parenting

On Valuing My Work as a Mom

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

On Giving Myself Credit as a Mom

Feeding and taking care of my child is an important, essential job. I need to keep reminding myself of this.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine asked how I could keep up the blog with a newborn. That answer was relatively easy; I write on the phone while nursing. But the question he didn’t ask – why I’m keeping up the blog – struck me. There are pat answers involving maintaining my audience and SEO, but if it came down to it, I would ignore them. No, the reason I’ve kept writing is because it feels like important work.

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This Too Shall Pass

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 9 Comments

This Too Shall Pass

Our little family is in a rough patch.

The sleep deprivation from being up for 30 minutes or (usually) more several times a night is starting to deeply affect me. Last night, there was barely an hour between when I would put Little Bird down and when he would start crying again. While I was running on adrenaline and optimism immediately after he was born, that’s faded. In the middle of the night, I’ve occasionally dozed off, awakening to the fear that I could have dropped him. While I blew through a couple of books in the beginning, I’m now too exhausted to do anything but check my social media over and over again in a soul sucking spiral. In the morning, I wake up with a sinus headache and a serious fog that I never really shake. I’ve had an on again, off again fever over the past two days.

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Visiting the Park with a Toddler and Newborn: A Play in 3 Acts

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

Visiting the Park with a Newborn and a Toddler: A Play in 3 Acts. (Photo: A sidewalk with shadows of an adult and child)

Ever feel like you’re stuck in an absurdist play as a parent? Waiting for Godot with diapers and sippy cups. Goodnight Moon come to life.

This was especially true when for some reason, I felt the need to go to the park with my newborn and toddler a week after the baby was born. I’m not sure if severe sleep deprivation was getting to me or the air in our house was just that stifling, but I must have been suffering from some delusions to think it was a good idea…

Characters

Shannon: an overconfident mom of two
Chris: Her husband
Sprout, Shannon and Chris’s almost three-year-old
Little Bird, Shannon and Chris’s week-old newborn
Fellow park-goers

Act 1: Getting to the Park

Shannon and Chris are sitting on the couch, with Shannon holding Little Bird. Sprout is lying on the floor.
Shannon: Let’s go to the park!
Sprout continues to lie on the floor.
Shannon: Don’t you want to go to the park? We’ll bring Little Bird!
Sprout pushes his toy school bus across the floor.
Sprout: Pee pee poo poo, mommy.
Shannon: We’re putting your shoes on in 5. 1-2-3-4-5.
Shannon walks over to Sprout, grabs his hands and tries to get him to stand up. He goes limp, then stands up very slowly and mosies over to the couch. Shannon hauls Sprout up on her lap and put his sneakers on. Chris straps Little Bird into his car seat, who immediately starts crying.
Shannon: Do you think he’s hungry? I fed him less than an hour ago.
Chris (carrying the car seat out the door and snapping it into the stroller): He’s fine. Just go.
Shannon and Sprout walk outside. Shannon begins to push the stroller.
Sprout: No no no no no!
Shannon: What’s wrong? Please use words.
Sprout: I WANT TO DO IT!
Shannon: Do what?
Sprout reaches for the stroller’s handle.
Sprout: Want to push!
Shannon: Ah. Thank you for being so helpful!
Sprout and Shannon push the stroller for two feet, then Sprout stops and pushes on the foot brake.
Shannon: The stroller can’t move if the brake is on.
Sprout runs to the side of the stroller and peers in. He then runs to the back, takes off the brake, pushes for another two feet, and puts the brake on again.
Shannon: Seriously, what are you doing?
Sprout (looks into the stroller): Hi, Little Bird!
Shannon: You want to see him, but can’t from the back, can you?
Sprout runs back, takes off the brake, pushes the stroller and then repeats the whole process.
Shannon: You aren’t going to do this every two feet, are you?

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Guest Post on Pregnant Chicken: The Seven Stages of Picking a Name for Your Baby

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

While the physical discomfort was bad, the most stressful thing for me about pregnancy was picking a freaking name for the baby. (Especially this time around, when Little Bird’s labor was bizarrely quick. But that’s a story for another time.) As I’m sure I’m not the only one who struggles with this, I wrote a guest post called the Seven Stages of Picking a Name for Your Baby for Pregnant Chicken.

Besides labor, picking a name is one of the hardest things about having a baby. It’s rumored that there are couples who have a name for each gender picked out before conception. But for the rest of us, it’s a process fraught with uncertainty, frustration and confusion. We also kind of hope those prepared parents’ kid changes their name during a quarter-life crisis. While not everyone goes through these, here are seven common stages of naming a baby:

Read the rest at Pregnant Chicken!

The Agony and the Ecstasy of the Third Trimester

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

Note: I started this essay before Little Bird was born, but thought I’d finish it off even though the third trimester is now thoroughly over! Content note: pregnancy loss / miscarriage, pregnancy complications

The Agony and Ecstasy of the Third Trimester

The most dreaded era of pregnancy: the third trimester. But even though it could be a slog at times, my third trimester was also the best part of my whole pregnancy.

Of course, I dealt with a variety of physical discomfort. From retaining enough fluid that my wedding ring hadn’t fit for months to the baby being in possibly the least comfortable positions possible, it was damn painful. I think he enjoyed sitting on my kidneys and doing upside down push-ups on my hip bones. The Braxton hicks contractions – oh, the Braxton Hicks! The “irritable uterus,” where it gets ineffably hard for long periods at a time, made its return. The lack of sleep was a killer, especially the fact that I woke up every time I tried to turn over.

But despite all that, my mental and emotional health was much more solid than it was any other time in my pregnancy.

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Easter: Candy, Eggs and Grace

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

Easter_ Candy, Eggs and GraceThis Easter is a little different from usual, as we’ve never had a week-old baby around while celebrating it. Sprout was almost a year old by the time of his first Easter, so he had a bit more comprehension of the world by then.  At this point, Little Bird is strictly interested in eating, sleeping, and pooping. He’s hardly awake enough to register anything else.

But we still have a near three-year-old who is more than aware of the idea of candy, even if the concept of the Christian resurrection is beyond him. Fortunately, both we and the grandparents were more than willing to oblige his interest in sweets. He’s also old enough to do crafts, especially after a successful color-mixing activity during the blizzard, so egg-dyeing was a definite must.

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Guest Post at Good Mother Project: Unexpected Complications

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

Trigger Warning: Miscarriage, pregnancy loss, pregnancy complications

As I mentioned a few months ago, I had some significant complications with my pregnancy. In my tenth week, I had substantial bleeding – enough to go to the emergency room.  I recount this experience in a guest post called Unexpected Complications at the Good Mother Project, from the initial discovery to the lifting of the restrictions.  (This essay was originally written over a month ago, so we now know that the true resolution was actually wonderful.)

At the ten-week mark in my pregnancy, I was lying on the living room couch, still recovering from putting my toddler son to bed. Suddenly, I felt a bubble and then wetness. Running to the bathroom, I saw blood. My breath faltered and then emerged in gasps.

Read the rest of the post at the Good Mother Project.

Welcome to the World, Little Bird

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 5 Comments

Babies are incredible at beautifully mucking up whatever plans you have for them. While his brother was five days late, our new munchkin arrived on Friday, a full three and a half weeks early! (I had been telling everyone, “Well, even if he’s earlier than his brother, he’ll still just be on time.” Ha!) Of course, I had been telling Sprout that his brother would arrive in spring, “when the flowers start blooming and the trees get their buds.” I thought with unseasonably warm weather, that the baby would be late weeks in comparison, but he turned out to be right on time.

Welcome to the World, Little Bird!

Despite him arriving much earlier than planned and faster than anticipated, both of us are doing well. (His birth was actually a bit dramatic, but I’ll tell that story later.) He was a little on the small side, but is eating fairly regularly. He’s a lot more sleepy than his brother was, but that’s common for early babies and Sprout slept very little for a newborn anyway. Sprout stayed with a friend during the delivery, but was thrilled when Chris’s parents arrived and showed him the picture of his brother and I. I was worried he would be negative – and there’s still plenty of time for mixed feelings – but it was a good sign.

But the baby’s entrance threw me for a loop, planning wise. Thankfully, we have most of the essentials for him – crib, mattress, sheets, clothes, car seat, changing pad – although we’re still waiting on his rocking chair to be delivered. But there are a couple of items at work I really wanted to wrap up before leaving for 10 weeks. And I had a whole schedule of blog posts that I intended to write and have here at the ready. So much for that idea.

Considering all that, it’s going to be a bit quiet around here for a while, even though it won’t be so quiet in our house.

Most importantly, welcome to the world, my beautiful baby boy, my Little Bird.

Exploring Wonder at the Renwick Gallery

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 5 Comments

I’m a fan of “big art” – sculptures that fill entire rooms, take up your entire scope of vision, and make you lose yourself inside of.  So when I heard about the Renwick Gallery’s  Wonder exhibition, I knew we had to go. Nine rooms, each featuring a thematically and physically large piece designed to provoke wonder, hit all of my aesthetic buttons. While bringing a little kid to an art museum is always a bit of a crapshoot, I hoped that Sprout would enjoy it as well.

Arriving at the museum on Saturday, we found that we were in luck – we happened to come on the Smithsonian art museums’ Family Fun Day. While people have generally been welcoming when we’ve brought him to art museums in the past, this just added an extra layer of normalcy and acceptance.

Sculpture made of sticks

From the museum’s formal lobby, we entered the first room, filled with sculptures crafted out of sticks collected from the forest floor. Weaving our way around, it evoked the feeling of being somewhere ancient, hidden and enchanted. It was a fairy tale wonderland, a place where gnomes or huge, intelligent birds might make their home. In fact, we actually used children’s stories to relate it to Sprout. We remarked, “This is what Big Bird’s nest might be like!” and “Doesn’t this remind you of the second house in the Three Little Pigs?” (Although he might not have fully understood the point of that story – he said he would like to live in a house made of sticks. Of course, if they were this lovely, perhaps I would too.)

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A Day in the Life During the Third Trimester

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

Life is very different in the third trimester of pregnancy than it is during any other time in life. Here’s a bit of insight into how a normal day has been going for me:

A Day in the Life During the Third Trimester1:00 AM: Wake up to go to the bathroom.

3:00 AM: Wake up again to go to the bathroom. Scoop water into my mouth with my eyes closed because I’m inordinately thirsty.

6:35 AM: Alarm blares. Attempt to turn over. Eventually flop onto back, then wiggle onto my right side and lurch my legs over the side of the bed.

6:43 AM: Catch a glimpse of my hands. Realize that my left hand is currently three times fatter than the right. Stupid fluid retention.

6:45 AM: Get in the shower. Thank God for solitude and hot water.

7:05 AM: A little voice cries “Mommy mommy mommy!” After checking to see if Sprout’s pajamas are damp (this child does 90% of his peeing at night), lift him up and change his diaper. Send him into our bedroom to wake up my husband.

7:10 AM: Peek into the bedroom to see them snuggling in bed. Climb under the sheets for a few moments of wiggly bliss.

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