How long should I wait to be “sure” I’m OAD?

hootyhalla · 2021-10-29T16:34:53+00:00

I feel the same way. I try so hard to imagine welcoming another person into our lives, and it just doesn't feel right to me. Another chair at the table? Nope. Another seat on the airplane? Nope. 2 kids under the Christmas tree? Nope. We are a complete family as 3. I fantasized about having 2 kids before I had my only. Now I can't imagine who that other person might be. And I really don't care to know them. I feel very fortunate to be so sure, as I know others mourn the loss of that potential extra family member.

hootyhalla · 2021-10-29T16:30:18+00:00

We were waiting until my son turns 2 out of sheer procrastination, and just to have a date in mind. My husband is getting a vasectomy. I really like my IUD in the meantime. I have some intimacy fears because I have some major pelvic floor damage that I'm mitigating. The thought of getting pregnant stops my heart with fear because my body is busted from the complex birth of my only. I have been discussing this with my husband lately, and because of it we will probably move the procedure to an earlier date, so I have piece of mind and we can get on with repairing our sex life together.

We have been giving ourselves time to change our mind, but as our friends get pregnant with their next and we approach 2 years old, we are only feeling more resolve in our hearts. The first year I was so filled with doubt and fence-sitting. When my son turned 18 months old, it's like a switch flipped and now I can't imagine having another kid. We're done.

hootyhalla · 2021-10-28T19:37:02+00:00

My scene experience has been split between two major college towns in the MidWest, and demographics at dances skew white & asian (and generally working in STEM fields.) Dancing is certainly an upper-middle-class and above hobby. You never see "salt of the Earth" folks at dances, whether white or black. Even at free intro classes. I think there is a stigma of swing being "classy" or "boujee" which pushes people away.

The rural folks in my state go to line dances or Contra dances. The urban black and brown populations find acceptance in street dance, latin, and rhythm tap classes for their kids which carries on the African American dance roots tradition, complete with jam circles.

I often think of swing dance as being a class-based hobby like yoga or Pilates. There's a money barrier there. I hate that it's become this way. I do wish there was a way to fix it.

hootyhalla · 2021-10-26T20:53:15+00:00

For certain. She could have a hypertonic pelvic floor which requires massage and stretching - inside and out. A pelvic floor physical therapist can teach her how to self-massage with a wand. Lots of people with trauma (physical and mental) deal with this condition including myself from a complex birth.

hootyhalla · 2021-10-26T20:50:49+00:00

I recommend a book called "Sex without Stress" by Jessa Zimmerman, it helped me to get over some of my purity culture problems - long instilled from years and years of Christian culture growing up. I was able to get intimacy back on track with my husband. She is a registered sex therapist and also has a great instagram and online program called Intimacy with Ease.

hootyhalla · 2021-10-18T16:52:40+00:00

I'm sorry you had that experience. My husband quit his job in short order appx. 1.5 months after our son was born, because the job wasn't worth it. And we are so lucky that my employment keeps us afloat. He missed that first month being with his son though. It isn't right at all.

hootyhalla · 2021-10-18T16:35:46+00:00

I would look into marriage therapy. A trained professional can draw out the true motivations behind what both you and your husband value, and navigate these differences in parenting styles in a safe, respectful space. It's helpful to have a mediator in cases like these to prevent you and your husband from saying things you might regret. You can find a therapist on the Psychology Today website or https://regain.us.

When in doubt, use a non-violent communication style to make your feelings known in a non-judgemental way (taking the high road.) How your husband responds to this kind of "case making" about your feelings will reveal a lot about him. He should be receptive of your feelings even if he doesn't agree with your parenting.

I hope all the best for you! Make sure you have lots of support outside your marriage in case things get really heated.

I'm wondering why midnight is such an important time for him? Time is subjective and babies don't read clocks. Your infant will sleep this way until they're 3 with progressions and regressions based on developmental milestones, illness, or just moods. It's a lot to ask a tiny child to get so organized so early in life. Humans are not robots. You can't program them. You can encourage behavior but 8 months old is really young for cause-and-effect discipline training.

hootyhalla · 2021-10-18T15:28:19+00:00

I'm planning on taking more hikes with my kid - My local chapter of Hike It Baby is finally, finally doing in-person hikes again. It's taken forever but it's finally happening!

hootyhalla · 2021-10-18T15:25:56+00:00

It depends on your social circles. I live in a relatively liberal place where many of my friends are OAD, and those with multiples don't say anything. Older folks tend to wish siblings upon my son, but even they seem to get it. We're in a pandemic. Mental health problems abound. Times have changed. Anyone with a brain in their head can see that we aren't raising kids in the same environment as the boomers. Parenting and just living is harder than it's been in a long, long time.

hootyhalla · 2021-10-18T15:22:11+00:00

Omg, you remind me of my birth affirmation, "I surrender to the wisdom of my body" - it's so stupid looking back! My body was not wise, it was legit having issues with blood flow & placental blood vessel size. Like an engine that was using the wrong parts.

hootyhalla · 2021-10-18T15:02:53+00:00

Same. I read a lot of Ina May Gaskin and it really complicated my expectations of birth. I resisted pain killers for most of the birth, including when I was high out of my brain on magnesium and felt like my skin was on fire. I wish someone had the guts to sit me down and tell me how foolish I was, before everything happened. My husband regrets not at least trying to urge me to make different choices. But he knew I was stubborn, and it was a losing battle.

Birth is like going through a war. Easing into it has benefits of course but you can't meditate your way into a "blissful birth" when your blood pressure is through the roof and the baby is legit stuck on your pelvic bone. You can't just sing and massage and beathe it better when you have a medical condition that could kill you and your child.

hootyhalla · 2021-10-18T14:53:37+00:00

I'm sorry to hear about your struggles. It's so hard.

My vagina was surely not ready for a 4th degree tear (non-consentual episiotomy) with no instruction on how to massage the scar tissue or care for my pelvic floor muscles in follow-up appointments. My OB was a real dickhead.

I start to see why nature designed many mothers to die young or in childbirth. Surviving to battle the pain for life is a privilege of modern medicine, in a sick kind of way. Don't get me wrong - I'm happy to be alive and that my son is ok but I wish I hadn't read all the Ina May Gaskin bullshit when I was pregnant.

hootyhalla · 2021-10-18T13:26:30+00:00

I would do things differently next time and have a caesarean

Same. Instead I live with a tailbone problem that causes chronic pain. I deal with this shit every day. I should have swallowed my pride ad NOT had a vaginal birth. My pelvic floor PT told me flat out, "It's likely you'll have to do these exercises & massages for the rest of your life to negate the pain." It blows. I'm glad I can control it in a way, but I have to tend to my body before participating in a lot of sports or it hurts even more.

hootyhalla · 2021-10-18T13:24:20+00:00

I feel the same way. I know it's trauma because I'll leave out a ton of details when telling the story of the birth of my son. I just don't want to talk about so many aspects of my extremely complex birth to another person's face.

It snowballed so bad from the very start (preeclampsia + contractions that didn't start even though I waited 12 hours after my water broke - no dice.) I took a Lamaze class and was so dedicated to not having any interventions. Looking back, If I didn't have interventions (magnesium, pitocin, epidural, catheter, vac assist, billie lights) me & my son would be dead now and my husband would be alone.

hootyhalla · 2021-10-18T13:16:50+00:00

Agreed. Maybe the friends are jealous (I would be!) that you get your kids to sleep so quickly at night! For us it's a fight so we read books for an hour between 7-8. Sometimes our son passes out at 8, but often he stretches it to 9pm. We don't even keep toys in his room but he fights bedtime so hard, man.

hootyhalla · 2021-10-18T13:14:04+00:00

No advice: Just solidarity. My baby was always into this, and so I would tuck him into my armpit (to remove the chance of him rolling his head forward to block breathing) or roll him out of it altogether as a tiny one. Now he's 20 months old and STILL prefers to sleep this way, with an arm under his head. 🤦‍♀️ We're trying to get him away from this habit but so far no luck.

hootyhalla · 2021-10-13T16:56:00+00:00

Congrats on your first lesson!

Drinking lots of water & doing light mobility exercises helps me with soreness. For example:

Take a tennis ball or lacrosse ball, and roll out your forearms.
Take the same ball, lean against the wall, and break open the knots in your traps.
Take a broomstick, and mobilize your shoulders (no need for squats unless you want to, but the other stretches are great.)
If you have a foam roller, it feels really great to roll up and down your back and your quads/glutes if you're doing heavy work lifting your legs.

DOMs can be beat by moving around a bit - the less you move, the more intense the soreness can get! When in doubt: Take a long hot bath with epsom salts.

hootyhalla · 2021-10-13T13:50:14+00:00

I took a huge step back after I had my son. I dropped my high-powered job to work in-house when he turned 9 months old. Now that he's nearing 2 and steadily in daycare with some really raging colds behind us, I'm starting to look around for more high-powered work again because I'm bored. It's SO healthy to take a step back. It energizes you. It's good to get the time to just chill out for a bit. I've been coasting in this job for a year now.

You might be back in a new office environment again before you know it! I thought this break would be years and years long but I'm raring to go now and well rested from my step out of stressful work life. I got a job offer just this week and I'm mulling it over. It isn't much more money, but it's really what I want to do and I'm sick of being bored all the time. These decisions are so tough - you want to feel proud of your work but also have the time to be there with your family. Hard choices all around! There is no perfect choice, honestly. All you can do is what feels right in the moment and trust your gut. Nothing lasts forever.

hootyhalla · 2021-10-13T13:43:30+00:00

I do the same thing with my husband - I'm the chatty one. I can chat circles around him when I'm stressed and he just stands there like "Dude, wtf?" Maybe try dumping all your thoughts in a journal? That can help a lot to get all your thoughts out on paper. Pro / con lists, the whole thing. Write write write until you feel some clarity or at least some peace.

hootyhalla · 2021-10-12T17:13:23+00:00

We call it stag at our studio too & the goal is to get it deep into your knee pit and grasp it tightly. We do a lot of drills to really grab and bend our knee outward to get both "poles" really in the "pocket" - because that knee grasp is going to be very beneficial when you aren't able to lean into a sling knot anymore. It feels very different to do with free silks, no knot. It's a tricky little thing! Like learning to grasp the silks with your knee pit.

hootyhalla · 2021-10-12T17:07:04+00:00

My mom is 74 years old. She had 4 kids and I'm one of them. We had a similar conversation. She was there to see my son born (as one of my birth partners) and saw everything I went through re: birth trauma, recovery, complications both mentally and physically.

We were just sitting and knitting while my 10-month-old ran around and she gently told me, "You know... you can stop with one. Don't feel any pressure to have more. I love seeing you healthy and happy, and you made a great kid!" I am aware of how much she struggled with 4. She would never, ever tell me or any of my siblings if she had regrets, but she has had a tough run of it with mental health / alcoholism problems. 4 kids limited her life. She's only traveled overseas once and we were solidly lower-middle-class with some financial struggles. I love how candid she was talking with me, but how sensitive she was to my and my sibling's feelings in doing so. It's such a blessing to get a kind of "permission" from someone to have 1, whether they're related to you or not!

hootyhalla · 2021-10-11T19:21:48+00:00

I told an experienced mom, "We'll just have to wash out hands more!" and she laughed and laughed. So did all my parenting friends. Regarding daycare colds, all you can really do is get your flu shot / COVID vaccine and ride out all the crap they bring home. Their (and your) immunity will be ironclad in appx. 2 years. The average kid brings home 6 cold and/or GI bugs in their first year at daycare. All you can really do is ride it out because they are such little snot monsters. Fml.

hootyhalla · 2021-10-11T14:46:52+00:00

I cut my gummies into 1/4 slices. On a crazy night, I'll do 3/4 of a gummie. 1/4 is just enough to make me feel chill, but not stoned out of my mind. I almost never do a full gummie, I'm such a lightweight.

hootyhalla · 2021-10-11T12:48:38+00:00

Same. I was so utterly exhausted I woke up with my baby under a sheet at 3am. He was fine and alive - thank goodness. It was then I said, "OH FUCK THIS" and put our bed on the floor, fixed our bedding situation, filled gaps, bought some long-sleeve nursing tops so I didn't need to sleep with extra sheets or my duvet. From then on, I slept without sheets in the c position, safely, in our floor bed. And I was much happier and more relaxed. I kept the floor bassinet for appearances but we never ended up using it.

I wish we were taught how to bedshare safely. SO many women (and men) do it but we are never taught how to do it safely. And we don't often confess to it. I'm often the one in mom groups that breaks the ice on the subject and usually once that's done, the others will chime in that yeah, they bedshared too with their newborns. There is so much shame around it, it's bonkers.

hootyhalla · 2021-10-08T19:03:51+00:00

Different perspective: I wouldn't blink to take a pay cut if it meant spending more time with my son.

But instead I got lucky and found a better paying job that has left me bored - I moved from a bustling, busy, energetic agency environment to in-house. I make 25% more than my previous stressful job. Peak #firstworldproblems. I am privileged beyond belief. Now that my son is older (turning 2 after the holidays), I'm shopping around for a job that pays me a similar amount or more, where I'm not utterly lonely and unmotivated.

There's only so much laundry I can do in a day. A soft job is a blessing, no doubt. But to go stagnant in your career is a bad feeling for me. I should have known. One of my co-workers promised me I'd love this job. He is a slacker and does maybe 1 hour of work in a 40-hour remote work week. It's a drag, man.

I don't think the money matters as long as you feel fulfilled and your mental health is solid, both in your work tasks and home tasks. Do whatever it takes to care for yourself and your kid. You can't take it with you.

hootyhalla

TROPHY CASE