From cheerfully childless to mindful mommy

I'd be lying if I said that the transition from being cheerfully childless to motherhood has been a smooth one. My life is so radically different that is almost as if I woke up in an alternate universe.

I really loved the life I had before. I loved being able to pick up and go somewhere on a moment's notice. Loved the freedom to take a course or sit and write or stay up all night hanging out with friends. I had a few lovers, each unique and wonderful, each aware of each other and my love of them all. Even with death and dying in my family, such heavy subjects, I felt a lightness of being. I felt free from all the constraints I'd placed on myself over the years. I'd finally grown up and become fully me. And then my female best friend goaded me into recognizing that I'd fallen in love with M and accepting his invitation to move in with him. He supported me after my grandfather's death. We traveled. I supported him through a grueling start-up. We bought a house. And then I got pregnant out of the blue.

Yes, I miss my old life. I'm giving myself permission to miss it, and to come to terms with the changes and the challenges.

The loss of my independence has been the most difficult to adapt to. It would probably be easier if M and I had family closer by, or if I had more friends in the area, because I could call on them to spot me for things like doctor appointments or haircuts or shopping. As it is, I have to pack the Little Man up and bring him everywhere I go. It can be an ordeal even if it's just to go weed outside.  I find it damned inconvenient that I can't just climb up onto a ladder to clear the gutters or empty the dishwasher or take a shower without having to make some sort of provision for my son, especially now that he is crawling around and has figured out how to open cabinets and drawers. And really, there's nothing relaxing about showering listening to a baby howl with displeasure because he's trapped in a walker or a bouncer or otherwise restricted in movement. At best, I get to shower every other day. Any longer than that and the smell of baby puke and sour milk and my own body gets to me.

I miss being able to focus on myself. Before I got pregnant, I was determined to get down to a normal weight range and I made good progress. In having a baby at my age I made a further commitment to being healthy and fit. I'm down 100 pounds in the past 2.5 years. I really want to drop another 30 pounds but I've hit a plateau and my visits to the gym are too infrequent. I try working out at home but the Little Man either wants to participate or wander off. It's rather difficult to monitor him while tying to make sure I don't pull a muscle or otherwise injure myself due to inattentiveness. My doctor says I've done amazingly well and I should focus on maintenance more than further weight loss. He says he's concerned that my focus on dropping more weight will become sabotaging if I get too discouraged. Meanwhile, I'm fighting this near-constant "I'm hungry" feeling that the doc says to feed with warm water. I'm almost chronically under-hydrated since I started breast-feeding, and even after my milk dried up I still struggle to drink enough water -- I'm just too busy playing mommy.

The changes that pregnancy and childbirth have wrought on my body have mostly been awful. My body still doesn't feel like it belongs to me. I often find myself walking funny because there is a cramp in my pelvic area, usually the hip-flexor muscle, I think. My ass aches when I get up after sitting for a while. My lower abdominal muscles, while never particularly strong, seem to resist my efforts to tone them up--from the waist down I feel gelatinous. I'm ok with the changes to my breasts and nipples. I actually like them more, with the weightloss and the changes from pregnancy and lactation -- they are less lumpy than they used to be, and I'm fortunate that I didn't experience mastitis or thrush. The acid reflux and the intestinal spasms have been agonizing.  Since I'm not lactating anymore I switched from Tagamet to Prilosec and it's made a world of difference. Now there is occasional discomfort rather than a constant mid-level discomfort that ramped up to must-go-vomit-stomach-acid-now a few times a week, often a few times a day.

But before I sound too much like some whiny, ungrateful, unfit mother, I should say that I love my new life, too. I love the home I've made for the three of us. I'm happy here, even if I do miss my friends. I've got my patch of dirt to dig in and grow things. I am grateful that M's brilliant mind, which is what initially attracted me to him, is also attractive to so many companies here in Silicon Valley. He makes a good living and we try to live modestly on his income so we can still put money aside. Yes, I'm itching to take some courses and get myself marketable again so I can feel less dependent, but that will have to wait another year or so. I really enjoy his company and he enjoys mine. We talk to each other often, we snuggle when the baby's needs allow, and we both agree that having a baby together has made our bond deeper.

And our son! Wow, what an amazing little guy. Yes, he's teething right now and I really want to run screaming from the house after his nth meltdown, but he's got this wonderful smile and even when he's crying he tries to smile for me sometimes. He's developing so fast and he's becoming his own little person and even as I struggle not to create habits in him I'll regret later, I can't help but scoop him up and love on him. He has so much joy in him and I'm loving experiencing the world from his perspective. I'm experiencing an aspect of life that I'd never thought I would (parenthood) and while it's definitely a mixed bag, I've no regrets. I'm trying to be mindful of what I feed him, trying to keep his chemical-load to a minimum. I'm thinking about what stories I read him and what television programs he sees so I'm aware of what social and cultural norms are being passed on to him. I'm trying to create a safe space for him to grow into the person he wants to be --whatever that looks like. And seeing what a fine job some of my friends have done with their own children, I've got some good role-models and sources of of moral support.

Time flies

The past few weeks have been busy ones.

Little Man seems to be developing more rapidly. He moved his walker toward me for the first time. He's started doing repetitive gestures, like putting his pacifier in his mouth and pulling it out, again and again. I notice him inspecting things with his hands and his eyes. This morning he was laying on my chest and we were doing some eye-gazing. He reached his little hand out and stroked my cheek. I smiled. He stroked my cheek again. And again. I stroked the side of his face with my fingertips. His eyes widened and his mouth made this little 'O' of surprise. He stroked my face and I stroked his, too, and then he smiled beatifically at me. It was a moment of real connection and intimacy that left me glowing inside.

My days seem to fly by. We still don't have a routine down yet, but I'm working on it.

During the day he naps for very short periods of time, usually 10 to 20 minutes, every two to three hours. Every once in a while he will nap for an hour or more, but it is sadly quite rare, so I rarely have time to myself to do the simplest things, never mind write blog posts. I'm somehow managing to keep up with laundry and most days, the dishes, but the floors and bathrooms are rather neglected.  To top things off, the acid reflux is still making me cough at night, and I've had laryngitis for weeks. It's pretty miserable.

The new fence we had installed looks phenomenal. I hadn't realized how much effort it took not to notice the ugliness of the old fence when I was on the patio or gardening in the back yard. Of course the reason we replaced it wasn't primarily aesthetic-- it was safety. It was leaning rather dangerously in a few spots and dry rot and termites had damaged enough of the boards that I worried Alex might scuttle through by moving a board aside. But no more.  We're in the process of water sealing the fence, which is time consuming given that it's 220 feet long, 6 feet high, with another foot of lattice.

 Now I'm looking forward to updating the landscaping, moving some plants around. I've got a hydrangea that needs to be moved now that the city cut down the big trees in the parking strip-- it's getting too much afternoon sun. And the impatiens solenii that I planted this spring are getting too much sun, too. Conversely, the previous owners planted day lilies and African irises on the north facing side of the house, so they hardly bloom. I'll be moving them and planting them around the bottlebrush tree, which produces a natural herbicide that keeps grasses and weeds at bay, but which doesn't seem to bother bulbs/corms. The Arabian jasmine and the hibiscus will be going into the ground soon, once things cool down a bit more. I still have to decide whether I'm going put the wisteria in the ground or leave it in the planter. The nice thing about living in California is that it's rarely a bad time to plant, and nearly everything grows. The difficulty lies in finding the time to garden with an infant needing my attention.

We're looking at taking a short holiday somewhere so we can get the flight experience in with Little Man before the big year-end trip to meet M's grandmothers. His passport arrived in the mail this week, which opens up the possibility of a trip to Cabo San Lucas as well as Vegas and Hawaii.  M would prefer somewhere tropical-- it's been a year since our trip to Bali. I'm just not sure I want our trial flight to be 5 hours long (Hawaii).

4 months already

My friend DaTo rode into town last weekend and stayed through Thursday morning. He was an easy guest. I enjoy his energy and low-key company, and Little Man really seemed to take to him. 15 years ago we were a couple -- today we are good friends. It doesn't make sense to me that people fall in love and later break up and never have anything to do with each other again. Relationships change -- this is inevitable -- but if we really love someone, what we love about them doesn't change. That is why I think it is important to be grown-ups and find a way to let go of the past romantic relationship and grow a new one that works in the new circumstances. It is how I maintain a rich life full of love and connection that spans decades and continents. I am fortunate that my partner, M, has known me so long that he is (mostly) comfortable with these apparently unusual circumstances. He's met most of my previous partners because I'm fortunate to still be close with most of them, and so far he hasn't objected to anyone. I'm hoping that as we raise Little Man he will follow in my footsteps with regards to forming relationships and maintaining them through their various iterations. I think he'll be a happier, more connected individual as a result.

This weekend is going to be a flurry of activity. We're taking advantage of the Smithsonian Free Museum Day to visit CuriOdyssey, which is just a mile or so from our house. I think I'll be bringing Little Man there quite a lot over the upcoming years. We'll also be visiting an open house on a house for sale a few blocks from us. We've recently had our home appraised for refinancing, and it's come back far better than we anticipated -- this home for sale is 300 sq feet smaller than ours, has had similar renovations, and is for sale at $50k more than we bought ours for last year. If it sells as fast as the other houses in our area have been, we'll feel pretty good about our decision to buy this place, as well as the price we paid for it.

We're also having the old fences taken down and a new one installed starting on Monday, which means I need to find time to trim back the plantings along the property line in order to make sure the fencers have access and to minimize damage to the landscaping. The fence will be redwood in the board-on-board good neighbor style with a foot of square lattice on top. It will pull together the Mediterr-Asian style we've been creating for the house and grounds. Last weekend we removed the ivy that had over-grown about 50 feet of fence. It revealed a lot of damage to the fence, so we're hoping that the neighbors will agree not to allow ivy to grow on the fence any more.  It's difficult to communicate this because they are a Mandarin-speaking older couple and their son isn't around very often for translating. But we'll work it out.

Once the fence is completed and water-sealed, we're pretty much done with updates to the house for the year.  We'll start the hunt for a japanese maple as an anchor plant for the back yard, and then that's it until Spring, I think.

Meanwhile, Little Man is growing like mad. We've got his 4 month check up next week, and I'll find out how much he weighs and how long he is at that time.  I figure he's at least 15 pounds and 24 inches now. He had a persistent diaper rash that didn't respond to the typical ointments, so we switched to an anti-fungal and it's mostly cleared up.  I think he's starting to teethe as he's using people's fingers as chew toys and he's drooling a lot. He's falling asleep around 9pm and waking for a short feeding break around 1am, then sleeping until 5am-ish. I try to take a nap with him in the afternoon so I'm not feeling sleep deprived.

I'm still struggling with feelings of inadequacy with regards to taking care of the housework and the baby. I'm also trying to take an online class, because I don't want my brain getting any mushier. I'm still lactating so I'm still subject to hormonally-influenced emotional swings, which makes things difficult for me and M, both. I find myself taking things personally that I normally don't, and getting irritable very easily. Ah well.  I'm doing my best to be ok with it, knowing that this, too, shall pass.

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.