Light and Tired

I've always loved summertime. I love the long, sunny days and the deliciously warm weather; I love that the sun moves so slowly and illuminates our garden and our porch and our home long into the evening. I love feeling really alive as we move and sweat and play in this time that rejuvenates us for the other learning-and-teaching-and-cold(er) times. But this summer, so far, I've struggled with loving the light and really wanting to crawl into a hole of complete and utter darkness so I can sleep.

One of the reasons is that the boys can't sleep when it's so light out. So their schedules have been wonky. Both have also started cutting back on naps in the afternoon, much to my chagrin. P doesn't sleep much at all then and S only needs an hour or so. Even with quiet time in place, it's just not the same for me as when they're unconsciously slumbering. So I get less rest during the day.

The bigger reason is that C's started moving, which means that she's growing and needier now than she was a few months ago. She needs more attention and she needs more food. The attention part is okay. After all, older siblings are great for that; plus, babies learning about the world around them are ir-re-sis-table. The harder part is the food part. I'm having trouble getting her to adapt to a sippy cup; I should have familiarized her with a bottle months ago and didn't do it. And I can't remember what I did with S, who didn't get a bottle until he was about six months old. I only remember that it wasn't much work to get him used to a bottle and then to formula. There's a reason why he's been called "the trash can" by certain relatives.

I've wanted to breastfeed all of our children for at least a year, but I've hit about the six-month-mark with all of them and hit energy and weight bottom: that is, my energy is suddenly, dramatically reduced and my weight bottoms out to the absolute lowest I am comfortable with. The weight thing looks like a perk to most people; I've been at my pre-pregnancy weight two weeks postpartum without doing anything but breastfeed and gradually lose another ten pounds for the next six months as I've breastfed the babes. I admit that this is a phenomenon that probably rankles most women in the United States who struggle to lose extra weight. My midwife has told me before that I'm one of the few patients she's ever had that she honestly tells to eat a big bowl of ice cream every night. I've tried this, and eating more protein, but it's difficult for me to eat when I don't feel hungry. It prolongs my ability to breastfeed but not enough to overcome my biological quirkiness, i.e. that while most people have a metabolism that runs like a lawn mower engine, mine runs like the generator on an aircraft carrier. Despite all the perks this brings, I can say that having an extremely high metabolism and controlled appetite has one downside, and that is that physically, my lightness as a milk maker can't sustain my children's growth. In other words, I don't have any extra reserves that can be converted to calories.

You can't see it, but the mom is drooling here. Because she's sitting down. Which means she's sleeping.

I think I'm finally coming to terms with this. I mean, I don't feel as guilty as I did with P that I'm not going to make it to C's first birthday exclusively breastfeeding her. I'm thankful that I've made it as long as I have and that C is healthy. And though formula makes me shudder--it looks and smells gross to me--millions, if not billions (myself included) lived off the stuff and weren't adversely affected.

So now we're in the pre-weaning phase, and I'm just tired all the time. This is different from the first weeks after baby. That's a "What's my name?" kind of fatigue, particularly with the first, that looks like a fog in retrospect. This is more of a "running the last third of a marathon" kind of fatigue, where you can't quite see the end and only know you just have to keep on going. This is more difficult for me to weather, in part because of the early morning tutoring thing (though I've thankfully had a break from this in the last six weeks) and in part because in the last month I've flown solo for about two weeks while Papa has been gone to various and sundry conventions and gatherings. I could complain about this, but that's just silly and not helpful. Plus, in a few months, this will all be as a dream because we'll be well into different phases with the kids. Ah, the blessings of short-term memory coupled with parenting.  

In the meantime, though, I pray that C begins to love the cup, takes to formula, and thus leaves me with a few six or seven-hour stretches of slumber without interruption. Luckily, we've still got quite a few long, sunshiney days left to us this year for me to savor, with or without sleep. We've still got hours and hours to play outside, to sweat and run, to swim and splash and soak in the rays. And most of all, we Olsons have been given all we need to support these bodies and lives. We have each other and we have Jesus, so despite the fatigue, we've got plentiful Light and life. What blessings! And just thinking about that gives me a boost of energy.