Helping young girls to be good mothers is something I believe in

I became a mother at the age of 30. I was married to a wonderful man, owned a house and had an incredible support network with both our sets of parents here in town and willing to help. And, it was hard.

Since having Kiernan I have often wondered how single parents manage - I can't even fathom it. Now imagine being 15, or God forbid, 12. You aren't done high school, you very possibly don't have the baby's father in the picture and maybe your parents aren't the most supportive types either. I can't imagine how impossibly hard that must be, but I think I can see how things could go one of a couple of ways:

1) You fall into the "system." Maybe you're on welfare, maybe Children's Aid gets involved with the child, maybe a lot of bad things happen.
2) You are determined, for yourself and your child, to make life a success and you're willing to work hard to do it.

I got to take part in a United Way "Seeing is Believing" tour this week (along with Bob from Flacklife , Zoom from Knitnut and the Lauras who blog for the United Way), allowing people to get a glimpse into all the good that comes of the money that is donated to the United Way each year and then dispersed to agencies across the city. The stop I (with Juliette in tow) went to is the one girls who choose option 2 need to know about - the Youville Centre.

In their words, the Youville Centre "helps young single mothers provide a brighter future for themselves and their children. In a caring atmosphere, the mothers can complete their high school education while developing strong parenting skills. Their children benefit from a licensed early childhood development program in Youville's bright, child-friendly facility."

What I saw was a place where young mothers can go and feel warmth and caring and support as they finish their high school diplomas while knowing that their children are being cared for in a wonderful environment. Girls with babies as young as 8 weeks old return to school full time at the Youville Centre, while their children go to the childcare centre that is also in the building. You cannot imagine (well maybe you can if you are a mother) the admiration I have for these girls. When I had an 8 week old baby it took everything I had to get showered and dressed in a day! Girls who are so committed to making life work for them in difficult situations deserve the support of a place like the Youville Centre. (On an aside, it warmed my heart to know that many of the young moms nurse and that the Centre provides breast feeding support.)

The alumni of the program make them proud - successful women who have gone on to great things. Up to 80% of each graduating class go on to post-secondary education, and the Centre is able to offer many bursaries and scholarships to help them achieve this. As well, alumni can always go back for support. The Centre is there for them in subsequent times of need - helping them to find housing, jobs and general support.

The Youville Centre is a special place that does a lot of good, but they can always use more support. The girls have access to donated goods, so if you have any gently used adult clothing (which a teenager would wear!) or children's clothing they are always appreciated. They are also always looking for co-op opportunities for the students - particularly administrative - so if you know of anything they'd love to hear from you. If you know someone who could use their support, or know someone who knows someone, young girls need to know this is an option for them. Or donate to the United Way - they do great things.

United Way bit:
Now more than ever your community needs you. This has been a tough year for some of the most vulnerable people who live in Ottawa. More than ever, every dollar and every donor counts, and United Way is reaching out to everyone we can. If you do not belong to a workplace campaign, we invite you to Call.613-228-6756 or Click.www.unitedwayottawa.ca and GIVE. Know that your gift will make a difference.

A conversation with Quinn

Hey, how's it going?





So Quinn, let's see how those teeth are coming along.





You're very cute, you know.





Ok. C'mon, just a little peek. Please?





Ok ok, I'll stop trying to look at your teeth and you can go play.

On being a mom

There are days I wonder if my friendships will survive this time in my life - motherhood of young children.

In my "old life" I used to have an enormous social circle. I was with friends, talking to friends, IMing with friends all the time. And now, I have a hard time keeping in basic touch with so many of them, I feel horrible.

But right now, at this time in my life, my world is so consumed by being a mother that it is difficult for me to come up with topics that do not revolve around not sleeping, starting solids, cloth diapers vs disposable diapers, cry it out vs other methods of sleep training vs babies who just sleep on their own, breastfeeding, etc. And my single friends.... I'm sure they don't really care. Or if they do, they don't care for a whole evening's worth of these topics. And that's it, that's my world - nothing else is new with me. Nothing else interests me (other than an occasional book, or Twilight or something). My life is all about being a mom of little children. I'm too tired to be interesting or have thoughts of my own.

So, my single friends, I love you, I miss you, I hope you still care when I get through this stage. And to me, this explains why on a rare night that I went out without any of the kids I went and met a bunch of women I tweet with (Eric's response to my request to go out to go to a tweetup was "uhh.. why?") is because I spent the whole time talking about children who don't sleep, toilet training, cloth diapers, pregnancy, etc and I don't think anybody was secretly wishing we could talk about something else ;)

Dressing up as "Mommy when she was a baby"

There is an outfit from when I was a baby that I always knew I would, if I had a daughter, dress her up in and take photos to compare with the ones of me. We forgot until she was a little bit older than I was when she wore it (I was 2 months, she 6), and this isn't in the same pose as the photo that is my favourite baby picture, but I think I'm thinking you'll agree we have more than just the outfit in common ;)


It was hard trying to get Juliette to look serious for the photo to go along with the photos of me, because generally... she's all:

Snippets

- The babies will be 6 months old next week - on Friday the 13th. How can 6 months already have passed? Yet, I can hardly remember life without them.
- We are looking for a house. There is nothing I love or even much like in our price range. This sucks.
- We left Quinn in his room last night instead of Juliette. He was up every 2 hours. Today sucks.
- This weekend we start getting our house ready to sell - throwing out old paint cans, reshaking paint from when we first moved in, painting the front hall and one wall in the kitchen, and starting to pack are on the agenda. I bet little of that will get done. We are doomed.
- Teething continues. Quinn's teeth are coming out all funny with back teeth poking out. I fear this means his front teeth are all askew and causing teeth to come out out of order.
- Kiernan is 3 now, I should be taking him to the dentist I think. Also, doesn't sound fun.
- Kiernan is 3 now. Apparently that equals being a huge pain in the ass.
- Wow - this is depressing.
On a bright note:
- Tonight I'm going to my first tweetup and will have a beer. I am really looking forward to this. :)

I so sleepy

Good sleep for the twins is eluding us. And it is frustrating the hell out of me!

Overall, both of these guys are better sleepers than Kiernan was. Really they're much easier overall than Kiernan was, to the point that I still find they are less work together than Kiernan was alone. On most days anyways - the last little while has been more trying.

Our biggest issue is that despite all the "twins love to be together, they are so much calmer when they are together, they sleep better when they are near each other", we can't put them in the same room. If one cries, the other one wakes up. Every. time.

Some might think that's not so bad, then they're on the same schedule. Noooo... then the one who wakes more often wakes the one who is sleeping and we have two screaming babies to contend with at the same time.

So, we've split them up. But, to split them up, we have to have one in our room. Lately it's been Quinn since Juliette wakes up even more easily to our sounds. But now, on top of Quinn being in our room and me having to tip toe around in my own room to not wake him, he doesn't particularly like the playpen anymore so he's been sleeping in bed with us - something that isn't really comfortable for either Eric or I. Even if he is cute. :)



It frustrates me that both of the babies nap best in their own rooms in their cribs but that I can't put them down at the same time. It frustrates me that if I wanted to let the babies cry it back to sleep in the night I can't exactly do that with Quinn lying in bed with me! It frustrates me that I can't (won't) push them harder to fall asleep on their own right now because they are teething and as much as I believe in crying it out, I only feel it's ok if I firmly believe that the only reason they aren't sleeping is out of habit - not pain.

So most nights I am up 6-8 times with babies between 8pm and 7am. The Quinn times are less disruptive to my sleep since I just keep him with me and nurse him without fully waking up. We're house hunting now, for a 4 bedroom house in our price range (ha ha ha) which is a whole other story because I am unemployed so we're working with one income. Anyone have a nice 4 bedroom house in Orleans they'd like to sell me for cheap? zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The kid loves Halloween!

For Halloween this year Kiernan wore a suit that was Eric's when *he* was 3. I saw it and KNEW that Kiernan needed to wear it.

A lot of people had a hard time with what we told Kiernan he was going to be for Halloween "Daddy when he was three", wanting something a little more concrete as a name for his costume.

So we went with Lion Tamer, ring master, vaudevillian, gameshow host or used car salesman - we leave it up to you :)

Surprisingly nobody asked when we were trick or treating - although I heard him called little tux man and handsome a lot. And our neighbour asked Kiernan to come back and marry her when he was older, but he had to explain that when he was older (4) he was going to go to school so unfortunately he wouldn't be available ;)

We had 3 skeletons for the day, but Kiernan refused to pose in this shot much to my dismay ;) These two were pretty cute though.

and stayed awake in the stroller far longer than I expected watching all the kids and lights and so on.


Kiernan and Eric finally came home about 45 minutes after I gave in and came home with the twins, and only because he had to pee and Eric told him they'd been to ALL the houses in the neighbourhood.

The loot - 20 bags of chips and lots of full of dairy chocolate ;) Imagine the loot we'll have next year with 3 kids!!

Wordless Wednesday: Look what I found!

Sorry about the snotty nose. I think my cold is almost gone though!

Starting solids

In a desperate attempt for anything that will convince these babies they aren't hungry 3 times every night, along with a scoff from the pediatrician at having to wait until 6 months to start solids, we decided that at 5 months old these guys could try out some rice cereal.

Have you tried rice cereal before? It's not the tastiest thing I've ever had, but babies haven't had a lot of variety so they don't have much to go on. Guess what? They don't think it's all that great either ;) I think my favourite part of starting solids has to be the hilarious facial expressions that are all at once "ew, gross!" and "WTF!?" :)

Maybe they'll like apple sauce and sweet potato better.




This is my favourite photo of all - the expression is priceless!

Very twinny of them

In most ways, Juliette and Quinn are not all the typical things that I was told about twins. Like my favourite "they'll be calmer when they sleep together. Keep them in the same room, in fact, in the same bed". HA HA HA! Good one!

But in one way they've been similar, they seem to be hitting the milestones pretty much at the same time. Quinn smiled at 5 weeks, Juliette 2 days later. And this week Quinn rolled, and two days later? Juliette. Considering they seem so different, focus on different things, have completely different body types and control of their bodies - I did not expect it!

So now our new game is... rescuing babies who are stranded on their bellies. Sigh. How long until they learn to roll back? Do I prefer having to turn them back over or the potential of them becoming mobile rolling pins? Either is better than the teething that is starting :P

What a beautiful Fall day

Shouldn't this be easier for me since I *AM* a girl?

I am having issues with some of Juliette's clothing - it confuses me!! I've given Eric a hard time over the years for putting Kiernan and Quinn's clothing on backwards (buttons at the back or buttons at the front for babies?) and suddenly I'm looking at girly clothing and I can't decide which is the front and which is the back!! The clues are confusing so I've taken some photos of one of the most perplexing case in J's wardrobe - maybe you can help me out.

Overalls... typically I imagine that they have two buttons at the front at the top where you do the straps up. Right? And pockets on the back on the tush? Do these rules still apply if the tag is on the side where the straps attach? And if there are buttons on what I would think was the back? Do I have this on her backwards? I think I've done it both ways and I can't decide!!


UPDATED: I turned it around because the consensus seemed to be I had them on backwards. I still feel like the 3 buttons up the back looks weird and don't understand why the tag would be on the front...

Backwards or forwards - these guys are getting cuter and cuter each day -despite the dripping with spit and slightly rashy faces that comes with pre-teething ;)

4 months old

My poor blog - I really have been neglecting it. And I know I'm going to regret it because lately I've been counting on my blog to have all kinds of information about Kiernan in his first year. And if I'm disappointed I missed out on weights and stories for him, I'm going to be really disappointed on what I've kept track of for the twins. :P

So here is a quick update for posterity.

At their four month appointments Juliette weighed 12 lbs 13 oz and Quinn weighed 15 lbs 13 oz. Three pounds bigger! And let me tell you - you can feel it!!

Quinn is wearing all kinds of clothing I had Kiernan in when he was walking, and I looked back and Kiernan was 18 lbs when he started walking so it's not shocking. I am very curious to see if Quinn continues being so much bigger than his brother always has been.

Juliette is the one who has more control over her body - not shocking to me since Q has so much more weight to heft around. She holds herself very similarly to Kiernan and has the same kind of straight posture. She holds herself up well on her arms, scootches forward if you leave her on her tummy for long, and can roll off her tummy to her back quite easily.

Both babies are pivoting like crazy and I often find them in a different spot than where I left them on the floor. So ya, I guess I can't leave them in the middle of a disaster zone anymore and go off for a pee and expect safety ;)

Quinn likes to sing. I was going to call it opera but Grandpapa seems to think that's a bit too generous. What do you think?


Both babies are extremely alert and happy babies. It still astounds me that I can leave them on the floor, playmat, exersaucer, etc for lengthy periods of time and just have them be content. Although I am often tired, overall I still maintain that these two babies are less work than Kiernan was on his own. That being said, I find myself a lot more housebound because they nap better and nap best at home. Also, I can't rely on them falling asleep in the car or stroller the way Kiernan did and therefore can't justify the outings quite as easily.

Nights are a whole other issue that you may find out about if I get around to blogging it ;) Hopefully I will. It involves me making an appointment with a realtor though. hehe.

And lastly, here is a photo of me with the 3 kiddos that I really like. It's not necessarily a fab photos of any of the children, but it represents how I view myself at this time in my life (which I'm happy with)

Being three

Kiernan turned 3 just over a week ago - did I even blog about it or did I forget?

Either way, three he turned and suddenly he's different. He's doing all kinds of things that are so "big boy" and are a blend of hilarious, cute, and/or downright irritating.

Bed time is now hit or miss. He's decided he's not tired at bedtime and would like to stay up later. And he's getting creative. After his usual bedtime routine as we try to leave we get a lot of
"mommy! mommy! wait wait wait!"
"yes Kiernan?"
"what goes up and down?"
"I need a drink of water"
"I want you to sleep with me!" (which I would actually do sometimes if it EVER worked. But it's just an excuse to get someone to lie down with him so he can climb over them, have them tell him stories and chat with)
"I love you!" (total points there for using the sentimental/make mom mushy card)

He's also negotiating and deal making. "If I eat two bites of dinner, I'm going to get to play games on mommy's computer"
Oh really? Who offered up this deal? ;)

And, especially with his new hair cut, he just looks older. Even as he's cracking jokes.

"okkk... I'm looking at you... take my picture...!"

Won't be long until they can share the same clothing!

Kiernan's not a big guy. Never has been and I think will likely continue to be on the small side for quite awhile until I'm sure he'll suddenly shoot up like a weed as I'm told his father and grandfather did. But I'm used to small guys. I'm used to clothing fitting for a year or longer. I'm used to most sizing on clothing being relatively accurate if not big for Kiernan. And Quinn... is not a little guy. According to the last time he got measured he's not a BIG guy (although I can't wait to find out what he weighs at his next appointment) but he's not at all like Kiernan. And so I'm having to pull out clothing that Kiernan wore way later for Q. Like later as in when he was walking and talking (which he did early, but still).
Here is a photo of Kiernan at 11 months old.

Quinn at 4 months old. A bit big, but certainly not outrageously.

I should start putting Juliette in Kiernan's old stuff just to get a better perspective ;)

(know what else is different? I took that photo because Quinn fell asleep in that chair by himself, cuz he was tired. By himself. Kiernan did that ONCE (and he was in my arms, I just wasn't bouncing) until he was over 1!)

The landfills thank you Kiernan

I like to think of Kiernan as my little genius. He walked early, he talked early, he's been impressing everyone since the getgo - that's my boy! When we finally sleep trained, things turned over in less than a week. When we moved him to his big boy room it was like flipping a switch. So I was fairly confident that when we started to potty train it would be smooth sailing. We started last February and it turned out.... Kiernan wasn't interested in potty training.
Sure, if you sat him on the potty every ten minutes, he'd pee for you. But that's not being potty trained, that's peeing on command. If he happened to feel like peeing when you hadn't thought to stick him on the potty then there wasn't going to be any effort to hold back. And pooping... well, Kiernan liked to poop in bed and was perfectly happy to wait until he had a diaper on at nap or bed time. We gave it a good solid try and then decided he just wasn't ready and went back to diapers.
I wasn't willing to start the process again when we were in the middle of new babies so nothing really happened on the potty training front again until July and then daycare really went gung ho with him and we were happy to work on it at home too.
Again, peeing on command was no problem. And we could even ask him every hour instead of every ten minutes, but he never ASKED to go pee. We were just catching him often enough that he generally wasn't peeing out. And the pooping... saving it for diapers still. This went on for weeks and then daycare managed to get him to poop in the potty and that was a great first step in the right direction. And then suddenly, a week and a half ago, it seems like the switch flipped! All of sudden it's working! We've been accident free in over a week! He asks to go pee whenever he needs to. Pooping is no longer an issue - in fact he's pretty gung ho on the whole thing.
We definitely tried to bribe him over the course of the whole process and it helped him get excited once he was really ready, but before that nothing we could offer him did it. He needed to decide on his own although we definitely all shoved him hard in the right direction to that decision :)
It's so nice to be down to only 2 kids in diapers. I dream of a day when I don't have to change so many bums any more ;)

*knock on wood*

Give me your best shot #3

Two knights hiding in the wilds of the cottage.

Another Peekaboo Beans cutie

My cutie in HIS Peekaboo Beans. (I'll post real content again soon. I think. I've got potty training updates and exciting things like that to talk about.)

Cutie in her Peekaboo Beans

I've always loved Peekaboo Beans and now I have 3 kids to dress in it. Here is Juliette in her very cute, if slightly large, new romper.

Give me your best shot #2

Such a peaceful shot. Too bad the thumb sucking seems to be waking her up more often than keeping her calm and asleep. But that's a different post ;)

Sleep training - an update

As usual, nothing goes smoothly without a bunch of changes to the plans to try to make things actually work for us. We had almost two weeks of improvement after I started the last plan, but then things went downhill. And really, I was nursing them to sleep if they'd let me and a lot of the time, they were letting me.

Then we had a couple of bad attempts, where it would have worked had they been on their own, but they weren't and they were waking each other up. SO FRUSTRATING!

We went and got the book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy twins, but I have to admit I suck at reading these kinds of books. I try to skim it to find the info I need without reading the whole thing - I've never been good at reading the instructions for something ;)

The book seemed to go on and on about how the non sleeping twin likely wouldn't disturb the good sleeper. *holding hand up* What happens when neither one sleep dude??!

So, plan B is to go back to plan A but to do it one at a time. Last night Quinn fell asleep all on his own at bedtime, fussed for awhile but only about 1/2 an hour around 10:30, nursed back to sleep at 2:30am and then slept through to 6am. That was the best night we've had in weeks! We then brought Juliette into our room and she slept with us and woke at 10:30, 2, 4 and 6:30. A bit more than Quinn - but not bad! And Quinn is napping in his crib again now!

The challenge will be what we do once Quinn is trained and we want to work on Juliette. Do we take Quinn out of the room for that time? Will that muck up all the work we did? I have a hard time believe he'll be able to sleep through Juliette's crying - she's loud!

Now, I need to figure out what I'm doing wrong that my body hurts after sleeping in my bed most of the night instead of a chair. I'm obviously sleeping in a bad position and/or our mattress isn't great.

Give me your best shot #1

Big week around here - started using the exersaucer and jumperoo. They still are a bit perplexed by the idea but aren't unhappy and it's nice to have something to get them to do when they're awake other than the playmat.

Sleep training has begun

The babies turned three months old this week and during one middle of the night waking that ended in a "no, we're both awake and we don't want to go to sleep again ha ha ha ha ha ha" at 3am I came downstairs and plopped each baby into a swing and googled "how to sleep train twins".

Because after complaining about feeling guilty about nursing and it hurting them, I wondered if I was doing the reverse thing I'd done with Kiernan. When Kiernan was 3 months old (ish) I had had enough of the constant night wakings and decided to sleep train, blaming myself for instilling and encouraging bad habits. It turned out the major problem was due to my milk and him getting all kinds of dairy and soy that was hurting his tummy, plus untreated reflux. This time, my instinct was to blame myself and my milk - but upon further thought I realized that they're just waking up and wanted to nurse and be held. They aren't screaming and wailing, they aren't acting like they're in pain, they aren't pulling on and off the breast.

So we're sleep training - in a semi serious kind of way. If they fall asleep nursing then I'm happy to let them do that. I'm not going to make sure they go down drowsy but awake. If, however, they don't fall asleep nursing, I'm putting them down drowsy and letting them cry for 5-10 minutes. Then I go in, calm them down, get them almost asleep again and put them down and let them cry 10-15 minutes. Generally they've fallen asleep by then. If they wake up from a nap too soon, I will let them cry for 5-10 minutes also (which they almost never do before falling asleep again). If they don't want to go back to sleep at night after being fed, they go into their crib wide awake with the same procedure for going in to them (I do still feed them in the night - I'm not trying to get them sleeping the whole night through or anything). But we're barely having to go in. They're falling asleep super quickly without that much of a fuss. I've slept more in my bed since we've started than I had in weeks - it's nice.

A lot of people have a really hard time with cry it out, and I totally understand. But it took us until Kiernan was 14 months old to do it and it was HARD. He kept standing up, and he was indignant. He knew enough to be pissed at us. But once it worked, it worked SO well. He went to bed so easily, slept better and it only continued to improve. Before that it was taking us hours to get him down at night - it was ridiculous.

This time, the babies are giving is so much faster and with less fuss. (The stuff I found indicated that you should just do the training at the same time and they learn to ignore each other's crying. Quinn definitely doesn't care if Juliette yells, but Juliette doesn't sleep through Quinn's quite as well even though she's the louder one) And from experience I really feel that babies who know how to fall asleep on their own are happier babies, so it's a favour not only to me but to them. Hopefully we keep heading in the right direction!

Some gorgeous (if I do say so myself) 3 month old bebes

Tweet tweet

I think that I have been caught in a fog for the last year. From almost the moment I got pregnant with twins until the veil has started to lift in the last few weeks I have felt slightly apathetic about a lot of things - including my blog, new media, well... almost everything. It sucked and I think might have been worse than I realized until I started to see myself come to life again.

I'm still not completely there - hell, I'm too tired to be. BUT, I feel better than I have in a long time, and inclined to do more and put more effort into things than I have in a long time. And it feels good.

I'm blogging more, I'm rediscovering twitter (follow me please! I need more people to talk to ;), I got my iphone and I'm getting more done around the house and contemplating having the energy to get out of the house to do things in real life soon too. MAGICAL!

****

Oh, and enter our Apples'n'Oranges contest too! Peekaboo Beans is my favourite stuff to put my kids in!

Breastfeeding and intolerances : when it doesn't always feel like breast is best

It was breastfeeding awareness week last week (I'm running a bit late on this post) and I read some great posts both on breastfeeding and also on bottle feeding and wanted to write about the unique challenges of my experiences.

My mother breastfed my sister and I longer than most. I was over two when I was weaned and my sister was just under two I believe. As a result, it was a natural assumption for me that I would nurse my children - it never occurred to me to do otherwise. That being said, I never had an aversion to the idea of using some formula, as long as it wasn't compromising nursing.

My first son was 10 days old when my mother suggested that perhaps a reason he was up all night every night screaming was a dairy intolerance. My father had been hospitalized as an infant for cow's milk protein intolerance so there was no harm in trying. I stopped eating cheese, stopped drinking milk, and there was an immediate improvement. Kiernan was obviously also milk protein intolerant. But as time went on, things got progressively worse and worse - by three months old he was up every half an hour all night long and Eric and I were on the verge of losing it. A few specialists later and we discovered that A) He was not only cow's milk protein intolerant but also soy protein intolerant and B) Cutting out milk and cheese wasn't enough, I needed to start reading the ingredients on everything I ate if I wanted to cut out what was hurting his tummy. I don't know if you realize how much food has either soy or milk protein in it, but let me tell you, it's a lot more than I knew before I started this process. C) He also suffered from acid reflux and started taking prevacid.

Kiernan started sleeping better after I cut these foods out, but it was never perfect. I often made mistakes, and sometimes he just seemed in distress when I was sure I hadn't eaten anything offending.

I knew that when I had any subsequent children I would cut out dairy and soy from the start to make sure that we reverse introduced any possible problematic foods. I stopped eating all dairy and soy about 5 weeks before the twins were born in order to make sure it was all out of my system.

I think part of my problem is that I have babies with sensitive tummies. All three of them have had reflux, all three of them wake up a lot more than most babies I know. And now, with twins, I have double the wakings and double the guilt. Every time they are overly gassy, or wake up more in the night I immediately wonder what I've eaten that has set it off.

These are the things that weigh on me:

* Am I doing them more harm than good. I was in a wedding on the weekend and so the babies had a LOT more formula than usual. They slept a lot better. Is it because I need to be cutting more out of my diet, or is it because I had a glass of wine both evenings? ;)
* I keep wondering if I should be cutting out more and if I can handle cutting out more. Plus, we never proved dairy and soy are actually an issue (although I believe they are). The thought of trying to figure it out makes me even more weary than I already am, I don't know if I can do it.
* I cannot seem to stay awake when I'm nursing in the night. As hard as I try, I fall asleep. I think this leads to innefficient feeds because the babies also fall asleep and I can't coax them to continue, and then they wake up again far sooner than they would have because they didn't have a full feed. Even when Eric sets his alarm to keep coming in and getting me waking me up, we don't have improvement, and the time we tried to have eric stay with me to keep me awake and efficient, it also woke the babies up completely and then they wouldn't go back down for a couple of hours. This means I almost never sleep in a bed but instead sitting up. I describe how I feel on most mornings as feeling like I have been kicked in the head repeatedly all night. It sucks.
* I just keep asking myself if they would be better off on formula. Part of me wouldn't want to do it because nursing is so much cheaper and, it seems to me, less of a hassle. Would they feel better? Or do they not even care that they wake up a lot. They DO seem less fussy than they were before they went on the nexium for their reflux.

And I haven't even touched on the fact that I'm almost exclusively nursing TWINS. With REFLUX. I'm really tired ;)

Not so perfect timing

This post is part of the Carnival of Maternity Leave over at Strocel.com. Visit http://www.strocel.com/maternity-leave for more posts on maternity leave from August 3 - 15, 2009.


It was pretty much a year ago exactly that I left my job of five years. I left because I wasn't happy there anymore (REALLY not happy) and I left because I decided to pursue a different dream - expanding my online business and opening a retail location.

I got pregnant within a month of opening the store, and yes, that was planned. I believed that I could run a business with a newborn - after a bit of a break I could bring him/her with me to the store - after all, it was MY business and I had heard of many other moms doing it.

Than I found out it was twins and I knew I couldn't do it - bringing two babies everywhere I went and trying to work no longer sounded manageable. (For that, and several other reasons including my business partner also getting pregnant and the whole economy crashing things, we closed the retail location, which was a temporary one to begin with, and went back to the online model only for the time being.) That's when I realized I was in a bit of a pickle. I had just quit my permanent job that not only would have provided me the eligibility for maternity leave EI, but a 5 month top up.

Do you know what you get for maternity leave as a business owner? Even if the business has yet to become profitable? Nothing, nada, RIEN!

I then spent the next few months trying to earn enough insurable hours to make SOME EI (although I still haven't gotten through the hassle of seeing if I'm actually eligible and how little money they're going to give me because it's so complicated). Thank goodness my husband is making enough money to get us by at the moment. Thank goodness we have supportive families who would never let us get into a horrible situation and thank goodness we have savings and good credit.

But I really think it sucks. I worked MANY hours in the store (paying myself minimum wage) and I can't claim any of it towards the national maternity leave benefits. How is that fair?

I think we are very lucky to live in Canada where we have such great maternity/parental leave options. That being said, there are definitely some flaws when it comes to people who are self-employed, and also for the parents of multiples.