Incrediably Close and Isolated

I am talking about the funny contradiction that happens with young people. Being a full time mom I spend the majority of my day up close with my little one. As a breast feeding mama I am also sharing my bodies vital nutrients along with all the hugs, holding and snuggle play that make up my infants day.

Being touched is so important to my well being, I love the contact with my daughter, how she holds my legs as I walk around towering over her, or how we play snuggle on the bed and she crawls up into my lap and pats my head. I also love nursing, the sweetest bond, sharing my body with her; this time is precious and so much fun.

I also sometimes feel the urge to toss her off my lap mid-nursing session and run out of the house to some place of adult persuasion where I never have to look at another nursing pad ever again.

I crave adult stimulation, intellectual talks, adult caresses with my partner, to have me be held the way I hold her. Some days I feel so isolated, especially when the weather is too hot or cold to take her out in and we end up in the house all day. By the time my partner gets home I have hit the cabin fever high and throw myself at him chattering away about all the things I have thought of that day. I try to make extensive plans in the mere 3 hours between him arriving with our car and babies bedtime. Being a mother can be an isolated path. Even if you join all the mom clubs and see friends, if you live with your little family, the majority of your time is spent with just you and your little one.

Daddy and I come up with extensive plans to co-parent and move in with people. We talk about buying land and living in the country with a collection of good friends, raising goats and living off the land. Right now these are fantasies that keep us going each day.

Isolation can have its benefits, the cloistered life gives me more time to write and contemplate. I think my introvert and extrovert self battle it out daily, I still fight the inner demons of isolation from childhood and teenage hood. I also notice when I am uber social I sometimes loose track of parts of me I really care about. I feel spread thin and like I can't do things alone the way I like to. Alone time is precious with a baby who needs you all the time. When she sleeps I get my breaks and put in my work, writing, looking for paid jobs, identifying trees.

Sometimes mothering feels like being in a crowd of people and completely alone. You get all this good sweet energy and touch, you get all this work out and body time running and crawling after your wee one but almost no intellectual stimulation. I listen to podcasts for this, read books when she naps, call friends and have mama dates where we just talk it all out while the kids play and nurse.

My old friends and new friends invite me to parties that are way past Sweetpea's bedtime. I could go alone and sometimes I do but I long for the times when I have my partner to go with me or a good friend to stay out with and no curfew. The adult no- kid scene is sometimes to shallow and drunken for the profoundness I feel in being a parent. The parent scene is over worked and sometimes feels to adultest and boring to really connect too. There is also seriousness among parents about the stress of holding multiple identities that sometimes makes everyone seem more uptight then they actually are.

I know there is something better then this out there. I see the potential for an un-isolated parenthood and know I will continue figuring it out as my baby gets older and I acclimate more to my new role. Until then I am holding out for real intentional community and as much alone time as I need.

My baby has health care!

Being a mom you want the best for your kid. You want to see them thrive and you want them to have medical coverage that will take care of all their needs. You want it to be top notch, what one might expect of healthcare in the USA and western society. This has not happened for my daughter in the state of Texas until very recently. We moved here when Sweetpea was 5 1/2 months old, she was on Medicaid in WA and we thought transferring it over to TX would be fairly easy. Oh boy, were we wrong, it has been one of the biggest red tape headaches I have ever experienced to date.

I don't actually blame this on Texas, like any other state Texas is working within the guidelines of a F#%&ed system. Unlike WA their are two kinds of freeish healthcare here, what I like to call healthcare for the poor, Medicaid, and health care for the kind of poor, CHIP. When we first moved here with our income, we were considered part of the poor, after an unexpected job change and supposedly making more money, (supposed because a lot of daddy's income goes to all the benefits for working for the city so we actually get less each month), we are now a part of the kind of poor. With keeping the class system in its solid place we had to switch over our babies healthcare.

At the beginning I thought CHIP was a part of Medicaid. I filled out a CHIP application and got Medicaid info in the mail. 3 conversations later with various operators, all nice people that I waited for 20 min. to talk too, I found out CHIP was a different program and Sweetpea would not be eligible because of the before mentioned income requirement and also because she was under age. No where did it say on the website you can only get CHIP after you are 1. The unfortunate part is in the meantime when I thought CHIP was Medicaid I found a doctor I liked who only takes CHIP. Feeling defeated I tried in vain to find a good doctor that takes Medicaid. Moving to a new state, not knowing any other moms on Medicaid, my options were slim. I even consulted the Internet to find a good doctor. There were reviews but most of them were for specialty pediatricians and were hard to get in touch with. Finally after holding off for too long, Medicaid assigned me a pediatrician and health plan. They also told me I could change it at anytime, great, still not the doctor I wanted.

With the advent of daddy's new job my CHIP dreams looked like they might come true after all. This is also around the same time I got a renewal notice from Medicaid saying if I did not fill it out in 5 days time I would not have Medicaid coverage. Perfect, I thought I want CHIP. I filled out the application once again, this time giving it to daddy to fax into the requested office. 2 weeks pass, again we are denied, Sweetpea is too young still.

I think, I am screwed, no CHIP and now no Medicaid, we still have yet to use Medicaid, but knowing it is there in case of emergency had been helpful. I call Medicaid. They explain to me they actually “just say 5 days to scare people into filling it out,” we got this form 2 months after my daughter got Medicaid, so only a two month break from paperwork, grrrrr. They tell me I have to fill it out again to have them officially deny me, then sign me up for CHIP. I fill out the form I think for the 4th time in the 5 months we have lived here. We wait; we get a letter saying our Medicaid will end. More waiting, then the letter today, a day of waiting to hear from a job after a second interview, my baby has CHIP!

My fingers tremble as I pay the fee online to get things started up and finally choose the plan I want and the doctor we picked out, the doctor we are aligned with in values, who has a small practice and is a mother herself. I am crying, things are finally working out in my favor, the stress of the last 5 months and not having the healthcare we want for Sweetpea is melting away. After getting her all signed up they tell me on the phone her coverage will not begin until October. A letter should come in the next week telling us the exact date. Sweetpea will be 13 months old and will be having her first check up sense we moved here. 5 1/2 months to 13months with no check ups, no updated vaccines and thankfully very little sickness.

To those of you who are used to having regular healthcare you may be appalled by this, why didn't we just go with a Medicaid doctor and get her all up to date? Well, we have tried, recently and we will continue to try until CHIP comes through. With the possibility of me working full time, childcare outside our home is in our eminent future. In order for Sweetpea to attend day care she needs everything to be up to date with her healthcare. The incentive is there, it’s just that the doctor they assigned us has been out of his office for a week now. This is a man we have never met, who doesn't seem to keep any regular office hours, school just started here it would be odd for him to be on vacation. I have called twice and still not even a call back.

The doctor we chose gave us a free half hour consultation; her practice is small and has a special room for sick kids. She is open to a longer vaccination schedule, she answered all of our questions and looked us directly in the eye. Her office said, I want you here. Isn't that what we all want for our kids? This is also why we were holding out. We had had a bad experience in Olympia when Sweetpea was sick and we had to see a substitute. We knew how bad it could be to have a doctor taking care of your baby that you don't trust.

The fact is most of these doctors for the poor are overworked, and run huge practices that look more like factory farms. I don't know the back ground story of why so few good doctors seem to accept CHIP and Medicaid but I do know it really sucks that I can't get my Medicaid doctor to answer the phone when I need my baby to have a wellness check up before she starts daycare.

This is not meant to just be a rant, although it could be. This is the state of healthcare in the USA. This is what makes me want to be a healthcare activist. I was put off my parents insurance when I turned 18; I have had health insurance for 3 years of my adult life. Once when I had a full time job that actually paid for it and once when I was pregnant and for 4 months of my post partum. Thankfully there were great cheap clinics in Seattle for all the times I got the flu or needed something checked out. What about now? I am a mother without health insurance because my family can't afford it until I get steady work outside the home, which will hopefully cover my babies childcare, groceries and then maybe health insurance? We shall see.....

For now Sweetpea has her doctor, we just need to hold out till October.

Crys In The Night

Sometimes parenting is a nightmare. Scrounging up all the tolerance you can muster in the thick of the night as your little precious being hits notes in the angels octave range. She is hurting, irritated, needing you at a time when all you need is yourself cuddled in a ball in the silence of your being. I thought this would stop when she got close to 1.

In the beginning you are ready for it, know it is an endurance test, co-sleep, know that this is a temporary space and time, you also just get used to not sleeping. After a few months of sleeping through the night I was lulled into the belief that this was our new norm, that is until the rumbling volcano of my child started awaking in screams 3 nights ago and flipped my sorry idea of a good nights sleep on its rear. The thing with babies is it could be that this will become our new norm for a week then she will switch back. They are unpredictable and fickle and so deeply wonderful on this base level that one has to say, it’s worth it.

Can I admit that I am an attachment parent that lets my baby cry it out alone in her crib? That I can hold the ideals of always soothing her and the reality that I am as grumpy as a gremlin when awoken 4 times in 1 hour in the wee hours of the night? Then there’s all the theories you come up with for why she has decided to start crying this week, grandparents in town, co-sleeping while g-parents take our bed, sick for 3 days, only nursing with no solids during the illness so never full enough for a growing 11 month old body? Any one of these, and probably a combo, is the culprit, but my brain does not function on that level at 12:30am when after two feedings she decides to start wailing.

It is a test of will. I will not leave the couch where I have set up camp hoping the distance will lull her back to sleep and she will not stop crying in the other room keeping our full house including me awake. Her father comes out and cuddles onto the couch, "She needs you, you know?" He says in a muffled just awoken tone, " I know" I snap back, the 4 year old in me comes out in this moment, "she will not win this time." As if her cries are a way to make me personally break. As if my daughter was having a vengeful moment for the 6-hour date we took the day before, getting us back for having an adult day at the water park without her. Daddy just laughs at my weak argument. We both lay there listening to her scream, willing her to fall back asleep. She dies down for a moment, collecting breath? Or finally done? Collecting breath wins as she aims another blast of anger into the world.

I just saw "Where The Wild Things Are" the movie by Spike Jones and got a better understanding of the un-tame side of childhood. Children show us the raw and brutal reality of human nature and human potential. I find myself often questioning why horrid things happen in this world and can see how the unfettered behavior of a hurt child shows the thread of how extreme harm and hurt happen. In the movie, Max is dealing with his own inner demons, trying to understand the oppressive experiences that happen to him and dealing with all the emotions that are balled up inside from feeling neglected. I see an over worked single mother, a distant older sister and no friends that set Max up to act out and get in trouble. He is an intelligent and creative child that has trouble controlling his wild side. The movie is a great example of child nature. It was sad and helpful to watch as a parent. Anything that helps me to remember what it was like to be young is helpful in navigating being an ally and caring for my child. It is so hard being both the enforcer and the friend and finding when to play what role.

Her wails have reached a pattern of unhappiness that I can't contain anymore. I laugh a bitter laugh and tell daddy she has won tonight. I go and pick up my stricken child and sooth her to sleep for the 4th time that night. Rocking chair and nursing tames my little beast, hopefully this calm will stick.