Insomnia, Again!

Hi Everyone,
If you're still reading this, thanks for hanging in there with me. I had set a goal of writing once a week, and have failed miserably! It's been about 3 weeks since the last time. It's 5:21am and I have been awake since 3:22am. I am prone to bouts of insomnia, which I despised most of my life. Now, however, I look at it as a chance to spend some time precious time alone. Without children or the dog needing something. There is often a silver lining if you really look for it, if you're that type. I'm usually the one to look for the dark cloud or the oncoming train when I see a light at the end of the tunnel.

So, what's been going, you might ask? Well, let's see.......I was sick for a few weeks.....to the point where I was actually going to break down and call my doctor. Until....light bulb. I went off my antidepressant medication a few weeks ago (I've been on it for a 1 1/2 years due to postpartum depression after my daughter was born) and after some research I found out that's what made me sick! I was in withdrawal - not fun. Nausea, dizziness, fatigue, loss of appetite (that has NEVER in my life ever happened to me), irritability (how can you tell, one might ask?) the whole nine yards. My marathon training got seriously derailed, household chores as well, as evidenced by about 8 laundry baskets of clothes that need to be folded and put away. Fortunately I think I'm on the upside of this withdrawal thing. Yesterday was the first day I've felt totally normal.

So what's it like to not have an appetite, you might wonder? For me, it's about the strangest, most alien state of being I have ever experienced (and trust me, I've experienced lots of altered states in my youth). I simply didn't have any interest in food. I could never find anything that whet my appetite, and would eat just enough of something bland to curb hunger. True hunger is, sadly, another condition with which I am not all that familiar. I also had no interest in cooking, normally one of my passions. I've realized that in order to want to cook, you have to want to eat. My interest in food fuels my interest in cooking. Seems intuitive, right? Never really thought about it until now. Oh, and incidentally, I only lost about 2 pounds during that period of time. Oh well.....

That's about it for now. It's 5:33am and I think I'm going to try to sleep for a little while before the kids get up. Have a splendid day. I'll be back soon. Thanks again for checking in.

On Buts and Boogars

Sorry it’s been a while since I last wrote. I am going to set a goal of writing once a week, so here we are. I actually had started to write a rather serious entry inspired by a book I am finishing up – The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. I put it on hold, as I am inspired to write of a few trivial events the happened to me today.

So I’ve had a rather stressful day today with the kids, nothing out of the ordinary, just the oh my god I’m going out of my mind feeling you have when you’ve spent the day with winy, cranky, screaming, screeching, demanding, unreasonable little people who refuse to take a nap.

At about 4pm this afternoon I packed us up in the car and we drove across town to pick up a birthday gift for a little friend at one of our local toy stores. After a short while Benny announces that he has to poop, so up we all go to the tiny, cramped bathroom right across from the shop’s offices on the second floor (where hencetoforth I had never seen a person emerge). The bathroom is so cramped that we leave the door open while Benny is sitting on the potty. He is four so I am still on for ass-wiping duty. Now, I don’t know about you, but my technique for wiping asses other than my own involves having my kids bend over and touch the floor so that I can have clear, easy access to the area in question. I take this responsibility quite seriously. In the midst of the wiping process, out comes a nicely dressed lady of about 55 or so and what greets her square in the face is my son’s sludgy rectum and his little testicles, and me with a perfectly balled up wad of toilet paper in hand. To make matters worse, the toilet doesn’t flush. Oh well. We accomplished our mission – gift was purchased and wrapped, and Benny had a bowel movement, the evidence of which may still be floating in that bathroom’s toilet.

On the drive back home, after a final stop to our local co-op to pick up a few groceries during which my daughter screamed the entire time with no intermission, she start screaming again. I am on the phone with my sister-in-law discussing my ailing mother-in-law so I ignore the screams until finally it’s impossible. I ask her what the problem is. “Here” she says, holding out her tiny little hand. I turn around while driving and see nothing. “HERE, MAMA!” Still, I see nothing. “I have something for you,” she says. “What is it,” I ask, not sure I really want to know. “A boogar,” she says. A boogar. Well, thanks, Alexa, what do you expect me to do with it, I think to myself. “Just wipe it on your car seat,” I counsel her. At that point I just put my head down on the wheel and start laughing uncontrollably, I’m not quite sure why.

I have lots of moments like these, as I’m sure you do, too. When I stop to think about it, I am incredulous at what my world has been reduced to while simultaneously being in awe of the enormity of the task ahead of me.

If you feel like it, please post a comment and share a story of yours. Thanks for checking in and may the toilets in your life flush and may your kids’ (and your own) boogars stay in their noses until you have a Kleenex handy.

Some thoughts on Nursing and Weaning

Greetings, everyone. I first want to thank you for taking the time to read this blog – and thanks also to those of you who wrote me via email. Please feel free to pass it along this blog address to anyone you think might enjoy it as well.

So now, down to business. Something has been on my mind lately and that is weaning (i.e. weaning my daughter from breastfeeding). Alexa and I ended our breastfeeding relationship a week ago Saturday, at my insistence, after a two year 4

month 14 day run. This is significant to me, as she is my second and last child and I will never in my life nurse a child again.

When my son was born 4 years ago, I never imagined that I would be one of “those” moms that nurses her child(ren) well into toddlerhood and into almost the preschool years. In fact, I realize in retrospect that when I imagined having kids just prior to getting pregnant with my son, I never thought further than the pregnancy and bringing home a newborn baby. I remember my mother (who of course did not nurse either of her two children - I was adopted and she had no interest in nursing my brother who is my parents’ biological child – a sign of growing up in the seventies) telling me that nursing wasn’t easy and “don’t be surprised if you can’t do it”. Well, that just made me all the more determined to do it. And while I know that some women do have issues while establishing breastfeeding, I did not. It was effortless with both of my children, my only difficulties being a few mild cases of mastitis.

My nursing relationship with both children evolved from one of physical nourishment when they were babies to emotional nourishment as they grew into toddlers and sought my breasts much like I seek chocolate whenever anything doesn’t go my way or I get an “owie”. I loved nursing them when they were babies – their sweet little suckling faces, their bodies curled around my midsection, the peace that overcame them and lulled them into a deep slumber, them never once ceasing to suckle. They could literally nurse at one breast for two hour stretches until I was bone dry and left with a melon on one side and a lemon on the other. That period of time was so sweet.

But then from about 10 months to age two, the nursing relationship gradually changed until finally it annoyed the living sh%t out of me and I could no longer tolerate it. All of those sweet memories were forgotten. All I could think was, dear lord, get this child off of me NOW or I will scream. Nursing became a power struggle of me trying to reclaim the right to my body and them trying to retain it. I was a human pacifier with both children. I can’t stand for ANYONE to touch my breasts, husband included.

I’d like to say that the reason I nursed for so long is because I am a staunch adherent to attachment parenting, but the truth is my parenting philosophy is more like “let’s just get through this day”. And nursing helped all of us get through the day. I just wasn’t up for the fight that I thought weaning would cause. So I swallowed all of the negative feelings that nursing my 2 and 3 year olds induced in me until I could stand it no more.

When I went through the weaning process (more on that in a second), I truly realized just how resilient children are. Like most things in life, the anticipation was far worse than the reality and both children weaned without incident. The “process” involved telling them on, say, a Monday that on Saturday we would be all done with “mimis” (pronounced mee-mee, their name for nursing and breasts). The first day there were tears and then nothing after that. They were fine, I was fine. That lesson was priceless as we contemplate the many changes and moves toward independence that we’ll face as they and we (their parents) grow up.

And how is life 11 days post “mimis”? GREAT, from my perspective! Sometimes I miss the idea of breastfeeding, the idea that my body is making breast milk, but the act of nursing? I’m over it! It feels so strange and wonderful to have reclaimed this piece of myself and to move on to the next phase, whatever it will bring. My relationship with Alexa has really improved – she will allow me to cuddle her when she previously would have asked for “mimis”, and we have eliminated one of the many sources of power struggle. AND, I can eat sushi again! From Alexa’s perspective, I assume everything is peachy. She almost never asks for “mimis” anymore and is easily distracted when she does. She will also say that she’s a big girl and big girls don’t have mimis, although occasionally she says she doesn’t want to be a big girl and wants to be a baby. Mostly she wants to be a big girl. We’re all ok.

By the way, the title for the picture above is "Bitch and her Pups". Thank you for checking in with me and have a splendid day!

Day One

Hello there - I just created this blog - I've been wanting to do this for some time now. For most of my life (almost 39 years) I have kept a journal, which stopped pretty abruptly the moment my first child was born over four years ago. I've missed that part of my life, so I decided to go into the 21st century and "blog".

A little about me - my name is Lisa, I'm almost 39 years old, married to David (age 50), stay at home mom to two children, Benny age 4 and Alexa age 2. I'm also stepmom to Tom (24), Mary (21) and John (almost 19). We live in Minneapolis.

I'm training for my 8th marathon (Twin Cities Marathon - 10/5/08), my second since having kids. Many of my musings come from time spent alone while running - time which I spend with myself, like it or not. During the week I typically run alone, while my weekend long run is usually spent with the company of my running buddies. The first musing I want to share here came to me actually while I was biking with my two kids in tow in the Burley.......

I LOVE MY BODY. Now, before you start thinking that I a.) have a beautiful body or b.) am narcissistic or c.) both, please know that this isn't about the aesthetics of my body. The reality is that I am 5'1.75", tipping the scales at about 125 #, and have a tendency toward the round, short-legged frumpiness that is the stuff of my Italian and Eastern European Jewish ancestors (think hunched over little grandma in her babushka, although I am not hunched over, yet). My breasts never grew up, they grew down from the word go, so they're really none worse for the wear of having nursed my children for 5 years collectively (my son for 3 years 2 months and my daughter for 2 years 4 months and yes with a 1 year 4 month overlap where I nursed them concurrently). I have an extra pooch on my stomach and a small tire around my hips. Cellulite festoons my lower rear end, saddlebags in essence. I'm not fat really by today's standards, but not certainly not svelte.

But I love my body. I love what it can do for me......I am strong - I can run a marathon, my legs, have carried me thousands of miles via walking, marathon training, have traversed many a beautiful place during the course of my travels throughout my life, particularly in my twenties; I can bike many a mile with two children in tow, I can run 5 miles while pushing my two not so light children in a jogging stroller, I can lift, I can do a Pilates or Yoga workout; my body has given life to two whole separate beings, and then nourished them, and frankly, more than a few men have taken pleasure in my body. I can get up and do pretty much anything I set my mind to. I am so fortunate to have physical ability. That is the gift of my body and what I love about it. I try to remember this as I criticize it for its aesthetic shortcomings. We women are just far too harsh on our bodies. Maybe if we remember to try to derive value from what our bodies do for us rather than their aesthetics, we'll feel better about ourselves.

That's all for now. I hope you all have a great day!