Squirrel Tao

So It’s Not Always This Difficult - I Have a High Need Baby

Jennifer Franklin Elrod — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 02:48:55 +0000

Maybe I’m dense, but it took me two months to realize I have a high need baby. He’s the only baby I’ve ever had. Since having Wyatt, I have been in awe of my mother and grandmother for having four and nine children respectively. They had natural labors and stayed home with all their kids. My mother breastfed all of us. But my mother started making comments, like, “Does he always nurse so frequently?” When I replied defensively that the hospital lactation consultant said it was normal for Wyatt to go through marathon feeding sessions during growth spurts, she said, “I don’t remember the marathon feeding.” I kept quiet about my own nervous thought that Wyatt nearly always seemed to be going through a growth spurt.

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Wyatt’s Birth Story

Jennifer Franklin Elrod — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 17:59:15 +0000

My four week old son, Wyatt, sleeps in his peanut shell sling, nestled against my body, as I type. Today is a milestone, the first time I have gotten him to accept being worn in the sling. I sit at my desk in the living room, watching the snow fall gently off the trees in the backyard. The whole house is peaceful, and I feel good to be on my computer and to have Wyatt nestled against me at the same time. I feel as if everything is going to work out now.

It took a while to get to this point. The first couple of days home with Wyatt were the most desperate, overwhelmed and exhausted days I have ever experienced in my life. I knew about the “baby blues”, but they had conjured up a vague image of a new mother sitting next to a tiny, sleeping baby in a frilly white bassinet, eating chocolate, crying about being fat. I hadn’t known that “baby blues” really translated into feeling as if I would never be able to go to the bathroom, eat, sleep or shower again.

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What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Jennifer Franklin Elrod — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 02:45:39 +0000

This August, my husband and I finally made a trip out to Glacier National Park, as we’ve wanted to do for several years. Since I’m now 20 weeks pregnant, I’m glad we had our babymoon while we could! We had four bear sightings, three mountain goat sightings and a bighorn sheep sighting. Pictures are on Flickr. Going to the Sun Road was spectacularly scenic, in spite of the haze from the enormous forest fire in neighboring Idaho. We enjoyed our trip, but it was also tiring doing all that driving, so we also enjoyed coming home. I’m ready now to take nothing but short trips for the next couple of years, which is the perfect feeling to have with a baby on the way. Some day, when our baby is old enough, we’ll all go back out West as a family, even if we have to ride our bikes out there due to the price of gas!

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Getting Caught Up on My Online Novel Writing Class

Jennifer Franklin Elrod — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 13:53:44 +0000

It’s hard to believe this is the first blog post I’ve written since April. I’ve been knee-deep in living several dreams at the same time, besides being bitten hard by spring fever. Throughout half of April and most of May, I spent most of my free time outside. Every week-end I worked outside made my weight drop by two pounds — an added bonus. Plus, my mornings are now spent exercising, not drinking coffee while feverishly working on my computer until the last possible minute before I have to get ready for work — which was how I created most of my Web Site design. It’s hard to have balanced, healthy habits while working full-time and fleshing out a fictional Web Site part-time.

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Getting Used to Feeling Productive

Jennifer Franklin Elrod — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 17:19:36 +0000

This year, I’ve begun to have a welcome yet unfamiliar feeling. It’s the feeling of doing what I want. It will take some getting used to it. In addition to gaining something from it - relief, satisfaction, a sense of accomplishment - I have also lost something. I’ve lost the entirely dreamlike status of my goals. When goals are dreamlike, it’s as if they exist in a warm womb. Now I’m much more conscious of all of the work that I need to do in the present, and I don’t dream about the future quite as much. In addition, of course, I’ve had to take the risk of finding out that what I accomplish will not live up to my own expectations and hopes. That’s what happens when you’re livin’ the dream.

There are times when I wonder if I want to do all the work I will need to do. There are times I wonder if I can. At such times, three thoughts help me immensely. The first thought is that I will be doing all the work incrementally.

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