Archive for May, 2007

The Stay-At-Home Community Conundrum

Posted in Motherhood, Parenting Twins, Creating Community | Monday, May 28th, 2007 | No Comments »

You know the idyllic story of your parent’s (or maybe grandparent’s) youth—a small neighborhood where all the children played together in a pack all day long while moms stayed at home to take care of the babies and have cookies and lemonade waiting when their children came home in the afternoon. While I know that idyllic stories tend to gloss over painful realities, the basic concept of mom staying home while children played together (and I mean played—they did not participate in group sports in faraway towns), was, in fact, the reality. I don’t know when that changed, exactly; I just know that by the time I had my first child, every mom I knew went back to work. This makes sense—I previously only knew working mothers, being a working person myself. But I looked it up: only 45 percent of women choose to stay home and raise their children, and that’s an improvement in the last ten years!
            The fact that the numbers are improving surprises me a bit, because the going-back-to-work trend has given rise to so many unintended consequences. I’ll use my own example—when I decided to stay home, I was the only woman on my block doing so. Each morning I’d walk around the neighborhood with my baby, and each morning was a completely solitary experience. No one was home. Even the families with under-fives were gone. Now what? You’re alone with your baby and without a community of adults to keep you company. Not only do you go nutsy from lack of adult contact, you have to single-handedly figure out this raising children thing.

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About Dad, My Dad

Posted in Motherhood | Thursday, May 24th, 2007 | 2 Comments »

Even though I’m 40 years old, I don’t know how to be with my father. 

He disapproves of almost every parenting choice I make.  How do I maintain a relationship with someone who doesn’t value what I value?  I bruise easily; I am very sensitive and empathic and intuitive (traits I admire in myself and that bring great good to the world).  When I’m with my dad, I have to put on my tough skin and move into the logical, analytical world.  I’ve had practice there (I earned two engineering

degrees) and I don’t like it there.   I come from two different worlds. 

My mom lives an eclectic life in Spain and Morocco.  My dad comes from a conventional world; he’s a very successful businessman who lives a mainsteam lifestyle.

So how do I make peace with both worlds?

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Nursing Twins

Posted in Motherhood, Parenting Twins | Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 | 2 Comments »

Deciding to nurse your new twins puts you into a fairly select category. So few women in this country nurse even singletons for any time at all, and so many twins are born prematurely that the difficulties in getting started are often insurmountable. I was lucky—my twins were full term, they were dedicated to figuring out this nursing thing, and I was fortunate enough to figure out the process with my oldest singleton.  My main obstacle to nursing was my very exhausted body. But I give women who learn nursing with twins a tremendous amount of credit, because you’re so insecure when you’re starting, and twin nursing often takes more time and resources than one would think possible. A first time nurser might think she wasn’t doing it properly and give up too soon, but I’m here to tell you that it absolutely can be done so long as you don’t mind being patient with yourself, your babies, and with watching your food bills double.

I hadn’t noticed this with my singleton, but as the nurses in the birthing center explained to me, it takes a tremendous amount of resources (i.e., food and sleep) to get your breasts up to speed in the nursing department. Colostrum is right there for the taking, but it takes the body time to get the breasts producing milk full time. I’m glad someone told me this, because the second night in the hospital, my daughter finished nursing what I had and was left hungry. I was completely terrified—I had to give her something more, but I’d read too much about the slippery slope of formula. What if I gave her formula today, and she needed it again tomorrow, and my body just never made enough milk? What if my body wouldn’t make enough milk anyway? I had also heard too many women explain to me that they did not nurse because they hadn’t enough milk, which I had never understood… but now maybe it was happening to me. Now I had twins, and maybe my body wasn’t up to the task, especially after the last terrible trimester. I was so frightened that my body had been broken and couldn’t take care of itself or my new babies.

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My Alice In Wonderland To-Do List

Posted in Motherhood | Friday, May 11th, 2007 | No Comments »

 

It’s been years since I’ve read Alice in Wonderland. I remember that when she ate or drank different potions, she either shrank or grew larger in the mysterious world she was exploring.

 

I’ve discovered the same thing happens to me and my day. I can either grow large and my day and my to-do list looks easy or I can grow small and my day and responsibilities look huge, like a giant looming over me.

And my magic potions? My magical potions are my emotions.

 

This week was a great example of this for me. I was grumpy. My to-do list looked huge. It felt overwhelming and impossible to accomplish.

Washing dishes felt like a chore, doing laundry felt like running a marathon. Practicing karate for five minutes felt like a burden and scheduling a dentist appointment felt like the final exams.

 

I used to think that because my list was so large, I felt grumpy. I’ve thought this for years. Actually, the opposite is true. When I’m grumpy, my list feels large.

When I’m happy, the exact same list feels easy. When I’m feeling bad, it affects how I see the world and everything becomes worse. And wonderfully enough, when I feel good, everything becomes better. We all know this from our past experiences. What we might not know is that we can choose how we feel regardless of the world around us.

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From Baby to Oldest

Posted in Motherhood, Parenting Twins | Saturday, May 5th, 2007 | 2 Comments »

When you are surprised with twins, so many expectations are chucked out the window.  I certainly knew that when my second child was born, my oldest would have to endure a period of readjustment when the addition arrived and he was no longer the focus of the universe. I had seen other children deal with the situation, and it wasn’t pretty. And no wonder! No matter how hard we try not to spoil our first and only child, it seems to be completely impossible to avoid doing so. God knows we thought we were trying! Now I can only laugh at our self-delusion. Parental restrictions, such as they are, are just no match for the day-to-day, minute-by-minute sibling wrangling, and I did assume that since we were having twins, our son’s transition from baby to oldest was going to be much more complicated.

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