infant

surviving colic

~ Maya C ~ Leave a comment

Colic is a poltergeist.
“It’s like waking up in a zombie infestation.” Yup.
It’s hard, really hard.
It challenges every fiber of your being,
Makes you feel like a rotten failure,
And drives you bat-sh*t crazy.

Sometimes shhhing helps. Usually it doesn’t.
Sometimes the swaddle is a blessing. Mostly it’s the devil.
Gripe water works one out of ten times.
And when you’ve finally found the magic cure – baby in carrier with Bob Marley in the background, probiotics, fancy body treatments – it stops working.

At times (ok, often) you can’t help but wonder what you did wrong during your pregnancy, or in the first few weeks, or what you’re doing wrong now.
And then you turn to Dr. Google to figure out what’s wrong with your kid.
NOTHING.

He is perfect. He is exactly who he needs to be and maybe his little soul chose you because he knew you could handle it.

So here’s to my peanut and all of the peanuts struggling with the colic monster. And mostly, here’s to the parents who are doing the best they can.

 

Hugs,
mxo

 
P.S. I actually wanted to post “Welcome to this World” by Renee & Jeremy but couldn’t find a video. It makes me cry every time. So beautiful.

time…

~ Maya C ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday Ryan celebrated one month of being on this planet. While the days were long, very long at times, the month somehow flew by.

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A couple of weeks ago, when I was in the depths of new momma baby blues, a sage friend sent me these words:

The ancient Greeks had two concepts of time: chronos and kairos. Chronos is the inexorable grinding on of time without a foreseeable end—like when 5pm can’t come soon enough or that meeting just won’t end, or your kid won’t stop crying. Most of the time we find ourselves in chronos, wishing we could be on to the next thing. In contrast, kairos describes those rare and precious moments in which time seems to stand still—when we fall in love, when we are blissed out to our favourite song, or playing a sport, or generally doing anything we love. Importantly, it is the moments of kairos that make all that chronos worthwhile.

This is a metaphor for parenthood. Most of our days are spent in a state of fatigue or overwhelm or anxiety, and if we focus on that we miss the moments of kairos—like when your baby smiles at you and he is so perfect that it makes all those sleepless nights worthwhile, and you would do it again in a heartbeat. Look for the moments of kairos, because in this twilight time of new parenthood they will be your guiding light to the end of the tunnel.

I hope you find them as profoundly healing as I did. Thanks A! Major love.

Hugs.
mxo

early mornings…

~ Maya C ~ Leave a comment

It’s 7:00 in the morning. Munchkin is fast asleep in my arms… again. I foresee a lot of early morning posts in my future.

We had a great night going into yesterday. Ryan slept for a good portion of the night between feeds which meant I could attempt some shut eye (though he’s such a loud little bugger when he sleeps, it’s hard to actual doze off). This last night was a different story. He slept just fine as long as he was being held… constantly. The second I put him down, all hell broke loose.

So I’m catching up on my email, online shopping, and contemplating life.

It seems my biggest challenge right now is the lack of control. I’ve been such a control freak my entire life and now, I’ve lost control over the most basic things (eating, sleeping, etc). Things that seem to work with Ryan one day make him scream bloody murder the next. Not being able to control the situation has turned me into a ball of nerves.

But I suppose that’s what parenting is about and there’s a life lesson in there somewhere. Parenting might just be the greatest teacher for staying present in the moment.

Looking backwards can be frustrating (like when you look at your bed wondering how you took those glorious nights of slumber for granted) and it’s pointless – those moments are gone.

Looking forward is a crap shoot. In an hour, Ryan and I might be napping peacefully together (fingers crossed!) or we might be back in the emergency room. Flip a coin.

So all that’s left is the here and now. It’s now 7:27am and he’s still slumbering. Rather than worry about what being held might mean for his future sleeps, I’m just going to enjoy this peaceful moment. If only the tea delivery service would wake up. 🙂

mxo

earlymornings
I made tea!