Day 319

Well, Ben, Jonathan, and I have just returned from a whirlwind trip to the East Coast. Our motivations for going were a bazillion-fold. We wanted to help dad start to wade through and sort mom’s things (which may take us just over a decade to do), I was a bridesmaid in a dear friend’s wedding up in New York, we wanted to see family, we wanted some free babysitting, we wanted an excuse to eat carbs…the list goes on. Obviously the first two were our main objectives and obviously were also the most emotionally precarious endeavors.

It was the second time I’d been in my parents’ house since my mom died and it was the first time Jonathan had ever been. Watching those worlds collide was both tragic and thrilling. The thought and care my mom wove into that house astounds me with every visit. Each time I discover a new trinket or even just the cleverness behind the juxtaposition of items in the room. She had an eye, I’ve said it a thousand times, but she also had a sense of humor and whimsy that made the space even more her own – even more telling of how she saw the world. Watching Jonathan’s eyes float about the house, settling on a carved wooden box, a dried nutshell, a bronzed baby shoe, was magical. And that was her goal. She always said that she wanted her grandkids to think her house was magic and she undoubtedly achieved that. Not only was this baby in awe of the sparkling antique chandeliers and the bright red kimono hanging on the wall, but my niece and nephew, Josie and Will, practically burst at the sight of  metal and melamine race cars, 3-d puzzles in the shape of cakes, and various rocking chairs and horses. Of course, many of these things were not really meant to be toys, but decor rather, and so it wasn’t necessarily a child’s delight as so many of these things were deemed hands-off. But the notion that one day they could hold these things, that they could graduate into that delicate privilege, was intoxicating. In fact, that experience is one that I’ve shared with my brothers all my life, and now, getting to touch – having to touch many of these things felt that much more sacred.

Sifting through curtains of beaded necklaces and drawers of inscribed cards was difficult, no question, but getting to do so while drinking wine with my brothers and dad, as my husband and Jonathan played with my own childhood toys on the floor in the next room – it was a bit joyous in a way, too. As many things in life, the task felt faceted and folded.

Attending my friend, Caitlin’s wedding was much less complicated – I was elated. And tired. I was lucky enough to spend the day getting ready in an endlessly cool Brooklyn warehouse/venue with an endlessly cool gaggle of ladies. Ben and the angel babe joined us for the ceremony, but promptly left after dinner so mom got to do some drinking and painfully uninhibited dancing (at 32, I still don’t know what to do with my hands…tightly clasped above my head? no?). It was fab. It was exhausting. I may still be in recovery. I danced until 1am and when the beautiful bride wanted to continue the celebration at a local bar, I had to bow out. In my youthier youth, I would have been the first in the cab, swapping my heels for bare feet, and prepping the crowd for ill-advised shots. Now, knowing I undoubtedly had a date with Jonathan just three hours later, I couldn’t swing it. Part of me bemoaned the impending late night mom duty, but the other part of me was thoroughly excited about the prompt removal of my tortuous spanx. But that conflictedness (or just conflict I guess) of being a new mom among newlyweds is tortuous in its own right…I wanted to prove I could hang, I wanted to nestle into bed with my sleeping boy, I would’ve liked another glass of wine, I should’ve cooled my effing jets and remembered that hangovers and teething baby cries reside together in the innermost circle of hell.

Anyway, it’s taken me almost two weeks to write this post, so I’m calling it. The trip was a heavy, beautiful blur.

Day 248

Titillating things you missed and I am choosing not to write about:

• Jonathan’s first actual barf
• Taking care of a very sick husband AND baby AND then getting sick myself
• 8-month sleep regression blues
• Adventures in solid foods
• Adventures in solid poops
• Typing Adventures three times now and not getting it right once
• Our ongoing battle with Baby Eczema

Instead, I choose to focus my efforts on the two latest biggies: Jonathan’s crawling and my very first Mother’s Day (and maybe some bonus material about work purse vs. weekend purse and the fact that I never seem to have my wallet in the right one).

So, Jonathan is properly crawling now and we own all the pointy things. Oh, are those antique hat pins so shiny? Does that deer antler I found in the woods look so delicious? Tell me, what is your stance on drawer pulls that could double as letter openers? When Jonathan’s crawling was in its beta stages, we generally could contain him by constructing a pillow perimeter – those innocent days are gone. He no longer drags his legs behind him like the world’s cutest zombie, nor does he transition from tip-toe to belly and back like an inch worm. No, he crawls on his hands and knees like an actual baby, and it is his mission in life to dig through/eat the trash we keep in a paper bag next to the trashcan for overflow control because we are actual pigs.

Suffice it to say, he gets into everything and when he starts to pull himself up and eventually walk, we are officially doomed. Of course, crawling comes with a lot of baggage in terms of choking hazards and head-bonking opportunities, but also in terms of actual baggage. Zippers are Jonathan’s latest obsession, so the moment he is on the ground (if trash is not an available snack) he goes right for either Ben’s backpack or my purse. We read somewhere or heard somewhere or saw an Instagram ad about how backpacks/purses are perpetually drenched in germs and as a rule of thumb, you should never put one on your sofa, bed, or any kind of eating surface. So we keep them on the ground which, as it turns out, is Jonathan’s eating surface. And I am not a germaphobe mom. I take the old “building up the immunity” approach, but Jonathan keeps getting sick so maybe I need to rein that in a bit. Learning.

As for my first Mother’s Day, it pretty much surpassed every birthday and Christmas I’ve ever had. We celebrated all weekend, and Ben, my musician/teacher husband, didn’t have a single gig or lesson, so we had two full days of uninterrupted Maggie/Mom time. On Saturday, we took Jonathan to his first zoo, and quickly discovered that zoos are not meant for adults or toddlers. Aside from brief highlights wherein Jonathan seemed to appreciate the elephants and got to pet an enormous goat, Ben and I were generally depressed by the small living quarters of the animals and the apparent existence of crowds and smells. But it was a beautiful day, Jonathan wore a sun hat that made my ovaries ping pong in my body, and we got to eat Chipotle, so it was a pretty solid afternoon.

Sunday, Mother’s Day proper, I woke up at 6:30, which is now begrudgingly known as “sleeping in,” to find a display of framed photographs of Jonathan, a small vase of my favorite pink and white daisies cut from our front walkway,  and a sentimental-no veiling joke-vulnerable-poem-type greeting card. Normally, I hate the latter, as does my husband, but the fact that he went that route and even signed with more than a B.E.N. made me tear up. He’s not a card guy, so this is love. I even got a large framed photo of Jonathan sitting in a wicker basket from our sweet daycare lady as well as a card including a stamp of his little biscuit foot. It was just the cutest spread you ever did see (unless you’re a lunatic who doesn’t think my baby is disturbingly cute, in which case it was a pudgy-cheeked, Anne Geddes-esque nightmare.)

The night before I’d requested that we go on a family hike of some kind and decided that, with Jonathan in tow, maybe the easiest thing to do was to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. Ben and I have lived in the SF Bay-Area for almost 10 years now, and had never done it, so there you have it. It was another sunny day, but it was windy and chilly, so we bundled up (meaning I got to wear a beanie in lieu of brushing my hair – yet another Mother’s Day treat) and were out of the house by 8:30.

We ate hot dogs for breakfast at the Golden Gate Cafe before making the trek. I’d naively suggested we get a reservation, but it turned out the place was little more than a snack bar and, at that hour, was totally empty, save a young cashier wearing a visor, holding tongs, and generally hating life. I, of course, was abuzz with tourist-mom-with-secret-bedhead enthusiasm (the most powerful kind of enthusiasm) which motivated her eye roll to achieve record-breaking arc. And with rubbery dogs in our bellies, we were off.

The bridge walk roared with wind and traffic, and the mere scale of the bridge made Ben a bit dizzy, but we strolled, and laughed, and I’m pretty sure we saw a ghost pirate ship – all the makings of a charming Mother’s Day outing. Upon returning to our car, I returned a phone call to my thoughtful dad and accepted a picnic invitation from my brother and sister-in-law. I don’t know about you guys, but a picnic for this bunch translates to day-drinking wine straight from the bottle and eating a lot of cheese, olives, and pork rinds in close proximity to a swing set and, if you’re lucky (and we were), a pop-up bake sale. And to cap the day off, Ben fried up some pork chops in bacon fat for dinner and we drank a bit more wine while watching The Office. Heaven.

The weekend was so good, I was slightly concerned Ben would drive me to a farm the next day where I’d have plenty of space to run. That said, this lovely first Mother’s Day had baggage, too, as it was the first one without my mom. It felt strange not to call her or send her flowers. And leading up to it, I didn’t get to assemble her gift, which always required countless trips to Goodwill and careful selection of a gift box because, as she said, “[she’s] a sucker for good packaging.” On the bridge that day, naturally, I saw a lot of moms and daughters, but one duo shook me in particular. It was a mom and her adult daughter holding hands. They didn’t look anything like us, (they weren’t nearly as stylish) but they were so together, and walking at a such a carefree pace that I gasped a little and had to hang back from Ben and Jonathan. It’s moments like this when I wish life were more like the movies. That somehow mom would reach out through a breezy embrace or a sudden flourish of butterflies. Nothing like that happened. This is not the movies. Instead, I gathered myself and caught up with my family.

So, yeah. Talk about packing an emotional punch. Jonathan is crawling and inching toward becoming a real human. Mother’s Day was beautiful and fun and still fucking heartbreaking. Life is complex. Loss is a process. I guess I am doing some inching of my own.

Now here is a brief cross-section of my life in two purses —

Weekend Purse Contents:

• phone
• diapers
• wipes
• onesies
• toys
• aquaphor
• binkies
• evasive pens
• location of wallet: Work Purse

Work Purse Contents:

• phone
• diapers
• wipes
• onesies
• toys
• aquaphor
• binkies
• zero pens
• bottom-dwelling, partially opened and thus crumby and inedible pieces of gum
• new glasses I forget to wear
• date book I forget to write in
• location of wallet: Weekend Purse

(Note: there is never any cash in either purse. Thus is life.)

 

 

 

 

Day 184

Like 90% of new moms, I cut my hair short. Really short. So short that my dad told me he didn’t like it, but that he loves me. When someone has to tack-on their tacit love to a remark about your hair, it’s pretty clear you’ve gone awry, but whatever. Jonathan doesn’t pull it down or directly out of my scalp anymore, it’s easier-ish to manage, and the pennies I’m saving in shampoo money can now go toward diaper money. GLAM LIFE.

That said, I’ve learned some short hair lessons and I am now going to pass them on to you, Jill.

1. Shortly after having a baby, you shed a bunch of hair due to the drastic change in hormone levels, so cutting your hair short then highlights these fun new bald patches.
2. Short hair is easier to wash and dry, but not necessarily easier to style. Luckily, 90s hair clips are having a comeback. Unluckily, I’m in my 30s and cutesy fashion trends can translate to perceived identity crises.
3. Jonathan and Ben have the exact same morning hair – it’s sincerely the cutest thing and I already have countless photos documenting the phenomenon. Now that mama’s hair matches, too, morning sex is pretty much out of the question.
4. When I had long hair, and I hadn’t washed it, I would throw it up in a messy bun and go about my day. Now, with short hair, I put on lipstick as a means to focus attention on my face and not the cowlick in the back of my head. You know what doesn’t work so much? That theory. Instead of conjuring a 1990s Linda Evangelista-esque tousled goddess look, it reads more as an ex-beauty-pageant participation awardee who woke up next to a sailor after a night of “dancin’” or maybe a homeless woman who scored a dumpster tube. Long story, short (see what I did there?) it’s not good.
5. There is no good way to grow out a short hair cut. Even Brad Pitt had an awkward stage and he is a beautiful, beautiful man. So, prepare to look like a less beautiful man.

Beyond the complex journey that is mom hair, Jonathan is now 6-months-old. You might ask yourself, When did that happen? My answer, I actually have no idea. Parenthood, it seems, exists in this strange continuum where days (and nights) are often painfully long, and months go by in an instant. Older parents say that the speedy months will turn into lightning-fast years and will do so exponentially. So, like, tomorrow I’ll be dropping Jonboy off at college, and the next day I’ll be suspicious of his second wife. Obviously she’ll just be after all my poetry money.

Anyway, he is babbling, and sitting up, and, in his desperate efforts to crawl, planking all the time, which in my own sweaty experience is actually a lot harder. The daycare he attends on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays had a Baby Pilates Instructor (because California) teach a session last week, and apparently she remarked that Jonathan is “very advanced.” My brother, William, thinks this is just a ploy to get us to sign on for full-time childcare, which is very likely, but if that is the case, our daycare lady precisely estimates my maternal delusion and exorbitantly overestimates our financial success. You’d think my scrappy paperboy haircut would have tipped her off. Unless it did tip her off and she knows we often eat canned tuna for dinner and Jonathan actually IS very advanced…!

The worst milestone to report is that Jonathan has his first actual cold. His nose is completely plugged up and he has the tiniest tragic fairy cough you’ve ever heard. And what’s worse is because he can’t breathe through his nose, he can’t suck on his binkie or eat very much from his bottle, and thus wakes up breathless and hungry every two hours. Of course, we also lost an hour due to Daylight Savings, so we are all sorts of messed up at our house. Tomorrow he is due for his 6-month shots, but if he wakes up with another snot crust-ache, I think we’ll have to postpone.

And the best milestone to report is that we are starting to play with solid foods. Jonathan tried his first sweet potato, avocado, and banana two nights ago. He mostly smashed things in his perfect pudge hands, but he did so from the perch of our family high chair. It’s the same high chair that my brothers and I used when we were babies, which then became a napkin rack in my parents’ kitchen for 30 years, and is now back to being a proper high chair for Jonathan. Seeing him wriggle and beam from this new seat makes me smile ’til my face aches, but also gets me misty at the thought of those lightning years to come. So happy and so sad. So small and so big. In an instant. In so many instants. And I can’t write about it because I struggle to grasp the enormity of it all. So I guess I’ll keep trying – to write it right and do it right. For now, all I know is: being a mom is so much more than bad hair.

Day 95

 

The nursing strike continues…it seems the pumping and bottle-feeding will be our new MO. Everyone says “that’s fine,” but what they mean is “that’s second-best,” so it’s hard not to feel like a failure, and it’s hard not to take Jonathan’s rejection personally. My latest lactation consultant, I’ve now seen three, says that the strike is either preferential or emotional. Preferential refusal stems from the fact that a bottle is just easier for babies – they don’t have to work as hard and the milk comes right away – and emotional refusal is the result of some kind of “trauma,” like a loud noise during feeding or pain/discomfort just afterwards. Obviously I don’t know which avenue Jonathan took on his strike, but in either case, I know I’ve compounded the problem by solely bottle-feeding for a solid week.

We were in Tucson for Thanksgiving, but more so, we were there to spread my mom’s ashes over her parents’ plots at Binghamton Cemetery. Naturally, my emotions swung between the utter joy of seeing my family meet and swoon over Jonathan and my consuming sadness and stale anger over losing my mother. I was not fit to battle at the breast, too, so I gave myself the week to just give into Jonathan’s new proclivity. Meanwhile, he was also going through a growth spurt, thus ravenous, so when I wasn’t leaking through my shirt while trying to catch up with cousins who had not seen me since I was prepubescent, I was hunched, pumping over the toilet in my uncle’s house/the rental car/the air bnb/the airport terminal. That last one was particularly joyous as I had to do it at one of those charging stations – I think it was a first for many of us at the airport that day.

Of course, on top of everything, we got sick. First Ben, then me, and baby made three. We are all still coughing snot buckets, but while in Tucson, I attributed Jonathan’s fussiness to everything else – change in routine, gas, silent reflux, early teething – not only did I become even more of a nocturnal hyper-googler, but I was around several moms who’d seen it all and had their own theories. In the end, it’s possible it was a combination of many things, as it so often is, or possibly a dark horse symptom of which we’ll never know, but in any case we are now home and he is getting back to his merry old self…just with a snot surplus.

And that’s the holidays with a kid I guess. Travel is harder, health more precarious, family even more involved. For the most part the latter has been lovely. I genuinely appreciate the input as I am new at this and there is just a lot I don’t know. Of course, especially this time of year, the swarm of mothers around me forces me to confront my feelings about the one that is missing from the lot. I’m generally not an uber-emotional person (publicly at least – I’ve done a fair amount of crying in my car). But my own maternal hormones are churning and I guess I wasn’t (am still not) prepared to navigate this chapter without my mom. I desperately want to call her with questions and updates or to compare notes: was I this smiley? did William and Travis have this much ear wax? did you also forgo showering? And because I can’t do these things, I’ve been crying at the drop of a hat (or ornament).

While trimming the Christmas tree, I endured blow after blow of memories manifested. It was tradition that she gave everyone an annual ornament and each one adorned her handwriting – those festive dots at every corner of our initials. I, of course, will continue this tradition, down to the dots, with Ben and Jonathan, and that very notion made me weep and choke on my fifth candy cane. And Christmas was practically mom’s Super Bowl. She was an interior designer with an undeniable eye and so decking the halls was second nature. Aside from a tree heavy with ornaments, every window had a candle and a hanging star. Every surface had one if not three nativity scenes. Poinsettias flanked the fireplace and her piece de resistance was a wooden tree on the mantel, made by my grandfather, which mom decorated with the tiniest of Christmas trinkets known to man.

I had dad send me the mantel tree this year. It’s taken me three-days-worth of naps to unwrap, consult the reference photo, and place countless bottle brush trees, clay Peruvian nativity scenes, German candle carousels, wooden Santas, vintage toy trains, and, naturally, tiny pigs and apples – and I’m still not done. I’ll have to post a photo upon completion because this thing is no joke. Mom was, if anything, a world-class collector and curator, and I can’t think of a better way to honor her. Of course, there is a very real possibility that my cat will jump up and destroy the whole display, but in that case, I trust that my mom will wield her ghostly wrath and haunt Lu ’til the end of her Christmas-ruining days.

So that’s where I stand. Jonathan is waking up from his nap now so I have to wrap this thing up without any kind of bow or ba-dum-bum (pa rum pum pum pum?) Christmas puns FTW.

Day 70

Remember how I said that I’d never before thought about, talked about, or touched my boobs as much as I had in Jonathan’s first month? Well, there is another contender for my obsessive attention these days, and that, my friends, is poop. Boobs and poops. Poops and boobs. Early motherhood is a glamorous thing.

In Jonathan’s first weeks, he pooped every time he ate. Which made perfect sense. He’d start to eat, pause to clear some space, and then continue with his meal. At about a month and a half, this evolved into just two major poops a day. He’d pee up a storm, don’t get me wrong. In fact, all day, every day. But two poops a day was generally all he needed to continue down the harrowing path of a voracious appetite coupled with a rookie digestive system. However, around 8 weeks, and again, now (today – thus the impetus for this post) at 10 weeks, he has bouts of constipation which only ever last 2 days max, but during which cause him (and me) major distress. He grunts, arches his back, and flails his little bootied legs, day and night, but the VERY WORST part of all of this is: he quits eating.

Naturally, when he first did this, I took to Bing to find some answers. Just kidding, I googled it. No one uses Bing. Anyway, I found several accounts of other moms experiencing the same thing and the most popular theory is that a) the baby associates the discomfort of gas/constipation with breastfeeding and thus doesn’t want to eat, but also b) he or she is at max capacity and doesn’t have room for it. Cool cool cool cool. So, breastfeeding is a physical and emotional challenge in its own right, but now I have a baby who is actively refusing to do it. Let me paint the picture…

Jonathan and I don’t sleep because he is grunting and writhing in his bassinet all night, desperately trying to poop. The sun rises (as it does) and he is particularly fussy because he is now not only constipated, but exhausted. Amidst his exhaustion, his mouth starts to go all goldfish, as it does when he is hungry, so I grab the boppy pillow, get set up on the sofa, flanked by burp cloths and a sleeping cat, and as I start to tilt him into position, he loses his mind. I mean, red in the face, full-blown tears, echo-chamber wailing. LOSES. HIS. MIND. My reaction starts with shushing and rocking, then I try to squish my boob into a bite-size, irresistible sandwich, then I start cussing into the air, then I throw whatever is nearby (usually a burp cloth or a cat) at Ben out of frustration, and finally I cry.

Today this sequence happened in the backseat of my car on the way home from a show. Ben was on stage, I was locked out of the car and pacing the parking lot with my vibrating baby. When it was finally time to head home, I attempted to feed him in the backseat. The scene devolved (more so) very quickly. I put Jonathan in his carseat to cry around the perimeter of his pacifier, and I just clamped my hands on my eyes, feeling beyond frustrated, like a complete failure and on the brink of prayer.  Before starting up the car, Ben turned around in his seat and asked, “Are you OK? What do you need?” I selfishly responded, “To run away.”

It was not one of my proudest moments. Not only could I not fulfill my maternal duty and feed my child, but I was so overcome by that helplessness, that I wanted to abandon ship. Obviously I didn’t run away. Really, I couldn’t, but my fight or flight reflex was triggered and I had lost the fight.

And unlike the tidy flow of cinema, and very much like the clunkiness of real life, Jonathan fell asleep on the car ride home, so we decided to pop into Nordstrom Rack while he was sleeping. Well, he woke up and the whole scene happened again. We are idiots.

Of course when we got home, Jonathan popped on the boob like the whole episode(s) never happened, and that was what my pediatrician said would happen when I’d called him at 8 weeks. It’s also what my sister-in-law said would happen. It’s also what my husband said would happen. Eventually, poop or no poop, he would be hungry enough to eat. And in my pre-mom brain, I would have been on Team Logic and Reason, too, but having the responsibility of nourishing your child is an unfathomable weight until you feel it. And the frustration of not being able to do so is unavoidable, even if it has happened before and even if you know it will happen again. There is a lesson in here a la I’ll want to run again, but choosing to stay means I’m more equipped to fight…blah blah. That’s all well and good and saccharine as hell, but it’s true that I’m learning and really, the nuts and bolts of it add up to more wins than losses. My husband asked the right questions. I got some cute shoes at Nordstrom Rack. I fed my kid.

Day 45

I started writing this post in my head at 3:30 this morning, while hunched over in the pitch dark, boob out, and gushing into (what I hope was) Jonathan’s mouth. Meanwhile, Ben was up watching drum videos on Instagram and I was simultaneously plotting his murder.

Jonathan’s triumphs this week:

1. Rolling over
2. Taking a bottle
3. Shooting poop all the way up to the back of his neck.

My triumphs this week:

1. Pumping more than 5 ounces in one sitting
2. Finding a viable nanny share
3. Getting Jonathan to nap under a bar while Ben and I had a beer and a hot dog

Our shared obstacles this week included, but were not limited to:

Gas and constipation for him

Mastitis for me

 

Now let’s break this down a bit. When Jonathan rolled over, Ben and I were elated. It was Jon Boy’s very first trick and it was clear that he was pretty pumped about it too, since he basically would not stay on his tummy for more than six seconds after that. In fact, he rolled over so much in the following days that I worried maybe he had an inner ear condition, rather than having accomplished a developmental milestone. Of course, after extensive googling, it seems this was all normal and good. (Side note: “normal and good” varies a ton in the pregnancy and baby-having world, so much of early parenthood is teetering on that age-old question: do I need to chill or do I need to call my sister-in-law at 4 o’clock in the morning? Usually the answer is: I need to fucking chill.)

As for mastering the bottle, this qualifies as a triumph to some and as evidence of an ignorant or lazy mom to others. When out and about, many moms will question what’s in the bottle.  Is that formula or expressed breastmilk? It seems there is only one acceptable answer and, though in my case it is breastmilk, I feel so awful for those moms who’ve struggled with breastfeeding and thus opted for formula. Yes, breastmilk is magical, nourishing stuff, but breastfeeding is not for the faint of heart. Really, breastfeeding has got to be one of the toughest aspects of being a new mom. Upon having a baby, we are ostensibly transformed into feeding machines, but there can be kinks in the mechanisms and it’s not like babies are born fully understanding how to run the factory. There is a learning curve on both ends and the hurdles can be frustrating as hell and sometimes insurmountable. The baby could be a bad sucker, the mom could have flat nipples, or both! The baby could fall asleep every time he goes to eat, the mom could have a low milk supply, or both! The baby could have a mouth infection, the mom could have a breast infection, or both! In my single month as a mom, I have dealt with all of the above, often falling in the both category, and I know I’m not alone. So, yes, we have breastmilk in our bottles and they’ve made for easier outings, but I can’t say I am stoked about inviting such scrutiny from my fellow stroller-pushers.

And as for his third triumph, poop to the neck…yeah. Though impressive, they can’t all warrant a high-five.

My own triumphs this week require a bit less unpacking, so here’s the shorthand:

More milk > less milk > too much milk

Nanny share > day care with a hand foot and mouth disease epidemic

Beer and hot dog > no beer, no hot dog

And finally, our obstacles. For the past three nights, Jonathan has been particularly cranky because of gas and constipation. I can’t blame him. Those things have the same effect on me, but I am much more articulate than he is…right? But really, I can tell you exactly what hurts, and where, and how much, and what flavor ice cream I need to remedy it. This poor guy’s only option is to cry with his whole self and our only option is to burp him from every angle and squeeze him like a tube of toothpaste without bruising any necessary organs. He’s inarticulate, we are essentially inept, and no one is getting the choppy six hours of sleep to which we’ve all grown accustomed. On top of dealing with his digestive woes, I have mastitis (for the laymen: an infection caused by a plugged milk duct). It’s super fun and my boob looks super attractive with hot, red, painful stripes radiating from my giant mom nipple (you’re welcome, dudes). And of course I got the infection in my better, milkier boob, so when Jonathan eats, I am wincing and then trying not to wince so he doesn’t think I’m wincing at him and thus triggering some kind of anti-maternal complex or inner ear condition.

And that’s where we are. Lot’s of peaks and valleys, but mostly peaks. Who knows what next week or month or even tomorrow will bring, but I expect it will be surprising, infuriating, puzzling, and powerful. Cheers to that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(M)other

So I’m resurrecting/reinventing this blog. What was once essentially a website mottled with agoraphobic observations, doodles, and sandwich appreciation, will now be a place wherein I examine my fears and advertise my successes as a new mom…as well as some doodles, and probably continued sandwich appreciation.

***

My path to becoming a mom was fairly typical. My husband, Ben, and I had the if not now, then when? conversation, saved zero dollars, and started trying. We tracked my ovulation to the hour, using old wives’ witchery and an app on my phone. We humped diligently and with purpose. We conceived, I told my whole family, and then we lost the baby at 6 weeks. That same day I threw a baby shower for a close friend and only had to excuse myself once to cry in the bathroom. After a few days (daze, really) on the couch, Ben and I got back to work.

After another 3 months of trying,  I was knocked up again, but much quieter about it this time. I didn’t tell any family members, ordered fake drinks at the bar with friends, and my eating habits stayed about the same (regarding chewing as more of a guideline than a rule), so nothing was revealed on that front either. This time, the kid stuck.

We didn’t do a cake reveal, rather posted a sonogram to Instagram like the Millenials we apparently are (I had to google it, like such a fucking Millenial). My tagline had something to do with my bump not being pizza this time and I think it really reassured the Insta-community how prepared I was for adult- and motherhood. Ben’s tagline read, “Maggie and I are having a boy in early September!”…ever the succinct pragmatic.

Aside from some rib discomfort and bouts of sciatica, my pregnancy was relatively easy. My labor, on the other hand, was brutal. I started having contractions on a Wednesday and the kid didn’t make his debut until Saturday night. 31 hours of active labor in total and then due to his large head and my dainty pelvis, it all ended (started?) in a C-section. I was so exhausted by the time the surgery rolled around, I literally fell asleep as they were cutting me open. (Props to my anesthesiologist, Manny.)

Now, Jonathan Thomas Lauffer (no, his name is not an homage to JTT…fucking Millenials) is just over 3 weeks old and going through an equally brutal growth spurt, which means he eats all day, all night, and gripes about my lagging boobs every moment in between. It also means I am up all day and all night, griping about my boobs too. In fact, in all my life, I have never thought about, celebrated, stressed over, touched, looked at, or leaked from my boobs as much as I have in the past month. That said, Ben is pretty stoked about them these days.

And here is where I state the obvious – Jonathan is by far the best thing we ever did. I know it’s cliche to say he’s miraculous, but it’s just true. I grew his giant body in mine for 9 months, and now he’s here – all human and in the world. And though he caused and causes us a lot of pain and distress, he’s our very favorite.  I love how his eyes roll back in his head when he flutters in and out of sleep, how sweaty his head gets when he nurses, and it is wholly illogical how much I miss him when he’s literally asleep on my lap. I have to remind myself of these things when he is inconsolable at 4 o’clock in the morning, batting at my nipple shield (nipple shields deserve their very own post) and kicking me in the tenderest part of my battle scar, but I think walking that line of exhausted and exhaustive love is a rite of passage for all new moms. I’m excited and terrified to do it, and I plan to report back how it goes. Wish me luck.