When your up with children and crickets, what do you think about? Its funny but I playout frustrating times. It seems like the frustrating times are when there were unpleasant circumstances that I didn't feel like I could properly communicate to help myself out of them. Last night I remembered when I was pregnant, working full-time 8-5 and living in student housing.
Our neighbors through the wall had a baby that would scream from 1 or 2 am until 6 am everynight. Our ciderblock walls reverberated the sound and the child might as well have been in our bed crying in my ear. The only difference is I could go and comfort the baby, rock it, sing to it and feed it and put it back to sleep. I felt it would be rude to the poor parents I didn't know how to bring it up without being presumptious. I don't think the parents once got up with that child. Maybe they were nieve parents who expected babies to sleep through the night right away and let her cry it out, maybe they were deep sleepers and didn't even hear her cry, maybe they had no idea how miserable it was for us, maybe the baby was teething. I'll never know because I never talked to them about it the cloest thing was with sympathy in my voice I asked if their baby was teething, I just wanted to know why, why why???
I wished I had talked to them, maybe offered to come rock the baby or feed her a bottle, or at least know that they were trying to comfort her or had done what they could. I used almost all my sick time at my job to catch up on sleep during those months, on those nights I only got 2-3 hours of sleep calling in and letting my supervisor know I'd be a little late so I could just get a few more hours of sleep so I could function.
Of course I don't know if this is related or not, but the baby I was pregnant with turned out to be colic, and we would spend countless hours up with our daughter as she screamed, bright red, standing stiff as a standing board during the ungodly hours of the night. I'd rock her for 6-8 hours a day, luckily she was my first and I could do that and sleep when she finally slept. I'd often lay on the floor with one hand on her bouncy seat at night so I could bounce it for her when she started up again. My husband and I worked it out that on week days when he had work I'd only wake him up if it was the fifth time up with the baby and on weekends he'd be up everyother time.
I had a sweet lady who lived in the apartment above me who was like a second mom, Sister Preito from Brazil. She would give me lunch and give me tips and help hold my baby and show me little tricks of the trade everyday. Always build me up and tell me I was a wonderful mother helping me so much when I was feeling discouraged and down. She will always have a place in heaven in my book, an angel. Of course I had wonderful family too and my sweet husband, maybe I won't judge after all that poor couple through the cinderblock walls in our student apartments.
3 comments:
It is painful to read about crying babies. It really is a huge challenge for parents. I hope I can be more sympathetic and understanding like your sweet neighbor. You're a wonderful mother!
I do the same thing, Sarah. About three years ago I wore a shocking pink T-shirt to the 4th of July bazaar, down town, and some woman looked at me and said, "Wow, that shirt is REALLY bright," and she looked at me like I was some kind of discusting a bug. She had on an old T-shirt that was faded. I didn't know what to say so I said, "Now I feel bad." Augh! I gave my power to her!
Here's what I dream about saying to her when I can't sleep:
"Well, all my worn out shirts--like yours--are thrown away so I guess you can't be my style guru today. Too bad because you have such an 'interesting' look."
So help me, that's what I want to say.
Ahh!I think everyone needs to give parents a break. If I have anyone give me anymore unwanted advice about Abby, then I will just scream. I'm sure people are trying to be helpful, but I tend to interpret their advice as criticism. I find I respond much better to positive encouragement. Being a mom is hard enough without having to deal with criticism which just makes me want to give up. So my two year old daughter doesn't act like a 60 year old woman, so what! Let her be a kid and let me be her mom. I hate it when people try to step in and parent other people's children. Sorry, I just realized that I was venting. I guess I'm having a hard time right now because for the last two years I lived in Philly far away from family with only an occasional phone call or e-mail, so I was used to being on my own with parenting, etc. Now I'm at the other extreme living with in laws who try to help me parent and I find it very frustrating. I think it is nice for people to give advice on parenting, but only when someone asks for it. I think different parents have their own style of parenting that works with their personality and the personality of their children. There was a really good article in the June Ensign about being sensitive to others that I think we all need to take to heart.
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