Family Drinking Problems: The Diary of a Nomad Mom Subject Swap

This is a subject swap entry, where another blogger and I are given the same topic to write about. To me, this is the equivalent of meeting a lover's ex, a little terrifying because you know everyone will COMPARE her to you, and you know you kind of suck a little. 
(You're obviously okay with sucking, otherwise you would have made an effort to be a better person by now, wouldn't you?!) 

A good read is a gift, though, no matter who wrote it. Our subject was Addiction. 
I don't want to say more, read it to answer any questions. My take on the subject is on her blog, link at the end.

Here is a treat from The Diary of a Nomad Mom written by, in her words "a mother of two pepto-bismol colored princesses who sometimes speak the same language." She says she spends her days "writing helpful advice about how to be a successful expat parent in the Netherlands (I KNOW right?) for NomadParents.com and nights writing what I really think about life, the universe and everything." Her blog is raw, and very real. 

Reading her blog is like reading emails from a friend of mine. She lives in the Netherlands, so prices of things are in Euros, which I find worldly and interesting.


Family drinking problems

It is 9pm on a Friday night and I am up to my usual antics: drinking a glass of wine and writing a blog post that 5 of my friends will read. Sadly, this is closer to social interaction than many moms come. But I digress…

I had an odd moment earlier while trying to decide whether to pour the wine before or after writing this post. If I poured it before, there was the risk that I might forget I was supposed to be writing. If I waited, I was at risk of falling asleep before getting to it (horrors, shudder!). The idea that I could skip the wine altogether was not an option. Why? Because I have a bottle addiction.

Waaayyy back before I had kids, I used to enjoy a glass of wine after a long day in the office. I would curl up on the couch and sip a nice chardonnay while watching The Daily Show. Two kids later I gulp down as much as I can between 9:00 and 9:05pm, when I fall into a comatose stupor due to massive sleep deprivation.

Why am I so tired, you might ask? Well, let me tell you. It is because I had a moment of complete stupidity and decided to have a second kid. Second kids are always the opposite of the first, a fun fact no one tells you until you are already pregnant. My first kid was a sleeper. You can guess the rest.

My second child did not sleep because she had her own bottle addiction. That damn kid could not go four hours without chugging down a bottle of milk.Actually, make that four hours if I was lucky. For sixteen solid months of my life,that kid woke me up every single night.

So she drank and I drank and somehow we made it through. However, many times along the way I thought about breaking us of our bottle addictions. Here are some of the things we tried:

Dream Drink
If you have read any parenting article on the internet, you have likely encountered the concept of the dream feed. This is where you wake baby up before you go to bed and try and stuff their bellies full of food. Whoever came up with that idea never met my kid. She didn’t want to gulp down an extra bottle at 11pm anymore than I wanted to chug a bottle of wine. When we tried it, we both ended up needing to pee and crap in the middle of the night as our stomachs tried to figure out what hit them.

Watered Down
Have you ever been out with someone who adds half a glass of water to their wine because they don’t want too much alcohol? When I see that crap, I want to banish them to 5 hours of time out for ruining a perfectly good glass of wine. Unfortunately, my kid felt the same way about watered down bottles. When a 14 month old gives you a “what the fuck is this” look at 3am, you do not want to go into a long explanation about how she doesn’t actually need all that food. If anything, I wanted to put extra scoops of formula in the bottle. Maybe if she chewed it up instead of drinking it, she would last longer between feeds.

Cold Turkey
This was the absolute worst method I tried of breaking our addictions. She cried, screamed and pitched a fit, her older sister woke up and then I had to deal with both of them without the extra cushion of alcoholic stupor. Screw that!

Finally one day she decided that she didn’t need the bottle anymore. She didn’t provide any explanation. I wish I could say the same for myself. I still need that nightly glass of wine to keep from grinding my teeth all night. Oh well, one family member at a time.

To read my take, "My Strange Addiction" on Nomad Mom's blog, click the link in the subject title. 
http://nomadmomdiary.com/my-strange-addiction/