One Year from Now - Will I Sleep?

I've had so many things I've wanted to post about since my last post but the last few months have left little spare time in which to do so for many reasons.

First, I started back in my PhD program (in Applied Anthropology) this semester, taking one course, which I was able to make an independent study, meaning I worked with my advisor to create readings and assignments just for me on a specific topic of my choosing.  

Evie enjoying time on campus.  I often have to take either her or both girls to meeting with my advisor (who luckily is totally cool with it).  This is one of our babysitters who is now a professor at USF.

I've decided to shift my academic focus to parenting rather than educational anthropology (although my path through that sub-field was certainly valuable and played a part in leading me this way). I'm finally very excited about what I'm doing and feel much more secure in this area.  I also feel like it will be (and has already been) so valuable to our family as we're raising young children. My research for this semester has been very broad, including child-rearing practices of hunter-gatherer and small farming societies across many cultures, the biological development of maternal instincts (and all of the complexity that entails), the historical development of both childhood and motherhood, the reality of class differences in America and the role parenting plays in reproducing them, and the contradictions within the modern attachment parenting movement, to name a few.  I've wanted to devour all of these readings, and I keep finding more that are so interesting.  I've been frustrated by my lack of solid blocks of time in which to study and write, but I've made an effort to have a babysitter regularly once or twice a week (Evie's former nanny), and that has helped a lot. It took me a while to be okay with this and not feel guilty (since I should be able to "do it all on my own," right?), but the more I've read about parenting historically and cross-culturally, the more I  feel like the position of the modern, western stay-at-home mom (SAHM) is very strange and perhaps, "unnatural". Child-rearing is one thing that may be considered "natural" for mothers (and even that is debatable) but to do it alone without doing any other kind of work and without multiple people helping is a rarity historically and cross-culturally. There seems to be a move away in some sectors of society from trying to "have it all" as working moms to just focusing on parenting and cramming more into that work than ever before. At any rate, you can likely see a bit of my perspective on this matter, and yes, my personal experience is heavily informing my research and work, but I think that's okay. 

How sleep happens sometimes.

Aside from starting back in grad school, Eleanora has still been waking up a lot over night and not napping much or well during the day. I thought that by now she would be more regular, but not so. She's in that awful stage where she doesn't want to do two semi-long naps on the morning and afternoon, but she's not quite ready for one long nap in the middle of the day, so we still get lots of cat naps and car naps and cranky wake-ups.  If I hold her or lie down with her, she'll usually sleep better, but I can't always do that with Evie.  However, Evie has (ironically) been taking wonderful, regular naps most days of the week.  She does a solid 1.5-2 hour nap almost every day, and I really thought she'd be done by now.  So it's wonderful when Eleanora does even a half hour during Evie's nap (which is often all she'll do), because I get at least a tiny break.  But often they're on complete opposite schedules, and those days are hard. Then at night, we put both girls in their room together and we're lucky if Eleanora stays down for 3 hours.  Then it's just a matter of how many times I want to go in the room to nurse her back to sleep and put her in her crib versus just bringing her in our bed (hint: she is in our bed almost every single night by midnight and stays there until she wakes up for good). I know many people would think there is something wrong with this sleep pattern, and trust me, I can't wait until we're past it. But if I've understood anything better through my research this semester, it's that it is very uncommon to NOT co-sleep with your babies, and parents from many other societies think it is cruel to let babies and toddlers sleep alone (or make them). Also, I know it's common for breastfed babies especially to wake up multiple times per night.  I knew this with Evie, but she slept longer stretches and only woke up 1-3 times per night at this age whereas Eleanora will probably wake up like 5 times. We even tried a very gentle form of night weaning recently, but it sort of went out the window when Eleanora turned one and there was a lot going on, and then she got a cold, and I didn't want to do it then, etc. So who knows when this will be better, but I'm going to try to visualize better sleep a lot and look forward to a year from now when it will hopefully be much better. 

Everyone gets in on the fun (this was on vacation in Ohio).

My friend Sarah recently wrote in her blog about the thing that most prevented her from feeling ready to have another child in her family, and she said it was the sleep deprivation. Not the financial cost, not all the feeding and diapering issues, not balancing the different schedules, but the lack of sleep. And I completely agree.  For me, it's also the physical toll that pregnancy and childbirth take on your body, but lack of sleep is a big part of why that feels so hard. And it is almost terrifying to think of doing that all over again (of course, I'm not even close to being "out of the dark" on this one yet, but I still dare to think about it sometimes). So I'm not going there yet, but to put it in perspective, I'd have to willingly accept that for possibly up to 2 years, sleep will be terrible. No napping when I need to, no long blocks of sleep at night, and perhaps no real rest when I'm sick.

I have to say, though, that I am so lucky that Gabe has a job that is pretty flexible and more importantly, that he sees it as important to sometimes use his sick days when the girls are sick and I'm behind on life or to work from home to help me with an appointment or something. He will likely even adjust his schedule a bit once a week next semester so I can take a class I need. And I often feel guilty when he does things like this, but if this is not part of a vision for a more family-friendly, equality-driven society, then what is?

Celebrating at Eleanora's birthday.

We have also had some other general life issues that have caused more busy-ness than usual. Eleanora turned one in October (yay!), followed in quick succession by my dad's birthday, my shared birthday with Lee, a family vacation to Ohio (which included Halloween), our niece's birthday in Orlando, getting our floors replaced (which meant we had to leave the house for 2 days), and having both girls get sick. And now Thanksgiving is almost here! 

This time of year is so busy, but we are also celebrating so much and trying to take it all in. More sleep is definitely my biggest wish right now, but soon enough, I think it will happen, and all the while Eleanora will become less and less a baby and Evie will keep getting bigger and more mature, and I'll get busier with school and possibly work, and I'll just have to be careful what I wish for.