My turn

Before i became a parent, I was doing fairly well at what we in yoga call 'cultivating the witness' This means you are able to simply be a witness to another person's experience without making it somehow about you or your own experiences .. instead of assigning judgement to it, you just let it be what it is - sad, joyful, whatever. Let's say that I find that to be more challenging now.

Since Jack was 3 weeks old, I have been going to support groups and spend quite a bit of time around new parents. I have listened to other people talk about how much breast milk they are able to pump, or how big their kid is or how they hold their head up or have been rolling over since they were 4 weeks old. They are simply talking about their experiences. They aren't bragging and they aren't saying their lives are easy but for some reason, that is what I heard because none of those things have come easily to me or jack.

I had not attended the mom's support group for a couple of months because of school or travel. I know the group talks a lot about sleep and I asked the following: Jack has been sleeping through the night for a while now but I wonder if I should be waking him up to feed him. The moderator asked how many hours he slept, I said around 11. There was an audible gasp in the room. Little did I know that some 5 month old babies still only sleep 3-4 hours at a time. I swear, I did not know this. My mom had told me babies sleep through the night around 3 months or so.

To be totally honest, I felt glee at finally having something go my way -- something that can be hard but for me has been easy (at least for a month). I wanted to do high kicks in the middle of the room. Instead as people looked at me incredulously I said, I have had so many hard times! meaning.. i feel like i deserve this lucky break.