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.

Eudaimonia -- Well-being and The Good Life

I am the first to admit that I have a good life. A beautiful home, a generous and loving partner who is an excellent breadwinner, and a healthy, adorable baby boy. I'm lucky and I know it. Some days, as I'm doing the mundane household chores or consoling a teething baby, I am visited with a sense of the surreal.  Never, in a thousand imaginings of how I wanted my life to be, would I have imagined myself being Susie Homemaker balancing a baby on my hip as I see my man off to work.

Sure, I enjoyed the kept-woman period and did my best to enjoy being freed from a 9-to-5 job even as part of me resented being dependent and without enough income to support myself. My partner assisted me in growing my internet storefront business as best he could during the economic crash, and he was incredibly supportive as my family went through one health crisis after another. But finding out I was pregnant, well, that was a huge life-changer. And now, as the Little Man reaches the 8 month mark, as my body still recovers from the effects of pregnancy and childbirth, the reality of my life as an unintentional mother is both incredibly real, and incredibly surreal.

Little Man's milestone last month was cutting two teeth. This month, it seems to be locomotion. He started off with the military-style forearms and toes crawl at the beginning of the month and this week he's crawling on his hands and knees. And really getting around. I went to brush my teeth and freaked out when he wasn't anywhere near where I left him. He's also figured out how to pull himself up to a standing position. The first two days he fell over whenever I wasn't watching him like a hawk, but today he's stable on those sturdy little legs. He's falling on his face when his arms give out, but the thunks on the hardwood floor aren't quite as alarmingly loud. I'm kissing and rubbing boo-boos, mostly on his head. It's time to take the next step of child-proofing the plugs and adding baby-gates.

The benefit to all his physical exertion is he's finally napping for about an hour twice a day. The drawback is he's gotten very clingy -- perhaps from the pain / discomfort and the scariness of falling. He often cries when I put him down, so I basically wear the baby carrier 16 hours a day and carry him around in it until he pushes at me to let me know he wants out. If I put him down and move too far away, he starts to cry. Finding time for bio-breaks has become a challenge.

Solid foods are hit and miss. There are days when he won't eat cereal or pureed foods at all. Since my milk dried up he's been on formula, so his poops are really stinky, but less frequent. I worry that he's not getting enough calories, but whenever I pick him up he feels very solid. He's not a chubby baby by any stretch of the imagination, but neither is he a skinny one.

It seems like I'm never alone anymore. I am a person who enjoys my solitude. I think that has been the most difficult adjustment. I'm starting back to the gym, though, and my neighbor is coming over twice a week in the morning to give me a chance to workout, so Little Man is going to learn to adjust to not having me around all the time. I hope.

The acid reflux still gets away from me about once a week. I'm managing it with eating a boring diet and medication. I've also had a half-dozen spastic colon episodes. Very painful. Like labor pains. I'm trying to reduce the amount of time Little Man spends on my chest and belly, since his 20-plus pounds pressing into my body seems to aggravate things. I've had the x-rays and CT scan, the upper GI imaging, and over 30 different blood tests and aside from exceptionally large ovaries (courtesy of PCOS) there is nothing unusual. I'm in excellent health, though borderline anemic. I had eliminated all supplements when I noticed that pills weren't resting well on my acidic stomach, but now that it seems to be (mostly) under control, I'm taking them a few times a week. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing.

At present I'm 75# lighter than I was the day I delivered Little Man. I'd like to drop another 30 this year. We'll see. I think I can manage 3 pounds a month. I'm wearing large women's tops and extra-large bottoms. Right now my excess weight is all below the belly button, courtesy of 10 years of sitting at a desk. I'm looking forward to focusing on my abdomen and thighs at the gym and getting my upper and lower body in better proportion to each other. Given that my mother and sister both were mermaid-shaped, I'm thinking I'm probably going to be bigger on the bottom no matter what I do, but my doc thinks the softness of the muscles in my lower abdomen has something to do with the spastic colon problem, so it's important to get that area of my body back in tone.

Through it all, M has been wonderfully supportive. He knows this isn't the life I'd imagined for myself, and he checks in with me a couple of times a month to make sure I'm doing ok. Believe it or not, the life I was building toward was living in a small house on the coast or in the mountains, alone, with lots of books and paper and time to meditate and garden. I'd imagined my various friends and partners visiting me, but never staying for long. For all my capacity to be a social person, I'm a hermit at heart. He's such an introvert that he considers me an extrovert. Heh.

It's all good though. I'm happy and pretty much healthy. The baby is happy and healthy. So is M. There are things I want to do, and they'll wait. Right now, it's important to be there for the Little Man.

End surreality check :)

Holiday travels, losing weight, and my sweet baby boy

A month has passed since my last post. It's been a busy month.

Little Man and I came back from Puerto Vallarta with colds, but by the 20th of December it looked like we'd kicked them. Then the cold virus caught a second wind and we were both feeling lousy again, just in time for the trip to Canada.

It was below zero on both the C and the F temperature scales in Winnipeg. I wore Little Man in the Baby Bjorn most of the time, with my coat pulled around us both. He stayed warm, though his poor face got chafed from rubbing against my sweaters. Most of the fabrics I wear are soft and light so they don't bother his skin, but fabrics I can wear year-round in California can only be worn there in the summertime.

The change in climate really created sinus issues for the Little Man -- saline drops weren't working to clear him up so I ended up giving him benedryl so he could drink his milk. To make things even more interesting, my breastmilk dried up shortly after we got back from Mexico, so the poor little guy was on formula. Stinky coming out, formula is.

The visit with M's family was great. Little Man is blessed with an easy disposition so he didn't seem to mind being passed around between the 20+ people at the gathering on Christmas Day. He just needed to spend a few minutes with me every hour to re-charge and he was good. His great-grandmothers were over-joyed to see him. I'm a bit of a sap and cried when they held him.

We were inundated with gifts for the Little Man. Fortunately, we had a second suitcase that was lightly packed so we could bring most of it back with us. Lots of toys and cute little outfits. We were there a week and nearly every day we were off somewhere doing something -- Boxing Day at the Mall, seeing The Hobbit, dinner with Cousins, making sure M's mother got her fair share of time with her grandchild, etc. The nice thing about all the spare adults around was that I got some baby-free time and much-needed naps. Best of all, M's father is even better with the Little Man than he is, so I felt comfortable leaving the baby with him for a couple of hours while M showed me some of his old stomping grounds and tourist sights. I told him he was very fortunate to have grown up in a population center rather than in some small town on the Plains. The capitol of Manitoba had the financial resources to fund the education of a child prodigy, and he had access to universities and college-educated people in far larger numbers than he otherwise would have.

Thankfully, the trip home was a lot less eventful than the leg to Canada was. No cancelled / redirected flights that meant hours waiting for standby and then traveling a day later -- no, just a plane that wouldn't start because it was too cold outside. We left Winnipeg an hour late and had to run to catch our connecting flight in Denver: 40 gates wearing a baby and two shoulder bags! M waited to get the baby seat and the rollaway bag. Fortunately, the airline held the flight for 15 minutes so that we and 40 other people wouldn't be stranded. Little Man was an angel on the flights. Once again he charmed everyone around us, and he fussed very little.

It was nice to get home. My old friend Dato and his partner took advantage of the house-sitting offer which got them away from the rain and cold along the Oregon coast. It was mostly sunny and dry here, so they got to spend a couple of days exploring San Francisco. The weather in SF is always better in winter than in summer. Funny how that works :)

Now that we're home, I want to start working on getting my milk production going again, but before we do that, I need to tackle the intra-abdominal pressure that is giving me both acid reflux and constipation. It really sucks that I'd never had a problem with either until Little Man was born and now the problems are big enough to affect how I sleep, how I eat, and what medications and supplements I take. I'm pretty anemic these days, but I can't take iron or even just a multi-vitamin with iron because it really binds me up and even stool softeners and milk of magnesia can take 3 days to produce a bowel movement. I saw the doctor and we're trying a week of really upping the fiber in my diet to see if that produces desired changes, otherwise, it is on to scanning or scoping. I've a feeling something is going on in my colon -- literally -- whenever I bend over I can feel something move inside me, like the kick of a baby or the snick of a ligament being pulled and then settling back into place.

That, and I've dropped nearly 15# since Thanksgiving, without trying, and much of that time with reduced or no breastmilk production. Call me silly, but I think the milk drying up is a sign something is going on.

With regards to weightloss, I've been really good about watching my portion sizes. I ate my fair share of Christmas treats -- but not too many. A sweet-tooth was never my problem, nor was junk-food. No, I was a gourmand with portion-control issues and a serious hormonal imbalance.  Lovely enough, having Little Man seems to have balanced out a lot of the hormonal weirdness of PCOS, which has made losing weight the past 7 months much easier than the prior few years. So I'm down 70# from my pre-pregnancy weight. My goal is to drop another 30# in 2013. That should put me solidly in the size 12 to 14 range and my BMI in the 20s, where it belongs, and down 160# from my highest weight in 2007. After that, it's all maintenance. I've three very good reasons to keep my weight down and be healthy and fit: me, Little Man, and M. I want to be around to see Little Man grow up and help M raise him, and given that I'll be 45 in a couple of months, its important that I take my health very seriously. I'm not 30 anymore :)

Once Little Man is over his cold I'm going to get us both on a sleep-play-feeding schedule. He's dabbling with solid foods, but I'd like to get him eating more. He's not crawling yet, but he does wriggle himself around pretty well on his belly. He's getting close to cutting a bottom tooth, I think, and he's chewing on everything he can get his hands on. He's passing things from hand-to-hand now. He knows his name. He's babbling more, and he's getting good at vocalizing when he's unhappy (grumbling) as well as laughing and cooing when he's happy. He's a fun, sweet baby, and most days I feel incredibly blessed.

2012 was an amazing year for me. Lots of changes. I've got high hopes for 2013.

Processing Motherhood

It is good to know that all the feedback I received about mother-in-laws mellowing once they meet their grandchildren is true. The visit from M's mother went very well. Better than either he or I expected, based upon her previous visit and comments regarding the pregnancy. Unfortunately, I had a GERD episode in the middle of her visit so I didn't get to do much with her, however, it was a blessing that she was here to take care of the Little Man while I spent the day in bed running a temp and coughing up aspirated stomach acid and phlegm. I've a feeling that my LES valve has been damaged somehow either during or after the pregnancy, because I can't lay down with anything in my stomach or it will come up. The back of M's head can testify to that, poor dear. I'm waiting to hear back from my doctor as to what to do next.

I've been (loosely) following the Dr. Sears approach to Attachment Parenting because it makes sense to me. My goal is to foster a strong sense of security in the Little Man, the kind of security that comes from trusting that the adults in his life will meet his needs. It is my hope that I'll never lose that trust, because one of the things I've been processing as I've been caring for my son are the early memories of my own mother, and my lack of trust in her.

I should state that my mom wasn't a bad mother per se... she just wasn't a good one. She wasn't very maternal or nurturing -- I recently confirmed this with her best friend from my childhood years, wanting to make sure my child's memory and Reality squared-up. Getting married and having children was, for her, the cost of freedom. Being a wife and mother, however, was not terribly interesting to her, and she put both roles behind her when I was 9.  I chalk it off as a Me-Generation thing.

Anyway... I can remember as early as 4 or 5 not telling my mother about an injury because I knew she'd hurt me in the process of attending to it, and knew she wouldn't provide any comfort to offset the pain. It was not an isolated incident, either. I should have gotten stitches on that occasion, and still have the scar to remember it by. Even today I am convinced that the ugly scar is better than the care would have been.

As a consequence of my lack of trust in my parents (my VietNam Vet father was a whole other story), I had trust issues until I entered grief-therapy in my mid-Thirties. Since I know what lasting impressions parenting styles can have on children, I'm determined to create and maintain a sense of security and trust with my son -- even if it means less sleep for now :)

Several times a day, Little Man meets my eyes and smiles this special smile that causes something inside me to flutter. It's a bit like the tearful-wonder feeling I get when my milk lets down. That smile lets me know I'm doing it right, this motherhood thing. Evolution at work -- the maternal instinct is alive and well in me.

This weekend is a just-us weekend, except for a BBQ at a friend's house, and the following weekend M's father and sister arrive for a week-long visit. Fortunately for them, there really isn't much work left to be done on the house, so they'll actually get to enjoy a California vacation with the newest addition to the family. Then a week later it's my step-mother and step-sister. My step-mom is willing to stay for several days, if we want. M seems to be pretty comfortable with her, her nursy-talk about illnesses notwithstanding.

Breast v. Bottle -- and 6 weeks of heartburn

Little Man isn't nursing. He doesn't want to nurse. He's made it abundantly clear that he finds nursing too much work / too frustrating compared to bottle-feeding.  I've seen the lactation consultant three times and I've got nipple shields and gravity-feed mini-tubing, and he's fine with them as long as he gets his milk straight away -- if there are any delays or kinks he pitches a fit. I'm trying to decide if messing with all this paraphernalia in hopes of getting him back on the breast is worth it. Admittedly, pumping 30oz of milk a day is a hassle, and the thought needing to pump for a couple of years is unexciting to say the least. The need to have a bottle ready in the wee hours, instead of just popping a nipple in his mouth so we can both get back to sleep, is disappointing. On the other hand, we're avoiding thrush and some of the other problems that go with nursing, and given my extreme sensitivity, that is something to be very happy about. In my observation, children that have been nursed for several months tend to be very secure -- they don't suffer from separation anxiety, etc -- so I've been trying to hold Little Man the way I would if he was nursing, rather than just propping him up and popping a bottle in his mouth (which I admit to doing sometimes).

I've been having problems with heartburn since we got home from the hospital -- even acid reflux and night coughing -- which is completely foreign to me. I've got (had) an iron stomach and now quite a lot of food isn't agreeing with me (yogurt, most dairy, sometimes eggs, most meats, fruits, juices, coffee, breads, etc). I've had to go buy protein drinks and protein bars to try to keep my intake up because I'm dropping 3 to 4 pounds a week and I'm concerned about the impact on my breastmilk supply. Even pumping ~30oz a day I'm having to supplement with 4 to 8 oz of formula a day for the past week. I'm hoping it's just because of the 5-6 week growth spurt I've heard about. I'm on a 14-day course of Prilosec to see if that eliminates the heartburn problem. Meanwhile I'm enjoying eating low-acid foods (like ice cream). I'll take any calories I can get right now.

Little Man's father went back to work today. I liked having him at home -- I really enjoy his company -- but it will be good to get into a routine during the week. Starting Monday.