again one girl would lie down and the other would pretend to open her stomach and give her a tiny doll saying "here's your baby". FUCK! Already?!? I realized that by the age of 7 or 8 girls have already internalized that birth of a child occurs by a doctor cutting you open and handing you a baby. Something is seriously wrong with that. No wonder so many womyn are afraid to even think about natural child birth, birth centers or even gasp home birth. Ugh.
Finally the Easter coming made me think of another dilemma- are we going to lie to maia and tell her about a fictional rabbit that bring candy and hides eggs? And a big fat guy in a red suit bringing toys? Or is she going to be the weird kid who tells every other kid those characters don't exist? Hmmm....
On to the next adventure.
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