I made it through 3 months!

M and I finally got our romantic dinner together last night. Fourth try was a charm :) M's father and sister watched over the Little Man while we ate dinner just a few blocks from home. We dined at The Melting Pot, and this time we ate with enough moderation to get to the chocolate fondue course with room to eat some of it. It was a leisurely two hour meal that reminded me how much I enjoy his company. For all that we are so different, we complement each other. He thanked me for giving him a son. I told him he was the only man I could imagine having a child with. It was a good night.

Little Man is three months old now. He's been a lot of fun for his grandfather and aunt, and a very easy baby. Normally he's very alert for long periods of time interspersed with occasional power-naps, but he's going through a growth spurt -- eating often and sleeping for 3 or 4 hours at a time -- so he's easier than usual. And he's such a happy little guy. Grinning and talking (when he's not grumping about having gas), making eye contact, and playing with his toys. He's flipped himself over onto his back as of yesterday, which surprised everyone, including himself.

The weather has been gorgeous here, perfect really. Blue skies, warm days, cool afternoon breezes. I generally spend most of the afternoon outside with Little Man, gathering peaches and tomatoes, monitoring the growth of the summer squash and cucumber, playing with the baby, and listening to audio books. It's a comfortable life, for the most part. M earns good money and provides well or us, and in exchange, I take very good care of us all. Being a stay-at-home mom is very different from the "kept woman" we used to joke about me being, but I can't complain. It's not a life or role I'd ever envisioned myself in, but it is working out. And perhaps that is the key -- I didn't have my heart set on things being a certain way, looking a certain way, etc, so I'm able to go with the flow of What It Is with little friction or disappointment.

The heartburn / acid reflux / GERD situation seems to be improving, though it's a bit early to be certain. I'm still struggling to keep my food intake up, especially protein, and I really notice it in my energy level some days. Humping all 14# of Little Man around, plus pumping breast-milk every 3 to 4 hours, trying to keep up with the housework and coordinating with 5 neighbors to get the fence around our property re-done is wearing me down. And I am pretty sure that is nutritional, because I'm rarely easily worn-out. But apparently all this is pretty normal for new moms. I'll get the hang of it.

Interestingly enough, my PCOS symptoms seem to be abating. I think that the prolonged changes in my hormonal balance due to pregnancy and lactation is over-riding / interrupting that awful cycle of androgen and testosterone generation. It's certainly made weight-loss much easier (read: normal), which itself helps reduce the excess hormones floating around.

The Descent of the Aunts

M's Aunt Jean sent an email that she and her sister would be coming this weekend. The email was titled "Descent of the Aunts." I read it with a grin. One was coming by Amtrak, the other, by plane, and the plan was to converge at SFO around noon and take the CalTrain to our place, since we're just 4 blocks from the station.

They and their spouses arrived here a little after 1pm on Saturday, bearing gifts. Jean handed them to me, but I left them for M to open -- he loves opening presents. My favorites of the gifts was a little porcelain piggy bank like the one I had as a kid, and the baby crocs shoes. It will be a while before he wears them, but he'll be able to wear them outside and help me in the garden next year. I look forward to making mudpies and running through the sprinklers with him :)

M enjoyed showing his family the house and telling them about the various projects we've done. They liked that the house seems modest in size from the front, but is so large on the inside as it unfolds along the depth of the lot. I like that about it, too. I've never been one for pretense -- which is why I balked when M wanted to look at houses in Palo Alto. After growing up in the Santa Barbara area, I'm full-up on pretentiousness. So we've got a nice modest-looking house in a friendly working-class neighborhood and the renovations have made it especially lovely.

M was proud to show off the patio extension we did with his father's help back in April. I'm still amused that I was hauling 15 pound pavers around at 7 months pregnant.  The whole patio area is really shaping up nicely, especially since we added the sunbrella to the patio set M's father got him for his birthday. There is still some clean-up work to do there, but I should have it done in time for the Peach Party we're having in a couple of weeks. I actually had to tie up the branches of the peach tree because it is so heavy with fruit.

The pièce de résistance was Little Man, of course. Both great-aunties spent a lot of time holding him, and even the uncles, too. We sat outside on the patio and enjoyed the beautiful weather and chatted for a couple of hours, at which point Jean noticed that I was tired. Little Man had me up at 5am, so by 3:30pm I was wilting. We arranged to meet for dinner at Buca di Beppo in SOMA and I laid down with the baby for a two-hour nap.

Dinner was quite an event. I'd never eaten at Buca's before, and so I was unprepared for the big, hearty family-style Italian fare and the celebratory atmosphere. Lots of birthdays with singing and clapping going on. It made conversation difficult, but eventually most of the groups left and by 10pm it was calm enough to visit a little. M's aunties said they think we make a good team, and told me that this is the happiest they've ever seen him, which was gratifying. I think he's the happiest he's been in the 15 years I've known him, and it's always nice to get independent confirmation of that perception.

He makes me happy, and I make him happy. Relationships are work, but when they work life really is beautiful. Fortunately, the arrival of the Little Man hasn't negatively impacted the connection we have.

He's a charmer

Little Man is really developing a sunny personality. He's almost always smiling and cooing when he's awake. I'm finding him more interesting now that he's more interactive. Newborns are time-intensive, but monotonous, to care for. He seems to respond well to strangers -- and strangers to him. We were at Home Depot at 6am yesterday (what else is open at 6am?) scouting out plants (I picked up an arabian jasmine and a kaffir lily, both in bloom) and I was surprised by how many men were charmed by him.

In a couple of hours Little Man will be meeting his great aunties on his father's side of the family. M is looking forward to showing them the house and all the work we've done on it the past year. Hopefully they'll be able to see past the patches of messiness here and there. I didn't get a chance to tackle the floors like I wanted to -- I spent most of my free time the past two days cleaning up a mess the older cat made on the hardwood floor in the office. Grr. Any way, M is certain The Aunts are going to fall in love with Little Man. It will be interesting to see how it all goes.

Still no go on the nursing front. I've given up. We picked up a double-breast pump on Craig's List and I'm feeding him breastmilk via bottle. I do miss the way breastfeeding feels -- it's incredibly intimate and pleasurable and an amazing bonding experience.

Now that I'm pretty much recovered from childbirth (I still haves some lingering stiffness in the pelvic region) I'm feeling restless. When I'm not exhausted, that is :) There are things I want to do, and with the baby, they're just not an option anymore. No more writer's groups, Ruby Tuesday geek girl meetups, college alumnae meetings, photography expeditions, or visits to the gym. Not during the day, anyway. Little Man is still too young to leave with his father for more than 30 minutes or so. He seems to have this radar that wakes him up when I leave the house without him, and then he gets a little agitated when The Mama doesn't appear. When he's a little older, I'll have to look for meaningful social opportunities that involve other mothers and infants/toddlers -- something that is rather outside my experience. As an unintentional mother, I've never found babies all that interesting, and I confess that the conversations between my previously childless self and parents of young children were only marginally more interesting than their little kids. I'm definitely feeling the pressure of a paradigm shift.

In the meantime, I've been exploring the neighborhood on foot with an eye for future activities. There is a Shaolin Cultural Center a few blocks away that teaches a few of the forms of wushu (Chinese martial arts) as well as Mandarin language and culture. They offer classes for kids starting at age 4. There is also a kuk sool won school here in town, and the Buddhist temple nearby offers tai chi, hula, and bon odori dance practice. I also found out they have a Cub Scouts troop there, but given the recent decision by the organization to formally exclude gay boys and leaders, I doubt the Little Man will be a member. I've also found a Safari Run playland a few blocks away, in addition to the Junior Gym and the Kumon learning center over on B Street. The Martin Luther King Center offers lots of family activities, including swimming classes in the summer, and there are lots of parks in walking distance. All-in-all, this is a good neighborhood to raise a family in. That wasn't what I had in mind when I first noticed the house for sale -- I was more interested in walkability / proximity to Downtown and cultural diversity -- but it is going to work out well since I'm not going to be car-dependent and trapped in the suburbs.

New life & Lost lives

Four years ago my grandfather asked me when I was going to give him a great-grandchild. I told him babies weren't on my bucket-list. When he pressed me to settle down and have children (You're 40 now!) I told him I'd raised two sisters, two step sisters, and two parents--that I was done. We'd had that same exchange on a few previous occasions, but this time he nodded to himself. He seemed to accept what I was saying. I don't know that I was his favorite grandchild, but I was his first grandchild.  I think that I was the only one of his grand-daughters who stayed in touch, and he always seemed to blame himself for my determination to be an "old maid."

He's been gone three years now, and I think he'd be so thrilled to know that I'm settled-down with a good man and that I'm having a baby. I miss him, and I'm sad my son will never know his great-grandfather, a man I loved and respected and was privileged to care for in the final days of his fight with cancer.

My sister Tammy died 4 years ago. She always wanted a family. She married young and bought a house with a white picket fence and then learned that she couldn't have kids. Like me, she was diagnosed with PCOS. The loss of that dream of living happily ever after changed her. She lived "family life" vicariously through our other sister and her children, but it wasn't enough. In her last days she was very sad that she'd never had a child. It seemed to be her one real regret. I think if she'd had a child she would have fought harder to live. I wish she was here to share the miracle of this pregnancy with. I think she would have loved being an Auntie again. And I'm sure she would have driven me just as nuts as she did our sister Terri, with all of her opinions about how to raise our children.

My uncle Jan would be thrilled, too. We had a special connection, Jan and me, and know he'd be happy, too. He'd probably be pressing me to get married, but that's ok. He learned to respect my life-style choices even as he considered me a sinner. It's hard to believe he's been gone for 15 months already. The time has just flown by.

So much of my family has passed away.  So many loved ones that I wish I could introduce my son to when he arrives. I feel sad about that, but try not to let it settle too deeply on me. That last thing I want to do is plunge into some sort of depression that will be difficult to shake.

A new life is entering the world soon. There is no replacing the ones who have passed away before him, but I'll tell him stories about Big Jan and Grandpa Hank and Auntie Tam and he'll know them in his own way. That's the beauty of language and memory. We're immortal as long as we're remembered.

Mothering

I hobbled through life for many years as an emotional cripple. I loved with everything I was capable of, and sometimes it was enough. And sometimes it was not. But in those days, it was the best I could do. And in those days, I was aware of my emotional disability, and I was grateful that I could not have children.

In my early 30's everything changed. I wanted to grow. I wanted to become more fully me. I just didn't know how. Well, that isn't quite right. I knew that in order to effect meaningful change in my life, I needed to develop new, adult coping mechanisms. I just didn't know how to do that. I looked to the people in my life to learn how and made a very poor choice, landing myself in a same-sex relationship with a friend-turned-lover that was both physically and emotionally abusive.

And within months for embarking on that relationship, people I loved started dying. Four people in two years: my grandmother, my mother, my mother-figure, and a good friend. I went from an emotional cripple to an emotional quadraplegic. I couldn't cope. I understood the grieving process intellectually, but didn't know how to walk the path. Paralyzed, I huddled in on myself for a couple of years waiting for something, anything to change. And then it did. The woman I was involved with finally realized what I'd known after 6 months into our relationship, and broke things off.

Within two months I was in therapy. Something in me found the resolve to seek professional help. I wanted to understand myself, understand why I'd chosen an abusive relationship with a woman when I'd never tolerated anything of the sort from a man. And I wanted those adult coping mechanisms, damnit!

Therapy was the hardest thing I've ever done. It was 18 months of shoveling shit out of the barn in my head. Many times I wanted to quit, but I didn't, because I knew that if I stopped, I'd never start up again. It was just that painful.

But oh so worth it.

When I went in to my first appointment I told my therapist that I wanted help developing new coping mechanisms for today and tomorrow, and that I didn't want to revisit things deep in the past. I was very adamant about that. I was also very wrong.

In order to develop adult coping mechanisms, I needed to recognize the genesis of the ones that weren't working for me. And in order to determine why I'd chosen to remain in an abusive relationship with a woman, I needed to understand my relationship with my mother and how it shaped me, emotionally.

For years I'd blamed my being an emotional cripple on my father, a Viet Nam Vet whom I'd never liked even as a toddler, and who was physically, mentally and emotionally abusive all through my childhood. And while, certainly, his style of "fathering" was damaging, it was my mother's "mothering" skills, or lack thereof, which shaped my emotional landscape.

My mother was adopted. It's something she never got over, that very fundamental abandonment, and the onotological angst (Who am I? Why am I?) haunted her. She was herself an emotional cripple. She wanted closeness but feared it. She pulled with one hand and pushed with the other. She married to get away from her evangelical parents, and children were an accidental by-product of that choice. She didn't want children, and she didn't want motherhood. She hated keeping house and by the time I was five I was doing dishes and laundry, dressing my younger sisters, changing diapers, etc. I feared her temper. I kicked her once and she told me if I did it again, she'd break my leg. I believed her. She actually chased after me with a bullwhip once. When I was injured, I was afraid to go to her for care, because she was so impersonal and rough. But she had a wonderful voice and she told good stories and sometimes she was warm and loving. My best memories are of her playing with my hair.

She and my father fought, often violently, and after really bad fights one of them would disappear for a few days. But one day -- one day she went away and didn't come back.

And that was what crippled me.

See, children don't understand the world, but as children, we do try, and we make the best sense of it we can. In the absence of explanations that make sense to us, we connect the dots and come to our own conclusions. We make up our own meanings, our own stories, and we live inside them.

From a child's perspective, a mother is someone who loves you always, no matter what, and will always be there. From a child's perspective, when Mommy leaves you, it's because there is something wrong with you. When my mother left, my sisters and I made it mean that we were unlovable and unworthy -- that there was something wrong with us, something so wrong that even Mommy couldn't stand to be our mother. We internalized it and forgot the story we'd made up. We lived it.

And I took up the mantle of mothering. I thought that it was my fault that my sisters didn't have a mother anymore, so I took it on, as best I could. As best as any nine-year-old could. My father re-married and I took on my step-sisters, too, since their mother, like my father, was all too eager to offload parenting responsibilities so they could go play.

I became an enabler, a rescuer, a fixer. I became controlling and manipulative.  I craved peace and harmony, and to my young eyes, the familiar, the status quo, was the closest I could come to that.  I developed skills and coping mechanisms designed to perpetuate those conditions. It was a comfortable, if miserable existence. In therapy, I learned to call it what it was, neurosis. Jung said that neurosis is "the suffering of the soul which has not discovered its meaning" and that pretty much says it all.

So in the course of therapy, I discovered the story I'd made up about the little girl who was unworthy of her mother's love, and I learned to comfort my inner child and nurture her (instead of everyone else). I let go of my strangle-hold on my old ways of being and opened up to learning new tools and ways of being. I worked out my mommy-issues and my daddy-issues and took ownership of my life, my relationships, my emotions, thoughts, and attitudes. I fully inhabit me.

I'm emotionally and psychologically adult now. I am capable of loving and being loved without building barriers to protect myself from fears of loss and abandonment. I've buried three more family members in as many years and come through those experiences feeling enriched, and at times, transformed.

My biggest challenge so far has been dealing with my youngest sister, whose mental illness and refusal to accept the help and care she needs had challenged the limits of my ability to cope. Today she's in an institutional setting, the enforced structure of which seems to be giving her the basis she needs to examine and rebuild her life.

I'm facing a new challenge soon, the challenge of mothering my son, and I feel confident that I am up to it.  Finally, at 44, I think I'm grown-up enough to be a good parent, to raise a child without fear of perpetuating the emotional and psychological issues that have plagued my family. And what a tremendous feeling it is!

Family Reactions

My family has reacted very positively to the news of my pregnancy.

Friends and family were aware that I've not been feeling well the past couple of months so it seemed important to let them know that there wasn't anything terribly wrong. We've had 3 deaths in the family around this time in the past 3 years so everyone has been holding their breaths wondering what was going to happen next. One of my sisters is dead and the other has literally descended into madness, so needless to say, my parents are giddy with relief. My step-sisters and my friends have all been supportive and congratulatory.

M got a more mixed reaction from his family.

His father is pleased, his sister is very happy, and his mother is upset. She's had a rough year, economically, and she had to take in her elder mentally-handicapped brother, and she wants her son back home in Canada, someday. Him buying a house here in the States and then getting an American knocked-up puts a damper on that idea.  Hers is a disappointing reaction, but I'm sure she'll come around. Now that he's told her and she's gotten upset, he has a good excuse to stay at his father's house, where he grew up, away from all the cats he's allergic to and the uncle he has difficulty relating to. It's too much uncomfortableness for someone with his level of sensitivity.

Meanwhile, M is a bit of a nervous wreck and can't wait to get home. To me, in the States.

Meanwhile, I miss him. Home isn't quite home without him.

M will wait to tell his extended family and friends until after the amnio results come through in a few weeks. It doesn't make sense to let everyone know and then have to retract the announcement if it turns out we're going to terminate the pregnancy. It could be rather painful, actually. I'm trying not to regret letting most of the people on my side know, since they're all so positive and excited and I'd hate to have to give them bad news.

Ah well.  Telling others about the pregnancy helps the reality of it sink in. I'm still partly in a state of disbelief. How could something that was never supposed to happen to me suddenly happen after 20 years? Life is weird. Life finds a way.

Christmas tide

As per usual, M and I are in different countries during this holiday. He is in Canada visiting his family and friends, and I am in Central California, doing the same.

I'm staying with my friend Nettie again this Christmas, outside Santa Barbara. I've known her since she was in the womb. I literally laid hands on her mother when she was in labor and prayed for Jesus to take the pain away. I was 4 and a half at the time, and I was already in the flower of my grandparent's evangelism :)

We've lost contact intermittently over the years, Nettie and me. I moved back East after high school while she got married and made babies. We didn't see each other again for 14 years, and that was for my grandmother's funeral. I had every intention of remaining in contact, but at the time I was involved with a very possessive woman, and in the couple of years after Grandmother passed I also lost my mother, my mentor/mother-figure, and a good friend. With each death I withdrew more and more, and about a year after the last death I realized that my coping mechanisms weren't working for me, so I started grief-counseling and therapy. I was really starting to live life again when my sister took ill, died 2 years later, and then my family was hit with a series of cancer diagnoses and deaths. Yeah, that ugly.

Anyway, I found Nettie again through that wonder of social networking, the big FB, and in the past 2 years we've gotten very close. Close like sisters. She had been close to my sister Tammy, the one who died, so I find that I can share the grief of her loss in the company of someone who isn't going to make a drama or tragedy of it.  It is what it is. What happened, happened and we miss her.

And boy do I miss her during Christmas. It was her favorite holiday. She tended to go all-out with hosting and entertaining, cooking, decorating, gift-giving. She loved a good party, Tammy did. And Nettie is a lot like Tammy that way. She is unfazed by the presence of 30 or 40 people in her house all talking and carrying on. She's got that Portuguese family thing going on -- the more the merrier.

But even with all the people mobbing the house she still found time to talk to me about the pregnancy, to reassure me with regards to some of my fears, and to offer to be there for me in the delivery room, if I wanted. I feel very touched by that offer. M has surprised me with his fortitude regarding hospitals and home health care, etc, after my battle with septicemia but I'm not sure he's up to being my full-time partner in the delivery room. He's just too empathetic. Even if my sister Terri wasn't, well, indisposed, I probably wouldn't want her there. As an RN she can be particularly nasty when her nursing standards aren't being met. I've seen (and heard) her in action and it is not pleasant.

Even though I've only been here for a couple of days, I've spent some time with my mother's brother, another friend of the family, and saw my parents and step-sisters and nieces and nephew. I noticed that spending time with my family still feels awkward at times. I never really bonded with my step-sisters (twins are a unit sufficient unto themselves) and my father and I had such an abusive, tumultuous relationship that the truce we worked on just before hell broke lose still feels fragile. I know he's wary around me, like he expects me to behave like my sister Terri does, but we're world's apart, temperment-wise. On the plus side, my step-mother and I are finally comfortable together, which is a blessing. Despite my mild discomfort it was a good Christmas. Everyone was full of holiday cheer and excitement for the baby, and I collected a lot of recommendations and advice.

Given that I worked very hard this year to slim down, one of my fears is of gaining the weight back during my pregnancy. My doctor and nutritionist have been working with me on a 0 - 10 lbs plan, but hearing about the 50, 60, and 70 pounds that my sisters and friends gained during theirs really freaked me out. It doesn't matter that most of it came off during breastfeeding, etc. With my PCOS-related hormone issues weight reduction is nightmarishly difficult and with my luck, breastfeeding would not cause the weightloss they experienced. So my goal is 0 - 10 lbs net gained. So far I'm at 3.

M still hasn't told his parents about the baby. He doesn't want the news to get out to the extended family until we're sure of the status, so he's waiting until after Xmas. That, and he's certain his mother is going to react poorly to the news, which makes him even more reluctant. She's one of those... hmm... glass half-empty types, with some over-protective tendencies. In other words, she's a fairly typical mother ;)

Ah, the Holidays. Such a love-hate relationship most of us have with this Season. To quote my father: "Smile goddammit, it's Christmas!"