Ok, I've got one for you. It's a little indirect, in terms of actual parenting practices. But it may just be one of the most important things you can do to improve your own parenting and your child's behaviour: Take some time to take care of YOURSELF. I am not kidding and I am not exaggerating when I say that this really may be one of the most important things you do in your parenting gig.
I have said it before in the context of sleep training: To be good parents, to function with balance, humour, tenderness, understanding and, yes, with authority as well, we need to feel healthy, strong and relatively ok ourselves. So often, parents (mothers in particular) are led to believe that all their needs must be put aside for their child. I'm starting to think that this is one of the most damaging messages sent out to mothers (by the media, but just as damaging, by fellow mothers): that they should feel guilty for working outside the home, for getting that massage, for leaving their child to go to the gym, for stopping for a coffee with their friend WITHOUT bringing the baby <gasp>, and so on. SUCH B.S. is what that is! (and if I wasn't trying to be so damn "professional" on this blog I might say a whole lot more colourful things).
We know how damaging postpartum depression can be: for the woman and her baby and their experience of bonding in the first year of the child's life. And it's not just new moms, far too many mothers in general are experiencing serious symptoms of depression. Maternal depression, as I keep learning in my own work and through a large body of research that I've been reviewing, can have a significant impact on children's health and well-being. In tomorrow's post, I'll review a bunch of this research, to give you a sense of how prevalent maternal depression is and how important it is to try to prevent these problems, if we can.
But for today, let's just see if we can take up this challenge: Try to do one SIGNIFICANTLY "good thing" for yourself this week. This is going to feel almost impossible for some of us and very easy for others (a lot will have to do with the age of your child/children and how much support you have).
- For those of you still suffering through major sleep deprivation, with a wee one who has just come into this world a few weeks or months ago (or many months ago, for that matter), this challenge may even piss you off: how on earth can you do something nice for yourself when you can't think straight, take a shower, or sleep more than 2 hours in a row?! For those of you in this camp, a few suggestions: (1) Think about the EVENTUAL possibility of sleep-training (even if you're not ready for it yet) and read this to remember that YOUR sleep is integral to your health and well-being and your ability to parent. You can deal with the sleep deprivation now… we all eventually get through it. But don't feel guilty when you and your family are ready for a change. (2) Do something nice for yourself, even if it feels like a tiny thing. This will require you getting some help from your partner, your friend, a family member, a paid sitter… ANYONE. And then choose that ONE thing you really want this week, whatever YOU most want: Take a bath instead of a shower for a whole 30 min, meet a friend for a coffee WITHOUT the baby, get someone to take ONE of the 10 bajillion feedings you do at night and sleep through it with ear plugs, order in your favourite type of food, go shopping for a spring dress, WHATEVER. Just choose that something and follow through with it. You are SO worth it.
- For those of you with slightly older children who are getting SOME sleep, this is a much more open challenge. What have you been dying to do for yourself but feel too guilty to indulge in? Is it a massage? Take it. An hour or two alone reading a book? DO IT! A date night that you've been meaning to book with the sitter for 4 months? Do it THIS week. A girls' night out without kids? A weekend getaway? Joining the gym and making the committment to go? A movie night alone? Doesn't have to be a big deal, doesn't have to cost anything… just something within your reach that you will do for yourself.
You get what I'm driving at here. This parenting challenge is meant to get us to PLAN for something, ANYTHING, that will make us feel happy. Of course, this challenge will hopefully be a good thing for many of us personally. But I promise you that this IS important to your parenting as well. You'll see in tomorrow's post: I'll cover the research on the many detriments to children and the challenges mothers face when they do become depressed. For now, let's try to get out of our funk if we're in one, and take care of ourselves.
Tell us: What are you going to do for yourself this week? What are your challenges when you try to take care of yourself? Does this feel doable to you? Does it feel relevant to your life?
This week, my “for myself” goal is to write that blogpost that has been kicking around in my head for a couple of weeks. It is small, I know, but that is actually one of the reasons I blog- it is a bit of “me space” that can be squeezed in whenever I have time.
Longer term, I’m going to start going to yoga again. Our morning routines are starting to work out so that I get to work early enough to be able to squeeze in a yoga class once a week.
For those in the throes of severe sleep deprivation… when my first was in her really, really crappy sleep phase (up 4-5x/night), my husband used to take her for a long (2 hour) walk on the weekends, and I’d napped. I cherished those naps!
I also really liked long, hot showers. The noise of the shower blocked out any crying that was going on, and I could just be on my own. I still like this trick, but since I live in a region that is suffering from a multi-year drought, I try to use it very sparingly these days.
It’s probably been years since I actually read a book for myself, but thanks to a power outage I finally just finished one, and am going to try to keep it up. Makes me feel smart again
Also, we desperately need a movie night, and I’m going to try and make that happen this weekend!
When we were still in the newborn stage, my treat was going for a haircut, alone…pretty much anything alone was a treat.
DH and I are going away for a long weekend later this month. We are taking DD along (she turns 5 mos tomorrow), and my mom is coming to stay with DS (28 mos). She wouldn’t be able to handle watching both kids – we barely can. My mom is an old school AP-er, and I can tell she is concerned about how DS is going to handle our absence. She’s also a bit of a “martyr mama,” so I am trying to remind myself that we are very different and I do not want to parent like that because her style was not very effective once I turned about 7. I think DS is out of the attachment phase already, based on how gleeful he is about leaving his parents to go do something fun with another adult. I hope my mom does not overreact to DS’s moods, and that we are able to enjoy ourselves free from worried calls!
@hush- we have left my now 35 month old for nights and weekends away, starting when she was about 6 months old. She has always done great. She clearly has fun with her Mimi and Boppa and I’ve never noticed any attachment problems. Isn’t it supposed to be healthy to have the kid attach to other loving adults, too?
I’m seriously looking forward to our first night away since the baby was born. I think it will be in about 6 weeks, when Petunia is a little over 6 months old.
@Cloud – I didn’t express my thoughts very clearly, sorry. YES – it is healthy to have kids attach to other loving adults, too! Absolutely! I’m with you. However, my mom drinks the Dr. Sears kool-aid and disagrees with me totally. That’s why I mentioned the attachment stuff.
This will be our first absence (4 days) from DS in 28 mos – ONLY because no one would watch him for us until now. The person will also have to co-sleep, otherwise he won’t sleep. We live very far from family, etc. So my mom is the only one who is willing and able to do this. Seriously, there was no one we could pay, as we live in Podunkville. I hope that makes more sense.
So my concern for this trip is not that any harm will come to DS (of course not!!), but that we won’t be able to enjoy ourselves free from the worry that my mom is judging us for not being hardcore AP like she is, and that we’ll get a ton of phone calls from her going on and on about how much DS misses us, etc when he will probably just be acting out like a 2 year old, she’ll frame it through her own lens of attachment.
@Cloud: I was just in the shower today thinking about how it used to be my only time of peace… for the exact reasons you mention. I remember VIVIDLY the dread of turning off the shower and hearing one or another baby wailing. Oy.
@JudyB: I didn’t get a haircut for 2 years during the baby years. BUT! I remember the DENTIST being a treat because, yes, I got to be alone. CRAZY.
@hush: It’s amazing to hear that YOU are ok with leaving your 2 year old in the face of your mother’s martyrdom. My mother’s the one who is usually begging us to leave for a weekend and leave the kids alone with them (probably so they don’t have to deal with my control-freak mothering). I think you’re ABSOLUTELY right that she’ll be fine. I’m with Cloud: We’ve been leaving our kids with grandparents for overnight getaways since they were 6 months and they never once had a problem. Yes, multiple attachments are a good thing. And we were never MEANT to do it all alone.
Oops. I posted at the exact same time as you did, @hush… I get it better now. Hope it goes well for you!
I’m pretty fortunate to have my MIL live just down stairs. She doesn’t go out much and so we regularly make use of her when we need an evening out. Our social life since becoming parents has not changed as a result.
I have been taking extra advantage of her during the week so I can go out for my thrice weekly run. I agree totally about exercise making you feel human(sometimes super human!). The weeks I don’t, I’m not myself and more snappy. Tonight me and hubby ( also a runner) signed up for our first competitive event, a 10k run, and I was so excited when we hit ‘enter’. 6 months ago I wouldn’t have ever dreamed of running competitively.
@Hush- maybe Google can turn up a Dr. Sears quote about multiple attachments being healthy? You know, to casually mention to your mother. Or to print out and accidentally leave on the kitchen counter.
I am so lucky to have a mother who wouldn’t dream of even implying a judgment on my parenting decisions… I hope your mom does better than you fear!
I have a three year old and infant twins and am up with the twins (who are getting over being sick) multiple times/night.
My friend (who has a worse sleeper than I do) saw a sleep specialist and he said that sleep training works in about 80% of children- in the other 20% of normal children, it doesn’t.
With my first child, we tried sleep training and after 2 weeks, we had a baby who screamed for hours at night and slept during the day. This was not helpful since I was working a professional job at the time and pregnant with the twins.
Does your book address “when sleep training doesn’t work” and you wind up in worse shape than when you started?
Taia- my heart goes out to you. I just finished the Bedtiming book… and I’m needing a little mental break here at work, so I’ll answer you- I hope Isabel doesn’t mind!
The book won’t so much tell you about HOW to address your “worse than when you started” state, but it will suggest time periods when you’ll have a better chance to fix things. It will also suggest time periods when you might have better luck sleep training with your twins. The book does summarize the most popular sleep training methods, but it doesn’t really tell you which to use- probably because the little research that there is available indicates that they all work about the same.
Whatever you do, don’t beat yourself up over what happened!
My first was a pretty crappy sleeper. She was hard to soothe, and slow to learn how to self soothe. My attempts at sleep training (around 9 months) failed miserably. At the time, I assumed that this was because she just wasn’t a baby who would sleep through the night. After reading Isabel’s book, I wonder if I might have had better luck if I’d tried earlier or later- I picked pretty much the worst possible time, because that is when my sanity snapped. I did have some success with nightweaning her at almost 11 months (which, it turns out, is a “good” time for sleep changes), and got her down to waking 1x/night. So I managed to survive. She eventually started sleeping through the night at about 2 years old. She did this pretty much on her own- all I did was finally finish the nightweaning.
My second is a MUCH better sleeper. She has already gone through one period of sleeping through the night. She is currently up 1-2x/night, but I think part of the reason for that is that she has congestion from a cold that is still clearing. She is 5 months old. She self soothes well already, and is much easier to soothe overall than my first was. I’m thinking of doing some sleep training in another month or so, to see if we can get the sleep through the night thing back. (I’m a bit at a loss for how to do it, though, since she already goes down awake and falls asleep on her own- but that is another story.) My major lesson learned from baby #1 was that if sleep issues are bothering you at about 6 months, try to do something then, because they are only going to get worse at about 9 months when separation anxiety hits.
Long story short- I think some kids are A LOT harder to sleep train than others. I didn’t do anything to make my first one a bad sleeper, and I’m not about to claim credit for the better sleep habits of my second one. I think it is at least partly genetic- as my first daughter gets older, I see a lot of my sleep patterns echoed in her- it takes me awhile to fall asleep, and I can have a hard time going back to sleep if I wake up in the night. And my second daughter seems to be echoing my husband, who falls asleep within minutes of laying down, even if he says he isn’t all that tired.
I can’t wait for tomorrow’s post! I had a breakdown about 2 months ago. SAHM with an 18 month old. Thank goodness for my husband, he suggested 1 day/week daycare. It was something I dreamed of but felt intense guilt about doing something like that. My mom could handle SAHM alone (with a much less helpful husband than I have) — AND 4 kids. So why couldn’t I do it? But my husband reminded me that it didn’t mean my mom wouldn’t have loved a day off or that she wasn’t depressed or lonely, etc etc.
Anyway, so now I have my Wednesdays free. C LOVES going to “school”. I get errands done. Or read the paper. Or go to the gym. Or eat lunch out with a book. Or a combination of the above. Totally worth the cost and I know I’m a better mother because of it. Some have suggested that maybe 2 days/week would be better but I honestly think I’d miss my time with her. One day is all I need to recharge for the week.
Cloud-
Thanks for your great response and sharing your story. My husband and I are high-energy non-sleepers and so are our children.
My twins had some breathing difficulties and I have to use the nebulizer with one twin 1-2x/day to keep him breathing well. For what I hope are obvious reasons, I wasn’t willing to ignore/sleep train a baby with major breathing difficulties. (The chronic breathing problems didn’t get diagnosed till he was ~9 mo but it was apparent to me as a Mom he frequently struggled to breathe.) His twin had severe reflux and would arch his back from the pain so I wasn’t willing to sleep train him either.
Things are looking up, though- my colicky guy will go to sleep on his own, and my breathing-challenged guy can breathe through the night. (They are 14 months but were 5 weeks premature.)
Before even reading this week’s challenge, I got my hair really cut and styled on Monday! So mission accomplished!
Also, Friday nights my SIL comes over to take care of the baby during the night, and my hubby and I alternate taking nights off by sleeping in the basement. (The parent sleeping in the master bedroom almost always ends up with the pre-schooler in bed with them, so not really a night off.) This Friday is my night! I do have to work late, but once I get home (hopefully 11 or 12), I will go straight to the basement and sleep through the night!
@Taia – Sleep training did not work at all for my pre-schooler. We just had/have to do whatever gets the most amount of people the most amount of sleep in our house. Usually, this means some form of cosleeping with her, even still, as well as me getting up for the baby in the night. Sounds like your kids have a lot going on, so no wonder you are up so much! I hope it all works itself out soon! The best thing for us has been my SIL coming over one night a week to give us a break. Do you have someone who could do that for you?
@Cloud – Your Pumpkin’s sleep issues always sound(ed) just like my girl’s sleep issues, and we tried sleep training at good times as well as bad times. Neither worked. In fact, during the good times to sleep train, she pretty much slept way better all on her own. But once those “ideal” periods were over, she was back to crappy sleeping and needing us. So don’t beat yourself up about not trying to sleep train at the right time. For some kids, I don’t think there is a right time at all!
@hush – Good luck! I’m usually worried when we leave my almost 3 yo with my parents overnight because she almost always wakes up and comes to our bed. My mom is not really an AP parent and doesn’t really do well cosleeping, so I’m always worried that my daughter will keep my mom up and my mom will regret taking her. Although my mom always says they have a great time and it’s fine when she wakes her up. I just know my mom and know that she would prefer my daughter was a better sleeper. Sigh… My point really is that I hear what you are saying about worrying the whole time you are gone and feeling like you are being judged. Try to enjoy yourself anyway!
Reporting back in… I couldn’t find the mental space or the actual time to do a “real” blog post this week. Maybe next week.
So I treated myself to a hamburger for lunch today instead (I usually bring my lunch from home). Maybe the hamburger was sort of for my milk supply (protein!) but the fries were definitely a treat just for me.
It was summer when my little one was born and I love sitting on our deck so it was a treat to sit with an iced tea, a magazine and just be in the sun while she slept (which didn’t seem to happen often enough). Just being in the sun seemed to recharge my batteries. I know it’s only March but if you can, make like a cat and grab a few rays, even if it’s through a window. It will relax you and lift your spirits like nothing can.
@Miranda: I just took your advice… Sun and warmth in Toronto mid March is usually unheard of, so I threw the kids out in the backyard (oh, the delicious mud), fed them lunch in their “treehouse” and drank a cup of coffee with the sun on my face. I’m feeling like a new person! (Oh, but how I wish I could sneak in a nap…)
@Cloud, @Isabela, & @caramama – Thank you for the supportive comments! My mom is here now, and we leave Wednesday night, returning Sunday. So far he wants everything to do with my mom and nothing to do with his parents. Hooray!