Kids Hurt.

I have been meaning to post but I have just no idea where I am supposed to start. Sunday night was horrible. I mean not the worst night ever but it wasn't good. My baby has discovered that she has the unique ability to hurt herself. I really wish that she didn't. Everyone in her family is already clumsy, so that was bound to be what would happen, but she really didn't need to also get my ability to royally hurt myself on top of that.

Sunday my little Bean was on her trike, the kind that you just push around while they are buckled in. She loves it, even though she is only 1 and can't reach the peddles just yet. She loves to go "weee" (cause who doesn't). Some how she managed to get her foot lodged between the front wheel and the bar fork that holds the wheel on. That was bad enough. What was worse was she managed go get her whole foot to turn 180 degrees, so that even though she was sitting on the bike still, her heal was pointing straight up, and her toes were pointing to the ground. Even as an RN I couldn't look at it for very long. I've never been good with broken bones let alone my own kid's. Thank god my father is good under pressure and Papa managed to get her unstuck in quick fashion. As soon as she was free and in mama's arms she stopped crying.

So we took a trip to the ER and after a 5 hour wait (because that's what we do with a 1 year old, make them wait for 5 hours in an ER), where she was amazing even though she was in pain, and hadn't eaten, and wasn't allowed to play. She was my hero. She yelled at the Dr. when he put the cast on her leg, when it was declared that she likely had a spiral fracture in her tibia (very not surprised), and flirted with a 4 yr old boy. She had a busy night. She was just wonderful.

Now she still has a cast, even though it's just a half cast, so she can't walk. This is what's causing her issues right now. The cast took away her pain for the most part, but that doesn't mean she is able to walk. Man does she get mad. She's still in a much better mood than anyone else that breaks a bone. She's just the most brave person ever.

Bean, with her cast that has duct tape on it, to keep her from pealing it off. In theory it'll keep her from pulling it off. I bet when I get up in the morning she has it all unwrapped so she can stand up.

Conflicting Feelings

Everyone, or at least everyone in my parent's generation tells me that I have to put my kid in her crib and allow her to cry herself to sleep at night. This is done because otherwise "she'll never learn to sleep on her own". That to me sounds like bullshit.

Before I had my own kid, I just took this advice as something that needed to be followed. We let our kids cry themselves to sleep because that's what they need. They need to learn that they have to sleep alone in their beds. They have to be able to put themselves to sleep.

I don't know everything about this stuff so I have some questions. If you think about it, how is letting our baby's cry themselves to sleep teaching them that they have to sleep alone? Is it maybe instead teaching them that no one will come and comfort them in the night? And why are we teaching them to sleep alone any way, when later on in life we want them to sleep in the same bed as someone else.

There has been some research done that says letting your child cry themselves to sleep actually causes trust issues, and intimacy issues. I don't know if that is true either. I'm pretty normal *shifty*.

What I think needs to start happening more, is for people letting other people decide what is needed for their own children. Or at least supporting some of the parenting choices that are being made. I can't count how many times I have been told by people who haven't spent much of any time around Bean, what is best for her. The sleeping thing comes to mind the most.

I decided early, that night time was going to be Bean and mommy time, and that's the way it has always been. This means that I snuggle her to sleep on the couch and then put her in her crib. This works most nights rather well. Some nights though, she doesn't get the hint that it's bed time until 11. Then I get told that I need routine, and that she should go in her crib to cry and blah blah blah. She has a routine, and I am very uncomfortable letting her cry in her crib as a way of putting her to sleep. She can just as easily cry in my arms, where I can kiss her and try and get her to understand that I'm not angry, she just needs to sleep.

I also realize that this doesn't work for everyone. I'm not saying that anyone else but me needs to do this, and in fact it doesn't work all that well for her father when he does it. There has also been times when I have put her in her crib, but she spend the time chatting to herself, and is content, not screaming and mad and tired. I also realize that the biggest criticism is the fact that babies cry when they don't get their own way. True. But who really wants to be put in a cage at night and left alone in the dark?

Yeah. Think about that.

That Day...(separation anxiety)

Tonight I work. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Good thing because money is awesome and buys me pretty things. Bad thing because it means that I spend the next 24 hours or so away from my baby. 

It's important. I need to sleep so that when I do get her back I can take care of her, and her dad needs to spend some time with her. That doesn't mean that I have to like it. In fact I'm sure like most parents who have split, this is the hardest part, sharing. I'm not known for being a particularly wonderful sharer to begin with so this is especially hard, since it's supposed to be the one thing that you don't have to share. 

I hear all the time from her father how hard it is for him and that he should be home with us (never going to happen), but he forgets that it's hard for me too. I'm not allowed to say that. I'm not allowed to say that it's hard for me to let her go with him, especially because right now she doesn't want to go. I'm not allowed because I made the choice that we would separate and have therefore lost all right to ever say that I'm unhappy with the fallout of that. I'm not allowed to be hurt that it didn't work, and I'm not allowed to miss my baby when she isn't with me. 

I say not allowed because that's how it feels. The moment that I state that I'm unhappy, I'm bombarded with ways that it would be better if I just took him back so that he could be here all the time then neither of us would have to share. Its a problem fix all wrapped into one lovely package. Except for the part that I don't want to be with him and so if I was doing that I would not be winning, only he would be winning. (except for the part where I would destroy his life to make him as miserable as I am feeling). 

He told me the other day, as he has so many times before, that my insistence that we not get back together is only hurting Bean. Bean has never known for us to live together. She's happy and well adjusted and smart, and other than never wanting her mother to leave her sight some days, she's really good. She has her mom and her step mom (my partner), and she sees her dad three times a week (yeah, that's right three times a week and I still get called unfair), and both sets of grandparents every week. She has so much love around her that I think changing the dynamic of that right now would probably be a bigger deal. She doesn't know it's supposed to be different and I think that teaching her that is harmful. 

In a world where 50% of marriages fail, and there are so many single moms and dads on top of that for other reasons, I really don't think that she's going to feel as though she comes from such an abnormal environment. (Okay the "my moms sleep in the same bed" thing might come up later but I have hope that it wont be an issue then either).  When I was younger, my "happy" parents were and anomaly, I don't really think the world has changed that much.