Finally Friday: Raccia Pumps

Did you see the story about the Illinois bar exam denying nursing breaks to a new mother? She was asking for a “number of accommodations, including being allowed to take 20-minute breaks every two hours for pumping and breastfeeding and getting extra minutes to make up for the lost time.” I’ll post the link below.

I was also a new mom when I sat for the bar, and had the distinctly unpleasant experience of ducking out 20 minutes before the end of the session, when you were still allowed to leave, to desperately pump and dump in the gross Javits Center bathrooms (blerg). I guess this shortchanged me about an hour and twenty minutes over the course of the exam (four three-hour sessions over two days, loosing twenty minutes each session). My baby was older, so I could last through most of the sessions, plus the two hours preceding the test itself (because they insist on you showing up ridiculously early), but I was hurting towards the end. It never occurred to me at the time to ask for breaks or other accommodations; at the time I was too worried about the test. It was a bit humiliating to have to bring my manual in a clear ziplock, but not too bad.

With some more years under my belt, I look back and wish I had agitated for something–loosing an hour and twenty minutes, give or take, over the entire test is not insignificant. While I’m lucky to have passed, it would have stunk to have failed–all the more so because I definitely would have felt that my reduced time was a contributing factor. It completely bums me out that she was denied by the bar examiners, because, honestly, the bar exam is such a wasteful exercise to begin–do they really think this gives her an unfair leg up on her evaluation of commercial paper? Have none of these folks had babies and ask for a little leniency somewhere because for pete’s sake, they’re dealing with a one-month-old? Gah.

Hi ladies! Checking in again now that my guy is 3 weeks old. I missed the great discussion yesterday about an ideal maternity leave, but I thought I’d offer up a few thoughts/lessons learned on other topics:

Best advice from someone else on this site: Buy really comfortable clothes for maternity leave that you can both sleep in and receive visitors in. Genius. I feel put-together when people stop by, and comfortable enough for naps.

Get organized about how you’re going to let everyone know the baby has arrived. I didn’t get around to this task, and I’m still kicking myself for that. All kinds of people got left out of our original “He’s here!” email: aunts and uncles, work friends who moved to new companies, etc. In retrospect, this was far more important to me than having a playlist put together for the delivery room, for example. It’s really awkward to get well wishes from people who don’t know the baby has arrived and respond with an “Actually, he’s 3 weeks old!” email.

People say newborns are so tough: the lack of sleep, lots of feeding and diaper-changing, etc. But here’s the thing: as a first time mom, I don’t know anything different! It’s not like I’ve had the experience of caring for a 1 year old who sleeps through the night and doesn’t need an outfit change at 3am (if in fact 1 year olds are like that…) I think most of the “its so tough” feelings must come at you in retrospect, because in the moment, this is just my new normal and its fine.

Most importantly, I wanted to put something out there about how I felt immediately after delivery, in the hopes that it may help someone else. I was physically exhausted and emotionally… overwhelmed. Which is what I expected of myself, but I didn’t know how to deal with that in the moment. Baby was born and I felt stunned, incredulous, and was waiting for all that love to hit me like a mack truck. It didn’t. It seeped in slowly, over a matter of days. In the mean time, I let everyone else hold the baby and gaze at him. Mistake. I had all kinds of fleeting thoughts that I’d just made the worst mistake of my life. Not true. What I wish I could go back and say to my self is this: If you don’t know what to do with the baby, just model the behavior of those around you. Hold him. Gaze at him. That’s it. That’s all you’re supposed to do, and doing that will help you feel the feelings that came immediately to everyone else. Basically, fake it until you make it. Because you will make it, and then, 10 days (or 10 weeks or 10 months) in, you’ll look at this little creature and feel love!

I also have some thoughts on exclusively bottle-feeding from the get-go, but didn’t want to wax too poetic in one post. Hope this has been even a little bit helpful to someone else out there!

Reposting from yesterday, but has anyone used a sleep coach with their child? We have created a monster – totally inadvertently. We started by bringing our daughter in with us in the morning at around 10 months old to get an extra hour or so of sleep when she’d wake at 5. Over the last 9 months, this has slipped gradually earlier and earlier, until now it’s midnight some nights when she gets in bed with us. For a long time, this worked really well actually. But now that she’s older, some nights are just awful – she’ll sit in bed between us and just play, or demand water, attention, etc. I’m at the end of my rope. Has anyone hired anyone like this with any luck? Am I dreaming to think that there’s someone out there that can help me fix the mess I made? (Am I getting a bit overly dramatic due to lack of sleep???)

I am loving these comment threads lately. Thank you all!