Dysfunctional Ever After | Page 10 of 23 |

Carving Pumpkins

I’m as basic as they come: I live for fall, layered clothing, pumpkin spice lattes, carving pumpkins, and fall decor. Gimme some pumpkin pie, a blanket scarf, and a fire place and I am good to go. So sue me. But, my enthusiasm for all things fall seems to be totally acceptable because I get to pretend like it’s all for the baby. Because, guys, we have to carve pumpkins for THE BABY.

Life is cool with a baby because you get to experience everything for the first time all over again. Things we normally don’t even think about become these fascinating mysteries. Pumpkin guts? Tell me all about them. Let me see you squish it through your fingers, let me smell it, let me feel it. Everything we do we narrate for her, and in doing so, we rediscover what it is around us that we take for granted. Take baking cookies, for example. What is normally a five minute task (because, hi, store bought dough) became this half hour long task where I tell her everything I’m doing, I do it slowly, and I let her touch/see/smell the dough. It took a lot longer, but it was a lot more fun with a baby next to me.

And carving pumpkins? Forget about it. All the seeds, and guts, she was amazed. Not so amazed that she actually saw out the completion of the pumpkins (girls gotta sleep) but still, she loved it.

About five minutes after the above picture was taken, Temen started fussing because she was tired. It was like eight o’clock though, so who can blame her? I nursed her to sleep and finished my pumpkin without worrying about picking up toys off the floor that she “dropped” – no complaints.

Now we’re officially a “bake cookies and carve pumpkins while listening to Disney music” type of family, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

xxoo,

Samm

Breaking the Rules: Sleep Associations and Bed Sharing

family, motherhood, Uncategorized

I did all the research about raising a newborn that you could possibly do. If I was going to have a miracle baby, I was going to make informed decisions, follow all AAP/WHO recommendations, and I was going to do it right. I read study, after study, after study about safe sleep practices. I scoffed at all the stories about mom’s bed sharing, and rolled my eyes at the parents who let their babies decide their own sleep schedules. Clearly none of them had done the research. Their poor children.

And then I pushed a human out of me.

I didn’t just have a baby, I had a human. She is a human with her own wants and needs. So, while experts say that by two months babies should have a set sleep schedule, and that by four months they should be able to put themselves to sleep, and that under no circumstances should you bed share, my daughter says “LOL yeah okay, no”.

Don’t get me wrong, boundaries are good, structure is good. We still do everything we can do to help her follow these guidelines. Experts are experts for a reason, and their recommendations are backed by years of research and studies. But I’ve found that parenting isn’t one size fits all, no matter what the experts say.

Screw it: Nursing to Sleep / Bed Sharing

Temen is about five months old (in a week) and I still nurse her to sleep. In writing this sounds fine. I notice she’s tired, I try to put her down to sleep, she won’t sleep, so I just nurse her to sleep and put her back down. Right? Wrong. So wrong. So, so, so, so, sooooo wrong. In practice, nursing her to sleep means that in the middle of my dinner or favorite TV show when I realize she’s tired, I pretty much have to stop everything to help her get to sleep. (She’s only fussy when she’s tired or hungry, and when she’s fussy SHE. IS. FUSSY.) So I’ll bring her upstairs into our bedroom where she sleeps, per expert recommendations. I’ll lay her in her own crib, per recommendation, to see if she can fall asleep by herself, per recommendation. She fusses and cries, and I let her while gently patting her for a few minutes, hoping that she will soothe herself to sleep. But she won’t. She never does, and I don’t have the heart/mind to sleep train with the “cry it out” method. So I bring her in bed with me and we nurse until she falls asleep. She’ll fall asleep quickly, but as soon as I try to put her back in her crib… mayhem. So we do it again. And again. And again.

We do it until I realize that right now she just needs me. She needs me right next to her. She needs to feel my skin against hers, know that I’m there with her, and know that she is safe. So I will lay in bed with her for as long as I need to. Sometimes it’s only a half hour. Sometimes it’s an hour, or hours. And sometimes it’s all night, with me going to bed at 7:00PM on a Friday night.

Nursing to sleep is what people call a “sleep association”. They recommend you cut out sleep associations at about four months old because, as time goes on, when they wake up they won’t know how to go back to sleep without that association. (Think about it like this: She falls asleep nursing, wakes up a few hours later, alone, and is like “I need to go back to sleep” but then freaks out because “where is the boob that puts me to sleep I can’t do sleep without it?!”) But, I’ve never met anyone my age that needs to nurse to sleep, so I’m not overly concerned that this is a habit that she will just never get over. Right now she needs me to stay with her for a while. She won’t always need me this way, so I’m ~~more than happy to be~~ here when she needs me, how she needs me, whatever that means. Because when she’s this little it’s not about what I need all the time. The shows can wait, my dinner can be reheated, my friends and family understand.

I used to be so annoyed that I had to do this for her. I was annoyed she couldn’t just take a pacifier and soothe herself to sleep, annoyed that she wasn’t eating to go to sleep, but just nursing for comfort. But now that we’re five months in, I feel more blessed than anything. I’m so happy she never took a pacifier. I’m so happy she needs me and can find comfort and peace in being next to me. When I was growing up, I always would want to cuddle my mom while watching tv. It did because it was so comfortable, my whole body would relax, and I felt at home. Now that I have a daughter of my own, I’m going to give that to her whenever she needs it. I don’t have to do this for her, I get to do this for her.

Basically the point of this post is this:

Do what you gotta do – Do your research, know the facts, but do what works best for you and your family.

Be grateful – It took me all of two seconds to realize that before she was here, I would have given my left arm to be used as a human pacifier.

xxoo,

Samm

This is why you don’t quote the Raven.

career, Uncategorized

Raven, a fellow blogger, has a lot of feelings and so do I.

She’s a conservative mom who I typically disagree with about absolutely everything, but I can normally still tolerate. She has some redeeming qualities, like we all do. But I’ve never been able to decide if she writes things to get attention or if she actually believes what she writes. Similar to how I’ve always wondered if certain presidents we may or may not have actually believe what they are saying or just say them for the attention. (She will likely see that as a compliment. To each their own.) But here we are.

The below post is about ten feet past where I draw my “I can tolerate” line in the sand.

Yes. She wrote that. And, I’m guessing she actually believes it. The experiences of women worldwide, the professional opinion of psychologists everywhere, and the peer reviewed research all prove that she’s wrong, but none of that matters to women who hide in the shadows because of women like her.

She also said in the comments: “If women spoke up decades earlier maybe he wouldn’t still be doing it. But everyone was too worried about themselves and their film career.” Yes. Exactly. They were worried about themselves. They were worried about their careers, because this man had the ability to ruin them. They had every right to be worried, which is why they might not have spoken up. That’s the freaking point.

Not to mention: women have been speaking up for decades and not much changes. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, our president has been accused and even bragged about sexually assaulting women, and yet he was elected to the highest office. That’s where women speaking out has gotten us. So forgive me if some women find themselves wondering what the point is, besides opening up old wounds for the whole world to see and being made out to be the bad guy by women like Raven.

I was sexually abused. And for years and years and years I thought it was my fault because I didn’t fight back. I didn’t do enough. I didn’t “kick him in the face and leave the room” like Raven, in all her expertise, says that anyone being hurt should do. I didn’t say anything for the longest time because of this. People like Raven, who perpetuate this idea that because I didn’t physically fight back that it’s somehow my fault or that I’m weak, is why men continue to get away with it and why women continue to keep silent. (And to be clear: She does place blame on the victim. Writing that she wrongly passed all of the blame and responsibility off to Harvey insinuates that there was blame and responsibility that she should own up to.)

But let me tell you why I didn’t fight back.

One, just like fight or flight, it’s a normal human reaction that does not mean you’re weak. Two, I was younger and he was older. There was a power dynamic at play. Three, I was manipulated into thinking that if I didn’t let him do what he wanted to me that I would be shunned, they wouldn’t like me, and from that I concluded that I would basically be alone every day that I was with him and others – that would be miserable. Four, the person that abused me was known to be violent. I knew what he was capable of, and didn’t want to be on the receiving end. Was I weak for not fighting back? Looking back, no. I was strong. I am strong. I did what in the moment my body and brain thought needed to be done in order to be safe and as happy as I could be while being abused. Don’t get me wrong, if I fought back, the abuse wouldn’t have stopped, it just would have been different. So yeah, I guess when I didn’t fight back I was “too worried about myself”.

That abuse continued for years. When it finally did come out, I was convinced not to press any charges. Excuses were made for him, and basically everything was dug up for no reason other than for me to relive it all over again in front of others.

Or maybe we should talk about the time that a family friend groped me until I pretended I was asleep. I was spending the night while my mom was away, and he wouldn’t leave me alone. I was uncomfortable, I was alone, I didn’t know what to do. So, I pretended to fall asleep. He eventually left me alone, but don’t be confused, he kept touching me after I “fell asleep” for a minute or two. Was I being weak? Was it my fault that I didn’t kick and scream? No. Absolutely not. The guy had what felt like two feet and fifty pounds on me, and if I honestly fought back and told anyone, it would just cause issues between our families. I was trying my best to hold it together.

We could also talk about the time I did speak up. I was being sexually harassed at work and told him it wasn’t okay in the nicest way I knew how, because I knew my job was at risk. I dealt with it for as long as I could, because I had a mortgage to pay, student loans to pay, gas to buy, and food to eat.

When Raven says the women are too concerned about their career, she shows her hand. You see, she has the luxury to not have to worry about money or her career. I wish I had that luxury. I wish that I could stay at home and take care of my daughter, but I can’t. I need to make money outside of the home to pay for our mortgage and student loans. I need to make money to live my life, so yes, when I think about speaking up or kicking people in the face, I have to consider what this will do to my career. Not everyone has the luxury she does to not consider this. (And I’m going go be honest here and say there’s a difference between a job and a career. It’s one thing to lose your job, it’s another to lose your career. Again, she has the luxury of not getting this.)

But I knew that if I burned that bridge, I wouldn’t be able to rebuild it. I would be blackballed from a certain, very important, group in my chosen field. The field I make my money in, the field my friends are in. Finally, I said something to the parent organization about what was happening. (I want to be clear about something: It was handled better than I expected. It was handled quickly, it was handled with care, and I felt oddly empowered by the whole situation. And yet…) Within four hours of telling the parent organization what was happening, I was out of that job and into a new one. I was initially given the option to stay, but within about an hour I was told to go and pack my bags – for my own safety. You see, he was going to be fired from that job no matter what. But the organization I was working for knew that the climate of the office would shift and that I without a doubt would face some retaliation. It was in my best interest to leave the job I had been working so hard at, and doing so well in, because this asshole decided that he could say whatever he wanted to me and I dared say something. And all of this impressed me, because I was treated with more respect and dignity than I expected. It’s a little sad that someone would expect less than that, less than being asked to leave because of retaliation. But, that’s the world we live in today. What is worse, looking back, is that I was asked to leave without saying a word to anyone. Again, it was in my own best interest to do so. I know this is the case. The parent organization had my back through and through, yet I was still forced to leave because some people just can’t help themselves.

Am I happy I said something? Ultimately, yes, I ended up with a better gig, but I’ve burned a major bridge. A bridge bigger than most people reading this blog will realize. And I still believe that could limit me professionally, at least for a few years. Do I think I was weak for waiting so long? No. Do I think I was responsible for not being more aggressive towards him? No. The first few times it happened I’m pretty sure I laughed. I was so uncomfortable, so taken aback that I didn’t know how to react. That’s normal. That’s human. If we’re being real, this is the reaction women everywhere have been trained to give their whole lives.

There have been times I haven’t said a thing. There have been times I did. Both of which I consider myself strong, not weak. And even in the cases of me speaking out, it ultimately didn’t matter. I was pressured into not to pressing charges, and the man I was working with ended up getting a better job at the help of the guy I was working for – even after knowing what was said and done to me.

All this to say that I think that while what Raven said is bullshit, it is also a prime example of why ignorance is bliss. I hope women who share her beliefs are never in a situation like so many, where they are forced to choose between their careers and their dignity. I hope they never have to weigh the pain of being sexually assaulted vs. the pain of being physically assaulted. I hope they never have to fear for their life because they say no to a man on top of them.

We don’t quote the raven because the raven is wrong, the raven is ignorant, the raven lies.