{Originally published on We Make Three}

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that I’ve been married to Michael for nearly 20 years. This man saved me. I’m not kidding. And I will always love him for that.

I was only 20 when we got married. Even at that young age, I realized that I had everything to learn about life. We both understood that starting a family would wait while we developed ourselves, our careers, and focused on our marriage. We had nothing for our start together other than the china and crystal from our wedding registry. Not even a couch. It was a meager beginning, but still a heady time for us. We had nothing but each other and our independence. I love how we started our relationship, and I love that we sacrificed and made our way without any help.

Life happened to us. We bought our home, built our careers, and enjoyed our lives together. We got our dog, a little Yorkie I named Chester, who became the perfect vessel for my maternal outpourings. We talked about kids. A lot. Michael is very practical. Pragmatic. He looks at the facts and makes very accurate assessments. We discussed the commitment, sacrifice, and change in our lifestyle that having a family would require. We were ready.

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Originally published on Fuse Moms

The common denominator of first-time pregnant women is not distended
bellies or compromised bladders. It is not the fear of another human
being exiting their body. Instead, they pursue one goal – preparation.
Whether it’s stocking up on diapers or painting a nursery in a soothing
color, these gals feel the need to prepare for their new arrival. For
me, it was childbirth classes…

Round One

We are at the hospital’s four-session course about childbirth. The room is chock full of rotund ladies and their husbands.

The
nurse who is teaching the class has grown children. I’d prefer to talk
to someone who carries recent scars… I mean memories… of the joy of
childbirth. To chafe me even more, she is wearing a waist-cinching
belt. I don’t think anyone in this room can imagine fitting in a belt
again. This woman is cruel. I want to run her over with my car.

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Originally published on For Me For Once

Jackson will be two soon. Samantha will be five in January. They are
the brightest parts of my life (along with my husband), and I can’t
remember my life without them. But I CAN, and do, remember being
pregnant with both of them. The time that I carried each of them was
sweet, fun, exciting, depressing, painful, overwhelming, scary,
life-changing and meaningful, all at once. Some days I look back on my
pregnancies with each of them and think “Dear God, how did I do that
twice?” and at other moments I wonder why everyone doesn’t have twelve.
For some reason I’m thinking a lot lately about being pregnant, or
rather NOT being pregnant, and how I feel about that, and I’ll tell you
why. (NO, it’s not because I am pregnant, so you can leave that thought
by the side of the road. Seriously. No seriously, knock it off - I am
NOT pregnant again. Fine, whatever. Think what you want.)

Here’s
why. Right now, Jackson is the age that Samantha was when we conceived
him. Just a couple of months before she turned two, we decided it might
be nice to give her a sibling fairly soon. I had always wanted my kids
to be two to three years apart, and I’m not even sure why. Part of me
wanted one child to be at least close to being out of diapers before
the next came along. Part of me wanted one who could at least bring me
a diaper for the other, if not actually change it. For some reason it
all seemed to center around diapers. That’s kind of jacked up, now that
I think about it. Hmm. Surely there must have been other reasons.

Whatever.
Regardless, we wanted them two to three years apart. And by “we” I mean
“me-and-Greg-who-showed-up-when-I-asked-him-to-with-sperm-at-the-ready”.

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Originally posted on Okay, Fine, Dammit

The minute Emma was born, I knew something was wrong. I’d swallowed a horse, fought its hellish bucking to the death, turned myself inside out, until I won. Until she slid breathlessly — literally — into the world. I listened for her bourning cry but it did not come, because she was not breathing.

I lie there, split apart at the seams and bleeding out, and watched
the scene as if from above. I bore witness while the midwives pumped
oxygen into someone else’s baby for eleven minutes before they called
9-1-1, before two ambulances delivered both of us to a nearby hospital.
It was all for naught anyway — by the time we got there, she was
breathing on her own as if nothing had ever happened.

When we left the hospital for home, Emma was perfect in every way
but one: she would not nurse. She could not suck. I knew the
powers-that-be wanted to remedy the situation with a feeding tube, to
rapidly ameliorate the problem and neatly close out our file, but she
was our second child and so I had faith in my body, and in my baby.
Somehow I held patience as she lost weight.

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