Boppy, pacifiers and more

Kylie is one random kid. One never knows the best way to soothe her or get her to sleep. One night it's patting her on the back while walking around, the next night it's bouncing her and then the next night it's nursing to exhaustion. And each night I'll think, "Okay, this is the magic formula". The next night I'll try it and Whoops! Doesn't work any more! Try lots of other things. I really love to follow methods and patterns and formulas. And the fact that she consistently resist this.......well....I'll just say that (while I grind my teeth) it's been a learning experience.

I both love and hate the Boppy. As breastfeeding pillows go, it's the best (I've tried some others). But I hate the fact that it's lovely soft material is so dang slippery. It seems like I'm constantly trying to keep Kylie from slipping off the pillow or to keep the pillow from slipping off my lap. At the end of the night, my wrists are sore from gripping it to keep it from slipping. It's not quite the right height and the way that it's supposed to wrap around my middle makes me think that I'm fat. So the eight to ten times a day that I'm using the cursed Boppy to nurse, it's shouting at me, "You're fat, you're fat, you're fat!".

Kylie likes her pacifier. She uses it as an after-dinner mint and a way to soothe herself to sleep. But when she first tastes the pacifer, she'll give me a look that says, "What is this gross, disgusting thing you are putting in my mouth!?" I've found that I need to pop the pacifier in and quickly pop it out a few times. This gets her spit on it so that when she next tastes it, she'll take it and suck away. This morning I was tried this technique and made her gag and spit up. Felt like Evil Mommy.

Lastly, I think I'm finally getting over this weird crap I've been doing. For WEEKS NOW, about an hour after falling asleep, I'll wake Karen up by patting frantically in the bed for the baby. I'm sound asleep as I do this. It's like in my dreaming, I've lost the baby in the bed and I'm trying to find her. The weird thing is that we don't ever have Kylie in the bed with us. Ever.

The horrible part about this is that I've wacked Karen some good ones. Here she is sleeping peacefully, only to wake up by having her wife slapping at her. Apparently, in my dreaming frantic search, I'm hitting Karen and the bed pretty hard. Karen will sit up, wrap her arms around me, and lower me back to the bed while telling me that the baby is safe in her crib over and over. I don't remember any of this. Each morning I'll ask Karen about it and each morning she'll tell me, "Yep. You did it again!" and I'll just feel awful.

But two nights ago, something shifted. As I was falling asleep, I actually felt the anxiety. My mind was rushing all of these images of the day past me really quickly. It was like a strobe light. I could see all of these near misses that happened that day such as a car hitting us (instead of missing us which is what really happened) or a dog that we were playing with scratching Kylie (instead of staying away from her which is what really happened). It was like all of the worse case possibilities that could have happened were flashing by.

And I felt all tight, like I was bracing myself the way you do when you have to slam on your car brakes. So I threw my arm and leg around Karen and nestled into her arms and just breathed through it, telling myself that it was okay. That none of those bad things had happened and that we were all just fine. In a few minutes, the anxiety passed.

And that night, I didn't beat the bed looking for the baby. My diagnosis is that my anxiety had moved from my subconscious to conscious mind and now I was able to deal with it. But who cares about the diagnosis. The most important thing is that I didn't beat the bed or my wife.

I tell you....motherhood is QUITE the trip!

And now as a reward for reading this long, rambling post, I give you a picture of Kylie.

-Wendy