Back to reality.

I have one week left of maternity leave before I head back to work. This is the hardest part, honestly - the anticipation of -gasp- leaving my baby!! I know she'll be fine. She'll be home with Daddy! I actually think it's very, very good and healthy for my children to spend so much time with Daddy - it makes it very clear to them that fathers are just as able (and just as responsible) to care for their kids as mothers are. I like to think that maybe our house work and other work juggling sets a good example for our kids, that marriage is a partnership and that raising kids, having a job/career, cooking dinner, and playing at the park are not solely the realm of either Mom or Dad but can be done by both, or shared.

Anyway, stepping off my soapbox.  I'm nervous about heading back to work, for no particular reason and for lots of reasons. I've done it before, but that was night shift - and I'll be working days now. I think it will actually make my life hugely better to be working days, but it feels like more time away from the kids (it isn't, actually, if anything it's less because I won't feel like I need to spend every spare second trying to catch up on sleep) and is intimidating in a rather general sense.  It's sort of like starting a new job - I know all the people, I know my way around the unit and I know what I'm doing, but it's a matter of getting used to the "flow" of the shift and of the unit, which of course will be different during the day than it is at night.

I'm just feeling a little sad that my leave - and time in general - are going so fast. It seems like every year passes faster than the one before. I know that things just get more and more fun and wonderful with my kids, and I know that I would not be happy as a stay-home mom long-term (I did it and was miserable!), and I know that my children are happy and lucky to be at home with Daddy when I'm at work, and I know that Kid4 will be just fine.  She's just SO little, and I think the bottom line is that going back to work means I have to share her more, and I'm not quite ready yet.

Reflux.

I have a strong belief that my kids get together and plot. As soon as I think I've got one parenting issue down pat, they change things up on me and I have to figure it out again.  They also tend to do this whenever I make the mistake of claiming that I know what I'm doing.

I fully intended to write a "family newsletter" and send it out with Christmas cards last year, and did write a letter but never ordered or sent Christmas cards. Something about being hugely pregnant and beyond exhausted (pregnancy-related insomnia plus regular insomnia plus working night shift = no rest for the weary) sort of got in the way.  So I edited the letter a little to add in a paragraph about Kid4, and sent it out with her birth announcements. In that paragraph, I mentioned that she was an easy and laid-back baby.

So it shouldn't really have surprised me when a few days later she started screaming - not crying, screaming - for several hours in the evening, and spitting up more often after nursing.

But it did surprise me. And worry me. Because I may know less about having children now than I did when I had no children, but I know that my baby screaming inconsolably for hours is not normal. I thought it was either colic or reflux, and we did everything we could think of to treat it at home, but finally we decided to take her to the doctor. None of the other kids have had reflux or colic, so we had no experience with what was going on and wanted to make sure we weren't missing something serious (or obvious).

So we went to the doctor and although I try to keep it hidden (because unless we're talking about pregnant women I don't want to be treated as a nurse, I need things properly explained just like everybody else when they're outside my area of expertise) my nursiness was showing. I think I asked about doing something "prn" (as needed) or something. Anyway, the doctor was very receptive and helpful and prescribed Zantac for her, just to see if it helped.

It's been about 2 weeks and I am going to say that so far the Zantac has been an absolute miracle. I was worried that this was just plain old colic and that there was nothing that would help except waiting it out, but the Zantac seems to be a cure. She still has fussy periods in the evening but they are much shorter and less intense, and if we give her the Zantac it seems to nip the fussy times in the bud. She's not spitting up as much and is my easy, happy baby again. I'm so happy and relieved.

To garden or not to garden

...That is the question on my mind this week.

It seems (and I realized I'm jinxing things here) that we may be getting an early spring this year, after a very mild winter.  And so, I'm starting to think about gardening.

We bought our house four years ago. The first year I did nothing in the back yard, but the 2nd year I decided to plant a small garden - I've never considered myself to have a particularly green thumb, but I love tomatoes warm and fresh from the garden, so I gave it a go.  And, it turns out, I LOVED gardening. My tomatoes, zucchini, and jalapenos grew like weeds, and I had a great time in my little garden.

Last year I planned and planted a much more ambitious garden, but a late freeze followed by a horrible dry spell meant that not much grew, and it was a little frustrating so I spent most of the fall and winter thinking about how to lay my garden out better, considered raised beds to help keep things growing, and strategized what and where to plant.

However.

I have a new baby.

When we added Kid1 to our family, the transition was honestly not nearly the challenge I had been told to expect.  As it turns out that was because she was just a ridiculously easy baby, but of course like any woman with OEB (one easy baby) syndrome I thought it was my wonderful skill as a mother and knew adding Kid2 would be just as easy as Kid1.

Kid2 knocked me flat to the ground down a few pegs. He was NOT an easy baby and Kid1 was not an easy toddler. It wasn't three times as hard to have two kids, as I had been told, it was so much more than that.

Kid3 was another huge transition but I assumed that it was because Kid1 and Kid2 were firmly out of the "baby" stage. And because he has no fear.

So I assumed, and joked with friends, that adding another baby to our family after we already had 3 was really just going to be a matter of "adding to the chaos." And it is, but it isn't.  I know she's my fourth baby but I am woefully out of practice managing two SMALL children together, and in some ways I feel like I'm right back in the early days of learning to juggle two kids again.

So I'm wondering if I should even bother with a real garden this year, or if perhaps I should do a couple of small containers with my favorites (tomatoes and zucchini) and save the big ambitious garden plan for next year.

I don't really want to do so, but a very wise friend told me recently that when she had her 4th baby, she felt stressed and overwhelmed until a lightbulb went off at about  6 weeks, that she just plain couldn't do everything she'd done with only 3 children and she had to let some things go until her 4th baby was a little older.  Well, Kid4 is almost 7 weeks old, and a lightbulb is going off.  Maybe this year isn't the year for a big ambitious garden.

But boy, will I miss the nice big planned assortment of home-grown veggies this year!

Princess

One of the downsides of having a baby girl in the middle of winter is that she doesn't have as many opportunities to wear cute girlie dresses.  But, I had some hand-me-down dresses from my oldest daughter, and I realized that I better dress Kid4 in one of them if she was ever going to wear it - she is growing like a weed!  Kid3 was watching, and when he saw that she was wearing a dress he gasped and said "you made the baby a princess!"  Super cute.

it goes too fast.

Today was my due date with our new baby.  She spent the day in a hand-me-down pink onesie that, about 9 years ago, was too big on her sister just like today it was too big on her.  Baby girl arrived before her due date, and is already 2 weeks old.

I wish this wee snuggly newborn stage lasted a little longer, just a little bit longer.  It's too fleeting.

Kid4 is such a delight.  I had a really difficult pregnancy with her - not because of any real complications, thankfully, but I found out I was pregnant a little sooner than we had planned and I just plain wasn't quite ready emotionally to add another baby to our family.  I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes (a diagnosis I still find questionable at best, to be honest, but already that too is in the past) and had the fun of checking my blood sugars 4 times a day several times a week throughout the pregnancy. Happily, my blood sugars were fine and baby girl is healthy. I was stressed at work due to taking on extra responsibilities and training (some by choice, some by necessity), worried about how my littlest son would handle no longer being the baby, worried about money after taking a pay cut by changing my work schedule, and on and on.  Because of the emotionally difficult pregnancy I sort of got into the midset that she would be a challenging baby too. My second baby was a very challenging, "high needs" little fellow - and I expected her to have a similar personality - adorable and beloved, but a tough personality to juggle with a toddler and two homeschooled older children!

I couldn't have been more wrong. She rarely cries, she's easy to soothe, she snuggles up with her head over my heart and falls quietly to sleep.  She sleeps well at night, she's calm and quiet when she's awake. She's just an angel.  And she loves to be held and snuggled, which is wonderful because I just can't get enough. I'm still in that postpartum stage where it feels unnatural not to have my baby WITH me all the time. It feels weird not to have a big belly slowing me down.  It feels abnormal not to have little feet wedged under my ribs and little fists punching me in the bladder.  It's not quite okay, yet, not to have her in my arms. So I'm glad she's happy to hang out there - I'm not going to be having any more babies, so I've got to cherish every second of this last newborn of mine. Soon enough, she'll be the 9 year old playing MarioKart and re-reading Harry Potter for the 7th time and running out the door to play with friends without a second glance in my direction.  For now, I'm happy to sniff the ambrosial newborn smell that lingers on her head, snuggle her close, and do my best to enjoy every second.