The Working Mother Debate

Anyone who is a mother has an opinion on this very subject.

I am no different.

Now I live in Canada, the home of hockey, and the one year maternity leave. That is for everyone that is not self-employed. (Now they do have maternity leave benefits for Self Employed people, but it started too late for me to benefit from this.) So Andre and I saved and built up a savings so I could stay home for four months full time with Emilie. Then when Andre was headed home for the summer from work I would head back to work since there was no way we could afford to stay home with half an income over the summer while Andre was off work!

Now I will start by saying that I am incredibly fortunate that I am self employed in that I have a flexible schedule and can bed my schedule. Most people with a traditional job do not have this option. One con to my specific field is that my income relies on the availability of people, ie. working evenings and weekends. My dream would be an 8am-4pm or 9am-5pm work day, but unless the work day of everyone else changes, this just isn't my reality.

I thought I was prepared for being a working mother*. I knew it would be difficult and not without challenges...I had no idea how difficult. I had no clue how isolated I would feel. Aside from one woman I know (also an RMT) no one knows what it is like. It is an incredibly blessing to get to be home with your child for an entire year. I will freely admit that I am envious of everyone who has the opportunity to do so.

There are a lot of women out there that will tell you that it is easier to be a working mother*. I do not agree. For me it is harder, much harder. I cannot be the best mother, the best wife, the best employee all at the same time. Something has to suffer. If someone has figured out how to do everything perfectly I would like to know their secret. I feel like I'm being pulled in every direction at the same time. I have no time for myself. I will admit that this is of my own accord. If I have free time I want to spend it with my daughter. I will never ever get this precious time back. You can't get back their first word, their first laugh, their first crawl, their first anything. Maybe when she is older it will be easier to leave her, until then I don't want to miss anymore firsts than I have to.

I found it easier to get things done when I was at home. When my daughter napped I would tidy the kitchen, throw in a load of laundry, clean the living room. I can't do that when I'm at work. So now my evenings weekends are spent playing catch up. Those days that Emilie would be up screaming for whatever reason throughout the night, I would :gasp: sleep when she was sleeping. Yet another thing that is hard to do when I am at work. I find out about a work function and the first thing I think is "I'll miss more time with Emilie".

I feel overwhelmed all the time. I feel like I'm playing catch up all the time.

For me, being a working mother* is harder, much harder.

*Please note that every time I use the term "working mother" I refer to a mother who works outside of the home. I don't want any nasty comments about how stay at home mothers work too. I am aware of that.

Here I am.

There have been many moments over the last few months where I have sat where I am sitting at this exact moment, thinking, to myself about how I should get back to blogging. I've found myself craving that release of thoughts like I used to when I was journaling years ago. I even found myself tempted to grab a pen and notebook and start scribbling down thoughts, but then reminded myself that I have a BLOG.

So here I am, again.

I think part of the reason I have resisted blogging is my fear that maybe people will find what I have to say boring, but then I remind myself that I started blogging for me, so I shall continue blogging for me. Hopefully the occasional entry will strike a chord with someone out there along the way.

So here, I am. I hope you'll have me back.

Time keeps slipping away

I was going through my blog entries, and found that I had done some blogging on my hiatus. This is part of the reason that I have been away from you all....work. It's sucking the life out of me I tell you! So here is my lost blog entry, written originally on September 22nd.

Time seemed to be slipping away quickly before, but now with both of us back to work and the madness now in full swing, each day is passing more quickly than the last.  Never enough time for us, never enough time for myself, and never enough time for Emilie, or at least that is how it seems. I find myself in a bit of a funk. Stuck in this limbo that I'm sure all working Mama's can appreciate. How do I make sure that I'm at my best at work? How do I make sure that my little girl is getting all of me at home? How do I make sure that I'm giving my husband enough attention and affection? Right now housekeeping doesn't even figure on the list. Someday it will get on there, but not right now!

Like everything that has to do with parenting it seems I knew it would be hard, but I didn't know how hard. I was a driven career woman for so long, over a decade before I had Emilie. I would joke that my practice was my first baby. Emilie was my second. Now that I have Emilie things have changed, my mindset has changed. I no longer want to stay at work, attend after hours work functions. I want to get my butt out of the clinic as quickly as I can, so I can scoop up my little girl and give her the biggest hug. I feel like I miss out on so much while I am at work.

I've already missed her first drink out of the sippy cup. She tried to get her little legs underneath her in the crawling position for my mother, I was at work for that too. I know it is inevitable, that I'm going to miss things, but it doesn't make it any easier. It doesn't make my heart hurt any less that I missed out on something because I was at work.

Now don't get me wrong. I love my job. I love what I get to do. I get to do two things that I love doing, I get to talk all.day.long, and I get to make people feel better. Can you get any better than that? So I can only imagine how I would feel if I didn't like my job, or worse, hated my job. I know that there are many of you out there in that exact situation. So I count myself lucky in that respect. I have a job that I love, at least once I get here I enjoy myself. It's just getting here.

I think my Boobies are closing up shop

I think my short and arduous journey into the land of breast feeding is coming to an end. Emilie has been outright refusing the breast during feedings over this last week. I've been meaning to write about my breast feeding experience for so long now. Wanting to share my journey, hoping that maybe it will bring comfort to someone out there. Now that everything is most likely coming to an end, I think now is the time.

I grew up in a home of three girls. My mother exclusively breastfed all three of us. My youngest sister is 8 years younger than me, so as a young girl I learned that babies weren't fed from a bottle, that's what boobies were for. My mother even shared a story of me as a 9 year old sitting outside our home freaking a neighbour right out when I lifted my shirt and put my baby doll to my chest so she could "eat". It just seemed natural. You have a baby, you breastfeed said baby. Easy peasy right?

NO!!!! A million times no!

I heard stories of friends, beautiful stories of their beautiful wrinkly, little newborns being placed on their chest and starting to suckle on their own scootching up to their breast so they can have that first little meal. That was not my reality. My reality was a sleepy, lazy, satisfied little girl who was so full of the fluid they (the doctors) had pumped me full of during my delivery, that she was in no way wanting another meal. All she was interested in was snuggling on my chest for a nice little nap. The closest we got those first few hours was her flicking my nipple around with her tongue, trying to push it away.

::Le Sigh::

Little Emilie was not interested in eating those first few days. Our second night in the hospital she went a full seven, S-E-V-E-N hours between feedings. Not from our lack of trying either. I swear that night I met almost every single nurse on shift. Each one trying their own little trick for trying to wake a sleepy baby to feed. I ended up hand expressing colostrum, squeezing the drops of liquid gold into her mouth, letting her swallow, then starting again. That was a meal for her. The nurses had me strip her down, lay her on my chest, tickle her toes, tickle under her chin, move her arms, move her legs, finally they had me wipe her down with a cold damp cloth. Mean I know, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Even the damp cloth didn't work after awhile. She was not interested in the boob juice.

After about 36 hours of that whole routine to get her to eat, her weight had dropped below the dreaded 10% loss. The midwife gave us two options; either rent a breast pump like that minute, or start supplementing with formula via a tube to get us through until that magic moment when my milk would come in. We happened to have some sample cans of formula in our pantry, so we opted for supplementing. I also booked an appointment for my fourth day post partum with a lactation consultant. We supplemented, and she gained, and the lactation consultant fixed our shallow latch issues, and I bought myself a pump.

I started pumping for 10 minutes after each feeding in the hopes of increasing my supply. The next day (5 days post partum) I had another visit from my midwife. She delivered the dreaded news: I had a low supply. I thought the 20mL I was pumping after each feeding was great, true, it wasn't enough to even supplement the next feeding, but it was okay right? Wrong. She gave me two options, herbs, or Domperidone. I opted for Domperidone. Made an appointment with my family doctor and started that very day.

All I have to say is THANK GOD Andre was home those first three weeks. I honestly would have lost it, seriously lost my mind if it wasn't for him. Feedings were suppose to be this serene time with mom and baby, snuggling. Hahahaha. Not in our house, it was a huge production of stripping Emilie down, changing her bum in the hopes of waking her up a little bit, then trying to get her latched on. And really that was the last thing Emilie wanted to do. My boobies couldn't give her what she wanted so why try right? Once we got her latched it was a rush to get the feeding tube in her mouth so she could down the formula while on the breast. That was assuming she would latch. Sometimes after about 10 minutes of struggling, we would give up and finger feed her. I do not miss those days. Then after the whole production of feeding her I would have to relinquish my little snugly baby who just wanted to be cuddled in favour of my cold, unforgiving breast pump so I would watch Andre get to snuggle Emilie while I sat (crying) in my glider pumping away.

By this point the post partum blues were beginning to set in. The stress of everything was becoming a little bit too much for me. Andre was about to go back to work, and I knew that our routine was not something that I could continue on my own when my late night partner in crime was asleep. I made the decision to drop my after feeding pump sessions overnight, and just supplement with formula what she needed. This was probably the beginning of the end, but when your sanity is hanging by a thread, you choose your sanity.

This lead to a phase of exclusively pumping and supplementing with formula. In the evenings in an effort to calm Emilie I would put her on the breast and she would calm herself by having a little snack. After about a month of pumping, I had enough, my nipples were killing me and I was miserable being stuck to a pump all the time instead of spending time with my daughter, or sleeping, or eating, or well anything.

I was on the verge of giving up all together when Emilie decided that she would actually latch on well and take a little feeding. So in a last ditch effort to continue giving Emilie some breast milk I started offering the breast before each feeding. She would nurse for about 10-15 minutes then finish off with her bottle. Let me just say my beloved daughter has no issue with the dreaded nipple confusion. We have continued with this for about 3 months or so. I think the final blow came with my return to work. Things were going so well, but I have noticed a drop in my lack lustre supply since I've been back to work. This has led to our little Miss outright refusing to nurse the last few days. I see the writing on the wall. I know what is coming. She's had enough. I can't give her what she wants when she wants it. The bottle can.

I found myself crying today while trying to feed her. My nipple leaking and her refusing to nurse because she knows a bottle is coming. At that moment I knew what is to come. I'm still taking Domperidone, but I will probably stop taking it after today. There is no need if she refuses to nurse. I refuse to go back to the pump for the dismal amount of breast milk I can pump. It's not worth the time I have to take away from her. She's thriving. She's happy. She's healthy. I can't complain.

If she will nurse tonight before bed I will savour those last little moments. Just her and I. Something only I can give her. PCOS robbed me of my ability to breast feed exclusively, but it can't take that away from me.

I am an Auntie!

You may all call me Auntie Jenna.

My little nephew was born via emergency c-section on June 29th, 2011. My sister Carrie went into preterm labour at 33 weeks, and the medication they gave her to stop labour ended up causing her blood pressure to drop dangerously low, thus causing his heart rate to drop dangerously low. It was a very tense day, but little Joshua Joseph was born a full 7 weeks early at exactly 5lbs. He was small, but perfect.

He spent the next 2 and a half weeks in the NICU, and got to come home. It was a great day to finally get to see him, and hold him for the first time.

He has been thriving since he arrived home. At his last weigh in with the family doctor he was a whopping 6lbs, 8ozs. He gained a full pound in his first week home! He has been such a good little boy for his mommy and daddy (oh how jealous!) as well.

So blog land, here is my nephew Joshua Joseph:

A little collage I made for Carrie to celebrate Josh's 2 week birthday. It reads "What a difference two weeks makes. Joshua then and now."

Their brave little man, finally home!

My first snuggle time with Josh!

We call this one "Big and Little". Their first picture together.