Hello! My name is Maureen. I am 33, and dh Mark is 36. We have been married for 8 years, and we have 4 children: Cameron (only answers to Cam now) is 6, Kyle is 5, Keira is 3 and Karli is 5 months.
The name HN is something I never gave much thought about, until a few days ago when I found this board. I believe that 2 of my 4 are HN. Cam and Karli.
Cam: like most of you, it's hard to recall those early years without crying. Other than 3 months of morning sickness, pregnancy was great, and labour was 6 hrs long. No complaints here. Cameron came out quiet (I had Nubaine in labour), but the amazing thing was that on my belly, just minutes after birth, he looked at me, then he lifted his head, bobbed it up and down a few times and turned it, to look at the doctor! That should have been my first clue that this baby was going to be a goer and a mover. lol
Okay, I won't go into my 6 weeks of trying to nurse (the pain, blisters, syringe-feeding, lactation consultants, tube-feeding, etc, etc, - It was a nightmare and a devastation to me that I could not nurse my baby!), so suffice it to say that at 6 weeks, I put him on the bottle. So, needless to say, the first 6 weeks, that poor baby did nothing but cry. And I really mean nothing - he surely didn't sleep, I remember that all too well.
Cameron needed me or my dh totally and constantly. Not just holding him - we had to STAND up, while holding him. If he fell asleep in the snuggli, and we tried to slowly sit down - WAAAAAHHHH! - until we quickly shot to our feet! We wore that snuggli out completely! But the worst thing was that I was VERY unprepared for the crying (his AND mine) and the lack of sleep. Dh reached a point, when Cam was about 3 months old, that he couldn't stand the crying anymore, so all night, dh would sleep in our nice Queen sized bed, and I would go to the other small room, and walk Cameron. Just walk and walk in circles. Until then, I was walking the length of the house, but dh vetoed that, with a, "Can't you shut that thing up!" I literally walked all night. By morning, Cam would sometimes fall asleep around 8 am. So I tried to sleep then too. But my cat would sense that I was sleeping, and she would begin howling in the kitchen - this would wake up Cam. I had fantasies of ringing her little neck and choking the life out of her. I hated everyone and everything that stood in the way of my getting some sleep! I had dh disconnect the doorbell, and the ringer of the phone was always turned off. I hated the birds for singing in the morning...you get the point.
Cam would sleep for 10 minutes here, 1/2 hr there. This went on, 24 hrs a day with his total daily sleep equalling between 3 and 6 hrs (per 24!) This went on until he was 8 months old.
I was still greiving that I could not nurse, so when "Aunt Flo" showed up when Cameron was 4 months old, I wanted to try for another. Mark figured that would take years, so he was all for it, but *bang* right away. I was happy to be pregnant, but the fatigue was unbelievable.
I remember when Kyle ( he DID nurse!!) was born, Cameron was almost 14 months old. I would just sit down to nurse, Cameron would take one look at me, grin, and proceed to climb onto the chair, then the table, then "sing" and do the cha-cha on the table! I would try to stay calm, and say, "Sit down! Climb down now!" but he would dance until I went to get him. Then I'd try to nurse Kyle again, and he would run for the changetable, climb up, reach up onto the shelf, grab the tube of Canestan Cream and bite into it! I spent more time NOT nursing Kyle, than nursing him. It was the single-most hardest time in my life! I thought that I would go insane. I have no family here (I live in Ontario, Canada), and no one understood how TIRED and mentally exhausted I really was.
I quit work when I was supposed to return, when Kyle was 6 months old.
Time passed, and things got better (and we invested in baby gates - dh had to homemake child locks, because Cam had those figured out on day one of buying them).
Baby #3 came when Kyle was 21 months, and she was a DREAM baby - still is, at age three.
Then, May 8th of this year, we had Karli. She was a homebirth with Midwives and it was the most EXCELLENT experience of my life! Nursing failed again, but I was okay with it. The day she turned 3 weeks old, she started to cry...and she didn't stop until 15 weeks old. I felt that I had "ruined" our nice family by wanting another baby. I felt guilty for feeling that, but our house became a war zone! No one could hear anyone over all Karli's screaming, and it was awful. I held her and loved her like a "robot". I didn't "feel" love, I felt like I was on autopilot love. I smiled at her all the time. I knew that she was in unbelievable pain with the colic, and I wanted her to know that I was 'there'.
Uh Oh! This is getting too long here! Sorry! Okay, the Reader's Digest Condensed version: Karli cries a lot, and needs to be held - but only accepts ME holding her. She is soooo happy when held, and we're pretty sure she's our last, so I'll hold her! :)
Okay, that's my story and I'm stickin' to it! :)
I LOVE this board, and I am so very happy to have found you all!
Maureen :)
Oh I MUST say one more thing! Due to the sleep deprivation on both dh and I, our marriage was difficult for a brief but intense period. Once we realized that it was detrimental for us both to be lacking so much sleep, and we worked it out for dh to get full sleep, things improved sooooo much for us! If Mark was properly rested in the night, he was able to be so incredibly supportive during the evenings and weekends that he was home. He'd spot me for sleep now and then, and he was very tolerant of both me (I cried a lot back then) and ds!
Okay, I thought that I had put him in an awful light, and that was not an accurate representation of my dh - just of an awful time for us both! :)