Personal, writing Natasha Chiam Personal, writing Natasha Chiam

My addiction

This was an assignment I wrote for a writing workshop I took last year.

I reread it tonight and it made me laugh...

because nothing has changed!

I hope you like it! 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

I can feel the pull.

It really is only about 22 steps from where I am right now.

And it will be warm.

And soft.

And I can just drift away from all of this.

 

This.

This never-ending LIST of things that I need to do.

The list I have been avoiding for so long.

The piles and baskets of bright coloured clothing that are scattered along my hall are looking more and more like permanent fixtures and they keep growing in height and depth.

I don’t know where all of these papers keep coming from. It is like a tree gets cut down once a day in here and all of it’s byproducts end up on my desk and scattered across the kitchen counters. I swear I just filed it all and emptied the pretty blue box yesterday.

 

If I could just close my eyes for a little bit, I can do it all later.

Everyone else in this house is sleeping right now. Why can’t I?

 

BECAUSE!

 

That is what you did yesterday and the list that was supposed to be finished then is now added to the list that is for today.

YOU JUST CAN’T.

PIck up this, put away that, wipe this, wash that, fold this, call so and so, book this appointment, get nephew a birthday present, plan this party, get a new windshield, schedule our next date night, etc...

 

Sleep is a powerful drug.

There are no problems when one is sleeping. The lists do not exist when I am curled up in my bed. I don’t have to deal with anything when I am sleeping. The kids will sleep with me and we are all happy and there is no yelling, no threatening to take away this or that toy, just peace and snuggles and...

 

Void.

 

But I can’t. If I go there now, then there will be three days of to-do lists TO ACTUALLY DO,

and I will soon be buried in those bright piles of clothes and papers.

 

It’s a game actually. One that my mind likes to play with me.

"How far can we push her? Let's make her eyes go buggy, droop those eyelids a bit more, convince her that it can all be done later.

Come on Natasha, only 15 minutes, then you will feel all refreshed and can get back to work."

 

But it never works like that. Once sleep catches me, she doesn’t let me go. She makes my limbs heavy, my head heaviest of all and won’t let me wake up after a mere 15 minutes. That does not appease her.

 

So I have to say no. I have to fight her off. If I keep moving, she won’t catch me. If I sit down, if I stop, she knows she has won.

 

This may sound silly, but no matter how much I want to be 22 steps from where I am right now, snuggled in my bed with the 4.5-year-old miniature version of myself, I can’t go there.

 

I have to GET THINGS DONE.

 

My name is Natasha Chiam.

I am addicted to sleep.

It has been 3 days since my last nap.

sleep

 

....................

Post #2 for today and the #summerblogchallenge.

Don't you feel lucky?

 

 

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humour, kids, motherhood, parenting Natasha Chiam humour, kids, motherhood, parenting Natasha Chiam

I am the Tony Stark of parenting!

I am a goddamn parenting genius! .

.

.

.

OK, fine. Slight exaggeration.

Maybe I just exude parental confidence. {While inwardly I am pulling my hair out strand by strand and sitting in a corner holding myself and rocking back and forth.}

Whatever the case may be, people ask me for advice all the time.

It ranges from prenatal questions all the way to potty training and back again. And for the record, I am definitely not an expert in any of these things by any conventional definition.

What I am is a mama. I have almost 6 years of seniority in this position and according to a recent personality test I took (more on that in a later post) I have an above average amount of behavioural adaptability. Which I think is just fancy talk for I just know how to go with the flow!

I also like to listen to my instincts. My gut, so to speak. And for the most part, (teensy bit of bragging here) my gut is rarely wrong.

Why am I telling you all this?

It started last week when my lovely friend and kicks-my-ass-weekly personal trainer, Jessica, asked me for some sleep advice for one of her 5 month old twins. One was sleeping in his crib just fine and the other one just could not do it without Jessica being there with him.

Now of course, my first reaction when anyone asks me for baby sleep advice is to laugh out loud, because, as you may know, I have not had a full night of uninterrupted sleep since December of 2006.

My second reaction is to ask more questions. How does he usually sleep? What does he need? What (or who) is his comfort?  Jess answered all of these and the main theme that I uncovered was that he needed HER. The problem is that she needed her sleep.

So, in my infinite parental wisdom, I said, "Give him your shirt."

Huh?

Here is the way I understand it. Babies imprint on us. Yes, imprint, just like in Twilight with Jacob and baby Renesmee. It's an instant and forever bond and a big part of that has to do with our senses. Touch, taste, hearing, smell and sight. So when Jessica told me that Baby R needed her and she needed to be sleeping in her own bed, I said give him your shirt.

Because it smells like her. The first scent that he ever smelled, his soothing imprint, his mama.

So she did. She gave him her "I just taught two fitness classes, this smells A LOT like me" top and a few hours later I got this tweet.

https://twitter.com/infinitefit/status/256248507684491264

And yesterday, she texted me this sweet (sweaty shirt) photo!

It has been a week and he is still sleeping at nights all snuggled up with his mama's shirt.

Therefore, I believe this makes it official.

I AM a genius!

Patent-pending of course, but in the meantime feel free to use my very scientific GTFTS "technique" (which by the way, I have also used with some success with toddlers too)!

Happy Sleepy Times Mamas,

Natasha~

 

 

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parenting Natasha Chiam parenting Natasha Chiam

Telling it Like it is!

(Disclaimer: Sorry Mommy, I know you are reading "my blog thingy" these days, and I love you for that, but there is some swearing in this one!!  Love you. N~)

On Tuesday night right before I went to bed, I posted the audio version of "Go the Fuck to Sleep" on my Facebook page. It is read by the ever so awesome Mr. Samuel L. Jackson. Now some might think, really? You mean big angry black man, Samuel L. Jackson? "Le Royal with Cheese", Samuel L. Jackson? "Snakes on a Mother Fuckin' Plane" Samuel L. Jackson?  And yes, yes, and yes, that very same one. And really he was perfect for this part. Go on over HERE and have a listen and you'll see what I mean.

Last night after I got home from an awesome networking event (@JenBanksYEG teaching a room of entrepreneurs all about the coolness of SEO!!), I hopped back on Twitter and Facebook for one last check before I went to bed and I saw that the lovely Laura from Greek Momma, had commented on my GTFTS link and so I headed over to read her latest blog post.

I loved her post and agreed with about 90% of it. But that last 10% kept me up last night and I had a very restless sleep, combined with a kid that kept waking up. Coincidence? I think not!!

If you will recall, I blogged about the sleep situation in our house a few months ago. C is still doing really well and is sleeping through the night, but L is just not there yet. And I accept THAT! My husband and I have made a conscious decision about nighttime parenting and "sleep training" and we, under no circumstances, will consider any form of 'Crying it Out' as an option for our family. And because I also believe that falling asleep in the arms of one you love and who loves you the most is an amazing thing, it is how I have always put my kids to sleep.

BUT, here is where the 10% comes into play. Do I like that I am usually up at least 4-5 times a night to put my child back to bed? NO. Do I think she really needs another sip of water, or trip to the bathroom, or 'just one minute' of nursing? NO. Do I think it is fair that she ONLY wants Mama at night and gets physically upset if Natural Urban Dad even stirs and tries to put her back to bed? NO.

Do I get frustrated some nights about the whole situation? YES!!  Are there times when in my weak moments, I just want to tell her to "Go the Fuck to Sleep"? YES!!  Do I think this is good parenting? Um, obviously NO.

So here is what I think about this book and why I really do like it.  I think that the author, Adam Mansbach, has taken what all parents may be thinking in the big, bad, deep, dark recesses of our minds at one time or another and has put in down on paper and published it for all to read. This may not sit well with some people who do not like to go to that deep, dark place and prefer to keep things all happy and rosy and that is just fine. I personally would prefer to be in touch with these feelings, and know that they are, wait for it......

...COMPLETELY NORMAL.

YUP, that is right folks, feeling frustrated about a situation, and even mad sometimes is a completely normal feeling to have as a parent. If you think that you are not allowed to feel anything negative towards your kids EVER, I am really sorry to have to tell you this, but you are not living in reality!!  Parenting is THE TOUGHEST JOB on earth, and we are all going to have our bad days or moments doing it. And like Laura said in her post, there are ways to deal with these times, take a break, get help, go for a walk, give yourself a time-out. Please DO NOT take out your frustrations on your kids, because that is definitely not the answer.

Maybe you steal away in your room for 15 minutes, take out your copy of "Go the Fuck to Sleep", read it (out loud, if that helps) and have a good laugh at the absurdity of it all. Then, take a deep breath and head back out into the fray!!

I for one am hoping that Adam also writes the follow-up books, "Eat your Fucking Food!" and "Put on your Fucking Shoes Already!!

When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen.  When they're finished, I climb out. 

~Erma Bombeck

Natasha~

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parenting Natasha Chiam parenting Natasha Chiam

Sleep.

I have not slept a full 8 hours a night in 1, 596 days. NO LIES. My son was born just before 8 PM on Monday, December 11, 2006 and I did not sleep that night. I spent it up in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit watching him breath and finally getting to hold him at 3 AM. The first week he was there, I went home at night and was up every three hours to pump breast milk for him. His second week in NICU, I stayed at the hospital in the old nurse's residence and was paged every 2-3 hours to go and nurse him.

He was so small and we were so new to all of this. In the NICU every beep, every blip on a monitor made us jump, our moments were measured in decels and oxygen sats, and we came to rely on the machines to reassure us that he was breathing and his heart was beating.

And then he was discharged. He was 4 pounds when we brought him home and could not go more than 2 hours without nursing. I slept in half-hour to 45 minute increments all day long, every day. We no longer had the machines to tell us he was breathing, and so we did not sleep. He slept between us in our bed. And with every stirring, every little moan, we were awake and checking on him.

And this did not stop as the months went on. He slept with us in our bed for his first four months, in his room for about 6 weeks after that and then we moved when he was six months old and he was back in our bed. And through it all never sleeping for more than 3-4 hours.

And of course I did all the "wrong" things (insert eye roll here). I nursed him to sleep, I allowed him to sleep in our bed, I napped with him during the day and I did not teach him to self-sooth. Natural Urban Dad and I became the experts at nighttime parenting, as in we were UP all night 'parenting' our child!!

Oh, trust me, I read ALL the books. Sears, Weissbluth, Pantley and please don't shoot me, even Ezzo. None of it rang true to me. and I refused to do anything remotely resembling "crying it out". What mattered to me was being with my child and soothing him when he needed it and he needed it, A LOT!

A few months before my daughter was born we bought C his Big Boy bed. We skipped the toddler size and went straight for the double bed. Maybe that was a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy, because once L was born and for most of her first year we effectively had a 'girls bed' and a 'boys bed' in our house.

And we were OK with that, sort of. I mean there was still little sleep for me, L was a voracious nurser, and kind of terrible co-sleeper (she is more of the kicking, punching, I gotta be on a boob to sleep kind). The boys on the other hand slept just fine!

(Total aside, but I am now watching that new sitcom "Rasing Hope" and they are talking all about sleep training the poor little baby! Wierd.)

Anywhoo, like I was saying...not sleeping a full night for over 1500 days. I get distracted very easily.

Then about three weeks ago, thanks to the suggestion of a friend, we found a simple reward system that seems to work for C. If he sleeps all night long, all by himself, and in his own bed, then he gets two 'chips' (and yes, by chips, I mean Poker Chips). When he reaches a certain number of chips he gets to 'cash' them in for different things. New books, trips to the zoo or museum, a special toy or even a bag of his favourite Spiderman fruity treats. And he is doing very well with this, with more nights of full sleep for him in the past three weeks than in the past 3 years!

Don't judge me people, I am getting desperate here and the poker chips are working! Although it is not getting any better with kid number two. Little Miss, I thought we had this one all figured out, she used to be able to fall alseep on her own, is now the kid who is up 3-8 times a night and ONLY wants Mama! And she is too young to really GET the whole reward/chip system just yet.

So imagine my excitement when I saw THIS in my Facebook feed this morning!!

Go the Fuck To Sleep is a bedtime book for parents who live in the real world, where a few snoozing kitties and cutesy rhymes don't always send a toddler sailing off to dreamland. Honest, profane, and affectionate, Adam Mansbach's verses and Ricardo Cortés' illustrations perfectly capture the familiar—and unspoken—tribulations of putting your little angel down for the night, and open up a conversation about parenting in the process. Beautiful, subversive, and pants-wettingly funny, Go the Fuck to Sleep is a perfect gift for parents new, old, or expectant. Here is a sample verse:

The cats nestle close to their kittens now. The lambs have laid down with the sheep. You're cozy and warm in your bed, my dear Please go the fuck to sleep.

I WANT THIS BOOK! And depending on the night, I may or may not be reading it to my kid(s)!!

Sleep tight everyone,

Natasha~

P.S. I also bought some Hyland's Homeopathic Calms Forte for Kids and am giving it a shot with L tonight. Both of us need to get some good night-time sleep and I am really hoping this will help. I will let you know how it goes....

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breastfeeding, kids, motherhood, parenting Natasha Chiam breastfeeding, kids, motherhood, parenting Natasha Chiam

Nighttime Parenting and Nursing: I really just want to sleep!

Welcome to The Breastfeeding Cafe Carnival! This post was written as part of The Breastfeeding Cafe's Carnival. For more info on the Breastfeeding Cafe, go to www.breastfeedingcafe.wordpress.com. For more info on the Carnival or if you want to participate, contact Claire at clindstrom2 {at} gmail {dot} com. Today's post is about nighttime parenting and nursing. Please read the other blogs in today's carnival listed below and check back for more posts July 18th through the 31st!

I have not had 8 hours of sleep in a row for FOUR years.  I am not lying.  I probably wouldn't know what to do with myself with that much sleep! For us, and on some nights, nighttime parenting has been just as busy as daytime parenting-at least from a nursing perspective.

We are kind of a part-time co-sleeping family.  We co-slept with our son until he was about 4 months old, had a month of bliss when he was actually sleeping for 6 hour stretches in his own bed and then it all went to pot again and he has refused to sleep by himself ever since. (A reminder to you all--he is 3.5 years old)  I nursed him to sleep from the beginning and according to all the 'books'  that was my first mistake.  I also kept nursing him throughout the night well into his second year, much to the dismay of people who kept telling me he really didn't 'need' to nurse at night anymore.  My husband and I switched roles at times so that he could take over all night-time parenting, and we would try to night-wean our son. This would work for a few days or weeks, but then something would always bring us back to nursing and sleeping with him.  I read book after book on how to get my child to sleep (well, everything short of Ferber that is--I refused to do any form of Cry It Out strategies).  I probably gave up on all the different strategies too soon, but damn it I really just wanted to SLEEP!  And so to make everyone happy, I would nurse him and we would all go back to sleep.

He is still not a great sleeper.  He gets scared in his room all by himself and wants one of us to come and sleep with him.  And we do it, and I will tell you why.

He is THREE years old!  He is our child and he needs us-to comfort him, to feel safe and to snuggle.  I am not so naive to think that these feelings and needs are going to last forever (I can just picture the DO NOT ENTER sign on his teenage bedroom door in the future) and neither my husband nor I want to look back on these years and say, 'Man, I wish I had just been with him more when he needed me."

My daughter is now 22 months old and is a better sleeper. We did not technically co-sleep with her IN our bed, but rather beside it in her bassinet.  I did learn to let her self soothe a bit more than I did with my son and it shows.  She can be put down in her bed awake and will fall into a nice slumber all on her own.  But...she is still up at least once or twice a night.  She calls for me in the dark and I can't deny her that extra hug, that few seconds on the breast that lets her know that I am only a few steps away.  I know that nursing her at night has no real nutritional value for her, but I nurse my kids for a whole lot more than just nutrition. I nurse them to comfort them, to nurture them, to soothe them and to help them sleep.  And you know what, I'm OK with that.

I am not having any more kids.  These two little humans are my only babies and I will keep them close to me for as long as possible, nurse them as long as they need to and do it NIGHT and day if need be.  That is all folks.

Sleep well ;) Natasha~

P.S.  I did NOT sleep well last night and neither did DS-up grand total of 5 times--it is not always what I want, but life is what it is.  Time for COFFEE!!

Here are more posts by the Breastfeeding Cafe Carnival participants! Check back because more will be added throughout the day.

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