It’s a been a pretty eye-opening year with many life changes,
some good, many pretty god awful. There has been enough going on that I just
want to drop some links and thoughts into a non-makeup related post just to
give you an idea of where I am.
On Marriage:
I married my husband and thusly, I married his family. That’s all fine. There is just some ongoing guilt regarding leaving my family in my move from the west coast to the Midwest. It was my decision to do so: I had just graduated college and was on the hunt for a job while my husband had a position where he already had a couple of years toward getting vested for a pension, he cost of living is more affordable out here, etc. The reasoning behind it will never fully wash away the niggling guilt in the back of my mind. I miss my palm trees but I am very happy with the life that I’ve made (we’ve made) out here.
My mother in law moved in with us a little over a year ago. My
inconsistent posts can be tied to that. She’s great, she is child care, she means
well. That does not change the fact that we are 3 adults (one parent) and three
children in a two bedroom apartment. My intimate marriage has become more
inclusive and my privacy has all but disappeared. I blog in the middle of the
night from my walk-in closet. Again, I married my in-laws, but that’s the price
of marriage sometimes and it’s worth it.
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| My late night hideout |
On Children:
There was a point in my life that I used to know what sleep was.
That hasn’t been the same for over 4 years now. Somehow I manage to forget how
difficult having a young child is and the reality of it slaps me in the face
with each new birth. Child number 3 seems more difficult than child 1 and 2. It
is not that she is any more demanding than the other two, and they were both
pretty goddamned demanding. The difficulty is in the lack of help with this
one. Lizzie, my nearly 4 year old, adores her father. She is his child through
and through. Olivia, the 2.5 year old is basically surgically attached to my
mother-in-law (no clue how that happened). This leaves Lilian all to me which
is amazing until I want to accomplish something. Basic grooming, cooking. I
forgot what video games or personal reading are.
My kids are back to back because I planned them that way. I met
my husband later in life and we both knew we wanted 3 children. I also knew I
did not want children after 35. It’s harder this way, nonstop babies but they
are close enough in age that they are actually close friends. Once I am done
with diapers I am done with diapers. I will probably die from the cost of
college and education in general and I have 3 girls so there will be other
costs: prom, weddings, hair maintenance etc.
Having a breastfeeding baby is both a blessing and a curse. I am
a regular dairy cow now but with my first two I struggled to produce milk. I
think it is because as the third born, she is passed around to other people a
lot less: she isn’t baby #1 and baby #1 was so recent that it’s become old hat
and everybody else is busy entertaining babies #1 and 2. This leaves more time
for my little lamprey to remain adhered to me. Most rewarding is she only has
eyes for my breasts me. Like I was with the other two (for a short
period of time until they gained mobility and a taste for solids) I am Lily’s
favorite person in the world. I love it!
The blessing of breastfeeding is the sheer amount of money saved
that would otherwise be spent on formula. There’s also the whole bonding thing.
The curse of breastfeeding is the amount of time invested to net any reward. It
is especially hard as a working mother to try to find time in my lab job to
excuse myself to go to the dairy. This dairy is also colloquially referred to
as my office which consists of a cushy leather couch perched in front of an
automatic urinal and toilet in a single restroom. Not overly romantic. We
Colleen because of space restrictions and if she barely wakes in the middle of
the night she will note my absence and scream bloody murder until she manages
to finally slurp up a tit. There will actually be a sleeping sound somehow!
During the day she sleep tons and saves a majority of her feeding for when I
get home. Her mood changes around 4:00pm so I never see that angelic baby
everybody talks about during the day. The baby I see needs to be held, wants to
be walked around, demands a human pacifier. Baby Ktan is a lifesaver. I only
wish I had one for the other two children.
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| The tomboy turned into a fashionista |
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| The fashionista turned into mommy's little mini-me |
Two common difficulties I’ve encountered with all three girls
with breastfeeding: milk production and milk and soy allergies. There was
really nothing I could do about milk production. I wouldn’t say I stopped
caring with child #3 but I definitely stopped stressing about it as much and
began producing more milk than I ever did with my first two. Correlation is not
causation though. The key for me was just make sure I eat and drink enough just
to have enough calories stored to produce milk, get enough stimulation either
through nursing or pumping (thanks, Lamprey!) and just don’t stress about it.
With cow protein and soy allergies, the allergens pass directly
through breastmilk to the feeding baby. God bless your soul if your baby has
any cow protein or soy allergies. Not catching this in time can lead to weeks
of endless wailing from our baby, bloody diapers, gallons of spit up and a
general sense of guilt and misery from not being able to save your squealing
piglet from its pain. The best you can do is later your diet asap and wait it
out. It can take about 3-6 weeks for the allergens to leave your body.
Soy (soybean oil, soy lecithin, etc) is in basically every
purchased non-raw food out there unless you buy specialty foods, often from
places like Whole Foods. If you are vegan or vegetarian, chances are you still
have tins of soy in your diet. Essentially you will end up cooking mist of your
foods entirely from scratch. Cow protein is another tricky ingredient, though
easier to avoid than soy. A cow protein allergy goes beyond just milk and
lactose intolerance. Cow protein allergies include caramel coloring (milk
based), any form of beef, chocolate.
Lizzie outgrew her allergies by 9 months, Olivia at 5.5 months
and I thought Lilian outgrew her’s (I was able to return to a mostly
normal-for-me diet 2 months ago) but she recently had a bad reaction to my
sudden cravings for tomato mozzarella pesto ciabattas. I attempted to go
vegetarian for a week but it looks like I leaned too heavily on dairy products.
Some brands that have served me well during my breastfeeding months are:
Enjoy Life - great foe
chocolate cravings and packaged snacks and cookies
Victoria
Gourmet - great seasonings if you are cooking from scratch. Moroccan
chicken with pita chips and hummus has become my life.
Wild
Garden offers some dairy and soy free seasoning options with a
Mediterranean flare.
Lactation
Cookie Recipe - this has been a life saver. The recipe is relatively
healthy, tasty, calorie rich and supposedly helps with breastmilk production. I
noticed an increase because with as few calories as I was taking in during my
first two calories, this kept me from starving to death. They also make a great
on-the-go breakfast for all. I love adding cranberries to my cookies.
Dairy
and Soya Free Recipes - a general list of other recipes for those on
restricted diets due to breastfeeding.
Two great resources for breastfeeding are La Leche League and Kelly Mom. They
provide insight and guidance through the quagmire that is breastfeeding. For
formula past milk sensitivities, I fell in love with the prices of the Kirkland
brand from Costco. The sizes are great, the price is worth it, there
is a “sensitive” formula and it is non-GMO. If you opt for formula feeding and
happen to notice a milk/soy sensitivity, try Neocate.
It smells like as and is expensive as shit, but it’s an option if breastfeeding
isn’t. There is also the Baby Bullet for superhero moms
that have all the time in the world. I have one, what I don’t have is time.
Some other interesting reads include (descriptions are my own):
On Death and Dying:
My father-in-law passed earlier this year. He had been diagnosed
with stage 4 bone cancer a bit over three and a half years before his passing
so the fact that he was with us for as long as he was is extraordinary. As hard
as it was to say goodbye, we took solace in knowing he wasn’t in pain anymore.
It was another death in the family, that of a distant cousin whom I had never
met, that helped me better understand my father-in-law’s situation. Alana Devich
Cyril was a writer, an editor and later on in life, a filmmaker. I knew of the
first two feathers in her cap but unfortunately I was unaware of her blog Two Bites of
Ice Cream until it was too late. Reading through her blog gave me
some invite as to what my father-in-law had experienced in his final years, I
just wish I had read it prior to his passing. I wish I had read it prior to
Alana’s passing. I will take whatever insights I’ve gained through her blog to
better empathize with other people.
In trying to comfort those he left behind I feel like I may have
overlooked him as a person. In trying to relate to him I worry that I still
completely missed the mark, not knowing what was going on in his head. Did he
want to have people relate to him? Did he want to be left alone to his
thoughts? Did he want to be diverted? Did he want zero sympathy and something
affecting normalcy? These are questions I found some answers to through reading
Alana’s
blog. Though I understand everybody is different, it helped me
understand after the fact.
On Alzheimer’s:
Alzheimer’s is a
dirty, tricky beast who thinks that laying hidden on the staircase to trip you
up and break your neck is the funniest prank in the world. You can retire and
within 2 years find out you have Early Onset Alzheimer’s. On the other hand,
you can move halfway across the country thinking you left all your ducks in a
row back at home only to find out the gremlin ripped through your home like a
microburst centered in the living room. My mother was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer's in July of this year (though we have noticed signs for a while now) and it's easily the most depressing event of the year. Nothing feels worse than watching somebody mentally waste away but that person does not understand what's happening to them or why. You slowly watch somebody lose themselves and devolve into a child and worse but are helpless to do anything about it. In many ways it is akin to cancer in the wasting away aspect, just with that added nugget of unawareness and a lack of understanding.
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| Image courtesy of Google |
One of the biggest hurdles of Alzheimer’s is recognizing the
signs. In the case of my mother, the first signs seemed like more of an
exaggeration of her quirks: poor, aggressive driving, losing the toaster
because it was misplaced with the pots and pans, losing her keys and purse,
becoming lost in a thought, poor time management, etc. I love my mother dearly
but I just thought “Oh well, she’s just being flaky. The woman made me late for
my own wedding for God’s sake.” I did not realize anything was wrong until she
would get lost driving very familiar routes that she had taken every day for
10+ years or when the GPS in her car was moving too fast for her to process
directions. I would argue that the biggest danger of Alzheimer’s is how easy it
is to dismiss early warning signs, especially if those signs are just mild
exaggeration of what was already there.
I won’t delve into what steps one needs to make to care for
someone with Alzheimer’s. I will leave that for people better suited to give
that information, especially since I am still boggling through that quagmire
myself. Instead here is a lovely visual representation of the effects
and progression of Alzheimer’s.
A
Place For Mom is also a wonderful resource that will aid in finding
assisted living for a loved one, however they do move very quickly so I would
advise you do not go that route until you are ready to get the ball rolling on
assisted living and other care.
Good Christ, this post has taken a dark nosedive that I cannot
pull out of. Like I said, it’s been a busy few months, for better or worse.
Don’t get me wrong, there has been tons of good: promotions, baby mile stones,
my brother got accepted into law school(!), the discovery of new family
members, reconnecting with old family members and concerts galore (3 in a year
hasn’t happened in over a decade for me and they were a good 3: Weezer/Pixies,
Nine Inch Nails and upcoming Jack White!) there just doesn’t happen to be much
insight to gain from a concert. Beauty posts will commence shortly, I just had
some thoughts to get off my chest.
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