motherhood musings throughout the years

2014

I have been a mother for a good 14 months now, which is practically the time it gets to get a Masters degree, which makes me an expert. Hello, duh. Step aside while I tell you what's up.

1. I don't think of myself as a laid back person until I am around other mothers. At the park, I seem near neglectful. I often get looks because Sage is barefoot and still in her pajamas...or maybe those looks are directed at me because I too am barefoot and still in my pajamas.

2. Fred let me borrow his FitBit the other day. I was secretly nervous to take it for a spin because I thought for sure it would be a rude awakening. To both my surprise and my validation, I reached 10,000 steps before noon. I only wonder how many tiny steps Sage takes in a day.

everything i do is bad

I have a thought I can't quite shake. I'll be going about my day, feeling fine, and suddenly I'll turn a corner and there it is like a white faced, screamless ghost: Everything I do is bad.

I've analyzed this thought many times, pulled it out of my head like a magician's scarf, pulling pulling pulling until POP there it all is, wrinkled and light in my hand. Seriously? EVERYTHING I do is bad? How dramatic. It's not possible for everything I do to be bad. In fact, some things I do are decidedly good: I write thank you notes, I volunteer at my daughter's school, I am profusely kind to customer service representatives. Even though I can logically refute this thought, I can't quite extract it from my heart.

So I buckle down. Today, I will make sure that everything I do is good. Today, I will turn off my phone so that I'm extra in tune with the people around me. I don't want to miss their cues for what they need. But before I turn it off, I'll check in with a few friends who I know are going through something. Today, I'll be sure to pop into my husband's office to give him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. I will make the side of his bed and pick up his dirty clothes. Today, I'll swallow my exhaustion when my children squabble and I, once again, coach them through a resolution. I will wordlessly do all the invisible work--faxing immunization records from here to there, measuring and cutting shelf liners, vacuuming whatever debris the neighbor kids tossed down our vents, signing all the school forms and making sure they're turned in on time, returning the abandoned toys in my yard to their rightful owners, buying and wrapping presents for birthday parties and weddings and baby showers, organizing and keeping track of the kids' social calendars and extracurriculars, researching elderberry syrup and probiotics, purchasing elderberry syrup and probiotics. I will pick up their shoes. I will pick up their shoes again. I will pick up their shoes again. I will pick up their shoes again.

But then, when they grab their shoes, take them off, forget where they left them, and ask me where they are and if I will drop what I'm doing to help them find them, I will hit a wall, and everything-I-do-is-good will sour into everything-I-do-makes-me-resentful.

I will feel hot with it

    when the kids down the street sneak into my backyard, toss our sand toys everywhere, and leave snack wrappers and half eaten pizza slices behind

    when Fred borrows my credit card and leaves it on the counter next to my wallet instead of putting it back inside my wallet

    when the school or the coach or the church leader emails me about parental duties but not my husband

    when I see a meme of a man proposing to a woman, saying, "Would you do me the honor of taking on even more responsibilities while my life remains largely unchanged?"

    when the mess someone else made is still sitting hours days weeks after they made it in a space that I just cleaned

    when it's been awhile since anyone's told me thank you or I love you or I see you.

Everything I do is bad.

An old friend comes over. She tells me about her recent triumphs over her lifelong struggles. She takes a hesitant breath, and then: "I hope this doesn't make you feel awkward, but I have always admired you." I am stunned. She explains that growing up, she thought of me as someone who had no shame in who I was. She mentions Brene Brown and owning our stories, and she believes that I was someone who always did that. It occurs to me that maybe she believes that I am someone who still does that. The truth is I am boiled and steeped in shame, and it's been so long since I've done something that I've actually wanted to do.

After the sun sets and the kids are softly snoring in their beds, I take a walk. I stand on top of the hill that overlooks the entire valley. The sky wipes the clouds away, revealing a full moon that's practically letting off solar flares. My whole body tingles and the wind picks up and my heart is walloping outside of me and something wild inside of me foams and froths and then there's this instinct to throw back my head and howl, to run barefoot and free.

I want to, but I don't.

I shove it down, look straight ahead, walk to my front door, climb into bed.

I turn off the light with great relief. It's time to sleep, and for the next eight hours, I can't let anyone down or make any mistakes. Fred slides into bed next to me, reaches in the darkness to hold my hand. As he talks about his day, I imagine that moon passing over our house, moving onto a different hemisphere of the world. I ask Fred questions about work, about the NBA, about his outing with the kids. With each question, I feel more self conscious that maybe he can hear my internal pleas clawing through each word:

    Fred, do you like me?

    Fred, am I making any difference?

    Fred, what is something you truly appreciate about me?

    Fred, is everything I do bad?

is this thing on?

Oh, hello there. It's been a minute a few years. Let's catch up.

We recently bought a house after an agonizing process involving many decisions and factors. Those decisions and factors are irrelevant now, and if you think buying a house in a pandemic is difficult, just know that buying appliances in a pandemic is even harder.

Anyway, here we are now. We've moved a bunch since my last post, have seen a lot of changes (including another child! Have I posted about Troy on here?), and as much as I wanted to write, it just never clicked. I honestly don't know how the "mommy blogger" thing ever took flight. Who are these mommy people that have not only the time but the brain clarity to write? I write, kind of, but not how I used to. Something pops up, and I want to write about it, but I usually don't; when I do, it's a stuttering attempt that doesn't reach completion. Here's something I wrote one night at the beginning of COVID-19:

*

The governor of Utah declared a state of emergency on March 6. Close the schools. Work from home.  Maintain a six foot distance from one another. Each evening, my daughter and I walk around the lake, silently watching the sky and the placid water turn from blue to peach as the sun vanishes behind the towering mountains. As people pass by, they scoot off the path, eyeballing six feet.

"Is it because of the sickness?" my daughter asks.

She knows about it, of course. It's taken her classmates and her dance recital from her. It's why the last soccer game of the season was forfeited, why we can't go to the library when her brother naps. To explain why handwashing is important, I let her dump pepper into a melamine Disney princess bowl full of water.

"Dip your finger in," I commanded. She and her brother gleefully obeyed and laughed at how the pepper covered their fingertips. I squired soap on their fingers, and their laughter ballooned as it slimed and dripped on the floor. "Now dip those in," I said. They did, and their laughter ceased into shocked silence as the pepper flung to the sides of the bowl, away from their soapy fingers.

"Yes, it's because of the sickness," I now reply with a small smile. She nods, satisfied, and keeps walking, squeezing my hand every few paces, and I'm relieved that's the only question she has.

A couple nights later, my son wakes up crying. Too tired to console him back to sleep, we move him into our bed. He contentedly curls up into my side, sleepily asks for a snack, eventually gives up the negotiation and floats back to sleep. After a bit, he keeps kicking me, so I move into his bed next to his sister.

I'm dreaming of my best friend's wedding. We're dancing at the reception when suddenly everyone starts vibrating. The music stops, the conversation hushes, and the vibrating grows more intense. One guest turns to me and says, "Earthquake."

"Earthquake," I whisper, my eyes flinging open. The room is sloshing side to side; I can feel our townhouse bend and sway. Next to me, my daughter sits up and whimpers, and just as she opens her mouth to shout, I grab her and say urgently, "It's okay. It's okay. This is an earthquake. It's okay." Just then, the shaking swells, and I consider gathering her up and running into the doorway hall, but then the room hiccups and settles, hiccups and settles.

Stillness.

"Is it because of The Sickness?" she asks in a whisper, and it's the first time it's gone from "the sickness" to sounding like "The Sickness."

*

That's it. That's how it ends. I know, right? I didn't publish this right away because I haven't been able to edit it (or finish it, obviously). As I glance through it now, I can see how it isn't quite how I'd want it to be, and yet I've lost the steam to fix it up. For the record, I was never (never) into editing my stuff before kids.  It was more of a "slap down, vomit up, and click publish" process. Becoming a mother has brought out the perfectionist in me (another topic I've wanted to write about).

But the writing, among other things in my life, is slowly returning to me. Thanks to those who occasionally checked up or said they missed the blog. I had kind of forgotten about it, and of course it was flattering to hear that someone liked it enough to still think about it after all these years of abandonment.

three years

Our path to parenthood started on a hot Sunday afternoon. We were in the car when I said, "Do you want to have a baby?" You reached for my hand and answered, "Rachy, I've always wanted to have a baby with you."

The bits between week 1 and week 38 only strengthened my trust in you: All the times I threw up, and you rubbed my back quietly until I was finished. The days in my first trimester when I came home from work to an apartment chilled to a perfect sub-70 degrees (who knew a cluster of cells could make me so hot and sweaty?). The nights before bed when you massaged the soreness from my lower back so I could fall asleep. The ultrasounds we sat through, and how the technician kept saying things like, "Here's her leg," "There's her heart," "See her elbow?" And you quietly watched the screen, and then eventually admitted, "I'm really glad you can see all that, because I sure can't."

The stares we got at the gym when you tied my shoes because I couldn't reach. The showers where I called to you to help wash my back because my tummy was too large for me to twist. The pillows I used that took up two-thirds of the bed, and yet you never complained. It all led up to the gentle, encouraging words you offered in that final hour of labor--the way you held me and said, "You can do this. We can do this," as I cried and yelled in pain and said that I was scared. I was so scared.

They said the biggest decision I'd make is who I married. That's not true. Marriage is largely reversible. I think the biggest decision I made is with whom I chose to have children, because children and parenthood can't be undone. I think about that every night when I look at you and Sage sleeping--the way she pouts her lower lip when she's deep in a dream, just like her dad. That is my favorite part of the day: nodding off in hypnotic breaths, feeling overcome that in this bed where there were once two warm bodies, there are three.

Happy three years, Fred. Thank you for being my husband, and thank you for being Sage's dad.

how to lose 6 lbs 5 oz in one hour

Step 1: Take approximately 38 weeks painstakingly gaining 30 pounds. Be sure to eat things that taste all right on the way back up, should that occasion occur (which it will 85% of the time). Don't let anyone say "gorgonzola" in your presence. Resist chopping your father-in-law in the face when he innocently uses the words "marinated" and "sardine" in the same sentence.

Step 2: Wake up early Thanksgiving morning with inconsistent back contractions. Go about your day as normal. Drive an hour to your family's Thanksgiving feast. Drive the hour back in the backseat on your hands and knees to ease the back labor.

Step 3: Scratch your head in puzzlement when your water trickles and you lose your mucus plug. Chuckle that the term mucus plug is pretty accurate (unlike the euphemism "birth canal"). Shrug it off since your contractions are still inconsistent, though intense, and you do not feel like you are dying, so you probably aren't in labor.

Step 4: Get in bed, breathing through each contraction as you nod off.

Step 5: Feel a powerful POP inside of you, and then the feeling of the devil himself clawing at your pelvis.

Step 6: Scream.

Step 7: Keep screaming. Vomit from the pain.

Step 8: Fall onto your husband when he runs into the bedroom with worry on his face. Tell him you are dying. Tell him that you need to go to the hospital now. Scream some more. Realize you haven't packed a hospital bag. Fall to the floor in pain as your husband throws toothbrushes and undies into a duffel bag and escorts you to the car, stopping to apply counter pressure on your hips with each contraction peak. Scream so hard that you're sure your apartment neighbors will call the cops.

Step 9: Lie across your husband's lap on the drive to the hospital. Pound the arm rest with your fist as you shriek your head off with each contraction, which have double peaks at this point and are right on top of each other. Say over and over that you are going to die, that they need to cut you open, that you can't do it. Your husband will say, "Yes, you can."

Step 10: At your next contraction, your body automatically pushes. Tell your husband, "OH MY GOSH. I'M POOPING MY PANTS." Love him for calmly saying, "That's okay."

Step 11: It's after hours at the birthing center, so you will need to be buzzed in. Be sure to pound on the intercom and say, "HELLO PLEASE LET ME IN BECAUSE I'M DYING AHHHHH" with desperation. Again, your husband will be pushing on your hips.

Step 12: The receptionists will smirk at each other as if you can't see them when they find out you're a first timer. They don't think you're in as much pain as you think you are. They will send you to the wrong room twice. Once you are in the correct room, you will run to the toilet to vomit again. The delivery nurse will greet you in all your sweaty labor glory. Be sure to kick off your shoes and your pants and poopy underwear right when she introduces herself. Scream while you do it, too.

Step 13: You'll hear the midwife in the other room speaking to the staff. She will say, "Oh, we don't need such and such right now. She's a FIRST TIMER wink wink chuckle chuckle. We are in the PRELIMINARY STAGES eye rolling with a smile." She will turn around as you enter the room and invite you to get on the bed so she can have a look-see.

Step 14: "Oh, my gosh. She's crowning!"

Step 15: Suddenly a swarm of people will encircle the bed, chanting PUSH PUSH PUSH, and you plead for them to set up the squat bar so you can hang off it and squat while your "birth canal" screams with you.

Step 16: The squat bar is up. On your next contraction, roll up off your back, grabbing onto the squat bar. Bite down on the squat bar and drop the f-bomb so loudly that the nurse shushes you. You will have only been pushing for five minutes, but the midwife is ready to be done with her shift and tells you that if you don't push harder, she will give you an episiotomy. Lean in and snarl in her face, "DON'T THREATEN ME."

Step 17: Moments later, everyone will cheer. The baby's head is out! Push for her shoulders! You'll feel your husband touch your arm as he says, "I can see her. You are so close! You're almost there!"

Step 18: Flop back onto your side to help the baby rotate out. Scream. Push. Feel the ring of fire and push harder. Scream some more.

Step 19: Suddenly, you will have lost 6 lbs 5 oz. It will only have been an hour since you went into hard (very hard) labor. It will be the most surreal weight loss experience you'll have. You will be breathing heavily, dripping in sweat, flat on your back in utter exhaustion. You will look down and realize you are completely naked. Your clothes are strewn all over the room, and you don't know at what point that happened, and you decide you don't care.

Step 20: As you turn your head, you will see your husband across the room cutting the umbilical cord. You'll see him drop the scissors to bring his hands to his mouth to choke out a sob as he peers down at the 6 lbs 5 oz--the baby, healthy and wonderful and so peaceful that the midwife and nurse say they don't see such quiet babies often. Moments later, your baby will be snuggled into you, her giant blue eyes fluttering open and her breathing steady and calm. All of this will be happening while the midwife stitches you up--sans anesthesia, because you figure nothing will hurt compared to what you just felt. (You will be correct.)

Step 21: Hold your baby. Tickle your nose against her scalp because she will smell amazing. You and your husband will give her soft kisses over and over. As you come out of the bathroom from brushing your teeth, you'll catch your husband looking at your sleeping baby, telling her in a low whisper how much he loves her. The nurses will tuck you all in and turn off the lights for you to sleep. You won't sleep a wink, though. You will be cuddled up to her, watching her chest rise and fall until the quiet sun beams streak through the shudders and light up the dust in the air. Outside, it is crisp and cool, and you can see cars and people from the window. And you and your new family will be squished onto one small bed--dazed, speechless, warm, and humbled.

the confidence of motherhood

I suppose I'm only a mother as much as my fetus is a baby, but if there's something I've learned in my embryonic stages of motherhood, it's that parenting requires confidence.

Like anyone else, my confidence is as easily gained as lost. I would say that I've mastered the art of faking it 'til I make it; in the times when I'm doubtful of my capabilities, I dive right in and act like I know what I'm doing until I believe it. I've taken enough tests, been to enough social events, sat through enough interviews to understand that as long as they think I'm confident, that's as good as being confident.

But I'm learning a little at a time that motherhood doesn't allow for as much room for such fakeries and doubts.

The times I felt most energized and secure as a child were the times when my mother exuded confidence. I liked when she requested and disciplined without feeling the need to apologize. I admired when she sacrificed her friendship with her children for the good of her role as our parent. I imagine other mothers can relate to those times when doing what's best also means being met with a slammed door and an "I hate you!" Perhaps the best thing means severing ties with other mothers whom you've considered your closest lifelong friends or putting yourself at odds with your children's father.

I had an incredibly enlightening conversation with my dad the other day about life management. If you know Big Mike, you know that he's all about management. He bought me a Franklin planner for my ninth birthday and encouraged me to forego my eighth grade one-page current affair paper about the state deficit to write a dissertation involving complicated economics and business models to prove, essentially, that there was no deficit. When I confide in my dad about frustrations, he simply says, "It doesn't have to stay that way. Just learn to manage it!" There's a management model for any situation; life is one big business, after all.

Unlike Big Mike, I let personal bias get in the way of my management. I make servers choose my order at restaurants, trusting that their decision is as good as my own. I spent an embarrassing amount of time at my sister-in-law's house this summer to obsess over which mattress Fred and I should purchase. (This process took me weeks to decide, and I even visited the mattress store every other day and spent hours researching mattress models, reviews, and even the skeletal anatomy.) And once I thought I'd made my decision, one comment from a friend who said, "Oh, we almost got that mattress, but then we got this other one instead" made me reconsider my preference altogether.

The point is, sometimes what other people think deeply affects my decisions. I claim to be fighting it. I am fighting it, in fact, and I'm pleased with my progress. But I'm quickly learning that when I'm a mother, I will need the confidence to make decisions despite who agrees or disagrees.

I don't mean decisions like flannel or muslin, cloth or disposable, breast or bottle, epidural or birthing tub, crib or co-sleep. I guess I mean the bigger, harder decisions. The ones that only Fred and I will stand by because everyone else, including our children, will disagree. The ones that will make me prove my confidence as a leader to my family and as someone who is qualified to direct--not to force, of course, but to direct.

Several of my friends have mentioned that I'm "brave" to have a child because labor and delivery is pretty painful (so I've heard). Some friends have admitted that they are scared of motherhood for vanity's sake--stretch marks, saucer-sized nipples, widened hips. I get that. I understand it takes confidence to stand up after puking an entire Subway meal outside the bank in front of a crowd of milling strangers. It takes confidence to allow people to watch you in an extremely vulnerable situation--going through the pain and panic of childbirth (or the "discomfort" and "orgasmic beauty," as I've heard some try to convince me). But that kind of confidence comes easily to me. I don't mind standing up, curtseying in front of those strangers, and saying, "Whew! Should've gone with honey oat instead of flatbread." I don't mind bouncing on a birthing ball and using hydrotherapy in minimal clothing in front of strangers.

For me, the bigger challenge will be in the other things. In the management, I suppose--the thing that comes so naturally to my dad, and even comes naturally to me, but that I fear will be more difficult to apply to my own children than to other life circumstances. I have good examples to study and imitate until it becomes more natural. I'm up for the challenge.

And now I really want a Subway sandwich...

two years

I have a whole heavy bag of past relationships. Although I learned a lot during that time in my life, I learned this the most: that I take heartache hard.

Because even in the situations where I knew this wasn't what I wanted, that I truly did want to turn away and move on, I'd still wake up the morning after the breakup with a bruise-y blue residue over my hands, my face, my bed, my closet, my path to school. While I was certainly mourning the loss of what was and what could have been, I eventually grew to mourn something more universal than just the individual comforts of a particular boyfriend in a particular relationship.

I mourned the fact that I still hadn't found someone who was good for me that I was equally good for, too. And that's the broader issue that weighed on my heart as I moved from love to love, from him asking, "What's happening to us?" in his pajamas on my front porch, from discussing the humanistic qualities of oatmeal while stargazing one last time, from a knowing farewell at a final American Heritage lecture.

I know this--or at least a variation of this--is a common theme in college dating. I think we all carry this grief at one time or another.

As I'm writing this, my feet are in Fred's lap. He's playing with my toes, watching Family Feud, chuckling to himself every few minutes. I hear again and again the improbability of soulmates; and yet, there are times when I am so sure that Fred is mine. When we ride our bikes and the setting sun lights his curly hair just so. When we pretend to be robots until we laugh so hard our sides nearly split. When we wipe away stray tears after Land Before Time. And, yes, even when we argue and have to be apart for a time to blow off steam.

In these moments when Steve Harvey's overdone attitude is shining into our quiet family room, the air still and quiet outside our screened windows and the cat is stalking a fruit fly in the corner of the room...these moments erase any trace of what ifs and why nots, the games of yes and no no no.

I'm in the right place with the right person, and the grief from before is gone.

Happy two years, Fred. :)