Work: 1, Life: 2, Balance: 0

Written last week on a flight to Chicago for a work trip.

I am 30,000 feet away from Amalia, and I am feeling every inch.

It has been almost three months since I last posted something, coinciding, almost to the day, with when I went back to work. My three-month hiatus from blogging has more to do with the lack of balance associated with work-life balance, but it also has something to do with the fact that when I first went back to work, I didn’t want to write about the anger and resentment I felt for fear that I wouldn’t put it into the right words.

But in just three short months, I have gained perspective. Ha! If only. Well, I've gained some, anyway.

Here is what it was like to go back to work: it was terrible. I missed Mollie fiercely, passionately, with my whole heart. I resented the fact that I was sitting at a desk while she was home. I counted down the hours I spent at the office or in meetings, and I felt so dispassionate about my work that I wondered whether it was really what I wanted to be doing. I hated pumping. Not only did it take an hour out of my day, it was an ounce-by-ounce reminder of both my physical separation and the fact that I was falling short of what Mollie needed (to eat), which made me feel like I was falling short of what Mollie needed (in general).

And here is what it is like to be back at work now: it is slightly less terrible. I miss Mollie fiercely and passionately and I resent the fact that I don’t get to spend my days with her, resent the fact that I only get a harried hour with her in the morning in between pumping, making bottles, and making myself presentable for my day, and then an action-packed hour with her at night, nestled among bathtime, nursing, bottle-cleaning, dinner-making (ours) and mealtime (hers). Pumping remains an ounce-by-ounce reminder of my physical separation, but because of a lot of research and a come-to-Jesus moment with Enfamil, I no longer feel like I’m falling short of Mollie’s needs.

And something strange has happened in the past two weeks. Lo and behold, as many a wise working-woman told me would happen, I have found that I don’t hate my job. In fact, there are days when I love it, love the fact that I spend my time affecting social change, working to make the world a more livable one, love the fact that I get to feel like a role model to this person who will someday become a teenager and hate me. My days are busy, busier than they ever were before (cue the “what did I do with all of my time before I had kids” song) and yet I manage to get more and less done. Every minute counts now, for better (I can write more emails in 20 minutes than I ever realized) and for worse (I feel tethered to the clock, I know exactly how much I can and can’t get done in any given 10-minute span of time, my days are planned to the minute).

And yet I still hate the fact of working. Rather, I hate the fact that I spent so much time and money getting to this point in my career, only to have a baby and wish that I could lead two lives – the one where I’m home with her, and the one where I’m making the world a better place while picking up a (small but critical) paycheck. Put more directly, I am a mother now.

I have no doubt that not working is just as hard as working, much like I am now certain that formula-feeding leaves parents just as crazed as breastfeeding, and sleep-training is just as exhausting as not sleep-training. Like everything else in life and in parenting (particularly first-time parenting), the decisions are hard, there’s merit on both sides of the spectrum, and the right thing for one parent is the wrong thing for another.

In the last three months, our little scrawny chicken has gotten fat. She has knee dimples, elbow dimples, and three round chins. She sits on her own, puts everything in her mouth, eats pears with gusto. She talks more when she’s around people she knows, she shrieks and squawks and kicks her legs when she’s excited. She will be six months old in just a week. It is amazing what six months can bring. Also, teeth.

I am 30,000 feet and several hundred miles away from her and I can conjure her sweet baby smell in my nose, and feel her cheek give under my lips as I kiss her in my mind’s eye. I am on my first work-trip, resenting the distance and grateful, so incredibly and unbelievably grateful for my two great loves at home.

I will be home again in 36 hours. And I will already resent Monday the very moment I pick Mollie up to feed her in the early hours of Saturday morning. In between then and now, I will meet the next generation of organizers, of world-changers, of people who work for a small but critical paycheck. Just like every day, the moment I hold her in my arms will be the sweetest homecoming I have ever known.

More of a Turkey than a Chicken

For the past 12 weeks and 4 days, I have been a stay-at-home-mom. On Monday, my time at home with Mollie comes to an end and I will be back at work.

These are the cliches I am wrestling with: It is hard for me to believe how quickly the time passed, it is hard to imagine myself working in any other capacity than the job I have taken on here at home, it is amazing how different Mollie is now than she was when we first brought her home from the hospital, the thought of going back to work and being separated from her for an entire day fills me with such despair that I am fairly certain that I will have no cuticles left come Monday morning. I am also filled with such other adjectives as fear (about whether Mollie will forget me/hate me/miss me), hatred (for having to work), jealousy (of those who don't have to work), nervousness (about whether or not I really remember how to do my job), and apathy (about the work itself).

Here is a new truth that I didn't know I would come to: if I could quit my job and stay at home with Mollie, I would do it in a heartbeat. Work seems more trivial than I could have possibly imagined.

***

The year was 1989 and I was getting ready to go to someone's record hop. For those of you who were not a Jewish teenager in the late 80's or early 90's, a record hop was one way a very rich Jewish kid could celebrate their Bar or Bat Mitzvah. Those fortunate kids had two parties -- one fancy party for the grown-ups where a few of their Jewish friends were invited, and one "just kids" party where most of the 7th or 8th grade was invited. While a record hop was good in theory (twice as many presents for the lucky 13-year-old, plus the parents got to have the celebration that they wanted for all of their money) it also meant enduring the awkwardness that accompanies every dance where not-quite-teenagers are forced to co-mingle.

Suffice it to say, it took me about an hour to get ready for the party. I had picked out the perfect outfit, which will sound ridiculous over here in 2011, but I'm going to give it a shot because it is important to our story. It was a predominantly purple tie-dyed babydoll dress, under which I wore a pair of black bike shorts. I wore it with enormous "scrunchy" socks, and what we called "Chinese slippers" at the time, but which are essentially black canvass Mary Janes. I carefully did my hair, securing it into a half-up-half-down 'do with a black scrunchie, and applied the mascara and lip gloss that my mom let me wear to Bar/Bat Mitzvahs.

I came downstairs feeling pretty great, just about confident enough to ask Keith Delaney to dance after a Shirley Temple and some chicken fingers. It was critical that I ask Keith to dance at this party because I suspected that he liked me. He had been snapping my bra strap in science class for weeks, a sure sign of interest, but he hadn't said anything. I figured that the bra snapping was his way of putting the ball in my court. I was determined to run with it.

"I'm ready to go," I told my mom.

"Honey, you need to lose those socks," she responded as she picked up her keys.

Lose the socks? Was she out of her mind? The socks were critical. The socks MADE the outfit. The socks helped to establish me as an almost-cool kid. Without the socks I was just a loser in a babydoll dress, pining after Keith Delaney.

"But the socks are cool!," I protested.

"No, the socks look ridiculous."

"I'm not taking off the socks."

"Then I'm not taking you to the party."

And on it went. I'm not sure why the socks were so important to her. I don't know why she didn't believe me. But we both held firm. Finally, in the car, moments before we pulled into the parking lot for the party, I took off my socks. I held them out to her with tears in my eyes.

"There," she said. "You look perfect now. Have fun!"

I said nothing as I got out of the car, not even looking at her as I walked inside.

The party sucked. Keith didn't come and there were no Shirley Temples. Midway through it I started to feel really sick, and by the time my mom came to pick me up, I knew that I had a fever.

I sat down at the kitchen table with the thermometer in my mouth, feeling like I could fall asleep right there in my dad's dinner seat.

"Honey, I'm sorry," my mom said as she smoothed her hand across my forehead. I assumed that she was sorry that I was sick, but she continued. "You were right about the socks. I saw all the other girls walking in and they all had socks on. I'm sorry I made you take them off. I should have listened to you when you told me that they were cool."

I nodded and headed off to bed. I remember that the illness turned into some of the worst bronchitis that I had ever head, that I missed a week of school, and that by the time I got back, Keith was dating someone else, only rarely snapping my bra, and even then it seemed like it was just for sport.

I don't know why this memory has been so vivid for me these days, but I can't stop thinking about it. I have thought about it over the years because it was so shocking. It was the first time my mother apologized to me like I was an adult, worthy of a real apology. But now I am thinking about it from her perspective. She must have felt really bad for making get rid of those socks, knowing how much I wanted to be one of the cool kids, despite also knowing what losers the cool kids would ultimately turn out to be. I wonder if she decided to apologize to me, or if she just blurted it out because she felt so sad that I was also sick.

***

A million times a day, I think about the ways that I will need to apologize to Mollie, about how sorry I already am for the ways that I am already hurting her.

I'm sorry I have to work. I'm sorry I can't buy you the fancy clothes. I'm sorry that kids are mean. I'm sorry we can't take a trip to Disney World. I'm sorry I didn't listen to you.

A million times a day, I think about things that I want for Mollie's future.

I want you to be carefree. I want you to be above the popularity contest. I want you to trust yourself. I want you feel safe and secure. I want you to know that I am always listening, that no matter where I am, I love you. I want Middle School to be easier.

***

She smiles with purpose now, squeals with conviction. She rolls onto her side, talks to herself, tracks her mobile. She knows her mother, her father, her Julie, her Stephen. She is not a fan of long car rides but she is comforted by her pacifier. She tolerates her bath and she enjoys being on her tummy.

She is suddenly a baby and not a newborn, more of a turkey than a chicken, so grown up and so little at the same time, probably the way that I will always see her. I am leaving her to do her growing, her thinking, her learning, her changing, all without me there to watch it.

***

Move at your own pace, little one. I may be a step or two behind you and it might take longer than you would like for me to catch up, to catch on. But know that no matter what, no matter where I am, I am always behind you.

There is no such thing as an A+ in parenting

Six weeks ago today, I cancelled a conference call that I was supposed to have at 2:30pm because I knew that I wouldn’t be able to speak through the contractions. 17 hours later, Amalia came screaming into the world.

As with all of the other milestones (one week, 2 weeks, 4 weeks) I can’t believe that time has moved so quickly. I can’t believe that she has been here for 6 weeks, I can’t believe that I only have another 6 weeks of maternity leave. I can’t believe that in another 6 weeks, she’ll be 12 weeks old. Parenting math is much harder than pregnancy math (a math story for another day).

There have been so many times in the past few weeks that I have wanted to pick up my computer to write down what I have been thinking about. And for some reason, I just haven’t been able to do it. People have been cutting me slack, assuming that it’s exhaustion that’s getting in my way. But that’s not it. I mean, I am exhausted, but that’s not what has kept me from writing. It’s the sheer enormity of it all, the fact that wrapping my head around this most recent life change is basically just as overwhelming as actually experiencing it.

It has been an up and down week. Last weekend went by too quickly. I had too little time with Matt and by Sunday at 11am, I was already missing him, even though there were still many hours until he had to be at work on Monday. On Monday I cried in Cris’s living room, trying as hard as I could to soak up every parental-advice tidbit she could give me, feeling grateful, so incredibly grateful when she would say things like, “I remember feeling that way,” but simultaneously feeling so doubtful of my ability to make it as a parent. But today I am feeling alright, confident in my ability to wear Mollie to the grocery store in a sling, certain that I will be able to pull off a Passover Seder six weeks after I had a baby.

I have come to the conclusion that I am trying to get my PhD in parenting right now. I am in the lab/classroom years. It is my job to repeat the experiment until I have something I can publish, something I can hold up in front of my committee and say, “look, this works!”

An ideal day goes like this: Mollie sleeps for a 5-hour stretch, eats and goes back down at 4:30 and sleeps until 7:30, she has a lovely day involving minimal spit-up or wardrobe changes (for either one of us), she smiles affectionately at the ceiling fan and enjoys her tummy time, and I manage to shower, eat three meals, drink enough water, tackle some of the laundry, and pump 4.5 ounces. We have had bits and pieces of the ideal day. She will sleep for 5 hours one night and spend that entire day gassy and uncomfortable, producing such a massive spit up that it bypasses the burp cloth and lands squarely on her father’s (clean) pants, dripping onto the floor. I will manage to eat enough food and pump, but she will be miserable every time I put her down for even a second. Or she will take good naps, eat without problems, but I somehow haven’t managed to shower, eat, or drink any water until Matt comes home at 6pm.

So every day, I go to my lab and try to re-create the pieces of the day before that worked, and then tweak the things that didn’t work to see if I can get them to work again.

I keep copious mental notes, reminding myself of when she ate, how much she ate, when she pooped, how much she pooped, whether I wore my hair up or down, whether I had three burp cloths or two, whether I burped her during or after she nursed. Of course, I can only hold on to these notes for approximately 3 seconds before I have forgotten everything I was supposed to remember. This means that my life is less like a controlled experiment, and more like a chaotic stab in the dark. I will never get a PhD this way. I will never produce publishable results. I will be ABD forever.

So the new trick is working to become okay with this chaos. It is a very difficult trick. I am filled to the brim with self-doubt, a cliché of a new mother, constantly worrying myself over questions like, “has she had enough to eat?,” “do I make enough milk?,” “how much spit-up is too much spit-up?,” “does she like me?,” “if she hasn’t smiled by exactly 6 weeks, is she developmentally delayed?” I know that these questions are cliché, because when I start to type in “how much spit-up” into Google, it smartly finishes my question with, “is too much spit-up?” Clearly, I am not the only one in a parenting lab. Oddly, this is of little comfort when it comes from strangers on the internet. When other mothers, experienced or inexperienced, ask the same questions, then I feel comforted, elated to know that I am not alone here, not the only one blowing up her lab space.

I am sickened by the thought of going back to work, of leaving Amalia in the care of strangers. Not because I think that I can do it better (see above), but because I cannot bear the thought of being apart from her all day for three whole days a week, cannot bear the fact that someone else will get to hold her, cuddle her, comfort her. I do not mind nursing her at 3am because I love being the only person in the world who sees her beautiful face at 3am. Sharing her with anyone other than Matt is difficult for me, even though I have no idea what I am doing, even though she sometimes cries so hard that she turns red and her lip quivers. I want to be the one to stop the quivering lip, to be there to kiss her delicious cheeks, to wipe away the tiny little tears that pool in the corners of her eyes. This time, there is a conclusive result: I cannot always help her, sometimes I need help. Both of those realities are intensely, emotionally trying. It must be painful to watch me struggle with it.

This afternoon I went to see a lactation consultant, one of the myriad of people whose jobs absolutely baffle me. They are like magicians, pulling breastfeeding tidbits out of a hat just when you least expect it. In the middle of the consult, Beth had Amalia on her lap and had just finished weighing her. Mollie started to cry, which was reasonable given that she was both naked and hungry. Without thinking, I leaned in and started talking to her. “It’s okay sweetpea, you’ll eat soon, I know you’re hungry and I can’t wait to feed you.” Mollie stopped crying, turned her head towards me and opened her mouth in that perfect little “o” that makes my heart stop. And Beth said, “that’s right sweetheart, that’s your mommy,” and handed her over to me. Time stood still for just the briefest of moments, and this is what I learned:

I will always be working towards my doctorate in parenting, always trying to create the ideal day, the day that works and flows just like I want it to. But what I really need to learn is to recognize the moments, good and bad, that are totally out of my control. In other words, I need to simply relax and let time stand still when my well-fed, perfectly developmentally appropriate, beautiful daughter hears the sound of my voice and feels calmed. Really, that is all the affirmation I need.

Exhaustion in Three Parts

Part 1:

I wake up to the sound of the baby crying at 4:26am and think, "when did we get a cat, and who is murdering it?"

Part 2:

I step out of the shower only to realize that I forgot to wash the conditioner out of my hair. I step back in and turn on the water...with my towel on. As I loudly curse because I'm getting my towel all wet, I dunk my head under the water and curse again because in my haste not to get my towel wet, I have forgotten to turn the knob to "hot" and am standing half-naked, half-toweled under a freezing cold spray, conditioner running down my face.

Part 3:

When the baby is fussy at 5pm, I think to myself, "only 3.5 more hours until my bedtime." At 11:34pm, when she is finally settling down from her nighttime fuss and thinking about sleeping somewhere other than my arms, I think, "please little one, please go to sleep, it's the middle of the night." And then I remember that once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, my nights used to start at 10:30.

Three Weeks and Two Days

Mollie turned three weeks old this weekend. It is such an enormous amount of time for her to have already been on the planet that I am struck by her age every time I murmur it to myself. I do not understand where the time went, how we made it from those moments when she was a few hours, and even a few days old, all the way up until now, when we can measure her lifespan in weeks. It seems unfathomable.

So it is an understatement to say that the last three weeks have been a blur. They have been a blink of the eye, one sleepless 24-hour stretch of breastfeeding, laundry, spit-up, teeny tiny clothes, thank you notes, and learning, OH, the learning.

This is a short list of some of the things I have learned in the last three weeks:

• When your milk comes in, it feels prickly.
• When your daughter is as perfect and tiny as ours is, people will always tell you how perfect and tiny she is, and you will have no idea how to respond. You will say, "thank you" as though you can take credit for her smallness and her perfection.
• Exhaustion can be manageable, as long as you're tag-teaming, and as long as there is coffee.
• Bottles and pacifiers won't cause her any real confusion, contrary to the teachings of the well-meaning, but slightly overwhelming, La Leche League.
• Dr. Internet is much more knowledgeable and helpful when it comes to breastfeeding tips than she was during pregnancy.
• Whenever anyone offers to help you through the first three weeks of parenting, the correct answer is, "yes, thank you!"

I hardly know how to describe how amazing our little girl is. She makes this face sometimes, eyes wide open, bright, and staring, her mouth a perfect little "o", her hands clasped in front of her, and it literally makes my heart hurt, I love it so much. I want to consume the image, eat it so as to make it wholly mine.

"It's crazy to think that she will never be this age again, that next week she will make new faces, new gestures, totally different expressions for us," Matt says. And I want to burst into tears for how sad it is that the time is literally flying by and that she is growing so quickly, and I want to jump up and down for joy, sky-write to the world about how incredibly lucky we are to have this healthy little girl we get to raise, how amazing it is that she is growing so quickly.

When I hear Mollie crying in another room, I know exactly what face she is making based on the sound of her cry. I love having that knowledge, love being one of the few people in the world who knows that about her. It is so intimate.

I spend a lot of time thinking about motherhood, things I have thought of only fleetingly over the years. I think about women in the Holocaust, unable to breastfeed their children because they were starving themselves. I grieve for those women, I grieve for the pain it must have caused them to know that they were unable to nourish their babies. I think about women who have lost their children, and I hold Mollie closer, kiss her soft head, tell her that I cannot imagine my world without her in it. I think about trying to keep Mollie safe, trying to give her good advice. I realize that I am not as cool as I thought I would be: I do not want her to try drugs and have lots of sex; I do not want her to hurt her body because it is too precious to me. I think about the fact that I have a little girl, that I was once a little girl. I think about being a mother and I think about my mother.

Late at night, I think about sleep.

This weekend our families will be in Boston for Mollie's baby naming. We will formally welcome her into the world as a member of the Jewish community. The ceremony itself is beautiful, a gesture of our commitment to raise her as a Jew, in the likeness of both her fore-mothers and the two amazing women for whom she was named. But more than the ceremony is the fact of her existence, that we have a daughter to welcome, that we have family who have new, never-before-experienced roles like Aunt, Uncle, Grandparent. We will all come together for the ceremony because of this one teeny little girl, this yet-unwritten beauty. I am struck, over and over again, by how different my world is now, how grateful I am for the change, and how quickly one little person can touch so many people.

I Always Thought I'd Be Taller

At some point or another in one's childhood, I think that it's normal to wish that you were older. I think that's probably the reason that up until we're about 10 or 11, we count our age in halves or even quarters: "I'm four-and-three-quarters" or "I'm nine-and-a-half."

I don't remember a time in my childhood that I wasn't wishing I was older. I think that for me, the yearning had something to do with the fact that my brother was SO much older. He got to do really cool things that I was going to be too young to do for a very long time. I remember being four and wishing I was thirteen (when Andy got Bar Mitzvahed), being seven and wishing I was sixteen (the year Andy got a car), and being eight and wishing I was seventeen (the year Andy went to prom and graduated from high school).

I vividly remember being about two-years-old when my dad promised that he would teach me to fly when I turned ten (I truly believed that he could fly until I was almost eight), that I could get my ears pierced when I turned thirteen (my mom relented at 11), that I could shave my legs when I was twelve (I started shaving them at summer camp long before this), and that they would never ever let me drive (Andy crashed the car he got for his 16th birthday not long after he got it).

But for me, the yearning to be older didn't end. When I was a teenager, I wanted desperately to be in college. I thought that the world would be my oyster, that I would take it all by storm, that if I could simply bypass the years between high school and grown-up, life would be better. I even wished it in my 20s, thinking that my 30s would be so much easier -- financially, emotionally, professionally.

Wishing the years away has never really stopped me from living in the moment. Rather, it has always been a way to remind myself to slow down, to live through what I'm currently experiencing. And it has always served as a reminder that I can and should envision the future, that it might not always be as difficult as whatever I'm currently experiencing.

But there was another component to the whole fantasy of being older (and wiser) than I was. Whenever I pictured the grown-up version of myself, I was always taller. Not much taller, not freakishly tall, but certainly a few inches taller. A more respectable 5'5", say.

The taller-than-I-am image of myself has persisted throughout my adult life. When I imagined myself graduating from college, I stood in my cap and gown and modest heels, standing head-to-head with my friends. When I pictured myself walking down the aisle at my wedding, I was wearing flats, because I naturally came to somewhere around my dad's cheek. When I pictured myself in a courtroom, I comanded quite a presence in my sleek pumps, because the extra three inches they gave me made me a daunting 5'8".

And here I am, about to have a baby. I am quite round these days, so round that I wonder if I am awkwardly round, round like I give the impression that I might topple forward at any moment. I am the kind of round that causes strangers to chuckle at me as I waddle down the stairs. I look like I swallowed a bowling ball and then ate about 12000 calories. Every day for nine months.

I did not expect to be a tall pregnant woman. But even now, two weeks before my due date, I imagine a taller version of myself bending down to retrieve a dropped blankie or pacifier or taking our bundled bean out of our car. As it is, I will be stuck with myself, 5'2" on a tall day, frantically trying to scale our not-so-tall SUV in order to awkwardly haul the carseat out of the car, which is a little bit higher than is convenient for my height.

I think that the taller-than-I-am images in my mind are really about being older, being old enough, rather, to be someone's mom. My own mother was short, just 4'11" in bare feet, so it's not like I associate motherhood with exceptionally tall women. No, it's just that ever since I can remember, being older, being old enough to do SOMETHING, also meant being taller.

Now that there are just two weeks left in the pregnancy, people have started asking me whether or not I'm ready. In case you're interested, this is a terrible question for me. Of course I'm not ready. How can you be ready to be a parent? Isn't that sort of the point of parenting? You're not ready...ever... for anything? I mean, sure, you have blankets and clothes and diapers, but is that the kind of thing that makes you ready? Not by my standards.

Anyway, this is what I want to tell people when they ask: "No, of course I'm not ready. I have to grow three inches in the next two weeks; who can possibly be ready for that?!"

"Ready" on One! Three...two...

At last week's 34-week appointment, my doctor turned to me and excitedly told me that 34 weeks is when she really feels good about a pregnancy.

Matt and I looked at her quizzically.

"34 weeks," she explained, "is when the risk for all of those horror-story-type pregnancy complications go way way down for the baby. So if you went into labor right now, we wouldn't try to stop you, we would just let your body do what it wants to do and in all likelihood, you would give birth to a perfectly healthy baby."

What good news! A perfectly healthy baby! We've waited so long to get here!

Except that Matt and I came home and promptly freaked the F out.

Of COURSE we want a perfectly healthy baby (who doesn't?). In fact, we're more or less "ready" for the baby (where ready is that place where we bought most of the things we need, or we know who we're borrowing them from, and we're ready for our world to turn upside down). Except that we're "ready" for the baby to make its appearance in six weeks. Or 5 weeks and two days at the time I'm writing this. Not now. Not 5 days ago.

So I now have a hospital bag that's packed with a really random assortment of things (pajamas, maternity clothes, underwear that I don't care about but is very comfortable). And we ordered a carpet for the nursery (greyish blue with a white border). And the baby's room is more or less coming together. You know, minus furniture. Also, my hospital bag doesn't have any clothes for the baby, which is ultimately fine because Julie is in charge of ensuring that the bean doesn't have to go home naked. But there we are: ready.

Ha!

Bean, if you're paying attention, please know that your parents are not yet ready for you to make your appearance in the world. We're thrilled and excited to meet you, but we're a little slow on the uptake over here, failing to completely realize that 34 weeks pregnant doesn't just mean that you've been growing for 34 weeks, but also that you will be here sometime within the next six.

And parents out there who are reading this, please reassure me that this is normal, that realizing you're going to be a parent eventually just dawns on you. Tell me that we're not SO slow on the uptake that this is basically a referendum on our parenting skills even before we've had a chance to implement them. Because if it's a referendum, all of the Weyants (grown and in bean form) are in for some serious growing pains!

On Fatherhood

The message in my inbox, sent from Amazon.com, said, "A Gift from Daddy." I was skeptical. It isn't like my dad to buy me presents online, and it's even less like him to send me something directly to my inbox. It's just a little too...2011 for his tastes. But there it was. I clicked on the email.

When I opened it up, I saw that he had purchased the mp3 of "Free to Be, You and Me," the record I listened to over and over and over again as a kid, wearing it out and necessitating a new copy. I can still sing most of the words from memory, and they still remind me of hours spent on the brown couch, belting out the hippie tunes along with Marlo Thomas (and Friends). I was touched. My Dad bought the bean a song! So I forwarded the email to Matt and told him that we should download it when we got home from work.

Two minutes later, my cell phone rang. It was Matt.

"Hi Sweets," he said. "I'm calling with some news that I hope won't burst your bubble."

"Okay..."

"The song wasn't from your Dad. It was from me. To the bean."

...

"Sweets? Are you okay?"

"Yes! I'm more than okay, I'm, I'm just, I...YOU'RE the 'Daddy!' You're going to be a Daddy!"

I was crying and laughing at the same time, sitting at my desk with my head in my hands, marveling at a fact that had somehow escaped me despite its obviousness. But it was in that instant, in that one perfect, bright moment, that I realized, from the bottom of my toes to the top of my head, that Matt is going to be a father. And not just anyone's father, he is going to be this little bean's father. This very little bean that has been growing and changing inside of me for 33 weeks, this little bean whose heartbeat we first saw together as a tiny little pulsating lima, who he reads stories about his favorite superheroes to at night, who he wakes up every morning to cuddle, who he kisses goodnight and says, "be good to mama." He is going to be this little bean's father. He, this man I married, this man that I love more than anyone in the world, is going to be the father of this baby, this little creature that on some level, some strange maternal level, I know that I already know.

Here is what I want to tell them, these two great loves of mine: you two are perfect for each other. My sweet boy and my precious bean. You two are going to be so great together, and I already know just how lucky you are to have each other.

***

All of the women in my family have always called their dad, "Daddy." My mother told me this when I was a little girl, and it stuck with me, part history, part admonition. I was pretty young when she told me, and I remember thinking that I couldn't imagine my grandmother calling her father "Daddy." But that's because it was hard to imagine my grandmother even being young enough to have a Daddy, especially when the only image I had of her father was a picture she kept on her bureau of a serious-looking and handsome young Russian man in a uniform. But it was also because in my mind, my own father was what it meant to be a Daddy, the man who made me oatmeal in the morning, took me "flying" in his Z-car, and would occasionally wake me up early on a school day in the winter to tell me that we were skipping school and going skiing instead.

Either way, the rule was written: fathers are Daddies. To this day I still call my dad, "Daddy" when I'm talking to him, typing that word into my gmail contacts when I want to send him an email, scrolling through my phone to find his number listed under that word. He has also abided by the rule, always signing his cards and emails appropriately.

I remember the day when I was too old to hold his hand when we crossed the street. I don't remember which one of us was more sad about it. I remember the day that he taught me to skip. Wildly, recklessly, in front of strangers. People might have laughed at us, but I don't remember them. I only remember feeling like I was flying. I remember learning that my dad could roller-skate backwards, a fact I learned at my 8th birthday party when he took my hand during the "couples skate" and twirled me around the bright yellow rink while all of my friends looked on, their faces showing the same surprise that I felt.

That's what Daddy means to me. There are other lessons associated with my father, times when I slammed the door and called him Dad, times when we were disappointed in each other and couldn't manage to communicate. But when I think of "Daddy," I think about oatmeal and a fast car, falling asleep on the way home from the Poconos. I see the disco ball from the roller rink throwing tiny little lights around the smooth oval while I'm holding tightly to his hand because he's a much stronger skater than I am.

***

"A Gift from Daddy," said the email. There it is, in my inbox. A gift from my husband, from my husband to his child. Somehow that's amazing and strange, and as life-changing as many of the other moments of these 33 weeks.

Even at 24, I had the good sense to realize that you shouldn't marry a man who you couldn't see as the father of your children. Over here at the wise old age of 32, I am realizing that I will soon come to know a side of him that I have never met. But more importantly, our child will know a side of him that I will never know, and will have a relationship with him that I will never have.

Good memories and bad, the things I think about when I think about my dad are mine and mine alone. And someday, this little person will have a similar story to tell. Some of the things I can imagine, because I know Matt. But others, the ones that are truly theirs and theirs alone, will be for them to capture and hold on to, for them to remember and to pass on.

***

It's a few days early for a birthday post, but it seems like the time to say it: on the eve of your 33rd birthday,my love, I can say without a doubt that you are going to have one hell of a year.

You Take the Good, You Take the Bad

"Where are her eyes?" she asks. Charlotte is looking up at me with her soft, blond curls framing her truly angelic face.

I point to somewhere low on my belly, somewhere near where I think the bean's face is located these days.

"Here," I say. She reaches out a hand and touches it gingerly, smiling at me, smiling at my belly.

We are in the bathroom at her house, at her parent's house, the house where I spend most of my Sunday nights. She has been potty-trained in the past year and sometimes she wants company in the bathroom, while other times she requires strict privacy: the purview of a three-year-old. I never mind being being invited into the bathroom with her after I've turned on the light or the "air" (vent), because I relish the chance to talk to her one-on-one, even with a toilet between us.

"I'm pooping," she whispers, smiling her I-have-a-secret-smile.

"Good!" I say, "that's a good thing to do when you have to poop."

I am suddenly struck by the fact that Charlotte is 3, that I have known her for her entire three years, that from nearly the moment of her birth, our lives have been connected in some way.

I have been thinking a lot about the stories of our lives, the stories that shape who we are, the facts and the histories that round out what makes us, us. It is something I come back to often, the fact that we all have a story, that there are certain immutable facts that we live through and incorporate into our sense of self.

I first started thinking about it again when I miscarried last year, when I realized that someday, the miscarriage would be a fact of my life, something I folded into the facts of my 30s, the facts associated with starting to expand our family. And lately I have been thinking about it in terms of this little bean, the fact that almost completely independently of me and Matt, this little one will be born in Boston, always a Bostonian, and will say things in college like, "I was born in Boston, my parents were living in a second-floor apartment with their two roommates."

"Does it have ears?," she asks, pulling me back from my thoughts.

"Yes!" I say. "It has ears and eyes and a nose and a mouth and hair."

"Not yellow hair, though," she advises.

"No, probably not yellow hair," I agree.

I am a fact in Charlotte's young life. I realize it at that very moment and it almost moves me to tears. It is an emotional day, and I am 31 weeks pregnant, so there are many things that almost move me to tears. But this day is different. This is the death-day, the day when the facts of my life at 15 came to require that I fold in the fact of my mother's death.

I have written before about how free I felt when it had finally been 15 years since her death, when my mother had been dead for as long as I had known her. I felt some of that freedom this year, but I also knew that it would be different, because every year is different, but because this year I am pregnant.

"After I'm done I get to go downstairs because it's not my bedtime yet," Charlotte assures me.

"But it will be your bedtime soon," I remind her, "and then it will be my bedtime, and mommy and daddy's bedtime, and then the whole world will be asleep."

"And then we'll wake up... and Santa will not have come," she concludes, not unhappily, as though just to remind me that tomorrow is not Christmas.

"That's right, tomorrow when we wake up, Santa will not have come."

She nods.

I look at her and I realize just how lucky I am to know her, how lucky I am to get to be a fact in her life. On impulse, I reach out my hand and cup her beautiful little face, whose features are perfect to me, perfect in every single way. I am so happy right here in this bathroom with Charlotte, her toilet and my belly between us.

In that instant, I think to myself that it's possible, maybe even probable, that my mother didn't dwell on what she was robbed of in her death. Maybe she tried not to think about what she would be missing. Maybe that was just too sad. Maybe she thought instead about all of the moments we did get to spend together, all of the moments and facts of her life that included me, and by extension, all of the facts of my life that included her.

I think about it now, almost constantly, how grateful I will be just to meet this little bean in a few weeks, how lucky I will feel for those first moments, those early facts, and then day by day, bathroom by bathroom, a lifetime.

"Santa will be here in the summer," Charlotte tells me.

"Nope, not in the summer, in the winter. But the baby will be here in the summer. We'll all go to the Cape together and look at seaweed."

"Oh," she says, nodding, incorporating this fact into her life. And then she puts both hands on either side of my belly, gives it a little squeeze, and grins.

I put my hands on top of hers, give the bean and Charlotte a little squeeze, and grin back.

I Thought You Were Smuggling Something Under There!*

Or, How I Came to be 30 Weeks Pregnant

Last Wednesday afternoon, Matt and I got to see the bean for the first time since our 18-week ultrasound. Same drill as before: we spend a few minutes in overwhelming waiting area, get progressively more nervous while waiting and staring at other mothers-to-be, we walk into the dark ultrasound room and make stupid small talk with the ultrasound tech while I climb up onto table and pull down the elastic "waist" of my maternity pants. I forget that the ultrasound tech is going to squirt jelly on my tummy and I gasp when she does, and then I turn towards the screen because there! right there! is that perfect little heartbeat.

And then I smile and cry a little and relax, finally, because the tech is saying things like, "there are the four chambers of the heart," and "there are the kidneys," and "look at those cute feet."

All of a sudden, time slows down and it's just me and Matt and our bean, suspended in that dark cocoon of a room, like we're all swimming around on that black screen while someone waves a magic wand over us so that we're projected on some other, different screen, and larger than life.

The bean looks and feels like a real little person now. It moves around during the day, making my belly and abdomen twitch. If you were watching me at all times, you would occasionally see me frown as the bean pressed on my bladder or stuck its little fist up and under my ribs, like it's trying to do right now.

We had a chance to find out if we were having a boy bean or a girl bean and debated the option right up until the very moment when the radiologist matter-of-factly asked us if we wanted to know the gender. It is an important detail that the radiologist was matter-of-fact; radiologists seem to never think about the patient attached to the magic wand, and speak only in abrupt, short sentences. "Let's wait," I said at the very last moment, and as the radiologist casually tossed some construction-paper-masquerading-as-tissues in my direction and walked out of the room, Matt smiled at me and said, "fine by me."

So we don't know whether it's a boy bean or a girl bean, only that it's definitely a bean. With a heartbeat, and a spine, and a bladder, and more or less Matt's nose.

I can't believe that there are only 9 weeks left in this pregnancy. It's 9 very important weeks, I know, but the fact that I'm almost 31 weeks pregnant means that I'm 3/4 of the way through the whole thing. Even though I know that time will slow down in these next 9 weeks, much like it sped up during the past 9, there is a part of me that just can't even wrap my head around this final home stretch and is eager for it to slow down. I know I will rue the day that I wrote this, probably sometime around March 16th, when I will read this post and think, "dummy, you tempted karma and basically asked for this to happen!" But right now, I want to freeze the moment, like a picture I could print out from the ultrasound machine, and carry it around with me.

I am 31 weeks pregnant. I am okay. Matt is okay. The bean is head down and ready to go, organs formed, Matt-like nose ready, arms waving and moving so much that it's almost impossible to snap its photograph.

It seems like forever ago that I first found out that I was pregnant. But it was 31 weeks, just over 6 months ago, and yet almost an entire lifetime. And then in 9 (probably 10) weeks from now, the bean will be more than ready, it will be HERE. I cannot put into words how amazing this feels for me, how far it feels like I've come. So I will say this instead: my arms get tingly when I think about holding it, my chest feels tight when I think about kissing its little head, and I am excited and nervous and scared and thrilled that life is actually about to become larger than life.

*The title of this post refers to something our hostess said when she seated us at a table last night. As I was taking off my coat to sit down, she said, "I thought you were smuggling something under there! Congratulations!" And it made me laugh out loud. Smuggling, indeed.

Twenty Years in the Making

I was sitting in my oncologist's office last Friday, waiting for her to come in and give me my routine exam, when it occurred to me that my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer 20 years ago. The fact stunned me, and I sat there on the exam room table, looking out at the tops of the buildings I could see from the 4th-floor room, marveling at the fact of those 20 years.

My doctor pronounced my breasts, "perfect" and my belly "so cute," and scheduled me for another routine appointment in six months. "Bring the baby!," she called as I was finalizing the details of the appointment. And I smiled at her, because it's nice that she wants to meet the baby, nice that she would be interested in knowing what the bump turns out to be.

Twenty years ago, my mother's initial instinct was to keep me shielded from her cancer. I knew about it, but in a very peripheral way. I clearly remember that she wrote a letter my teachers explaining what was going on at home, and I will never forget the look on Mr. Deluca's face when he read that letter. I remember going to the wig store to pick out a wig that matched her tight brown curls, and I remember that was terrified that the wig would fly off when she was lifted up on a chair at my Bat Mitzvah. But I remember these things in a way that is fuzzy and distant, and not just because it was 20 years ago. You see, she wanted me to be able to erase these memories, to move on with my life as though they didn't have to be part of it. She wanted to try to shield me. I know this for two reasons: one, there are other memories from the same time in my life which my mother crystallized for me, carved into stone and handed back to me wrapped in a bow. And two, with just three months until I become a mother, it occurs to me that this is part of what it means to be a parent, that you pick and choose those things from which you incorporate or shield your children, to the best of your ability, anyway.

When I was a month shy of my 24th birthday, just barely on the cusp of my first year of law school, I found a lump in my right breast. The fear I felt that day is indescribable. In fact, when I think about the way that I felt the night I first discovered that something hard and foreign was residing inside my body, I associate it with the color white, which only makes sense if you know that I often associated strong emotions with colors. White is fear or panic, and when I think about having cancer, I feel the color white with every fiber of my being.

The biopsy showed that the lump was nothing to be overly concerned about, but its discovery opened up a whole pandora's box of white. To mitigate this, I was told to get regular check-ups by a breast specialist, something I have more or less avoided, despite two additional breast lump scares, until we moved to Boston. It was here that I decided to take control of my fear, that I determined to overcome the waves of white, and talk to an oncologist who would finally assess my cancer risk.

It is no secret that my single greatest fear is having a child that I do not get to know, of raising this baby until she is 15 or he is 24 and then vanishing from the world. Yes, I have certainly heard that one could get hit by a bus at any moment, but this statement has never worked to calm me and instead reminds me that I should be smart enough to look both ways before crossing the goddamn street. No, for me, the white hot fear is cancer, not rogue buses.

While I was sitting in my oncologist's office on Friday, I realized that try as she might, my mother wasn't successful in shielding me from anything. That's partly because genetics betrayed her and I'm considered high risk for breast cancer, but it's also because in some respects, by working to shield me from the cancer mess, she made me more curious and more afraid. I have spent 20 years worrying that I will get cancer and leave young children behind when I die. I am about to have a young child. In the past 20 years, despite all of the races and the pink ribbons, despite the advances in chemotherapy and hormone treatments and radiation, despite my own measures to overcome my fears, very little has changed.

I don't know whether this baby will worry about breast cancer the way that I do. I don't know if it will understand our family history, or have a girlfriend/wife/mother-in-law who is going through her own scare. I don't know if this baby will remain unshielded from my fears, or if it will live them and devour them as though they are their own. I can only say that I hope that the next 20 years bring some kind of change. I hope that in 2031, when I realize that it has been 40 years since my mother was first diagnosed with breast cancer, I am not sitting in my oncologist's office breathlessly waiting for her to tell me that my breasts look perfect. I hope that this son or daughter knows no real cancer fear, never picks out a wig, or watches their science teacher cry, or harbors all of the memories associated with watching cancer take someone they love.

I realized the other day, sitting on that crinkly white paper in my cotton gown, that I can't really shield this little one from, well, anything. And that is what is making motherhood real for me right now. Twenty years ago, my mother sat in a similar room, wearing a similar gown, waiting for her doctor, hoping that she would hear that her breasts looked perfect. And I imagine her sitting there, thinking of her babies, hoping against hope that she would be able to shield them from whatever lay ahead.

If all goes well, in six months, I will have a 3-month-old at home. I will shave my armpits, put on the cleanest clothes I can find, and go to my routine oncology exam. I will not bring the baby with me, and I will perch on the crinkly white paper in my cotton gown and I will think about the fact that I am nearing the end of my maternity leave. And then I will wait breathlessly for my doctor to tell me that things are fine, that my MRI looked great and that I should come back in another six months. I can only imagine that no matter what I hear, I will go home after that appointment and think, "thank god for you, little one."

Eye of the Storm

The last time I sat down to write something, I was 24 weeks pregnant. Four weeks have passed since then, and for the first time since I found out that I was pregnant, time went quickly. I feel like it was just yesterday that I last heard the bean's heartbeat, last peed in a cup for the nice people at Harvard Vanguard, last skipped out of work on my way to my appointment.

I can't quite figure out why time sped up this past month, and I can only conclude that the closer I get to actually having the baby, the more there is to do, and the less time I can spend fuh-reaking the F out.

A year ago this Wednesday, I was in a conference room in Boston, about to start a day-long conference that I was more or less dreading. But I got a text message that morning from Julie saying this about J and Cris: "It's a boy! A nine pound one!" And I spent the rest of the conference nearly jumping out of my seat, I was so eager to meet Oliver Paul. I showed everyone at the conference his picture, grainy and small on my phone, but nonetheless so fantastic that it was all I could do not to reach into the phone and kiss his enormous cheeks.

I remember walking through the hospital that night, bouncing on my feet and nearly speeding through the halls, Matt close on my heels. I remember whispering into Ollie's shmooshy little face, finally kissing his sweet chubby cheeks. I remember going to eat Chinese food after we left the hospital, ordering a plate of spicy pork buns in honor of the spicy pork bun that had come into the world that day.

The crazy thing is, I remember it like it was yesterday. I literally can't believe that a year has passed since Oliver was born. Today, Oliver walks, eats cheese, says "dada," and sticks his tongue out while concentrating. A year ago, he was just a spicy pork bun.

A year ago, I was living in Davis Square, I'd never met Stephen or Linda, and I was a few weeks into a pregnancy that wouldn't last. Matt had only just started his current job, Ike wasn't even sitting up yet.

And yet here we are. 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days later. I both can't and can believe everything that's happened this year, just like I can't and can believe that I'm 28 weeks pregnant, counting down the weeks until I become somebody's mother.

I think that the last four weeks have moved at lightening speed because some months have to do that. Some months have to leave you surprised at all that's happened, bracing yourself for what's ahead. Some months move like molasses, forcing you to examine your life from every possible angle, wonder whether or not you're comfortable with what you're living, whether it really suits you.

And no matter what, there are some days in every month where you're granted the gift of freedom from your thoughts, the rare moment where you can look at a little boy who was once just a spicy pork bun and think, I am so glad I get to know you.

Happy (early) birthday, Ollie-bear. Thanks for slowing me down.

Wow.Wow.Wow.Wow.Wow.

The title of this post roughly translates to the sound of the bean's heartbeat. Whisper it to yourself quickly, with short "o" sounds, at roughly the rate of 140 beats per minute. And that's the magical sound our little bean's heart makes as it flips around on the inside.

It is the best sound I have ever heard. Really. Ever.

I am 24 weeks today, and feel like a pretty good cliche. I have energy but I sleep well. I can eat a full meal and feel satisfied. Walking up a flight of steps is annoying but not totally exhausting. I crave chocolate but I also crave broccoli. I am hormonal but not totally off the deep end. I feel grateful that the bean is still warm and safe, and I don't yet feel annoyed with it for taking up so much space under my ribcage. And so far, I only get up to pee at most twice a night.

Despite all of this, despite the total unremarkable facts of this pregnancy, despite the fact that I have felt more or less okay since I passed the 16-week mark, the other day I had one of those horrible anxiety-ridden days where I just couldn't calm myself down.

The Anxiety Day came just after a very full weekend and a very long preceding week. Matt's return from Amman was fantastic. I felt like I'd never been so happy to have him home from somewhere. He came home on a Wednesday, the same Wednesday that I had my first ever work-related high-profile speaking engagement. That Thursday was my birthday, but it was also the beginning of a 3-day conference where I was supposed to remain intellectually engaged in the topics at hand while schmoozing with other lawyers. At the end of those three days, I went to work on a Saturday, and capped everything off with a birthday dinner, followed on Sunday by a football gathering at our place where I made too much food and worried that the invited guests wouldn't feel comfortable in our apartment.

I woke up on Monday feeling like I'd been run over by a truck. Which in my current state, translated to waking up and realizing the following impossibilities:

1. There is no way I am going to be able to cram 7 months of work into the 4 months that I have left before I go on maternity leave. And even though I probably need to take it easy on myself, I can't slow down because I haven't yet talked to my boss about my post-maternity-leave plans, and I don't want to her to think that I'm a slacker.
2. There is no way that Matt and I are going to be able to afford to pay for daycare and this apartment at the same time. Which is a problem because I want to think about decorating the baby's room, even just a little bit, even though it makes me feel superstitious, because it also makes me excited. Except that I can't think about decorating the baby's room if I don't know whether we're staying in this apartment, which I can't figure out until I know how much it will cost to send the kiddo to daycare, which I can't know until I figure out whether we're staying in this apartment.
3. There is no way to balance all of the changes that Matt and I are going to face in our relationship with the changes that we're going to confront when the baby is born; it is impossible to prepare for such things, so we are likely doomed.

This culminated in the obvious: a total meltdown at Park Street Station while waiting for my train to arrive.

Matt rescued me from Kenmore and stayed silent while I ranted for the car ride home. He was silent for two reasons. For starters, I was yelling. But also because when I finally took a breath between high-decibel tear-infused frustration, he looked at me and said, "I'm so glad you're finally ready to talk about this stuff."

What?

It turns out that Matt, like most dads-to-be (at least according to this valuable tome), think about all of these nitty-gritty details from the moment they find out that they're going to be someone's father. Moms-to-be, on the other hand, initially think about things like their changing bodies, and labor, and nurseries, and whether it's really okay to have sex in your pre-pregnancy favorite position. But eventually, all of us parents-to-be come to the same conclusion: having a baby is a giant mind fuck, and there's a lot that's going to change, a plethora of unanswered questions, and completely uncharted territory.

So my questions about where I'm going to live are other parents' questions about how to work out their call schedule. My concerns about getting all of my work done before maternity leave are other parents' nanny versus daycare conundrum. In typical Matt-Lizzi fashion, while I was spending my time marveling at the size of my breasts, Matt was patiently waiting for the day when I was ready to talk about things like our budget, our apartment, and our childcare options.

We had a long talk that night. It involved spreadsheets. We made a list of the things we need to do. We made some decisions. We made some decisions about not deciding. We reached out to some people who might have answers. We fell asleep on the couch totally exhausted. Matt read Superman to my belly.

I woke up the next day with the start of what turned out to be a 24-hour (plus) stomach virus, which I took to be my body's way of telling me to slow the F down, for REAL this time. And today I finally feel like myself again: 24 weeks pregnant, just as many unanswered questions as answered ones, and wow.wow.wow.wow.wow.wow.wow beating a steady pace inside me.

Never on a Friday

The bus is packed. Bodies are pressed against bodies, windows fogged from the humidity of the rain outside coupled with the warmth of the people inside. Despite the fact that most people look showered and ready to work downtown, the bus smells like an old, wet dog. You spot the odor-culprit muttering to himself and rocking back and forth. Sighing, you heave your computer bag onto your shoulder and collect the various other bags containing your lunch, conference materials, and the cookies you're bringing in for a co-worker's birthday. You manage to grab onto a pole as the bus lurches to a start, and two of your bags swing dangerously close to the women sitting in front of you. She looks up, annoyed by the near-death encounter with your baked goods. You smile an apology, she takes in the fact of your bags, your exhaustion, and your swollen belly, and she returns comfortably to the book she was reading for the remainder of the ride.

"You're clearly and obviously pregnant now!," chirps the cheerful words from the baby website you read once a week to find out how big the baby is (the size of a Harry Potter book!). "People will smile at you on the street, give your belly unwanted pats, and stand up to give you their seat on the bus."

Except that there's a limit to even the nicest commuter's willingness to give up their seat, and I have found that it is correlated to two things: weather and day of the week. If it's raining on a Friday and you are so huge that you look like you're going to go into labor any second, be prepared to hold onto a pole while balancing 14 packages for an entire train ride, all while trying desperately not to wet your pants.

Sunny Mondays are the best. Filled with the good will of a weekend, event BU Frat boys will offer you their seat on the bus. Wednesdays and Thursdays are tricky. Women are more likely to give up their mid-week seat, more likely to stand up during the evening rather than morning commute, and are most likely to offer their seat if they are somewhere between the ages of 25 and 45. Younger women remain engrossed in their cell phones, and even when they look up, they will probably scowl the gross-ness of your condition, and then promptly return to their text message. Pregnant women are the most likely to give up their seat for other, more pregnant women, something that gives us a chance to smile at each other in a "don't other people suck?" kind of way. Most of the time, men aren't interested in giving up their seat. Chivalry is probably dead and apparently labor isn't hard enough. I'm pretty sure they're not remaining seated because they think that no good feminist would want them to stand, but I could be wrong. This is Boston, after all.

As a daily commuter, I vow to teach our children how to give up their seat for the elderly, the disabled, the exhausted-looking, the woman with a stroller, and the pregnant. I vow to teach my someday son to be chivalrous, to look up from his ipod (or whatever device) when people get on the train. I have every intention of becoming the woman who asks for a seat during my 10th month of pregnancy when it's snowing outside. But the next time it's raining on a Friday, I will probably drive.

What 6000 Miles Can Mean

For the past 10 days, Matt has been in Amman, Jordan. The trip is mostly business and partly pleasure, and it marks the longest amount of time that we’ve spent apart since I got pregnant. I spent a few days in Denver around the 16th week of my pregnancy, but there’s something inherently different about Denver and Amman. I think it’s probably the 6,903 miles that separate the two cities, but I could be wrong about that.

Matt was a mess before he left. I couldn’t figure out how to help him, how to calm him down, how to make him see that this trip would be an incredible experience, an opportunity that he simply couldn’t pass up, and one that truly couldn’t have come at a better time in my pregnancy (namely, before the baby was born). The night before he left he tossed and turned, anxiety crippling his features in a way that I have never seen in the 11 years we’ve been together. It was almost too much to bear, and I complained to Julie that I wish he’d just LEAVE already, because it was too hard to not understand what he was going through and not have any power to help him.

But I was talking to an old and dear friend about it over the weekend, and she was so insightful. “Being there for you is pretty much the only thing that Matt can DO at this point,” she said. “When he’s not there, then it’s almost like he’s not part of it, because he’s not growing that little person, not feeling the aches and pains, not going through the changes that you’re actually going through.” And all of a sudden Matt’s anxiety made sense. The one thing that he can do to usher us safely through this pregnancy is to help usher me safely through this pregnancy. It’s awfully hard to usher when you’re 6,000 miles away.

But the strangest thing about Matt being gone is that it’s forced me to spend some time alone with my own thoughts about pregnancy and motherhood. A few weeks ago, this would have been a very bad thing. I would have thought about all of the ways that I was already a terrible mother, because I was likely doing something terribly wrong to hurt our little bean. But now, a few good appointments under my belt, regular movement in my tummy, and the occasional visible-from-the-outside kick near my belly button, the thoughts aren’t all anxiety-laden. Even as I sit here licking the remnants of a Milky Way from my fingertips, I know that I’m not (yet) a bad mother.

But what I realized the other night was just as shocking to me as if the bean had screamed “I hate you!” from inside my uterus. I realized that I was okay. Rather, I realized that even with Matt not there, I was doing alright, and that the bean and I are a new lumpy little unit.

I can’t explain why this realization was so jarring to me, except to say that I will look back on it as the first time that I realized that I am actually going to be somebody’s mother. The mother to somebody who will need me for most moments of their first few months, somebody who will expect me to calm their fears, exalt their accomplishments, and be present for the little and big moments of their life. Someone who will have every right to expect my unconditional love, and who will someday shout at me for smothering them. It was both a terrible and an amazing realization, because it made me feel wonderful to feel so needed at the exact same time that it made me feel terrible for needing Matt a little less.

I haven’t shared any of this with Matt yet, so when he reads this post he’ll probably feel sad. It flies in the face of what it is that he probably feels like he can do to make this pregnancy easier for me. If I don’t feel like I need him when he’s gone, then what can he give me while he’s here?

The truth of the matter is that by leaving for Jordan, he gave me something he couldn’t have given me if he stayed. He gave me confidence. He reminded me that I’m strong enough to weather a long-distance relationship, that missing someone (for a little while) can be a good thing, that I can be the type of partner who recognizes a great opportunity for her husband when she sees one. But more than that, by leaving, he made me realize that I will be the kind of mother I want to be, the kind that fails (by her own standards) many many times, but succeeds many times too. I already know exactly what kind of father Matt is going to be, because he will be the man that I married, the man who loves me and our someday-bean unconditionally and feels anxious at the thought of not being able to be there for us. I am starting to realize that together, we’re going to make a pretty good team.

Matt will be home in 2 more days, just in time to celebrate my 32nd birthday. I can't wait for him to come home, can't wait to hug him and kiss him and see his face as he marvels at how much my belly has grown in the 12 days he was gone. I have no intention of being apart from him for the rest of this pregnancy; I AM better off when he's around. But in the interest of donning a pair of rose-colored glasses, of looking on the bright side (finally), I think that this trip was a good thing for all of us, for me, and even for our growing little bean.

Over Halfway There

I am 21 weeks pregnant today. As I write this, I can feel the bean doing a somersault. Maybe he’s excited and wants to come out in 18 weeks! Maybe she likes her cozy home and wants to stay there for another 20. Either way, the calendars tell me that I’m over halfway there.

“Happy halfway there!” read Elissa’s email from last Thursday. And I read it and thought, “oh my god.”

That night on the way home I turned to Matt with a panicked look in my eyes. “What?!,” he asked, “what is it?” I put my hand on his arm to steady myself. “Matt,” I said, “it has to come OUT.” He laughed. He can do that, you see, because he doesn’t have a vagina.

But in reality, I’m not scared about labor. I’m too naive to know what to be afraid of. I have conveniently skipped the “Labor and Delivery” chapter in my books. My “birth plan” is to be admitted to the hospital while pregnant and to be discharged from the hospital holding a baby. What happens in between admission and discharge is up to me, Matt, the bean, and my doctor, not in that order.

What I am scared about is actually being someone’s mother, and doing so sooner rather than later. It has to come OUT, as in, it has to come into the world, it has to exist in our apartment, it has to ride safely in our car. It has to be clothed and fed. It has to have toys and books, blankets and black-out curtains. But more than the things that it has to have, more than the mountains of necessary and not-so-necessary baby stuff that is certain to accumulate in our apartment overnight, the bean has to exist in the world as a baby. The bean has to become a person in the world.

And what a scary world it is.

I’m not talking about the world of wars and climate change and Republicans (though lord knows that I could). I’m talking about my world, the world where Matt and I are pretty young and have no idea how to be parents. I’m talking about the world where my genetically-related family lives miles and miles away. I’m talking about the world where daycare is expensive and people ask me questions about how much I care about infant CPR. I’m talking about the world where we still get wrapped around the axle (every day!) about work and bosses and dry cleaning.

Everyone says that our world will shift. These soothsayers explain it all calmly, with a wave of their hand. Sometimes the shift will seem gradual, they say, and you’ll wake up sometime in June and realize that the lens through which you view the universe is different than the lens you were using in December. Dry cleaning and bosses will seem silly in comparison. And sometimes the shift will be immediate, they warn, and the day after the baby is born you will find yourselves un-self-consciously referring to your breasts as the “moo-makers.”

To say that I’m excited about it doesn’t really explain what I’m feeling. Excited is how you feel about your birthday, or a vacation. Excitement for me always implies a known component; I generally know what I am excited about. This time, while I am excited to see our little bean live and in-person, I am also apprehensive. I am uncertain, confused, nervous, tentative. I am guarding the world that we currently live in, struggling to balance day-to-day life with the ways that day-to-day life is already 100% different, all while totally unable to comprehend how it will change even more than it has since that day in July when I found out that I was pregnant.

You see, the bean has to come OUT. I will have moo-makers and new lenses in a matter of weeks. WEEKS! That’s what it means to be over halfway there, there where the world is different, where the ground has shifted, where the population of the world (our world) has increased so fundamentally, so dramatically, that it’s like we’re making space for a bean farm, not a bean.

So in the next 18, 19, 20 weeks, I have things to do. I have to store up on fertilizer and dirt, rakes and tractors. I have to get ready for the bean invasion, the bean explosion, the magnificent mountain of bean. In plain English this means that I have things to buy, pictures to finally frame, dinner dates to squeeze in. But more than that it means that I have to do exactly what I’m already doing. I have to stand at the precipice of my existing world and peer over the edge, holding Matt’s hand and wondering what’s out there. And then, when the time is right, the bean will help us all jump, the first of many things it will do to take us to a new and different world.

A Universe Unto Itself

I remember exactly where I was sitting the day that J called to tell me that Charlotte was born. I was at our kitchen table in our small apartment in Pittsburgh. I had spent the day planning for our trip, trying to nail down our precise route and figure out how we could fit all of the places that we wanted to see into just 100+ days (we couldn't). I wasn't working at the law firm anymore, so I spent my days at that kitchen table, listening to music and feeling happily unemployed for the first time in a long time.

When my phone rang, it startled me because I'd been by myself all day. But when I saw that it was Jason, my heart stopped for a split second, because I knew what he was going to tell me.

"It's a giiiirrrrrl," he said. "Her name is Charlotte and mom and baby are doing great." He went through the play-by-play of Cris's labor, and Charlotte's height, weight, and baby statistics. I know that my memory is accurate, because I wrote down everything that he said on a recipe card that I keep in the front of my recipe box, along with all of the songs that Matt and I heard in the bar that night when we went out to get a beer and celebrate Charlotte's existence.

Charlotte was the first baby that really changed my world. It's a hard thing to put into words, but the short version is that after Charlotte was born, I thought about her and before she was born, I didn't.

I thought about what she was doing, how she was growing, how her parents were adjusting, what she would be like in 3, 5, 15, or 20 years. Before Charlotte was born, there was no space for her in my head because she simply didn't exist. And then after she was born, either I found some untapped space, or I shoved over some other thoughts that weren't relevant in order to make room for her. Either way, she was in my head.

Since Charlotte, other babies have made their way into my brain space, eliciting boundless affection and a world of enrichment. My beautiful and perfect nephew, our dear friends' son who lives in Philadelphia with all of that delicious curly hair, Charlotte's adorable brother, my high school best friend's smiley sweet boy. These babies, (especially the nephew who makes my heart hurt, I miss him so much) are the opposite of how life often works. In my world, things are here today, gone tomorrow. But these children weren't here yesterday and today make up an entire universe.

It was something that I didn't totally understand before Charlotte was born, that a baby can take up an entire galaxy, that even when your life is complete, when you want and are ready for a child, it can make your life more complete somehow. Even when you are so happy about the path you have chosen, a baby can take you down a path you didn't even know existed.

The funny thing is that I know that I don't even totally understand this now, because I've watched other people go through it, rather than been inside of it myself. But as with many things on which I stand on the outside looking in, I have a sense of how much bigger my world will be after the bean is more than a bean.

It is a funny thing to credit a three-year-old with opening your eyes to a world that's a different place, but so it goes. Someday I'll explain this to her and I bet she'll do that thing where she crinkles up her eyes and nose just like her dad while smiling just like her mom. She will probably think I'm just being sentimental, OLD even. And that's fine. She will be well on her way to seeing new worlds of her own.

Happy birthday, Little C. I hope you help to water this baby for the rest of your lives together.

Lonely But Not Alone

This is not the first time I have experienced something huge without my mother. For some reason, I just didn’t think it would be this hard. I would like to say that I just didn’t think about it, but that isn’t true. I thought about it a lot, but I truly believed that I would weather it differently.

These are the times I have missed her: when I look at bassinets online, when I think about where I will store the furniture we need to buy, when my dearest friends offer me hand-me-downs, when my brother says he wants to buy me something, when I have to buy maternity clothes, when my boobs are suddenly the size of grapefruits.

I am standing there, bra in hand, marveling at the fact that my breasts have morphed into something I don’t recognize, and suddenly I am weeping in the dressing room.

I am going through the book about baby bargains at the kitchen table, thinking to myself that the selection of bassinets are basically the ugliest things I have ever seen and then I realize that I am feeling bereft that there won’t be one waiting at my mother’s house ready to come to Boston when she gets the news about the bean.

I am trudging through department stores with Matt, irritated that most maternity clothes make me look like a pregnant orka, and I am furious that she isn’t there with me, that she can’t just go online and surprise me with some clothes that at least make me look like an animal that is cute while pregnant.

I am 14 again, buying bras without her. I am 17 again, trying to decide on a college. I am 24 again, picking out bridesmaid dresses with Matt. Except that I am 31, I am pregnant with my first child, and this, finally, I cannot do alone and without her.

“You’re NOT alone,” Julie says. And I know what she means. I have her, I have Andy and Elissa and my dad and Matt’s brother, wife, and parents. I have the people around whom I have chosen to expand our family, raise our child, here in Boston. I have Matt, Matt who has gone through these lonely-for-my-mom times with me as an adult and trooped alongside me through a surgical breast biopsy, to pick out bridesmaid dresses, to buy maternity clothes.

But I AM alone. I am alone because I have an abundance of love and support and I still feel lonely for my mom. I am alone because I wish
that it was different.

I hate that last paragraph. I hate that I sound so ungrateful, that I am taking all of this support for granted. I am not ungrateful, I don’t take it for granted. When I think about these people, when I think about how lucky I am, how lucky this baby is because it is already so loved, I feel like I am overflowing with good fortune. But I am overflowing with good fortune and my mom is still dead.

This is how it ends: I do get through this and I am not alone. I pick out a bassinet and a crib and a changing table, I ask if I can store it in a friend’s basement, and I hope he understands what this means to me; I tick through the list of offered hand-me-downs and I truly think, “thank god Cris saved all of this stuff!”; I avoid my brother’s request to buy me something; I buy maternity clothes that don’t make me look like an orka; I find bras that fit.

And if all goes well, in 21 weeks we bring home a live and squirming bean who is so loved that it brings some people to tears to hold him for the first time, who has her grandmother’s cheeks or her uncle’s mouth. I bring home a baby that my mother will never meet, but who I believe she will know somehow, through and through. I become the mother that my mother will never meet. And sometimes I will miss her like I miss her right now, through and through.

Our World: Getting Bigger by the Day

Some of you might already know that I have been secretly blogging for a few weeks now, an activity that coincided roughly with seeing two pink lines on a "First Response" pregnancy test.

I have decided to go public with the posts, and as I'm writing this, I don't remember why I kept them secret in the first place, or why I have now decided that they shouldn't be a secret anymore. Either way, I am ready to share them with you, the two or three people in the world who are interested in reading what I have to say.

A few words of warning about these posts:

1. They are almost entirely about how I feel about being pregnant. There are no interesting pictures of far off lands, or stories about men touching Matt's butt in tight spaces.
2. They have a theme that goes something like this: I am thrilled and I am terrified in equal parts; life is crazy these days; everything makes me laugh and cry; the end. They are awfully repetitive.
3. I am 100% aware of the fact that I am lucky to be leading this life, but I also feel that since I am the only one I know who is living my life, I have the freedom to complain about it, cry about it, laugh about it, and talk about it.

With all of those warnings in place, please know this: if none of those things sound like something you want to read, by all means, stop reading! But if you decide to proceed, do not blame me if I sometimes make you want to throw up, shout "grow up already!" at your computer screen, or cry. You have been warned.

So with all of those caveats out of the way, welcome back! I can't promise it will be as exciting as watching a pizza hut dance party in Agra, or as crazy as taking a cooking class in Thailand, but I know for certain that we are in for the adventure of a lifetime.

You're Only What You Give Back

Written October 4, 2010

Nearly nine weeks ago, something really huge happened to me. Matt, Julie, and I were frantically preparing to host our house-warming party. None of us had showered, all of us were frazzled. I was cooking and cooking and cooking. Julie was as to be expected, cleaning the house from top to bottom. And Matt was running around doing errands, taking care of things we were sure we’d forgotten to take care of, and generally trying to stay out of our way.

There came a point in the day when Julie had finished the playlist and had gone out to get one last thing, Matt was doing a final beer run, and I had cooked everything I could and was taking a moment to savor the calm before the storm. I turned to Julie’s computer, which had been slowly working its way through the night’s playlist, and picked out a couple of songs to listen to. I danced around to a few and eventually landed on Imogen Heap, who was a new addition to my list of great artists. I had been playing her song, “Earth” on repeat for weeks. I can’t tell you why it spoke to me, only that it did.

That day, I lay down on the freshly-vacuumed living room carpet and listened to the song over and over again. I thought about the fact that I was living in this great apartment with two of the people I love most in the world. I thought about the fact that my best friend was happily dating someone I suspected might be around forever. I thought about the fact that our friends were coming over to celebrate our new place. I thought about how lucky I was to have this moment, and more importantly, to realize how lucky I was. I thought about the fact that I was pregnant. And then I burst into tears.

That was how Julie found me, lying on the floor of our living room, staring up at the ceiling fan, blasting Imogen Heap, crying huge and happy tears and gasping for breath. Only she didn’t know that they were happy tears and she knelt above me, touching my shoulders, my face, looking as worried as she sounded that day in January when I told her about the miscarriage, asking me what was wrong.

“Nothing,” I told her. “I’m just, I’m going to have a baby. Julie, I’m going to have a baby and I’m going to be someone’s mom.”

“I know!,” she said, her relief so obvious I felt like I could touch it, and she settled herself down on the floor next to me, shoulder-to-shoulder, and stared up at the ceiling fan as we listened to Imogen Heap and I laughed and cried and calmed down.

It was an amazing day, the day that I knew that this baby’s heart was beating inside of me, the day that I knew that I was right about Julie and that new boy, the day that I realized just how much my little world was changing, and how beautifully.

You’re going to lose it all and find yourself on your knees
So get a grip and you might flow, reverse the great slow bleed.
I’ve tried patience but you always want a war.
This house won’t tolerate anymore.

…

You’re only what you give back.
You’re only what you give back.
You’re only what you give back.

Today we had our 18 week ultrasound and saw kicking feet and waving arms and kidneys and leg bones. I stared at that screen and thought, “I love you I love you I love you” with every single inch of my body, crying and laughing and holding tightly to Matt’s hand.

I can’t totally explain why the two moments are connected in my mind, the sun-drenched day in July with Imogen and the happy tears, and today’s low-lit room flooded with pictures of our baked-potato sized baby. I think that it has something to do with realizing change, with being in a place where change feels amazing and right, despite the difficult things that come with it.

When I got up from the carpet that day in July, I turned towards the kitchen to put the finishing touches on something that we probably never got around to eating, and there were tears drying in the corner of my eyes. I remember smiling at Julie, who smiled back at me as she picked a final piece of lint off the carpet. When I hopped off the table today, I literally burrowed into Matt, holding onto him and saying what I always say after these appointments, “did you see the bone? Did you see the kidneys?” just so that I can hear him say, “did you see the ribcage? And the brain?” There were tears drying in the corner of my eyes and I smiled at him. He grinned back at me.

Yes, you’re only what you give back. And change can actually be everything you wanted and then some.