Mother-less Day

Tomorrow marks three months since I lost my mother.  Next Sunday will be my first Mother's Day without my mom.  For 33 years of my life, I had someone to love and celebrate on this upcoming day... cards to buy, gifts to order, and flowers to send (although I rarely did that... mom hated flowers.  She said they died too quickly and reminded her of death.  How ironic).   And now, almost suddenly, I am a motherless daughter.  I have no mom to take to brunch.  I have no mom to send a card to.  I have no mom to call and tell her how much I love her.  As a result, I'm deeming next Sunday, May 13th, Mother-less Day. 
To some this may seem morbid or depressing and I can't entirely disagree.  However, I'm mourning and I have the right to be as sad as I want for as long as I need to.  My mother was only 59 years old, and although any age is too young to lose a mom, losing your mom when she is so young just seems exceptionally cruel.
Everywhere I turn this impending day is in my face- from commercials to newspapers to stores - everyone is yelling, "Buy your mom the perfect gift this year!", "Don't forget the person who never forgets you.", "Bring a smile to that special lady in your life."  The message seems more prominent this year, louder, in my face.  Surely this isn't true, but my perception is my reality these days.
Now let's be realistic here.  I did have some Mother's days that weren't the best.  There were some I'd like to forget.  Those days when I was younger and immature and the 'obligation' of seeing my mother wrestled the other obligations that I thought were important.  I think I even remember speaking the words, "It's my mother's day too, you know" shortly after becoming a new mom.  I'd be remiss to not mention that it wasn't all peaches and cream.  No relationship is.  But, overall, it was good.  It was better than good.  I had a fantastic mom and I was so loved.
Losing my mom has left a void in my life that I never could have imagined.  It's the simple things that I miss the most about my mom.  My mom was the ONE person who always answered the phone.  I knew that I could call her at 6:00 am or midnight and she would be thrilled to hear my voice.  I knew that if I was stuck on the side of the road or had a fight with my husband, my mother would be the first call I'd make... and I would hang up that phone feeling better.  I miss my mother's questions, "Tell me something funny the kids said today?"  With the exception of my husband, no one else truly cares what my kids said.  I miss how proud of me my mother always would be as I'd over hear my mom brag to her friends, "She went to Middlebury, you know.  She's a manager now."  I miss her smile, her smell, her hands.
As I mature in life, I've become privy to all of these secret societies that I never knew existed.  First was my induction into the new motherhood society.  I found a group of woman who all were facing the same struggles with being a new mom.  You would see another mom braving her first grocery shopping visit with a newborn in tow and you'd share that 'knowing glance'.  There was a commradery amongst us. 
And now, since losing my mom, I've come across a new secret society of woman who have also experienced the sheer loss and emptiness that comes along with losing the woman who gave you life.  There is nothing else like it and although others may empathize, only those who are also motherless truly understand.
As a result, I invite all of you to join me in a day of mourning and loss on Sunday, May 13th- our Motherless day.  Those who have not lost a mom may think us to be morbid and twisted.  They might attempt to comfort us with words such as, "You should celebrate her life." or "She wouldn't want you to be sad."  But we know the truth.  We need to live without a mom for the rest of our lives.  Surely there will be time to celebrate and to remember her.  But this year, I will just join forces with those in my secret society of motherless daughters.  I will have a drink and look through old photos. I will dig out those old videos or phone messages.  I will cry.  I will allow myself one Mother's Day of pure wallowing in self-pity.  Then, I will pick myself up by the bootstraps and attempt to move on.  I may regress, but I will persevere forward... the day after Motherless Day.

Do I stay or do I go now?

... If I go there might be trouble. If I stay there will be double. Do I stay or do I go now?

To all unknowing eyes, I'm living the dream. I have an amazing home in the Vermont countryside. I drink my coffee in the morning on the deck as I listen to the sounds of the birds singing and the river gracefully flowing by. I kiss my gorgeous husband and adorable babies goodbye and I head off to a job that is well paying. In fact, so well paying that it affords us the luxury of a one-parent working household. I work in the fulfilling healthcare industry, taking care of those who are dependent on me. I come home each night to dinner made by my adorable husband. I drink wine on the same deck that I drank my coffee on earlier that day. We are not rich, by any means, but we get by... comfortably.

Sounds pretty amazing, right? So what's the problem?

Someone once told me that I am never happy. That I'm always looking for the next best thing. I took massive issue with that statement years ago. Fortunately, or unfortunately, age has caused me to grow wiser. Maybe she was right?

I miss my kids. Yes, these annoying little creatures who wake me up all night. The same beings who pluck my last nerve and cause me to wonder what in the hell I was thinking when getting knocked up. The same little people who have given me bags under my eyes and constant stress in my heart. The exact human beings who are so needy that the sound of getting in a car alone and driving non-stop for 30 hours sounds appealing. I miss those little fuckers. (Don't fault me for saying that, you know it's meant in the most endearing way possible! You have little fuckers too... and you know it!)

I just read back to one of my posts in which I was racing down the road to get to work when Gabe was 8 weeks old. I don't know if it's maturity or just experiencing the 'other side' of working full time, but I have had a total change of heart. I don't care about the vacations, the cars, the house. I want to experience the everyday. The daily nuances of life. I want to clean the bathroom, and make dinners... and grocery lists... oh how I miss grocery lists!

So, the question is: Do I continue working in a job where I am not entirely happy or do we sell our home and buy something much smaller so that I can stay home?

Do I stay or do I go now?

To be continued...........................................................

Two years, seriously? Good thing I have no expectations

I really should change the title of my blog to Parenting without Expectations, but it just doesn't have the same appealing 'ring' to it. I fully expect that I'm yet to be discovered and certainly the title of my blog is a real eye catcher.

I'm not sure how I ended up letting this blog go for two years, but life happens. A couple years, a few states away, and two toddlers later... I'm back. I can't make any promises that I wont disappear again for several years, but tonight I am fully here. I'm all yours. Well, that's not true... I'm all theirs. My husband and I have already negotiated who will be taking which child tonight. He'll take Thing #2. She'll be up by 11:00 pm. She's getting way too attached to mommy, who is now working full time and is WAY too tired to be up for an hour in the night. I'll take Thing #1. Hopefully he'll sleep through the night, although it's hit or miss. Last week was nightmares, this week it's vomiting. Honestly, it's a crapshoot. My husband and I wake up in the morning and instead of the good morning kisses and greetings we used to enjoy, it's a game of who had the worse night. It goes something like this:

Me: "Did you put the coffee on?"

Him: "Not yet, Julia just woke up."

Me: "Nice, I've been up since 5:30.. glad you slept in."

Him: "Since when is getting up at 6:15 sleeping in? Besides, she was up from 2 to 3:30. How did Gabe sleep?"

Me: "He slept on the floor again, ended up waking himself up when he rolled under his bed and got stuck. I'm exhausted, can you put the coffee on?"

I'll never forget when Gabe was a newborn and one of my girlfriends told me about her six year old who was sleeping in her room. My self control must have escaped me with the placenta and without a filter I exclaimed, "What the fuck? Your kid isn't sleeping through the night at six?" She smiled with that 'knowing' mother look and calmly replied, "No". Clearly not satisfied with that answer I asked, "Will I ever sleep normally again?" Her response: "You will sleep normally again, but it will be a new normal." Um.... a new normal? What the hell does that mean, I wondered? Two years later I finally GET it. New normal = You get used to functioning on 6, maybe 7, hours of interrupted sleep for the rest of your life. Lack of sleep becomes such a way of life that over time it becomes your new 'normal'. Long gone are the days of sleeping 'in'. Alarm clock? Dude, the Things that wake us up in the morning have no 'snooze' button.

Goodnight.

Now I can really put the title of my blog to good use!

After my 6 week writing 'hiatus', I'm back! I apologize for the long absence, especially to all of you who read my blog as religiously as the Bible. I hate that I've kept you waiting. I'm sure you'd understand though. In between working full time and taking care of my one-year-old son, you'd likely find me in the bathroom hugging the porcelain God. I'm not sure if my last post was a premonition, but guess what?? Yup, pregnant again!

When I wrote my last post, I wasn't anticipating getting pregnant so quickly. Who the hell would have guessed that it would take one time of 'doing the deed' to conceive? If you've been a follower of my blog, you'll remember my history of standing on my head to get pregnant with my first. This pregnancy really came as a shock... a pleasant shock... but a shock nonetheless. When my very-regularly-scheduled monthly visitor didn't appear, I was a bit concerned. I waited an entire day to take a pregnancy test and nearly fainted when I saw TWO pink lines. How could this be so easy? And.. how could this be so cheap?? (I had spent nearly $200 on pregnancy tests when trying the first time around.) Had I realized we'd get pregnant so easily and quickly, I probably would have made a much more concerted effort to really savor the sex!

I'm officially 9 weeks pregnant and this pregnancy couldn't be any more different than it was with Gabe. For starters, I've been hit hard with morning sickness. (Which by the way is a really ridiculous name for things considering I am sick morning, noon, and night. I think I'll stick to the official name of 'nausea gravidarum'. That sounds more serious, anyway!) This has been a difficult aspect to manage between work and caring for a toddler. While I would have preferred to wait to tell my managers and colleagues, I couldn't justify running away from my patients in mid-sentence. My husband knew I must be really sick when I started popping Zofran like it was candy. This coming from a girl who could be on her deathbed before agreeing to take a Tylenol.

The other aspect of this pregnancy that has been much different (and personally, much more alarming) is my absolute lack of attachment to this pregnancy. This isn't to say that I wouldn't be devastated if, God forbid, something happened and I lost my child. However, I am having a much more difficult time feeling as though this pregnancy is real. The moment I found out that I was pregnant with Gabe I immediately felt a new life growing inside of me. Not physically, of course. Emotionally, however, I felt as though I carried a special secret around with me. It didn't matter what went wrong in the world because I had a human being growing inside of me. I would often talk to him and sing him songs while in my tummy. I am having a much more difficult time wrapping my mind around things this time around. While I do realize how much more occupied I am now as compared to the first time around, I somehow feel as though I'm not being as good of a parent... already!! I thought that feeling only came once the baby was born. When pregnant with Gabe I never, ever missed a prenatal vitamin. This time around, I'm lucky if I remember to eat breakfast. When pregnant with Gabe I carefully examined every food label, had someone else pump my gas, and I slept, and slept, and slept. This time around I eat whatever sounds appealing (including feta cheese!) and I hope for the best.

I keep telling myself that this is normal... and I secretly pray that my new miracle and I are able to find some bonding time soon.

Now that I have 'Thing 1'... when is it time to have 'Thing 2'?

The title of this blog is a Dr. Seuss reference, for all of the non-readers in the group.

I must start this post by stating that this whole 'work' thing is a real hindrance to my creative side! While I am enjoying the paycheck and it's certainly wonderful to feel like 'me' again, I find that working so many hours seems to suck the creative life right out of me. By the time that I leave work, stop at the grocery store, make dinner, help with bath, breastfeed, and tend to my husband and babe, I'm looking at the clock and thinking, "Where did the day go?" I'm lucky if I check my e-mail some days.

So what do I do with ALL my leftover time, you ask? I start thinking about whether or not it's time to try for 'Thing 2'. I know, it's a little ridiculous. One interesting fact about me: The more I have on my plate, the hungrier I get. I thrive under pressure.

I've been thinking about this age-spacing thing for a while now. For the first 10 months of Gabe's life I swore up and down that he would be an only child. The responses were typical, "Oh honey, you'll forget how hard this is." I would stand as firm as a soldier and state, "NO! I will NOT forget what this is like. I'm exhausted. No one told how much being a mother sucks!" The tears that usually followed that statement often made whomever I was talking to actually agree that one child was probably all I could handle.

Well, Gabe just turned 1 and guess what? I haven't forgotten how difficult it was, but the memory IS slowly fading. While my little guy is still not sleeping through the night, he's made enough improvement for me to reinstate his previously lost 'sibling privileges'.

You'd think that I'd know better than to try to plan the spacing of my children. After all, the title of my blog... Expecting without Expectations... was supposed to teach me to let go of expecting anything when it comes to pregnancy and parenthood. Um, let's just forget that tiny little factoid for a few. Okay?

I've been keenly observing mothers with more than one child for about 3 months now. I see them in the grocery store, visiting the park, at the doctor's office. I have no qualms about asking them if they like the age differences between their children. In fact, I met one of my good friends that way.

There has been extensive research done on the topic of optimal birth spacing. I've read a good bit of it. Do you want to know how I would summarize it all?

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS OPTIMAL BIRTH SPACING.

There are pros and cons to having children closer together AND there are pros and cons to giving yourself a little breather and spacing them out a bit.

So, where does that leave me?? This parenthood thing has been wonderful and I adore my son. However, it's also kicked me in the ass. I'm afraid that if I wait until he gets a bit more independent I may get a taste of my own Independence back and say 'Screw it, I'm done'. I'm still full force in baby-mode and my sleeping is spotty, at best. So, why not just continue this fun all at once?

At the same time, I feel guilty about taking time away from my first born to do this. He's still happily breastfeeding and that will likely need to stop if I get pregnant (due to pre-term contractions with my first). I'm not entirely certain that my body has recovered completely. Despite the fact that I eat amazingly healthy, I'm not sure that my nutritional stores are enough to grow as strong and healthy a baby as I'd like.

Well, here's to letting go of all expectations... and just seeing what happens, playing it by ear, flying by the seat of my pants. I've been incredibly blessed in my life thus far and I have every reason to believe that the 'timing' is already set. My second angel will know just when it's time to make his or her appearance.

To work or not to work? Deciding prior to birth is a wasted expectation!

I just got home from one of my three jobs. Yes, that's right... I have three jobs. Why, you ask? Well, because I'm one of those 'never-quite-satisfied' people and one job just wasn't enough. It's like the early stages of dating, prior to finding your perfect mate. You date several guys with several flaws and over drinks with the girls you admit, "God, I just wish I could take certain aspects of each guy and put them all together! Mike is great in bed, but a lousy conversationalist. John is an amazing artist and is really smart, but has the social skills of a 7 year old. Dave is a great athlete and is hilarious, but is terrible with his finances. Why can't I find a guy who has ALL of these great qualities?" Well, that's how I feel about working. I can't seem to find that one job that 'has it all'. One of my jobs is with a large teaching hospital. I certainly am challenged by the job and the people that I work with are really intelligent and driven. However, being inside the same large building day in and day out would irritate me. My second job is monetarily lucrative and allows me much autonomy, but I'm working with a rather difficult patient population. So, instead of settling (which happens much too often in both relationships and careers), I figure I can have my cake and eat it too!

So far... so good.

I am very fortunate to have found a career and a work/life balance that has worked well for myself and my family. I wish that I could say the same for some of my friends, many of whom struggle daily with finding the right combination of both. It's certainly a challenge that nearly every mom that I know has faced.

For ease of simplicity, I categorize my 'Working Mom Friends' into two categories:

A) Mamma's who work for the love of their career. These moms find great joy in maintaining their sense of 'self' that they had prior to baby. They love what they do and I've often heard them say, "I'm a better mom because I work". They aren't forced to work due to finances, but rather have decided to continue their career path that they took so long to build. These moms are both lucky and rare.

B) Mamma's who don't really love their jobs, but are financially obligated to continue getting up everyday and helping to 'bring home the bacon'. If given the choice, these moms would happily discontinue working and stay at home with the babes. These moms are usually (and I emphasize usually) quite discontent with their current situations. They are often trying to find other ways to maintain financial stability and yet still stay home.

I realize that this is very simplistic and there are other categories and subcategories of working Mammas. However, most of my girlfriends would fit nicely into one of these two groups.

If I could offer just ONE piece of advice to those friends of mine who do not yet have children it would be:

Don't make the decision about whether you will return to work or not until your child has arrived.

Now, I can already hear the "Yeah, but...." comments coming through my computer. "Yeah, but I have to let my work know what I am doing." or "Yeah, but I don't really have a choice. I have to go back to work." or "Yeah, but I know that I am going to stay home for at least a year."

Listen to me and listen to me carefully: You have no idea what you are going to want to do until your little bundle has arrived. Life prior to children is much different than life post-baby. Everything changes, right down to the core of YOU.

My husband and I had decided to try our best to set ourselves up financially so that I didn't have to return to work for at least a year. I just 'knew' in my heart that I wanted to stay home with my baby. So, we sacrificed and saved just enough so that this would be possible.

Guess what I was doing on Gabe's 8 week birthday!? Driving as fast as I could down Route 83 towards the hospital where I worked. I was ecstatic to get a coffee on the way into work and I was even more thrilled to be working with a sick patient population. As insane as that might sound to some of you, working was just what I needed to make me feel 'normal' again.

My story is a bit more unique than the opposite scenario that I hear quite often. I have so many friends who are hell-bent on getting back to work as soon as their 12 week maternity leave is over. They are convinced that they will be 'ready' and that the baby will be old enough to leave comfortably. (I remember, prior to having a baby, thinking how 'old' a 3 month-old baby was.) Staying home for three months seems so long, until you are faced with the Sunday before returning to work, and you are a literal mess. You have more anxiety than you did before starting your job for the first time. This is where I've seen many girlfriends come as close to a mental breakdown as I have ever seen.

So, what can you do prior to becoming pregnant and then in the days leading up to having the baby?

1. Set yourself up financially so that you are able to stay home for up to a year. This may seem like a lofty goal on top of your piles of mortgage bills, student loans, and new baby expenses. I realize that. However, if possible, skip that Starbucks run today. Tell your friend that you simply can't make her Hawaiian wedding. Do everything you can to save prior to the birth of the baby. It will be worth it.

2. Plan to take a three month maternity leave, but don't just 'quit' your job prior to having the baby. You may quickly realize, as I did, that your job is your only chance as maintaining sanity. There is less guilt in leaving your baby to go to work than there is in leaving your baby to go shopping or out with the girls. You may find that you are one of those woman who IS a better mom when you are working.

3. Begin exploring options for part-time employment. Talk to your boss about working a 4 day work week. I would suggest talking to your employer about working from home, but I've seen many a girlfriend try this unsuccessfully. As much of a multi-tasker as you are, it's nearly impossible to get work done with a baby in the home. The basic advice here is to explore your options of part-time work.

Whatever you do, don't make any 'decisions' about what you will do with your career prior to the birth of your miracle. While you may think you know what is best, there is no way to accurately predict how you will feel once your child has arrived.

Learning to embrace loss- what it means to have a child

When Gabe was a month old, I remember sitting outside talking to one of my girlfriends on the phone. She was a new Mamma too, but her little guy was around 7 months old, making her an expert in my inexperienced eyes. She said something in that conversation that has stuck with me since. (Which says a lot considering the fact that the first few months post-birth are all a blur to me. They seem more dream-like than reality!) She said:

"Having a child is really about loss."

I couldn't figure that one out for the life of me. How could my new addition, this wonderful new life, be about loss? I actually thought about that for a long time, trying to figure out what she meant. I must have tucked that thought in the archives of all the advice I was receiving.

In a week, Gabe will be turning 1... and I finally GET it.

Having a child is about learning to embrace loss. My first understanding of this concept came when Gabe was about six months old and we were getting ready for a move up the East Coast. As I sat in his room packing up his things, I began to cry. I was on the floor and I was separating his clothes into piles. I picked up a onesie that was once swimming on him and could have easily doubled as a dress. I remembered back to when we first put this on him and I remember thinking, "This will never fit him. What was I thinking when I bought it?" Eventually, his little body grew and he fit nicely into the onesie. It didn't take long before it became more and more snug. (The dryer is really shrinking our clothes, I naively thought.) He wore this onesie for two months too long. Was it because he looked so cute in it? Was it because it was comfortable? Negative and negative. My tears quickly turned to cries, which then quickly turned to sobs. The onesie now became my handkerchief. I couldn't bring myself to put it in the 'too small' pile. I packed it with the other fitting onesies that would be making the trip with us.

You know how you feel after an irrational emotional breakdown? Like a huge weight has been lifted off your shoulders, and yet you can't figure out why the hell you were so emotional!? That's how I felt. I realized that I was having a hard time accepting the loss of my little baby. Of course he was still a baby in my eyes, but he was no longer that fragile little being that fit into that onesie. And that's what this was all about.

I've heard similar stories time and time again from fellow moms. One of my girlfriends writes about her 'emotional breakdown' when she was folding the crib sheets after transitioning her baby into a big-boy bed. Another girlfriend tells me about the pain she felt after taking her little guy for his first haircut.

While encouraging development and growth in our children, moms also have the unique experience of mourning the loss of our babies as they reach the many wonderful milestones of life. Outwardly we rejoice at the 'firsts', inwardly (whether knowingly or not at the time) we realize that this new first is just another step towards indepedence.

Take, for example, leaving your child with a babysitter or at a daycare. If you are anything like me, the moment you closed the car door you became so emotionally unstable that it probably wasn't safe to drive. I remember trying to see the road through my tears. Was the baby okay? Sure he was. In fact, two seconds after I left, he didn't even notice my absence. While crying my thoughts were: "What if he needs me?". The reality of the situation is that all of his needs were being met. It was ME that needed to adjust to the loss of being without my baby.

Children are amazingly resilient. Largely due to their innocence, and perhaps due to their lack of fear, they adapt well to most situations. It's Mamma that has the difficult time adapting.

My advice, although I'm a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do type girl, is to embrace the loss. Do not be afraid of letting go of the past and allowing your child to grow and thrive. Our world is much too focused on holding on. Nothing is forever and the permeable aspect of life is what makes it so sacred.