On being the mother of a newborn

Two months ago I completed my comps making me ABD in my pursuit of a PhD.  In the past few years I have had four articles accepted for publication.  After my first year of teaching I was nominated for first year teacher of the year.  In high school I went from being the new student at school who didn’t even have anyone to sit by at lunch to being nominated student council president.  All of these accomplishments pale in comparison to the pride I felt Monday when I was able to load Maggie into the car, pick up both of my other girls at two different schools, change them into tights and leotards, and get them into the dance classroom before the class officially started.  Or on Tuesday when I showered in between feedings and then headed off to the grocery store where I figured out how to push and load a cart while holding the pacifier in Maggie’s mouth avoiding one of her classic scream sessions.  Newborns are tough…

            Whenever I meet a new baby I tear up as I listen to the new mother talk.  My heart breaks as I sympathize with the inadequacies, hormonal outbursts and sleepless nights that will be a part of the days ahead while being a bit jealous of the soft skin snuggles that come with the territory.  The momentousness of this life change is never lost on me…  Welcoming a new baby into the world is one of the most amazing, challenging, rewarding and scariest of live events.  In the past four weeks I have performed the following searches on my IPhone:

            How often do infants sleep?           

            Infants and goop in eyes

            Normal temperature for infants

Infants and loose stool, infants and smelly gas, color of infant poop…  (and various other questions about excrement)

When can babies track?

When can babies see color?

Infants and leg twitching (even texted a bunch of friends and bugged the poor pediatrician on FB over that one…)

Rock n play sleeper safe to sleep in

How do I keep my infant from catching our family’s cold?

How much breast milk to gain the benefits

Acid reflux in infants

Best formula for AR…

Mastitis or engorgement?

C-Section scar burning after two weeks

And a variety of other postpartum healing searches not fit for print…

No matter what I typed someone else had asked the exact same thing.  It’s normal to feel totally insecure in these early days.  The funny thing is that this is my THIRD time doing this, and think I feel calmer this go round!   I truly believe Maggie will breathe through the night, and I didn’t freak out when she did catch that family cold after all…  This just all goes to show that being a new mom is hard no matter how many times you have done it.

            Being a new mom can be isolating.  I always forget how much my identity is intertwined in the productivity and socialization integral to a day’s work.  I actually was jealous of Sephus when he headed off to work Monday.  Being home all day can cut you off from people that are normally an important part of your day.  (Yesterday I watched six episodes of Frasier and when I woke up I found myself instantly wondering how these fictional characters were fairing…)  Lack of sleep can make you cranky…  (Look at all those assholes who made it to REM sleep last night.  I bet they actually ate sitting down with both hands too!!!!)  Hormones can turn getting teary while watching The Descendants into an hour long cry session where you wonder, among other things, if anyone will ever be willing to watch a baby that cries so much, and if not, will you ever be able to leave your house alone again…???

            Being a new mother is also wonderful.  There is always that moment when you go from loving your baby because all babies are loveable in their wide-eyed, soft-skin, helpless little warm radiator kind of way, to loving YOUR baby.  There is that moment when they become a real person…  when their name suddenly fits…  when you want to literally eat them up because you cannot breathe their essence back into you to the point of satisfaction.  There was a time when I was not sure I would ever have a baby of my own, and then we were blessed three times over.  Three times I was allowed to fall in love – with Avery

And then Tessa

And now Maggie. 

I anxiously await those milestones that mirror her sisters and those moments that are all her own.  I know that in five short weeks I will sit at work like a school girl with a crush who simply cannot wait for that moment when I get to lay my eyes on one of the loves of my life once more come the end of the work day. 

It is important to keep it all in perspective…  to remember how lucky I am even in the throes of a terrible tantrum…  and of course, to keep watching Frasier. 

On smells, touch and being pregnant for the last time

            I have a gold compact that used to be my Grandma Rubin’s.  It smells like her.  I can open it and breathe in the traces of Clinique loose powder and her signature perfume.  When we went through her things in the summer of 2003 this was a must have for me.  To smell it evokes memories of her kind voice saying “Je t’aime Danielle,” and distant memories of her satiny tan skin.  Of course, I can also go through boxes of pictures of her brilliant smile deeply enjoying her family, but it’s these other sensory memories that I crave the most.  These take more to conjure up and make her past presence in my life more real to me.  For now, these images have to suffice as nothing resembling a camera has been created to capture the smells and touch of loved ones. 

            This is what runs through my head on my last night of what will be my last pregnancy.  I can feel our third girl tumbling in my belly.  What was at first just flutters, like a fish side swiping a tank, has turned into gyrations that feel as if they could throw me off the couch.  Though this pregnancy has been harder than the others as I battle what feels like carpal tunnel, intense heartburn, lots of pressure, etc, tonight I am trying to relish it.  It’s strange knowing that such a fascinating sensation will never be felt again.  These little finger scratches reminding me she’s here, the frequent kicks reminding me I must make way for her, the punches that make sitting in meetings more enjoyable as I anticipate her arrival…  Of course none of this is any match for rubbing your nose against the smooth head of your baby or brushing your lips on chubby cheeks, but it is still an amazing feeling.  I look at Avery and Tessa and am amazed that they once thrived inside of me.  I look at my mom and can’t believe she was my home for nine months, and her mom hers…  Women are so lucky to be granted this privilege even as it comes with months of giving up Riesling and Mountain Dew.  Tonight I want to relish these movements for the last time. 

            Technology has come so far, but it still has not found away to capture memories outside of the sound and visual realm.  Perhaps this is why my favorite recollections come in the form of the smells and feel of the moments and people I have loved the most.  Perhaps technology would cheapen this nostalgia…  

On those last three miles...

             I enrolled in a doctoral program in the summer of 2006.  I have always been overly achievement motivated, and I was in a bit of a career rut in the sense that I felt like I was out of ideas when it came to helping certain students.  But most importantly, after 18 months of infertility I was ready for a new goal.  I was tired of living by cycles.  I thought a new goal would refocus me.  Four days before my first class began I found out I was pregnant with Avery.  I stayed in regardless of the then irrelevant real goal.  In the past year, as I have struggled to complete comps I wondered if I made the right decision.  I felt like I had no real reason not to quit except for the need to save face. 

            A PhD program is broken into three stages.  The first is course work.  You take 75 plus hours of graduate level courses.  For me this meant spending 1-2 nights away from home to sit and discuss scholarly articles.  Sometimes this felt undoable, but looking back this was one of the easier parts.  The discussions and chances to write were invigorating.  The readings caused ongoing paradigm shifts.  If I allow myself to be totally honest, the socialization and snacks made for a nice break from the challenges of home life at times.  Most importantly everything had a deadline imposed by someone else with clear instructions.  The summer I committed to going part time at Oakland to knock out this course work I found out I was pregnant with Tessa. 

            The next step was comps.  About two and a half years ago I got five questions that I was supposed to answer through lengthy writing after reading numerous texts.  This is supposed to take about six months.  I could make many excuses for taking as long as I did, but it all came down to simply not putting any effort into the task.  I would dabble here and there, but ultimately I put anything and everything before this tedious task.  Self-motivation is the hardest of all motivations.  Finally I told myself I was calling my own bluff this summer.  I gave myself until the first week of September to finish because, really, when it comes to goals you have to eventually say, “If not now – when?”  The past months I have been locking myself up Friday nights, leaving the family on Sundays and not turning on the TV after bedtime.  Last weekend I wondered if I could make it.  I kept thinking of marathon runners.  I wanted to know how you push yourself to run the last three miles when the first 23.2 sucked the life out of you.  I reminded myself of my personal conversation I often had with myself that guided me since I picked up books my first semester as the song about being in over your head came on the radio… like a warning.  I was pregnant and working full time at the time.  I told myself I may be in over my head, but I would do this the same way the old cliché tells you to eat an elephant – one bite at a time. 

            Now I still have a new marathon to run – the dissertation (assuming I pass my oral defense of comps on the 20^th *crosses fingers) – and I am pregnant and working full time AGAIN J , but I have realized that I can do the things I decide to do.  Comps were never going to be any harder or take any longer than they were going to be/take.  The question became whether I was willing to do the time and the work.  I am glad now that I was.  I look forward to an even greater elation when I walk across the stage with my hood NEXT winter.  As a celebration, I wanted to share my final paragraph of one of my comps questions:

Final Thoughts

            As I type the last lines of this last comp on a perfectly temperate Sunday morning to the sounds of giggles and swings seeping up from the porch, I ask myself if missing so much has been worth it.  Were the lost tuck-ins worth it?  Were the moments when I told the girls that I could not play dolls this evening worth it?  Were the days when my patience with them had been worn thin by over commitments they did not ask for worth it?  And then I realize that if I can help make literacy education in Columbia a little better for all kids, I make it a little better for my kids as well.  Isn’t that an important goal?  I know I am not sure of much, but I do trust that I have thought about some things in ways others in the racing train of education have not given themselves times to think about.  Just last week, the principal at my daughter’s elementary school explained that they don’t see the value in giving the STAR early literacy test to kindergartners because it won’t teach them anything they can’t learn from sitting down next to students and reading with them.  This reminded me that there are voices of reason, or perhaps even more importantly, ears of reason in this age of accountability and standardization.  Someone said the right thing to the right person to allow Ridgeway to be an autonomous school.  On this brisk fall day, the sound of children playing reminds me that all of this thinking has been worth it and will continue to be as I seek more answers and more questions.  

On Parenting and Tough Decisions

            When I was in 7^th grade my parents sat us down for a family meeting.  By this point I realized family meetings usually meant bad news.  They proceeded to say, somewhat excitedly, “We are moving home.  We are moving to St. Louis.”  St. Louis isn’t home, I thought, Bartlett is…  I had amassed some amazing friends and was living the high life as I had slowly merged into the popular crowd.  I spent the next days and even year selfishly pouting about how this decision affected me.  Never did I consider the agony that surely went into that decision.  How many tears did they shed or pros and cons did they weigh before they felt ready to sit us down and pass on that news?

            Ultimately the decision worked for us.  I would have never gone to MU, met Sephus, had my girls, worked at Oakland, (insert any other event that occurred since then) had the move not happened.  Would I still have flourished in Chicago... probably…  but this is my life and I like it. 

            Perhaps all of that was somewhere in the back of my mind when I got the call from Ridgeway Elementary today that Avery had officially been accepted through the lottery system.  We knew we were first on the waiting list, but the secretary told us it would be very unlikely that we would make it in anytime in the near future.  We were okay with this.  Though there are things we love about Ridgeway: multi-age  classrooms, a close-knit community, a history of stellar kids that have gone through the program, promise of continuity for all three girls if we moved, there were also things we loved about Parkade.  Something about it felt right.  I liked the diversity, the location, and the amazing teachers and principal we met there.  What would have been a pretty easy decision for many, was excruciating for me.  After I got the call, I burst into tears and called Sephus, my mom, and my dad.  The tears lasted almost an hour.  Much of this was from the stress of changing back to school nights, having the wrong supplies and the knowledge that Avery would find this last minute change unsettling, but much of it was about something much bigger. 

            In addition to calling into question many of my personal beliefs about social inequity and public schooling, this decision became the first tangible moment in my life when I had to make a decision for Avery.  Yes, I know I have made a million decisions from what diapers to use to whether to work or not,  But this one felt different.  It was so concrete.  Two options… two sets of consequences…  two lives…  I will never know how, but Avery’s live will inevitably be different because of this decision to go to Ridgeway.  Her friends will change; the books that are put in her hands by chance will change, the interests she have will change.  Suddenly I am so moved and overwhelmed by the power we have as parents over another human’s life.  Yes, parenting is an incredible responsibility in the form of caring for the physical well being of a child, but the mental well being is infinitely more impacting.  I don’t think there was a wrong choice, but our lives will change because of it. 

On Gender, Girl’s Weekend and Trying to Pee Standing Up

My proof that Sephus is a well-balanced man! 

When I was a little girl the absolute coolest human being in the whole wide world was my big brother Jason.  He was 22 months older than me, and I was star struck by him.  I wanted his full attention at all times, and I wanted to be him more than anything.  This manifested itself into failed stunts such as trying to pee into a training toilet while standing up.  If you have never attempted this as a female, let me assure you that it makes quite a mess and can upset a young mom trying to care for two toddlers.  I can clearly remember looking up at Jason standing as king of the playground on top of a slide at Bartlett Park - chest glistening high above.  I immediately ripped my shirt off too because I was hot and wanted to be king of the slide alongside him.  My Grandma Rubin quickly admonished me for such a tasteless act, and I sauntered off pouting and confused by her statement, “little girls can’t do that.”  This was one of the first times I came face to face with my gender and the impact it would have on my life. 

            Growing up with brothers has a profound effect on females.  Sure, I played with my share of dolls when I was a child, had a killer Walgreen’s dollar-nail-polish collection, and could enjoy girl drama at recess with the best of them, but I was not prone to embracing many stereotypical aspects of femininity.  Because Jason and Jon were, and remain to this day, a few of the people I most like to pass time with, I developed a comfort around males that not all women might have.  I am able to hang with a bunch of guys and remain totally unfazed by some of the words that come out of their mouths, especially when talking about girls, because I had heard it all being near my brothers and their friends. Because I admired the two so much, I think I grew up viewing male company and admiration at the ultimate goal in life.  This translated into having my first crush at age five when I would chase Jason’s best friend around his bedroom in hopes of a kiss on the cheek.  In middle school it translated into trying to find a boy to flirt with in each class period so I had a reason to attend.  In high school it meant placing all male relationships in front of my girlfriends to the point where my best friend had to call me out one evening our junior year. 

            Luckily, my one-year stint in an all girls dorm with some of the coolest women I could ever meet taught me the value of female friendships.  As I hang out with some of my best adult friends at Lake of the Ozarks I am reminded of the power of females in my life.  Last night, as we drank wine (0r Shirley Temples) around the lake, I told these lovely ladies that I get something from hanging out with them that I could never get from a room full of men.  The energy and buzz of conversation is something I crave and thrive on.

            Gender is on my mind as I prepare for the birth of my third daughter!!!  The irony of this is not missed by me.  As a teenager, I swore up and down that I would have all boys when I grew up.  They were cheaper, easier and just more fun.  Now I realize the beauty of girl company; I am fascinated by this role of sister that I see played out every day by Avery and Tessa.  I am amazed at the amount of purple and pink that has gathered in my house…

            When I first met Sephus our good friend who set us up said that I would like him because he was androgynous.  This sounded AWFUL to me.  Is that like a worm, I thought…  After eleven years I see the total truth in this wise observation.  Sephus is a foreboding male at 6 feet 6 inches.  His current hobbies are brewing beer and catching raccoons in the back yard.  He can talk football as needed with my dad or whoever else is around.  At the same time, he is spending his weekend playing with our girls and pinning trail mix ideas on Pinterest.  Later this month he will be decorating his fifth cake for a friend.  I think I am a bit androgynous myself.  I was able to get ready in five minutes last night for girl’s night, and I am career focused to a fault.  At the same time, I oohed and aahed over pink and brown newborn kimono shirts at Carter’s yesterday and took part in a gossip session or two after dinner.  I desperately hope that together we can use this balance to create strong independent females who can mesh with both genders. 

            I believe firmly in the power of gender and interactions based on it in to shape who we are as people.  I believe our gender both opens and closes doors for us.  My goal for my girls is to embrace who they are and to open more doors than are closed.  I hope that they can find balance in a houseful of females.  And if not, I know I will at least probably never have to mop up pee off the floor due to a failed attempt to mimic a hero of an older brother.