Dear Less-Than-Perfect Mom

Dear Mom,

I've seen you around. I've seen you screaming at your kids in public, I've seen you ignoring them at the playground, I've seen you unshowered and wearing last night's pajama pants at preschool drop-off. I've seen you begging your children, bribing them, threatening them. I've seen you shouting back and forth with your husband, with your mom, with the police officer at the crosswalk.

I've seen you running around with your kids, getting dirty and occasionally swearing audibly when you bang a knee. I've seen you sharing a milkshake with a manic four year old. I've seen you wiping your kids' boogers with your bare palm, and then smearing them on the back of your jeans. I've seen you carry your toddler flopped over the crook of your arm while chasing a runaway ball.

I've also seen you gritting your teeth while your kid screamed at you for making him practice piano, or soccer, or basket weaving, or whatever it was. I've seen you close your eyes and breathe slowly after finding a gallon of milk dumped into your trunk. I've seen you crying into the sink while you desperately scrub crayon off your best designer purse. I've seen you pacing in front of the house.

I've seen you at the hospital waiting room. I've seen you at the pharmacy counter. I've seen you looking tired, and frightened.

I've seen a lot of you, actually.

I see you every single day.

I don't know if you planned to be a parent or not. If you always knew from your earliest years that you wanted to bring children into the world, to tend to them, or if motherhood was thrust upon you unexpectedly. I don't know if it meets your expectations, or if you spent your first days as a mom terrified that you would never feel what you imagined "motherly love" would feel like for your child. I don't know if you struggled with infertility, or with pregnancy loss, or with a traumatic birth. I don't know if you created your child with your body, or created your family by welcoming your child into it.

But I know a lot about you.

I know that you didn't get everything that you wanted. I know that you got a wealth of things you never knew you wanted until they were there in front of you. I know that you don't believe that you're doing your best, that you think you can do better. I know you are doing better than you think.

I know that when you look at your child, your children, you see yourself. And I know that you don't, that you see a stranger who can't understand why the small details of childhood that were so important to you are a bother to this small person who resembles you.

I know that you want to throw a lamp at your teenager's head sometimes. I know you want to toss your three year old out the window once in a while.

I know that some nights, once it's finally quiet, you curl up in bed and cry. I know that sometimes, you don't, even though you wanted to.

I know that some days are so hard that all you want is for them to end, and then at bedtime your children hug you and kiss you and tell you how much they love you and want to be like you, and you wish the day could last forever.

But it never does. The day always ends, and the next day brings new challenges. Fevers, heartbreak, art projects, new friends, new pets, new fights. And every day you do what you need to do.

You take care of things, because that's your job. You go to work, or you fill up the crock pot, or you climb into the garden, or strap the baby to your back and pull out the vacuum cleaner.

You drop everything you're doing to moderate an argument over who's turn it is to use a specifically colored marker, or to kiss a boo-boo, or to have a conversation about what kind of lipstick Pinocchio's mommy wears.

I know that you have tickle fights in blanket forts, and that you have the words to at least eight different picture books memorized. I've heard that you dance like a wildwoman when it's just you and them. That you have no shame about farting or belching in their presence, that you make up goofy songs about peas and potatoes and cheese.

I know that an hour past bedtime, you drop what you're doing and trim the fingernail that your three year old insists is keeping her up. I know that you stop cleaning dishes because your kids insist you need to join their tea party. I know you fed your kids PBandJ for four days straight when you had the flu. I know that you eat leftover crusts over the sink while your kids watch Super Why.

I know you didn't expect most of this. I know you didn't anticipate loving somebody so intensely, or loathing your post-baby body so much, or being so tired, or being the mom you've turned out to be.

You thought you had it figured out. Or you were blind and terrified. You hired the perfect nanny. Or you quit your job and learned to assemble flat packed baby furniture. You get confused by the conflict of feeling like nothing has changed since you were free and unfettered by children, and looking back on the choices you made as though an impostor was wearing your skin.

You're not a perfect mom. No matter how you try, no matter what you do. You will never be a perfect mom.

And maybe that haunts you. Or maybe you've made peace with it. Or maybe it was never a problem to begin with.

No matter how much you do, there is always more. No matter how little you do, when the day is over your children are still loved. They still smile at you, believing you have magical powers to fix almost anything. No matter what happened at work, or at school, or in play group, you have still done everything in your power to ensure that the next morning will dawn and your children will be as happy, healthy, and wise as could possibly be hoped.

There's an old Yiddish saying, "There is one perfect child in the world, and every mother has it."

Unfortunately, there are no perfect parents. Your kids will grow up determined to be different than you. They will grow up certain that they won't make their kids take piano lessons, or they'll be more lenient, or more strict, or have more kids, or have fewer, or have none at all.

No matter how far from perfect you are, you are better than you think.

Someday your kids will be running around like crazy people at synagogue and concuss themselves on a hand rail, and somebody will still walk up to you and tell you what a beautiful family you have. You'll be at the park and your kids will be covered in mud and jam up to the elbows, smearing your car with that sugary cement, and a pregnant lady will stop and smile at you wistfully.


No matter how many doubts you might have, you never need doubt this one thing:
You are not perfect.

And that's good. Because really, neither is your child. And that means nobody can care for them the way you can, with the wealth of your understanding and your experience. Nobody knows what your child's squall means, or what their jokes mean, or why they are crying, better than you do.

And since no mother is perfect, chances are you are caught in a two billion way tie for Best Mom in the World.

Congratulations, Best Mom in the World. You're not perfect.

You're as good as anybody can get.

With love,
Lea

An Aside on Unintentional Shaming

Zen baby

I'd like to talk, if I may, about something very important.

Not shaming other parents.

You see, parenting is hard.  Very, very hard.  And we have a tendency to take it very personally.

After all, whatever you're doing- you've probably been pretty sure that you're doing it wrong at some point.  And that's normal.  We all go into parenting completely blind- we all go in with this sense of heightened importance, we all go in with this crazy idea that we are somehow going to be perfect parents.

We'll do everything that our parents did right.  We won't do anything that our parents did wrong.  We will feed our kids properly, we will train our kids properly, we will love our kids properly.

And that- that right there- is where the shit starts to hit the fan.

You see, from the moment we first see our babies, from the very first second, everything you do, you do to show them that you love them.

If course that ends.  You start doing things because they need to be done, because you need a few moments to yourself, or because you just forgot and acted like a jerk because you are still a human being.

But you get started based on love.

You feed the baby, with breast or bottle, because somewhere inside of you... you know you love it and you want it to thrive.

You hold the baby, because although you've never met before, you love it and want to show it that you care.

Or you don't hold the baby, because you're afraid that it will sense that you don't know what the hell you're doing, and you don't want it to know that you went into parenting totally blind.

Every parent starts making choices for their child the moment they come into the world.

And we take those choices personally.  Because, based on their failures or successes, they seem to equal the total of our love.

"If I make all the best choices, my child will know that I really, really love her."

"If I make wrong choices, it must mean that I don't love my child enough to make the right ones."

These are the nagging voices in the backs of our own minds.  These aren't the reality- we're not being judged.

Until, suddenly, we are.

Somewhere, some mom says to herself that she is making the right choice, and it is her duty to tell other mothers who are doing it wrong that they are doing it wrong.  Not because she actually knows, but because if they're doing it right, then SHE must be doing it wrong, and she can't live with that kind of doubt.

And if everyone does it right, it's quantifiable.  It's simplified.  There's a right way and a wrong way, and she's doing it the right way.

But what is right for one mother is simply not right for all mothers.  What is right for one baby simply isn't right for all babies.

I saw this picture posted on facebook today.  It's allegedly the nutritional content of breast milk.

Now, I nurse RH.  Almost exclusively.  She gets an occasional bottle of formula, and I feel the need to justify that.  Not because there is anyone policing breastfeeding mothers to tell them whether or not they're doing it right, not because the occasional bottle of formula is in any way hurting my child, but because other mothers might click their tongues at me for leaving my baby at home at two months old with her grandparents and the instruction to give her a bottle if I'm not back in time to feed her.

And I get back, and yeah, I feel guilty if she had a bottle.

I feel guilty if she cried, and I didn't comfort her.

I feel guilty, and nobody did that to me but myself.

But I project.  If I feel guilty, then I must be being judged.  By other mothers.

And, if I am not careful, I judge those other mothers to protect myself.  Those attachment parents who would never leave their babies with a sitter to go to a movie, or the store.  If I am not careful, I tell myself that this is they who are the bad parents, because they don't take any time for themselves to stay sane.

*I* need time to myself to stay sane, who knows about anybody else?

*I* breastfeed my baby, but not entirely exclusively, because sometimes she's hungry and I'm not there, and I just don't have time to pump all the time.

So maybe I don't go around and shame other moms for making different choices, and instead I publicly pat myself on the back for my own choices.  "Good job, me!" I say outloud, where everyone can hear.  "You made the right choice."

And that... that is the unintentional shaming.

That picture of the breast milk nutritional contents...

When I publicly declare that I did the right thing, and I did a good job, I am also saying that you, a real person, made the wrong choice if you did something different.

Yes, it's less malicious.  But no less hurtful.

My mother only nursed her children for a number of weeks.  Her letdowns were so painful that she was unable to function through them.  She was a wonderful mother, and I do not think I was in any way harmed by being a formula baby.

I have a friend, a La Leche Leaguer, who's daughter was "failure to thrive" until she started supplementing breast milk.  Her breast milk genuinely wasn't providing everything her baby needed.

I have many friends with babies and children.  Some nursed their children, some didn't, some still do.

All of their kids are, frankly, great.

But things like that picture... those things can genuinely hurt.

We, human beings, live in a constant state of doubt.  I think it's one of the things that separates us from other animals.

We doubt, and we wonder.

And that is why we have religion.  And science.  And literature.  And art.  Because we must express our doubt somehow, and we must answer those questions.

And most of the great questions left to us have no right or wrong answer.

And for those great questions, questions like, "Am I a good person?  Am I a good parent?" a muddled, shades-of-grey answer just doesn't cut it.  We want to hear a resounding, "yes."

We want to stop doubting, and know that we love our children enough.  That we are doing the things that they need.

There are women who cannot breastfeed their children.  That doesn't make them bad parents.  There are women who choose not to breastfeed.  That doesn't make them bad parents.

What matters is that we care.  We want to protect our children.  We want them to thrive, both in love and in health.

The bad parents are the ones who don't feed their children at all, because they do not care if their child lives or dies.  That is bad parenting.

And sometimes?  That isn't the parent's fault either.  Sometimes, a parent needs almost as much help as a baby.

And shaming those parents by strutting around and saying, "look at me, I'm doing everything right." that isn't helping anybody but yourself.

Am I proud of breastfeeding my baby?  Yes.  Very.  Not because I think formula is bad, or that bottle feeding is wrong.  I am proud because it was really effing hard to get good at it, and I did it anyway.  I feel more like a breastfeeding survivor than a lactivist.  Showing off my chubby baby is like rolling up my sleeve and showing the scars on my arm and saying, "You see that?  That really hurt, and that was a hard time in my life, but things are better now.  Things get easier."  Except that instead of talking about depression, I'm talking about parenthood.

So to all the parents who have ever felt judged by my pats on my own back, I am sorry.  I am not here to judge you for your choices, for the realities of your lives.

And to all the parents out there, insecure about their roles and their decisions and looking for some validation...

You're not going to find it from other moms.  You're not going to find it through judging other moms.  You're not even going to find it by announcing that you don't need it because you know you're awesome.

Me and M and our children

You'll find it by looking at your kids.

Look at them.

Listen to them.

Watch them.

Are they happy?  Do they know you love them?  Do they trust you to do what you can to ensure their safety and their health?

Then you are an awesome parent.

The validation of your success is that you have succeeded.  And nobody can give that to you but yourself.

Good job, moms and dads.  You have loved your children, and you couldn't stop if you tried.

You are successful parents.

Let that be the final word on the matter.

 

Sunday Blogaround 4.29.12

It's that time again!  Best blog posts of the week!

"Bip!" - Suburban Rebel Mom
This one had me laughing my ass off.  I can totally picture M in his epic battle to get something just out of reach- particularly as so much of his self identity is defined by his absurd height.  ;)


"Help!  I'm Pregnant!" - The Happy Hippie Homemaker
Yup.  I'm with her 100%.


"Because I Said So, That's Why" - Momaiku
This blogger writes a haiku a day about parenting teenagers.  This one cracked me up so hard that I had to forego some of her other fabulous posts this week to bring you this one instead.


"When Wilbur Met Henry" - Daddy Knows Less
It's never too early to teach your children about love, acceptance, tolerance, and diversity.  Well done to DKL for this gem.


"Bros for Life, Bro" - Preposterous Pace
Another one that cracked me up, start to finish.  I freakin' hate college students.  And this is hilarious.


"Fatkini 2012" - GABIFRESH
I think we could all use a dose of this kind of self confidence.  I'm not saying that I'm going to rock the Fatkini... but I'm definitely tempted.  She looks awesome. :)


"Defining Moments: Lea" - The Mom Pledge Blog
I know, it's an interview with me.  But it's about my birth experience with DD and SI, and I'm very glad to share it.


"And There Will I Keep You Forever" - Fall of James
I think every parent has had this moment of reflection and awe.


"Oh... is for Opera: A Parent/Teacher Guide" - Departing the Text
I love this.  I mean, I love opera, but this is a wonderful explanation of why it's good for children, how to introduce it to children, and what operas might be the best for different age groups.  Lotsa love to Looney Tunes in here.

Salted Chocolate Fake Bacon (and an Interview!)

This.

As I entered the home stretch ("last ten weeks") of this pregnancy, I started experiencing an odd phenomena.

Pregnancy food cravings.  Straight out of some wacky sitcom.

These are not like first trimester aversions, this is an all out GIVE ME ALL THE CALORIES kind of obsession.

I'm talking popsicles and goat cheese for lunch.  I'm talking scarfing down a pound and a half of grapes while chugging my kids' Strawberry Quick.  I'm talking, "Honey, I know it's two in the morning but can you run to the store for a watermelon and salted chocolate caramels?"  My gall bladder isn't pleased.

I've come up with a few recurring food themes that I eat quite a bit, much to the chagrin of my pseudo-doula and my husband.  My pseudo-doula (long story) is mortified at how little *real* nutrition I manage to ingest, while M is simply grossed out by me literally chugging down a gigantic root beer float make with dark dark dark dark dark chocolate sorbet instead of vanilla ice cream.

But I have come up with one dish that, while it sends M scurrying for the hills, doesn't bother my pseudo-doula so much.  And it is salted chocolate fake bacon.

Morningstar Farms, how I love thee.  They make a fake bacon product called "breakfast strips."  These are really freakin' tasty.  And here is how I, in all of my pregnant, ridiculous glory, have been managing to get an extra twenty or so grams of protein a day.

Plus?  This is seriously fast.  So fast that I am making it right now.

Step one: Melt your chocolate in the microwave.  The darker the chocolate, the better.  Spread your melted dark chocolate on a plate- so you have an even layer of gooey, chocolaty goodness.

Step two:  Salt liberally.  I've been alternating between shaved sea salt and pink Himalayan sea salt.  They're both awesome.

Salted chocolate.  Simple.

 Step three: Nuke the breakfast strips in the microwave.  Follow the cooking instructions on the box, and then add another 5 seconds or so per strip.  You want them kind of overcooked.  Singed is best.

Fake bacon

Step four: Break your strips into halves or thirds.  Use them basically as chips, to transfer the unholy awesomeness that is the salted chocolate into your face.

This.  Repeatedly.

Enjoy.  You are now an honorary pregnant lady.





...and today, I have an interview up over at The Mom Pledge!  Check it out!

Defining Moments - Lea

SI and DD's Birth Story

October 1, 2009

I am happy to say that I am taking part in The Mom Pledge's Birth Story event!  Rather than simply write the girls' birth story as it stands alone, I have divided the tale into two parts- conception and birth.  In the first part, I revisited the sense of judgement that I experienced having used IVF while my husband underwent chemotherapy.  In this part I get down to what we all want to know... how DD and SI came into the world.






My pregnancy was anything but ideal.


I walked into my OB/GYN's office, happily pregnant, and informed the nurse that I was having twins.  My regular GYN already had a full list of pregnant patients, so she couldn't see me.  I was referred to her junior partner.  The junior partner was very, very excited.  She had never delivered twins.  She wanted to schedule my c-section that day.


I left and never looked back.


I went out and researched a local practice that specialized in multiples- every single doctor in the practice had multiples as a specialty.  It's just what they do there.  As a result, the office was a zoo of women like me- pregnant with multiples and trying to see the experts.  I never built anything like a personal relationship with the doctors there.  I was just pregnant lady with twins number eight or twenty seven of the day.


An early subchorrionic hematoma put me on bedrest, and the moment I finally stood up, the symphasis pubis dysfunction (SPD) took over.  It was excruciating.  My OB was completely unconcerned.  I was obviously fine, the babies were obviously fine, if I could do something for the pain, great... but if not, whatever.  Every other time I went in, she asked when I wanted to schedule a c-section.  I always told her I didn't, and she always said, "Great," and that was that.

But I was determined to have a natural delivery.

I started looking for alternatives.

A friend of mine offered to doula for me, and I bothered her nearly daily.  She gave me an impossible to follow diet (vegetarian Brewer diet for twins) that  I tried and tried to accommodate.  I just could not eat that much food.

I went to physical therapy and used moxibustion to help the babies get into position.

I learned to absolutely love acupuncture.

Through the intense rituals of creating familiarity between me and my babies, position wise, I became certain of who was who.  What they were like.  We began to develop a rapport.

But as the months wore on, my doula and my OB and even my chiropractor began trying to make me face facts- I was probably going to need a c-section.

Five months in...

My babies might be healthy and entertaining and awfully cute on ultrasound, but they were stubbornly transverse.

For those of you unfamiliar with the lingo associated with pregnancy and birth, "transverse" means that, rather than being head down (ready to exit as we all hope they will) or breech (butt or feet first), they were laying sideways, on top of each other.

No baby comes out sideways.

I tried.  Oh how I tried.  But I began to make peace with it.  I would have as "natural" a c-section as possible.  I wouldn't schedule one- I would wait to go into labor (probably early) and I would get an epidural, and I would at the very least be conscious for the birth of my children.  I wasn't thrilled, but I was beginning to make peace with it.

And still I tried.  Still I hung out upside down, shone flashlights into my lady bits, burned herbs next to my toes, spent hours and hours on my yoga ball.

I was so determined.  But I had changed my focus a little.

I stopped worrying quite so much about the c-section, and started worrying about pregnancy milestones.  How many weeks before the twins were viable.  How many weeks before the twins would experience no lifelong health issues if they were born prematurely.  How many weeks before they would be likely to just come home with us.

Every other week was a milestone, and  held up the next one in front of me- "Just stay pregnant another two weeks.  In another two weeks, they'll be so much better off..."

This was complicated by the fact that I started feeling that something was wrong.  Something seemed not quite right with DD, and I couldn't exactly put my finger on it.  I insisted on the OB checking it out, and as a result every few days we went in for an non-stress test (NST).  While these are only *supposed* to take an hour, they could never keep both babies on the monitor.  It was our twice-a-week-or-so seven hour long routine.  It was awful.  And every time the end result was that the babies were both fine, that there was nothing to worry about, and that I could continue being pregnant.

But I hated being pregnant.  Oh, how I hated it.  I was in so much pain, my gall bladder was shutting down, I had heartburn peeling enamel off my teeth, I couldn't sleep... I was ready to be done.

I started making really awful jokes about it.  I started shouting at my belly to GET OUT OF THERE!!!!!

And then, after one long evening of making incredibly tasteless jokes and complaining that my children could evacuate my womb any time thankyouverymuch, I went home and went to bed.  That was 11pm.

At 2am, I woke up feeling a gush of warm fluid between my legs.  I was about 99% certain that I hadn't just wet the bed, and I shook M awake.  "I think my water just broke!" I managed to get out.  He practically jumped out of bed in his haste to turn on the light.  I closed my eyes against the glare of it, and heard him say, "The bed is covered in blood..."

It was.  There was so. much. blood.

Blood was dripping off the bed onto the rug on my side.  It was pooling between my legs.

I jumped up and called my OB's emergency after-hours number.  I got a call back two minutes later.  In those two minutes, I had run to the bathroom, and discovered something sticking out- something sort of fleshy but... wrong.  I couldn't feel any fetal movement.  I was desperately trying not to panic.

M was sopping up blood as I took the call, the OB told us to head straight to the hospital, to bypass triage, and that we were going to be admitted directly because they were now waiting for us.  The moment I hung up, the thing came out.  It was bloody and red and fleshy and about the size of my fist.  But it wasn't a baby, and it wasn't a baby part, and so I managed to calm myself enough to rinse the blood off my legs and throw on some clothes for the trip to the hospital.

What was normally a half hour drive took us closer to fifteen.  In that time, I had called my doula, who said would come as soon as she could.  I had called my parents, which was a disaster.  My mom was on ambien and had no idea what I was talking about and couldn't register the urgency in my voice- after all, I wasn't due for weeks.  I called my sister and left utterly panicked messages on her voicemail.  And I sat in the car, trying not to panic.

We got to the hospital and bypassed triage, just as we were supposed to.  But we still needed to wait for our room.  And because we had bypassed triage, they sat us down in the labor and delivery waiting room.

Where at 2:40 in the morning, there was a crowd of ecstatic grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews to-be.  It was full of balloons, and flowers, and... happiness.

And we sat there for a few minutes.  Me, bleeding into a maxi pad, M holding me, trying to separate whatever was happening to us from the joy in that room.  Because we just didn't know what was happening, or what the outcome would be.

After about ten minutes, I couldn't take anymore.  I left the waiting room and demanded that we be allowed to wait somewhere else.  The lady at the L&D waiting room desk was less than helpful.  She eventually agreed we could just stand in front of her desk while we waited.  She wouldn't even offer me a chair.

Finally, we went into our room.  I was quickly hooked up to all sorts of monitors and an IV, and for the first time ever the nurses had no difficulty at all in locating both babies, and seeing that both of them were just fine.  Normal heart rates.  No signs of distress.

The OB (the one on call, not my regular OB) explained that they had no idea where the blood was coming from, but that as long as I wasn't having contractions (I wasn't) and the babies were fine, I would just be staying there.

...that it might be as long as a few weeks.

Me?  I had just had the most self controlled full blown panic attack of my life.  It had been six hours since I'd eaten.  My blood sugar was crashing.  In my relief and the expectation that I was now moving into the hospital, I asked if I could have something to eat.

They told me... no.

No, because I might have to have a c-section at any minute.

But, I thought, I might be here for weeks.  Am I not supposed to eat anything the entire time?

Eventually, once they knew what was going on, they said, I could eat.

Until then, no food.  No drinks.  Nothing.

So the waiting began.  Hours passed.  I was starving.  "Can I eat now?  Can I just have some orange juice?  Anything?"  I asked them over and over and over again.  Nothing.

As my blood sugar continued to plummet, I started having contractions.  Excruciating contractions.  Nothing like what I had anticipated, but that didn't matter.  When I'm having a blood sugar crash, everything is the worst that it has ever been.

I was desperate.  I knew that if I could just eat something I would be fine.  But they wouldn't let me.

I finally asked for something for the pain.  It was what they had been waiting for.

"If you're in that much pain, we need to get those babies out.  Now."

I wasn't ready.  They weren't ready.  I tried not to cry.  I was exactly 35 weeks pregnant.  I had one more week to go until I thought everything would be fine.

And then the OB dropped a bomb on me.  She explained because they didn't know why I was bleeding, they couldn't do an epidural.  I would have to be unconscious.

I freaked out.  I told her that there was nobody else in the hospital right then- almost true- and that they could RUSH the blood work.  That they could do something.  I don't know why, but it seemed to finally get through to her.  Maybe it was because this was a different doctor- she'd just changed emergency shifts with the OB who met me when I was admitted- and she actually understood how much terror I must be experiencing.  Maybe because she didn't know what was going on with the previous OB.  I have no idea.  But she said, "We'll try," and directed the nurses to get me ready for surgery.

M was moved to wait for me in the recovery room.  I was wheeled into surgery alone.

Anesthesia is bad for babies, so they don't give it to you until the last possible moment.  That meant that I was fully unsedated for all the pre-op nastiness.  The catheter, which HURT, the mail line insertion... all of it.  Finally, I was laying down, surrounded by doctors and nurses who informed me that as soon as my OB entered the room, we would begin.

Still numb, but holding my babies for the first time

She walked in and the first word out of her mouth was, "Wait."

She leaned over me and said, "I just got your blood work back- we can do the epidural.  They'll go get your husband scrubbed in right now- and then we'll begin."

The next two minutes were a blur.  The epidural was inserted, and I went completely numb from the chest down.  M came in, looking both terrified and relieved.  He stayed next to me with his hands on my shoulder while the procedure began, and then...

...they invited him to look over the curtain for the birth of our babies.


I'll never forget the sound of his voice.  It was high and cracked, he sounded like he might faint.  "Oh my god, I see her.  I can see head now..." and then I heard her cry.

SI

I don't know what the doctor said.  I just wanted M to tell me everything- what did she look like?  Was she okay?

A few moments later, the next baby was out.

They took the girls away from M and me to clean them up, get their Apgar scores, weigh them... while they did that, they stitched me up.  M got to hold them first.  I couldn't quite register what I was seeing.

8:34am, SI- 4lbs 6oz.  8:36am, DD- 4lbs 14oz.

Once they had finished cleaning me up, I was propped up a bit and handed my children.

DD

It was bliss.  It was overwhelming.  I looked at them both and thought, "How can I love you so much?  Who the hell are you?"

Surprise surprise, their blood sugar was low.

I agreed to giving them bottles of basically sugar water to see if that would help.  SI got hers first.  As a result, when they checked her blood sugar again, it was perfect.  DD's wasn't, so they insisted on sending her to the NICU.  By the time she made the trip via elevator and had her blood sugar checked again, it was perfect.  They started telling me that any time now I would have her back.

It would be almost nine hours before I finally did.

In that time, my doula, and then my parents arrived.

As soon as DD was back with me, life was perfect.

I had my daughters, they were healthy.  They were tiny, but they were healthy.

Reunited

I don't know if it was the rush of oxytocin, or the morphine, but I was the happiest I had ever been in my life.  We spent five days in the hospital, during which friends and family came to visit, I snapped picture after picture after picture of them, and I ate all the oatmeal and hard boiled eggs I could possibly want- brought to me in bed.  I would stay up in bed while M desperately tried to sleep on the cot/bench/thing in the room, watching the girls sleep and singing them lullabyes.  I knew how crazy it was- soon enough I would be desperate for a few hours sleep and they wouldn't let me have it... but I was too enamored of them.  I just wanted to take in every single detail for as long as I could.

I still look back on those days as one of the best vacations of my life.

Recovery from the c-section was not what I had expected.  I wasn't in as much pain as I thought I would be, but the muscles in my abdomen never fully recovered.

"I missed you."

And I still feel like I was right about my body- that if they had let me just get my blood sugar up, I could have stayed pregnant a while longer.  Long enough to already have my doula and my parents with me, long enough to be calmer and more prepared.  At least a little.

It turned out that I had a partial placental abruption, caused most likely by the blood clot that was responsible for my subchorrionic hematoma during my first trimester.  That's what had passed in the wee hours of October 1, 2009.  It was DD's placenta.

I learned that my instincts are good.  I was probably right about my blood sugar, but I was definitely right about DD.  There was something wrong.  Not wrong enough for it to cause her any damage, but enough that I knew.

I have felt judged by other moms for having a c-section.  Judged enough that I always say emergency c-section, to make it clear that it wasn't my choice- that it wasn't my idea.

DD and SI

But the judgement over my c-section has never bothered me as much as that over IVF.  Possibly because I can't imagine anyone reacting very differently when they wake up in the middle of the night soaked in blood.  Possibly because I don't have the baggage of M's cancer and treatment attached to the process.  Partially because I feel so justified in my own knowledge of my body, regardless of having a c-section.  Mostly because I simply can't complain about the outcome.

My daughters?  They're as perfect as children come.

When Baby X is ready to arrive, I will have the confidence to assert myself, to say, "I know me better than you, I know this baby better than you, and these are the facts.  Now give me some damn orange juice."

This time, I'm going to try again for that natural delivery, but not for me so much as for DD and SI.  I don't want to spend five days having an awesome hospital vacation.  I want to have my family together.  I don't want to spend nearly a week separated from my twins, I don't want to spend over a month unable to hold them because of the sutures in my stomach.

First night at home with the girls

I want that natural delivery because I believe it's what will make us a whole, happy family fastest.  And maybe best.

But if I have to have another c-section?  If it turns out that my uterus is only comfortable to transverse babies, or that there is some sort of fetal distress...

I'll have that c-section without more than a moment's hesitation.  Because what matters is that all of us get through this okay.  Not that I do it with my hippie ideals perfectly intact.

And I promise, In another month and a half... I'll tell you all about it.

Origin of the Grublings

My uterus- well past maximum recommended occupancy

I am happy to say that I am taking part in The Mom Pledge's Birth Story event!  Rather than simply write the girls' birth story as it stands alone, I have divided the tale into two parts- conception and birth, which are very much linked not only in my mind and in the way I reacted to them emotionally, but also in the way I was made to feel regarding how they came to pass.  I have linked liberally to other posts where I explain some of the details from this story, which is as complicated as it is personal (so personal that it's probably best to link up with Shell's Pour Your Heart Out as well).  This is part one- Origin of the Grublings.

It was inevitable that I would be a woman with essentially naturalistic tendencies.

My parents (at least my father) desperately wanted to be hippies, but they were just a bit too young.  My father was determined to go to jail for refusing to enlist for the draft.  They ended the draft just a few months shy of his eighteenth birthday, much to his adolescent dismay.

They were vegetarians before they met at fifteen.

I was raised with their values- peace, love, acceptance, respect for nature...

I have fond memories of a community event for Earth Day where we picked up garbage, and I discovered that there were companies that made shoes and backpacks out of recycled tires.  Yes, fond memories.

My parents, the hippies

My school lunch box was always filled with things like fruit leather and "Vruit" juices.  My mom was into organic foods before it was hip.  The other kids (and moms) thought that she was crazy.

Of course I grew up to be kind of a hippie myself.

When as a young woman I started thinking about pregnancy and birth, I always envisioned things being as natural as possible.  As organic, as un-medicated, and as fundamentally intervention-free as any other animal.  But my life has almost never gone according to plan.

The day after we got engaged, my husband was diagnosed with brain cancer.  This started a whirlwind of medical procedures... one of which was the storage of his "genetic materials."  After all, who knew what the long term effects of his treatments might be?  He banked sperm, and we started the long and frightening process of fighting an inoperable, stage four tumor that had lodged itself deep in his brain.

As the year progressed, we began to be truly optimistic.  We were winning.   We were beating the thing.  Our lives could go back to... well, normal.

But not quite.  Because under "normal" circumstances, we would have waited to have kids.  We would have taken a few years to establish ourselves, we would have enjoyed a prolonged honeymoon of coupled bliss.  But things had changed.  Now, with this looming over us, we wondered how much time we had.  We wondered how long M might have.  And how would it be if we waited, and then the cancer came back?  If after all of that, we lost him just when we wanted to start a family?  Or when our children were too young to know him?

M's boss gave him a teddy bear with a t-shirt that said,
"My bald head is cuter than your bad haircut" when he
lost his hair to radiation.  That was the same day I got this
awful haircut.  I cried.

Sooner, we decided, was better.  The sooner we had children, the longer we knew we would have with them.  The longer M would have with them.

And so we decided to get pregnant.

We reached this decision in the months leading to the end of M's treatment.  He had already been through radiation, and an experimental protocol involving arsenic that may well be the thing that saved his life, and he was finishing up a full twelve months of post-arsenic chemotherapy.

Now, chemotherapy does one job particularly well.  It attacks rapidly dividing cells, like cancers.

"Genetic material" is also rapidly dividing cells.

It is incredibly dangerous to get pregnant when one party is on chemotherapy.  And the damage caused by the chemo can be permanent.  The doctors told us that we would have to wait between 6-24 months to see whether the "genetic material" would return to normal.  We didn't want to wait that long.  So, we decided to use the stored specimens to make a baby.

Unfortunately, everything happened so quickly after M's diagnosis that we didn't have a chance to store very much.  There wasn't enough to go the IUI route (otherwise known as the "turkey baster method"), so IVF it would have to be.

I can't say I was crazy about the idea.  It was so unnatural.  It was so... clinical.  But I wanted to have children with my husband, and I wanted to do it right then, so I swallowed my dissatisfaction and I got ready.

Our first picture of the girls- the moment of implantation

I've got to say- IVF sucks.  The daily injections, the side effects of those drugs, the constant blood draws, the never ceasing saline ultrasounds... it was awful.  I hated IVF.  It was the opposite of everything I'd ever wanted making a baby to be.  There was no love in that clinic.  There was no romance.  There was nothing but fear, shame, and judgement.  And nearly all of that came from me.

Finally, the day of implantation arrived.  Like everything before, it was unpleasant, clinical, and unnatural.  The doctor explained that since I had at least been pregnant for that moment that the embryos (they insisted on two, as each had a 30% chance of "taking" and didn't want to have to try again if one failed) were implanted, I would probably test positive on an at home pregnancy test whether or not it had succeeded.  So I decided to avoid the stress and just wait for the weeks to pass until I went in for an ultrasound to see what was going on in my uterus.

And there they were.  Two functioning yolk sacs.  I was pregnant with twins.

There was so much joy, so much excitement... 

And then, the judgement began anew.

Nearly every time I told somebody I was expecting twins, they asked if I used IVF.

Two zygotes in with their yolks

I always felt that the question, "Did you use IVF?" was utterly dishonest.  What they were actually asking was, "What's wrong with you?  Why couldn't you get pregnant naturally?"

This was reinforced by the occasional person- always a woman- who would actually ask that.

I felt judged for having used IVF.  I felt that other women thought of me as somehow less than for using fertility assistance.  I was reminded constantly of the fear and the anxiety and the pain that had gone into the decision, that had let me and M into that fertility clinic for the first time.

It hurt.  It hurt to remember those long talks about how old was old enough for a child to remember their father if he died.  How old was old enough for there to be meaningful memories.  How long I would need to prepare myself to be a single parent, how long we might have as a family.

These aren't the usual conversations couples have when they decide to have a baby.

I never knew what to say to women who did have fertility issues that led them to IVF.  I wanted to say that I was sorry, and that I wasn't judging them.  But I also felt trapped by their acceptance of me, like we were a support group for a condition that I didn't actually have.

25 weeks with my twins

I didn't feel superior to them, I felt separate from them.  And I wanted to be separate, to find the other women who must be in the clinic because of chemo or cancer or some other issue that had nothing to do with them.  I wanted for everyone to know that I didn't know whether or not I could get pregnant naturally, that I didn't know what my body did or didn't do all by itself.  All I knew was that my husband had brain cancer, and he was beating it, but that it had nothing to do with my uterus.  Or my womanhood.  Or my ability to be a mother.

I felt bad for the women who had tried and tried to have a baby, and had ended up in the fertility clinic for help.  I felt bad because I knew what it was like to want to have something huge and meaningful in your life, and not to know whether it would be possible.

And I felt bad for them because I knew how it felt to be judged by "normal" women who could get pregnant whenever they wanted.

I experienced other women actually bullying me and other IVF successes for using fertility assistance (ALWAYS online with the aid of internet anonymity).  Because it is unnatural.  Because if God wanted you to have a baby, you would have simply gotten pregnant.  Because medical interventions have no place in the realm of the Goddess.  Because if your body wanted you to be pregnant, you would have gotten pregnant.  Because if you just listened to your body and did what it needed you would have gotten pregnant without any help.  Because you didn't pray enough.  Because you didn't try everything.  Because you just wanted the attention of having multiples like the Octo-mom.  Because some people obviously aren't meant to have babies.

I wanted to punch those ladies in the face.  But it's hard to tell somebody that they're a grade-A asshole when they accuse you of all the things you already feel.  When they tell you you are less than them because you failed at getting pregnant naturally.  When, in some shameful corner of your mind, you agree.

SI - 22 gestational weeks

I didn't fail at getting pregnant naturally.  I did everything I could not to get pregnant naturally.  I succeeded in getting pregnant with two squirmy creatures who would eventually become my practically perfect daughters.

But I felt that I had failed, a little.  Because it was so unnatural.  And it was so clinical.  Because, "when a mommy and daddy love each other very much, they make love and that creates a baby."  And that isn't what happened.

With every complication I had, and there were many, somebody would helpfully explain that this probably happened because of the IVF.  Or it happened because I was carrying twins (because of the IVF).  So everything that went wrong, from my SPD to my subchorrionic hematoma to my gall bladder disease, was happening to me and my babies because I had failed.

I did a good job of silencing that voice- the one that judged me so harshly for how I got pregnant.

DD - 22 weeks gestational age

But every time another woman- who had succeeded- asked me "Oh twins!  Did you use IVF?" what I heard was, "You are a failure at getting pregnant, aren't you?"

So through the whole pregnancy I harbored my dedication to a beacon of hope- a natural delivery.

My babies might have come into my womb in a cold, clinical way, but they were going to come out the way I wanted them to.  In that, I was determined to succeed.

...knowing that my life almost never goes according to plan.  Almost never.

Tune in tomorrow for the second half of the story- the Birth of the Grublings.

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.

New Feature: Weekly Blogaround

I'll be making a badge for next week.
But for now...

Hello, lovely readers!

As you may have guessed, I spend a lot of time blogging.

And since I do a lot of reading in addition to my writing during my online time (sorry Spanish homework, you'll have to wait until the last moment again), I've decided to share with you what I consider the best blog posts I read each week.

Usually, I share these as I read them via Facebook, Twitter, and Google+... but now you can find them all here!

How convenient is that?

Each Sunday I'll link up my favorite posts of the week.  No idea how many that will be.  Today it's seven, next time...  well we'll just have to see who writes something awesome before I make any executive decisions.

So without further ado, my weekly Blogaround:



Try Defying Gravity: "Brother"
As one son grows, he helps his brother to grow as well.  An autism success story.  Beautiful.



QueensNYCMom: "Free Congratulations From the White House"
I think that, now that I have this information, I'll actually send out birth announcements this time around.


Daddy Knows Less: "10 Movies I Can't Wait to Watch with Peanut"
A great list, a great set of reasons.  I'll be putting one together for myself in the near future.


The Mom Pledge Blog: "Vlog Tour"
Get to know the women who have taken the pledge!  And if you haven't already, take it!


Tales of an Unlikely Mother - "Bringing a Knife to a Gun Fight"
In case you didn't know all of the other awful things that some men are saying about women who rely on birth control...


The Kopp Girls: "Lessons Unknowingly Taught"
What can I say?  I'm a sucker for toddlers nursing toys.


The Hossman Chronicles: "I Love You"
I'm also a sucker for daddies who love their kids.