Alex has reached the same level of separation anxiety Daniel did at seven months, but it was easier to deal with when only one baby needed to be held constantly. But the last two days slowed to a crawl as I developed tight muscles in my hips from no real walking, everything hurt from sleeping in a semi-comatose version of Twister between two babies in a hospital bed, often waking up in the morning with my head at the foot of the bed, curled into a ball, after a night of adjusting positions to allow babies to flop around unhindered. After the first night we began to sleep a little better out of sheer exhaustion, but now that we have spent two nights in our own bed, the threat of the adults also dissolving into hysteria, in addition to the kids doing so, is less imminent.
Now that we are home, Daniel is...kind of horrible. Yep. I said it. I so wish I could have an articulate conversation with him to try to uncover the basis of his horribleness, the motivation for his constantly being in Alex's face, bopping him on the head, trying to push him over. Mostly when Alex invades his bubble, but he quite often goes out of his way to get in Alex's bubble, too. And the meltdowns are constant. I have found myself wanting to yell at him. Contemplating a well-timed smack. When I am sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor with two crying babies, one on each leg, both pushing the other away as they also attempt to fish their little grabbing hands down my shirt in hopes of snagging a tender bit, the success of which creates a sensation worse than fingernails on a chalboard, I have felt a little bit of crazy pushing it's way through my composure. So far, I have kept the lid on the big pot of crazy, but I am feeling the need to let off just a little steam somehow. A really hard run, a day of creative frenzy, maybe just a night out with the girls.
Daniel was feeling a little inflexible before our five days in the hospital, but nothing like he has been since we got home. I can't even blame steroids, since we haven't been on them since last Tuesday. Now our lives have become an endless cycle of him being certain he knows what he should be doing, and me trying to convince him we don't need to make more fried eggs when his last ones are still uneaten, that we need to either go potty before naps or wear a diaper to bed, that we reeeaally don't need to have a fire in the fireplace all the time, that our mailbox key will only open one specific mailbox in the community lockbox, no matter how many times we try the key in other doors and then melt down when it doesn't work. And that Alex is allowed to eat. And sit in the high chair. And play with his own toys. And breathe Daniel's air. And share Daniel's parents.
I am placing all my eggs in one basket here, with taking a gentle child training approach. I know it is more work. Nobody ever said it was easier to raise a kid empathetically and with gentle respect than it is to raise one so fearful of his parents inflicting punative physical pain he dares not misbehave or challenge them. However, it rings true to me that the person I want him to be is one who has experienced respect and learned empathy, rather than someone who has been taught to emulate respect for others he may not truly feel, in order to escape painful consequences.
I also feel like perhaps I need to be a better doggie owner, because much of the misbehavior I see him dishing out in Alex's direction, I have modeled with Andy. Using my foot to push him away when his cold, wet nose is obnoxiously up in my grille, pulling him away from the table by his collar, blocking him with my knee, these are all things he has witnessed me doing with Andy. I really can't expect him to treat his brother any differently than he sees me treating others, human or not.
I have to admit this year has tried my early decisions about how to introduce my sweet, innocent babies to the world. We didn't start out thinking we would be "attachment" parents. It started when I became so exhausted waking to sit in a chair and feed my tiny newborn who could not cry loud enough from his nursery to wake me. We moved the crib into the bedroom. Then I discovered how lightly he was actually sleeping away from me- scarcely at all. No wonder he slept all day in my arms. He couldn't sleep at night unless he was next to me, my familiar smell and body rhythms soothing him. My arm wouldn't fit through the crib slats to reassure him all night with a gentle hand on his back, so we took the front rail off the crib and pushed it against the bed. Which meant I did not have to sit up to nurse him anymore, I could just pull him into bed and nurse him. Which meant we began dozing together like that. I was terrified of SIDS and smothering him in my sleep, so I began researching safe bedsharing. We put up a bed rail, filled the cracks between wall and mattress with blankets, and slipped a hard foam mat under the sheets on his side of the bed so the mattress was appropriately firm. I gave up my big fluffy pillow for a small, hard one that was only slightly bigger than my head. I wore warm clothes to bed so neither of us needed blankets. And just like that, the sleep deprivation stopped. We all slept better than babies. I found I had a sixth sense for when he was going to wake up, sleeping curled around him in a way I could not roll on him. His smells and sounds became as soothing to me as mine were to him. Within weeks, we were inextricable tangled up in each other's hearts and fairly incapable of functioning away from each other.
This can't be healthy, I thought. It's going to result in all sorts of psychological damage, from an Oedipus complex to extreme codependance. I googled and read all the parenting philosophies and whatever studies I could find, to discover kids raised with as much parental warmth and contact as they wanted, often specifically through cosleeping, statistically grew up to be the most empathetic and independent teens, and the most insulated from peer pressure. I read about sleep training and crying it out, which I had always thought was an essential part of parenting, but now made me feel overwhelmed. We couldn't imagine a better sleeping scenario than our existing one any more than I could imagine nine hours per night away from the other half of my heartbeat. We decided to let him choose when he was ready to transition to his own bed and big-boyhood.
As time went on, his attachment to me grew- the instant comfort of breastfeeding a huge part of life as he enountered it's struggles on his own terms. Again I googled all the opposing theories. And in the end, again decided to let him tell me when he was ready to let go of this particular form of comfort, not a moment before he felt ready to handle life without it. Knowing that, again, someday he will need it for the last time, and he will know without a doubt that he is strong enough to take on life without it. (Bobby says every post of mine talks about boobs in some way or another. I didn't realize this, but told him my readership is lucky a paragraph or two is all they get, considering that about 80 percent of my time, waking or sleeping, revolves around this part of my life and anatomy.)
This decision was tried mightily when I got pregnant again and the soreness made breastfeeding him excruciating. But to feel his tense, unhappy little body melt into mine and become content within seconds made the pain and crawling skin worth it. Pregnancy dried 'em up and I thought that would make him stop, but it didn't- he still needed the familiar comfort of nursing, dry or not, to help him make sense of the world. He nestled against my expanding belly all night as his little brother kicked against him, our two tangled-up heartbeats becoming three. When Alex was born, my milk came back in and Daniel had to re-learn how to nurse effectively, but he remembered eventually. I didn't even mess with trying to put Alex in the crib, putting him in my bed immediately, applying the same safe bedsharing principles I had to Daniel, and now slept curled around Alex with Daniel melted against my back. He started preferring his own bed, his crib again pushed against our bed with the rail removed, me sleeping close enough he could reach me, nurse at night, then crawl back to his own bed to sleep. He is doing it. Chosing independence on his own terms, at his own pace and comfort level. I am elated and also sad that we will never again be so close. Because my biggest job, as his mom, is to ready him to live without me. The heartbreaking irony of parenthood.
In making these two decisions, to bedshare and breastfeed as long as he wanted, the decision to practice gentle discipline was automatic. The research was not surprising to me- children who are hit by caregivers on a regular basis tend to be much more violent in nature, both as children and as adults. Children who are modeled empathy, gentleness and patience tend to display these characteristics. This is the challenge now. To remember I am a better person than one who yells and hits. To remember that yelling and hitting are damaging shortcuts that will not lead to better understanding him. To remember how much I don't see, and try to see it.
We have a video clip where Daniel and his dad are playing together, and suddenly, Daniel stops playing and starts to cry. To both of us in the moment, there was no reason for the crying. But watching the video reveals that he had repeatedly reached for Bobby's hand, and Bobby had not seen it. Daniel looked up at Bobby, and Bobby did not look down at him. The disappointment and betrayal were too much. There were tears.
My biggest goal right now is to see. To understand. I feel I am failing miserably. But also, not failing entirely, because he still melts into me to nurse away the frustrated meltdowns, and for a few minutes, he is still my uncomplicated baby. I can feel those precious moments coming to an end. As much as he loves to nurse and cuddle with me, he is down to only doing it when he is upset. Slowly, he will learn to calm himself without my help. Then he will learn to do a whole lot of other stuff on his own, and then one day I will realize he is all grown up. And I will be happy, but also so sad.
And right on his heels will be Alex declaring his independence. Soon I will have my body all to myself, Bobby and I will have our bed to ourselves, and we will lie in each other's arms as we often wish we could do now (without waiting for babies to fall asleep or someone sitting on our heads while wearing a soggy diaper) and reminisce about the time in our lives when one bed held an entire family. Including the dog.
Right now, I feel a little overwhelmed. There's no other way to say it. I am so thankful my plate does not include things like war, poverty, homelessness, hunger, or even being uninsured, but what it does have on it feels like a lot some days. The constant call for patience and understanding. The isolation when Bobby is gone. The feeling of delaying everything, of being in a holding pattern. Bobby has the stress of a job that is not working out, and needing to stay there just a little bit longer...always just a little bit longer. I am so over being adulty and responsible without a break. I don't know how to say this without it sounding like I'm complaining. At the same time, I know it's temporary, and we can survive a lot temporarily. This time is so, so short- the time our babies are in our bed, the time they spend nuzzled into me, clinging to me like I am their whole world (which I am, temporarily), the responsibility of being someone's whole world. This short time our toddler is fighting not only for increased independence, but also for his life. Not to mention the responsibility of making another person's medical decisions for them.
And for right now, feeling overwhelmed is just going to have to be how it is. My toddler has an immunity of practically zero (it's been a few days since I started this post, and in the meantime we've gotten another CBC, which quantifies his ANC at 31. If you've been reading this blog for long, you'll remember anything under 100 is critical, 750 is sort of the "out of the woods" number, and a normal person's ANC is 1,500-5,000.) Which means we are stuck here, hiding from the germy, germy public, and every person in and out of this house brings potential devastating bacteria and viruses in with them. So right now, I don't have the option to ask for anything that might involve contact with other people. Our grocery store makes deliveries if I need food and Bobby is gone. Even my parents are keeping their distance for the time being, and are dogsitting to keep Andy's dirty paws off the always freshly Cloroxed floors. Because nothing is more disturbing than pounding it into everyone's heads how important it is to wash their hands for 30 seconds after going to the bathroom or blowing their nose, only to turn around and witness the dog dragging his butthole across the carpet while water from the toilet drips off his chin.
And on that classy note, I should go referee. The littlest little has learned a very exciting new skill- ascending stairs. He'll do it as many times as I will carry him down to a safer elevation. The bigger little has decided it is his job to keep this from happening, by pushing littlest backward off the stairs he has just climbed, or grabbing his heels and dragging him down, or simply standing over him and beating on his skull for no apparent reason. Age appropriate behavior and displaying his need for control, his speech therapist called it. Nobody ever said this would be easy. I can't help but think, though...the last time he displayed such "age appropriate behavior" was when we was deathly ill and felt awful. I hope, and implore to whatever logic his undeveloped prefrontal cortex posesses, that it is the fact that he is eight months into an intense nine month chemo regimen, nauseated and exhausted and in pain, more than his age. Because either way, we have to wait it out and deal with it. But the end of his most intense chemo is closer than the end of this age.
And I do think Daniel has pain he isn't telling us about. Night before last, he organized an impromptu family dance session with the polar bears on "Numbers around the Globe", a show that incorporates dancing and counting. He did ok until he tried to jump, then collapsed crying. Every time he tried to skip on one leg, he cried. He is tired. We all are, but especially his little battleground of a body. We are ready for life to get back to normal. As we near maintenance, my heart breaks even harder for the kiddos who relapse and have to keep doing this, over and over and over. We plan to put this time in our rear view mirror. I can't imagine not being able to plan on a time when Daniel will be just fine.
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