I don’t know how to stop.

I have an obsession with buying/giving my kid books to read.

I don’t know how to stop.

I adore reading to him and do it lots, I keep finding amazing steals at Value Village (98% of these are second hand and were $1.25 each!) and I figure if you’re gonna spoil your kid, ya might as well do it with books in hopes of helping build a love of literacy.

Right?

Right?!?

Riiiiiiiiight?!?!?

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The bough.

I’ve been quiet on here for a bit, hey? I haven’t forgotten about Soundly Sarah, however. Rather, I’ve chosen to be purposefully quiet. While I have had many, MANY things I have wanted to write, a large part of me couldn’t consciously put any of it to paper until I addressed something that took place not long after I last posted here. Addressing that something has been an extremely private, long, arduous, six month journey for me, however, and I have returned here now as I am finally ready to write it out and begin again in this space that I have so missed.

On a Friday morning near the end of July, I had a breakdown. It was a full on, anxiety ridden, nerve stricken, tears and screams, I’m losing my mind, I can’t breathe, I can’t think, why am I shaking?! breakdown. It was very real, very scary, and with D’s help, immediate medical attention was sought for me to understand what the hell was going on.

But to make clear to you what I eventually learned about myself, I first need to give a bit of back story.

Many of you are already aware, but for those who are not, the first hundred days of O’s life were a nightmare. He would not, could not, be put down. At all. He slept nowhere but on us (no matter how many times or how hard we tried to change that). If he was awake, he had to be moving or breastfeeding 95% of the time or he was livid. It was all this and so so so so so much more. A part of me has chosen to purposefully forget some of it because I just have to. His colicky, angry and needy demands drained from me every ounce of energy, every ounce of sanity, and my every ounce of EVERYTHING, joy included. The posts I put on FB from during this period were mostly a façade of the few good moments he did have. All the other moments that didn’t make it on FB were the REAL ones, and by god did those real ones hurt.

But after those first hundred days, we found a bit of reprieve. We found a little bit of peace. I was able to find some happiness once again. I started to feel a bit more human. I bit more myself. A bit more like I could do this motherhood thing and that we would survive.

Near the end of July, however, O began a vicious cycle of teething. At the time I didn’t know it, however, as you tend to not know a lot of stuff during that first rodeo until you get slapped in the face with it, and boy – did it ever. The reprieve we had been experiencing? It was shattered to the ground, stomped on, set on fire and proceeded to have its ashes obliterated into one million pieces. Well, that is exactly what was happening in my head at least. Because, unlike freaking out like a normal person and hoping for the best, I began to have a series of PTSD like flashbacks that quickly worsened.

Imagine holding your child as they are screaming at you, unable to find comfort or calm. You are sitting in a rocking chair in their dark room, trying your best to help their exhausted, pained body. But rather be there and be present, your mind is waging war on you. Your mind is telling you that you are going back to those first one hundred days and you are never leaving it. Your mind is telling you this is it from now on. Your mind is telling you that there will never be better. Your mind is SCREAMING at you, as you struggle to breathe amidst a rapid tightening of chest, that this is going to be FOREVER. There is no escape, there is no way out, you’ve gone back and you will never return.

And then imagine telling no one for days and days that this is happening to you continually and soon constantly because you are ashamed, unsure, embarrassed and deathly afraid.

On that Friday morning, the bough finally broke. Like a river it all flowed out, unstoppably and rapidly, and the shell I had been frantically trying to encase it all in soon gave way.

With the help of BC Women’s reproductive mental health unit, psychiatrists, counselors and medicine, I soon came to learn of a thing I had never heard of before. Postpartum anxiety. I knew of postpartum depression, but anxiety? That was a new one. Additionally, I came to learn of the concept known as intrusive thoughts. They were the thoughts that were giving way to the PTSD like flashbacks and they were the thoughts I soon set out to try and understand, come to peace with and, if I was lucky, banish for good.

However, the weird thing about getting help for mental illness – which anxiety falls under – is that it breeds other things. Admitting it can be a chain reaction, and a revelation of so much can be equally clarifying AND unhinging. It brings you up the depth to which you’ve denied, it forces you to acknowledge that which you have refused to do, and it leaves you raw. It leaves you weak. It leaves you to realize just how deep, multifaceted and pervasive our minds can be, and how much they will refuse to let go and morph anew no matter the amount you shake.

Six months later, I still wouldn’t call myself healed, but I’m trying. There has definitely been some harder moments, and they’ve absolutely effected how I deal with the outside world (I apologize to those who might have read this who I KNOW have gotten the receiving end of some of that), but I’m trying. Intrusive thoughts are still a daily struggle of mine, though they have decreased in intensity and occurrence. But I am making my way back. Always.

Most importantly, and this has taken me a LONG time to say, I finally know now and can say with confidence that this doesn’t make me a bad mom. This doesn’t mean that I don’t deserve O. An inability to cope doesn’t make me abnormal. It makes me human. Admitting it here, on a public blog, can in fact be empowering. It can be healing in itself. And while this has been a damn hard journey to wellness, I am determined to get that shell of mine back. That is a belief that I refuse to let go of. And to those of you who are willing to join me for this journey, thank you. I appreciate you more than you know.

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Thirty minutes.

Like many other babies his age, O is in the midst of a period where he only sleeps 30 minutes for every nap he takes. He started this off and on a good month or so ago, and now has solely taken naps like this for the past two and a half weeks. Additionally, in between his every thirty minute nap, he has the tolerance for being up around two hours before cranky town hits. Naturally, our daily schedule has adjusted to accommodate this, though not by choice. If I didn’t have to constantly feel as if I was living life by the clock and always chasing the next nap, I wouldn’t. The needs of my child say otherwise, however, no matter how much of a schedule whore it may make me seem.

For me and I imagine millions of other moms, nap time is a time of reprieve. A time when, after giving every piece of you to your LO, you can give something back to yourself.

But in those thirty minutes do you…

Read (a choice I have made more so lately)?

Peruse other hobbies (a choice I have not made enough lately)?

Clean (a choice I made far too frequently last week as it had been neglected and we were expecting company)?

Play SimCity on my phone (a choice I wish I would make less of)?

Sleep (a choice that is a joke within a thirty minute time frame)?

Eat (a choice that should always take precedence, but often doesn’t)?

Write a post on Soundly Sarah (a choice I have neglected lately, oops!)?

Just be thankful you have that time?

Do you choose one of those?

Some of those?

All of those as you frantically try to jumble it into 1800 seconds and end up not satisfied at all as a result?

Evidenced by the fact that I’ve only been able to just now write this while on bed rest from a hurt foot, I don’t know how to answer those questions. Is this how it’ll always be?

In terms of better prioritizing, scheduling and letting go of the reins at times for things to happen as they will, I could have the answers I seek. But I did not expect this aspect of motherhood. I did not expect for my needs to be sequestered into 30 minutes time chunks. I (obliviously) imagined dreamy, two hour naps of bliss and relaxation. Eventually, those may come, but nap time in general will happen less if they do.

This obliviousness, or delusion, rather, it went so far as to tell multiple people before giving birth that I was worried I would get bored or stir crazy while on mat leave. I didn’t realize it would be nothing like that. I didn’t realize the second I’d have some time, it would be gone. Nap after nap, I find myself just getting started on ‘me’ when it’s nearly ended. So often, I hear O on the baby monitor at a point when things have just gotten ‘good’. Is that horrible of me to admit? Or merely human?

I write this for it leaves me in a spot of motherhood that I still find myself flailing, unsure and a bit ruffled. No matter the changes I could make, I am stuck at these questions. How do I redefine and pair down what I truly need while I am immersed in all that is motherhood? How do I make space for my desires and interests in a way that now accommodates times as a resource precious as gold? How do I refuse to loose myself among the demands that this new life entails? And, in this so often mother eats mother world, makes you feel like an selfish jerk for wanting it that way?

How?

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What even IS baby sleep?

Since he was three weeks old, O has slept in our arms for 99% of his naps and sleeps at night (he is now almost eleven weeks). He is typically tummy down as he leans against our bodies (while we lean back). It started originally as he began to absolutely LOSE it when we put him down in our bedside co-sleeper bassinet. This and a variety of other symptoms lead our pediatrician to believe he has reflux, which with the help of medicine and changing how we do things, has helped make him a much happier baby.

He will now tolerate periods of back/tummy play and being in his swing (we went through a five week period where we couldn’t put him down PERIOD without him loosing it). But getting him to sleep on somewhere that is not our bodies is something we’re having a lot of trouble managing.

I understand this is typical of a lot of newborns and there are very valid reasons why he wants to sleep on us. I just keep envisioning this still happening at 8+ months because it forms a pattern of behaviour, and that makes me kind of want to loose it. We are continually having to find new ways for him to sleep on us while we we try to rest but not really rest and it’s exhausting, no matter how much we break it up into shifts. I miss lying down and have legitimately forgotten how to sleep that way. My hips also kind of want to kill me for all the sitting down I have to do with him.

For those of you who have been able to get a baby past this phase, how did you do it? Here is what we’ve been doing or have tried thus far:

  • He is mostly nursed to sleep (has been since birth, he loves it and nothing puts him out faster). If I don’t do it for him, he freaks. If he could nurse all night, he would. My nipples disagree.
  • He will not take a pacifier (I have tried ten million times). I am his pacifier.
  • Elevating his bassinet, using white noise, making it smell like me, positioning him with towels to be on his side and warming it have all been tried.
  • He LOVES to move his arms and legs. Some of it is his Moro reflex, some of it is it’s just what he loves to do. He pretty much looks like he’s conducting an orchestra all day long and is never still. You can guess how much this desire of his lets him sleep deeply when laying down somewhere that is not on us.
  • Swaddles and Swaddle transition blankets/gear DO NOT work. We have had a rare occasion where they have, but it is not reliable. Anything that restricts his hands or legs pisses him off for hours at end and defeats their purpose. We legit tried them for weeks and weeks — it was horrible.
  • Carriers equally piss him off and while he will fall asleep in one while we take long walks, that’s not solving this problem.
  • I tried co-sleeping with him leaning against me and by me. He either kept waking himself up as his flailing/movements kept hitting me or he couldn’t last longer than five minutes, no matter how milk drunk I got him or where I put him. I am unable to nurse him easily while laying down, and him doing it on his own to get back to sleep is not possible.
  • He has slept in his swing, but it’s very sporadic and getting it to happen regularly is something we can’t seem to master, no matter how much advice we follow from baby sleep blogs.
  • Putting him to sleep on his own his tummy freaks me out. Please don’t suggest it. I understand babies sleep deeper on their tummies and that’s part of why he does when he’s on us, but he’s WITH us while doing so.

This too shall pass.

I know.

But, for now, HELP PLZ.

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