The things we do for love...

I went back to work last week. The Hubs was still away at our last festival event this summer. He was on the clock and making bank so we decided it was worth the stress and worry I faced returning to work without him around. At this point Starfish had barely started taking bottles. She would MAYBE drink an ounce. I was worried. My mother and sister-in-law were around and had lovingly agreed to watch tiny while I was at work. The day before I went back I popped out for a quick visit with a girlfriend, leaving tiny and MIL home alone for a test run. I was feeling pretty good until MIL called. I could hear tiny screaming bloody murder in the background. "I think you should come home" she said. I walked home quickly, already feeling the cold panic spreading through my stomach. "What is she going to do tomorrow?! What if tiny wont eat?! What if Nanna cant hack it and our childcare plan goes to total shit in the course of a single day?!?!". I was short of breath with panic by the time I went to bed that night. In the morning I got up and got ready before tiny awoke. I managed to squeeze a final snack in for her before I left the house and cried my whole way to work. Throughout the day I was blessed with sweet pictures and honest updates about tiny. My SIL told me of the meltdowns and sent pictures of the happy times. It helped to feel like I knew the truth about how her day was going. The next day there was less crying but it was still very hard to leave her. By the time I got home Hubbs was back and tiny was happily in his arms.

All in all the first week back was not as horrible as I had feared it would be. I hate leaving her. I hate hate hate it. I'm not getting nearly enough sleep yet but thats just the shape of my world right now. I will write next about pumping at work and how that is a special hell for lady-mommy-medics but its not so bad overall. When I get sad (usually on my way to work and again around hour 8) I remember why I am doing this. I think about how important it is to show Tiny what a successful, working woman looks like. I want to keep working to keep myself open to new opportunities (*cough*nursing and midwifery*cough*). I think most importantly right now I can give G and Tiny a chance to spend quality time together. They have the next month together. If I weren't going back he would have to pick up OT to make up the income. The burden would be all on him to make ends meet. If he were in a job where just the weekly paycheck covered us comfortably it would be a different conversation but right now its not the case. Equity in our relationship is just as important as equity in other areas like parenting. I want Tiny to know G just as closely as she knows me. I want him to feel as important and involved as I am and I want them to have as much physical time together as possible. All of those things are mine to give them but only if I go back to work. So I go. I go happily and with comfort and confidence in my purpose. Love is a wonderful motivator and an even better anesthetic when the pain of leaving catches up to me.

Four Months Old. Friends make all the difference

Ramona turned four months old this week. Holy shit! Where has the time gone? I feel like a second ago I was pregnant, half a second ago I was holding her on the couch contemplating just how long and hard the days were and how lonely and emotionally overwhelmed I was. Those first eight weeks were a fucking doozie my friend.

Now, I am really enjoying being Ramona's mom. Really REALLY relishing all this time we get to spend together. I like knowing her signals. I like our routine and that she knows I know what I am doing and she is relaxed and confidant. She struggles but she is a happy girl almost all of the time. Overstimulation is our number one cryptonite but honestly, she does what I want to do when I get overstimulated so it is hard to get very upset. In fact, 99% of the time, when she freaks out I feel bad for her. Sometimes it IS hard to be a baby. But most of the time, especially this last two weeks, being a baby is happy, full of smiles and coos and gurgles and fun. Even the rough nights are made beautiful with the smiles I get in the morning. Think hateful things if you must....I can take it....but really, we have a beautiful thing going and even when we dont I love her so damned much its cool. It really is.

All that said, this morning, after a huge week of travel, flying cross country twice, visit with Mimo hijacked by ten-bazillion family members wanting to visit and a less than awesome carseat, followed by arriving home in the middle of Hubs work week leaving me still on my own for chicken duty, and a scream fest with the lactation consultant two days ago, I went for a pedicure with a friend. I left R with daddy and split like a fugitive. It was fucking awesome! We got coffee, pedicures, chatted about nothing, hit Target to hilariously try on clothes and came home to a crying baby and a pretty chill husband considering. It was beautiful. I was so happy to see them. I was so proud of them. I felt recharged. My toes look adorable. I was ready to be mom again. I was gone 3hrs. I felt like I had slept for a week. This was just what I needed.

Earlier in the week I met my "new mom friend" for coffee and a walk on Alberta. It had been a very nonsleeping day for R and I was still jet-lagged as F! I needed to do anything to kill the hours between 4 and 7. Meeting J was perfect. We walked, had coffee, got pinwheels for the baby girls. We talked about babies, husbands, families, gay mons, life, TV... It was sooooo easy. Our girls are mere weeks apart. We have so much in common aside from the girls too. It is crazy! I never could have imagined we would be instant friends when we swapped numbers at the midwives picnic.

I also went to moms group this week with my neighbor buddy. I met a fee new moms, realized I am not new anymore as R is one of the older babies, heard a handful of other moms talk about going back to work and talked at length, with another mom who is a few months ahead of me but still experiencing some of the same sex and intimacy issues I am experiencing. I left feeling awesome. I dont have it all figured out but I am making some great friends who dont have it figured out either and that is awesome, comforting and reassuring. There isnt any negative talk or complaining but an openness and curiosity about it. Nobody is "suffering" or poor me-ing, just talking, exploring this new life and new identity. I must say I find it amazing.

So, in conclusion, month four is starting off awesome. I go back to work in a month (boo but yay), we go to fair in two weeks ( bust out cha tie dye!!) and I have some awesome new people in my life. I owe it all to this little girl. She upended my life and gave me a new one. Thank you sweet pea! Now, do mommy a favor and sleep in tomorrow ok?

Wedding Bells

Some dear friends of ours are getting married this weekend.  Hubs has known Iz since she was barely a teenager ten years ago through search and rescue.  I have known K and Iz for almost as long as I have been with Hubs.  They were just starting their now quite successful gardening business then.  They have been through their share of struggles and have come to this awesome point.  They love each other madly, they are starting to see real success in their business venture, they are surrounded by family and friends who also love them madly...Time to get hitched!  The only bummer is that our nation still has its head too far up its ass to recognize their marriage as legal and binding the way mine and Hubs is recognized.  Bullshit.  But, for this weekend I will suspend my sadness and frustration over the lack of true equality for all Americans and I will put on my party hat and my dancing shoes.  It is so important to celebrate the times like these.  It is important to celebrate with my dear sweet friends as they start their "official" life together as wife and wife (or as Wife and Isabel).  It is important because with every celebration we add another drop of not just tolerance but normal-ance to the water of the world.  If we keep celebrating we keep increasing the number of people who know and love a couple who "got married" even though the government hasn't caught up yet.  Before we know it everyone will have family, friends, co-workers who they love and respect who don't fit the puritanical definition of "marriage" as one man and one woman, and we will be forced to change the way the state and federal governments recognize the awesome and sacred union of marriage.  Maybe people like Rush will no longer get to marry since they clearly don't respect the bond as much as the two women down my block who have been together for 25 years....just sayin' its not the gays who are threatening the sanctity of the union, its the Newts and the Rushs.  Anyway, this weekend I will party like a rock star as we send these two awesome women into the next phase of their lives.  They will awake on Monday morning to find that nothing much has changed, yet everything is different and it is wonderful.  I will toast them and dance and pour love from my heart, and in the back of my mind I will hope that by the time my daughter is old enough to love someone enough to want to spend the rest of her life with them, she will be able to marry whoever she chooses and will have access to all the rights and responsibilities therein.

Life is so damn good I could sing!

There is SO much exciting stuff going on.  I don't even know where to start.  The class that I am working on with my dear friend B is starting to come together and starting to feel like a real project and not just the hormone sodden ramblings of a brand new mom who would rather fix someone else's life than look at her own baby blues.  We have input from lots of fantastic families and are starting to expand our circle of input to include same sex and LGBTQ families.  I am really excited about this 1.  We live in Portland.... 2.  Women's health education is important.  We are doing such a shitty job of teaching our kids sex ed these days people are barely equipped with the real info on how that baby got into her belly in the first place.  It is time to start offering education that addresses EVERYONE and that for us, includes all the shapes and incarnations of "family".  So hooray for awesome families eager to share and help us help more awesome families.

Ramona and I are traveling to see my mom in Michigan next week.  It will be her first real big trip and my first time flying with a baby.  I am excited and anxious.  It is a long flight but we can do it!  We will get to see all of the women I refer to as "the aunties".  They were aunties to me as a kid and a few of them treated me like the little girl they never had.  I am excited to show off my tiny peanut.

My short term disability claim extension was approved after 6 weeks of no money coming in and 45thousand phone calls to sort out what BS they needed and what they already had.  It was a gut rotting cluster but they approved it and I got a lot more time than I had ever anticipated and it is awesome.  I can't think of anything better to do than be with Ramona.  She will be nearly 5 months old by the time I go back to work.  I feel so much better leaving a 5 month old than I did thinking about leaving a 2 month old.

I am making mom friends.  This deserves a whole post of its own but I need to add it to the exciting things list.  I really failed at forming a mom network.  I stayed away from all of the mom groups and shunned the idea of meeting these women before the baby arrived.  I thought I was too good for child birth ed classes and boy oh mother lovin' boy, was I foolishly FOOLISHLY wrong.  It isn't about the class....its about the community you form.  I have been spending time with my neighbor and she birthed at home but was part of a centering group at the birth center in town.  She has this whole network of moms who saw each other every month through pregnancy.  They still meet up now too.  She took me to a Thursday morning mom's meet up at the birth center education space.  It was soooo nice to just sit around in a room with a dozen other moms and babies all within a few months of one another.  We all talked about whatever.  Work, family, travel.  Turns out we all see the same pediatrician.  It was so nice to be in that group.  Babies nursed and fussed and slept and pooped and we just went about it like it was no thing.  It felt like coming home.  We were all in the same place.  We honored each other just by being present in that space together and it felt so good.  I am actively trying to make more mom friends now including the awesome family next door who have a one year old.  We have now gone to see Mr Ben, the children's musician who plays near by every Tuesday twice.  It is so nice to talk as we walk over there and then sit in a room full of parents and kids from birth to 5 just all doing their thing to the sound of Mr Ben.  Networking with other parents is key.  I feel more confidant, less depressed, energized and not alone!  It is a very good thing.

G and Ramona are bonding.  I cannot begin to express how happy it makes me to hear him chatting away to her on the changing table or to see the two of them out in the garden.  He is such a great Dad.  Ramona really lucked out.  As she blooms more and more into the outside world he falls deeper and deeper in love.  It is enough to make me cry.

In short, life is good.  Life is exciting and overwhelming and more beautiful than ever before.  I think I had a bit of the baby blues there for a while.  I was struggling to feel connected and honestly, the majority of my closest pre-baby friends seem to have abandoned ship for a while.  I understand.  I wasn't myself and I had some shit to sort out once my home birth I had been planning since I was ten became a hospital birth with an epidural and pitocin and a baby in the NICU...It was shitty and it conflicted with my personal view of myself.  I had some figuring out to do.  I also had some letting it the fuck go to do.  I have my good days and bad days on that still.  Anyway, getting paid, making friends, sunshine and my flippin' awesome kid all add up to BEST LIFE EVER.

Let's Do the Time Warp Again

Ramona is 3.5 months old.  Holy SHIT!  Pardon my French but where oh, where has the time gone?  Wasn't it just a second ago that I was hugely pregnant?  No, in fact, it was a year ago that I GOT pregnant.    This has been the fastest year of my life.

I have been thinking about that.  The way we are all able to "escape time" for a while in our twenties.  We finish university and then we just sort of exist for a while.  First 'real' jobs, traveling, Peace Corps, getting married, medical school, working at Starbucks, whatever....We may live in one place or a series of places with a rotating cast of characters.  Time is flowing and nebulous for a while.  Nobody is having growth spurts of changing very much in the physical sense.  Time seems to flow but also to stand still.  We are afforded the luxury of believing we will escape time and be young forever.  Then someone has a baby and that happy little day dream honks twice, sticks its tongue out and disappears into the desert leaving a silhouette of dust a la road runner.  You have a baby and you start living in weeks, not years anymore WEEKS!  Do you have any idea how fast a week goes by?  I am here to tell you it goes so fast you can't even make your eyes bring it into focus.  You have to take a picture of it as it rushes on by so you can look at it and study it later because now it is moving too quickly for you to get a good look.  That baby changes every day too.  Now days, which once happily blurred together in your nebulous 20 something time soup, are significant units of measurement.  You can see things evolve in a matter of days!  The last time a few DAYS mattered was when you had a big assignment due in school.  Since then, days might as well be months.  Babies grow and change so quickly you are no longer able to escape to that magical place where none of us is aging.  With a baby around you see that we are all aging and time is fucking flying by.

When we brought R home she was just a tiny tiny peanut girl.  She was barely 8lbs and I was sure I was going to break her arms every time I changed her onsie.  She slept nearly constantly, had a tiny raisin on her belly from where we had been connected for the last 9 months and she looked like she was being eaten alive by the cloth diapers.

Today, she is 15 weeks old.  She would rather stand up and look around than just about anything else.  She has a very distinct sense of what is funny and what is crap.  She is growing out of clothes left, right and center.  She knows who her mom and dad are as well as her aunty.  She is starting to be more comfortable with a handful of other people too.  She sleeps well, eats well and really likes live music.  She smiles and even the crankiest soul would have to smile.  She is charming as hell!  I have been her mom (officially) for 105 days.  

I never imagined I would take so much time off of work when she arrived but it has been the best thing I have ever ever EVER done.  There is so much to do with her.  She has so much to teach me and we had some hurdles to clear after the way she came into the world.  I am so glad I have had this time with her.  Being with her every day has taught me her signals and has taught her to trust in me.  Now, as she has learned to trust me, she is learning to trust other people and to be comfortable being passed about as long as she can come back to me at the end of the day.  This is the time that you can't ever get back.  I suppose it all is but this time is OUR time.  We live in a tiny little world full of smiles and drool, walks in the sunshine and adventures out and about.  She and I are having a lot of fun getting to know each other and I wouldn't be anywhere else for anything in the world.  It has been the blink of an eye, the last 105 days.  At first I panicked when I thought about going back.  I still do a little but it gets better every week.  I am so thankful to have so much time with her now.  I know it will be just another blink of an eye before she no longer wants to sleep next to me and she is telling me that I "just don't understand".  But for now, I will snuggle her next to me, take a long, deep sniff of her head and thank the universe for this gift of my tiny peanut girl and the time and space to show her that I am 100%, unequivocally, hers. 

3 month on the outside

So there it is....My mom belly at 3 months.  It is squishy and wiggly and multicolored.  Why on earth would I post this on the internet?  Because someone has to.  Confused?  Let me explain.  I have battled my weight my entire life.  I have dieted, exercised, starved, binged, given up...you name it.  I have likely tried it.  The fact of the matter is I like to be happy and often times food, cooking it, sharing it, tasting it, makes me happy.  I am someone who loves cheese and chocolate and beer and carbohydrates.  I like bad for me things.  I like veggies and fruit a lot too but I don't think I have ever said no to a cheese cube.  Now that I am Ramona's mother, the mother of a little girl, I feel a sense of responsibility to get my shit together.  I have changed a lot of my eating habits.  I wept once while driving home from a trip to Eugene because I was so tired I stopped at a McDonald's and had a hamburger and fries for dinner.  "I just ate crappy McDonald's food and now I am going to make her crappy McDonald's milk! Waaaahhhh!"  I feel an almost overwhelming sense of responsibility to eat a lot of greens and a lot of fruit now that I am breast feeding.  I want her to have only the best milk and that means I have to eat good stuff to make it.  

I talk to my lady friends and we ALL have body issues.  One hates her shape and another hates her skin.  One wishes for bigger breasts and smaller thighs while the other, smaller breasts and less of a tummy.  I know moms who have stopped breast feeding so they could "hurry up and reach their goal weight".  Ladies!  Ladies!  Stop the insanity!  

This picture is a real woman.  It is a real belly where a real baby grew.  That baby is healthy and smart and happy.  That mom is utterly, stupidly in love with that baby and would do anything for that little soul.  So, instead of doing "anything" I am going to do something very specific.  I am going to end the cycle of passing along the body bashing.  I am not going to raise my daughter to hate her body and to pick herself apart in the mirror.  I am going to raise her to run and swim and play.  I am going to encourage her to eat the good things that make our bodies feel good and move well.  I am going to let her dress herself in clothes that make her feel happy and confidant.  I am going to tell her how much I love her and how awesome I think she is.  I am going to let her grow wild and strong and free.  I am going to lead by example.  I am going to eat the good things and run and swim and play.  I am going to treat my body as a gift and talk about it like it is a dear friend whom I cherish.  I am going to dress myself in clothes that make me feel beautiful and happy and free.  I am going to love this body entirely. I am going to worship the body that gave me that little soul.  I am going to embrace the gift of her clean innocence and start fresh myself.  I am not going to hide out in the shadows any longer.  I refuse to hate myself for the squishy bits and the stretch marks.  My LIFE has given me this body.  Your life has given you yours.  Having the chance to live and a body in which to live is a gift.  Lets treat it accordingly shall we?  So here it is.  This is my belly three months out.  I am not a model or an actress or some airbrushed belly on the cover of a magazine bursting with promises of 5 minute abs or how to shed the baby weight. I am working on making my whole body stronger and fitter and faster.  If I become smaller and more toned that is great.  That is one more way to feel beautiful and strong.  But I am no longer focused on "getting my body back".  My old body is gone.  I am now looking forward to joyfully welcoming my "new body" to this life I am living.  I welcome it like a dear friend.  I will offer it green things and fresh water and love it no matter what.  I will show my daughter what it looks like to be unashamed of the body you live in.  I will teach her how it feels to be at home in her skin.

Mother's Day

Tomorrow is Mother's Day.  This is my first year as a mother.  I know the weather is supposed to be HOT and beautiful and we are having friends over tomorrow night for a medical skills refresher prior to some festival volunteering in a month.  I don't know if G has anything special planned.  I would be a HUGE liar if I said I didn't hope for at least a card but I really don't need anything special.  I want time with G and R.  I want some time together as a family. 

Today, R slept in (after a nursing strike last night and LOTS of crying I am not surprised she needed a little extra sleep) this morning.  I woke up to nurse her before going to Zumba and when we were done I snuggled her in next to G.  I hoped she would let me get out the door before waking up and demanding his full attention as I knew he didn't get a lot of sleep and his pitiful sleepy face is too much for me to resist and I would have stayed home.  She cuddled back up with him and napped a bit longer.  I came home to the two of them happily wandering about the front yard gardens smiling and drooling.  I got cleaned up and took R to meet up with some girlfriends at the St John's street fair.  R passed out in the Ergo and slept for the next 3 hours.  Growth spurt anyone?  We hit the store after the fair and got things for dinner and lunch quinoa quiches for next week.  We spent some quality sofa time with G before he had to leave for work and then Amy came over. 

Amy is G's sister and my personal life raft.  During the first two weeks of R's life I didn't want anyone around.  I was still recovering from my plan B birth and the hormones made me think that I didn't want anyone other than mom and G to hold R.  I have written about that time...it was not pretty.  Anyway, I didn't want anyone else around.  I knew Amy and I had talked about her being our house helper after the baby arrived but I was regretting that and wishing for plywood to board up the door against ANYONE coming over.  My Mom had my number though and invited Amy over almost every night for chores and dinner.  She would do some house stuff like laundry, vacuum, change our sheets and then she would stay for dinner, hold R for a little bit while I tried not to cry at the dinner table and then she headed home.  Lather, rinse, repeat nearly every day for the first 2 weeks.  It only recently dawned on me that my mom knew exactly how I felt then and did it anyway because she knew how it would manifest later.  Last week in the midst of sleep regression hell and G's work week I was having a particularly down day.  I felt honest to goodness depressed and was so sad and scared about everything big and small.   When G left for work I noted how crappy I felt and how I had tried to nap about 10 times that day with no success.  I noticed my feelings and told myself that if I still felt this way in 3 days I was going to call the midwives because this was not 'me'.  When Amy came over after work I asked if she had time to stay so I could go to an exercise class.  I wasn't even sure I wanted to go but as she picked up R and they started singing and cooing and dancing around happily I started to feel better.  I felt like I could go and know unequivocally, that she would be in loving hands and even if she screamed the entire 90min I was away, she was screaming in the arms of someone who loved her and someone who had been around her from the very day she was born.  Amy was my savior.  Class was fun.  I came home full of endorphins, dripping sweat and happy to see my baby girl.  Those 90 min were all I needed to refresh my perspective and get back in the game.  I was eternally grateful for Amy that night and continue to be every day as I watch her bond with R grow.  This is what family is all about.  I have my mother to thank for that.