Category: life

This is Not the Maternity Leave You Are Looking For

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When it became clear that, pre-delivery, Sugarpie was healthy and would be arriving to stay, I started thinking about how my maternity leave would play out.

Things have not exactly gone according to plan.

WHat I IMagined This Maternity Leave Would be Like

There would be binge watching on Netflix and Amazon Prime Streaming! (Outlander Season 4, I’m looking at you….)

Exercising on the regular!

Writing. So much writing!

Reading! I would finally have time to read stuff!

Cooking and baking as I haven’t done since before I had Babycakes!

Volunteering at Babycakes’s school!

Taking naps!

Playdates (eventually)!

What This Maternity Leave Has Actually Been Like

Trying to soothe a fussy baby who doesn’t like to nap.

 

Homeschooling my kindergartener.

Needing protective gear to go to Target.

Watching Frozen 2 at least three times a week.

Did I mention a fussy baby?

Stress eating.

Getting beat up on the regular when try to feed the baby.

Shushing the whole house when I do finally get Sugarpie to nap.

Only to have her wake five minutes later. (And multiple times a night.)

Oh yeah, those Target trips? Can’t do that now.

Wash yo’ hands!

Starting to sleep train.

 

In seriousness, this is a hard time for everyone. We’re fortunate, I know others are not. Let’s just try to keep some lighthearted moments in the coming days. Look for beautiful things. Be kind. Celebrate small victories. Eat chocolate. Sleep when you can. Hug your children and kiss your partners (they don’t mean to irritate the hell out of you).

In closing, a PSA from Samuel L. Jackson (language warning):

The Light at the End of the Fourth Trimester

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Sugarpie is quickly approaching her 3-month birthday,  and the official end if the newborn phase. And, oh my gosh, what a phase it has been!

For those that don’t know, the first three months of a baby’s life are now often referred to as the “fourth trimester”, a period when baby wants and needs to be kept close – preferably to Mom – under conditions that closely mimic life in the womb. The idea is that this period is a time when parents gently help a baby transition to this big, loud, bright world we live in.

Every baby is different, and so it has been with Sugarpie and her big sister. To be fair, I honestly don’t remember a whole lot about Babycakes’s newborn days. But their temperaments have been different from the start.

We have dealt with mild colic and gassiness (which thankfully seems to be abating for the most part). We have dealt with inconsolable crying, which is now termed “purple crying” (perhaps to make parents feel better). We went from ridiculous all-day sleeping to “We don’t need no stinkin’ naps!”

The sleep is one area where Babycakes and Sugarpie have some similarities. Babycakes was a crap napper, and we struggled with night sleep for a long time (those of you who have been with me for a while will recall my lamentations on sleep training, etc.). While Babycakes was sleeping 10-11 hours straight at night by about 10 weeks before going back to multiple night wakings from about 4 months until 15 months, Sugarpie still wakes once or twice a night to eat. I usually get a big chunk of 5-6 hours (once she went 7!) at the start of the night, so that has helped me immensely. But the lack of good naps (I mean, longer than 10-20 minutes, I kid ye not) makes it hard to get anything done during the day. I know naps will get better, because they did for Babycakes, but it does make it hard.

Temperament is very different, too. Babycakes was a content baby who displayed almost no interest in moving on her own for the longest time. I would put toys just out of reach to entice her to roll over, watch her get 3/4 of the way from back to tummy, and I could seriously see the moment when she decided the toy just wasn’t worth it. She didn’t crawl until 8 months and didn’t walk until 14 months. Sugarpie, however, is in constant motion and, other than that first bought of night sleep, isn’t really completely settled when she’s asleep. And she is just now starting to play reasonably well on her own for a little while (which gives me time to, you know, attend to nature’s call).

I don’t mean to sound like I’m complaining, or trying to compare my kids. Both of my children are amazing blessings that I honestly didn’t think we would have. Maybe it’s because we were so far removed from the baby phase that it feels harder. And I know it will get better. Within a couple months, the naps will start consolidating (and I can perhaps get a regular schedule going for myself and my writing!), and life will become normal again – at least, whatever normal will be for us now.

My Goals for 2020

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2020 is upon us, and with it the obligitory Yearly Goal Setting Post.

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This year, I’m piggybacking onto the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge, hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

So what’s on tap for me this year? I’m trying to be conscious of the fact that I have a new baby, which obviously changes a lot in terms of how much time I have for any sort of goal setting. But here goes.

Writing

Obviously I want to try and do more writing this year. This includes submitting the historical romance that placed 2nd in three 2018 contests (yes, I know that was a goal last year, too). I also need to return to the first installment in my Sweet Somethings spinoff trilogy, which has sat in First Draft Limbo since last February.

This also incorporates freelancing. I had several excellent freelance writing gigs the past couple years and I want to keep that up, in addition to my independent contractor work with Newsela.

As an extension, I would love to finally set up a copyediting business as well. This has been sitting on my chairside table for over a year. I should probably start perusing it:

Ultimately I would love if I can make enough with my pen, so to speak, to cover Babycakes’s school expenses and maybe a little extra.

Reading More Books

Or just reading books.

More on that later.

Cooking

I love to cook and bake, but haven’t had time to do much of either since I went back to work in 2015.

Okay, since Babycakes was born and then we moved to Charlotte and most of my kitchen stuff stayed in boxes for almost a year.

Being a stay-at-home-mom again for a while will, eventually, give me time to cook and bake again like I used to. For now, it helps that I am now the owner of an Instant Pot:

Apparently I can make yogurt with it? I’m also interested in the fact that I can also apparently sterilze baby bottles with it.

Being Mommy

Of course this year, I want to focus once again on being Mommy. I am officially on maternity leave for the rest of the school year, and then we have to reevaluate our plans beyond that. But I have a 5 year old in kindergarten, and I want to volunteer at her school. And of course, Sugarpie is here.

I also hope to not only finish filling out Babycakes’s baby book, but also keeping up with Sugarpie’s.

what are your big goals for 2020?

A New Edition – I mean – Addition

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2019 is coming to a close, and what a whirlwind year it proved to be.

I got started with some very cool independent contracting work, which I’m looking forward to continuing next year.

I self-published a historical fiction short story.

And our family welcomed a new “edition”, you will.

I found out on April 1st (no joke) that we were expecting again. It was the first time since having Babycakes that we had a positive test, and disbelief isn’t a strong enough word for how I felt. As with Babycakes, worry and a lingering need to remain somewhat detached were the norm.

It was not an easy pregnancy.

With Babycakes, I had pretty severe nausea and vomiting from week 6 to week 16 of that pregnancy, and this time around was worse. The nausea began around week 5 and continued literally until the day before I delivered. I had food aversions, mainly meat – which caused anemia. I felt tired. I felt terrible. And as with Babycakes, I worried that, no matter what I did, there was a chance this just wouldn’t work out.

But on December 4th, Sugarpie arrived.

She is an unexpected blessing.

Now, we reenter The Baby Bubble.

Summer Break Got Me Like…

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I was actually a bit shocked the other day to realize I hadn’t posted ANYTHING here since April, and for that, I apologize. The last quarter of every school year always bogs me down, and this year was no exception. Between state testing, final projects, packing up my classroom to move to a new classroom (thankfully I had several students who were willing to help in exchange for donuts), and a few minor health things that have kept me down for the count for several weeks… well, it should come as no surprise why I went incommunicado. Again.

We’re into my second week of summer break. and I’m still all:

April and May took a lot out of me, and I almost feel a little hung over with lingering exhaustion. There has been a lot of napping and binge-watching of Netflix. I’m trying to carve out some time to actually read some of the books that have been stacking up, so to speak, on my Kindle.

And writing, of course. I’ve been doing some serious edits to my historical romance and putting together submission packages for the same. A handful of short-term freelance gigs have come my way. I’m days away from hitting the “publish” button on a short story for Kindle – which is more to learn Amazon’s self-publishing platform than anything else, though I’m fond of the story itself. And I’m trying to get back into the first book of a Sweet Somethings spin-off trilogy that, sadly, has languished in First Draft Limbo since February.

Long story short, there’s a lot going on. Hopefully, I’ll soon be back to regular updates and, of course, news of new books.