Time's a wasting...

I just finished putting Ella to bed, and as I sat down, exhausted from a long week, I noticed that an old post I'd written for the Fussy Baby site was reposted on Facebook. I noticed a lot of comments about the post, how it had meant something to people. I went back to the site, and I noticed the comments people had written, and questions they'd asked me that I'd never answered. I reread the posts I'd written a few years ago about living with a fussy baby, breastfeeding, postpartum depression, etc. and I remembered how much I loved writing those pieces, and I asked myself, why has it been so long since I did this?

The simple answer is that I am too busy, as we all are, but that is also an excuse. The truth is that this has been a difficult year and a half. We are still in the throws of trying to have a baby, and the desire for another child has often consumed my thoughts. It has pulled me away from other things I love to do, like writing, and I regret that. So many things have happened in the past six months, and I regret that I haven't documented them here. I regret that wanting another child has, at times, distracted me from enjoying the amazing child I have right upstairs.

I'm not the kind of person who thinks, oh no, she's getting bigger, it's all flying by so quickly! But when I think back six months, I can't believe how much she's changed. That big girl upstairs can write her name, and do a headstand, and memorize the lyrics to a song. She can tell a joke (sort of), and earlier she said, "Y.E.L.L.O.W." spells yellow. She is getting bigger, and time is flying by, no matter how cliche is sounds, and I don't want to waste any more of my life on regrets.

We're still trying to have another baby. I still hope each new month will be the magical month that everything will change, but I'm trying to remember that my life is right here, right now, with that girl and that man who are upstairs right now reading stories and snuggling. They are my family.

The sister dilemma

Practicing sisterhood with her friend Felix

Now that the cat's out of the bag on the whole fertility thing, we can talk about the "sister" problem. As I'm sure many children of a certain age are, Ella is wondering why she hasn't become a sister yet. Because she is three, many of her classmates have become big sisters over the past year, and she's started thinking that this is a natural part of getting older. You become a big girl; you become a big sister. Here's how many of our conversations go:

Ella: When am I going to be a big sister?
Me: When Mommy and Daddy have another baby.
Ella: Can you have a baby right now?
Me: Well, we're trying buddy, but we have to wait until the baby is ready to come.
Ella: Tomorrow?
Me: No, definitely not tomorrow. Babies take a long time to make.
Ella: Can we make one when we get home?

And so on, and so on. As if this wasn't bad enough, she's actually started lying to people. She told a girlfriend of mine and a teacher at her school that her mommy, "has a baby in her belly." They approached me all excited to hear the good news, and I had to sit Ella down and talk to her about lying. "But you're trying to have a baby," she said, looking guilty, and I told her, "Yes, Mommy is trying, but I don't have a baby in my belly yet, and you can't tell people that until I do. Once I do, you can tell any one you want."

The hardest part has been explaining to her what a sister actually is. She's got it in her head that "sister" is another word for "big girl." She'll say things like, "I have to eat my vegetables so I can become a sister," or she will ask me if big girl's she sees in various places are sisters. She also can't understand the whole big sister/little sister thing. She can't fathom that I am a little sister, or that one of the one-year-olds in the baby room at school is going to be a big brother. We talked about everyone we know who is a brother or a sister, and I tried to explain what made one "big" and one "little." She had it until she brought up her friend Kate who is a middle child. She said, "So, Kate is a big sister because her mommy had baby Claire!" I said, "Yes, Kate is a big sister, but she's also a little sister because she has a big brother." That conversation pretty much sent us back to square one.

The whole thing is pretty heartbreaking because I know exactly how she feels: everyone at school is becoming a big sister or brother, she wants it desperately, but there's nothing she can do about it. This thing she wants is completely out of her control. And man, do I know how that feels.

Luckily, I think she's finally getting it. Yesterday, she was pretty quiet on the way home from dance class. When I unbuckled her from her car seat, she said, "When you get a baby in your belly, I'll be a big sister, but you don't have a baby in your belly yet." I pulled her out of the chair very gingerly and gave her a big hug. "That's right, buddy, but until then, you'll be my baby." She smiled and hugged me back. And in that moment, it was enough for both of us.

I'm just going to say it...

I've always been considered a bit of an over sharer. I have no problem telling people how I feel, what I fear, what I'm anxious about. This is why I've always loved but found therapy to be somewhat unnecessary. I often wonder why I'm paying someone a hundred dollars an hour just so I can tell him what I already told my husband, mother, sister, best friend, and hygienist earlier that day. I never pretend to have it all figured out, especially when it comes to motherhood.

When I suffered from post-partum depression after the birth of my very unhappy baby three years ago, I didn't hide my anxiety or sadness. When strangers in the grocery store asked me if she was a good baby, I looked them in the eyes and said, "No." When people asked me how it was going, I would say, "I'm having a really hard time." People were a bit shocked by this. Some were even a bit put off, but mostly, people told me how "brave" I was for being so honest. This reaction puzzled me. There was no part of me that was trying to be brave. Bravery implies trying to overcome something fearful, but I wasn't afraid to share my feelings. It wasn't hard to cry in front of people and tell them I felt like I was losing it. Honestly, I couldn't have faked it if I'd wanted to, but, really, I didn't want to and couldn't understand why anyone would. Why would I try and tough this out on my own when there were so many people willing to help me if I just asked them to?

The most interesting revelation I had during those first six months of my daughter's life was how many other people had experienced similar feelings, and how many of them had kept it a secret. Both acquaintances and close friends would tell me, "Oh God! I felt the same way," "I was miserable,"  "I thought I'd made a huge mistake," "I was so depressed." It wasn't their reactions that shocked me but how for years these same women had pretended to be enraptured by motherly bliss, to have it all together, to be perfectly comfortable as mothers, to the point that they had me completely convinced. 

And as I spoke to them, I started to get angry. I started to realize that if I hadn't shared my feelings first, they never would have shared theirs, and I would have kept walking around thinking I was the only one who felt this way, that I was a terrible mother for being depressed, and that everyone else around me was perfectly happy. I started to realize that there were a lot of women suffering in silence and that, to some extent, society wanted to keep it that way.

I noticed this before my daughter was even born. As a chronic over sharer, I was not able to keep my pregnancy a secret during the requisite three month period. Many people were appalled that I was sharing the news so early, and several people cautioned me by saying, "Well, what if it doesn't work out?" I understood, of course, that Tweeting at the moment of conception wasn't a good idea, but these were friends of mine, people I saw regularly. My response was always, "Yes, if I have a miscarriage I'm going to be really upset. Am I supposed to hide that from you, too?" I realized that there were unique burdens that, for some reason, women were supposed to suffer behind closed doors.

Unfortunately, three years after the birth of my daughter, I'm learning this lesson all over again. I discovered recently that there is another word besides "depression" that women aren't supposed to speak of: "infertility." For exactly a year now, my husband and I have been trying to have another child. Recently, we underwent fertility testing and began a cycle of treatment. This has been an emotionally challenging year. Last summer, two of my girlfriends and I decided to get pregnant. They both did; I didn't. To spend the year watching their bellies grow bigger, and to watch the onslaught of Facebook and celebrity baby booms was difficult to say the least. Before we started trying, I had to wean myself off of the Zoloft I'd been on since my daughter's birth, so I was especially anxious and inching towards depressed throughout the year. I've had more ultrasounds and blood tests in the past six months than in the rest of my life combined, and the monthly roller coaster of hope and disappointment has distracted me from my work and my life. I'm telling you people right now that I'm having a really hard time, and just as with my post-partum depression, I refuse to pretend like everything is fine. 

So, when people ask me when we're going to have another baby, I tell them we've been trying for a year. And once again, every time I bring it up, I find out how many women have also dealt with infertility. I talk to women who tried for years to get pregnant but never said a word to their family members or closest friends. At night, when I indulge myself in the guilty pleasure of reading posts on infertility message boards, I listen to these women pouring their hearts out to strangers, discussing how long they've been TTC, and how many DPO they are, and that they just did the BD with their husbands. (That last one took me a minute- "baby dance" if you're still trying to figure it out). These women have no problem describing their cervical mucus to complete strangers, but keep telling their best friends and mothers that they aren't ready to start a family yet. And all I keep wondering is, why?

I know that I am being somewhat unfair to the women who choose to suffer in silence. Everyone who is dealing with something difficult deserves to do so as she sees fit. I don't expect most people to shout their private business from the rooftops as I am doing here, but to bear this burden alone when there are people in our lives who can ease our feelings of disappointment, pain, and fear just doesn't make sense to me. In my mind, keeping such a huge secret implies that one feels guilty, or embarrassed, or ashamed- three emotions no one who has dealt with infertility should ever feel.

That's why I choose to talk about it. When my two girlfriends got pregnant last summer, I felt incredible joy for them and incredible sadness for myself, and I told them that there were days when it was really hard to be around them. When a huge box of fertility medications, needles, and syringes arrived on my doorstep and I nearly had a panic attack wondering what I'd gotten myself into, I called my girlfriend who recently went through IVF, and she offered to come over and show me how to use everything. Every month when I found out I wasn't pregnant, I had at least five girlfriends I could text and get encouraging messages from. When I needed someone to watch my daughter while my husband and I did our first insemination, I had three people offer to help.

And last night, when I discovered that our first IUI procedure didn't work, I cried to my husband, texted one girlfriend who always knows the right thing to say, and made lunch plans with another friend who can always make me laugh no matter how terrible I feel.

I am so lucky to have such amazing women in my life who are happy to lift me up when I need a hand, and I think I owe it to them to be honest, to create connections of shared experience rather than barriers of secrets.

Recently, I got an email from a friend of a friend. This is a woman I know only casually, and she explained how she's been trying to get pregnant for a year and didn't know if she should try fertility treatments or just keep trying naturally. My girlfriend had given her my email address because she knew I'd be happy to talk to her friend. The woman wrote, "I totally understand if you don't want to talk about it." I sat at home reading this email, and I was so glad she'd decided to email me. I was so glad that it was me she had reached out to because I knew I was the right person for the job. I told her, "What do you want to know? You can ask me anything." I realized then that being honest about our difficult experiences not only helps us to feel less alone, but it shrinks the space between ourselves and others. So, to some extent, I feel not only a desire to speak up, but an obligation to.

You may think I'm completely out of line for insisting that you share your pain with others, and maybe I am, but I'm also so glad to be an over sharer because it means I don't ever have to suffer alone, and if it makes you uncomfortable, well, tough, because it makes me feel a whole lot better.

I'm off to share a big plate of sushi with a really great friend. I feel better already. 

A disappointment

At the ripe old age of 32, I know that life is filled with disappointment. Whether you have a charmed life or not, things are not always going to work out the way you'd hoped. I have come to accept this truth in my own life, but yesterday it suddenly occurred to me that now I have to accept it for another person's life, a tiny person, one so bright-eyed that I'd rather endure the most horrible disappointment imaginable than watch her deal with one ounce of it. And that, my friends, is called motherhood. Luckily, we're not talking about any life-altering disappointment here, just a little cancelled ballet class, but it was enough to bring one of us to tears (that would be me).

Ella has been talking about going to "ballerina" class for quite some time. She loves nothing more than to twirl and leap in full ballerina costume, and she has been begging us to take a dance class for at least four or five months. I waited until she turned three, then began pursuing a class that would be a good introduction- low-key, nothing too intense. I avoided places that advertised the number of awards they'd won, or the ones with glossy pictures of ten-year-olds trussed up like 1930's prostitutes. I found an inexpensive place near our house that advertised a fun, non-competitive, no recital, no polyester costume sort of dance class perfect for a wee one just starting out. About two weeks ago, I signed her up. Since that day, we've been talking about it. At least three times a day, she would ask me, "Is my ballerina class today, Mommy?" Finally, the day arrived, and I picked her up early from daycare, leotard and ballet shoes in hand, and we talked about what it meant to be in a dance class the whole way there.

Then we walked in the door, and there was no one else there, and the girl behind the counter looked surprised to see us. I tried to ignore all of these warning signs.

"We're here for the ballet class?" I said, both of our smiles plastered to our faces.

The woman did not return the smile.

"Oh gosh. I completely forgot to call you. That class was cancelled due to low enrollment."

My heart sank. Ella's head fell to my shoulder.

"I'm so sorry," the woman said. "This never happens. I just completely forgot to call."

Normally, in times like these, I would have simply said, "Oh that's okay. No big deal." I am quick to forgive peoples' mistakes. That's the number one rule of life my mother taught me. "You can't get mad at people when they do something by accident." And this has always been a relatively easy rule for me to follow, but at that moment I realized that someone disappointing me feels a lot different than someone disappointing my little girl.

I didn't say anything. I wasn't mean, but I didn't tell her it was okay, and our sullen faces revealed our feelings. Of course, if the woman had called me the day before, the class still would have been cancelled. Ella still would have been sad, but to walk in there with her leotard and shoes all ready to go was more than I could handle. 

We walked out of the building and sat on the steps so I could explain things to her.

"The ballet class was cancelled, buddy."

"What's cancelled?"

"It means that there isn't going to be a class."

"Why?"

"Not enough kids wanted to go."

"Why didn't they want to do it?"

"I don't know. Because they're really silly, but we'll find another ballet class, okay?"

"Right now?"

"No, not right now, buddy. Now we have to go home."

The look on her little face just crushed me. I couldn't hold it in. It came at the end of a very bad day I'd had, and I just couldn't control myself. I started blubbering like an idiot on the drive home.

"Mommy, why are you crying?"

"I just feel really bad that you couldn't take your class today."

"It's okay, Mommy. We'll find another class."

She held my hand as we drove home, and I realized that she was going to be fine. It was just a dance class, afterall, not a broken heart, or a cut from the volleyball team, or a rejection letter from her top-choice college. It was the first of many disappointments in her life, and I realized that I was going to have to experience all of them with her, so I'd better suck it up and show her "It's okay," even when I feel like it isn't.

And I know I won't be able to fix every disappointment in her life, but for now, it's nothing a little Swan Lake and a popsicle can't fix. Thank God for YouTube and for little girls who are a lot tougher than their mothers.

Kid-free weekend

So last weekend was Alex and Larry's wedding up in the Cape. Since the wedding plans got underway, Mike and I have been debating whether or not to take Ella with us. We considered bringing our babysitters (A.K.A my parents) along with us and making a real vacation of it, but we ultimately decided that we wanted to just be on our own for once. Both Mike and I have been away from her for several days before, but we haven't had the opportunity to do that together, so we were really looking forward to it.

The funny thing was that it was strange to both be away from her and not have any grading left to do. When we arrived on Saturday, it was raining, and we had some down time before the party started. In my normal life, I never, ever feel moments of boredom, and I don't really know how to deal with having nothing to do, so I had my first little itch of "I kind of wish Ella was here," mostly because I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself.

However, once the parties got underway, I was glad to have the freedom to enjoy myself. Our other friends who had brought their children had to play the, "Which one of us is going to go to bed now?" game, and we were glad to not play it.

At one point, one of our friends who had left her ten-month-old for the first time came up to me and said, "Do you miss Ella?" implying that she was having a really hard time without her little girl. And, I realized how much things change in just a couple of years. Before Ella was a year, it would have been nearly impossible for me to leave her. I would have worried about her nighttime routine, her napping, her eating, everything. Now, she really is just a kid, and if she stays up late, then she stays up late. If she eats cotton candy and lollipops for two days, she'll survive. I so understand how my girlfriend felt, and I'm so glad to be past that feeling.

I did slip away around ten on Friday night to call my parents and see how bedtime went. My father answered the phone and said, "We're just pulling in the driveway!" I assumed she was asleep in the car, but my father said, "Nope! She's wide awake. Want to talk to her?" I couldn't believe it. I had never spoken to her at 10 PM in the three years she's been alive. They had just arrived home from my niece's dance recital and she couldn't have been more excited about all the things she'd seen. It was shocking, and heart-wrenching, and wonderful to know she was having a great time without us. A while later, my father sent me this picture of her evening at Izzy's recital.

I saw that look on her face, and I knew that she certainly wasn't any worse for wear. When we got home, I gave her a big hug and we had the following conversation:

Me: El, did you miss me?
Ella: No.
Me: Didn't you ever think, 'Gee, I wish Mom was here?'
 Ella: No, I never think that.

And even though her reaction was super harsh, I was glad to know that she is okay without us. She is her own little person now, and she doesn't always need Mommy and Daddy around to have a good time. Though, being missed just a little bit wouldn't be so terrible.

Congratulations to Alex and Larry, and thanks so much to my parents for putting that smile on my little girl's face.

Balance

So, it's been a few weeks, but at least it hasn't been a month. I'm improving, a little.

Anyway, I went away last weekend. For three nights. For fun. Without my husband or my child. I know. Craziness. I've been away from her before, but only when Mike and I had a wedding or I had to go to training for work. This is the first time I've left her for more than one night just to have a good old time with my girlfriends. And yes, I did feel the obligatory mom guilt gnawing at me from the bottom of my stomach, but once I filled that puppy with Espresso martinis and lobster, that gnawing was replaced by another feeling all together. That feeling was "Freedom!" There. I said it. Staying up late, sleeping until 11:30 (are you serious?), and doing whatever I wanted to do during the day felt pretty amazing.

Even though I've only been a mom for three years, I have grown accustomed to the constant reminder of her presence. I always know where she is, what she's doing, whether or not she has pooped, if her hair is up or down (down- obviously), if she is wearing the Cinderella underwear or the Dora underwear (Cinderella- obviously), and even while we're both sleeping, it only takes one tiny "Mommy?" for my eyes to shoot open, ready for action. When you are a mom, you are always on-call, 24 hours a day.

I think that was the thing that initially freaked me out about motherhood. I had understood, of course, that this would be the case, but it wasn't until that first night in the hospital when Lost was over and I was ready to go to bed that I realized, "Oh my God. I don't get to just 'go to bed.' There is no "clocking out" of this job, no union to help me negotiate working conditions and personal days. No, there is only this very small and very unreasonable tyrant telling me I will never have five minutes to myself ever again!" This went on for quite some time. You've all heard the sob stories about my devil baby, so I won't bore you with them again.

But now, fully emerged from the baby fog, I realize that there is life after motherhood. That I can find the balance between my role as a parent and my role as a friend. This past weekend was about celebrating the end of single blessedness for my dear friend Alex, a girl I have literally been friends with for 27 years. Going away for the whole weekend seemed impossible when the idea was first presented, not because I didn't think my husband could handle Ella (he's always been better at it than me), but because it seemed like a lot to ask of him, and because, well, I am a mom now and moms aren't supposed to spend a weekend drinking booze and riding through P-town on something called a "Funk Bus" while their friend gets an impromptu lap dance by a stray lesbian off the street. Moms don't sleep until 11:30 and play Sexy Slang until the wee hours of the morning. But then I remembered that before I was a mom, I was a lot of other things, and namely, I was a friend who enjoyed the company of her girlfriends more than almost anything. This is a part of my identity, too, an important part of it that I want to cherish and cultivate, just as I want to cultivate the relationship with my husband and my child. The good thing is that these relationships have always felt stable to me, but it is the quality of those relationships that is tenuous. Partner, child, friend. I am lucky enough to have all of these things in my life, and I know that with that blessing comes an obligation to nurture these relationships every day. That's a lot to take on, but it's a job I'm lucky to have.

So, I relished the time with my girlfriends as much as I could, and when I got home on Monday, there was a smiling little person, no worse for wear, so excited to see me that she ran in front of my car, and I had to stop in the middle of the driveway, get out, and hug her. She wrapped her arms around me tighter than she ever had before and said, "I'm so glad you're home, Mommy!" She kept grabbing me intensely all week, saying over and over again, "I missed you Mommy. I missed you so much." And I took her in my arms, holding her little body against mine, and I relished that blessing, too.

Ella B taking over my spot in bed. 

Popping Bubbles

A disclaimer...

It's been over a month since I blogged. This is the first time since I started the blog that I've let an entire month go by, and this makes me a little sad. I'm sad for both the right reasons and the wrong ones. The wrong reason is out of a sense of failure. I love to write; next to cooking, writing is my most favorite thing to do. Also, walking in the woods. If I could find a way to write about eating while walking in the woods, I'd be a very happy girl. So, why, then, have I allowed over a month to go by without writing a post? Work, kids, life, work, weeding, laundry, etc. Okay, so I know why, but I still feel like a failure for not carving out one hour for myself every now and again to do this thing that really does matter to me. But this is not the right reason to be disappointed. What matters is that every time I don't blog, I'm missing out on a chance to create that living record of the amazing Ella B. The sheer number of funny things she said or did in that one month is unimaginable, and everyday I tell myself, "Oh, I'm totally going to remember that one!" and then I start to make dinner, and Mike gets home from work, and when I turn to tell him what she said, I've already lost it. Life is happening so fast, and sometimes it feels like she's passing by me in a blur of hair and teeth. I'm trying to catch her, but she slips just out of my reach every time.

This is all very dramatic, of course, and plenty of people can enjoy their children's lives without every taking pen to paper or finger to keyboard, but for me, this is a place where I get to hold her just a little longer, and I want to do a better job of giving myself that gift...So, without further ado...

 Dear Ella B,

You never want to go inside anymore. It takes every promise of Cinderella and sour worms and ballerina dancing to get you in the door so I can make dinner, but today was just too beautiful. So, we changed our clothes, made a picnic, grabbed a blanket and headed back outside. We raced on the driveway and practiced bike riding, and then we laid the blanket in the backyard and had our dinner. I read I Love You Stinky Face while you ate strawberries, and we snuggled under a canopy of leaves. You put your hands behind your head and said you were relaxing, and I laid down next to you, feeling the sun on my face, and exhaled long and deep. You are three years old, and your skin is soft and your hair streams halfway down your back. You say things like "disappointed" and "eventually," as if you're fifteen, but you also say "each udder" and "somefing" to remind me you aren't. You can almost ride a bike and get yourself dressed, but you still like to sit and hold my thumb while we watch T.V. You ask a million questions, but when I ask you about your day at school, you say, "I don't want to talk about it." You think sitting at the table during dinner is the worst kind of torture, and you scream every time I try to brush your hair. You know songs about the days of the week and the months of the year, and you desperately want to be a big sister. You are starting to remember things, Ella B. You are making memories, and it makes me so happy to know that all these days that fill our lives with joy are starting to stick. So, here's one for you, in case you forget. Tonight, while we sat on the blue blanket in our backyard, you asked me to blow bubbles for you to catch. As I did, we noticed that the ones that fell on the blanket didn't pop right away. They hopped a little and then rested there. You went to pop one, and I said, "No, wait, let's see how long it lasts," and we sat and watched the bubble, the iridescent sphere swirling in the sun until it finally popped. You said, "It didn't last, Mommy," and I said, "I know, buddy. It's okay." You furrowed your brow and stared at the spot where the bubble once was. I blew another bubble, and another, and another until I finally got one to land right on your dress and sit there for just a minute. You smiled at it, and we watched it explode into a million tiny droplets. You collapsed into my lap dreamily and said, "I love bubbles, Mommy," and I said, "Me too, buddy," knowing that we both meant so much more than that. These are the days I will cherish. I hope you will too.

Love you always, 

Mom