The few, the proud ... the parents of multiple children

Invoking my "do-not-have-to-summarize-everything-that-has-happened-since-I-last-posted" clause ... NOW!

This post is dedicated to my sistas from another mister, those of you with two or more kiddos. I am humbled before your tired feet and your frazzled mind.

Allow me to explain. Tonight my hubs is going to be home later than usual. Notice I did not say late, just *later*. He will be here long before the kiddo goes to bed.

However, it is now about 20 minutes or so past the time one of us (between the kiddo and I) starts to peer out the front windows, hoping - for very different reasons - that we will soon see our crappy little rundown truck pull up. (The kiddo: "Ahh! Daddy daddy daaaaaaaadyyyyyyy! Mama, it's daddy! He's home!" Me: "Oh thank god.")

And I am already starting to question everything that led up to having a child.

“Any parent who is honest will tell you, you live with that ambivalence. You look at the face of your beautiful, lovely child and you think two things at the exact same time: ‘I love this kid so much that it ‘s changed my whole life. I love other people more because of how much I love her. I love people that died years ago more. My love has traveled time because of how completely I love her and she loves me back. She’s completely given value to life that didn’t exist before and I regret every decision that led to her birth’. That’s how it feels.”

—	Louis C.K.

So It's Been a Long Time. Whatevs.

Anything less than a year and I consider myself a candidate for sainthood.

Today happens to be Valentine's Day 2012. Our kiddo's third day Valentine's Day.

We (okay, maybe it's just me - I probably shouldn't speak for the hubs) would put ourselves squarely into the "less is more" category when it comes to giving gifts. I got my husband a thoughtful card and made us a super delectable, unexpected Valentine's Day treat (The New York Times' Dark Chocolate Cherry Ganache Bars). I'm planning a flavorful yet relatively healthy dinner (The Gracious Pantry's clean eating curry chicken and Enlightened Cooking's Moroccan quinoa salad) and that's it. It should be noted here that I love to cook and would have made dinner anyway - now I get to make something brand new. We got the toddler a big ol' red mylar Valentine's balloon and a card that plays music. And that's it.

That being said, I can't help but feel like I should be doing more, what with all the ads littering the right side of my Facebook news feed for 14 dozen roses, delivered by a dancing cat dressed like your favorite character from Downton Abbey, and the posts from friends in which they share that they made their kids a fully-functioning servant robot.

I've never been one to go all out on Valentine's Day and, in fact, I am a pretty awkward romantic dinner date. I'm also a hot mess at arts and crafts and other homemade-y gifties. What about you all? Do you go all out on this day, or is it just an exceptionally pleasant February day?  

Talk About Your Delayed Gratification!

So it turns out that the last time I wrote for this blog was my kid's birthday. When she turned one. Not the one that just happened, where she turned two.

Yikes. I am behind.

In an effort to save you and me both from the written word version of the time-passing montage in movies, I'll try my best not to recap everything that has happened in the last year.  I can tell you that it involved a trip to Hawai'i, a handful of birthdays, a Thanksgiving dinner with friends, a Christmas holiday with a very sick kiddo, a trip to the coast, innumerable Facebook posts, and, perhaps most happily, growing friendships and a connections to a place that we may just very well end up calling home.

Things seem to be going well on the home front - for example, I can hear my kiddo just woke up from her nap and is doing some wake up yoga in her crib: "Meow, moo! Meow, moo! Woof woof woof woof woof. Meow, moo!" (That's cat and cow pose, with a few downward dogs thrown in for good measure).

I have an idea for a post swirling about in my head, on the topic of kid-free flights, or restaurants, or dog parks (see this article, shared by a friend on Facebook: More adults support kid-free zones) but I haven't sorted out my thoughts enough to write anything on it without coming across as a raging loony. 

What are your thoughts on the topic? Please share them in the comments.

And she's one.

Today, at 9:42 a.m., my kiddo turned one year old.

The BabyCenter emails I receive weekly have changed from a subject line of, "My Baby This Week" to "My Toddler This Week." That stinks. I think I'll unsubscribe from those emails.

She opened her present of books, a drum and a coat this morning. As expected, once she tore through the tissue paper, climbed over the drum and chewed on the books, she has moved on to pulling magazines down off a shelf she has only recently been able to reach, and trying to pry open the one DVD case we forgot to move out of her reach.

The dog and cat prepared a little something for her special day - from the dog it was/continues to be full facial licking, and from the cat it appears to be a resolve to not run away immediately.

The day has only just begun; we have plans to visit our midwife with homemade brownies in tow and to buy a child bike trailer as a one-year gift to ourselves.

Last night, before falling asleep, I read her birth story...at least, as much as I have written down. It may have happened 365 days ago, but I feel more ownership and more deep pride at her birth than ever before.

Happy birthday to me.

Baby Addiction

Hi, I'm a new mom and I have a baby addiction.

Hi, new mom.

It started out innocently enough - the first few days after she was born I was uncomfortable going anywhere (in my own house) that was far from her, for fear she would start to scream and need to be fed immediately.

It turned into a nervous internal voice waking me up to turn on her little SnuggleNest light to make sure she was a) still breathing; and b) not gagging on her own spit up.

Now, it's gotten to the point where yesterday, when hubster took a nap upstairs with said baby and left me downstairs, I made food, cleaned some stuff up and then had no idea what I should be doing.

For me, this is different than the idea of baby as narcotic (see this great article sent to me by another new mom friend: Katie Roiphe: My Newborn Is Like a Narcotic. This isn't necessarily something pleasurable - it just is.

The article got me thinking. Yeah, I call myself a feminist and have done so for a long time (feminism - the other f word). Yeah, I'm taking a significant chunk of time off from work, more than I have taken since I started working some decade and a half ago. Yeah, my plans after that aren't even firm enough to be called plans, just ideas about what life could be like if this, this and this happened.

So, yeah, a lot of which which I'd based my personal sense of strong and female on in the past has been twisted into a new form of my life. I haven't yet gotten friendly enough with this new life to figure out why it is uniquely female and inherently strong.

Right now, my baby addiction is functional - I need to do things for this baby to make sure it lives and grows and thrives and bonds with me. When I'm not there, I worry I'm losing those chances to build that deep bond and trust that will benefit both me and this child as she grows. I know, and I hope, that soon that addiction will change into something more like the pleasure high from a narcotic.

Lies and the lying liars who tell them

Disclaimer: This is going to be a really scattered post. I haven't posted anything in a while and this topic has been bubbling around in my head for a few weeks. Also, over at http://www.glossolaliac.typepad.com/ there is a much more well thought out post about this. Read the article. Share it with your friends. And for god's sake, help a mama out. Any mama.

Thank you to Al Franken for the title.

Or, maybe more appropriately, this post should be called "Why didn't anyone ever tell me, and why isn't it in the books, just how f'ing hard this will be?"

I was scared about what to do, I had/have a rush of hormones flooding through my body as the pregnancy hormones peter out and the breastfeeding/mama hormones rush in to fill the space, breastfeeding is H.A.R.D. and hurt like hell (my nipples were bruised and cracked, dark red and purple for about a week), I'm healing from essentially running a marathon and, in my case, a tear, and, on top of all that, there is this small, squirmy, little being sleeping in the middle of my bed that cries to be fed on my poor boobs, that makes messy diapers and keeps me and my husband up and away from the life we used to know.

That's the stuff nobody tells you.

Really, I'm almost indignant about it. I feel that, if you have ever had a child before, it is your job, nay, your DUTY, to be realistic with all new moms from then on out. None of this "aren't you just LOVING it?" bull shit.

And, for that matter, what's with the baby books that barely even address the "baby blues" or postpartum depression? How about a little reassurance that postpartum depression is the far, far end of the spectrum and that no, you probably aren't going to go that far down the path. But yes, you will have crazy thoughts about what the hell are you doing and why did you get yourself into this.

Acknowledge the difficulty, acknowledge the darkness out loud so that new moms don't go into their own heads and start to get scared about the thoughts in their heads. We can help each other out if we are honest about what the time period immediately after birth is really like for new mamas.

New mamas are truly doing something extraordinary and we owe all of them the straight dope on the post-pregnancy experience.

It's only by talking about it, by bringing light onto an all too common state of mind, that we can make it less scary and lonely for the millions of women who experience it.

Baby Girl

She's here.

She was born on Sunday, August 2, 2009 at 9:42 a.m.

She weighed in at 8 lbs. 3 oz. and was 20 inches from top to bottom.

She came into this world in a beautiful birth at home, in a birth tub, in her mom and dad's bedroom.

I am sure that more will follow, but I didn't want this incredibly momentous event to go undocumented for too long. Believe me, the delay is only due to the tough adjustment to our new schedule.

Punting

Not that I like to necessarily call it this, but last night my husband characterized our decision to put both last names on the baby's birth certificate as "punting." Which, essentially, it is. Once they're both on there, we can figure it out later, or let the kiddo figure it out. No pressure or anything (although Jacobsen is obviously a much more less-abnormal last name than Demerice - just sayin').

I think it was a good decision. One of the best, you might say.

What's in a name?

So last night we made a very important decision.

The baby's last name will be Demerice Jacobsen. Put it all on the birth certificate and then we can sort out the logistics later.

Yesterday

Yesterday was July 7. My husband's birthday.

Also, yesterday marked 37 weeks of pregnancy.

For a good portion of my life, for over a decade, one of the goals I've had for every day has been, "Do not have a baby today."

For the first time, that changed yesterday. Yesterday was the go ahead date, the date where this whole game changed.

What's that feeling in my belly? On July 6, the answer was "hope it's just a practice contraction." Today? "Hey, maybe the baby's on the way!"

Last night I laid in bed trying to envision the birth, putting good images in my head.

Instead, I ended up thinking about how we need to clean the bedroom and move the storage chest thing out and the bed over so that the tub can go in, and when we move the bed over we need to also move over the wall hangings above the bed because I have this thing with symmetry and I would not be happy having to look at wall hangings that weren't hanging centered over the bed and we should also take this opportunity to dust the floor trim and actually vacuum all the way to the walls and where will the dog go during the birth and will our families just give us 72 hours to get used to each other and our new little family and for me to heal before they barge in and where am I supposed to get this food that we should stock up on and why is our freezer so small.

So maybe the visualizations aren't what I need to be doing right now.

The Transition

Maybe this happens for every soon-to-be mama, but it seems to me there has a come a point where my main focus has gone from protecting with ferocity what I see as my news, my excitement, my prerogative, beyond the decision of the type of birth I want to experience to those all-important, myriad choices of what I will actually do once this little person is here.

Now that people don't need to be told I am expecting my first child, now that the evidence of said arrival is, well, evident anytime you see me, my attention has turned to much more daunting preparations. How long will I breastfeed? Am I jiving with this attachment mothering idea? Am I already setting myself, my husband and my baby up for failure because I don't plan on having them (the baby) sleep in my bed or in one of those bed-attaching crib thingies? How can I make my traditional office job fit in around the edges of the work I actually want to be doing for the next half decade or so? If it doesn't, can I leave it without it being called "dropping out?"

Additionally, how can I shield myself and my family from the ever-increasing outside expectations of how this pregnancy and birth experience will be when those same outside forces also happen to be related to me? How do I express what I want, and is it okay to want what I want when everyone else seems to want something different?

A lot of questions for too early on a Saturday morning from one very exasperated yet hopeful mum.