have you noticed i’m not blogging about chicky? July 22, 2008

I have. I realized yesterday that i just don’t have that mybabymybaby thing happening like I did with Smarty. She exists, and I love her, but I don’t have the urge to write about everything she does. Well, anything she does, really.

Not sure if it is because I still feel disconnected to her, or if it is a 2nd kid issue. And if I’m being really honest, as I usually am, I must admit that I don’t really like babies all that much. Even mine. Love, yes - like, not so much.

Everyone says, savor this time, or it goes so fast, or people talk about how they ache for when their kids were infants. Really? No fucking way. I mean, when you want a baby and are having trouble getting one, that’s a different story, ache away. But I NEVER ache for the early days with Smarty. Ever. When I see infants, I see sleep deprivation, barf, constant swaying (I catch myself swaying when I’m holding a grocery bag, like a crazy person). I see no alone time. I see fighting with one’s partner. This baby stage is not for me.

I kinda hate it.

Chicky is adorable when she smiles, and tolerable other times. But I love fat toddlers, I love it when they can do sign language and giggle. So forgive me if I don’t talk about her much right now. Forgive me for not talking about much of anything right now. Jesus, I sound depressed as fuck. Maybe I need to get back on the Wellbutr!n.

i’m on a diet. July 12, 2008

and by diet i mean “lifestyle change” and by lifestyle change i mean “weight watchers”, because i have been totally unsuccessful on my own. i am 30 lbs heavier that before i got pregnant, and i just can’t seem to loose the weight, or accept myself as i am. unlie some folks who embrace their curves, i just feel fat and unhealthy. i don’t like my muffin top, or the fact that my previously sculpted, lovely collar bones have disappeared. but i’m not focusing on that stuff. i’m feeling very very hopeful about this issue for the first time in years. i have some friends at work who do the program, so i’m doing a modified version (no meetings) and we’ll see how it goes. so far i’m not feeling deprived, and being tall (skinny me is 160 lbs) gives me way more points (thus more food) than my poor short friends.

have any of you successfully done weight watchers or a similar deal? any advice? so far i’m on day four! and i’m not cheating. and for the first time, like, ever, i’m finding it easy to leave food on my plate. oh, additional motivation is that S and I are renewing our vows in 3 weeks, because we can now GET MARRIED in this fine state.

blah July 6, 2008

sorry. i don’t have anything to SAY lately.

i’m making a mix tape that rivals the g@rden state soundtrack. not quite as good, but almost. i know. but i only have 10 songs. any suggestions in that same genre? mix tapes are serious business for me, and it take me weeks to do just one.

i have the hoof and mouth thing June 30, 2008

Coxsackie. Including blisters on my tonsils. fun times. this is the same “rare” illness that Bri had a month ago. it is a common baby/toddler disease which adults supposedly don’t get. ridiculous. anyway, it sucks ass to be sick in a house with 2 kids and a depressed postpartum partner. yes, she is. she’s at what she calls her ‘depression class’, as i type. i try, to no avail, to get her to call it a support group, but whatev. this is a shitty week in the dosmamas household. times where we are all tired and ungenerous…where everyone needs taking care of and everyone is slightly exhausted and resentful. but Smarty did say to me last night “”mom, i’m so sorry you’re feeling bad,” yes he did, then he patted me, “do you want me to rub your feet?”  then he scratched the bottom of my feet.

chicky June 25, 2008

can you see the teeny bit of puke in her mouth? cute times.

this is Rocket Man holding Chicky. he is so sweet with her in a i-care-about-you-in-a-way-that-is-totally-charming-but-not-threatening-or-weird. more later.

i have not fallen off the face of the earth June 20, 2008

what i have done is enter the obsessive reading phase. it happens every few years, when i have starved myself of good reading. suddenly i will order 19 books and read one every day. i will stay up until 1 or 2 am, when i force myself to sleep. i read at stoplights. not that i have an obsessive personality or anything.

current books, you might wonder? some anne lamott, some ‘pillars of the earth’, some vampire novels (actually a series of teen vampire novels from the young adult section .) When i bought them i asked for a brown paper bag and hoped the clerk thought it was for my niece. i might as well be honest with y’all, seeing that we discuss cervical fluid and all our deep and petty fears. oh, i also read ‘ex!t to eden’ by anne r!ce, writing under a stupid alias. don’t you love how smart and literary i am? i really do have a graduate degree you know. i’ll read pillars of the earth next - but only because the final book in my vampire series is not out until august. but it may also improve my self esteem to read an book that isn’t embarrassing to buy.

more chicky picture soon.

othermotherhood is rough.

visiting WTF and family this weekend. this is the first time rocket man (our donor) and their 3 children will meet our chicky. i’m a little nervous but i don’t know why.

xo

what’s happening? June 8, 2008

Why am I developing an increasingly intense crush on Hugh Laur!e? Anyone? I used to think that Bri was gross for loving him, but I had never really watched H0use. Now I have watched almost all of the seasons and I have seen (not 5 minutes ago) Mr. Laur!e being interviewed with his witty British accent and now I want marry him or something. Gross. I hate unwelcome crushes. Like the one I had on Tom Cru!se for 10 years. Sick. Mercifully that one ended when he got all crazy on Opr@h, but I bet you even he could still do it for me in the right role. What is wrong with me??

Birth, Part I June 1, 2008

We were sitting on the couch, on April 30th. It was way too late for us to be up, in the 11 o’clock hour on a weeknight. A Tuesday. We were watching a D@vid Bl@ne special on Opr@h, where he was attempting to break a world record for holding his breath underwater. We were up late because we are naughty people who never go to bed on time but also because we were very casually trying to induce labor. She was reluctantly (lots of eye rolling) doing n!pple stimulation (not fun while watching Opr@h) and I was pushing special acupressure places on her ankles.

At 12:35am (now May 1st) she said “ahhhh!” and flew off the couch. I thought she had seen a giant spider (unfortunately this has happened before at our house). But no. “MY WATER JUST BROKE.”

There was actual liquid on the couch, and she leapt over to the part of our living room that is slate, and pulled down her pants just in time for an impressive show where torrents of amniotic fluid came gushing out. Splattering all over the floor like in the most unrealistic movie, ever. I must admit I was totally, utterly unprepared for her water to break on her due date.

We don’t do things textbook style. Hells no. Anyway, we eventually went to the hospital in the middle of the night to ‘confirm’ that her water broke. Why don’t doctors trust people? Of course her water broke…no need to send us to the hospital in the middle of the night to confirm that her water broke. Did Dr. PSS (poor social skills) think we thought S was peeing all over our home?

The next morning, with little sleep, we woke up and told Smarty. That was a good moment. A sunshiny moment. Her labor slowed over the morning, and she was able to garden with Smarty for a while. Some friends came over. Right before we left for the hospital, she was on our porch, wearing giant earphones, rocking, moaning and clutching her water bottle - looking, according to her best friend, like we just met her at a bus stop.

Smarty insisted on riding with us to the hospital in our friend’s van. We hit traffic. Smarty helped S with her low moans, making noise right along with her.

How do I write about the painful, eternally long labor? S had back labor. She swore like a sailor. She barked at me. She barked statements at me such as “do stuff!” Apparently I was just supposed to know what that meant. S was amazing. Strong. Held it together. Finally got some narcotics (2 shots) at the very end. She pushed for 2 hours.

Oh!!! Smarty was there. The whole time. How could I forget that. He wanted to be there to cut the cord. How fucking adorable is he? At about 11pm, after marching in and out of the room, playing with my mom, coming in to sit with his mommies, then leaving again, I finally held him for a while and told him to go to sleep - that we would wake him up when she was about to come out.

So he slept. Right in the hospital room. And by ‘room’ i mean suite. Like with a balcony, and a GIANT whirlpool tub, and hardwood floors (more about that later). Smarty slept on the small fold out sofa type thing. Just crashed out right there in the midst of everything. And he slept. And slept. And slept.

Slept right through the bleeping machines, the nurse coming and going, S moaning, S screaming. Slept through S screaming in an unmedicated birth, with back labor. He slept through S’s screams as our doctor put her entire hand inside S in order to PUSH her cervix OVER the baby’s head. He slept though S screaming over the birthing stool. Through S begging for drugs. Through crying. Through more screaming. Screams like you can’t imagine…all followed by Smarty, snoring.

So then it was like 3 in the morning. There were 13 people there (including me and the doula) in the final moments: S’s dad, my mom, Smarty, my best friend and her husband, S’s best friend from high school, S’s mom and her husband, S’s brother (our donor for Smarty) and his wife, and WTF. After much pushing, it seemed kinda impossible to me, to S and to everyone I think, except the doctor, that an actually baby was emerging from all of this.

When it seemed like it was actually going to happen we woke Smarty up. I coaxed him out of bed and we watched as his sister’s head emerged, all cone headed and smooshy faced.

And then she was just there, squishy and big (almost 9 pounds) on S’s chest. That moment for me was actually a little anticlimactic, and honestly I missed the feeling of a slickery baby on my own chest. For both S and I Smarty’s first minutes of life were the most miraculous event that has ever existed. This time she was just…there. I found out later that S felt the same way. The magical moment came a few minutes later..

Smarty had been talking about this for months. He put his tiny 3 year old fingers in the scissors and we cut through her cord together. That moment, for me, was when the heavens opened. The moment that was too good and light and perfect to exist on this earth.

thanks May 28, 2008

things are better. thank you so much for all of your support, and comments. love the comments. i felt better right after posting. free therapy, i’m telling you. i am trying. enjoying some sweet moments with her. trying on the fact that she is mine. i think i want to change her blog name to Chicky. i have mnay thoughts, provoked by your many thoughtful comments, but i started work this week and have no time to blog tonight. oh, i am pumping, in the hopes that i’ll be able to relactate and she will want to nurse with me. i’m finding that holding her close and the few times she did comfort nurse were the times i felt closest to her. but it is hard and not very motivating…the pump. hate that thing. anyone had any luck inducing lactation? it hurts. and i’m getting discouraged and it has only been 3 days of earnest pumping. i think it will be worth it? more later. btw, her butt is so very small.

the ‘other’ mother May 25, 2008

WARNING: Complaining ahead. Don’t go there if you need me to be rosy and grateful.

Being the other mother thus far, is unfun, to say the least. Maybe I’m the only asshole who feels this way.

It seems that even the lesbian books who discuss the sucky parts challenges of being the “other mother” just seem to be having a different experience than me. Maybe it is just my personality, or the fact that I was a birth mom so recently. I don’t know. But it ain’t easy, I tell you that. It isn’t “challenging”. It sucks.

For me.

And I’m feeling pretty alone in this. No one in our lives, IRL, has experienced motherhood from this perspective. I have no strengths in this area (being easy going, trusting, selflessly caretaking - like my dear S). But I can’t even compare myself, really, to how she handled being the other mother because it was so different the first time around. And she’s a different person. Plus, when S was in this role she could fall back on being related to Smarty, because she was. Every way Smarty looked, everything he did, every attriblute, could have been from her gene pool (S’s brother was our donor).

Yet, S was so good in this role and that makes me feel like even more of a failure.

All the stuff I read about on this topic it discusses fairness issues, which just don’t work for me.

Chicory and I had an interesting discussion about this recently, when she was at my house. About the need lesbains have for equanimity, fairness, equality. How this isn’t a bad thing, but sometimes it simply doesn’t work int he parenthood realm. For instance, when S and I get into the fairness game about babies, we both loose. We get lost in youstayedhomefor3yearsIonlyget3months or youworkedfromhomefor1yearwhileIonlyget3weeks.

Not fair, on either front. Same with the breastfeeding. I feel this pressure from to ‘let S have her turn‘. Her turn with the birth, with the breastfeeding, with the decisions of early infancy. Because I had my turn with Smarty. The problem with this is that we are in a totally different situation now. There is no fair. There is no turn. Or maybe there is, and I am just a giant selfish bitch.

I just don’t know how to DO this. Be the other mother. Be not desperately needed by the baby. Not tied down. No relentless infant demanding my boobs. No constant skin to skin with that soft creature. I feel like I could disappear and she wouldn’t notice. Which, at this point, is true.

For me, when there were motherhood doubts, as the birth mother, there was this primal reassurance, yes, yes, this is my baby, I gave birth to this baby, this baby needs me, this baby needs my milk, I can’t run away (ever) from this baby because I am his mother. This time I have no reasurrance, internally. I have the opposite. I feel, starkly, the contrast. How unneeded I am. How little time I actually spend with her. How much she doesn’t look like me.

This role is WAY harder than even my pessimistic nature anticipated. Like WAY.

Also, we are both the moms, and I wish people in our lives would stop referring to her as the ‘new mama’. She has been a mama for 3 1/2 years. I suppose they mean she just gave birth. That is ‘new’. I don’t know. It just seems that our friends and family, even the sensitive lovely ones, often say things that sting…that highlight the differences I am already painfully aware of and defensive about. Oh, and it doesn’t help that Littleo looks exacly like S. That is constantly commented upon, by everyone. Secretly, alone in our home, I am completely thrilled that she looks like my beautiful S, and surprised and grateful that she does not look like our donor. Yet, I wish that people were a little more thoughtful about saying that so often. It hurts my feelings, as a constant reminder that she looks NOTHING like me and is not related to me in any way, and it hurts S’s feelings that it hurts my feelings. Good times.

I feel left out. Sad. Not needed. Unconnected. And, sadly, I’m going back to work next week. I am afraid that everyone thinks I am an ungrateful asshole for complaining about this at length, when we have this gorgeous little baby, but this blog has never been about all of my easy happy feelings, so why lie? Why pretend that this time with our perfect baby is blissful?

One of the hardest parts has been Littleo deciding she doesn’t want me to comfort nurse her. It is probably necause i don’t have milk yet, but I can’t help but feel incredibly rejected - like the lesser mom - rejected by my own kid. Unable to comfort our daughter the way I did for so many years with our son. Logically, I know that I will need to work hard to breastfeed, and that I cannot take the actions of a 23 day old baby, personally.
But this is not logical. This business of motherhood is primal.

The truth is I could spend more time with my daughter. I could pick her up and rock her more. I could try harder. I could. But with Smarty I didn’t have to work hard for his attention, or to soothe him. I had magical boobs that fixed everything.

I don’t know, maybe if I was a dad this would still be hard, but there would be no comparison to the other experience, and if there was (like for a trans dad) there would be a new role to fulfill, a clear place to exsist, with its very own holiday - coming in June. But I’m not the dad.

And please, friends, do not think that I am talking shit on this caretaking role, on being the one who didn’t give birth. I have nothing but respect for all the women who accept this role with grace, and embrace the beauty of it, the realness of it, the complicatedness, and fiercely love their babies. I only lament that I am unable, yet, to do the same.

I am too scared, in recent days, to reach out to Littleo, because it hurts. The distance between us is growing and I do know that I am her mother and I am the only one to bridge the distance, to work harder, to find my place, to be brave - to love her despite how much it hurts to do so, despite the differences, despite my own pain.

But.

Right now that feels slightly impossible, and that is the ugly truth.