Talk Feeleez

Rites of Passage and Leaps of Development

I really don't understand anything about anything. It's a good thing I'm comfortable with following intuition. There is no reason to think that making a video would cause accelerated development in a four-year old but that's what happened. Echo and I made the nursing video, from the last post, where she talked about missing nursing. Within that video we sort of stumbled upon the idea that we could hold each other in an intense purposeful way in order to substitute for the connection she was missing from nursing. Then we pressed Stop and went about our day. I held her more, we fell in love just a little more, and there were smiles all around.

But then she mentioned she wanted a "Goodbye Milky" party, a celebration of no longer nursing. I was taken a bit aback since it had been ten months since she last nursed. But it turns out she hadn't wanted a party because she still thought of herself as a nurser, even though there wasn't any nursing going on. After making the video and establishing what we would do instead of nursing she was ready to think of herself differently. She wanted a party.

Well a party means a cake and so that's just what we made. I thought we'd cobble together a little something from the baking drawer but she was very specific and before I knew it I was committed to a two-tier chocolate cake with strawberry filling and salty caramel icing. It felt silly to be going all-out in the middle of the week to celebrate something that happened almost a year ago but I went with it and I'm glad.

Because part of the lesson here is that rites of passage are important. Making an actual "deal" of no longer nursing meant that we marked a passage in little Echo's life. Where before we sort of tiptoed around the idea of Echo not nursing in deference to her sadness about it, we were now congratulating her and celebrating with her a whole new girl. I didn't think it would have that big an effect, but it did.

She was proud.

And she felt older. At one point in the afternoon she went into the art closet and conferred with her imaginary step-mom Mama Pom Pom and emerged, according to her, two years older. She was four before the party, and six after the party. By bedtime she was seven and by the next day, seventeen. Pretty cute.

So I've been thinking about rites of passage and sort of renewing my commitment to acknowledging them in our family. I am reminded that first and last days of school are important, weaning is important, birthdays are important, losing a tooth is important, etc. But I also can't help but notice that it might only feel like an official rite, something to celebrate, when the child crosses it herself. Crossing the finish line doesn't feel that celebratory when one is thrown across the line by someone else. And Echo's pace, well it's been pretty darn slow. So slow that I forgot there was even a finish line she was moving toward. 

That's the part I know nothing about, what form development can take if given the opportunity to evolve on it's own, without "shoulds" and nudges from the parents. Hmmm.

But here's the other part I am surprised by: not only did Echo grow older from her rite of passage, it seems that her brain opened up to new information and growth as well. It sounds funny but I'm not kidding. Over the last two days this girl has been screaming through new skills and information. She learned to tell time, for instance. She learned to count quickly to one hundred and beyond. She can now write every letter and every number on her own. She can identify new, long words, on site. And last night in the span of five minutes she learned to count money, adding quarters and nickels and dimes like it's old hat. Before last night she hadn't known that coins had different value at all.

What?

I guess I am taking home a couple different messages with this one. Kids develop at the rate that is appropriate for them and it doesn't necessarily coincide with anyone else's rate. And, it seems that readiness to learn new things is dependent on factors that we cannot see, gauge, or easily guess at. For Echo, having another comfort method to reach for when the old method retired, allowed her brain to expand. Security is essential for learning, I knew that, for instance if you want your child to feel confident in exploring the world it's important to give him a solid nest from which to leap, but I didn't know the "solid nest" part could be so sensitive or subtle, and I didn't know that the effects of shoring up the nest could be so profound.

ps. After conferring with Nathan I wanted to say that Echo indeed has been practicing reading and counting (except money) so it wasn't as if she woke up one day and could do something completely foreign, but more like there was an extremely sudden "snapping together" of connections which made the application of what she's been learning instantaneous.

The Nursing Story Continues

This is Echo last year some time. She was three and still nursing quite a bit. I was struggling with it all and so took a moment to ask her about her thoughts on nursing.

 

After making the video my compassion for this little being grew. I no longer saw her as an adversary in the nursing struggle, I saw her as someone that loves me so and doesn't want to squander a single moment of shared affection. My emotional renewal on the topic allowed me to lovingly nurse her another eight months when she self-weaned.

I thought that was the end of the story. I am surprised that ten months later the subject still comes up. When Echo weaned it wasn't exactly a conscious decision on her part. She was only nursing for a few minutes each night as she fell asleep but then for a few nights in a row she became distracted by stories and singing and it didn't occur to her to nurse. Eventually the milk ran out and when she thought to ask to nurse again it was no longer an option. I felt pretty good about the process as it was natural and without upset, but apparently it's still on Echo's mind. On New Year's she made a wish. Without a moments hesitation she wished she could nurse again.

We got the video camera out again to talk about it.

 

Again I felt a well of compassion rise in me when I watched this. I hold Echo a lot but I have to admit that I put her down pretty quickly, either setting her on the counter or drawing her attention to something so that I can release her. I tell myself that it's hard to hold her because she's so big now, and it is, but I also tell myself made-up stories about how an almost five year-old should walk on her own, or that if I hold her and cradle her she will never want me to put her down and I will be trapped and unable to "get anything done". These stories leave me frustrated, as "shoulds" always do, and also insensitive to her desires for closeness. My response is sometimes begrudging and cold, not cradle-y and warm. 

And whenever we ignore our children's needs, in this case connection with a parent, they don't disappear, they pop up again. The more I turn Echo down or distract her, the more her need finds ways to bob to the surface elsewhere - whining, or extreme snuggling in bed where I can barely move, or fatigue, or discontent. If I were to meet her need by purposeful holding I might just be able to avoid all of the other manifestations of that need, all of which are just as irritating and prohibitive if not more so.

In any case, when she asks me to hold her now I do, and I make sure to be present and gracious in my giving of myself. My perspective of her has shifted to one that feels so much better. And all because I asked. I love that.

My girl.

 

Revisit

Echo watched the video about nursing in yesterday's post and wanted to make an updated version.

 

nursing

I've been struggling with nursing lately, mostly with the frequency. So I decided to look into it a little further with Echo in a non-judgemental, non-nursing moment.

   

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM9q6pM3nlk]

I sure love her.

I don't know if I'm going to make any changes but I do know that after this conversation I no longer feel mad about "still" nursing, or nursing "so much". I can see her side of things and my heart swells with unnameable emotions.

not enough arms

You know what's difficult to do while parenting in an attachment style?  Moving.  Moving literally requires that you hold things in your arms and carry them somewhere else. And those things? Well if they are your children, then moving doesn't actually happen. No, those things have to be other things.

Echo likes to be held. She likes to be nursed often. This is on an ordinary day, but lately she has been battling a beast of a cough and wanting to be nursed and held even more. If she had it her way a perfect day would be: nurse, read books, nurse some more, be carried in my arms while I do something, then nurse, then read... you get the idea. So you can tell just how much mama moving things instead really doesn't work for her. (And just so that nobody thinks I didn't think of using a backpack, I did. It seems that for this sick girl, riding on mom's back just isn't going to cut it.)

I was attachment parenting before I realized that was what it was called. It seemed like a no brainer to sleep with our kids, to carry them in slings and backpacks, and to be physically close to them as much as possible. Hello, who doesn't want to snuggle a baby?But the thing about attachment parenting that I hadn't thought about was the fact that it doesn't end after the baby stage. A kid that is attached to her mama as a babe will still be attached to her mama as a three-year old.

You know what else is difficult to do while parenting in an attachment style?  Anything with a deadline.  We have the notion that we need to be completely moved out of the house by the end of this weekend so that the construction crew can rip the roof off and continue the remodel in earnest. That means that when Echo wants to nurse for the fifteenth time I don't want to. I don't want to stop clearing things out and sit. I want to be done and every nursing session prolongs the, what is beginning to feel like, agony.

I figured out this no deadline thing in other areas of our life pretty quickly. I know that parenting with empathy and connection are only possible if the list of things I absolutely have to do is kept really short. Really short. If we have people over for dinner I make sure that I only invite folks that wouldn't be bothered by a loose structure, that wouldn't be upset if, due to a clingy sick child, the meal didn't make it to the table right at six. Or wouldn't be mad at me if the expected home cooked meal was bagged completely in favor of burritos from the taqueria down the street. And/or I make things ahead of time, staying up late instead of turning down Echo's request to be held.

In fact when parents say: Sorry honey this HAS to be done right now. What they really mean is: Darn honey. I don't want to hold you right now. I really want to get this done. I am very attached to completing this project. If you get super technical about it, no one absolutely has to do anything. I find that simply exchanging have to, for, prefer to, loosens me up sufficiently to at least have a genuine interaction.

But alas, today I didn't do that. At one point, so exasperated by Echo's seeming inability to be self-sufficient for even a minute, and by the seemingly seven hundredth request to nurse, after the seemingly twentieth nursing episode, I actually said: I know you want to nurse, but THAT"S JUST NOT GOING TO HAPPEN! Arg.

It's too bad because really, if we still have a few odds and ends at the house come Monday, the sky is not going to fall. But I didn't remember that. My preference was so strong that I convinced myself it was imperative. And Echo was sad. And even if I make the case that I had nursed her so much already and had been holding her the entire day thus far, which is all true, what does that have to do with anything? Just because I am justified in turning her down doesn't mean it felt good, to her or to me.

I redeemed myself a little while later. I actually sat down, nursed, and read Frog and Toad. I don't think she was scarred by my earlier response, but at the end of each day when I look back, I can be so critical, wanting to only see responses that are text-book empathy and connection based. When I see something else, I get a little dull almond sized feeling of regret in my belly. I'm never sure what to do with that almond.

In any case, despite the aforementioned struggles, I think tomorrow might actually be the last moving day. And then I promise I will post about something else.

in response

Parenting is painful. It literally hurts.

There is the obvious pain of childbirth. A pain that is confusing because, unlike any other kind of pain a woman has felt thus far, it does not injure. A skinned knee hurts because flesh has been torn, a burned hand hurts so that you pull it quickly away from the flame, but a contraction hurts without harming. It is a mind bending, life altering kind of pain, but nevertheless it is pain.

There is the pain in your arms when you are rocking your baby to sleep. That crucial window when if you were to adjust those aching arms in any way, he would wake up. So you maintain the position longer than you ever thought possible and by the time you lay him gently down there is little feeling left at all in your biceps.

There is the pain that jerks through your belly when you see your child trip on the sidewalk.

And there is the pain of cold fingers and toes as you make your way, ever... so... slowly, around the block in the middle of winter while your one year old tries out her new walking skills. Stopping, every three feet or less, to investigate a leaf, a barking dog, or a fleck of dirt.

There is emotional pain too.

There is the pain of being rejected in favor of the other parent.

There is the pain of staying home with a sick baby while friends and family frolic somewhere else.

And there is the pain of watching your girl walk up the driveway to spend time at her other house.

And the pain continues beyond the kid days.

My dad has children in their thirties and his heart still seizes up with a worry so intricately woven around love that it makes him bend forward through his days. There is that kind of pain.

My grandma is in her eighties and she still dresses her heart in armor hoping to stave off any pain that comes from loving, and protecting her more than grown children. There is that kind of pain too.

When you think about it, no matter what parenting style you've chosen, there is a lot of pain in parenting. I happen to be in pain from nursing several times through the night, others may not have this type of pain. Perhaps they night weaned earlier, perhaps they never nursed. But I am sure they are not escaping some other form of pain.

I have said that I would change from a completely empathic approach to something else if my kid were in danger of hurting themselves or someone else, and even though I am technically being hurt, at least to some degree, by nursing so much at night, I do not see a contradiction. I am not an unwitting sibling or friend, getting punched by Echo's wrath. I do not need an authority figure to step in and protect me.

No. I signed up for this. Each night, fully aware of the incredible strength of my body, and in constant awareness of my motivations, I willingly walk straight into the same exact choice to nurse my girl through the night. I do not want to wean her. Not because I'd like to avoid the task of weaning, but because I know her, and to know her is to completely understand how important nursing is to her. In honor of that interest, I choose the pain of less sleep. I choose the pain of sore nipples.

If I were putting someone else at risk by parenting this way, if I were sleepy enough to be a danger on the road, I would have to find another way to honor Echo. (No one else signed up to be hurt by the way I parent.) But that isn't the case. I'm just not that sleep deprived.

What would it look like to parent while trying to avoid pain? What would I miss? I'm not sure I want to know.

If loving this completely, this wildly, this earnestly means I get a little sore now and then, I'll take it. I think most parents would agree that though they can point to any number of painful experiences while parenting, the joy piled up high on the other side of the scale makes it more than worthwhile.  I know with absolute certainty that my dad wouldn't trade in his bruised and tender heart, even on the most painful days, in exchange for his daughters.

Loving fiercely even when it hurts, that's a legacy I'm happy to carry on.

in the dim light of dawn

I'm a little too sleepy to figure out what the right phrase is for our nights lately. Can't win for losing? Caught between a rock and a hard place? Whatever the phrase is, this is what our nights have been looking like: Echo, not having gotten enough sleep the night before, nurses to sleep in a matter of minutes (three or four), then as the night continues, if there is any surfacing on her part, whether it is an intense dream, or the covers slide off, or she hears a sound somewhere in the house, she calls out and I come in to nurse her back to sleep. Then later, when I climb into bed she cuddles up to nurse again. Then again every two hours or so after that. Finally, after the umpteenth nursing session, I say: Baby, I need to take a break. We just finished nursing both sides and I don't want to nurse for a little while. Let's just snuggle and fall back to sleep together. She screams, then nestles in, then falls asleep, then wakes herself up, then asks to nurse, then gets upset at my refusal, then nestles in, then falls asleep, then wakes herself up, then finally is fully awake. If it's still the middle of the night I finally nurse her again, so desperate to get a little sleep, even if it is the half sleep of nursing. If it starts to turn light during the fall asleep/wake up pattern, Echo just stays awake and we get up with the dawn.

To sum up, she wants to nurse all night. If I nurse her all night I don't sleep, if I dissuade her from nursing she doesn't sleep, which of course means that I don't sleep. This also means that Echo will be crabby throughout the day requiring lots of holding by me and... you guessed it, lots of nursing.

This isn't the first time we've been in this place. My feelings about nursing, especially at night, seem to cycle in relation to her cycling interest. When she wants to nurse more than I think is necessary or appropriate, my feelings about not wanting to nurse become more intense. It's nothing new. I wrote about it here. After receiving lots of empathy and new perspectives from this dear online community, my feelings settled a lot. I wrote about that here. But enough time has passed, I guess, for me to forget about my renewed faith.

Or maybe I'm just too tired to remember.

Logically I know I am not the judge of what is necessary for Echo, obviously she has a strong and counter opinion to mine. And I also know there is nothing inappropriate about nursing, no matter how much it ends up being. But in the middle of the night, how many times Echo nurses seems to matter to me. I start to think along the lines of: This isn't fair! And we all know that this kind of thinking, with regard to parenting, is a dead-end. Parenting is nowhere near fair. It isn't supposed to be fair. To even start down this path is to invite torture.

And when we got up this morning, that was how I was feeling, tortured.

And that's how I was going to end this post. Tortured. But then I had some tea. I wiped the sleep from my eyes. I felt my perspective move beyond the edges of our bed. I looked over at Echo watching a book on DVD and realized she isn't mad. She could very well hold the perspective that I am keeping her up by trying to alter the way we do the whole sleeping thing. But she isn't. She's far better at honoring her emotions as they come up and then watching them float on by when they are done than I am. She isn't replaying the night, attempting to justify her responses or her behavior today. She's waiting for the next moment, ready to live that fully as well.

I can see now that there is no victim here. Just two people finding their way. (Well three when you count Papa, roused every few minutes by our middle of the night bickering.)

Then, searching for an image for this post I saw so many women. So many beautiful women nursing their babies. Big women, little babies, older women, large not-really-babies-anymore babies, all of them holding one another lovingly. Each nursing moment was captured with a tender eye.

I realized I could see Echo and I this way if I wanted to. If I saw each nursing session as a single graceful painting, instead of as the seventh session in a long line of too many sessions, or as something that keeps me from getting sleep, I would feel differently. If, each time we nursed, I was able to erase the thoughts about everything that came before, keep my mind from jumping to the moments ahead, and just be a single moment like those captured in the paintings, there might not be a conflict.

No conflict, just two people finding their way.

Just another mother holding another baby in the dim light of dawn. Like all the other mamas all over the world, all through time. And whether or not I am able to let my anger slip away as quickly as Echo does, or see every nursing moment through the eyes of an artist, just feeling a part of this legacy is a comforting thought.

tender

My heart is full with the loving responses I have got about my sleeping vs. nursing predicament. I am honored to hear your stories, to feel your support, and to receive your shining doses of empathy. My life both in the microscopic sense and the macroscopic sense has changed for the better due to your words.

On the local level, when I lay with Echo at night and she snuggles up for nursing, I am now aware that I am not riding a dangerous precipice, that nothing need be done right this minute, that I am not in crisis. I have this sense now because each comment that I read that says "I have been there" reminds me that this is only a moment of time that I am experiencing, just a teeny tiny blip on the graph of my whole life and Echo's. There will come a time when I look backward at these days, and merely remember.

She will not nurse forever.

And for those of you currently nursing three children, or that have nursed four children in sequence without a day of pause, you inspire in me further strength. If you nursed all those babies for all that time, then I can nurse this one baby for all of our time together as a nursing team.

Perspective is what you have given me.

I also feel less alone.

Before, awake in the middle of the night while Echo nursed, I felt like the only person not sleeping in the entire world. The cats snoozed, the dog snoozed, Nathan snoozed, the girls snoozed, and I did not. Now I know that, despite my loved ones blissfully dreaming around me, I am not alone. That you too are nursing your babes, yearning to stretch your back or roll over. Or, I know that even if you are sleeping now, you remember what it's like to watch the moon move past the window, and you are awake with me in spirit.

Thank you.

And many of you, while reading the post, relived a past weaning experience with pain. I will not try to take this away from you, not because I think you deserve it   ( you do not), but because we all make decisions every day that we alone live with and no one can remove the emotions that accompany those choices.

Sometimes we make decisions with other people in mind, the aunts, grandmas, or friends that have walked the gauntlet before and want to ease our passage, or ease their own insecurities by watching us make a similar decision. These choices can rattle around in your heart as emotions that spring up with surprising sharpness when reading a blog post years later. Other times we make these difficult decisions wholly on our own, with much thought, and immense love. But because they involve a child, sprung from your body, and cleaved from your deepest dreams, even these independent decisions still carry pain.

It is quite understandable. Nursing is so tender a spot, that no matter what decision you make, to poke it again will certainly cause an ache.

not a baby anymore

I've been in a walking stupor for the last few days. I am simply not getting enough sleep. I start each night with prayers and high hopes and end it each morning deeper in the pit of sleep deprivation. It is no wonder that denying prisoners sleep is used as a method of torture because it is tortuous. I can handle a night here or there of not enough sleep, usually due to staying up too late with Nathan with a movie and late night conversation, but several nights in a row is unmanageable.

Here is where I point fingers and complain...  I am currently getting less sleep nursing my almost three year old through the night than I did when she was an infant. Yes that's right... start the gasps... Echo is 30 months old, sleeps in our bed, and has been nursing eight to nine times per night (basically the entire night). I know this is culturally unusual. I know I would get more sleep, at least at this point, if she were in her own bed. I know it is "all my fault". I know that there are some of you reading this right now that are filling up with incredulity and anger.

I also know that I will head to bed in a little bit and make all the same decisions again.

I'm not sure what my plan is. I only know that I am unwilling to turn nursing, which has been the ultimate form of unconditional nurturing love in Echo's life for three years, into something contentious, and negative. I just can't do it. I want to be an unwavering pillar of strength, consistent, and loving. I do not want to suddenly (at least in her eyes) sprout spikes and leap out of the darkness, angry and self-righteous. She isn't doing anything wrong, merely following her own interests and desires. It is only because I have changed my interest that her behavior feels inappropriate or unwanted.

I know my body can handle this. I have not forgotten the amazing capability of the human body, something I marveled at during pregnancy. I felt I could climb mountains after giving birth. My own power, strength, and stamina is real. It would be easy to simply declare that my body can no longer handle the strain of nursing any longer, but it would be a lie.

Still, I am not finding it easy. In the morning my nipples are raw, my back is tight, and my hips are sore. I am also nearly delirious, crying at the drop of a hat, and recasting every single aspect of my life in a negative light. I am mad at Nathan (for any reason I can conger) and completely bereft of any emotional stamina.

Still I am unwilling to aggressively withdraw my nursing love.

I am not stubbornly staying the course either. I talk to Echo about stopping nursing, or at the very least nursing less. I have told her outright that I do not want to nurse at night. She agrees to this, saying she is willing to just snuggle through the night and nurse again in daylight, but somehow she doesn't remember, or care, about this deal at 4a.m.

I also arm myself with a banana, a big bottle of water, and a large glass of milk, and offer these to her each time she nuzzles up to nurse. She happily and groggily accepts these new nighttime delights, settles back in, almost nods off, and then turns to me to nurse herself all the way to sleep. Again and again.

You could say it's not working. Maybe it isn't. But it also kind of is too. I am being my true, most loving (of myself) self by being the kind of mother I want to be. This is my version of lifting the heavy automobile off of the baby in order to save it's life. No, Echo isn't actually in danger, she certainly would live if I decided to never nurse her again. But I am accomplishing an amazing physical feat every night that I nurse her longer than is comfortable. I am not resting, but I can rest assured that our relationship is not threatened by a sudden, jerky change of mind on my part. And in the end, that is what is important to me.

I can sleep later, when she is twenty and living in a grimy apartment off campus (at least a little more!). I can catch up then when getting more sleep doesn't mean breaking her heart and causing her to wonder who her mother really is.

nursing Echo

Oh I look at her little face in this picture and I feel sad.

Today while cleaning the garage Echo asked if we could nurse. Echo is 28 months old and she nurses, sometimes a lot.

I said: "I don't really want to right now."

She said: "Why not?"

I said: "Because we just nursed a little while ago and I am enjoying doing what I'm doing and I don't want to stop."

And Nathan said: "Wow. We've really come a long way from 'nurse on demand'".

And I didn't say anything. I wasn't even bothered by the comment. It's true we have come a long way, but I had a whole list of ready explanations:

• She just nursed.
• She doesn't even drink that much when she does.
• We can still be close to one another even if we don't nurse (I was holding her at the time).

Which is ALL true and very reasonable. But it wasn't until tonight that I thought; so what?

There I was, sitting down to write a post about empathy and feelings, when today I chose the less than empathic road with Echo. And it wasn't just the moment in the garage, it's often. I have been begrudging her interest in nursing frequently. She asks and I delay or grumble.

I'm not saying that a 2+ year old has the same nursing needs as an infant, or that I should be nursing on demand, no matter the circumstances. I am not bothered by my actual choices regarding nursing, I am bothered by how I treat her when she asks. I am noticing a little disregard, on my part, about her feelings. And I feel really sad about that.