Episode 1: The first five days

This post was written on March 10, 2011, Mollie's actual due date. As is starting to become the new normal, it took me a day longer than I expected to actually get it up.

Today is the bean’s due date, the date by which medical science predicted she would be ready to enter the world. The world that she has inhabited for five whole days as of 4:48 this morning. In fact, in just 18 minutes, it will be five-and-a-half days. Twelve hours is very important when you only weigh 5 pounds.

These five days have been the most unbelievable five days of my life. And I mean that in every sense: I literally cannot believe that these five days belong to me, that I get to fold them into the story of my life. It sounds cheesy to say it, but they feel like a true gift, like something I waited all of my life to have, and now that I have it, I just want to savor each and every moment, even the ones that make me cry (and man, there are SO many of those).

I want to try to recap these five days, but I’m certain that I won’t do it justice, mainly because I can’t quite figure out how to write about our Mollie-bean and parenting and all of the million things that come with it. It sort of comes out in a list of things I cannot stop thinking about (practically in order): how beautiful my daughter is, the fact that I have a daughter, breast-feeding, the state of my nipples, Matt, parenting with Matt, not sleeping and co-sleeping, overwhelming emotions, family and friends, eating one-handed, my 4-months-pregnant-looking belly. These are the things I think about all the time, cannot get out of the running dialogue in my head. And then Mollie wakes up and whoosh! all I hear are my thoughts of how amazing she is, how cute she is when she makes that half-smile that shows the dimple on her left cheek, whether she is warm enough, comfortable enough, or hungry.

Here is labor, the short version: I started having contractions at about 11:30 on Friday, March 4^th. I went to the hospital when my contractions were about 5-6 minutes apart and the triage nurse was mean and unhelpful. We waited an hour before the doctor came in, and when she did her exam, my contractions were about 3-4 minutes apart, I was 7cm dilated, and 90% effaced. After being rushed up to labor and delivery, the wonder-doctor, the anesthesiologist, came in and gave me an epidural. Blissful, pain-free labor ensued from 10pm until about 3:50am, with only a few hiccups when the baby’s heart rate slowed down.

At 3:50am I felt a punch from within and then heard a big gush as my water broke. By 4:30 I was pushing, laughing out loud at the fact that I was actually pushing, trying to figure out how I was actually doing anything given the fact that I couldn’t feel a thing from the waist down. When my amazing labor and delivery nurse, Denise, took my hand and put it on our baby’s head after the second push, it was a feeling so miraculous that I am almost hesitant to share it here, that’s how sacred and special it was. Looking into Matt’s face, I told him, “that’s the baby!” through tears, and he laughed with me, saying, “I see it!” Then there was an urge to push, a squirm that told me I wouldn’t need to, and the baby on my chest by 4:48am. It happened so quickly that the nurse had to turn the baby towards Matt, “It’s a…” she prompted, “GIRL!” he finished. And we laughed and cried and cried and cried and laughed and kissed, while they cleaned her up and stars shot across the sky, fairies danced in the forests, Matt and I became parents, and the world changed forever and ever and ever.

I am making myself cry.

But that’s how it was, especially with the stars and the fairies. At least, that’s how it felt to look down and see this wet little head on my chest, this squirming little body, all while knowing that she was mine. I felt like a superhero at that moment, invincible not because of what I had done to bring her into the world, but because of my power to protect her.

After we went up to the room with Mollie, we started calling the people who are destined to love her most in the world. Those were some of the best calls to make because we got to hear people’s excitement over her existence and the fact that she was a girl-bean.

Julie was the first to meet her. And later that day, she met Stephen, Jason, Cris, Adam, Linda, and Katy. And still later, she met Dan and Steph. And then, much to our surprise, she met her Pop-Pop and her Uncle Andy, who drove from Philly a few hours after they got the phone call so they could meet her on the day she was born. On Sunday she met her Aunt Elissa and her cousin Ike, who suddenly looked so big that I cannot believe that Mollie will be his size in just a short 18 months.

And the next day we got to take her home. As I was being wheeled down the hall at the Brigham, holding her in her carseat on my lap, I was silently talking to her like I used to do when I was pregnant with her. “Some of these people are doctors, some of these people are sick. Some of these people are daughters, some are friends, or parents, or grandparents. Some of these people are poor, some of these people are rich. You are the only you here, and your whole life is ahead of you, waiting to happen.”

By the time we got to the car, I was overwhelmed with the emotion of driving home with our daughter, so that when Matt said, “I can’t believe they’re letting us take her home,” I knew exactly what he meant. We had spent her first two days of life inside that hospital room, and as bizarre and unfamiliar a place as a hospital is, it felt like the place where we were supposed to be with her, making home more surreal. Of course, in the grand scheme of her entire life, those two days are but a blip on the radar screen and home is always home.

In the days since we have been home, we have spent our time learning her and learning ourselves in this new role. There have been more visits and so many thoughtful gifts and emails. We have seen projectile spit-up and pee, and this morning she farted so loudly that she woke herself up. I have struggled with breastfeeding and am working through it, because there is something amazing about holding her so close to my body and actually providing all of the nourishment she needs, much like I did just six days ago, but in a totally new way.

Because she is my daughter, I am privy to certain information about her: I know how much she loves to have her hands close to her face, that she can find her thumb in a time of real need, that she curls her lower-lip under when she breastfeeds, that she has a tiny stork bite on the back of her head, that her eyes are getting pigmentation around the pupil, that she looks almost exactly like her father when she sleeps soundly. I study her face every chance I get. If I could draw, I could draw it from memory for you. I miss her when she sleeps.

One of the most amazing things I have noticed about being her mother is how wonderful it feels to be her mother, to know that no matter what, I will always be her mother. And I find myself thinking, over and over again, “She’s here! She’s here! She’s here!,” a running dialogue in my head, repeating itself regardless of my ability to have a normal conversation. As with sad things, I am always having two conversations – the one I am actually having, and the one I am having internally. The only difference is that my internal conversation is delighted, thrilled, overwhelmed with joy.

These have been some of the best days of my life in every possible way. I am exhausted. I am amazed. I am so incredibly lucky.

Because Every Superhero Has an Origin Story...

...and this is hers.

Meet our little girl and future caped crimefighter Amalia Ruth. But when she's busy bringing the ne'er-do-wells of Boston to justice, she goes by her alter ego Mollie Danger.

Ok, so maybe her ninja training and spandex body armor are a few years off, but no matter what she's here and ready to take the world by storm.

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?!"

36 weeks

Dear Bean,

I have only dared to write directly to you a few times during this pregnancy, and even then, it has only been in the privacy of my own journal, never on this website. I talk to you in my head all the time, telling you how amazing you are, how glad I am that you are growing, how exciting it was to hear your heartbeat. I call you "little love," and "sweet one," and "darling bean" in my mind. Writing to you directly has felt different than writing about pregnancy. It has felt like I would be tempting fate, possibly writing a letter that, horrifyingly, you might never get to read. I have been too scared to address you directly.

But I woke up this morning with the overwhelming urge to write to you. I am 36 weeks pregnant today, you are somewhere around 4-5 weeks from making your way in the world. Just like I cannot believe that I made it to 16 weeks, to 20, to 30, I cannot believe that we are here, glancing around the corner at the day when you will actually make your arrival in this world. It is in your hands, little love. We are ready whenever you are ready. Rather, we are ready to be not ready for the way that you will certainly turn our world upside down. We are as ready as we will ever be.

Yesterday the doctor felt your head. While I won't go into the (intimate) details of how she did that, rest assured that it felt just as strange for me as it did for you. You responded exactly the way I would expect someone who has resided completely undisturbed for 36 weeks, and your heartrate skyrocketed to 165, calming down to its usual 145 after a few seconds, in rhythm with my own decreasing heartbeat.

The amazing thing about the experience was the fact that the doctor FELT your little head. Until that moment, I had imagined so many things about you: your feet, your hands, your eventual personality, whether your first word will be "Julie" or "Stephen." But until yesterday, I hadn't pictured your little newborn head. It swam in front of my eyes with sudden clarity -- dark and curly, covered in yuck, soft and mushy and cone-shaped and requiring the utmost care. I wanted to kiss the image in my mind, wanted to reach out my hand to stroke the picture of your beautiful little head. And then I realized that sometime within the next few weeks, I will get to actually kiss you, that I will brush those dark, soft curls with my actual fingers, that I will get to hold your neck and stare at your face and be the person in your life who gives you the utmost care.

So I woke up this morning and wanted to tell you this: I cannot wait to meet you.

With every ounce of love and then some,
Your Almost-Mama

"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.

Someplace Like Home

I have been straightening my hair a lot these days. It is something that I do in the winter when it is cold, because it saves me from walking outside with a wet head every morning. But it is also something that I do when I feel like I need some control in my life, when I need a change, however small, that is entirely within my purview.

I used to straighten my hair in college whenever I broke up with a boy. In high school, I would straighten my hair when I had a week that felt particularly low and I needed to be noticed. Since Matt and I got together, these are the memorable times when I have straightened my hair: when I found out that we were leaving Oklahoma to move back to DC, after we got married (almost every week for an entire semester), when I was applying for clerkships, when I finally decided to come to terms with how miserable I was in Pittsburgh, and right now.

Which is to say that my hair has always been the one thing that I knew I could rein in, even when everything else was seemingly off track.

Matt and I have spent the last three days in Hollidaysburg, PA, the place that is more or less Matt’s hometown. To know Matt is to understand that he is a man of many hometowns. But Hollidaysburg is the one place that has been consistent for him, consistent for his family since the 1820’s, if you want to put a number to it. This is the town where Matt learned to drive, went on his first date, really figured out his parents, met his first love, broke no significant rules, came to see the meaning of family, and bought his first car. In short, this is home.

So coming to Hollidaysburg was something that we knew we wanted to do during this pregnancy. It occurred to us sometime early on, sometime before we called his grandmother to tell her that she was going to be a great-grandmother. We decided to come when I was good and huge, big enough that the bump was unmistakable, not so big that I couldn’t fly. And we let Matt’s brother, sister-in-law, and parents know that we were going to be at the homestead, hoping that they would drive from their respective towns to meet us here.

Coming to Hollidaysburg is always a mixed bag for us. On the one hand, we’re spending the weekend with family at home. On the other, we’re spending the weekend with family at home. Family is a challenging concept for both of us, which is part of the reason we have each other, part of the reason we have our urban family in Boston, and the main reason that we understand the complex realities of what it means to be from somewhere. Our lives in Boston feel so different than what life in Hollidaysburg would be like. The food, the sounds, the stars, the feel, the air, the bed, the water, the lights, EVERYTHING is different.

And yet family is family. They take you out and get you to pick out fabric so that they can make a blanket for the niece/nephew they’re so excited about. They ask you to send them a book about your faith so that they can learn a little bit more about it. They goad you into an argument about things that don’t matter. They tell you what life has really been like here while you’ve been living far away in that big city. They love you for who you are, even if they don’t understand you.

My hair has been straight for most of the time that we’ve been here, for most of January, actually. And I’m ready for it to go back to its natural state, to freely curl and frizz however it wants to, to get big and puffy and wild.

Matt held up a brand new onesie, white with tiny green elephants, so small, so cute. “I’m so excited,” he said as he hugged me. “I’m kind of scared,” I said. And he tightened his grip.

The thing about family, the thing about hair, the thing about life, is that we can control little bits of it, but we can only go so far. We live far away, but we feel guilty and genuinely sad about the things we’re missing at home. We look in the mirror and know that we don’t look quite like our real selves.

And every so often, we take giant leaps of faith, because we know that even with an apalling lack of control, we’re going to land somewhere, somewhere a little bit like home, even if at first that place is unbelievably exciting and tremendously scary, all at the same time.