True confessions.
Jan. 20th, 2006 07:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaOne thing they don't tell you about, pre-motherhood, is the fury. You hear all about the fierceness of mother love and mother protectiveness and even mother anxiety, but no one ever says much about how angry it's possible to be at your own innocent and helpless child.
Alex is over her fever - it went away as inexplicably as it arrived. She woke up Thursday morning in a sunny mood, temperature normal. I, on the other hand, woke up Thursday morning at 4am to discover that something I'd eaten Wednesday night was violently disagreeing with me. I was worn out all day afterward, and all day I held on to the idea that I would come home, eat something unchallenging, and go to bed around eight.
I forgot to tell Alex. She was off her normal nap schedule because of being sick; fatally, on Thursday afternoon she napped until 5pm. At 7pm, her normal bedtime, she clearly wasn't ready to go to sleep. But at 7:30 she was rubbing her face a little, so we decided to give bedtime a try. We carried her upstairs and I settled down on the glider in her room to give her a bottle. For a few minutes, she looked like she was going to cuddle in and fall asleep. Then she developed a deep and absorbed interest in the star lights on her ceiling. Followed by a compelling need to explore every molecule of the necklace I have been wearing every minute of every day since her birth. And so on.
From 7:30 to 9 I struggled to get her to sleep. Every time she got drowsy and I put her down in the crib, we started again from square one. Somewhere in there I started hissing angrily, "Stop that! Go to sleep!" instead of my usual soft, reassuring, "hush, Alex, it's sleepytime." You can imagine how well that worked. A few times I stepped out into the hallway to catch my breath, and to hope that she would settle on her own. Each time, she started to scream in less than a minute. I'd go back in and find her standing at the foot of the crib. As soon as she'd see me, her face would crease into a delighted grin. Mine... would not.
She woke up at 2:15. And 2:45. And 4. And 5:15. This is a baby who, prior to her fever, was regularly sleeping 9-10 hours in a row, nearly every night. I tended to her with gritted teeth. (Michael had done all the baby duty Wednesday night, and I had promised him a night's rest.) At 5:15 I sent him up anyway, because I knew I was too angry to care for her properly. But she screamed enough that there was no sleep for me anyway, even with the baby monitor turned off, and eventually I went up to relieve him. She dozed fitfully in my arms, but would not allow herself to be put back down in bed.
I cried, when I brought her downstairs at 6:30 without having gotten any more sleep myself. I cried because I was tired, but mostly I cried because I wasn't being the mother I wanted to be. It's not Alex's fault that she couldn't sleep last night - her schedule was thrown off by her illness, and her sleep habits were disrupted by the fact that we went back to picking her up and holding her at night while she was sick, instead of calming her at cribside. It's not her fault. She wasn't trying to piss me off. But nevertheless, I was helplessly, horribly furious at my little girl, and I did not hide it successfully. I didn't hurt her or, I think, scare her, but I was not gentle or patient. I was grim.
But now it's all better. I napped with her from 9 to 10, and we woke up because our friends Emily and Zoe were knocking on the door to accompany us to story hour. With Emily - and our new friend Suzanne, who we met at story hour a few weeks ago, and whose son is three days older than Alex - I am comfortable confessing to the horribleness of my late-night thoughts. They understood and sympathized, and we all laughed about how awful it can be, and how great. We spent three hours together going to story hour, letting the kids play at the library, and then relaxing over lunch, and at the end I felt like I would be able to keep going. I felt... understood. Normal. Not alone.
I deliberately kept Alex awake until her normal afternoon nap time, with the result that she slept for two hours and then was able to stay awake until her normal bedtime. She did enough independent playing in the afternoon that I was able to read the entire New Yorker. And, just now, I took her up to bed and she was painlessly asleep within fifteen minutes. Now I'll have some dinner and a glass of wine, and then crawl into a hot bathtub with a book. Even if she wakes often tonight, at least I won't be starting from a place of rage. I'll try, again, to be the mother she deserves.
Alex is over her fever - it went away as inexplicably as it arrived. She woke up Thursday morning in a sunny mood, temperature normal. I, on the other hand, woke up Thursday morning at 4am to discover that something I'd eaten Wednesday night was violently disagreeing with me. I was worn out all day afterward, and all day I held on to the idea that I would come home, eat something unchallenging, and go to bed around eight.
I forgot to tell Alex. She was off her normal nap schedule because of being sick; fatally, on Thursday afternoon she napped until 5pm. At 7pm, her normal bedtime, she clearly wasn't ready to go to sleep. But at 7:30 she was rubbing her face a little, so we decided to give bedtime a try. We carried her upstairs and I settled down on the glider in her room to give her a bottle. For a few minutes, she looked like she was going to cuddle in and fall asleep. Then she developed a deep and absorbed interest in the star lights on her ceiling. Followed by a compelling need to explore every molecule of the necklace I have been wearing every minute of every day since her birth. And so on.
From 7:30 to 9 I struggled to get her to sleep. Every time she got drowsy and I put her down in the crib, we started again from square one. Somewhere in there I started hissing angrily, "Stop that! Go to sleep!" instead of my usual soft, reassuring, "hush, Alex, it's sleepytime." You can imagine how well that worked. A few times I stepped out into the hallway to catch my breath, and to hope that she would settle on her own. Each time, she started to scream in less than a minute. I'd go back in and find her standing at the foot of the crib. As soon as she'd see me, her face would crease into a delighted grin. Mine... would not.
She woke up at 2:15. And 2:45. And 4. And 5:15. This is a baby who, prior to her fever, was regularly sleeping 9-10 hours in a row, nearly every night. I tended to her with gritted teeth. (Michael had done all the baby duty Wednesday night, and I had promised him a night's rest.) At 5:15 I sent him up anyway, because I knew I was too angry to care for her properly. But she screamed enough that there was no sleep for me anyway, even with the baby monitor turned off, and eventually I went up to relieve him. She dozed fitfully in my arms, but would not allow herself to be put back down in bed.
I cried, when I brought her downstairs at 6:30 without having gotten any more sleep myself. I cried because I was tired, but mostly I cried because I wasn't being the mother I wanted to be. It's not Alex's fault that she couldn't sleep last night - her schedule was thrown off by her illness, and her sleep habits were disrupted by the fact that we went back to picking her up and holding her at night while she was sick, instead of calming her at cribside. It's not her fault. She wasn't trying to piss me off. But nevertheless, I was helplessly, horribly furious at my little girl, and I did not hide it successfully. I didn't hurt her or, I think, scare her, but I was not gentle or patient. I was grim.
But now it's all better. I napped with her from 9 to 10, and we woke up because our friends Emily and Zoe were knocking on the door to accompany us to story hour. With Emily - and our new friend Suzanne, who we met at story hour a few weeks ago, and whose son is three days older than Alex - I am comfortable confessing to the horribleness of my late-night thoughts. They understood and sympathized, and we all laughed about how awful it can be, and how great. We spent three hours together going to story hour, letting the kids play at the library, and then relaxing over lunch, and at the end I felt like I would be able to keep going. I felt... understood. Normal. Not alone.
I deliberately kept Alex awake until her normal afternoon nap time, with the result that she slept for two hours and then was able to stay awake until her normal bedtime. She did enough independent playing in the afternoon that I was able to read the entire New Yorker. And, just now, I took her up to bed and she was painlessly asleep within fifteen minutes. Now I'll have some dinner and a glass of wine, and then crawl into a hot bathtub with a book. Even if she wakes often tonight, at least I won't be starting from a place of rage. I'll try, again, to be the mother she deserves.
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this icon says it all
Date: 2006-01-21 01:23 am (UTC)And we all survived. And we all still love each other.
Yeah, nobody warns you about that part, do they?