Don't Cry

RH

The thing about depression is that it's only invisible when you're outside of it.  When you're inside the depression bubble, it's more than visible- it's tangible.  It's a cloying, noxious cloud of mud.

Everything that you see, you're seeing through that depression.

I know, because I have a lot of experience with it.  I was seriously depressed from the time I was eight until I was in my twenties.  I also didn't sleep.  I began contemplating suicide at eight and a half.  I tried once, at fourteen.  Nearly succeeded, too.

Depression?  It comes in a million different flavors, and they are not mutually exclusive.

So when I realized that I had been feeling depressed- truly, genuinely, severely depressed- I did my best to explain it away.  To come up with reasons that I wasn't depressed, I was just... something-else-not-nearly-so-bad.

And I had lots of convenient scapegoats.  The best of which was a little something called D-MER.

D-MER is, for me anyway, a pretty severe problem I'm experiencing but had never heard of until recently.  That acronym stands for "Disphoric Milk Ejection Reflex."

Basically, every time I'm about to have a let-down, I have a panic attack.  A crying, panting, sweating, freaking-out panic attack.

Every. single. time.

And, as other nursing mothers of three months old know, that means that I'm having all-out panic attacks as often as ten or twelve times a day.

They're blessedly brief, all things considered, but it's made life more than a bit hellish.  Every few hours, a panic attack.  And then the adrenaline rush wears off, and I'm exhausted.  Or antsy.  Or both.

I coped with it pretty well for about six weeks.  And then, the depression kicked in.

I have a confession to make.  It was so bad, one of those dancing videos I put up?  I edited out a bit where I stopped dancing with my daughters to just sit down and weep.

It was awful.  Their concern, their fear, their sadness, that all made it worse.  But when they would ignore my crying and go about their business, that just made it worse too.

I felt constantly judged but other mothers.  By comments about how being a mom is the greatest job in the world, about how lucky we mothers are, about how we chose to have children, about how some women would give anything to be in our shoes.  I was overwhelmed by guilt at feeling so completely trapped, and I did feel trapped.

I found myself thinking awful things, I realized how close I was to actually considering (not causing, but considering) some sort of self inflicted harm.

And I know that this is probably going to sound totally implausible, but I'm doing much better now.  You know, one week later.

I can tell you what shook me out of it, too.  It was Ani Difranco.  At her show, she sang "Joyful Girl," and it was like I heard the lyrics for the very first time.  Or like she was actually talking directly to me.  In the song, she's talking to her reflection in the mirror, and says, "Would you prefer the easy way? No, well okay then, don't cry."

How can I have been listening to that song for more than fifteen years without really hearing that one line?  Those last two words?  I swear, I had never heard Ani sing those last two words to me before.  And for some reason, it worked.

The fact of the matter is, life is hard.  And parenthood is hard.

And you know what?  Parenthood isn't what you expect it to be.  And life isn't what you expect it to be.

I always knew I wanted to be a mom.  I always knew I wanted to have children.  But in my head, they were always... older.  Between three and eight.  Those magic years when they're still so young that much of the world is an amazing place, but old enough that you can talk to them about it.

And children don't emerge from the womb ready to play make-believe and visit the zoo.

When I was pregnant with the twins, I prepared myself for what I thought would be six months of purgatory. Six months of wee little babies.  And I wasn't particularly fond of babies.  But I was pleasantly surprised- I actually enjoyed them as babies.  I actually enjoyed cleaning all the poo and nursing and rocking them to sleep.

And now they've reached that stage, that dream age I always wanted my children to be, and they are every bit as wonderful as I could have hoped.  But I wasn't happy.

And here I was, with another baby.  An amazing baby.  Big, healthy, and easy.  Good lord is that kid easy.  She'll just lay swaddled under her mobile, smiling at the little owls, and put herself to sleep.

I'd watch my incredibly wonderful children playing together, and I'd feel an intense sadness.  A hurt so strong, and so deep, it was a physical pain.

I was depressed.  And, for now, I've sort of snapped out of it.

I'm still not back at 100%, but I'm finding joy in my day to day again.  I'm not just dragging myself from chore to chore, I'm making priorities and actually enjoying myself.  Pretty much every day.

Just like that, one day I woke up ready to crawl into a hole and never again.

And last week I woke up, ready to try to be me again.

Depression is awful.  Depression hurts, even physically.  It's something nearly impossible to explain.

But it does get better.  Knowing that I survived depression, once upon a time, helped me get through this bout.  Knowing that I've been through this, or something like it, before... it's not so much a comfort as it is a promise.

I know it's going to come back.  It always comes back.  I know I'll find myself weeping openly into unmatched socks, just wishing I wasn't so dreadfully alone.

But I did something really important, something new.  I saw that I was depressed, and I acknowledged it.  I let it be visible- I let my friends and my husband and my children know.  I didn't hide it.

Depression is like an abusive boyfriend, keeping you from your friends, and telling you that you need it.  And once it gets its claws in you like that...

I didn't let my depression become my secret addiction.  Not this time.

This time, I listened to Ani.

My loves

I didn't want my life to be easy, but what I wanted wasn't real.  What I wanted was a fantasy that only existed in my mind.  A fantasy where I played with my littles, and where I lived in the woods, and my life was totally impossible.

And the thing is, I knew that.  Of course I knew that.  But the desire to start a family is about more than wanting your genes to carry on, or wanting family pictures on the wall.

It's about moments.  Moments where your life is utterly full to the brim of meaning.  Where every little action seems to matter, but not to be full of dire consequence.

Moments like today, when I snuggled up with my three daughters on the bed and read No Roses for Harry.

I'm not better yet.  But I'm getting there.

Today was a good day.  Yesterday was a good day.

I'm pretty optimistic about tomorrow.

Confession:

RH

Let's face it, babies are nice.

The confirmed DINKs of the world (that's "dual income no kids," for those of you who don't know any of them) are quick to pass judgement on babies.  They scream, they poop, they're expensive, they make outrageous demands on you, and they are a commitment.  You don't just have a baby for a year or two to see if it works out.  There's no going back from having one.

And so those no-baby folks have plenty of reasons to fall back on for why they will never have kids.

And all of those reasons are valid.

But aside from that?  Babies?  They're nice.  

There's nothing quite like holding a sleeping baby.  And there's nothing quite like being the reason that the baby is asleep.

The act of comforting an infant is profoundly empowering.  And there are so few things in life that are simultaneously empowering and pleasant.  Usually, empowering activities come with an element of danger.  Climbing a mountain is empowering.  Firing a gun is empowering.

Gently rocking a baby to sleep?

You feel like a freakin' rock star.  Like a God.  You are all that is great in humanity.

And all that you did was make the baby sleep.  Or keep the baby asleep.

When you're holding a sleeping baby, you are the embodiment of human goodness.  You are more than that, you are the embodiment of potential.  What you look like, where you came from, any conglomeration of details about who you are... they are meaningless.  You're just a safe, friendly, and somehow beloved creature.

For this reason, babies are addictive.

Really, really addictive.

Which means that baby fever is a disease.  Those who suffer from it are victims of an addiction- and may in fact require help.

And no victims of this affliction are more pitiable than new mothers.

Sleeping

Today I can stand before you and I can say...

"Hello.  My name is Lea, and I have baby fever."

I am one month into my renewed adventures in motherhood, and I can admit it.

Here I am, having slept maybe a scattered six hours in the last twenty four (hooray growth spurt!), roasting in my post-surgical garments in the 90 plus temps, still half brain dead from being pregnant, and with my hips slowly returning to their pre-pregnancy and painless alignment (I hope), and I can tell you this...

I am so not done with babies.

This baby?  She's a month old today.  She's bright eyed and beautiful, on the verge of smiling (she gets her lips to twitch smile-ishly, and you can see in her eyes how much she likes you), she likes nothing more than watching her big sisters play.  Well, except eating.

I've got nine pounds of cute and cuddly that routinely screams at me and requires me to clean up its feces.  And having two nearly-three-year-olds, I know that this keeps going.  For a long time.  Forever.

And yet?

I look at her sleeping, her long torso and her little froggy legs, her tiny fingers curled around mine...

And I want more babies.

Not today.  Not while this one is so pleasantly baby-ish.  Not while all she wants is to be snuggled and held and carried around our suddenly fascinating home.

But the fever...

...it has begun.

Perhaps it's made worse by knowing that now this baby factory has shut its doors.  Perhaps it's compounded by how much the big sisters like their new baby sister.  Perhaps it's due entirely to the fact that I've had round the clock help for this entire month.

Really, this should be enough for anyone.

Whatever the reason, it's there.

The burning urge to get more babies into my clutches.

Oh, I can wait.  I can wait.  But it's always going to be there.

Even if you haven't had a drink in ten years, you're still an alcoholic.

And if you haven't had a baby in a decade...

The sickness may still remain.

Waiting to strike.

My name is Lea, and I have baby fever.

May God have mercy on my soul.

Remember, Remember, the Fifth of July

Photo taken July 1st, 2007 by C. Lemanski

Today is a very important day in our family.

You see, yesterday was Independence Day.  And, just as it was five years ago, it fell on a Wednesday.

Five years ago, yesterday, we woke up late.  We lounged in bed for hours.  We got up and, in our pajamas, I made us an epic brunch of California Benedict.  We ate a dozen eggs.  We went back to bed, laughing and full.  We napped lightly, and then showered and got dressed.

Five years ago yesterday, M and I enjoyed our mid-week day off by heading to a friend's rooftop and backyard barbecue, drinking some Shandy, and sweating and smiling in the absurd Chicago heat.

We walked through Pilsen, where we lived, as though through a different world.  Every other block was blocked off, many illegally, for parties and concerts and fireworks.  There were music and colorful explosions everywhere.

I remember one moment in particular.  We were drinking beers at the party, and I caught M pointing and me and grinning.  His friend Bradley gave him a high five.  I had no idea what they were talking about.

It turns out, M was telling Bradley that he was going to ask me to marry him.

You see, M had this grand master plan.  On Friday, M was going to take the day off, and we were going to go up to Guppy Lake.  We were going to spend an entire week up there, TWO weekends even.  M was going to bring a bottle of champagne and a ring, and take me to my favorite picnic spot, and propose to me.

But on the Fourth of July, five years ago, he couldn't wait.  We walked home from the party just after dusk, completely surrounded by fireworks.  In the air, on the ground, shooting out of windows... everywhere.  We laughed, we held hands, and we went back to our incredibly cool and comfortable basement apartment.

And M asked me to marry him.  No ring, no pretense, just the colorful showers of light filtering through the curtains.

And I said yes.

We had one wonderful night.  We both went to work the next day.  At lunch, we met up and picked out a ring.  And then I went home after work, while M went to play in his company softball game.

I got in my pajamas, and read through an inbox filled with congratulations from friends and family.  And then the phone rang.

It was my future MIL.  She was in a panic.  A coworker of M's had called her, he was being taken to the hospital in an ambulance.  By the time the coworker called me, I already had my shoes on.  With my pajamas.

It took me less than fifteen minutes to take the usual half hour drive to the hospital- at rush hour, during the infamous congestion of the Taste of Chicago.

I cried most of the way.  I got lost for a harrowing moment on lower Wacker Drive.


Filmed on Lower Wacker Drive.  It is one of Dante's circles of Hell.


Horrifically, this song came on in the car:




I nearly crashed the car I was crying so hard.

The first time that, outloud, I called M my fiance was when I was looking for him in the ER.  A very nice, older doctor told me to calm down.  That he would be fine.

I didn't know then that that would be my mantra.

On the Fifth of July, five years ago, M had a gran mal seizure and strokelike symptoms.  He awoke in the ambulance.  He had several CAT scans.

They showed several masses in his brain.

I spent the latter half of the Fifth of July, five years ago, shivering in the hospital in my pajamas, joking with M about the copious amounts of dirt that just kept coming off of him.  He got three sheet changes while he was moved from gurney to gurney.  They were all completely full of ballpark sand.

When we finally left the hospital, there was already a new plan.  We weren't going to Guppy Lake.  We were going to spend the weekend with both sets of our parents, who up until then had never met, getting ready for M's exploratory surgery the following Tuesday- the Tenth of July.

On Tuesday, we went in early in the morning for M's surgery.  My parents, M's parents, my sister, two sets of M's ants and uncles, and M's grandfather and his wife were there.

M was so brave.  He didn't show a moment of hesitation.  We were going to do this brain surgery thing.

I have never experienced a longer day in my life, sitting in that private waiting room, next to the phone that was bolted to the table which might ring with information about the surgery.  Across from the clock that was bolted to the wall.  Cruel room design.

It took all day.

Finally, M's surgeon came into the room, told us that M's surgery went well and that a few of us could go see him in the recovery room soon.  But first he wanted to talk to "the parents and fiancee."

He took us to a tiny little consultation room.  Tiny.  And in that room he told us what he had found in surgery.

The masses were cancerous.  They were worse than cancerous, they were stage four of an incredibly malignant brain cancer called astrocytoma.

They were inoperable.

He kept using the phrase, "extremely aggressive" to describe the cancer.  Not the treatment, but the cancer itself.

And then, bravely, my future father in law asked about the prognosis.

Sometimes, the doctor said, you see patients surviving five or ten years out.  Sometimes.

Not often.

He told us that we shouldn't expect it.

He told us that, with the advanced stage of the cancer, with its placement... most of the time patients only have about two years.  Maybe less.

But, he added, M was young.  He was healthy, otherwise.  Who knew?

It was like a dream.  I didn't cry.  Well, I cried a little, but mostly because I just didn't know what else to do.  I followed my future in-laws back to our private waiting room, where almost a dozen people were waiting for the news we would have to deliver.

Everyone wept.

M's grandfather, the pastor, prayed.

I did nothing.  I stared at nothing, I thought nothing, I felt nothing.

And as my family, and M's family, began hugging me and weeping, I heard myself telling them that everything was going to be just fine.

I told my future in-laws, M will be just fine.  He's going to beat this.  He's going to be okay.  Everything is going to be fine.


I said it over and over and over again.  I said it and I willed myself to believe it, because believing absolutely anything else was going to destroy my entire world.

Over and over and over.

From our "Save the Date" shoot- M newly hair-free

He's going to be fine.  He's going to be fine.  He's going to be just fine.


And nobody contradicted me.

I saw him in recovery, and he was groggy and in pain and confused.  But he told me to go home.  To sleep.  To come back in the morning.

I wouldn't have, if I had the emotional energy to argue with my parents and in-laws and sister.

I slept on the couch that night.  My future in-laws slept in our guest bed, and my parents slept in our bed, and I pulled out a blanket and curled up on the couch.  As I lay there, too conflicted to rest, my father came up and sat down next to me.  And while he sat there, and hugged me, I wept.

I wept like I have never wept before, or since.

I cried and cried and cried, because I had been happy.  I had been so happy.  I had absolutely all that I wanted from life- I had everything.  And after only sixteen hours... it was gone.  My life was gone.  I wasn't newly engaged and in love and ready to start out... I was preparing for widowhood.

I let myself mourn.

And in the morning, I started telling myself again, he's going to be just fine.


We went to the hospital, where he was slightly less groggy.  And we prepared to introduce him to the news. To tell him that he had terminal brain cancer.

But we didn't.  We couldn't.  Nobody did.  We told him what kind of cancer, what stage, and that it was very aggressive.  But we didn't give him the prognosis.  He said he didn't want to know.

I thought he was so brave.  And I knew I was right- he was going to be just fine.

We spent the next ten days getting him into a clinical trial for an additional treatment.  Banking sperm.  Fighting with his HMO.

And I kept telling everyone, he was going to be just fine.

Three days before our wedding, Ted Kennedy was taken to the hospital by ambulance.  It was big news.  It turned out that he had seizure.

Of course, M kept up on the developments of that news.

...and then the news came that Ted Kennedy had the same kind of cancer that M had.

...and along with that news, the reporters did their job of giving the whole story.  The entire story.  Including the prognosis.

M learned that Ted Kennedy probably had eighteen months to live.

That was three days before our wedding.

Nine months after his diagnosis.

He was halfway there.

And I told him, he was going to be just fine.

M's speech at our wedding,
"Thank you for your thoughts
and prayers.  We heard every one."

Five years ago, today.

Five years ago, and he has had no new growth, no new symptoms.

Five years, and his MRIs are clearer and clearer, less and less frequent.

Five years, and my husband is just fine.  His cholesterol is his biggest health problem.

Five years.

Every Independence Day, we celebrate our engagement.  And we celebrate the one incredibly happy day we shared.  Most years, I make California Benedict for breakfast.  Each fireworks display reminds us of one of the happiest days we will ever have.

I love my husband more than I can possibly say.  The last five years have been more than wonderful, they have been a gift.  While I can't claim to have cherished every day, I can promise you that I have never once gone to bed feeling bad about the course our lives have taken.  No matter how hopeless it seemed during the year of M's unemployment, with two new babies... no matter how exhausting it was with M working insane hours, with both of us in school, with me pregnant and with the girls at home... no matter how frustrating it has been to live our lives together, we have been unfathomably fortunate.

My husband is alive and well.  He is just fine.  Five years later.

His medical team doesn't talk about his prognosis.  They talk about the weather, our children, their children, even politics.

M?  He's just fine.  We're just old friends with the neuro-oncology department now.  Bitter enemies of our old pharmacy technicians.

The Fifth of July is always an odd day for us.  On the one hand, it is full of bad memories.  Memories of fear and confusion and pain.  On the other hand, it is a victory.  It's another Fifth of July that we can spend together.

Five years.  And no sign that there is an end in sight.

Shortly before our wedding, M told me it was his goal to have spent more of his life married to me than not.

Five years down, twenty to go.

I am so glad to spend every minute of them with my husband.  I am so grateful to have him with me, not folding laundry and forgetting to take out the trash.

There is nobody on this earth I would rather spend the next twenty years with.

Or the twenty after that.

Or the twenty after that.

Five years is a long time.  But not nearly long enough.

Here's to the rest of our lives- the long and open-ended ideal we all mean when we say "for the rest of our lives."  Not "eighteen to twenty four months."  Not, "for as long as we have."  Not for, "as long as you're mine."

Forever.  Until we are old and gray, and our children and grandchildren are grown, and death comes to us as the natural end to a life well and thoroughly lived.

Here's to every five years.

Here's to the Fifth of July.

...and to the Twenty Third of May

Here's to every single day.

Our family, nearly five years later.

Here's to M.  The love of my life.

Nope- still pregnant

We've been busy.

...is what I'm considering changing my voicemail message to.

I know I didn't post today.  We didn't do anything exciting.  I spent a lot of time laying down and being miserable.

Baby X is posterior, past due, and probably a giant of a baby.

...this means that whenever she kicks, on top of my stomach looking as though an alien is about to burst through, I suddenly have a terrible flu.

Fluid rushes behind my eyes, my ears, and my throat, and I lose my voice.

That, and the pain is excruciating.

So... still pregnant.  Sorry.

Here's a quick visual recap of what we've been doing since the week before this baby has been totally ready to evacuate my uterus:

I graduated from college

We went to the Children's Museum on Navy Pier

We went for a cruise down the Chicago River

M graduated with his Master's

I had a baby shower

We went to a baseball game

We visited with Great-Grandmommy and Great-Granddaddy

We saw Jonathan Richman at Millennium Park

We went to the Chicago Botanic Gardens

We went to the Museum of Science and Industry

We went to Margie's Candies

We went bowling

We went to the beach

We went to the bumpy slide

We went to Indian Boundary Park

I achieved approximately the size and shape of a bloated, dead Beluga whale

Have a happy Father's Day weekend, lovely readers!

Hopefully by Monday morning, Baby X will be here and I can quit complaining.  :)

Alternate Plans

Several weeks ago

As you probably know from glancing to the right hand side of your screen, or from glancing at this picture right here... I'm super pregnant right now.  Due with grubling number three in a number of weeks.  I anticipate that she'll be a little early.

And, as you probably know from reading several recent posts, it has been my plan to have a VBAC.

But, as my OB constantly likes to tell me, "There's just something weird about your uterus, isn't there?"

What's weird about it?  The only position that babies like to hang out in there is transverse.

...babies can't come out vaginally if they're transverse.  It just doesn't work.  It's like a German Shepherd trying to climb through a cat door starting with one hing leg.  Not going to happen.

Sort of this time last pregnancy- with twins
(I had actually already popped by now)

(Yes, I just compared my vagina to a cat door.)

So we're back to the glorious days of "trying to turn the baby around."  How I remember this from my previous pregnancy.  The daily moxabustion, the routine acupuncture, the hanging out upside down, the flashlights, the music, the firm but cautious belly massage to gently encourage this stubborn little one to just get her damn hip out of my cervix and replace it with her head...

And in the meantime, I need to reconcile myself to the idea that I might very well be facing a repeat c-section.  Because nobody will let me try to labor a transverse baby out naturally, even under the best of circumstances.

And while I endeavor to make peace with the facts of my "weird uterus" and the remind myself that the invention of the c-section is responsible for such advances as ensuring that a woman and transverse twins can all survive the birth process, I learn/remember more and more of the things that I loathed about the end of pregnancy.

Over eating is a problem.

Like "Things That Cause Contractions."

1. Over eating
2. Coughing
3. Climbing the stairs to my third floor walk-up
4. Laughing too hard
5. Lifting up my daughters to tickle them
6. Vomiting

...oh right, vomiting.

I caught a stomach bug this week.  Always glorious when you're into your final month of pregnancy.

I should be back at 100% in... well... let's face it, not until after this baby comes out.  Give me another month, and we'll see how things are going over at Casa SuperMommy.  In the meantime, what's happening around here?

They're awfully cute.

On Friday we're going out to celebrate M's success with a dinner cruise down the river.  Yes, there will be lots of pictures of the girls being very excited on a boat.

Saturday, my husband receives his Master's degree.  I've never seen anyone work so hard as he has these last two years in my entire life.  There will be many pictures of him with his hood and diploma.

The following Monday, it's back to school with me for my final class.

...and the following weekend my friends are throwing me a baby shower.

...and then it's me and M's anniversary.

...and then Baby X is due.

Somewhere in there, the girls are being evaluated for a speech delay (twins, what can I say?), I'm *hopefully* finishing up some nursery projects and belated wedding presents, and we're taking the girls to their first baseball game.

So in short, I'm sorry I haven't been around much.  Things have been busy.  They are SO busy.  And much as I love you all, and I LOVE writing, and I wish I could be here, writing, daily...

Well...

This month is non-stop insanity.

I think you all probably understand.  :)

That said, you can expect a post for each of the super fun things we do around here.  Which means, at least two a week all month (plus the Sunday Blogaround).  And then?  Then I think I'm going to hand the reigns over to Poppa to write about the early days with Baby X for a while.  If he's willing.

Cheers-
Becoming SuperMommy

Wealth, The Mommy Wars, Some Family History, and the Nature of Parental Stress

My granny is the little girl on the right

Part of the Mom Pledge reads, "I want to see moms work together to build one another up, not tear each other down. Words can be used as weapons. I will not engage in that behavior."

Words like "Mommy Wars," words combined into 140 characters that set whole presidential campaigns against each other.

I'd like to address this, if I may.

The thing about life is that no matter what you're doing, you want to have somebody tell you how impressed they are with what you do.

You want to have somebody who made a different choice than you say, "Wow, I could not do what you do.  You work so hard.  You impress me so much.  You must be exhausted.  You must feel amazing about yourself."

Or, you know, some sort of paraphrased version of that.

So today it's been hard for me to get away from the back and forth over the comments that Hilary Rosen made about Ann Romney.

What she said was, “His wife has actually never worked a day in her life.  She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school and how do we — why we worry about their future.”

Now, these are two entirely different statements.  If Hilary Rosen had left off that first sentence, this wouldn't have ever turned into an issue.  Of course the left believes that the Romneys are out of touch with the majority of Americans.  Let's face it, they are.  But that isn't what the argument is about.

This has been made into yet another occasion for people to accuse each other of accusing each other of being lazy.

I know that sounds like nonsense.  That's because it is nonsense.

Do stay at home moms think that working moms are worse parents?  Do working moms think that stay at home parents are worse parents?

No.  Nobody actually cares.  This only matters when somebody feels that they are being accused of being less than the best parent they can be for their children.

Being a working mom is hard.  But a lot of women in this country don't see it as a choice.  They see it as a necessity.  If they're the only parent, or if their spouse is in a low wage job, they may not have an option.  And then they see stay-at-home parents as having the luxury not to "work."

But they know that staying at home with kids is work.  It's just work that our society doesn't seem to value very much.  The United States is one of only a tiny handful of countries in the world that doesn't require employers to pay maternity leave.  In many countries, that pay can go to either parent.  In either case, a parent can stay home, if they choose, with their child.

Not so here.

So now in this country, we have a situation where some women CAN choose to go to work, or to stay home.  You have many families, like mine, where the choice comes down to whether or not the cost of childcare exceeds the benefits of a second income.

So the so-called Mommy Wars have grown around the ability women have to work, the frustration of being torn in one's desire to both contribute financially and their desire to contribute in the many intangible ways of being a constant and positive figure in their children's lives, and the frustration of people who make different choices being happy.

Because, you see, their happiness is an affront to anyone who has made a different choice.  If your life is willfully different than mine, and you are happier than I am at this moment, your happiness is an indictment of my choices.

...this is crazy talk.  But we all do this.  We all see somebody else being happy and we think that because we're exhausted or sick or overworked or somebody three feet tall has peed on our favorite chair twice that morning, they must have made a better choice.

And we can't stand that.  But we've made it up ourselves.

I was talking to my mother the other day about how tired I was.  How I couldn't imagine how she did it when she was in labor (for a month) with my younger sister.  How I had no idea how single mothers could do this.

And then she told me about my great-grandmother's diaries.

You see, my great-grandparents were wealthy.  Mansion in Chicago, vacation house in Aspen, property across several other states...  My great-grandparents were patrons of the arts (the Dadaists in particular), had the sort of living room that has a full grand piano "in the corner," and built a bowling alley in their basement.  My great-grandfather refused a request to invest in Henry Ford's early plants- although whether that was a poor business decision or a good choice based on Ford's anti-semitic sentiments is up for debate.

My great-grandfather was independently wealthy, despite the wealth of his father, who was also a construction magnate.

My great-grandmother and her son

My grandmother was in many ways closer with the house manager than her own mother.

But my great-grandmother, the wealthy socialite weathering the Depression in mansion, hosting her benefits and having chamber orchestras over to play parties with centerpieces made of gilded lilies...

(Yes, she actually gilded lilies.)

She agonized over her work.

Her journals were full of worry, worry that her baby was sick, that her household help couldn't do things as well for her children as she knew they needed to be done, that she was terrified that she was incapable of caring for her three children alone, that her son wouldn't speak after learning to speak Spanish during their years in Mexico.  She had so much to do and that she was pulled in so many different directions.

She was terrified and exhausted.  She was overworked and miserable.

She was, in short, a mom.

Then there's my grandmother- her daughter.  In her stories of her early motherhood, she and my grandfather are living in a rapidly collapsing house in backwater Florida in the late 50's, subsisting on food stamps and around $3,000 a year.  My grandfather turned down an opportunity to compete in the Olympics because back then, that meant forgoing any sort of income.  And besides, he was focusing on his Ph.D.  In these stories, my grandmother mastered the art of stretching her food stamp allotment into real meals for her family, every day.  She made pasta out of her flour rations, she made sauces and soups from every last scrap of meat.  And of course, her children were mischievous or dangerously ill in turns.  She had truant officers stopping by her house to discover that her children weren't in school because they had scarlet fever, mumps, and measles.

My grandparents

She was frustrated and exhausted.  She was worried and overworked.

In short, she was a mom.

I have no idea how either of those women did it.  And honestly, I don't know how I do it.

The problem with wealth is that it does nothing- nothing- to make you happier.  The more you have, the more you come up with to do with your time and money.

You have the money to hire a nanny to watch your children?  You will commit to all sorts of other activities or causes that will depend on you, and you will be pulled in more directions.

You have four houses?

You have four times as many rooms to clean, four times as many lawns to care for, four times as many cobwebs to combat.

You have committees and causes and charities.

You are working.  And you have your kids.

You have less money?

Well, you have fewer rooms to clean, fewer cars to keep up.  Fewer bills to pay.

There is no world where this is easy.

But your bills take up more of your income.  You have to "work" harder to stay on top of them.  You have to make choices between phone or gas, food or car, rent or a medical bill.  Even if you're subsisting entirely on government aid.

You are working.  And  you have your kids.

And kids?  Kids are a lot of work.  Kids are hard.  Kids are exhausting.

And they will always have more energy than you.  They will always have a leg up on you.  They will always have a million things that they need you to do.  That they simply cannot do for themselves.  That nobody but you can do for them.

Being poor is hard.  I've done it- it sucks.  I've been on public aid and literally lived off of leftovers from going on as many blind dates as I could squeeze into a week.  The closest I've been since I've had children involved food stamps and WIC, and I know the difference between relying on the public safety net and being totally without one.  As millions of single mothers in this country are.

Being rich is not hard in pretty much any of the same ways, but it's not as much fun as you probably think.  My family has been rich.  It didn't solve our problems.

There is no world where this is easy.

Even when my family was rolling in it, my mother was still dealing with four teenagers who, while independent and intelligent, were just as crazy and disaster prone (and in some cases, much much much more so) than any other teenager.  There were car crashes, bad boyfriends and robberies.  There were brushes with the law and curfew violations and plenty of standard rivalries.

My mother?  She must have been exhausted.

And when we were all little, and she was working as a secretary while my father worked on his Ph.D., she must have been exhausted.

Because all of us, all parents, everywhere... we are all exhausted.  We are all stressed.  We are all paranoid and concerned and determined to be better.

But we are what we are- human beings.  Human beings trying to raise other human beings.

And honestly?  None of us know how we do it.

You know what it's like to be 32 weeks
pregnant, working on your degree, fighting
off skin cancer and gall bladder disease, and
raising two toddlers?  It's exhausting.  This
is how I look most days.  It's not a failure.

Somebody else having a good day doesn't mean they made a better choice than you.  It doesn't mean they're happier than you.  It doesn't mean that they are judging you in any way.  It just means that they're having a good day.

Ann Romney?  She raised five boys, she's fought cancer and MS.  Yes, she is out of touch with the majority of Americans.  The majority of Americans can't afford to buy horses to help them through their MS, or furnish half a dozen homes.

But all of those things?  Those things are hard.  Those things are more things that Ann Romney has to do.  And she must be exhausted.

There are no Mommy Wars.  There is no battlefield where women are attacking each other for their parenting choices, or lack thereof.

There is only the horrible, self-critical part of our own minds that insists that we are being judged by everyone.  All the time.

And we are all working our asses off to do the best job that we can.

End of the Month Controversy- Vaccinations

Influenze outbreak
From Brittanica online

Vaccinations have been on my mind quite a bit lately.

First of all, there's the fact that I'm getting DD and SI enrolled in pre-school for the fall, and that means... vaccination records.  And the fact that next week they have their two and a half year well check up, at which they're scheduled for Hep B shots.

And then there's the ongoing birth control debate going on around the country.  And frankly, I think these two issues are related.

Allow me to explain.

There are a lot of things that are going unspoken by the (mostly) men who are arguing against birth control.  And they're the same sort of (mostly) unspoken things that, reading or listening between the lines, you hear from people who don't believe in vaccinating their children.

"Nobody dies from pregnancy or childbirth."

From the CDC

You hear these politicians talking about how rare it is that a pregnancy *really* jeopardizes the health of the mother.  And yet...

Over the last decade, the maternal mortality rate in the United states has doubled.  DOUBLED.

There are probably a lot of reasons for this, from inadequate prenatal care to the rising rate of c-sections.  But that doesn't change the fact that, yeah, women die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth.  And twice as many American women are doing it as they did ten years ago.

Which brings me back to vaccinations.  I personally know several mothers who don't vaccinate their kids because, "Nobody dies of the measles."

Educated women.  Empowered women.  Women of my age, with many of the same life experiences that I have.

The children of my generation were pretty much all vaccinated.  I never had the experience of losing a classmate or a sibling to a preventable disease.  I never knew a child who was effected by polio.  I never even heard stories about, "a friend of a friend of my cousin's neighbor" who had a baby brother or sister that died of whooping cough.

And so for mothers of my generation in particular, vaccination can seem... unnecessary.  Why give my children shots- shots that will hurt them- so that they won't ever get a thing that just isn't a big deal anymore anyway?

And then there's the belief that vaccinations are linked to Autism.  Beliefs caused by a scam artist who has since recanted his so-called research, but who's claims traveled far and wide.

And then there's the fear of side effects.

Scary.

And then there's the issue of what the hell is in this shot anyway?

Vaccinating is a hard decision to make.  It's impossible to be 100% informed with a simple layman's pharmacological vocabulary.  It's hard not to be scared at the idea that you're intentionally putting something that you know to be harmful into your child's body.  It's hard not to feel guilty about causing your child pain by stabbing them with a needle.  It's hard not to feel vicarious terror at the idea of being stabbed by a needle yourself.  Needles are scary.

I still firmly believe that it's the right thing to do.

I believe that because there is a reason that nobody I know died from polio, or measles.

There's a reason that I look at adults with shingles and cringe at the idea of that ever being me or my child.

I have been so fortunate to grow up in a society that has come so close to eradicating these diseases.  But they're not gone.  And there are important lessons about disease that we can learn from history.

Like that a society that has never been exposed to a disease is more likely to be utterly decimated by that disease if they ever cross paths.  (Think Native Americans and smallpox.  Or European colonizers in South America and Yellow Fever.)

That it is easier to keep children alive when "common childhood illnesses" don't include measles, scarlet fever, or mumps.  Or smallpox.

These are all diseases that we don't have to have.  That we don't have to worry about dying from.  And that's because of vaccination.

Name that disease
Photo from Brittanica

When the girls' pediatrician first approached me about the chicken pox vaccine, I laughed and said, "I'll think about it."  After all, I had the chicken pox as a kid.  My sisters had it.  Everyone I knew had it.  And we were all fine.  I called my mother and I told her, "This vaccination thing is getting totally out of hand. Do you know they're vaccinating against chicken pox?!"

And she told me about how when she was a child her baby brother had nearly died of chicken pox.  How many children actually did.  And then she told me why so many parents back in my childhood would try so hard to get their kids infected by other kids.  It's because if you get chicken pox as an adult, it's 20 times more likely to kill you- and it never goes away.  You have shingles for the rest of your life.

I did a little research, and I learned that chicken pox related deaths have gone down 88% since the introduction of the vaccine.  And that is a staggering figure for less than two decades of work.

So yes, my children got that shot, too.

I'm going to be perfectly frank.  I hate getting my kids their shots.  I hate holding them down while a nurse stabs them with a series of large needles.  I hate listening to them scream and cry.  I hate that I am responsible for that.  I hate having to lie and tell them that it's not scary, when I know it's scary.  I hate pretending that I'm not scared.  I hate being complicit in their pain, when they simply cannot understand why on earth anyone would want to intentionally hurt them.

I would so much rather that I am occasionally responsible for that trauma than that they die.  For any reason.

If I could get them vaccinated against being hit by a truck, I would do it.  No matter how many injections it took.

When they're pre-teens, I'll be sure to get them vaccinated against HPV.  Because that's a whole category of cervical cancers that they won't get and need to be cured of.  Or die from.

Name that disease
Photo from NIH

If I could get them vaccinated against AIDS, you could bet your ass I'd do it in a heartbeat.  And thankfully, that day may be nearer than I previously believed.

It doesn't matter to me how unlikely it is that they'll be exposed to the measles, or to any other disease for that matter.

What it comes down to is that a case of the measles today is more dangerous that it was fifty years ago.  Not because the disease was more virulent.  Not because the medicine for treating it was better- it's better now.  What it comes down to is that fifty years ago, everybody knew what it looked like.

There's a fever.  There's a runny nose and a cough.  There's red, watery eyes.  That's before the rash shows up.  A rash I definitely couldn't identify on sight- to me the pictures of it look a lot like roseola.  With proper medical care, the mortality rate due to these former "common childhood ailments" is very, very low.  But there are other effects- measles can leave your child blind.  If you're pregnant, rubella can cause horrific defects in your baby.  Diphtheria can make your child fall into a coma.

And we've come so close to actually wiping out these diseases that I just simply wouldn't recognize them.  And neither, most likely, would their doctor.  She's probably never had a kid in her office with diphtheria.

I understand why many parents choose not to vaccinate.  Fear.

Fear of the side effects.

Fear of the pain.

Fear of the responsibility.

I share that fear.

Name that disease
Photo from Brittanica

My fear of my children dying from something preventable is simply greater than my fear of those other things.  Despite the fact that the vaccination is a certain source of pain, and the disease itself so much less certain.

What is certain is that I want to let my children play with other children, without worrying if those children have been to events like the Superbowl, where apparently you can pick up the measles.  Or if they've visited a country with less successful vaccination campaigns.

I want to let Grandmommy and Poppa play with their grandkids when they fly in from South Africa, or China, or any other corner of the globe, without wondering who they might have been exposed to at an airport or train station.

I want to take my children to visit other children, without fear that my children might be the ones spreading disease.

And yes, I'm afraid of making my children sick by giving them shots filled with toxic chemicals.

I am so much more frightened of rubella.  I am so much more frightened of my toddlers spreading pertussis to their new baby sister when she's here.

I'm not ignorant of the risks.  I know there are risks.  I know that every year, many children do die as a result of complications from vaccines.

I also know that the number of children who die from measles, mumps, rubella, polio, meningitis, and the flu is exponentially greater.

Name that disease
Google images

Do I hate myself for vaccinating my children?  While it's happening, yeah, I do.

But from the moment of their first watery post-shot smile onward, I am grateful.  There is so much to worry about as a parent.  There are so many dangers.  I absolutely cannot protect my children against all of them.

But I can protect my children against a growing list of diseases that could harm them- that could cause them permanent disability or death, or even just a few really awful weeks or months of illness.

I am afraid.  We are all afraid.  Parenting is terrifying.  But we all do the best that we can.  And I believe that the best that I can do includes vaccinating my children.

Note: I will not publish or respond to any comments attempting to link autism to vaccinations.  All of the studies that do so have been debunked, and I will not dignify those arguments by engaging on that topic.  All other respectful comments are welcome.