Happy Mother's Day!! I've been a mother of two for one month and its been a journey.I'll give you a quick recap. I've been to the ER twice, I go days without combing my hair or brushing my teeth, and I truly realize I would rather be at work than be a stay at home mother.
Unlike her big sister, CC is a crier and demands to be carried around constantly. She has facilitated my need to adhere to the tenets of attachment parenting . . . you know baby wearing, co-sleeping, nursing on demand, no "cry it out" for her. It indeed is draining especially with Lil D wanting just as much attention. Initially I was planning to keep Lil D home with me during my maternity leave, but experience has taught me that this was not a good idea. Depending on the week I've been sending her to her Abuela to get "me time". She needs just as much attention as CC and at grandma's she is able to get it.
D is not a big fan of Mother's Day, or any holiday for that matter, he calls it another consumer's holiday and he always says he wished he owned a store to sell to everyone scrambling to get gifts.
Rixa, blogger of one of my favorite blogs, Stand and Deliver shares her sentiment about Mother's Day:
I'm just not feeling the love. If we really valued mothers--speaking both individually and culturally--we wouldn't have one day of lip service, followed by a year of neglect. Give us a year's paid maternity and paternity leave. Give us Mother-Friendly care in all hospitals and birth centers. Give us a culture that really, truly values mothers and children and finds ways to keep them together even when the mother needs to earn a living, like flextime, on-site childcare, or babies-at-work programs. Give us a month of daily home visits from postpartum helpers who can cook, clean, do laundry, and help with the other kids so we can snuggle and nurse our newborns. Give us generous social and emotional support for the tremendous work of mothering. But please don't give us flowers and a sappy tribute to 1950's gender roles and think that will suffice until the next Mother's Day. To read more click here.
What you think about Rixa's thoughts? This will be my third Mother's Day and I don't really get hyped about it particularly because my birthday is always within 5 days of the holiday. D surprised me and took us out to McLoone's Boathouse in West Orange for an amazing brunch. The menu was extensive. There were assorted fruit, juices, bread and cheeses, a raw bar, omelet and waffle station, crab cake station (all crabmeat no filler), carving station, and 10 different hot entrees to name a few. ;-) I even took two sips of a mimosa. It will probably be the last taste of alcohol I'll have for a long while.
S/N: We gave CC her first bottle of expressed milk yesterday. I purchased the new Medela Calma bottles and this is what she drank from. "Calma is the only scientific based feeding device that helps to support the similar sucking behaviour of the baby at the breast." Indeed this is true, we had no issues with her feeding. We tried the pacifier but she didn't take it, she gagged instead of sucked it. Oh well we'll try again.
