The weather has been so lovely here lately. By the calendar it will be officially spring in nine days, but usually it still feels like winter well into late March and even early April. Temperatures have made it feel more like mid-April this last week and we’ve been doing our best to get out for some walks in the neighbourhood, Nate in the stroller.

The fresh air and sunshine has done wonders for all of us. If we time it just right, Nate has an afternoon snooze while we walk. While he sleeps, we just keep right on walking.

As we headed out yesterday afternoon, we spotted one of our neighbours across the street. Since Graham and I have been hibernating new parents since Nate was born, Terry hadn’t met him yet. I was glad to see she was outside in her yard when we left the house and we strolled over to say hello.

We chatted a bit about Nate’s birth and about what it has been like for us to be new parents. We told her what’s been up with us lately…that we’ve figured a few things out with respect to Nate’s eating and sleeping and that it’s been a real learning curve, but that things are getting better.

“Everyone tells us it gets better,” I said to her.

“It doesn’t,” she argued. “It just gets worse!”

I laughed. I found her honesty refreshing. So many people have used the opposite line on us, saying, “It gets better,” or “It’ll get easier.”

Not our neighbours. Instead we hear, “Wait until they tell you they hate you!” or “It gets harder as they get older. You worry about them going to high school and getting into drugs and alcohol and getting beat up or hurt. It’s so hard.”

Apparently it’s really the teen years we have to fear!

14882 Comments »http://www.assertagirl.com/?p=1488It+gets+better+%28or+worse%2C+depending+on+who+you+ask%29.2010-03-13+01%3A25%3A56Amy

I’ve been hesitant to write about a recent decision that Graham and I have made about Nate. I think you’ll see why when I get through this post.

Nate has not been a good sleeper. If you’re a regular reader, you already know this, since it’s almost all I’ve been writing about lately.

He is also a very demanding feeder. He’s been nursing about every two hours for the last, oh, I don’t know, month or so. This makes for a very exhausted mommy, a frustrated daddy and a tired and crabby baby. We have not been a very happy family.

A few nights ago Nate was very fussy. It was late, we were very tired (again) and Graham turned to me and said, “Why don’t we give him a little formula?”

I didn’t want to. I had convinced myself that the only thing Nate should be eating was my breast milk.

“I don’t want him to have formula,” I said.

“Why not?” he asked me.

“Because breast milk is the best thing for him and I want to do what is best for him,” I replied tearfully.

And then he asked a question that hadn’t even occurred to me.

“What about you?”

He said he didn’t think I could go on this way, and I agreed.

I have exclusively breastfed Nate for almost four months. And in doing so I may be fulfilling a physiological need, but I’ve also sacrificed HOURS of sleep, time for myself, time with my husband and basically given up any semblance of balance in our lives, all for the sake of nursing our son.

I need to get some of that balance back.

We’ve decided to introduce some formula into Nate’s diet.

The first few days were rocky. He still doesn’t like straight formula, but we’ve been mixing it with breast milk and he likes that. We found the right flow level on a nipple and he had a good, big lunch today and went down for a nap like a good boy, his tummy full.

I finally have realized that I can’t take proper care of Nathan if I don’t take proper care of myself. This is just the first step.

148520 Comments »http://www.assertagirl.com/?p=1485A+step+toward+sanity.2010-03-10+19%3A24%3A09Amy

Nate’s skin is so dry, it’s this horrible Canadian winter weather! He’s discovered his hair, so he holds onto it, scratching his face and head in the night when he wakes up.

I tried using baby nail scissors to trim his fingernails (I refuse to bite them) but they just wouldn’t grip the nail at all. I used a pair of baby nail clippers at a friend’s house but they left his nails square, so the tiny edges were sharp. Sometimes the nails sort of peel away, but trimming them was still a mystery to me when I decided to ask YOU what I should do.

I asked the Twitterverse, “Tips for cutting the nails of the wiggliest baby on the planet? Other than doing it while he sleeps? Anyone?”

You answered.

alotofnothing said, “bite them off. no, seriously” (I told you, I’m not doing that.)

Nicole013 said, “We do the “one parent holds, the other clips” technique. Since Darren is a better distraction than me, he does the holding.”

sara3isenough said, “I always offer marshmallows after but that won’t help you! Take him outside so he has something to look at? In the high chair”

velocibadgerGRL said, “I’m curious to see what ppl say. I wait for sleep with mine!”

jenbshaw said, “manicure scissors, and yes, while they sleep (or eat)”

S_cerevisiae said, “I go to YouTube & play The Wiggles Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. She becomes mesmerized. It’s the only way I can trim them.”

In the end I waited until Nate was very calm, with his arms at his side, watching Sesame Street, and carefully used regular nail trimmers to get them as short as I could. Man, those little nails grow fast!

Thanks for the advice, everyone!

148117 Comments »http://www.assertagirl.com/?p=1481Tips+for+Trimming+Baby%27s+Nails2010-03-05+01%3A02%3A20Amy

“Do I seem like the kind of parent who complains a lot?” I asked Graham.

We were in the car on the way to visit our friends Tamara and Carys, who live in Guelph. The drive took us about an hour and a half, the longest we’d taken Nate in the car. We timed things just right. We got in the car as Nate was about ready for a snooze, and he slept most of the way there.

“No…why do you ask?” he responded. “Did someone say that about you?”

“No,” I replied. “I was just wondering. I really hope I don’t seem that way.”

I thought about my blog and about how I write about how mothering is so challenging. About how, when we get together with our friends who also have children, we talk a lot about the difficulties of raising them. Of course being a parent is also wonderful in many ways. Although I don’t write or talk about the happy stuff all the time, I really do hope that I don’t sound like I’m not appreciative of every moment we have with Nathan. Because I am.

147811 Comments »http://www.assertagirl.com/?p=1478Appreciate.2010-03-03+00%3A33%3A05Amy

I’ve come to the conclusion that motherhood and sleep are incompatible.

I have one friend who has a new baby almost exactly the same age as Nate, and this friend’s baby has been sleeping through the night pretty much since he came home from the hospital. She kids around and says he’s just lazy, but I know she’s just trying to make me feel better about Nate’s sleeping patterns.

I have another friend who had a new baby about a month ago, and this friend also has two other kids who began to sleep through the night around twelve or fourteen weeks.

I keep hearing people tell me, “It’ll get better,” or “He’ll get there soon,” or “You should nap when he does.”

All of these sentences kind of make me want to scream. I know it will get better. He won’t be a ten year old who wakes up every three hours to nurse. I know he’ll get there. All babies eventually figure out the mysteries of sleep and the nights of interrupted slumber become a distant memory for moms and dads.

But in the middle of the night, when I’ve had the longest stretch of sleep I’ll get that night (three measley hours) and Nathan won’t go back to sleep because his tummy is troubling him or whatever else is preventing him from falling back to sleep…when it’s been days, weeks, months now, since I’ve had any real quality rest, when the tears begin to fall and I begin to envision walking away from the house just to find a bed somewhere dark and quiet…that’s when I know it’s time to ask for help.

Like I did last night.

Desperation began to set in so I put Nate back into his crib. I went back into our bedroom and woke up Graham. I told him I needed help. I was beginning to lose it a little. I was exhausted. Without a word he left our room to tend to our son so I could get some rest, shutting the door behind him.

I felt awful. Guilty. Sorry. Like I had that one night in the hospital when our nurse took Nate, screaming, from our room so a sleep-deprived new mom could cry herself to sleep.

Thanks, Graham. I know it’s hard for you, too, when neither Nate nor I are sleeping well. Thanks for being on our team.

147556 Comments »http://www.assertagirl.com/?p=1475Motherhood+and+sleep+are+incompatible.2010-02-25+13%3A28%3A02Amy