More of the Unexpected

Before V came along, I could never have imagined how sweet and fun she is. I would never have been able to know how she loves to connect with giant hugs and kisses, how she clicks her tongue to try to get me to play noise games with her, or how she clucks and squeals with excitement when she sees any animal. Before they are born, our children are always a mystery and getting to know them is a wonderful surprise.

Yet, as the mother of two other girls, I thought I knew a few things about parenting. Okay, I will confess. I thought I was getting pretty good at it. Ah, hubris is always the beginning of an interesting story.

I thought that if I did the same things that I had learned through parenting my two other kids, everything would work out. I would cosleep without the illusion that a crib would ever be part of our lives (we sold it while I was pregnant!). I would wear my baby in the variety of slings and carriers that I have collected for every occasion. I would be an emotion-coaching, attachment-parenting, homeschooling uber-mama.

After all, I had a first child who was a lot of work for me. I struggled with decisions about how to parent, sleep, breastfeeding, discipline, and educational choices. My second child was certainly plenty of work, but many things were easier. Breastfeeding worked marvelously. She slept though the night, swaddled in a little bundle. She is happily homeschooling and responds for the most part to my new and improved (and since I am always learning, always new and improving) methods of discipline. The kids were getting along well. We had our education and social routines in place. Things were groovy. What did I have to fear by adding another child?

Ha! The gods laughed at me by giving us the gift of a beautiful, healthy, sweet baby who cried from midnight to 6 a.m. for several weeks. I failed to produce enough milk and many, many challenges flowed from that problem. Even now, no matter how cute she is, she nurses an awful lot at night and I can't remember my last decent night of sleep. She wants up and down from the backpack several times each quarter hour. And she is currently enjoying one of my least favorite aspects of her development - the point and scream. She yells, "THAT!" which is her way of demanding whatever strikes her fancy. While I am blessed with a verbal, communicative, and persistent child, it means that she keeps screaming at me even when I calmly explain why she can't have the razor blades and poison and try to distract her. And this again falls under the proverbial category of "not what I expected."