I've become quite dependent on having a
nap in the afternoon. Now that Rosalie is more active, she has become
more exhausting and, unfortunately, less of a fan of napping. For the
past month or so, I have been unable to get her to sleep on her own,
outside of when she falls asleep in her carseat. The moment I try to
put her down in her crib after she falls asleep nursing, she wakes
up. And I mean, like, WIDE awake. This was becoming quite a problem,
because when Rosalie doesn't nap, she's not happy... and the whole
house becomes unhappy. Even Boca starts avoiding her.
So when I vented my frustrations to
Erin while she was living here, she said her cousin had the same
problem and she just naps with her son and then they both get to have
a few extra Zzzs. This is completely genius. Best advice I'd ever
been given. It is now a staple in our daily routine.
I had heard that cosleeping was good
for you, your baby and your relationship, but I always thought of it
in the context of sleeping at night, so you don't have to get out of
bed to feed your baby and you both get a better night sleep. This
doesn't really work for us because, considering how much Roland kicks
and punches me in the middle of the night, I couldn't trust my
husband's sleeping routine to not harm Rosalie. If we had a cosleeper
that clipped onto the side of the bed I would have been all for it.
But alas, the crib was a must.
Now, I can guarantee that SOMEONE is
thinking: “I heard that cosleeping is dangerous”. But it is SO
not true. Granted, you can't be an idiot about it. Just like leaving
your child on the floor in the middle of the livingroom is generally
safe, unless you decide to shatter a bunch of glass around them.
Clearly, when cosleeping you shouldn't use a bunch of super fluffy
pillows all around your baby and you shouldn't put them in a place
where they can roll off the bed. To remedy these things, Rosalie
doesn't get any pillows at all (obviously), and I fold our flat sheet
in half and Rosalie's in the crook of the fold, and I lie on both
ends of the sheet so she can't roll away. I lie on my side and the
bottom arm goes on the mattress right overtop of her head, then when
I nurse her, and we fall asleep, my arm works like a kick-stand so I
won't roll over on her. Not that I would anyway, I don't think that
you can just forget about your infant lying next to you. Which also
makes me believe that you are your own best SIDS detector. If
Rosalie's breathing changes at all, I always wake up. She's had a bit
of a cold lately, and when she sniffles in her sleep it wakes me up.
I think that becomes genetic when you become a mom. Also, I can't
remember the exact statistic, but it's something like 98% of infant
deaths that resulted from cosleeping were because drugs or alcohol was
involved. This makes sense because if you pass-out or OD you aren't
going to have the mental capacity to think about your child,
especially subconsciously.
Another “pro” for cosleeping is
that it's really not natural for your baby to sleep on their own
anyway. Because of the “4th Trimester” (and yes, I
know, it doesn't make sense that a TRI-mester has a 4th
part, but that's what people call it), in the first 9 months of their
lives, where your baby continues to develop so much outside the womb,
your baby is completely dependent on you, so they are more
comfortable if you are near them ALL the time.
So that's my 2 cents, I know that
others may have opinions differing from mine, but I would always
recommend it now. Sleeping issues? Have a cosleep nap. Good for you +
good for baby = everybody wins.
~*~
In
this moving, wry, and candid novel, widely acclaimed novelist Ayelet
Waldman takes us through one woman’s passage through love, loss,
and the strange absurdities of modern life.
Emilia
Greenleaf believed that she had found her soulmate, the man she was
meant to spend her life with. But life seems a lot less rosy when
Emilia has to deal with the most neurotic and sheltered five-year-old
in New York City: her new stepson William. Now Emilia finds herself
trying to flag down taxis with a giant, industrial-strength car seat,
looking for perfect, strawberry-flavored, lactose-free cupcakes,
receiving corrections on her French pronunciation from her
supercilious stepson – and attempting to find balance in a new
family that’s both larger, and smaller, than she bargained for. In
Love and Other Impossible Pursuits Ayelet Waldman has created a novel
rich with humour and truth, perfectly characterizing one woman’s
search for answers in a crazily uncertain world.
This
is the best book I have read in a really long time. I can't even tell
you how much I would recommend it. That being said, I am it's target
audience. I would probably not recommend it to men necessarily, but
if I describe it, and they like it, I would say go for it! But no
pressure.
First,
I'll give a little background of how I discovered this book. While I
was still working nights at the jail, and I was watching movies to
pass the time, I watched Thor. As I have said in previous posts, I
often look up the cast of movies after I watch them to see what they
are up to, or to see if I've seen them in anything else. Natalie
Portman (whom I love), is in Thor, and also made a movie called The
Other Woman. I then found out that Love and Other Impossible Pursuits
is the book that The Other Woman is based on. I read the above
description, I figured it was a must read. I had never read a book
where Step-parenting was an important theme. As I am a step-parent
myself, I figured I could relate and I was excited for this one, but
it got bumped a few times by books that I borrowed from people, or
movies that were coming out that I thought I might go to in the
theatre... so I just got to it now, after owning it for about a year.
Wow.
Waldman totally nailed it. All of the difficulties of being a
step-parent, all of the expectations and stereotypes that people have
of you, all of the things that you hate to admit to yourself, let
alone say outloud, all of the things that you want to avoid, but end
up succumbing to... everything was in this book. It was so liberating
for me to know that at least one other person in the world feels the
way about step-parenting that I do, and I'm guessing that there are
more than just the two of us. Just for the record, my relationship
with my stepson isn't (and never was) nearly as difficult as the one
in this book.
There
is also another theme in this book that I was totally not expecting.
It is not mentioned in the description above, but it was
mentioned on the back of my book. However, I didn't read the back
once I bought it (I had to special order it in from McNally, so I
bought a bunch of books at the same time, put them on my shelf and
didn't look at them again until I wanted to read them). I looked at
it after I was midway through because I was kinda thinking “how
could they not have mentioned this in the description on the back?”
Then I noticed they did, so I thought “How could I have missed
that?” Then I checked goodreads. I missed it because it's
different.
Ok.
So. Now I am gunna mention what the other theme is, but if you want
to be surprised, like I was, then read do not read the next
paragraph. Skip to the one after... the one about the movie. I liked
being surprised by this part, but I could see how it could devastate
and be very painful for some people to have it sprung on them.
Consider yourself warned....
This
book also deals with pregnancy and/or infant loss (I won't tell you
which, so you might still be a little surprised). This is an issue
that I have not been dealing with personally, but I have several
friends who have had to deal with pregnancy losses and it has become
a topic that is very close to my heart. In this book you find out
very early that the main character has been pregnant, but that child
is no longer on this earth. Little tiny bits of information are given
throughout the entire book and it makes it very enticing. At first
you know that more information is coming soon, but once you think you
have all of the info, you keep getting little bits more, and every
time your heart breaks a little bit more. Because I read before bed
almost every night, when I got these little bits of heartbreak, I had
the urge to go and scoop Rosalie out of be and cuddle her and just
appreciate holding her in my arms, and be thankful I have her company
every day. Of course, I didn't. It wasn't worth waking her. But it
made me go check on her to make sure she was OK, because I couldn't
bear to lose her the way others have lost their babies while pregnant
or afterwards. Then when she did wake up to eat, I gave her extra
cuddles and didn't rush to put her back in her crib. Another thing,
kinda on the same line of being pregnant and stuff, it is also
mentioned in the book the “post-baby body” dilemma that I am
having right now, as mentioned in THIS previous post. Dropped the weight but have a very squishy middle
right now. Sometimes knowing you aren't alone makes you feel all that
much better... still won't be wearing a bikini any time soon
though...
The
movie adaptation was not too bad; the book was way better (no
surprise). It was extremely loyal to the book, and that is one of the
most important aspects of a movie adaptation in my humble opinion.
The problem with 3rd
person perspective books is that they lose something in the movie
without narration, but narration would make the movie seem cheesy and
awful. This book/movie is no different. Something is lost when you
don't know Emilia's thoughts and you can't know the drastic internal
change she goes through during the novel. I believe this movie was
made with the best intentions, it's such a great story, and one that
does a great job of entertaining while educating people on the
complexities of step-parenting, among other things, but the book
still does these things better.
See
the movie if you must, but don't skip the book. :)
