A kiss Goodnight

What if I don't remember the little details of being her mother in the days before her memory takes hold? What if I forget that the first time I put her to bed without nursing her I had tears in my eyes while she drank her cup of milk reading Goodnight Moon. What if I forget that when she lay down in her crib, belly full and a smile on her lips, she took her bunny and teddy bear and pressed their lips together with a kiss.

When she gets too old to kiss me on the lips what if I forget the day she first kissed me?

Tonight after she brushed her teeth in her father's arms, he handed her to me and she planted her minty mouth to mine. She pulled away and we both laughed. She kissed me again and again, laughing each time. Then her father said, Et Daddy? Bisous a Daddy? And when he leaned in for her to kiss him, she pushed her father's face towards mine, preferring that he kiss me instead.

What if I forget this? What if the pictures and even the words aren't enough to remember exactly how it felt to have her in my arms at the exact age she is now, to hold her so completely in my heart.

Hopefully some things are never forgotten.

Joyeuse Fete des Peres : Happy Father's Day

Mommy Love vs. Daddy Love

I am of the opinion that mothers and fathers love their children differently, not more or better, but differently. And I think that's a good thing.

I am consumed by Eloise. I see her and I have an actual ache in my belly to gobble her up. I read some where that this desire mothers have to "eat" their babies is Mother Nature's way of making sure that we get plenty of contact with our young, pick up whatever germs and diseases they're carrying so that our immune system can create the antibodies and pass those along in our breastmilk. I don't know about all that, but if those cheeks and thighs weren't made to be snacked on then they shouldn't make them so deliciously rolly polly.

The other day I was telling Eloise that she was my favorite person in the whole world. Her father was in the room, overheard me and laughed. I asked him if Eloise had replaced me as his favorite person and he said non, it was still me his favori.

Now I have no doubt that the Frenchman ADORES his daughter. He worries constantly about her well being. He marvels at her progress, her strength, her budding intelligence. The best part of his day is when Eloise flashes him a big beaming smile when he walks in the door.

But I think it makes sense that while Eloise has become my favorite person, I still hold that title for her Father. Mother's lose themselves in their children - at least at first - and I think part of the Father's job is to make sure the Mother doesn't lose herself completely.

I would have fallen apart a million times over if it weren't for the patience and understanding of this man.

If I am a good mother it is because of the space and confidence he gives me to do so.

The Science of Sleep

When I was pregnant the most common comment I got from parents was SLEEP WHILE YOU STILL CAN which was slightly annoying because with the round ligament pain, the pelvic girdle pain, and the intense excitement at impending motherhood a good night’s sleep was rather elusive during most of pregnancy.

The second most common comment from parents was MAKE SURE YOU GET YOUR BABY ON A SLEEP ROUTINE ASAP. Every baby book I read said that creating a bedtime routine is crucial.

The Frenchman and I figured it made sense. Let the baby know there’s a difference between night and day (apparently living in a dark sack of goo for 9 months can mess with your internal clock or something). Give the baby sleep cues so it knows bedtime is a-coming. Teach the baby how to fall asleep on their own so they don’t need you to do it for them whenever they wake up (and BOY do they wake up!)

It’s that last piece of advice that we really struggled with. Most of the books all agree that the best way to teach your baby how to fall asleep on their own is to put them in their bed awake.

I just found this to go against all instincts. I would nurse Eloise before bed (and some would say that’s my problem right there – but I felt the fuller the tank the longer the sleep) and as most babies do, she would fall asleep while nursing. So there I was in the dim light of my bedroom, cradling a warm little creature, heavy with sleep, a small smile on her face drunk with milk – and I’m supposed to wake her up before putting her to bed?!? But the baby snoring and the milk smile and the visions of sugarplums – what monster would destroy that?

And it worked. Sure I was nursing her to sleep – but she was STAYING asleep – 6 hours, 8 hours. Sometimes the whole night. At 7 weeks. My other new mommy friends were waking every 3 or 4 hours and I knew we had it good and saw no reason to change things. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

And so I continued to nurse Eloise to sleep and place her in her bassinet. And she would sleep for 6 hours or more, wake up to feed once and go back to bed. Life was good.

Then Eloise reached 4 months. And it would take me ages to get her to sleep. I would nurse her. She would be asleep in my arms I’d lie her down ever so gently in her bassinet and she would wake up. Feed sleep put down wake-up repeat. And she started waking a lot more often. Like every hour more often.. And I would feed her or her Father would rock her and I would sit in front of the Internet reading websites on baby sleep sites while crying from exhaustion.

And what we found out from our desperate Internet research is that babies fall into a deep sleep right away when they’re fresh on the scene. They have a lot of catching up to do and that sleep helps them develop. Then at around 3 or 4 months their sleep patterns mature and become like ours – when they first fall asleep it is a light sleep – easily disturbable (not a word but it should be) hence the new difficulty at getting her to stay asleep. They also have sleep cycles like we do – around 45 minutes. So when Eloise would finish a sleep cycle, instead of putting herself back to sleep she would cry, wondering where the giant milk bag that put her to sleep went.

We knew we had to fix this. We couldn’t live with a child who wakes every hour crying. We were also aware that it would probably be painful. I decided to buy two different books on baby sleep from both spectrums – one a tough love, no nonsense approach, the other a fluffy, anti-crying, cotton-wool type. I wanted to get both opinions so I could then make my own. We held off on a course of action and just dealt with the sleepless nights until the books arrived in the post.

When they arrived I made the worse mistake of my young parenting career. I gave the fluffy book to the Frenchman to read and I read the tough-love book. We spent the next week arguing about whose book was right until we finished them and switched. My book actually mentioned his by name saying that the methods were rubbish. After the Frenchman read the first chapter of his book he said he now feels terrible that Eloise has spent a small portion of her life in tears. I believe my response was - well my book says your book is crap. Healthy stuff here people.

By the time I read both books I felt horrible. Eloise’s poor sleep habits were all my fault. I had one book telling me how important a good nights sleep is for the development of my child, statistics about how babies that don’t get enough sleep end up being angry, unintelligent and prone to getting themselves knocked-up, in jail or both by the age of 12. The book said it was my duty as parent to get my child to sleep through the night no matter what amount of crying was involved – a couple of bad night’s for the greater good. The other book told me that I’d be a horrible mother if I let my child shed one single tear that I could have some way prevented.

In the end we went for the middle of the road. Whine-it out we call it. We spent more time on our sleep routine with Eloise and instead of nursing being the last thing I did before she slept, I would pass Eloise to her Father and he would rock her a bit and put in her crib awake, but sleepy. We would let her complain for up to ten minutes before intervening and if her complaints turned into a proper cry we would step in.

So far it’s working. She doesn’t sleep through the entire night, but only wakes up twice for a feed. Which is such an improvement from the 7 or 8 times she was doing before that we are ecstatic.

And more importantly we learned that educating ourselves in different parenting styles is helpful – knowledge is power. But that ultimately we need to come to our own decision on what is best for us as a family. That lesson has been worth all the sleepless nights combined. Ok. Almost worth it.

One family, under Mom.

Not to blow hard and heavy on my own shiny trumpet over here but there are a fair amount of aspects of Motherhood that I was pretty convinced I would excel at. Story telling, sing-a-longs – got those down.

Songs have come flooding back to my memory from childhood – Alice the camel is back, Miss Mary Mack has made an appearance, the monkeys are back on that bed jumping like crazy despite doctors orders, I got grouches rolling over, I got speckled frogs going against common advice and going for a swim straight after eating, Peter Pan, Dumbo and Pete’s Dragon have all come flying out of my mouth. I haven’t stopped at children’s songs. I belt out Helter Skelter when she’s crying until she realizes she can’t compete and stares at her crazy Beatle loving mother acting like she’s preparing for X Factor auditions. I softly sing Joni Mitchell and Johnny Cash when her eyes start drooping. I croon along with Frank and Sammy Davis Jr. when Eloise and I need to shake off the blues .

I’m quite happy spending large portions of my day pulling funny faces, making animal noises, shaking my body like a scarecrow – as long as it makes her laugh. (The scarecrow move kills at our house by the way).



I can jiggle and rock until she rests her head in the crook of my neck and those pink-rimmed little eyes finally shut. Give her a big mama bear hug when she’s upset and whisper in her ear how much I love her.

But I also knew there would be aspects of Motherhood I would not excel at and the biggest one is accepting Fatherhood and its importance in my our baby’s life.



For the majority of my upbringing it was just me, my mother and my sister. Even before my parents got divorced it was a bit of a tag-team parenting style from what I can gather and I rarely saw my mom and dad parent together. My mother did an incredible job raising my sister and me (warning – gross maternal bias about to be uttered in the next 4 seconds) – one of us has devoted 2 years of her life to serve the Peace Corps in Mozambique and lives each day with compassion and integrity and the other one made a baby so cute and edible there are talks of putting her on the Tour d’Argent menu. I think somewhere along the way though I picked up the idea that parenting is a job that should really be done alone. No need to confer major decisions or deal with your kid playing you and your partner off each other. One family, under Mom.

I realized I felt this way when I would fantasize about my future children and never once was there a father in the picture. So when the Frenchman and I decided to have kids I made a point to force him into my mental picture. And I thought that once Eloise was born I would instantly feel that we were a family. Not so.

For a long time I think I kind of felt like a single mother. Having had more experience with children I naturally took the lead in the first few weeks. The Frenchman quickly learned the baby ropes though and by the time she was a month I thought, we’re a family now, right? But I knew deep down I still felt like this parenting gig was mine and mine alone.

And it’s not that the Frenchman is a deadbeat dad by any stretch of the imagination. He LOVES our baby. Adores her. She is his raison d’etre and he continues to be amazed by her beauty and her strength. But it is me that stays up for 40 minutes at 3am feeding her. It is me that takes her to the doctor for her shots. Me that gets vomited on all day. Me that puts her to sleep. Takes her to play group each day. Dances around to make her laugh. Well – until the weekend that is.

Which is all normal. I am of course the one who is at home during the week getting my government maternity pay (that doesn’t cover the rent) to make sure my child flourishes under my watch. My partner of course goes off every weekday to make sure we can pay the rent, occasionally spoil the baby and not starve.

But as the months dragged on I still didn’t feel that family unity that I was expecting. I Still felt that Eloise and I were one unit and the Frenchman an occasional plus one. Until a few weeks ago. 16 weeks after Eloise was born. I was nursing her in her room before bed. Dim lights, Buena Vista Social club playing softly in the background. In walked Eloise’s father, smiling at the two women in his life. Eloise unlatched herself from my breast to turn and look at her Daddy. He came closer and knelt next to us. She then reached out her tiny hand and began to stroke her father’s bearded face. Slowly. Deliberately. She smiled and then turned back to nurse. And there we were.



A family.

My toes hurt. Why? She's keeping me on them.

Living with an infant is a crash-course in flexibility. Just when you get used to a certain bedtime, they decide to stay up till midnight. Or when you start to inwardly gloat at how easygoing your baby is, they decide to spend then next week doing one of two things: crying or regurgitating curdled milk.

Or there are days like this when after a couple of difficult, cranky baby days, she decides to take a 4 hour nap (allowing her mother to express 2 batches of milk, make a vegetable soup from scratch, serve and eat the soup, read a chapter of her book while drinking a cup of tea, do the dishes, and take a walk to the grocery store) and then when I put her down for the night wide awake, assuming she'll take ages to get to sleep due to the 4 hour nap, she calmly sucks her hand for a bit and then nods off.

Expect the unexpected is the first lesson Eloise has taught me. Never be lulled into a false sense of security. Nor should you assume the worst is here to stay. Whether times are good or bad, this too shall pass.

My advice so far? Do not boast when times are good - they may be fleeting. And when times are bad make sure you trust your Second-in-command.

Because you're mine

As is the case with most babies, getting them to bed is a nerve wracking time. We're pretty lucky as she sleeps through the night, but we never know when she'll sleep or how long it will take her to go to sleep. There are nights where she falls asleep in my lap, I put her in her bed, she gives me a drowsy look, flings her arms above her head and passes out. There are many more nights where it takes me 2 or 3 hours to get her to bed. Nursing, rocking, putting her down, crying, picking her up, vomiting, nursing, rocking, putting her down, crying.... you get the idea.

Obviously on those difficult nights I get a little frustrated. I've spent the entire day with this adorable yet demanding creature and I am craving some adult time to regenerate before I have to go through it all again. A glass of wine maybe. Time to write. A bath. Some canoodling with the Frenchman. Any one of these to make sure that I get enough me time so that when she cries in the morning I am greeting her with a huge smile, excited to spend the day with her.



Last night was a difficult night, preceded by a difficult day. She would not got to sleep. She'd fall asleep in my arms then wake up as soon as I gently laid her in her bassinet. For the third time she was asleep in my arms and I thought, this is it. This one will stick. And I cautiously moved to lay her down. The hot water bottle was in her crib and in order to put her down gracefully I needed the Frenchman to come give me a hand. I very quietly called his name near the baby monitor. Nothing. I called again. Nothing. I stood there for five minutes in the dark, hovering over her crib, willing her not to wake. Finally I awkwardly cradled her in one arm and flung the water bottle on our bed. She woke. Once down in her crib she screamed. The Frenchman came upstairs and I marched him out of the bedroom and hissed at him for not listening to my cries for help through the baby monitor. I told him how important it is for me to have even just a 30 minute break before putting her to bed and putting myself to bed and he'd shortened my window of freedom. Oh precious freedom from the sweet little baby.

I went back into the room and picked up my crying baby and calmed her down. She was soon asleep in my arms. The Frenchman came back into the room a few minutes later and went to sit down next to me on the bed, a look of remorse and solidarity on his face. As he sat down 3 coins fell out of his pocket onto the hardwood floor and rolled around, thunderously loud in the dark bedroom. A murderous shot of anger flashed through me as my baby's eyes flashed open and her arms flailed. I then looked at the Frenchman, ready to kill and instead we both exploded with laughter.

There is a very thin line between utter despair and pure joy when living with an infant. If it weren't for the Frenchman I would struggle to walk that line. Because if you don't laugh you'll cry.

Nothing makes me feel more a part of something greater than watching him watching her.