Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind

Post-baby, it is hard to imagine having a spotless mind. It is something I find myself aspiring to, but I'm not holding my breath. There are now so many things that must remain in the forethought of my mind that I often have difficulty remembering to do things like go to the bathroom or take a shower.

Mind you, I wasn't great at remembering these things before I had a child, so my close associates might think I'm exaggerating when I say this is incredibly stressful. After all, I managed to be quite successful before little Johnny came along. However, there are slight, but meaningful, differences between my pre- and post- baby brain functions.

Before I had Johnny, I had a busy career. I worked roughly 60-80 hours a week, most of them after noon. I tended to waste away my mornings checking email, getting food, having a smoke (or three), getting coffee, and generally relaxing into my day. Around noon, I would realize the day was quickly passing me by and I'd get serious. Phone calls, emails, database look ups and entries, meetings, project plans, etc, etc, etc. Around 6 or 7 in the evening, I'd start thinking about going home. Around 8, I'd walk out the door, laptop over my shoulder. On a good day, that would be it - I'd head home or grab something to eat or hang out with my (then) boyfriend (now he's my hubby), maybe hang out at the neighborhood cafe, walk the dog, read a book, talk on the phone to a girlfriend. On a bad day, I might swing by a fast food place to pick up dinner, then I'd go home and log back in - sometimes working until 2, 3, 4 in the morning.

Now ... I work about 8 or 9 hours a week and I meet with my mommy friends for 2-5 hours each week, depending on everyone's availability. I spend time reading email and looking at facebook. I make dinner for the family, cook and puree all of Johnny's food, try to make sure I at least say hi to the dog each day. I still spend time on the phone with a girlfriend, but mostly that is split into 5 or 10 minute calls scattered throughout the week. I am still busy and still have many things to get done. When I have the child, it's understandable - I can't very well sit down to 8 straight hours of work because Johnny needs feeding, changing, and attention - babies actually do require interaction and when they don't get it, they demand it in the form of babbling, then crying, then outright screaming. It's impossible (for me, anyway) to concentrate on anything while my son screams. Someone else's kid, sure ... but not so much with my own.

So then I look at the days when I have childcare lined up ... thus far, I haven't left Johnny with someone else for more than about 6 hours (beside my mother who lives on the other side of the country, so that's rare). Nonetheless, one might think I could then dedicate myself to at least 5 or 6 hours worth of work. Not so. I just don't seem capable of concentrating that long anymore. If I work on something for two hours straight, I am aware of the time spent in a way I never used to be. Even when I go into my client's office, use his computer (so no access to email or facebook), etc ... I still know I'm spending time working on his stuff.

I don't know why this happens. Even when I am working on a project that is for me - one that will hopefully bring in money - I don't seem capable of digging in and getting it done. Is this because I have "mommy-brain"? I've heard the other mommies refer to it and it is mentioned in a handful of the baby books I've seen. What benefit could this possibly have, biologically speaking? I guess maybe you just get used to functioning in interrupt mode and a few hours of relief don't really bring you back to "normal" thinking.

Maybe there is a post-partum concentration switch that gets shoved into the off position while you are dealing with a baby. In other words, it doesn't matter what you're doing or who it benefits - you can't concentrate on any task longer than a few minutes, maybe half an hour if you're lucky - because you must constantly be on alert to meet your baby's needs. You can't concentrate so much that you can no longer hear or identify your child's cry from across the room, down the hall, etc. Your baby could be in danger, might need feeding, or may just need a good, solid hug to create new neural connections.

I really hope that this passes as Johnny grows up. I want to have some semblance of my life back, and to me, that means working ... being productive, helpful, successful. I love my son to pieces and want to do everything I can to help him thrive in this world. I don't think I'm selfish to want to thrive in my own way too.

Sitting In a Pool of Blood

Ok, that may be an exaggeration, but it is definitely what I felt like Saturday morning. Let me backup and explain.

Postpartum PMS can be - and is for me - a dizzying ordeal. A few weeks ago, I had a few days where I just couldn't remember anything. My hubby walked the dog, took off her leash and sat down next to me on the couch ... at which point I turned to him and asked, "Have you walked the dog yet?" Um, helloooo! After a couple days of this type of brain (in)activity, we looked at each other and wondered if we had just forgotten what this was like, or if postpartum PMS was really much worse. Talking to some of my mommy friends, I hear this is a common phenomenon. Woo-hoo!

Fast forward a month, and I *finally* started my period - three weeks later than I expected, which caused some anxiety in itself. So I started Thursday afternoon and was pretty much fine until Friday night. I was in the bedroom with Johnny, nursing him to sleep as usual. Jim was in the living room, playing xbox games with his friends (online - they weren't visiting). I started to really resent that I always get stuck getting the boy to sleep while he does his own thing at night. I mean just about every night! I didn't think much of it until I looked back in retrospect, but I do remember thinking maybe this was a hormonal, period thing.

Anyway, Johnny didn't sleep well all night - tossing and turning, nursing constantly, or so it felt. I was exhausted when we all woke up in the morning and just couldn't stop crying. Jim took Johnny to change him and get him into his clothes while I laid in bed, crying. Finally I struggled out of bed and decided to make breakfast. Jim said he could pick something up since I seemed to be a bit of a mess, but I insisted that cooking would help me feel better, and it did. For a while.

One of the problems with having your period while you are still nursing is that you can't really walk away from everything and sequester yourself for a day or two ... which is what I normally try to do when I have my period. Instead, you are still in near-constant contact with this little being that takes its very nourishment from your body. Combine this with sleep deprivation, and it's really a recipe for disaster, as we found out.

Earlier in the week, we had decided to start sleep training Johnny this weekend. Jim was to move his crib back into his room and we were going to follow the baby whisperer to get the boy to sleep.

Obviously I was in no state to deal with sleep training a baby, but I didn't think to cancel or postpone the event. At one point, I was sitting on the couch, thinking, "I feel like I'm sitting in a pool of blood."

When it was time for his first nap, I swooped him up in my arms and plopped him into his crib. I didn't bother with trying to dim the room, play a soft lullaby, or soothe him. It's no surprise that Johnny didn't settle down. I followed the directions for about half an hour, then asked Jim to take a turn. I was already crying.

Finally it was time for Johnny to eat his solid lunch, so we took a break. At some point, Jim suggested I lie down, so I took a quick nap, then laid in bed feeling lethargic and unable (unwilling?) to think too much about anything.

After my nap, Jim tried to put Johnny down to sleep, but he wasn't having it. I could hear the boy crying his head off and eventually it sounded like he was screaming. I thought Jim was just leaving him in the crib to cry instead of following the procedures, so I finally got up to check - I couldn't take it anymore.

Jim had the boy up to his shoulder, but Jim was facing away from me so I couldn't silently offer to take over. Instead, Johnny saw me and started screaming louder. sigh. I ended up in the living room with my hands over my ears, tears streaming down my face. Ultimately, Jim and I had an argument that ended with me grabbing the baby out of his arms and yelling, "fuck you!" ... then *running* down the hall to our bedroom and slamming the door behind me.

The morals of this story are:

1. Don't sleep train when you have your period for only the second time since you've given birth. Hopefully the period situation will get better, but for now it's a dicey time.
   
2. When you do decide to sleep train, make sure you have your plan mapped out and that you follow it.
   
3. SHARE that plan with your partner! The more communication you do before you start, the less likely you are to have wild misunderstandings during the process.
   
4. With some of these methods, it is important for you to be able to communicate without the baby knowing it's going on. In our case, life would have been easier if Jim was standing facing the door - I could have indicated to him and the boy would not have seen me.

Hopefully your sleep training experience will be easier than ours. In the end, we decided not to do it ... not sure how long this will last, but for now the boy is staying in bed with us.