Summer

My two kids have been kicking my ass these past few weeks. I've composed many blog posts in my head but there was never a time when I had enough energy to turn them into something real.

So... I guess I'm resorting to some bullet points before I will write something eloquent again (which might not be before September).

The highlight:

• Celebrating the toddler's 3rd birthday at the beach. It was gorgeous weather and there were enough adults present that there was always someone to run after the toddler or cuddle with the baby, so mommy had a great relaxing day too. 

The good:

• Our three-week vacation in Holland. Better weather than predicted, bike fun with the kids and seeing the toddler fall in love with the sea.
• Meeting fellow blogger Valery
• Starting the baby on solids - and especially being able to go to the market and buy all the great summer fruits and veggies and turning them into baby food! So far he loves carrots, green beans, zucchini, peach, nectarine and apricots. 
• Switching from breast to bottle. After initial refusal (which made me a bit nervous, because he had taken the bottle occasionally before without problems and now that I wanted to start the switch he didn't want to anymore - but it only lasted a few days). Still nursing mornings and evenings but very briefly. Seems the baby's now getting frustrated with how much effort it takes to get something out of the breast, while the bottle is quickly gulped down.
• Apart from the teething episodes (see below), the baby is slowly starting to sleep longer stretches at night. 
• My sister and her family arriving in the area (and staying for a few weeks).

Edit: the switching from breast to bottle should actually be under its own header called 'bittersweet'. The switch is complete now. I'm happy it wasn't such a struggle as with our first one, but still have very mixed emotions about being done with it. 

The bad:

• Baby's tooth #1 and #2 breaking through. Lots of horrible screaming, especially at night. And I'm thinking #3 is on its way too, because he's still very fussy and refused to eat his veggies two days in a row.
• Toddler deciding a good way to get his mom's attention is to start wetting his pants again... (at the sitter's he is completely dry, all the time). I've started with reducing time he can watch videos on my phone, but I think I need to take more drastic measures - taking away his pacifier (yes, he still has one, ugh) might work better.
• Toddler being wide awake at 6:30 am, tugging at my arm and telling me to get up because it's light outside, after a night where the baby would have woken me up at least three times.
• General sleep deprivation - I just don't want to be this tired anymore.

While most of the French have now gone on summer holidays, we're staying here until the 21st, when we will go camping for ten days near the Mediterranean (giving the toddler some more sea/beach time). My sister will be in the area until the 17th. She has done a home-exchange with people in the area and that house has a pool, which is great. I'm a little nervous about the camping, with the baby still not sleeping through the night (how on earth am I going to give him a warm bottle in the middle of the night...? will the kids be able to take an afternoon nap in a tent? etc) but also looking forward to some real family time again.

I have this idea about doing a blog post series about cultural differences. Hope to start that sooner than later, but I won't promise anything...

Perfect Moment Monday - Mont Blanc

Is it still Monday somewhere in the world? Hawaii maybe? I do have a few excuses though for being late: we're on vacation so kids are with me 100% of the time; hubby left his laptop at home so he used mine in order to try to avert too much work crises (yep, hubby doesn't have much of a vacation...). His laptop arrived by courier yesterday evening, so now I can blog again while the baby sleeps and the toddler plays.

One of the things I absolutely love about the city we live in is that on a clear day you can see the alps from the edge of our neighborhood. It always puts a smile on my face and I feel lighter, as if I can't just see those beautiful snow-capped mountains, but also breathe in the fresh mountain air. This only happens a few days a year, and on even less occasions it is clear enough that you can also see the Mont Blanc, Europe's highest mountain.

A few weeks ago it was a bright and sunny day, but it felt a bit hazy. So you can imagine my surprise when I arrived at the lookout point and not only saw the mountain range but also the Mont Blanc. It wasn't super clear, and many people probably missed it that day, but the faint outline was definitely there.

Seeing the Mont Blanc from the city is always very special to me. People might say that it is difficult to know which one is the Mont Blanc if you have never seen it before. But it isn't. Hubby and I like to compare seeing the Mont Blanc to meeting your life partner. Even if you've never seen it / met him/her before, you know it the moment you do. If you're not sure, it's not the Mont Blanc.

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On the 4th Monday of each month we engage in mindfulness about something that is right with our world. Everyone is welcome to join. Perfect Moment Monday is about noticing a perfect moment rather than creating one. Perfect moments can be momentous or ordinary or somewhere in between. What Perfect Moment have you recently been aware of? Visit Write Mind Open Heart and share your comment love. 

On demand

Yes. A post about breastfeeding. Not about the controversial Time Magazine cover though. Just about my kids and me.

Breastfeeding these days is supposed to be on demand. Which I'm all for, but I'm not good at. I'm a schedule kind of girl. On demand throws me off. It makes me sit down (often, very often), and do nothing, except feeding my baby, while to-do lists remain long. It's OK though, this will not last for years.

My baby demands to nurse somewhere between every 2-4 hours. Having a bigger brother running around means he gets distracted a lot while nursing, which leads to demanding to nurse more often because he didn't get a lot of milk in the previous session. We only get to the 4 hours when we're on the go, never at home. There are people who say that my kid is feeding out of boredom, and I should get out of the house more, so the on-demand will be more spaced out. But there is stuff that needs to be done, sometimes, at home, and I can't be on the go 24/7.

My pediatrician thinks once a baby has reached a certain weight, he/she should be able to get by with 4 to 5 feeds a day. Yeah, right, on a bottle maybe, not on a breast, or at least not on mine (or at least not my kids). With baby #1 these kind of comments made me very nervous, now I just shrug them off. Even though I would love to have a kid that only demands every 4-5 hours, mine are not that way and I also understand very well that breastfeeding is not just about food. I can count on it that every time I have to clean the baby's stuffed nose in the middle of the night, he will want to nurse afterward. For comfort, and to be able to fall back asleep. I think that's perfectly OK (even I sometimes curse silently saying it was only 1.5 hrs ago that he last nursed), and I will give the evil eye to anyone saying that babies snacking for comfort are starting a bad habit and will be snacking on chocolate and/or chips in front of the TV later in life when they're bored or sad.

In the whole discussion about breastfeeding and on-demand there is however not a lot of thought about how it has to be a situation that is best for baby AND mommy. With my first baby I was so focused on 'breast is best' and that you should exclusively breastfeed for the first six months that I completely lost sight of myself. My son wanted to nurse all the time, day and night. Except for about a month when he ended up in our bed around midnight every night, he slept in his own room, which meant I was up at least three times a night. He didn't gain much weight between three and five months, which made my pediatrician suggest to start supplementing with formula, which freaked me out and made me ask a second opinion with a breastfeeding specialist at the hospital. This doctor said nothing was wrong and suggested I should nurse even more, which basically would have meant having my son latched on 24/7. I sought advice everywhere and didn't know how to form my own opinion anymore. I now wish someone had told me to look for the balance between what was right for baby and me, but I'm not sure I would have listened (I'm sure my mom did say something like that), the baby was all-important to me. I only found myself again after a few therapy sessions (and the baby starting solids, finally the bottle around 7 months, and sleeping better at night).

So even before the arrival of baby #2 I decided to do things differently. He's sleeping in a co-sleeper next to me, so even if he wakes three times a night (which he does), I don't have to get up, and even though it's tiring, it's nothing compared to the to-and-fros I did with #1. He's a big boy (bigger than his brother) and packing on the pounds as he should, so now my pediatrician compliments me for getting these results by exclusively breastfeeding. But two days ago I did start giving him a bottle of formula before putting him down for the night in an attempt to have him sleep better at night. Waking up three times a night, wanting to nurse every time, is just too much for me. Don't say it's a growth spurt, those don't last for three weeks. It might be due to his stuffed nose, or maybe he's already teething, or maybe he just wants to cuddle up to mommy at night, or…  We'll probably never know. I just can't get to the point of exhaustion I had the first time, especially not with a toddler running around - who usually wakes up around 6/6:30 am just when the baby's fallen back asleep, making sure I don't get any sleep past 5:30 am… The first night with bottle didn't make any difference. We'll see how the coming nights will be. Otherwise he's such a happy baby - and didn't make any problems with the bottle at all. He still wants to nurse before falling asleep at night, even with his tummy full of formula, which makes me smile (for naps I can just put him down, but at night he wants to nurse to sleep - which is often a challenge with his big brother coming in and jumping on the bed) and hope that he will continue to nurse until six or seven months (I say this because his brother, who took two months before finally accepting the bottle, rejected the breast pretty quickly after discovering it required much less effort to get milk from a bottle than from my breast). Yes, I will wean him. I admire the women who can/want to nurse their children for 2-3 years, but that is just not for me.

The bracelet

My mom used to wear this bracelet

First, there were only two 'coins' on it, one with my sister's name on the front and her birthday on the back, and one with my name and birthday. Then years later she added the heart to represent her stillborn son. When my nephew was born, he got a coin too, next to my sister's, and almost four years later one was added for my niece. The last one my mom added was for our first son.

When my mom died, we talked a bit about what to do with the bracelet. It had been such a part of her, that we briefly considered having her wear it and take it with her into the grave. But it had too much meaning to do so. Incorporating it into the gravestone was also discussed - but the chances that it would get stolen were too big, so we abandoned that as well. Until we came up with a better idea, my dad kept it safe.

My dad recently had a sixth coin with our second son's name and birthday added to the bracelet, and when we saw each other over Easter, he gave it to me and asked to alternate it with my sister.

I won't wear it because it's not my story that it represents, but my mom's. I liked the idea of exchanging it with my sister, but at first I didn't really know what to do with it, I didn't want it just sit in its box and being forgotten until I would hand it to her.

But now I think I know. Today is my sister's birthday. So this morning I opened the box, I took the bracelet in my hand and looked at that oldest coin, the one with my sister's name and birthday on it and thought what that birth (a healthy girl after stillbirth and miscarriage, born on a day people in Holland remember the death from WWII) and that girl has meant to my mother for all those years.

My mom and sister, on the beach in Holland, probably somewhere in the early 1990s

And it made me tear up, because I miss my mom so much.

Perfect Moment Monday - Rich

Another Perfect Moment about my children... 

After hitting publish on my previous post I realized I would have liked to add how extremely happy and grateful I am for my two boys, and that I don't take having them for granted at any moment.

We went back home to Holland over the Easter holiday (although there isn't really a home there anymore, my parents' condo is up for sale, my dad now lives more at his girlfriend's place and cleaned out a lot of stuff - we stayed there and had lots of room, but it felt cold and empty) - mainly so my two grandmothers would have a chance to see our youngest son and of course to see other family members and friends - and to stock up on all the Dutch goodies we love some much and can't get here in France (peanut butter, chocolate sprinkles, licorice, etc).

It was a full and busy week. The kids were often not in bed before 10 pm because of travel or dinner with friends, etc. The 11-hour drive back home was with a fully packed car (I even bought a new bike!) and even though the boys were champs, it was pretty tiring for everyone. So the next day we took it easy at home (except for hubby, who had to go to work again). When I'd put the toddler down for his afternoon nap, the baby and I went to sleep as well. An hour later the toddler came into our room, climbed into the big bed, snuggled up with me, and promptly fell asleep again. The baby stirred a bit in his co-sleeper, so I put a hand on his stomach to keep him calm and so he wouldn't fully wake up. I suddenly felt so incredibly rich with my two boys at my side, sound asleep in the comfort of their mommy's presence. I didn't mind at all that I was now wide awake, I was so happy. I savored that moment, nothing else mattered.

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On the 4th Monday of each month we engage in mindfulness about something that is right with our world. Everyone is welcome to join. Perfect Moment Monday is about noticing a perfect moment rather than creating one. Perfect moments can be momentous or ordinary or somewhere in between. What Perfect Moment have you recently been aware of? Visit Write Mind Open Heart and share your comment love. The next Perfect Moment Monday event will be on May 28.

How many children?

This post came about after a prompt from St Elsewhere a few months ago... The idea has finally taken on enough form that I think I can write it down, even though I'm not sure I have a final answer yet.

In St Elsewhere's prompt there were three questions:

Q. How many children do you want?
Q. what issues/factors drive this 'number'?
Q. Has the number of children you wanted changed through your TTC journey? Would you rather leave this number question open and say as many as we can?

I will try to answer them as a whole.

Before we even started TTC I always dreamt of having four children, and maybe two of those would be twins. We'd have a fun and loving family. Never a dull moment. Then we started TTC and it didn't go as planned. After trying naturally for about two years, and then six failed IUIs, my dream of four children had been changed into the desperate cry to have at least one living and healthy child.

Then IVF #1 was a success. A breezy pregnancy which resulted in a healthy baby, love and happiness and the adrenaline rush of wanting to do this again. Soon. And so many people were saying that probably my body would know what to do now, and we wouldn't need IVF anymore for baby #2, #3 and who knows, #4 (which was still a desire, but I'd lost quite a few years during the TTC and IF battle so I wasn't sure if I wouldn't be too old by that time). But, when usually (or at least according to the books) life with baby becomes easier after the first three months, mine became a sleep-deprivation hell. I lost myself and I couldn't imagine wanting to go through that again. Maybe I wasn't made for this. Maybe I should be content with one child.

But of course it got better, and looking back I thought there might be things I could do differently with a second baby. So we started TTC again. But no luck the natural way, and we didn't want to waste too much time, so after a few months, we were sitting in the RE's office again. IVF#2 was a go. The first attempt was cancelled midway because of my mother's passing. The second attempt went OK, but when lying in the recovery room after ER I told myself "I never want to do this again", so much stress, so much uncertainty. Two beautiful embies were transferred, one was frozen. Since IVF#1 had been a success I thought this time around it would work too. And the dream of four children was suddenly back: twins from IVF#2 and then another child from a subsequent FET... How wonderful would that be?

Well, it didn't happen. I got a BFN from IVF#2 and the dream of four children immediately changed back into the realization that maybe I should be content with one child. 

I didn't have high hopes for the FET a few months later. But this one stuck around, and was pregnant with a second son. Another great pregnancy. Two boys. I couldn't be happier. When I gave birth to him I thought I would have this feeling of "now my family is complete. Our family building is over" like I heard some women say. But I didn't. Not that there was a feeling that I immediately wanted to do this again. No, there was just love, an immense amount of love for this new and tiny human being, nothing more and nothing less.

I let go of the dream of four children. But three children is still a question mark. In two years I'll be 40. I find that quite old to be a new mom again. And that thought I had in the recovery room after ER does come back to me every now and then, I was so adamant about it, "never again".  I wouldn't mind being pregnant again though. I absolutely love being pregnant. The first few weeks after birth? Getting used to the sleepless nights again? I'd gladly skip that. And handling three kids while hubby is away on a week-long business trip, while I already lose my patience too often with two? And thinking that now, maybe, it would work the natural way? And I'm still apprehensive of the months to come with this new baby, who's now three months old - the time when it all started going downhill for me with our firstborn. I know the two boys are quite different, and I'm a lot better prepared, but still...

So, I guess the jury is still out. It's too soon to make a final decision. However, one decision has been made in my mind: no more IVF. If we were to have a third child, then it would have to be a natural miracle.

Perfect Moment Monday - bedtime

Evenings in our household have become quite a challenge lately as our toddler has decided it is the best moment to get some alone time with mommy and daddy. Usually around dinner time the baby's witching hour will start. So often I nurse while eating (and trying not to spill anything on him) and urging our toddler to eat something too - which if it's not lasagna, risotto, sausages or french fries is more or less impossible. Then when dinner is done, it's time to prepare the toddler for bed (while the baby is still/again screaming). Hubby (when he's not away for business) usually takes charge of getting him into his PJs, brushing his teeth etc. but I have to do story time. At that point he will have told us at least five times already that he doesn't want to go to bed - "Je veux pas dormir mamam" has become his new mantra.

Once we've read one or two stories, I have to sing him a song, at least twice. Then he wants me to remain seated on the sofa next to his bed. When I get up after five minutes and leave the room, he will either start crying or get out of bed too. This is repeated several times… (and I've tried different techniques and they don't make much difference, the only thing is that if I get angry, he just laughs at me) and usually it takes an hour before he finally goes to sleep [I assume this is just a phase and is all due to the arrival of the baby, before that the toddler's bedtime routine was very easy].

Then I have to put the baby to bed, which compared to the routine described  above, is quite simple - change diaper, put him in PJs (usually that's already done), nurse, burp, swaddle, put him down in co-sleeper.

One day last week I was dead tired, had lost patience a few times with the toddler, before he had finally given in and went to sleep, and I was craving a little me-time before I would crash and go to sleep myself. The baby, whom I'd put down already, was crying, so I went to our bedroom to give him back his pacifier. I wanted to leave the room again, but he spit the paci out, looked at me (the way only babies can) and started 'talking'. It was just the two of us, the craziness of the previous hours gone and he completely calmed me down. After a few minutes he just closed his eyes and went to sleep.

Despite my fatigue I went to bed smiling that evening. It was my Perfect Moment.

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On the 4th Monday of each month we engage in mindfulness about something that is right with our world. Everyone is welcome to join. Perfect Moment Monday is about noticing a perfect moment rather than creating one. Perfect moments can be momentous or ordinary or somewhere in between. What Perfect Moment have you recently been aware of? Visit Write Mind Open Heart and share your comment love. The next Perfect Moment Monday event will be on April 23.