Cry it out now or cry it out later

I have coslept with all of my kids but if we have another I am not sure that I am going to do it again. I think I may try a combination of co-sleeping and crib sleeping. All I know is that I am still dealing with the repercussions of co-sleeping and not doing cry it out. I am a big softie with my kids when it comes to them sleeping with us. I have had a really hard time transitioning my kids from co-sleeping to sleeping on their own. And from talking to other cosleeping parents I don’t think I am alone. The problem is sooner or later you have to move them out of the bed and I think that I procrastinated on this for too long. Sooner or later you have to let them cry in order to get them sleeping in their own rooms. Or you can be crowded in your bed like a sardine, uncomfortable, annoyed, and miserable.

This last week I have laid down the law with my oldest daughter who is far too old to still be sleeping with us but she still doesn’t want to sleep on her own. I have put this off because she is exhausting. She screams, cries and has tantrums whenever I try to make her sleep by herself. She says she is scared or she can’t. Honestly I believe her. And this is the reason I think I should have done cry it out sooner. Had I made her face her fears and deal with sleeping independently while she was a baby maybe she would have learned to self soothe and we wouldn’t be going through all this now. At some point, you have to get your kids out of your bed so why not tackle this monster while they are babies and the process is not so exhausting.

I guess I just think that at some point in your child’s life you have to let them “cry it out” in order to get them to sleep on their own and now I wish I had just got it over with while she was a baby. If I have another baby I will most likely start doing cry it out when he/she is over six months old. I haven’t decided on the age yet but I do know that I am not going to create another co-sleeping monster. I will probably still co-sleep while he/she is a baby but somewhere around six months I want to start making the transition to sleeping independently and if that means letting him/her cry it out, then so be it. I would rather get this over with early than have to deal with the aftermath of letting your kid sleep in the bed with you for far too long.

Throwing the word “uneducated around”

Why is it that people like to throw the word uneducated around so easily. All the time I see people talk about moms who want to have an epidural as being uneducated. It annoys me like you wouldn’t believe. Just because someone doesn’t want to be in pain during labor doesn’t mean she is uneducated. I like to think I am fairly intelligent. I have done my share of reading on pregnancy and childbirth too. I had an epidrual, a csection, and an unmedicated vbac. I am certainly not uneducated. I hate when people assume that someone is just not educated because they made a different choice.

I plan to have natural childbirth again but I am doing this for personal reasons. I do not think that I would be harming my baby by getting an epidural, or a csection for that matter. But I really enjoyed my last childbirth experience. I was up and about right after she was born and I felt really good about my birth. My daughter and I are really close and I think part of that is because of my birth experience with her. But the truth is labor hurts. It hurts a lot. I have watched some doulas describe labor as really bad menstrual cramps. Puuuuhllllllease, menstrual cramps don’t come anywhere close to what real labor feels like. I can certainly understand why someone would choose to have an epidural. And sometimes I ask myself why I want to have natural childbirth again. I mean why on earth would someone purposely choose to go through that much pain when they don’t have to. For me, the reason I want to do it again is because it was an amazing experience, like running a race, and it felt overwhelming to push my baby out and know I did it and could do it. If you never try it, you just never know if you really could have done it. I liked my natural birth and am proud of myself but I certainly don’t think anyone is uneducated if they choose to have an epidural.

Back to homeschooling but feeling weird about it now

We took a break from homeschooling for a while. It was so hard for me to do but I put my kids in a private school for a while. The first few weeks of school were very hard on my kids. My son would cry almost every day and he didn’t want to go. I felt terrible because this wasn’t what I wanted for my kids but I felt like I was in over my head with homeschooling, I had no support from family or friends, and I was beginning to get very depressed about homeschooling. So one day I just did it, I registered them for school. They got used to going to school and actually liked it a lot.

We decided to start homeschooling again this year and withdrew the kids from school. And it was equally hard on my kids taking them out of school as it was putting them in. One of my kids really likes homeschooling so he was okay with it but was sad about leaving his friends. My daughter, on the other hand, was really upset about it and wanted to go back to school. This is where my conflicted feelings have stemmed from. I feel really weird about homeschooling at the moment.

I always thought homeschooling was the best thing you could do for your kids. That is, until I actually did it. And what I found is, there are not a lot of activities for homeschoolers to do. Even if you live an area with an active support group, they still don’t compare to the amount of things they get to do at school. The support group I belong to meets twice a month. I had the kids in a homeschool gym class but it didn’t last long. The homeschoolers that went to it slowly but surely all started dropping the class until there weren’t many left. Eventually it got cancelled. I haven’t really connected with any homeschooling families that I really fit in with. I want homeschooling to work but I must admit I am concerned about my kids not having any friends and not having the social connections that I think they need. Things aren’t like they were for me growing up. I knew lots of homeschoolers and they were all pretty much normal.

I think this may be because I used to be involved in a church. I don’t go to church now although I am thinking about going again. My husband isn’t a Christian and really I am very lost spiritually. I wouldn’t call myself an atheist because I believe there is a God, or maybe I just want to believe that, but I can’t quite make myself dive into the whole Christian thing again.

I find myself not fitting in with the religious homeschooling moms because, well, I think a lot of them are weird. I don’t want my kids to grow up not being allowed to watch tv or video games or any of the other extremist stuff I see in the homeschooling movement. But I don’t really fit in with the secular homeschoolers either. The secular homeschoolers I have met were weirder than the religious ones. I met one lady whose daughter supposedly was schizophrenic and that is why there were homeschooling. From what I could see, though, the daughter wasn’t the crazy one in the family.

So here I am going through the motions with homeschool. I know that I don’t want my kids in school but I wish that there was more out there for homeschoolers. I also wish there was more time in the day for me to do everything I really wanted to do with homeschooling. I get really jealous of the homeschooling moms that seem to be on top of things and always are up to something cool.

Why I started this blog

I am hoping this blog will be an outlet for me and that maybe some like minded moms will stumble upon it. I will start by saying I am not “anti crunchy” per say. I am a former vegetarian, I have breastfed all of my children, coslept, had natural childbirth, and we are currently homeschooling. Yet, in spite of this, I have found myself slowly but surely becoming more mainstream.

It started when I gave up vegetarianism. I was a vegetarian for most of my adult life but I would find myself having dreams about meat and eating meat in my dreams. It was like my self conscious was saying it is okay for you to eat that. I think being a vegetarian was a way for me to feel elite. I took a lot of pride in the self discipine that went into being a vegetarian and I enjoyed calling myself a vegetarian. All of a sudden once you are a vegetarian you are part of a “clique”. When I originally became a vegetarian it was mostly motivated by my desire to be thin, fit, and healthy, but in time I started feeding into the vegetarian propoganda. I started feeling guilty about eating dead animals and I really convinced myself of this. I think I wanted to feel guilty because the more I did it, the more I felt like a real vegetarian. The truth, I never really felt like I fit in with vegetarians. I wanted to but I just never felt like a real vegetarian. When I was pregnant with my daughter was when I started “cheating” with my vegetarian diet. I hid this because I didn’t want anyone to know. Eventually I just came to term with things. I enjoy eating meat. This was the first step in me leaving “Las Crunchy”.

I have started to look really hard at the whole crunchy life style that I idealized. I had this picture of what I wanted for myself and my family. I wanted to be that perfect “crunchy” mom. I has this vision in my head and in my head a crunchy mom was a perfect mom.

And what I find funny now is watching new young women falling into what I call the “crunchy cult”. They stop using common sense and slowly stop thinking for themselves too. I am all for breastfeeding, natural childbirth, homeschooling, and some of the other crunchy ideas but I also believe women should use common sense and do what is best for their children.

This blog is going to be dedicated to the moms that have given their babies formula because they were smart enough to know when their babies needed it, to the moms that give birth in a hospital because the health of their babies is more important than having the “perfect dream home birth” experience, and the moms that put their kids in school even though it is hard for them to do because they know that it is what is best for their kids. Now please keep in mind that I AM a breastfeeding supporter but I believe that baby’s health should come first. I am also a natural childbirth supporter and although I don’t think it is my place to decide how someone else should give birth, I believe that the safest place for a baby to be born is in the hospital. I am also the biggest homeschooling supporter you will find but I would not let my desire to homeschool supersede what is best for my child and his education. If I was not giving my child the best education at home or if I was not able to dedicate the time to it that I knew in my heart that my kids deserved, I would get over myself and put my kids in school.