40 before 40

As I have entered into that final year before the big 40, I started to think about the things I'd like to do, try or explore, or, honestly, just get back to. Since I do love a good list, I thought, why not make a big list of 40 things I'd like to do before turning 40?

In no particular order, here's what I've got. I've left a few empty to add as things come to me during the year.

1. run a 5K
2. weekend at kripalu
3. hike in the white mountains
4. perform with todd at a coffee house
5. teach yoga
6. travel to northern ca
7. weekend away with ben sans children
8. organize the basement
9. finish switching to organic cleaners
10. go apple picking
11. write a short story
12. develop a regular meditation practice
13. waterski
14. get a pedicure with friends
15. take ella to the nutcracker
16. get rid of all maternity clothing
17. have 5 outfits i really love
18. volunteer for the natick food bank
19. do 'clean' for a week
20. find a regular yoga class to attend
21. lose the babyweight
22. meet with a life/career coach
23. try rock climbing
24. try rowing on the charles
25. learn more about photography
26. go to nantucket
27. have a twice monthly date night with ben
28. have a tv free week once in a while
29. practice being more open about what I feel and need
30. no iphone use on sunday unless someone calls
31. no talking on cellphone when driving
32. try a new haircolor
33. floss every day
34. take a weeklong facebook vacation
35. have a family vacation somewhere other than maine
36. get a massage
37. meet with a personal trainer at the Y
38. return to singing on a regular basis
39.
40.

SAHM

I seem to be able to be a SAHM for a certain number of hours each day, but after that amount of time I am done. DONE.

Today, I have both kids at home with me because my daycare provider had her helper call in sick and can only have 6 kids there with her and since we don't drop off first, we can't drop off at all. In the morning we made a shape turkey, hand turkeys, gratitude turkeys, glitter glue pictures and a dot art coloring book. We had breakfast, we made an event of getting dressed and putting in pony tails and we watched part of a Disney movie.

Now, the afternoon hours are waning and there was no toddler nap and quiet time failed. The infant has not gone down for a nap despite being tired (probably because his big sister is pathologically incapable of being quiet). The toddler is yammering non stop, issued most often in some form of whining proceeded by 'mom, mom, mom, mom, mom...'

I'm out of ideas for distraction I'd love to have her run around in the yard but am not really interested in standing in the cold and don't have a warm enough thing to bundle the infant in to take him out too. Every time I have to nurse him she steals my iphone and starts to watch something on PBS kids. I take it away and then think 'why am I doing that? it only adds to my own misery, let her watch!' I might take that thought back when she is 10 and has ADD.

Basically, I've hit that point when I feel like I'm trapped in some circle of hell and there are hours, HOURS before the hubs will be home.

This too shall pass, but not before I've looked longingly at the case of beer in the kitchen a time or two.

So much to say...

... so little brain power.

Sometimes there is so much noise in my head that I can't even imagine what it would be like if I tried to speak even half of it aloud.

It might go something like this:

Good lord.
I am so f-ing tired.
Is this my life?
Do we have milk?
What am I supposed to be doing now?
I should make a list of all the things I could be doing.
Why do we never have any pens?
I should go for a walk.
I should get off the couch.
What am I going to do for work?
Am I completely messing my child up by spending so much time being frustrated by her?
What is up with my husband's family?
How on earth am I supposed to juggle being a wife and a mother and still be just me?
How do I sort out daycare and my work at the same time?
Maybe we should move to California.
Will we ever have money to take a real vacation?
I want to be fitter.
I wonder if I'll ever sing again.

Seriously, that's what runs through there in any given thirty second segment.

I realize as I listen to the chatter in my head, how I waste a lot of time wanting my life to be one way when it is another and how I don't do much to change it to get closer to what I want. In my fantasy life I am super active and fit, I don't eat crap like crackers, I have a close network of friends who have lives like mine (riddled with small children) and we have families we do stuff with, I expand my cooking repertoire, eat organic, make smoothies, always look on the bright side of life rather than bitching about how tired and frustrated I am, practice yoga regularly, have a job I love that brings meaning to my life... basically the life I envision as being the 'perfect' one for me is the opposite of how I live right now.


I've been reading "Buddhism for mothers of small children" and from that I could glean that I suffer from perfectionist syndrome of always focusing on what isn't there, thinking 'if only' then things would be perfect and I'd be able to do x,y and z. I know I do focus on getting things done as though at the end of doing, something magical is going to happen - oh, if only I organize the basement then.... right.

I know I've struggled the past three years and, honestly, going through the rest of my life this way is going to make me and everyone around me miserable. I don't want to spend my children's childhood hating them for being children and being frustrated with their every mis-step as they learn - I am terrified that I am creating a little girl who is going to spend her life feeling as though she is struggling to be perfect so I'll love her. Lord knows what I'll do to her little brother. I don't want to be frustrated with my spouse because I'm the one with boobs who is stuck at home feeding the infant while he gets to go off to work (as though going to work carries no stress with it....).

Somehow accepting the perfect imperfection of my life might be the thing that actually turns things around for me. Just letting what is be what is. Maybe imperfect is perfect. The book suggests that a loving kindness meditation is the ticket for someone like me. I can see how that might work.

Now, if I can only muster the brain power to remember to do it....
Where did I put that book again?

Doormat Dads

The NYT's blog on parenting "Motherload" has had yet another fabulous post. This one called In Defense of the Doormat Dad.

As I read the post I found myself shaking my head and thinking, 'I believe I've taught children of parents like this at Harvard and been incredibly frustrated by them.' This dad, because of the overly strong method of discipline issued by his father has decided discipline isn't his thing and he always gives in to his child - in doing that he always makes his wife the bad guy (note to the dude who wrote the article: if she doesn't already resent you for this, she will, soon).

It also made me reflect on how things happen in our household. I am, by far, the more strict parent. That is in part because 1. I believe in the power of limits with children - and see them as empowering rather than disempowering, 2. I firmly believe that at age 38 I know better than a 2 year old, 3. I am home much more and deal with the consequences of a child's behavior much more often and  4. I value my sanity.

Just an hour ago, my nearly three year old tried valiantly to convince me that she needed to have music on to be able to nap. That music would, in fact, help her sleep. That this was all issued to me in a whine told me all I needed to hear - her level of fatigue meant if no nap happened the rest of the afternoon would be ugly. From prior experience, when I gave in on music and let it play during nap time (only once), she did not nap and instead was out of her room as soon as the CD ended and was a freaking disaster by the end of the day.

I have seen in our house the role of the parent who gives in to a child's whims and the parent who doesn't and the conflict that can create. For a long time, I felt like the police always having to tell the other two members of the household when it was time for bath, time for bed, time for lights out. It made me resentful. Why was I the only parent who seemed concerned with getting the child to bed on time? Sleep is critical and important to a child's development and mood and to the mood of the mother who will have to deal with said child the next day. Eventually, I stopped saying "okay, it is time for tub," when I wasn't the parent who was going to give the tub. That stopped me from feeling like the police, but it doesn't stop me from wondering why the other parent doesn't seem to see how tired the child is and how getting to bed a bit early could benefit everyone. However, I do realize they have to develop their own way of doing things and develop their own sort of relationship.

What I've also learned is it is hard to be the parent who is gone all week at work, leaving at 8am and home at 6pm and then issue boundaries. It is never fun to the be the parent who says no, but for me, as long as that no comes with a real reason that is ultimately to the child's benefit, I'm okay with it. It is rare that the child flinches when I say no, even when it is issued in a stern voice. However, recently, when she grabbed a knife off of the counter and accidentally poked her father in the arm with it and he said no to her, she immediately sulked and started to whimper. That cut right to the core of him and he felt terrible. She came to me for comfort and he apologized for hurting her feelings.

As we talked about it later and he expressed how terrible he felt about making her cry, I tried to reassure him that he is doing less damage by teaching her things like 'you don't brandish knives and stick people with them', than by saying nothing and letting her do what she pleases. Those are simple lessons she needs to learn, even if they come with a brief crying fit.

When I told her recently that she could not touch the television screen, she replied, "oh mommy, you say no to everything." I stopped and thought about that a bit and realized that I do say no to a lot, but there's a lot of behavior that she'd engage in if there were no limits. I make a concerted effort to say yes to things she requests that are in the realm of acceptable behavior or fun or going to enrich her day - you want to play with playdough while I make your lunch? Great! You'd like to go to the library this afternoon rather than play in the yard? Fantastic! You'd like to watch Sesame Street for the second time today? No. One time through is enough. You'd like a brownie before your lunch? No, we eat our growing foods first. But, if you eat all your lunch, you can have a brownie.

I think we've gotten to a better balance in our parenting of both of us instilling discipline and I certainly have a better perspective on my husband's experience of it and why it presents challenges for him.

For the sake of the dad who wrote the blog post, I hope he learns it is ok to cut short your child's tub at night if it is going to take him past his regular bedtime and that though your child requests you to turn right rather than left on the way home, you might still want to go the way you've planned because a detour might throw off all kinds of other things you (or your wife) may have planned - like, oh, say, a timely dinner that would lead to a timely tub, that would lead to a timely bedtime.

None of us has all the answers as parents but for the future teachers of your children and all the people who will interact with them, please set some basic limits so they don't end up pissing off the world with their entitlement and obnoxiousness.

Just noticing...

One of the things I admire the most about my husband is his seemingly endless well of patience - with me, with our child, with life. As someone who has a patience well that is as deep as the shallowest of puddles, I fully appreciate the value of being with someone who can endure when, so often, I cannot.

At night, when I've had it with the day and the child has had it with the day and the two of us are apt to get on each other's nerves, he is able to negotiate the final hour of her day in a way that I could never. Tonight, she was edging toward wild and he suggested that they 'do shells' before going up to do a tub.

The Hubs is a serious collector of shells. If we are at a beach, he is picking them up and usually bringing a fair number home. We have various containers filled with shells throughout the house (incidentally, my mother also collects shells and I grew up with containers of them in our house, so this was not all that strange to me that he has them too) and the one in the living room is a glass bowl filled with them.

The process of 'doing shells' is to take the bowl down from the bookcase, take the shells out one by one putting them on the coffee table - sometimes remarking on their color, or noticing the shape, or enjoying the tactile experience of touching their ridged edges, or simply just loving the process of taking out and putting back in - something at which all toddlers excel.

This particular container of shells has lots of small scallop-like shells and some others that I can't identify. There are also lots of pieces of shells, scraps of broken up conch shells, pieces of dog whelks and what not.

If it were me, I wouldn't pick up a broken shell, let alone bring it home. But, this, people, is what I love about my husband. He looks at a broken shell and sees the beauty in what is there - ignoring whatever else might be missing. As he pulls those shells out he'll often comment to the Shorty on what parts of it are neat, or how the color changes inside and out.

It is just a truism about him that he can find such beauty and wonder in the most imperfect of situations, beings and things. This, perhaps, is why he is able to love me! The way he views a shell, whether whole or broken, is how he views life. There is always something good and redeeming no matter what is going on or how difficult the situation. He is kind, he is patient, he is compassionate and he can find beauty in the smallest scrap of a shell.

Should be we surprised by this?

Another day of buzz on the interwebs. This one is a true tragedy; the shooting in Aurora, CO at a midnight showing of the new Batman movie.

It is so terribly hard to make sense of such a senseless act, until you start to wonder how senseless it really is. When we live in a society that, for all intents and purposes, extols the virtues of violence, should we feel shocked when all that is offered as entertainment comes to life?

A line from an article on boston.com jumped out at me: "...maybe it’s worth having a discussion about an entertainment culture that excels at selling violent power fantasies to people who feel powerless." I don't think the violence is limited to power fantasies aimed at the powerless.

It is everywhere from the myriad police-based shows, shows about the mafia or forensics, kids cartoons can be violent, even, frankly, the evening news shows violence. Violence isn't limited to television either. Murder Mystery books are prevalent too. Whether it is Patricia Cornwell, James Patterson, Faye Kellerman, Sara Paretsky, there probably is seldom a time when a book about violence isn't on the New York Times Best Seller List. As of this week, GONE GIRL and BACKFIRE are two that are clearly crime/violence based.

Frankly, the concept of violence extends all the way down to children's clothes. In recent years a trend has emerged of the use of camouflage in boys and girls clothing. For girls, of course it has the ever-present pink added in, but for boys it is straight up camo, like what you see soldiers wearing. Really? People want to dress their infant, toddler, elementary school age boy as though he is a mini-soldier? Ben and I often discuss what it means to sign up for the military and we both agree that a major part of it is that you are signing up to agree to be okay with killing people. It might come as no surprise that I won't be buying any camo gear for either of my children.

How easy is it for someone to obtain a gun in our culture? Pretty freaking easy. Our second amendment give us the right to keep and bear arms and the supreme court has had several cases to debate whether this applies to individuals and many cases come out in favor of people being able to keep guns in their homes. The original intention, I believe, was to allow for militias and for communities to protect themselves. I'm pretty sure the makers of our constitution never fathomed an assault rifle or the number of bullets it could dispense in a matter of minutes.

That we can get an assault rifle to keep in our own homes seems just so unnecessary. To what end does an average individual need an assault rifle? While I would personally never own a gun, if you are a hunter you would have one or if you are a sportsman you would have one. But in neither case would an assault rifle be your weapon of choice. They are meant for nothing else than killing as many people in one fell swoop as possible. Its not like you are going to take an assault rifle out into the woods hoping to stumble upon a herd of deer and just fire away.

But, I bet we see images of assault rifles all over movies and television. We might even read about the carnage they create in a book or in a story covering unrest in any number of foreign countries. I would argue that the supreme court needs to re-enact the ban on assault rifles it over turned in the 90's. But I might also argue that we as a culture need to start speaking out against the violence that pervades our airways as a way to begin to curb the senseless violence that continues to occur in our society.

Do we need maternity leave?

Yesterday the interwebs were buzzing about the news of Marissa Mayer's Fortune Magazine interview in which she stated "My maternity leave will be a few weeks long and I'll work throughout it."

Mayer is the new CEO of Yahoo, no doubt a high pressure, high stakes job. She started yesterday at 28 weeks pregnant. In many ways it is progressive for a company to hire a leader who is expecting a child in just under 3 months. But is it really if the expectation is that she has to give birth and immediately return to work? Do women really still have to act like men to get the top jobs?

When I first read snippets of the article I snorted out loud to learn of her plan to just pop her kiddo out and go right back to work. Spoken like a first time mom who doesn't know what is coming. Maybe you'll be put on bed rest before giving birth. Who knows how long labor will last, how tired you'll be, whether you might hemmorage and be told to take two weeks and do nothing but feed the baby (I was). Maybe you'll have to have an emergency C-section. How will your body react to being up every two hours to feed said infant? What if the child has colic or other health issues? There are so many unknowns about labor and delivery and the first few months after that it seems incredibly short sighted to just blithely say, 'oh sure I'll go right back to work', when your company probably offers some kind of maternity leave and you earn enough to take a leave, even an unpaid one.

The cynical part of me guesses that she has a scheduled C-section set up and will immediately just bottle feed with formula for the sake of going back to work and employ any number of nannies to care for her newborn. How else can she accomplish such a feat without going down in flames when she sits down at her computer to send an email in her sleep deprived haze, unshowered, baby poop on her pants and milk leaking through her pajamas and puts together a completely incoherent message to her employees? I should say that I advocate women doing what's right for them on the breast-feeding front, and I know many who have had to bottle feed because nursing wasn't an option from a physical standpoint. But, not nursing because you are pressured to return to work is just wrong.

In the LA TIMES there was a story that quotes Lisa Stone the CEO of BlogHer as saying her phone lines lit up with people celebrating Mayer's hire and impending motherhood as a true sign that women have smashed the glass ceiling. I think there's a serious problem there. Women have gotten into the workplace and gained access to high level positions but they've had to do it by acting like they are men. Men take two weeks off (sometimes) when their child is born and go back to work.  There seems to be no respect for the changes a woman's body undergoes to give birth and the need to heal from that to be healthy and happy. That healing takes time - the 6 weeks of healing your doctor tells you, you need is, from my experience and those I've talked to, really just the tip of the iceberg.

I firmly believe in women making the choice that works for them when it comes to working or not working after having children. I firmly believe that women are just as capable of holding high powered offices and succeeding just as much as a man can. But, I don't believe our workplace model has evolved to a point to allow women to succeed in doing that while actually acknowledging the demands of motherhood.

In the Atlantic Monthly recently there was an article written by a high powered mom of two tween/teenage kids who has decided to leave her high powered position because she realized you simply can't have it all. Something always has to give and usually it is on the family side. She's an older mom with older kids so she has some wisdom with which to look at things and she isn't talking about stepping out of the workplace just to have kids, but to be engaged with them throughout their lives. She discovered the neediness to survive passes when kids get older, but the neediness to thrive is still there.

I admit I was shocked to go back to work 3 months after having my first. I had assumed there was some rhyme of reason to why that was the allotted maternity leave - like, my child would be on some kind of sleep schedule that allowed me to sleep enough to be a functioning human being. Nope. She was up every 2-3 hours, nursing for an hour at a time and then going back down. I don't even want to calculate how little sleep that meant for me and I know I was not the best worker I could be in the first year of her life. I probably wasn't the best mom either, but on both fronts I gave it my best shot.

Now, that my second is due (ironically on the same day as Marissa Mayer and I'm also having a boy), I know I will not be able to take a full 3 month maternity leave. After my first I left the administrative, benefit providing side of my job to just teach part-time, 3 days a week as I believe in being home part-time to participate in the raising of my child. So, I enter into this birth gratefully covered by my husband's health insurance, but with no maternity leave. We have set money aside to allow me some time to stay home, but both of us know keeping as much money in the bank as possible is a good thing. So, I am constantly thinking about how long to take off and when to go back. I should teach 10 weeks of lessons (the fall semester starting, no less, when I am about 36 weeks along). If I did 3 before having the baby, could I do 3 after, starting say in late November? Can I handle that after just 6 or 7 weeks? I struggle to come up with a paradigm that feels right beyond, I want at least 3 months at home. Truth be told, I think women should be granted with pay and a right to return to their position without retribution, a year off after having a child. (My reasoning behind that is probably the topic for a whole 'nother post.)

So, when I read about Marissa Mayer, who probably has the option on paper to stay home for 3 months, or maybe to even have started her position 3 months after giving birth to her child, yet she's saying she doesn't need maternity leave, it irks me. I think it sends the wrong message to the world about what women have as rights in the workplace. It tells me that women haven't risen nearly so high as we like to think. It also tells me Marissa Mayer might be in for a rude awakening.

With me its all or nothin'

Yesterday I had a small moment of epiphany: I realized that I am completely and utterly an all or nothing girl. That realization was quickly followed by the thought, "how well is that working for you?".

The truth is, it doesn't. At all. In fact, I would hazard a guess that choosing to be all or nothing makes me miserable at times. If I can't even compromise with myself, how well do I compromise with others?

Like, when I'm pregnant...clearly you can't live your life as you do when you are a non-pregnant person. But, for me, if I can't do things the way I normally do, I don't want to do them at all.

Exhibit A: Exercise: In my pre-child life I probably worked out 5 or 6 days a week and loved it. I felt good about myself and my body. Exercise helped me manage stress and unwind after a workday. Post-child and now in pregnancy number two, there is no way I have time to work out 5 or 6 times a week. So, what do I do? Embrace the times when I can work out? Nope. I tend to not do it. WTH? Why can't I just go when I can and accept that it won't be what it once was? While pregnant my body becomes slowly less and less able to do exercise in the way I am used to. So, now that walking makes my hips hurt, I have stopped doing even that. However, I know that leaves me feeling yucky mentally and physically and that walking a shorter distance is probably still possible. One mile instead of two, anyone?

Exhibit B: Singing: In my pre-child life I sang every day. I took lessons regularly, worked with a coach and performed several times a year. Post child, I can no longer sing every day, life just doesn't allow it. We moved and my teacher and coach are now too far away to realistically work with. Finances are different and it isn't possible to take lessons every week and work with a coach. So, have I embraced the time that I do have to sing? Nope. I've stopped doing it. I honestly can't see a way to make it work - in my mind if I can't function at the level I was, I'd rather not do it at all. Hmmm, then I spent a lot of time missing singing and wishing I had my old life back where I had time to do something I loved and was good at.

So, what gives. Why am I so all or nothing? I'd guess it is some form of perfectionism, though Lord knows in other parts of my life I am far from concerned with perfection. I can make a quilt and not worry if every line matches up perfectly. I can draw a picture and not worry about accurately depicting what I'm drawing. I can make dinner and fudge ingredients a bit if I don't have everything I need and still have faith it will taste just fine.

I guess the good news is I'm not an all around perfectionist. The bad news is I can't quite figure out how to be less-perfectionist in all parts of my life. Perhaps I need a mantra like 'some is better than none' and remind myself of that when I think about doing something but then stop because I don't know when I'll be able to do it again.

The good, the bad, the iPhone

My first iphone was my wedding present from my husband. We both joked about me having one because technology was just not my thing. I could do it, I just didn't really want to. However, within a week, I was iphone fluent, downloading apps, taking photos, texting and wanting to do more. It was a new me. But, was it an improved me? From the get go, I wasn't sure.

Fast forward to the birth of the child. We announced the birth via email and Facebook from the delivery room on my iphone. I nursed while reading NPR stories on my iphone. I took walks and snapped cute photos of her sleeping in her stroller on my iphone to email to the grandmothers and the husband.

In my professional life, I left my administrative job after having the Shorty and was just teaching. That meant I was in my basement room all day with no access to a computer, yet a need to check email when students cancelled, sometimes look things up on the internet to give them more information, have a calendar that was easily accessible and coordinated with my home computer and, frankly, a chance to read NPR stories or the Boston Globe when they ditched their lessons. For that, the iphone is perfect.

When it became clear last summer that my first iphone was dying. I felt very unsure about getting another. I was aware of how much less available I was to those I love because my hands were tied to the phone. I didn't and still don't like how available the iphone makes me: the ding of an incoming email makes me want to check it right away, something funny happens in our household and I want to post it to facebook, a cute moment occurs and I want to photograph it to keep it forever. If feel tired of parenting and being tuned in, I want to tune out by surfing Facebook, Pinterest, US Magazine, NPR, Boston.com or read my horoscope. At night, the Husband and I often sit on the couch using our iphones - he to play games and check sports scores, me to read Facebook - rather than actually talk to each other.

Ultimately, I was unsure enough about my unsureness and got another iphone. The sales people informed us that NO ONE was getting the unlimited data plan that we had and we wouldn't want to give that up. I'm still not sure what unlimited data means. I don't think a day has gone by that I haven't questioned that move. Then, my husband got one (switching from a blackberry). Our apps are different, but our use the same.

With a slightly older Shorty I put the PBS kids app on so as to have entertainment if needed in a pinch. We 'favorited' some sesame street clips for her to watch on you tube - surely 3 minutes at a time is not bad, right? I tried to keep it away when I was with her, but since it is my only phone, I found myself carrying it with me around the house and frequently pull it out to play. Now, the Shorty knows just how to get to you tube and watch those videos herself, her little fingers tapping and sliding. I'm fairly sure a few times she's ended up watching Al Jazeera propaganda and stumbling onto porn can't be far behind. She knows the PBS app and helps herself to watching shows. She opens the camera app and has taken photos and videos. She. Is. Two.

At night, my husband sits in her room for a few minutes after lights out, while she unwinds in her crib before falling asleep. At first, I found that endearing. Now, I know he usually sits there and plays video games (and sometimes falls asleep). How is that quality time? It is actually through observing his iphone use that I have come to question my own even more. On the mornings that I go out for a walk, or to run an errand I almost always come home to the two of them curled up on the couch watching videos on the iphone (this, after she has already seen her allotted hour of PBS in the morning). I hear her say to him, "stop playing with your phone daddy".

She can now get herself anywhere she wants to be, either by her own reach or by dragging a chair over and hoisting herself up. In other words, there isn't a place we can put our phones that she can't reach.

Just this morning I put the number lock on my phone so she can't just help herself. But, this is about more than just her finding my phone and using it. It is about desiring and needing to curb my own use. (I have been more mindful in the last year and work hard to keep the phone away when she is around). I still wonder about surrendering my iphone and going back to just a regular old non-smart phone. In some ways I need the technology, but in most ways I don't. There is no need to for me to be so available. I hold no delusions that I am that important. When I need it is when I am working and frankly, if I'm home with my kiddo for the purpose of being a present parent, I shouldn't be working.

Technology has facilitated things in my life, but I can't honestly say it has improved them. Maybe I'll try an experiment in the coming weeks of putting my iphone in my bag when I'm home, turning the email signal sound off and the ringer up and allow for a small amount of time each day to check email - when the child is not around, but not when I have the chance to have quality time with my spouse (allow me the delusion that this time exists). That way I can answer the phone if it rings, but can ignore the rest. We'll see.

More from the annals of modern medicine

Yesterday was my follow-up ultrasound. It was also my monthly check up with the midwives.

In the past three weeks I've worked hard to stay in a positive emotional place with the whole possibility of Trisomy 18. Intellectually I just knew the risk was so low that it was practically non-existent. BUT, I was also aware that emotionally I wasn't quite in the same place. When my mind started to wander to that place where it loves to churn and churn and churn, I tried to take a deep breath and shift my focus to imagining the cyst getting smaller until all that was left was just a healthy little baby brain.

Up first was a check in with the midwives. Part of what I love about them as opposed to an OB is that they really strive to just let you be pregnant (not that some OBs don't do that too, but the midwives are open about being less medical model than an OB). Don't get me wrong, were I someone who was high risk for things I would for sure make the choice to go with the medical care that would be best which would probably be an OB in a hospital setting. But, I'm not. I know things can go wrong fast in a delivery which is why I love this particular practice. They have multiple offices around Cambridge, but you deliver at Mt. Auburn where specialists are a page away if need be.  But if you don't need them you can just labor on and pop your kiddo out on your own terms. This particular midwife is one of my favorite. Probably in her late 50's early 60's, three grown girls, no-nonsense, but also very warm. She was on duty right after I delivered Ella and is one of the highlights of that birthing experience for me.

As we chatted, I mentioned that I was going to the hospital after seeing her for this second ultrasound to check the growth of the baby. She sort of gave me a look and said, "there is no reason for you to have to go through another ultrasound". I explained my experience of the first one and how over the last three weeks I've come to realize that a lot of my issue was with the way in which the OB delivered the news and talked about it. Her response was that this was someone new(ish) and they are beginning to hear similar things from other patients - that he is a bit more 'medical model' than he professes. He laid out this whole plan to me that we'd check the baby's growth, then we could move on to an amnio and then decide to terminate if need be.

What Megan the midwife had to give me was a handout saying that this cyst in the brain was almost never an indicator for T18 (a handout created by an OB at Mass General). There was no need for him to lay out that plan as it just heightened my anxiety in a most unfounded way.

Once at the hospital, I saw the same ultrasound tech who was super nice (though she got the goop all over the waistband of my skirt....). It was a quicker survey than the first time and throughout the boy was kick, kick, kicking away. His kicks are strong enough now that you can really feel them on the outside and he kept kicking her the more she'd push on him to get a picture. (I was secretly cheering him on).



She left and we waited for the OB to come in and tell us what was up. It was a different OB this time. It was the guy I saw at the 13 week ultrasound whom I really, really liked. He walked through the door and said "I love everything I see on this ultrasound. The cyst has totally disappeared and the baby weighs about 15.5 ounces, right on track." He said "I'll be in touch with Megan to see if she wants to order another ultrasound to check growth". It wasn't lost on me that he thought a midwife had ordered this test, not his fellow OB.

I think Ben and I were both a bit incredulous. The OB last time had told us the cyst might go away but it wouldn't be gone by the time we came in for the ultrasound yesterday.

Alls well that ends well. I'm happy to just move on to the last half of this journey and let my little guy grow away (not incidentally, I was prepared to be fully pissed if I'd gained four pounds in the last month and the fetus hadn't grown at all). I'm sure he'll give me plenty to worry about once he's on the outside, but for now he can just keep on cookin' in there.

Crush it!

I read something on Facebook this morning that will not leave my brain: an article posted by a former student that condemns gay marriage, saying there is no evidence that gay couples can raise children in a healthy way and therefore the institution of marriage, as a heterosexual one, ought to be protected.

I fundamentally disagree with this on so very many levels. Family comes in many, many forms and what I believe children need above all else is love. Everyone knows how to love, no matter your sexual preference. If churches want to decide not to marry people, I have no beef with that. But I believe from the depths of my soul that our governments, both state and local, have a responsibility to provide equal rights and protection to all citizens. That is somewhat fundamental to our constitution.

The kicker in the article is this: the student who posted it is, I'm fairly certain, gay and very, very closeted. When he was first my student, I simply assumed he was gay (trust me, after enough years in this industry you just come to know when such things are the case). He set my gaydar off from his mannerisms, his speech, his projection of himself. He managed the Stars on Ice event on campus his senior year and bounded into his lesson the week after proclaiming that he'd gotten Paul Wylie's phone number....Then, as I got to know him he would often talk about how girls in church would throw themselves at him. He always expressed it in such a way that he sounded rather uncomfortable with their advances and I sometimes wondered if he was asking me for help in a backwards kind of way. Then I learned that this was not just any church that he attended. It was the church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints. Yup. He's a Mormon. From a big, Mormon family with a dad who is a prominent business man and professor in Boston and a slew of older brothers who all excelled at sports and business. This young man loved music and singing and wanted to be an architect. He participated in an organization on campus that was a haven for so many gay young men finding their way through a world that was not always gay friendly. Maybe I was wrong in my assessment of him, but my gut tells me I'm not.

I've seen him periodically in the years since he graduated and at each encounter I've seen him move more into the hetero sphere and often felt saddened for him as his religion and his family would so likely reject him if he were to embrace his true self.

His posting of the article today just seems one more move towards distancing himself from a world he might really want to embrace. To lead a life of repression and denial, where, as the character in Book of Mormon says about his homosexual tendencies, you take your feelings and "turn it off like a light switch" and "find a box that's gay and crush it!" makes my heart break for him, his future wife and any children he might have.

He's taken a lashing from friends on Facebook over the article and I wonder if any of them see the person I saw those years ago and might want to approach him in a loving way to support his own right to embrace his true self.

Noting the Good

Plenty of what I write here is about processing the bad, so every once in a while, I want to take time to celebrate the good.

Today I'm celebrating signing my first student up for my home voice studio. He's beginning on Thursday. Hooray! May a few others follow in his footsteps.

This morning I also had a voice lesson. It feels amazing to be able to sing while I'm pregnant. I adore the woman I'm taking lessons with. She is such a warm, happy person who is a few decades older than I am. Her children were grown, but she's been where I am and is so unbelievably empathetic and encouraging. Today, as I told her about the issues with my current workplace, she nailed it when she said that we are so made to think we have to hold onto any teaching job we have because the jobs are so few and far between and we feel horribly guilty to think about leaving. But, there will be other jobs, there always are. I needed to hear that. I feel hopeful to plan a little concert that can happen before #2 arrives.

Last week I also had a meeting with a woman who lives here in Natick and has started a yoga-based company that is a system of teaching yoga to children and adults with disabilities. It is also something that can be used to teach yoga to toddlers. After several years of doing it all herself the business is set to grow and she recognizes that she needs someone to take on the tasks that she doesn't enjoy doing - most of it operational and financial. Voila, here I am. Someone who loves organizing, planning and being entrepreneurial.

We are meeting later this week to suss out the particulars of what I will do and then I'm ready to get started. I feel very hopeful about the prospect of this job. It solves so many of the issues that  currently exist in my professional life: no long commute, year round employment, feels meaningful to me, working with someone else, will cover the cost of two in daycare for the time that I work and bring some money into the household.

So there you have it. Some of the good. The very, very good.

Testing, testing...

Oh, modern medicine. I have such a love-hate relationship with you. So much of the time you do so much good. When I had a heart condition that needed surgery, you were there for me, giving me a non-invasive, fairly low-risk cure. When my father-in-law was recently ill with an infection that was not responding to treatment and his life expectancy suddenly looked like days, rather than years, you came through again with the ability to scan the body, pinpoint the infection and provide treatment, bringing him back to life.

However, on the subject of the care of pregnant women over 35, I'm a bit more on the fence. Sure, you've helped many of my friends have children who otherwise would have been unable to conceive. You provided me with a safe environment to deliver my first child with pain managed (thank you very much) and a flawless birth. And, most of the time knowledge is power, but sometimes knowledge is unnecessary and anxiety producing. Sometimes it is possible to get information that probably never needed to be known in the first place.

Since I'm over 35 I get to have all kinds of genetic testing done. An ERA blood test to calculate risk for Downs and Trisomy 18 (my risk was 1 in 3700 and 1 in 10,000 respectively based on solely bloodwork. For perspective, the average risk for a 38 year old woman is 1 in 150), an ultrasound at 11-13 weeks, an AFP blood test to give further risk for Downs, Trisomy 18 and Spina Bifida and another ultrasound at 18-20 weeks.

Yesterday was my 18-20 week ultrasound. We found out we're having a boy (yay!) and we also saw what are called soft markers for both Downs and Trisomy. Ella had the same soft marker for Downs - a light spot on the heart. It doubles my risk, so I'm now 1 in 1850, or, put another way I have a .05% chance of having a baby with Downs. The Trisomy 18 soft marker is a cyst in the brain, which doesn't effect anything after birth and, in fact, most fetuses outgrow the cyst and it won't be seen on later ultrasounds. I can't remember what that does to my risk, but let's assume it doubles it as well so I have a .02% chance of having a baby with Trisomy 18. To look at it another way, I'd have to give birth 1850 times to have a baby with Downs or 5000 times to have a baby with Trisomy 18 (PERISH THE THOUGHT OF GOING THROUGH THIS THAT MANY TIMES!).

The only way to definitively know whether I'll have a baby with either is to have an amniocentisis, but the risk of having a miscarriage as a result of an amnio is 1 in 300, or .33%. That's a greater risk by far than actually having either in my baby, so it isn't worth it.

What the doctor recommended is to come back in 3 weeks for another ultrasound to be sure the baby is growing. With T18, I guess they just don't grow. From there, if growth is stunted, I could have the amnio, get results and still be in the window of time to terminate (T18 babies rarely survive past the first week of life) if it came back positive.

It is all so horrible to think about and honestly, I think I stopped comprehending at the point the doctor told me there was a cyst in my child's brain. Once I left the office and we had lunch and I had a chance to process, I began to wonder why we even had to be told any of this. I also felt a sense of calm come over me with a strong sense that no matter what we'd be okay and the best way for me to proceed is as though I have a totally normal, healthy child (so I went shopping for baby boy clothes).

I've long believed that there has to be more than a mother's age to predict the potential to have a child with issues. I understand that western medicine needs to quantify and qualify and age is the one common factor they have found, but surely your own family history, that of your husband's, how you and he take care of yourself and the environment you live in also have to play a role. Hard to quantify those because they vary so much from person to person.

Hopefully the next 3 weeks will pass quickly and on June 1 at 11:30 we'll see a strapping, young lad who has grown beyond the 9 ounces he weighs right now. Lord knows if I keep gaining weight, but he doesn't I'll be pretty pissed. Until then, I'm planning to stay positive, hopefully not wake up in the middle of the night and play the what-if game and put this mostly useless knowledge provided by modern medicine out of my head.

Giving it a try

I've written a fair amount recently about my unsureness (probably not a word) about my career path and whether staying in my current field is the right thing. So many days I am left feeling a bit empty from my job and not feeling as though I am doing much to contribute to the greater good. I understand what is missing and know much of it is related to the 'where' of my job and also that I am now teaching people to do something that I no longer do myself.

To that end I've started to take some steps to rectify things. This weekend an opportunity came through my email to get 'mommy cards' at 50% off. Now, the last thing in the world that I ever want to do is to have my entire identity become being someone's mommy and advertise it on cards that I hand out to people. But, the company didn't care what you chose to put on the card, so I ordered myself some business cards. The last business cards I had were made in graduate school circa 2000 and they had a copy of my headshot on them. Let's just say my cell phone number hasn't changed, but my face sure has. I'm excited for them to arrive, so when I meet new people I can actually have something to hand out.

This morning I spent a long time going through all of my contacts on gmail, yahoo and facebook to create a list of people to email and advertise the start up of a home voice studio. I know that if I wasn't staring down a long commute, spending 15% of my earnings on gas, tolls and parking and a manager who, every time he meets with me, saying he needs to find a way to cut my pay (NOT KIDDING HERE), I might like what I do a little more. On my list of other things to do is to get signs made to put up in some public places around town and try to meet with, or at least email, the head of the local school system's performing arts program and eventually put a website together.

Then, there's the element of me as a performer. With my last pregnancy I had such awful reflux and general overwhelmedness (I know that's not a word) with life that it got put on hold. I hadn't realized how impossible it would feel to go back to singing. What I've realized is that as long as I think it is impossible, it will be. So, I've been working on redefining my thinking on what it takes for me to be a performer. Maybe I can do it with only 3 days a week to sing and lessons every once in a while. I won't be the performer I was, but that's okay because I'm not the person that I was. So, I scheduled a voice lesson for myself to do in a week or so and I want to start to nail down what I'm going to work on and work to find a time that I might actually do it in public before #2 arrives.

It seems as though I owe it to myself to take these steps and see if I can construct something that feels personally rewarding as well as financially viable for my family before walking away completely. We'll see how it all goes.

Who is the source of stress here?

Sometimes I think I should rename this blog 'fumbling through motherhood'....I've spent many an hour racking my brains over the source of my child's meltdowns in the morning on the days I go to work and every night when I make dinner. They began around 12 months old and now, at 29 months continue on a mostly daily basis.

I know some of it is fatigue and hunger and some is the stress of being away from me or the prospect of being away from me. I've tried just about everything to solve the issue - given my undivided attention upon returning home for 10-15 minutes, put on Sesame Street, created art projects to be done 3 feet away from me, put on music, read books in between chopping vegetables, yelled, ignored, given time outs. Nothing has made a difference.

In the last week I decided it was time to return with a serious bent to my yoga and meditation practice. I've been so aware of how off-kilter I've felt since the beginning of the year. Frankly, I find myself miserable to live with, I can't even imagine how the other two people in this house can deal with it.

So, I've gotten up between 5:45 and 6am and tiptoed downstairs where I've done 45 minutes of yoga, 5 minutes of breath practice and 5 or 10 minutes of meditation. What I've noticed is a marked change in my sense of balance. I feel better. I feel like Sarah on a good day.

In my meditation I often visualize sitting on the dock at the Eckel's Camp, a place I would go swimming with my grandparents as a child. It is probably the place that I most equate with happiness and safety. My time there, usually with my grandparents, was filled with nothing but joy. Now, when I close my eyes, I can feel, see and smell the surroundings - cool pine needles crunching as I step on them. The weathered wood of the dock that is warmed by the sun. The sound of the water lapping against the shore. The feel of the vinyl seats in my grandparents subaru.

The person that I most wish I could talk with about my role as a mother is my grandmother. A person, who, it seems, had endless patience and the deepest well of happiness I've ever known. I so wish I could travel back in time, staying the age I am now, but being with her when she was 65 or 70 so we could talk about just how she did it.

So, in my meditation I imagine she is sitting with me on the dock, holding my hand. I can so clearly evoke the feel of her hands, the texture of their skin, the spots that peppered their backs and the smell of her paquin hand cream. I try to allow myself to feel the same sense of patience that I always perceived she had.

What I've found is that the first few times I did it, I just dissolved in tears and sat a wept as I (tried to) meditated. Now, I can feel a sense of peace as I sit with her.

The most interesting thing is that in these days when I have felt more balanced, my child has not had the meltdowns. Yesterday she was meltdown free. This morning, when she asked me if it was a mommy-ella day and I said, no it was an ella and friends day, she said a small 'oh' and then brightly 'ella and friends! yay!' I dropped her at daycare with nary a tear.

So, is her behavior her or me? Was I looking to the wrong source for the meltdowns? It will be interesting to see how things proceed. If I keep up my practice will her behavior be better because she senses mommy is more even keel? I'm sure there'll be hiccups and some meltdowns are inevitable, but if nothing else, maybe this practice can help me to respond better when they happen. That alone makes it worth it.

One of those weeks

You ever have one of those weeks where it feels like one more thing will just be the straw that breaks the camel's back....and then that one more thing happens?

I'm there. This week I sat down to do some back of the envelope calculations about next year's daycare costs vs. what I am likely to earn teaching...yeah, so that leaves us $4K in the hole from daycare alone, let alone my salary not contributing anything to cover other household costs. That's just depressing. I am not someone who wants to be home full-time with kiddos, but I can't say that I can justify putting them in daycare to lose money so I can do a job that I'm not so thrilled with either.

Then, we have a major family event in the works with my father-in-law's parkinsons which has taken a sudden and dramatic turn for the worse. Over the course of a few weeks he has gone from fairly functional, living a regular life, to hospitalized and now in rehab and unlikely to be able to come home - can't walk, feed himself or even, it seems, think straight anymore. I so feel for my mother-in-law. Her first husband died of cancer in his 50's and I don't think, when she remarried 10 years ago, she ever thought this marriage would also ask so much of her. She is a young 72 with a lot of life left in her (her own mother is still alive at 103) So we are all feeling overwhelmed and sad for both of them.

Now, here I am home for the day and waiting for our final windows to be installed. We decided to have two in-wall, ancient air conditioners removed and replaced with picture windows. The one upstairs went fine. Downstairs brought with it rotted wall studs, a colony of carpenter ants and damage to the major, lower support beam that is holding up the addition of the house. A fair portion of the back of the house is now ripped off and I'm hoping it is all put back together before the end of the day. Somehow this was missed on the inspection so we're stuck with dealing with it and paying for it.

And there you have it, a lot of stuff all at once in life. I guess that's the way life goes. Good stuff can be hard and bad stuff can be hard. Things always work out and everything comes to some kind of resolution whether it is a new baby entering the world and jobs changing, a life leaving the world or renovations you weren't intending to do needing to be done.

March on.

UGH

Apparently insomnia in pregnancy is not so terribly rare. I had the I-need-to-pee-every-hour at the end of things with Ella, but this is full on lie awake, can't fall back asleep insomnia. Last night I slept until Ben came to bed and that motion of the bed woke me up at 11:45 and I could not fall back asleep. I read. I listened to meditations. I had a snack. I tossed. I turned.

The big problem is with only 3 hours sleep I get even more nauseous than normal. Today I had a long day of teaching planned, then needed to jump in the car, drive out to Acton and do a job interview for a summer position.

I dropped Ella off and drove back home and lay down on the couch. I seriously feel like I can barely move. After talking with Ben and texting my best friend I made the call to cancel teaching.

The whole thing makes me want to cry. This can't go on. I need to sleep. I have to be able to function and get through the rest of the semester and run our household.

Sunday night was much the same as this so I got about 3 hours that night and Monday, a home day with Ella was brutal in ways you cannot even imagine.

Please, please, please Universe make it STOP!

One of those days.

You ever have one of those days where you feel like you completely lost your mind? That was me, pretty much from the moment I rolled out of bed this morning. Not my best day. I'm hoping sometime between now and tomorrow at 6am my mind returns and I can stop feeling like a freaking looney beeyotch.

Thought of the Day

I'd normally put this stuff on Facebook, but since I'm still in the not telling phase of pregnancy, I'll put it here instead:

Going through maternity clothes is one part fascination "oh, I forgot I had that" and one part horror "Dear God, I'm going to be THAT big? I'd forgotten that."

Had to pull out maternity capris and loose t-shirts today because the temps are in the 70's in March and my belly no longer works with my regular pants and t-shirts. The good thing is I have a fair number of items from post-pregnancy that should work for the next few weeks to get me to the point of going public and openly embracing stretchy panel front bottoms and empire waist, extra material in the front tops.

Raising a Strong Girl

There's no question I'm a mom with opinions and ideas about how I want my daughter to be raised: to be a citizen of the world, with a knowledge of other cultures and the extreme priveledges we experience in this country. From the way we live our daily lives, I know she will end up with values similar to ours, and, I hope, a desire to live her life in a conscious way.

The other thing I feel strongly about is a dislike of the Disney Princess Mecca and Barbie. Both leave my feminist undies in a knot when I think about the messages they send to little girls, how they place such value on your appearance and not on your person. I'm not a fan of commercialized everything from toothpaste to diapers to bedding and have gone to great lengths at times to search out non-branded toys and kiddo crap. I want my daughter to know she is beautiful, not for her appearance alone, but for her sensibility, her intelligence and her abilities.

It was with great joy that I got to read Peggy Orenstein's CINDERELLA ATE MY DAUGHTER this week. She addresses the Disney Princess craze, Barbie, American Girl Dolls and the like. I feel sort of lost as to how to navigate what lies ahead in the dolls/toys realm and know it isn't realistic to keep her so sheltered from what's out there because this fall at pre-school I have a feeling she'll see it all. Orenstein's own candor about struggling through this with her own daughter was reassuring in a 'misery loves company' kind of way.

It was interesting to learn that almost each category began with its own merits but morphed into something akin to anathema when marketers took over. Once upon a time the Disney stories were just stories in books and movies. Barbie was a feminist creation of sorts in a backlash against Roosevelt's calling for girls to play with dolls so they'd want to have children. American Girl dolls were the solution to the oversexed pinup appearance to Barbie (it was then sold by the creator to Mattel, the very maker of Barbie...how's that for ironic?). Now they all come with incredible amounts of swag that is mostly pink, conveying overt messages of consumerism and a message that girls are valued for their appearance. It hard to put one's finger on exactly how these messages hurt our girls, but I think we see it in eating disorders, body perception issues, poor relationship choices and a loss of confidence in themselves.

As Orenstein says of the Disney Princess world, "Let's review: princesses avoid female bonding. Their goals are to be saved by a prince, get married...and be taken care of for the rest of their lives. Their value derives largely from their appearance. They are rabid materialists....And yet...parents cannot resist them." That is so not what I want my daughter to go after in life.

So far we have no Disney in our house. We have no Barbie either, though she's seen it in Maine where her cousin was introduced to Barbie at a young age and gone on to fully invest in it. We have only regular baby dolls, nothing from the American Girl Doll empire. Yet I know all of this lies just around the corner. So when she asks for it, what do I do? I know full well that too much denial of things on my part will only lead to greater demand and the last thing I want is to force her into a place where she wants it all the more because I've said no. However, it doesn't seem as though there's a way to realistically discuss issues of body and materialism with the 3 year old crowd.

How does one navigate the world of girly-girl culture that is oh-so pervasive to raise a girl who has a strong sense of herself, who knows that her beauty is not her ticket to life and holds values that don't include owning as much stuff as possible? Orenstein doesn't claim to have all the answers. Some things she talks about, we do. When television is watched (usually Elmo's world. sometimes SuperWhy and Wiggles) I watch with her. We spend a lot of time doing random art projects of mucking around in the yard (which she calls 'the field'), picking up sticks, playing stuck in the mud, hide and go seek and kicking a ball. Orenstein did some leg work for the rest of us by finding some videos that cast girls in a positive light. Mulan is one Disney movie that has a strong female protagonist. She also talks about a film maker named Hayao Miyazaki who offers female characters of substance. In an ironic twist, these films are distributed by Disney in the US.

Her book doesn't give me a solution to what to do when Ella encounters Princess-Land and comes home asking for things. I think my tactic is to decide how much is enough and hold the line. Some exposure isn't bad. I realize I might get stuck watching some crap films where I want desperately to add my own snide commentary, but I'll try to bite my tongue. I've encouraged family to give toys that aren't in the pink realm. Maybe she'll be interested in Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys. Perhaps some figurines instead of films will allow for her to write her own princess story.

As with most of parenting I think I'll have to wing it when the time comes and rely on what my intuition tells me and find a way to talk about things in age appropriate ways.

You heard it here first...

I had a dream.

No, not that kind of dream.

It was a crazy pregnancy dream which I seem to specialize in when I'm expecting. In the dream I had the baby - a boy weighing 7lbs 1oz. We'll see come the fall if my subconscious is somehow able to predict the future. Though given the rest of the dream, I kind of hope not.

In any event, in the dream I was nursing and feeling very grateful that this child was a much better nurser than the Shorty. I finished one side, put him down to switch sides, went to pick him up again and couldn't find him. For three days. In that time I realized I had no memory of the time right after delivery but I was pretty sure the midwives hadn't handed me the baby right after he came out and he hadn't nursed to get any colostrum and therefore my milk hadn't come in (I realize in real life that makes no sense, but whatevs. Ride along here with my addled, hormone saturated, losing mass brain).

So, even though I couldn't find the baby, off I went to get 3 ounces (apparently I was sure that was all I would need) of formula to feed him. Wherever he was. I went to the store and came back and eventually found the baby strapped into his car seat where he was emaciated and near death. I fed him and he lived.

Nice. Really nice.

I'm pretty sure this dream was inspired by a section of the book BAD MOTHER where the author had a baby with a cleft palate who couldn't nurse, but no one knew this and he nearly starved until she took him to the doctor to see why he felt so light and discovered he had gotten no food in many days. I finished reading that book over a week ago. Apparently it took my mind some time to be able to convert her experience into something that I could be anxious about.

Ah, me. Last night I had a dream about a woman I know who is about 5 weeks ahead of me in her pregnancy. In the dream she had delivered her baby and was experiencing terrible post-partum depression, crying 24/7. No one but me thought this wasn't normal. In the dream their baby also had an adult size head and a five o'clock shadow (it was also a boy)....Jaysus. You'd think I was eating super spicy food before bed or something.

Stay tuned for more from the annals of Sarah's brain on pregnancy. Yikes.

How to freak a pregnant woman out...

There is one sure way to completely freak a woman out when she is pregnant and it happened to me last Friday.

I went in for my first appointment with the midwives. They weighed me, I peed in a cup (and all over my hand - WHY have I never mastered doing that? I remember as a kid repeatedly dropping the cup in the toilet and my exasperated mother fishing it out and getting me another...) and took blood.

Then, the midwife came in. We chatted a bit - she was on the morning after I had the Shorty and was the one who noticed I looked rather pale and had me tested for anemia (THANK YOU!). Once we'd caught up she did the exam. At first when I commented that I felt like I'd popped out really early, she looked and said, oh that's just bloating, but then a few minutes later when she went to feel my uterus, she said, "hmmm, you are big. I think we better do an ultrasound to see if there are twins in there."

All I can say is thank God they'd already taken my blood pressure because I'm pretty sure it went through the roof at that moment. Twins are not on my agenda. Even remotely.

After several minutes of lying there feeling not only like I was going to puke, but also like I was going to have a heart attack she came in with the portable ultrasound. It wasn't the best picture, but she saw only one little being bobbing around in there.

WHEW.

The upside is though it was too early to hear the heartbeat on the doppler, we could see it on the ultrasound so that was reassuring.

My first official ultrasound as part of genetic testing is at the end of the month. I'll be grateful for another confirmation that there aren't two growing in there - and until then I'm going to try not to think why I was measuring at 13 weeks when I was only 9 weeks and 5 days along.

Thinking Deep Thoughts

This post comes with small caveat for all two of you who read it: I'm going to disclose something in it that is not yet public knowledge, so feel free to email me about it, but please don't post it on Facebook!

Of late, I've spent a lot of time wondering about the point of my life. Deep, I know. But really, it gives me pause when I think about it, because I have NO IDEA what the answer is. I realize the simplistic stupidity of this statement, but I've always felt like I am meant to do something extraordinary with my life. Never have I been able to define what that extraordinary thing is, but the feeling has always been there.

I began working when I graduated from college and haven't stopped, but nothing has ever felt like the extraordinary job where I make a difference in the world. Then, I had a child and extraordinary took a back seat to survival. Now, I'm 2 plus years into being her mom and staring down the next 30 weeks before #2 arrives (yep, big reveal, not ready to go Facebook level public with it, though).

Juggling working with being a mom is not without its complications and, though I want to work, professional life doesn't seem particularly compatible with mommy-hood. So I guess my conundrum is this: is the point of my life to be an excellent worker or to be an excellent mom? I am thus far not convinced that the standards I hold for each allow for the other to be possible.

Professionally, I want to be high achieving, hard working and committed to my job. As a mom I want to be involved, present, making healthy meals, developing young people who will be citizens of the world. It doesn't feel like the two can co-exist without it coming at a cost to someone or something - either work loses, or the child loses or worst of all, I lose.

Work doesn't feel family friendly and family friendly doesn't feel like it allows for work. Working part-time seems like it should fit the bill, but my current part-time work is no picnic and when I look at other jobs, they are all low level, low paying and don't exactly fill the 'extraordinary' category of what I'm capable of or interested in doing. If I want to be extraordinary and make a difference in a tangible way, the jobs I see are full time. So, do I want that as a worker or is that what I think professional life should be?

Over the years I've evolved and the career path I chose to go down way back in 1998 is no longer my understanding of where I need to be. I have learned so much more about the world and realize that the passion one needs for something like performing has probably never been present in me the way it should to want to make singing a career and teaching has begun to feel like a poor alternative. I find myself ignited though, when I think about issues like poverty and hunger and the effects they have on women and children. I understand the need for all humans to have the chance to live healthy lives in a way I have never understood dressing up in costumes and parading around on stage. So, I get that professionally, if I'm going to go the route of working, I need to make a change. We won't even delve into what it is like to go on a job interview in your first trimester of pregnancy and how/when do you reveal in the process that shortly after you would start working for them you'd be leaving to pop a kid out.

Thinking about the issue of my life and its purpose has also circled around to the issue of whether the mom I want to be is really the mom I think I should be: super mom. The mom who does crafts, makes things for her child in the way of clothing, curtains, sweaters, goes to the library regularly, takes her child to music classes, exposes her regularly to new foods. I enjoy all of those things, but it doesn't feel like enough for me to satisfy my existence. And, honestly, there are many times I find being home for a whole day alone with a child totally smothering. Other days it is nice to fruit around, stay in our jammies, read stories, change pretend poopy diapers and nap.

Would I ever give up working to raise kids? I think I would feel like I'm giving up if I did that. Financially it probably isn't an option, but staring down the cost of two in daycare, even part-time, my current job won't cover it and it seems unlikely from what I've seen of what's out there that any other part-time job would cover it. So, if I work full time, what do I do with my super mom tendencies?

Some other women must wrestle with this and many probably don't. I started writing this two weeks ago and now today is international women's day. Maybe this day will bring some enlightenment to what feels like such a clouded issue. I could sure use some illumination on how to proceed!

Swan Song?

I'm beginning to wonder if this semester is shaping up to be my swan song from voice teaching at Harvard and maybe from the field.

In my eight years there nothing has changed to make teaching there better and the reality is, nothing will. The University isn't suddenly going to allot more room to teachers. The students aren't suddenly going to start showing up weekly for their lessons and understand that when they sign up they are committing to the semester and therefore, to my income and when they quit out of the blue, I'm out income. The Director of the Choral Program isn't suddenly going to become a strong leader, interested in people's teaching and in professional development for voice teachers. The other teachers aren't suddenly going to be interested in collaborating and communicating about voice teaching to have a cohesive department.

Those are all things that I know I need to keep teaching. I've hoped for a long time, particularly when the leadership turned over, that it could come to fruition, but clearly, it ain't happening. Six students dropped this semester, and one week in I've already have many last minute cancellations leaving me twiddling my thumbs for hours. There's no communication from above except the occasional run in when he'll launch into how expensive the program is and it isn't sustainable to pay us what we are paid blah, blah, blah. My commute is now longer and rather than just taking the bus to work I now have to pay for gas, tolls and parking in a garage in Cambridge - the garage alone can run anywhere from $13-$25 a day. I find teaching days draining rather than inspiring.

Not much to recommend staying, yes? I have a hard time letting go of it though. I think I'm a good teacher, with a lot to offer and I've worked hard over the last decade to become such. Each semester I start with new hope that maybe I'll find the right balance of how much to teach each day and how to teach in a way that I'll not feel drained of creativity at the end of the day. I took a sabbatical leave position last term at another school in the hopes it might build a connection to get me out of Harvard. I met some nice people and enjoyed working in a more 'legit' situation, but nothing came of it. It seems as though no one is retiring from schools where lessons are offered for credit and there are no openings ever. None of it seems to be panning out. I have fewer students than ever this term due to many people dropping and just received an email from a new student saying she isn't continuing, despite signing up for the term.

The question is, what on earth would I do if I leave voice teaching? Our household needs two incomes and I also think I'm a mom who needs to have some professional outlet to be a better parent. I want a job that will give me flexibility with my young family, but also prove to be satisfying. It would be nice to use some skills and abilities that I have cultivated in my professional life in my next position.

Any suggestions? Thoughts?

Traveling with a Two

Here we are, two plus months into the Shorty being two and already I'm finding myself opting to stay home rather than venture out to run errands. Partly this is due to our recent move to the burbs and the fact that an errand now involves getting in the car to go anywhere, no more walking down the street to get places. Mostly, though, if I'm being honest, I'm staying home to avoid being seen in public with my two year old.

Girlfriend is HIGH energy these days. She's always been that way, I suppose, but when you mix it up with a huge yet moderately understandable vocabulary and the ability to leap small cracks in a single bound, you get a recipe for being thrown out of Stop and Shop.

Her newest thing is to yell "I wanna walk Mommy" and refuse to get into the cart/stroller/your arms. I've convinced her that she should be carried in parking lots rather than dart away from me "that too danerous mommy, too many cars for Ella," she'll say. However, once in the store she develops an incredible ability to lock her knees and stand in the cart while you nicely ask her to sit her toosh down.

Last weekend I gave in and let her 'walk'. Both parents were at the grocery store together and I figured we could divide and conquer with one keeping an eye on her and the other gathering food. Holy Jesus. I don't ever want to set foot in a grocery store again with a two year old. She ran. RAN up and down aisles. She hollered at the top of her lungs. She periodically stopped mid-aisle to have a dance party to whatever music was on the store muzak system. She whipped her hair back and forth and grabbed items off the shelf 'need dis mommy?'.

When forced to sit somewhere she doesn't want she pitches a fit that nothing can quell. So, today when I'd like to go to CVS and to the mall to do some errands, I find myself avoiding and staying home because I don't care to deal with the potential tantrums and hijinks.

Ahhh, I know this will pass, but til them, I'm seriously considering PeaPod.