You know what I’m talking about. It’s one of the most common dilemmas for women today; career or children.

Feminism and the women’s liberation movement have given us so many options that I sometimes feel like it would be easier to go back to being oppressed. At least when women had so few rights, they didn’t put unrealistic expectations on themselves. In many cases they simply accepted that their lot in life was to raise children and look after their husband and household. Sounds gleefully uncomplicated, doesn’t it? (Notice I didn’t say easy.)

I am playing Devil’s advocate here; I don’t actually want to be a 50s housewife. But I never expected to feel so conflicted about motherhood.

My pregnancy was unplanned and came as quite a shock, even though in the back of my mind I had always believed I would eventually find the right time to have children. And in retrospect, it was probably for the best that it happened of its own accord, because as many parents will tell you, there really is no “right time” to have children.

So despite not being sure I was totally ready, I took a deep breath and stared square in the face of impending motherhood. For the most part I was excited and looked forward to life with our new little family member, but there was a little niggle in the back of my mind that I really wished wasn’t there; the one that told me I was “giving up” and turning my back on my career, which I have worked hard to develop.

It didn’t help that once I made the announcement, people immediately started to treat me differently. They weren’t rude, or unkind, but they inadvertently became a little condescending, and enjoyed making jokes about how my life was over now. Even other parents chimed in and seemed to relish in telling me how I would never sleep again, how my “glamorous international career” as one friend called it, would have to take a backseat to the new little driving force in my life, when she arrived.

At work, instead of talking to me about the projects I was working on, people would drop in and head-tilt at me; Aww, there’s the little mother. Look at that bump! So cute! Etc, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked discussing my baby and my pregnancy. After all, it was a huge deal. I was excited, and scared, and I have always been the sort of person who likes to analyze things by talking them out with friends. But again, that little voice was there, telling me this was all I was now; something that anyone can be. Parents are a dime a dozen, and as much as they like to pat themselves on the back and tell themselves they are doing the most important job in the world (which actually, they are), they are boring to people who haven’t done it yet. It feels like being put out to pasture. I was no longer a racehorse, I was a breeder.

No longer was I someone to be admired for having the aforementioned glamorous international career; I was just another woman heading off on maternity leave. Around me, my colleagues were being promoted, or given jobs and projects that might otherwise have been offered to me. It stung.

Then the baby was born. Everything changed. I no longer cared, not only about my career, but about anything that wasn’t directly related to my baby. I would find myself getting immediately bored whenever the subject changed away from parenting, and I’d have to mentally slap myself so that I could stay focused on what other people were saying. I had become what I previously said I never would; one of those annoying people who have nothing in their life besides their child. And I didn’t care who knew it.

The career woman in me was still there, albeit gagged, stuffed in a box and buried alive. I heard her muffled cries a few times, but was unsympathetic to her plight; she’d had her day, and really felt like no great loss. I surrounded myself with other mothers, and lived and breathed babies for 15 or so months.

But one has to come out of that baby fog eventually, if only because most women eventually have to return to work. I had taken as much time off as possible, adding a few unpaid months to the 12 or so paid months we get here in Norway. But we couldn’t afford for me to stay home forever, and when I’m completely honest with myself, I have to admit I was getting bored. And so was my daughter. There just wasn’t enough to keep either of us entertained, stuck at home alone together. Even though I arranged outings almost every day, and regularly spent time with the other mothers I’d met during my maternity leave, it wasn’t enough to keep my brain nourished. I started to want to talk about something else again.

A few months before I was due to return to work, I was told that there had been a restructure, and they weren’t going to be running customer projects out of the Oslo office anymore. So essentially my job didn’t exist anymore, but they were willing to find something else for me to do. I was given a couple of opportunities to think about, and I took the one that offered me the most flexibility and the least pressure. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Now that I’m back, I don’t exactly regret my decision. Any of my decisions, actually, because if I did anything differently, my daughter would have less of me than I want her to have. My job is secure, flexible, and nowhere near as demanding as project work was. No more travel, no more late night teleconferences, no more working until late on Christmas Eve to satisfy demanding customers. I can work from home when or if I need to, and my new boss (a mother herself) is very understanding if I ever have to drop everything and leave in an emergency. The perfect compromise? Maybe. But it also means that as long as I’m no longer a project manager, my skills are getting lost, forgotten and outdated. When I am ready to get back into more demanding work, I have lost the most valuable thing one can have in the IT Industry; recent, relevant experience.

I don’t know too many men who have had to do this to their careers when they have children. Most of them take the minimum amount of parenting leave, and still pursue their careers, hobbies and friendships much as they did before. True, maybe they spend more evenings and weekends at home than they used to, but when they go out, or have to work late, or spend a weekend away, they feel justified. Speaking for myself, as much as I sometimes long for a weekend away, or even an evening, I am plagued with guilt and worry the entire time.

Sure, it is possible for a woman to bottle feed her baby, share the parental leave in a different ratio with her partner (at least here in Norway it is), and return to work without missing a beat. But what does that do to her relationship with her baby? Some would argue that it doesn’t have any negative impact, if the baby is well cared-for in her absence. You could even say that it’s better for both of them to learn to be apart. But it’s still not “having it all”, is it? You are handing over the care of your baby to others, so that you can pursue a career.

I can’t speak for other women who have chosen to do it this way, but I know I wouldn’t have been happy about it. I feel bad enough already that my daughter is seeing more of her kindergarten carers than she is of her parents, and she was over a year old by the time that happened. Plenty of babies today are in daycare from only a few months of age. That may work for those parents, and good luck to them, but I still argue that it’s not “having it all” to do it that way. It’s having a little bit of a whole bunch of different stuff. But for me, well let’s put it this way; I never feel like tapas is a real meal, even if I am full afterwards.

I think the main difference between men and women in this situation is expectation. Men don’t generally expect to be able to spend all day, every day with their children. They expect that someone (be it the mother, or some other person) is going to take care of their child while they work. They have done this pretty much since the beginning of human history. Women, on the other hand, still have all that history to overcome. For many of us, we spent our early years at home with our own mothers. It’s difficult to be the generation that does things so differently for the first time. The old expectations, desires and feelings of responsibility are fighting with the new ones.

The more time you spend being a mother, the less time you can spend focused on your career. At best it is a balancing act. I’m not the kind who can forget she ever had a career, and find total fulfillment in being a full-time mother even if it were financially viable. But I can’t go back to my old working life either.

The key to happiness is, I guess, finding the balance you can live with.

At about five weeks, Ella started to fuss for the first time. Up until then she’d been a very calm, placid baby who only cried when she was hungry or very tired. But suddenly I had a baby who desperately wanted to suck on something, but still HATED dummies. I tried silicone, latex, cherry shaped, orthodontic… you name it, she hated it. All but one made her dry retch, and that one confused her so much she’d burst into fits of frustrated, angry tears. In the end she settled for using me as a dummy, and wanted to suck long after she’d finished eating. At the time I had an overabundance of milk, so this frustrated her even further; she wanted non-nutritive sucking, and kept getting more food. At this point we even had to give up bottle feeding with expressed milk because the bottle nipple seemed to be just the size and shape of what she wanted to suck on, only the milk came out of that even faster than the breast, causing her to choke, splutter and again cry with frustration.

The one dummy Ella would accept without gagging was a Tommee Tippee orthodontic latex one, but she seemed at a loss as to exactly how to suck on it. She’d roll it about in her mouth, chew on it, very occasionally suck on it, and then she’d fall asleep seemingly against her will with her face red from frustrated crying.

I looked everywhere online and in books to find information about how to train a baby to use a dummy. All I could find were articles about how to wean your child OFF a dummy. I found several people asking the question I wanted an answer to on sites like Yahoo Answers, but the usual replies were things like “If your baby doesn’t want a dummy, don’t force it! You’ll only have to wean later.” This was so frustrating! I knew Ella wanted a dummy, she just couldn’t work out how to use it. I started to get mad at all the experts who had told me not to give her a dummy too early, because I felt that she’d forgotten how to do the non-nutritive sucking that babies are pretty much born knowing how to do, and she was now attempting to eat the dummies with a wide mouth, which just had them rolling around and falling out.

So what did I do? There is a happy ending here, folks. The only tip I ever found online about babies that didn’t like normal dummies was that there was a special kind of dummy being given out in US hospitals called a Soothie that seemed to be popular amongst the more discerning babies. When I looked into it further, I found that there were two types available that I could order online; one was the Gumdrop Soothie, which is available in four colours (pink, blue, purple and orange) and the Wubbanub, the original hospital-grade Soothie with a soft toy attached. I promptly ordered one of each from sellers on eBay.

I was both excited and nervous when the new dummies arrived. I knew it was our last chance before I gave up all together. Ella was just getting ready for a nap when the mail arrived that day, so I quickly washed and sterilised the Wubbanub (with its plush caterpillar attached) and offered it to her as she was lying in her cot getting ready for sleep. To my absolute shock and delight, she slurped it in like she’d had it forever, took two or three happy sucks and dropped off to sleep!

I was still thinking it was all too good to be true, so I tried again, this time with the Gumdrop Soothie (vanilla scented), later that day. She fussed a little at first and I thought, “Uh oh, it was a fluke before.” But moments later she was sucking happily away like a limpet. Amazing!

Since then I’ve ordered quite a few more (a cat and a duck in the Wubbanubs and some different colours in the Gumdrops) and she’s still happy with them. In fact, these days she’ll even use the ordinary kind, but she still prefers the Soothies.

So what is the big difference, I hear you ask. It’s in the shape, really. The teat of the Soothie is shaped more like the top of a bottle, rather than a bulb like other dummies. According to the manufacturers, it is less likely to cause nipple confusion because it is so close to the shape of a nipple. You can also buy bottles that are the exact same shape if you are particularly worried about your baby getting confused.

There are a couple of points I should mention, however. Firstly, as I mentioned above, I ordered the first Soothies from eBay, which was fine. The next lot of Gumdrops I ordered were directly from the manufacturer via their website, which was less successful. It turns out that when you order through that website, they try to find a distributor in your area who can ship it to you locally. I emailed them after waiting almost two weeks and they replied that they were having trouble finding a local distributor for me. I emailed back and asked if it would be better for me to order via one of their authorised eBay sellers and they told me that was a better plan and cancelled the order.

The other point, which applies to another baby I know of who was having similar problems with dummies, is that she was almost two months older than Ella when she finally got her Soothie and tried it out, and apparently she rejected it along with the others. I don’t know if this is because it was too late, or if she wouldn’t have taken one regardless. In any case, I guess they won’t work for all babies, but they sure have made life easier for us.

Links:

I bought my Gumdrop Soothies from: http://myworld.ebay.com/17labarbie/

I bought the Wubbanubs from: http://myworld.ebay.com/lilonesworld2004/ and http://myworld.ebay.com/elite*breastfeeding*supplies

I would highly recommend any of these sellers. They were really fast with shipping to Norway and communication was excellent.

These blankets are good for a couple of reasons. Firstly they’re natural muslin, so they’re very light and they breathe well. Having a summer baby, this was pretty important to me; I was nervous about the baby overheating when all wrapped up. Secondly, they’re nice and stretchy, allowing for a good, tight swaddle that the baby can still wriggle in. Thirdly, they’re quite large, which makes it much easier to wrap the blanket all the way around the baby and use her body weight to keep it in place. So overall, I would definitely recommend these blankets… except if you have a wriggly little escapee like we do, the baby can sometimes manage to wriggle her hands free, rendering the swaddle useless.

I couldn’t seem to keep Ella contained in the muslin swaddles, so I started to look around for alternatives. I read a lot of good things about the Woombie, which is a tight-fitting sleeping bag with a two-way zipper so that your baby is tightly contained inside, but you can unzip the bag from the bottom to change nappies without unwrapping the baby. This sounded like a great idea to me, so I ordered one in the newborn baby size. Unfortunately this option didn’t work for us. The newborn size turned out to be quite big and just wasn’t tight enough to stop Ella from flailing. I guess the idea of these is to give your baby room to move inside the bag, but not to flail the arms above the head. But for Ella, a little wriggle room was still too much. She would try to bring her hands up to her mouth, but would just get a face full of Woombie, frustrating her no end and making her wake up and cry. Perhaps in cold weather it would be a way to keep another swaddle layer in place inside, but it’s not a good idea for summer, and too much trouble for me.

Here is a picture of the various ways a Woombie could be used (from the Woombie website):

As you can see, it looks pretty tight, which is why I ordered one. However, at four weeks old it was still too big for Ella, and she’s average size for her age (and now at 8 weeks old, it’s still too loose for her). So I don’t know how old or how big the babies they designed this for are, but considering swaddling is most important for the first twelve weeks, this one was a bit of a dud as far as I’m concerned. However, lots of people posting reviews online seem to love them, so I guess they work for some babies.

Chris eventually developed a swaddling method with the muslin swaddles which we came to call “the burrito”. As he rolled her into the swaddle, he’d catch her arms in spare folds of the cloth so that her body weight kept them down at her sides, and kept them there until morning. Being a bit of a wuss when it comes to wrapping her tightly, I never managed to do this technique very well. I’ve managed a couple of times, but my swaddles are always too loose and eventually Ella wriggles her hands free and wakes herself up. I did experiment with a “double layer burrito” method I saw on YouTube, which worked, but once again I didn’t like having too much wrapping around the baby in warm weather.

Eventually, and somewhat by accident, I came across the Miracle Blanket. It is a swaddling blanket that is designed to do exactly what both Chris’s complicated burrito and the double layer method do. It has an extra piece of cloth sewn inside so that you can wrap your baby’s arms down before wrapping the rest of the blanket up. It also has a little leg pocket so that you can choose whether or not to have your baby fully swaddled, or let the legs be free. I have ordered one and am now waiting for its arrival. I’ll update this post with the results once I’ve given it a try.

In the meantime, we’re happily using the original muslin swaddling blankets. I do a light wrap for her daytime naps and then Chris does his burrito for night-time.

On an interesting side note, I was surprised at some of the reactions from Norwegians about my swaddling Ella, particularly from the older generation. One woman told me categorically that I should not wrap my baby so tight because it takes away her freedom. I politely told her that Ella likes being wrapped this tightly and sleeps very badly without it. She looked skeptical and raised her eyebrows at me, but seemed to accept it. Another woman, of about the same age, seemed pleasantly surprised that I was doing something “so old-fashioned” and said she hoped that it came back into fashion because it was such a sensible and effective thing to do. Strangely, I don’t think I’ve come across a single person here who thinks swaddling still exists in the modern world. Some of them had never even heard of it in the first place. But in my opinion, if your baby responds well to it (after you’ve learned to do it well and given it a proper try, not a half-assed try like we did at first) it is the best thing you can do for your baby’s sleep. If you need more proof, I can add that Ella was sleeping through the night at six weeks old, and had to be woken for her late-night feed because she was sleeping so well.

UPDATE!

Ella has been using The Miracle Blanket for several weeks now and absolutely loves it. We don’t use any other kind of swaddle anymore and she has yet to escape from it. It’s incredibly easy to use, the fabric is soft and stretchy and you can put it in the washing machine and dryer with no shrinking or fading. If you’re having trouble with swaddling, especially if your baby is escaping, I can’t recommend this more enthusiastically.

Coming from Australia, I expected to swaddle my baby and was very surprised to learn that it is not the done thing in Norway. It’s considered old-fashioned and some people believe it both restricts the baby’s freedom and hinders its development (both points are nonsense as far as I’m concerned).

Anyway, I had to order swaddling blankets from the UK (and I will post about the actual blankets later) because they are just not available here in Norway.

In the hospital I had nothing to swaddle Ella with, because the only blankets given to me were somewhat thick and bulky cotton cellular blankets which don’t lend themselves to tight swaddling. However, Ella seemed content to sleep with her arms above her head and didn’t seem to want to be wrapped tightly. So I figured I would just use the swaddles I had bought as light summer blankets, play mats, burp cloths etc.

However, as many mothers will be aware, everything changes when you get home from the hospital. Your baby starts growing and changing immediately, and suddenly doesn’t want to just fall asleep so easily. Ella was very good with going to sleep, she just couldn’t seem to stay asleep. Her little flailing arms wouldn’t stay down and every time she startled (which new babies do ALL the time) she’d wake herself up.

We tried swaddling her with the blankets I’d bought, and this worked for a day or two, but our lame attempts at proper swaddling had her little arms wiggling their way out within minutes. This is when I started looking around online for help. Not help with swaddling per se, but with getting a baby to stay asleep. This is when I started seeing references everywhere about a book called “The Happiest Baby on the Block”. It sounded a bit cheesy to me, but I saw it often enough (and the comments were overwhelmingly positive) that I thought I should check it out.

It turns out there is a book and a DVD with essentially the same information. We opted for the DVD, since I didn’t have time to sit down and read yet another baby book, and Chris just wasn’t interested in baby books anyway. Let me tell you, 6 weeks later and we have never looked back. I cannot recommend this DVD highly enough. Even though we have a very easy baby generally, I can only imagine how helpful this information would be to parents with a colicky baby.

Essentially, the book and DVD are about Dr Harvey Karp’s “5 S’s” and how to apply various combinations in soothing your crying baby. Note that these methods are only effective for the first 3 months. Dr Karp’s theory is based on the premise that human babies are born too early and need a “fourth trimester”. So for the first three months of their lives, it’s important to recreate the environment of the womb when your baby is unsettled. This involves:

• Swaddling
• Side- or stomach-lying position
• Shushing (making a shhh sound or playing white noise)
• Swinging or swaying; and
• Sucking (on a dummy/pacifier)

We already knew that the concept of swaddling is to keep the baby feeling secure, but after watching the DVD we realised we had been a bit wussy about it, and that to be effective a swaddle really needs to be quite tight. I was scared to do it, but seeing how quickly Ella responded in such a positive way, I was convinced immediately. It was also a relief to hear that babies initially fight the swaddle a little, but once in it they relax, which is exactly what happened.

I didn’t read the book, so can’t say one way or another whether it’s worth buying, but the DVD was excellent. You can actually see crying baby after crying baby just go completely calm as the “calming reflex” kicks in. We have never had to use all five S’s at once, since for us the swaddling, shushing and swaying are usually enough. Lately Ella has needed the sucking as well, but that is a whole other blog post that I will write soon.

The book and DVD are available from Amazon, Play.com and various other sources. You can also read more on the Happiest Baby website (link will open in a new window).

As I get time (ha ha) I will add blog entries about all the weird and wonderful things I have bought (and where I bought them, since it was usually online) or tired and let you know what worked or didn’t work, and why. Bear in mind that I am totally aware that every baby is different, and what works (or doesn’t) for us may be completely irrelevant for you and your baby. But it might amuse you to read about my adventures into motherhood anyway. In any case, there are a lot of products that I found after lots of research that I wished I had known about from the start, and I’d like to share these with you.

Watch this space!