- We are both still awake, and there are birds chirping outside and What. The. Fuck.
- Way, way too many skinny, pale, almost-vaguely-ethnic, blonde chicks up in my fashion editorials right now. Diversity, PLEASE.
What did I do to deserve a nursing strike?
Published September 16, 2009 | 
This afternoon, around 1pm, Maia started getting a little fussy. The first thing I did was try to get her to nurse, but no luck. Awhile later, we figured that maybe her teeth were aching (we think she may be getting one of her top teeth in, as well as both of her bottom one) so I tried applying some Orajel, which resulted in me tweeting the following (at 1:43): “bad news: it’s hard to apply orajel to a squirmy, angry baby. good news: if Maia’s lips were hurting? THEY AREN’T ANY MORE!“
Yeah. No one told me how hard it is to apply Orajel. Holy shit.
So anyhow, after I numb her entire face, she ends up falling asleep against me, having not eaten in several hours. Whatever. She’ll nurse when she wakes up from her nap, right? She only naps 30-45 minutes at a time these days, I can deal with that. Turns out, she sleeps until 4pm. AND DOESN’T WANT TO NURSE.
But oh. my. God. She is throwing a MASSIVE fit every time I try to feed her. I’m starting to get engorged. Then I get angry, pass her off to Chris, and we decide to all go for a walk.
The walk is great, she’s lovely and happy the whole way, and when we get home, I try to feed her again.
CATS. SLEEPING. WITH. DOGS.
She freaks out.
I pass her off to Chris and open my copy of “The Mother of all Baby Books”, read the section on Nursing Strikes, don’t like what it says, and call my mom, babbling and most likely nearly incoherent. She tells me that maybe Maia wants some real food and isn’t really all that interested in nursing. Of course, my response is “But what’s wrong with my boobs?!”
Anyhow, Chris gives Maia some food and she starts to dig in, happier than a pig in shit. Which when you think about it, is not the most apt metaphor when referring to someone eating, but the point is… I felt horrible. I felt rejected. She greeted my boob with screams, but Real People Food with adulation?
When she lost interest in her food, I tried nursing her again. Still no luck. Again, she started throwing a fit.
By 8pm she still hadn’t nursed and still had no interest. We’d started her bedtime routine at 7, like usual, but she wasn’t falling asleep. By 8:30pm I’d managed to hand-express 1.5oz of milk into a bottle.
There are no words for how absolutely rejected and worthless I felt as I held her, watching her hold onto the bottle and drink from it, feeding herself. She didn’t need me. It could have been anything in that bottle. It could have been Chris holding her, or she could just have been laying on the bed, and nothing would have been different.
Since she enjoyed that milk so much, I went into the washroom and studiously expressed another 1.5oz, which she gobbled down just as gleefully.
Honestly, though, what really matters here, why I really need to write this post, is this:
I am so angry. At her.
It’s like a switch flipped and my mommy empathy turned off. When I tried to nurse her and she rejected me, screaming with a pitch and fervor that showed her absolute displeasure, I set her down on the bed and laid down alongside her… I watched her cry. I could NOT bring myself to hold her against my aching, engorged breasts. I felt no sympathy for her. Nothing was wrong with her. If she wanted to eat, I waited; if she wanted to sleep, she could curl up against me. There was no reason for this screaming. No reason to reject me.
I think that’s the crux of it: I feel like she rejected me.
And it hurts.
I don’t want her to suffer, but I don’t understand why she’s suffering. Yet… she’s only “suffering” when I try to feed her. Other than that, once I set her down and she realized I was no longer trying to shove my boob in her mouth, she returned to being happy. I don’t know if I kept trying to feed her because I hurt (physically and emotionally), because I thought she needed it (clearly she didn’t), or because that’s just what I do, I feed her, that’s a big part of my job. I guess she wasn’t hungry. Tonight, it seems like I needed the connection more than she did.
Chris stepped up to the plate BIG TIME. He told me he’d watch Maia while I went and tried to hand express. He tried to comfort me as I sat there aching, fighting tears, feeling my heart crumbling in my chest. He reminded me “it’s not about you, it’s not personal” as I stared at Maia holding the bottle in her mouth. He held her close and sang to her when she got sleepy but wouldn’t sleep for me. She fell asleep in his arms. When she woke up a few minutes later, he told me to stay put, and went to her, rocking her to sleep again.
That’s the one good thing that came from tonight: she wanted him, and he wanted her.
But I feel lost.
Girl Talk Thursday
Published August 27, 2009 | 
Girl Talk Thursday is a weekly event run by Maria of Mommy Melee. This week, we’re discussing dreams.
I’ve written about dreams twice before. Interestingly, those recurring dreams don’t happen as much anymore. Now that Maia’s here, there’s a whole new set of strange going on in my head.
I had a really fucked up dream the other night. I dreamt that my parents, who have been split up for something like fifteen years, got back together. Now, to be clear, I don’t remember ever wishing my parents would get back together (I think I understood that a divorce isn’t a lightly undertaken process) but if I have, it sure as hell hasn’t been within the last, ohhh, fourteen point nineninenine years. In this dream, though, my mom kept saying to me, “It’s okay Tatiana, just give him another chance.” My dad kept pleading, “Please let me hold my granddaughter,” and I was FREAKING OUT, screaming at him: “You’ll never hold her! Never!” Fucked up.
And although sexy dreams have been absent for several months, I’ve had a few of them lately. I’m kind of ashamed to admit that only one of them has featured Chris; the others have featured celebrities. I’m totally not a celeb fangirl type, but I guess I am in my sleep (hellooooo Colin Farrell, and no I don’t care if anyone thinks you’re dirty, like the Paris Hilton of the male celebrities, I’m totally okay with that).
Now, speaking in a loftier way of dreams — what are my dreams?
Obviously, I dream of health, happiness, long life, and prosperity for my family and everyone else I love.
I dream of having a career that leaves me feeling fulfilled. I dream of going back to school. I love learning. What is that career, though? Sometimes I think I’m meant to be a chef, but other times I’m certain I’m meant to write, and yet others I know I was born to be a teacher.
I dream of growing old with Chris (also of him cancelling his WoW account). I want us to be that little old couple walking, bent over, slowwwwwww as molasses, along a sidewalk under falling leaves in the autumn, holding hands.
I dream of our little Maia growing up strong and beautiful, of holding her baby in my arms.
I want to say that I dream of a world free of discrimination based on gender, race, and sexual preference. It needs to be clear, though, that I speak of mutual, informed, consensual sexual preferences. I’m not cool with the stuff that’s illegal for a reason.
I don’t dream of world peace. I genuinely don’t believe it’s attainable. I WISH it were, but so long as people use religion as a justification for unjustifiable behaviour, man needs natural resources, and psychopathic mental illnesses exist, world peace cannot happen. Sad, but true.
Ironically, my working title is “Sorrow”
Published August 18, 2009 | I’ve been writing again.
Obviously, not blogging. Not even article writing (although I should). Not freelance writing (again with the “should”).
No, I’ve been creative writing. I’ve brainstormed a world and characters and a history, and I’ve been scribbling it down — pen to paper, ink staining my fingertips — for the past several days. Each morning and night, when Maia sleeps, I take my notebook and pen onto the balcony and just write, until I have nothing more to say or she wakes up.
I love every moment of it, even the ones where I am staring blankly up at the sky, wondering if I’ll ever be able to put the scenarios in my head down onto paper. I used to write stories constantly, although I never finished one (story of my life!), I had stopped for many, many years. One of my goals to achieve while pregnant was finishing the first draft of a novel, just so I would have something to refine and show her in many years.
I’m counting my blog as that novel.
Now, I’m writing for myself. And it’s something that Chris and I are bonding over. I can ask him geeky questions that no one but the most hardcore lover of the fantasy genre would understand, and he helps me brainstorm. When I’m in the middle of this world in my mind, sometimes I need an outsider’s perspective, and that’s where he comes to the rescue. I explain a few key facts to him, and then I ask why are these things true, or how do these things relate to one another, or what’s a possible side effect of these? Sometimes he comes up with great stuff, sometimes not so great, but he always makes me think.
And I’m writing. WRITING.
I could cry.
Being a twenty-something
Published August 15, 2009 | I introduced myself as a “writer” at our CPR course this afternoon, because I felt ashamed to call myself (just) a “blogger”.
I’d rather be a writer who blogs than a blogger who writes.
The other woman who was part of the class — and 36 weeks pregnant! — told me that blogging is the wave of the future, and while I agree in theory, I still feel… funny… introducing myself that way. “Hi, I’m Tatiana, and I’m a blogger.” As I explained, 13 year olds on MySpace are also “bloggers”.
But then, there are numerous professional bloggers, people who get paid to write editorial-style pieces. Perhaps there’s not so much of a stigma attached to it in the public eye as I feel like there is. Maybe my hesitance is born from the fact that I’m a “mommy blogger”, a title that has been growing increasingly derogatory as the dramas of this summer continue, even among those I’d consider my peers.
Sometimes, though, I have to laugh at myself. I suppose what I’m going through recently is the existential crisis that plagues twenty-somethings. I always assumed I’d skip it and that I knew myself, but I look back at who I was when I turned 20 as compared to who I am now and I’m hardly the same.
Then again, I’m not even the same person I was six months and one week ago.
I think I’m better now, in some ways. I love my family, appreciate life, and trust myself more. Yet at the same time I’ve found such anger smouldering inside and have rediscovered the genuinely hurtful side of my personality that dominated my teenage years, and Chris is the person who bears the brunt of that. Sometimes I feel like I use all my love on Maia, so when I turn to him or the dogs, I have nothing left but frustration and fury. They deserve better.
Most days, being a wife is harder than being a mother.
Motherhood comes instinctively and innately. There is not a cell in my body that is satisfied when she is hurt. I’ve never snarled something intentionally cruel at her and stalked away. I’ve never sat in self-righteous indignity with my back turned to her. Yet I’ve felt and done all those things to Chris since we brought her into this world.
The truly sad part is that I try to be a better wife, a better woman, and I fail. Miserably.
You know that “50% of all marriages end in divorce” wisdom that is so prevalent? I wonder how many of those marriages involve children.
Balancing these dual identities — wife, mother; husband, father — is the real challenge of parenting thus far. I wonder how long it will take for me to figure it out.
Because this is difficult. Sometimes it’s downright impossible.
Happy Anniversary!
Published July 27, 2009 | Three years ago today, we were in Connecticut.
We met Buffy and Joss. They were only a month old.
Oh, and we got married.
Then we ate dinner.
It was a very good day.
I love you, Chris!
The Highs and the Lows (or, accepting that it ain’t all roses)
Published July 1, 2009 | 
I’ve documented a lot about my little girl here. I’ve shared some of the highest highs, but I’ve avoided many of the lowest lows. It’s not that I don’t want to talk about them; I do. There are times I’ve felt so overwhelmed at how much work this motherhood thing requires that I’ve sobbed while holding my crying baby, times I’ve been so resentful towards her that I just wanted to pass her to someone else and walk away to regain my senses, times I’ve called Chris at work and hardly been able to speak through my tears. I don’t write about these things because I don’t want to relive them. I want to reread this blog in ten years as Maia does her homework on the kitchen table behind me and find myself smiling at the fond memories, wishing I could again experience the feverish, all-consuming need for one another we have right now.
I love my daughter. I love my husband. Those are immutable facts. I might as well say that I need air to live and water to thrive. But it’s also undeniable that my relationships with them change day-to-day, for better and for worse. Chris and I have argued and snapped at each other more in these past four and a half (!!) months than we have in the six years (as of today!) we’ve been together. It’s difficult. It’s really, really difficult. I hope that every pregnant woman out there understands one thing, though: YOU are the mother. YOU know best. You must listen to and consider other people, but never, ever go against what your heart and gut are telling you when it comes to your baby. Parenting is demanding enough without making it harder on yourself because of what a book, or your parents, or your frustrated partner suggest.
Truly, the struggle to accept that, since I set the basic parenting rules, I am responsible for maintaining them is the greatest frustration I’ve experienced so far. It puts a strain on my self-esteem, my marriage, and even at times my emotional stability. There is no way to explain to someone who hasn’t been here how absolutely low the lows can be. We all read about post-partum depression while we’re reading our pregnancy books, and I have to say that while I don’t believe I suffer from PPD, I do believe I’ve had some depressive episodes in the past four months. I think that’s an important distinction: for the vast majority of the time, I am delighted to be a wife and mother, I am confident in my ability to be fantastic at both, and I want nothing more than to be near my daughter and husband forever.
Yet there have been times that I think I’m a horrible wife and mother, that I’ll never make both of them and myself happy, or that if I could just get away from them for half an hour, the world would make sense again.
I know this isn’t the happiest blog post. But I tell you — you know what makes me feel better, when I feel low? Knowing that other women have been here.
So remember — when you are feeling despondent, when you doubt yourself, when you want to bury your face in a pillow and scream with frustration — you’re not alone. I know you feel like you are. But you’re not. We’ve all been there.
And fortunately, the highs outnumber the lows.
Chris: Inconceivable! Me: Uh, actually…
Published May 17, 2009 | A year ago today, Chris and I were in Washington DC, doing the tourist thing.
Innocuous enough, right? Well, it was. Until we left DC, and found ourselves up in the gorgeous mountain town of Frederick, Maryland.
We decided to go out for dinner, and I looked around online at various review sites until I stumbled across this great-looking restaurant called Cacique, that specializes in Spanish and Mexican cuisine:
I had a half pitcher of sangria, Chris had an amazing mojito or two, and there was also some food eaten, but let’s be real: the alcohol is the real star of this story.
Back at the hotel, we got our freak on. And then I got sick in the toilet, which was really sexy (not).
LITTLE DID WE KNOW then that eating at Cacique made me pregnant.
Happy Conception Day, dear Maia!
Month Two
Published April 13, 2009 | Dear Maia,
Today you turn two months old and, just like last month, I’m stuck between amazement at how time has flown by and disbelief that it’s only been that long. This morning as we laid in bed together, I rested my hand on my stomach and remembered being pregnant, feeling you kicking and pushing — but I couldn’t think of what it was that I did all day without you around. Then I tried to remember life before the pregnancy, and it came to me in bits and pieces: a vacation to Florida, a trip to Connecticut, taking pictures with Daddy in Montreal, or bringing home the puppies. These memories seemed more like remnants of a dream than anything that ever happened to me, as if I only drew breath when you did.
Despite our love for you, there’s no denying that this month has been difficult. You’ve grown more aware and responsive, but at the same time, you’re very demanding. I’m surprised there’s not a path worn in our flooring from how many hours Daddy and I have spent carrying you back and forth around the apartment, shushing you, trying to make you happy. There was one night where you cried for four hours straight — and of course this was quite late, when Daddy had to work the next day. But you know what? As soon as he came out to help us, you fell asleep in his arms.
This month, you two have become something like best friends. We joke that you’re Queen Maia, he’s Prince Daddy, and I’m Mommy the Milkmaid. There have literally been times when you two are together, I’ve walked over to say hello, you’ve taken one look at me, and started to wail. Fortunately, I have a sense of humour about this, or else you might just hurt my feelings. Although that said, he did scare you the other day. He was raising you up in the air, over his head, and you loved this, so he thought that maybe you’d like to be lowered as well; he pretended to drop you from his waist to his knees and you screamed, this frightened, high-pitched, endless wail. You were terrified. We felt horrible, and Daddy cuddled you close until you calmed down.
If there’s only one memory I could hold on to from this month, it would be seeing you smile for the first time. It was 5am and you decided that was a perfectly good time to wake up for awhile, so we went out into the living room together. I laid you down on the couch and played with you — and then, you beamed. Your mouth opened wide, the corners of it curled up, your dimple appeared, and your eyes wrinkled up with joy. Maia, you could wake me up every hour of the night, as long as you smile at me. I went and woke your Daddy up to let him know, but it took another week before you started smiling at him. Now, every morning, you are in a happy mood and you smile at us while “talking”. It makes starting the day so much easier!
For the last few days, you’ve been trying to laugh. This is hilarious, since it means you draw a big breath and then you squeal or yell, very loudly, while smiling. I know that within the next week or two you’ll start giving us those giggles that you so desperately are trying to find, and of course I’m more than willing to help you, and I’ve probably tickled you more in these few days than I have in the rest of your life.
You’re also “standing” a lot. Sometimes when we’re holding you, you stretch out your legs (we refer to this as “Legs of Steel”) and push off us. We’ll swing you backwards and pull you back up, but that’s not always enough, and you want to be held straight up so you can put all your weight on your feet. Then you straighten your back, hold your head up, and talk to us. You’re only eight weeks old, Maia! Stop trying to grow up so fast.
Every day with you is different from the one before. Sometimes you’ll nap all day, sometimes you’ll be awake for ten hours in a row. Sometimes you are incredibly happy, sometimes you cry no matter what we do. Sometimes you’re interested in us, sometimes you want to look at toys instead. We can’t predict you, and as frustrating as it can be to have to think outside of the box, I love that you expand our horizons. People say they start to think differently when they have a child, and I understand that now. It’s not just that I have to think about how to take care of someone else, or how the world will impact you, but I have to find new ways of looking at situations. I have to try and think like a baby, and that’s difficult with twenty-six years of life experience. But it’s amazing.
We are so in love with you, baby girl. Even when you wear us out.
Love,
Mama.
At least it wasn’t just me…
Published April 8, 2009 | The other day, I grabbed the breast pump my MIL bought me and decided to disassemble and wash it. I pulled out the directions as to how to clean it, and broke it down into pieces — or at least, I tried to. The handle part is attached to some blue cup thingie, and to get the blue cup thingie detached, you have to turn it counter-clockwise and match up the dot on the blue cup with the centre of the handle.
So I’m trying to do this. And I can’t get the damned thing to turn far enough to get the dot anywhere near the handle, nevermind the centre of the handle. I started cursing at it (Maia was asleep!) and finally just threw it aside to let Chris handle later, before my brain exploded.
When Chris got home, he read the instructions and tried to follow them. He couldn’t get the blue cup thingie to come off, either.
So he paused. He looked at it. He looked at me. He looked at it again. And then he turned it once more, smoothly, and the blue cap came off. “Oh,” he said.
“How did you do that?” I asked.
“I turned it counter-clockwise.”
We had both been turning it clockwise.
We’re fucking GENIUSES in this house.
She doesn’t have a goatee though
Published March 30, 2009 | Sometimes I look at my daughter but all I see is my husband.
And it makes me so happy, because I love him so much. These days, I feel like I’m being unfair to him, like I’m not giving him enough attention. I am not the only one feeling overwhelmed, and I need to give him more credit for being as strong and as steady as he is.
Hopefully my lemon meringue pie turns out well… I know he loves his mother’s!