Good news! It’s been a year now since I last got pregnant, not that that worked out, and I think I may actually finally be mildly interested in getting pregnant again! After the miscarriage I was stunned, then overwhelmed with the move, then apathetic and frankly too busy at the beach to care, then in a bit of denial, and now a little ready.

Not that it matters, since I won’t. I mean, hello, we’re in the middle of an international move. Sweden’s national health plan also won’t cover your pregnancy if it starts before you get enrolled. And just a few months after getting there I’d like to start an intensive year-long course in Swedish, after which I’ll need to go through the teaching (re)certification process. And then there’s the renovations we want to do. And passing the Swedish driving exam. Plus learning how to drive manual. That last one’s like a full-time job. Not really a good time to see about creating new life to care for.

But Little Girl’s three-and-a-half already. And let’s see, we wait another year-and-a-half or so to try, I get pregnant in a reasonable time-frame, I actually stay pregnant and don’t have to start over, then the baby’s born…I don’t know, that’s a lot of math, but that’s a really long time from now! Little girl’s car seat will totally have expired by then. I don’t want to buy a new one! I don’t think you realize how expensive that thing was.

And I’m starting to like babies a little bit (blame our one friend here; she has a two-week-old that never cries! It just gurgles and grabs your finger! Aww!). I’ve looked at old videos of Little Girl, too. She was so cute! If you leave breastfeeding out of it, maybe babies aren’t so bad! They can’t run away when you want to cuddle them!

Even if I decided not to do such a hardcore Swedish language program, which is my main mental obstacle to getting pregnant in the next year-and-a-half, Husband isn’t anxious to have babies. He wasn’t with Little Girl, either–it wasn’t an unbearable need for him like it was for me–though of course she’s the absolute center of his life now. Her fleeting preschool whim is his command. I’m not worried about that. He’d get on board.

But there are a lot of potential pitfalls here. The isolation of a new baby (not that I had that with Little Girl, but I have no idea about Sweden) wouldn’t be a good combo with a new country with a foreign language. Hello, postpartum depression! And Husband is having a hard time finding a job there (he’s been looking) that doesn’t require a lot of travel. Can you imagine–winter dark and cold, preschooler with cabin fever, no friends, stupid incomprehensible language, can’t drive, half-finished kitchen, bathroom with no bathing apparatus, all alone in the countryside, fussy newborn who fears and loathes my breasts? Holy shit.

That’s the worst-cast scenario. Maybe things could go differently. It’ll be a while before it makes any sense to roll the dice on this one, anyway. But it feels a little healing to want to hold a baby, even if I still have to hand it back immediately if it starts to even look like it might want to fuss.

You know sometimes, you read a post, and the comments are all, “you brought me to tears, that was so ___” and I always figured that for hyperbole, maybe a figure of speech. But then I read something about how women on average spend 2.5 hours a week crying, and wondered. Is crying really that common? I was pretty hysterical when I realized my cat, Tang, who just died, was so sick, and I had cried a bit (maybe about ten minutes?) the night before the surgery for my miscarriage.

In fact, I can tell you about every time I’ve cried at least since getting married: when my rabbit was killed; a bunch of times during all the infertility stuff; the newborn phase, mostly for breastfeeding reasons; and weaning. That’s it. Evidently, compared to most people, that’s not a lot.

I understand each tear contains the hormones related to the emotional upset, and shedding them releases your emotional burden (I’m glad this is a blog and I don’t have to find a citation for this assertion–but I read it somewhere respectable enough). It’s possible I just don’t get as emotional about things as others, but more likely that I’m just not showing it. I’ve had enough therapy to realize that it all stems from my problems with my mother. With her, my way to assert myself was nonchalance. Whatever, mom, it doesn’t matter what you say. I was all about the sangfroid.

Husband can’t stand this about me. When we’re arguing and I’m being condescending about his upsetness instead of being hurt myself, he thinks it means I don’t care about whatever the topic is, or his feelings. That’s not true, but I also can’t let myself show any vulnerability. The way I was raised, showing your feelings was the quickest way to get them pummeled further. So now, for the most part, I do sadness as anger, and injured feelings as brittleness.

I’m trying to teach Little Girl it’s okay to be sad, but I know actions speak louder than words. Maybe her father–who is never afraid to show his feelings–will be her guide there.

Tonight I attended Part 1 of my high school reunion (you may guess which one). In preparation, last week I got a haircut that, well, did not go as anticipated, and this week I bought what can only be described as a minidress. It is made out of a tissue-thin cotton material in black and possesses a neckline that does fantastic things for my breasts. I had to try it on in front of Husband like six times before he semi-convinced me that I was not too old and motherly for it. So tonight I show up (Husband-free, indeed the only person not to bring a partner), and I see an old friend, the organizer, and the first thing she says to me is, “How’s the pregnancy going?” OMIGOD MINIDRESS FAIL.

I’m not sure if it’s worse that what actually was going on was that I had, apparently, told her that I was pregnant, back when I was, and then neglected to tell her when I was not. So then later, when my high school BFF showed up (the one who married my high school boyfriend, which still weirds me out), and I was relating this story, instead of laughing at the end, she’s telling me she’s so, so sorry. Huh, something had gone seriously awry with my anecdote. It seems I hadn’t ever even told her I was pregnant to begin with, so here she was getting a very large amount of information stuffed into an aside about a story about someone else. And then I was hastening to tell her it was okay, I wasn’t too upset about the miscarriage, in fact otherwise we’d never have gotten to live at the beach!, and I could tell from her increasingly horrified expression that she clearly thought my affect was all wrong.

Most of the evening was a similar mixture of awkwardness and catching up. I didn’t recognize an embarrassingly large number of people (they were so much older than I remembered!), and once I did have everyone mostly down, I still couldn’t quite remember my relationships with them. Most of us had been in the same very small class since the sixth grade, and friendships had waxed and waned, so I kept having to ask people, “So…were we friends in high school?” And people would tell me yes, you told me about orgasms! or We used to have slumber parties at your house all the time! or We were in physics together senior year, don’t you remember? And no, I totally did not. I remember shockingly little about all those years of forced togetherness.

When that old BFF and BF got married a few years ago, I took Husband to the wedding, and it was increasingly disconcerting to introduce him to one after another guy with whom I had been to at least one of the bases. Tonight wasn’t quite so populated in that way, though a couple of men and I kept our distance and I wore a strange smile when I shook their wives’ hands. I spoke to most everyone. Mostly the topics were jobs, kids, geography. Everyone had all these careers, Ph.Ds, businesses. I recalled a lot of the spouses from high school, which seemed weird to me until I remembered I have been with Husband since then, too; people said they remembered hearing about him. I fell in for a long time with a few other women and I realized we were orienting around each other in the exact same positions we used to in seventh grade at lunch. We shared breastfeeding tales. Somehow none of them was happy.

I’m glad I went, though it wasn’t an entirely good time. It feels like part of my Farewell to America tour, tying up loose ends. There’s another event tomorrow and I’ll go because my friend is the organizer, but I think it’ll just be depressing, and lonely since everyone but me is bringing their families; I’m moving away, literally and figuratively, from my early life’s ties, stretching them thin. Sometimes this long process of moving abroad feels like swimming to the horizon, waiting to drop off.

Big week! Monday I sent in my application for residency to the Swedish embassy. Holy hell was that a lot of paperwork. And I made it extra stressful for myself by deciding to include a cover letter explaining why we wanted to move to Sweden plus some family photos as evidence that we’re, you know, actually a family. I had a line in the letter about being excited that Little Girl would enjoy “the benefits of growing up Swedish,” by which I meant the landscape, family, the culture, whatever. But then I freaked out, thinking they would take that to mean, “I can’t wait to get my grubby hands on all that money from the government!” so had to turn the car back and change it to being excited she’d have the opportunity to grow up there, which hopefully would sound less avaricious.

AND someone made an offer on our house! Yes! But bittersweet. Obviously selling it was the whole point of putting it on the market, but it makes me sad to think that, even though we never see them, our awesome backyard will never again be ours to frolick in, our gleaming hardwood floors that Husband put in will not be ours to enjoy, our gardenias, transplanted from my grandmother’s garden, might be neglected. It also makes me sad that we (should we come to an agreement on the price; they crazy lowballed us) will be paying around 30k for the privilege of no longer owning the property. Thirty thousand dollars. Talk about a shitty investment. Makes me sick, really, and it’s through no fault of our own, other than selling at the wrong time. The housing market in my area is particular deplorable now and houses are going for next-to-nothing.

While, of course, we are fortunate we even have 30k to pay not to own it, and I totally sympathize with all the people that have had to foreclose for just that kind of reason, as that is insane, we kind of had other plans for that particular chunk of money. Those super-exciting renovation plans for the house in Sweden are, well, not quite as exciting anymore. Which blows.

I had hoped to have a trinity of neat news in this post, but my sister-in-law’s baby is stubbornly a week overdue, and they’ll let you go at least three weeks in Sweden, so who knows when I’ll find out what flavor Little Girl’s new cousin is. My grandmother had advice for me when I was tired of being pregnant (though I didn’t go past 37 weeks as it turned out): They’re easier to take care of inside than out. So true. I hope she has an easy time of it. I certainly don’t envy her the prospect of newborn care. Blech. A lot of people love little tiny babies but they’re just itty bitty balls of audial and sleep torture to me, and I’m not even mentioning my particular baby-related bête noire, obvious from the sidebar.

At my ultrasound today I found out that there is one new beating heart inside me, no more, no less, which is just what we were going for. 171 bpm. My little buddy has arm and leg buds in the appropriate quantities, and its brain has differentiated areas. Everything was fine. Great. Perfect!

Husband wanted to bring Little Girl to the sonogram as she is a “member of the family.” I didn’t, in case Something Bad happened, but it was fine, except that, in her words, “This video is boring. I want a new video.” But she did fine.

Making conversation, I asked the ultrasound lady, “Isn’t it technically an embryo until eight or ten weeks or something?” to which she replied, in a prickly tone making it clear she wanted to differentiate herself from people who loooove abortion, “It’s a baby from the start to me.” Then I had to try to correct her impression of me as, what, callous? I’m not sure, by going on and on about how amazing it is how developed they are when they are so little, and she warmed up a bit, called my embryo/baby/whatever “cute” and likened its appearance to a “Teddy graham.”

I measured 8 weeks 3 days today. I am 8 weeks 6 days based on my LMP. Based on when I know I ovulated, I am 8 weeks exactly. Since the sonogram due date and the LMP due date are only three days apart, the OB office said it is going with the LMP date, meaning it is, in my opinion, nearly a week too early (they have me due October 10th). This bothers me mainly because they do not let you VBAC past your due date at my OB’s, so I want the latest due date that makes sense. A week makes a big difference, especially since people who are going through labor for the first time tend to go after their due date to begin with. So I’m going to have to tussle with them about that. I’m probably going to lose.

But based on some other stuff going on I am reluctant to change providers. Last Friday a nurse called me with my bloodwork test results, and told me everything was great. And then she told me, casually, that they want me to see a maternal-fetal specialist for high risk OB patients. Something about my blood clotting disorder. My–I have a what? Evidently, something in the bloodwork my RE originally did like five years ago showed some marker for some blood clotting thing (clearly I am very well-informed on this topic). This turned out not to be why I was infertile, but it did cause my OB to put me on baby aspirin for the duration of my previous pregnancy, something I am doing now with this one. The OBs were very nonchalant about it and I’m not sure I even knew it was for a blood-clotting disorder last time. No one said anything about perinatologists last time, either, so I don’t know why they are suddenly so concerned. But I’ll go see the specialists.

I also need to have a, we’ll say, serious discussion with the docs about my continuing my medication (Metformin for insulin resistance) throughout the pregnancy as opposed to stopping after the first trimester like they like, and which, in fact, I did not do until I was 20 weeks last time (which they knew). According to my super-awesome LC, a likely reason I had such insanely low milk supply was because I was off my Met for that second half of my pregnancy, and she had me go on it immediately post-partum. My prescribing doctor said I should take the Met throughout the pregnancy this time, too, and since I reallyreallyreally do not want to go through quite as unpleasant a breastfeeding experience, I would like to take the precaution of being on the Met continuously. They give it to women who have gestational diabetes (which I was not diagnosed with, but Little Girl was born 8.5 lbs. at 37 weeks, sooo) so I imagine it should be okay, even good for me for that reason, but I want to make sure it does not affect my risk for preeclampsia again, as something on the internet suggested it might.

Seeing all this written down makes me agree with the OBs about the high-risk referral. Which totally blows. I thought this time it would be so much less fraught. I’m quite a lot healthier starting out, for one thing. And in general I am less worried, yes. I do not check for blood every time I pee. I was, today, to be honest, much more worried there would be twins in there than there would be no heartbeat at all. My pregnancy symptoms can ebb and flow and, except for being on a sharp lookout for morning sickness (the fact that I am not currently throwing up as I type this indicates to me I am less pregnant than they say) don’t fret me if they go. But new things are coming up to worry me, instead. But that’s just how pregnancy goes, I guess. One long worry-fest.

More from mid-January:

I borrowed an ovulation predictor kit (though I guess
“borrow” isn’t the right word) and I have meticulous records
of my cycle lengths, and I think I am supposed to
ovulate between [lots of math]. Now, back
in my TTC days with Little Girl, I never ovulated or
had a regular cycle at all (and I have the temp charts
to prove it) (so TTC mostly consisted pretty simply of
continuously not getting pregnant for
two-and-a-half years, until I magically did ovulate,
thanks to the Metformin I take for my PCOS, thanks to
the RE), so I am really unfamiliar with this whole
planned-sex-ovulation-scenario that you see in sitcoms
and read about on blogs.

I’m not sure I get it, and since this is a one-shot
deal, I need advice. Do we need to have sex for every
one of those ten days? Because that is a lot of sex.
I’m not sure either of us is enthusiastic enough about
the possibility of another miserable, semi-dangerous
pregnancy (and the anxiety, oh, the anxiety) to have
that much sex. Not to mention newborns (shudder). (Or
breastfeeding, dear lord). Or can we just wait until
the really-confusing-looking OPK says to expect
ovulation? And is there something else I’m forgetting
that we need to do? I am really expert at avoiding
pregnancy through contraception and infertility so
this is new ground for me.

So what ended up happening was that I misread the OPK a lot so we ended up having to have death-march sex for something like seven days in a row. We were both so relieved when that was over that we haven’t slept together since (not to disparage Husband, or sex, in any way). Every little thing seemed so fraught for a while–if I get up from the bed right now will that disrupt something, some sperm that was just about to make it? But I have to pee. Since I wasn’t (and am not) 100% in the I-want-a-baby camp, I usually threw caution to the wind and just ruminated on the vagaries of biological mechanisms on my way to the bathroom.

I seem to be depressed. It’s been a while, so it took some time for me to figure it out, but it’s there.

I think it dates back to last month’s super-exciting 6-days-late-for-my-period extravaganza. My standard deviation in cycle length is a mere 2.3 days, so by the end of the wait, I was thinking there I was either pregnant or something was wrong with me, and I wasn’t entirely sure a pregnancy would not be preferable. But I was relieved when my period came.

Sure, Little Girl would have been three years by then, which is my own personal absolute minimum child-spacing target, but neither Husband nor I have felt interested in going through another unpleasant-and-debilitating-and-occasionally-dangerous pregnancy, followed by the sheer horrifying misery of newborns and their twin terror, breastfeeding. I make ugly faces just thinking about it. I feel sorry for, if not superior to, pregnant ladies chasing toddlers. I am happy to hand drooling, squawking babies back. I get bored with sleeping newborns. Plus, I didn’t even find trying to conceive enjoyable, since it took years and years and help from a reproductive endocrinologist, though I suspect it would be easier now. I love my baby-free lifestyle with Husband and Little Girl. Basically I’m not in what I imagine to be the proper mental condition necessary to get through another reproductive attempt with anything approaching good cheer and tolerance for the difficulties and worries involved.

Which is why I am confused as to why I am moping around, pressing Husband into intense little conversations about our Future Plans. What I’d really like is for both of us to want, genuinely, a new baby; to get pregnant easily; to have a totally easy and worry-free pregnancy; a pleasant-enough birth; a trouble-free or at least guilt-free breastfeeding experience; and a child that easily and sleepily fits into our lives, all at the most convenient time and location. But apparently Husband doesn’t want to try until we are at least settled in Sweden (years from now in the current economy), if at all (perhaps you are unaware that the sun rises and sets with Little Girl, thus eliminating the need for future progeny). And since I still don’t actively desire another person to care for making me ill from inside my uterus, I’m not arguing with him on this.

Yet at the same time, if we’re going to make a go of it, I’d rather do it in the US, I think. I don’t love a lot about our birthing system, but at least I understand it. My mom is here. My friends. I’m way less likely to suffer depression afterwards. And as materialistic as it is, my baby crap is here. I don’t want to get rid of it all and then have to buy it for 300% more in Sweden. And if we’re going to do it here, the window of opportunity is closing, since I definitely don’t want to be pregnant/newborning while trying to move abroad.

But I’m not sure these are reasons to try for a baby. I just feel so uncertain. So in the absence of a plan that sits comfortably with me, with us–not just with any possible babies, but with our move in general, a topic I am sick of already–I’m muddling, and it’s been getting me down.

Longtime readers would never have thought these would be problems I’d have, right? Not with my crib-sleeping, resolutely non-nursing child? It’s been a surprise to me, too, I assure you. But some things happened around the time Little Girl turned two.

First a large variety of my friends had newborns, and Little Girl was cruelly denied the opportunity to hold them while they were being nursed, which frustrated her to no end, as did my holding the babies, and these negative emotions seem to have been sublimated into a recurring and extensive fantasy of being, herself, a baby, “goo goo gah gah” babbling included. She likes to feign helplessness, waving little fists in the air while fake-crying. She does this whenever she wants to pretend not to understand instructions or scolding, or in uncertain social situations, like our toddler fitness class occasionally, where she’ll stretch out on the floor while the other kids are jumping around her. (When she’s not pretending to be a baby, she’ll often do puppy and kitty impressions instead. She’s rather good.)

And sometimes, after seeing a baby nurse, or even watching a friend of mine pump, Little Girl has tried to climb up under my shirt to figure out what I am going on about when I am talking about these little babies drinking milk from their mommies. I’ve told her Mommy’s milk is long gone (and you will be pleased to know I have heroically refrained from extensive lecturing about how she totally missed the boat on nursing, and how I wish she had taken such a keen interest several years ago, as nine months of pumping is not my idea of a good time, and she would have saved Mommy a lot of trouble), but she has wanted to make sure. Little Girl doesn’t like to miss out on snacks other children are getting, after all. This interest in investigating nursing waxes and wanes depending on seeing nursing babies, so honestly I am, quite selfishly, kind of happy that most of my friends are no longer breastfeeding their newest crop of babies.

And the sleeping. She used to sleep very nicely in her crib, and from a very early age, with no prodding from me, but I guess she decided she didn’t want to fall asleep on her own anymore, and got smart enough to convince us she didn’t have to, so now I have to sit on a little footstool beside her bed every night until she falls asleep. It usually only takes a few minutes–since she doesn’t nap, she’s usually very ready for bed–and I can tell she’s asleep when her breathing gets louder, moving to a sweet range somewhere between a purr and a snore. Adorable. And she’ll usually turn over one last time before finally falling into slumber, and she can suck her thumb in her sleep. It’s sort of been enjoyable to learn these things about her.

However, I think my helping her get to sleep now has led to her being uninterested in putting herself back to sleep on the occasions (a few nights a week) she awakens in the middle of the night. Now she calls for Mommy, and wants Mommy to sit with her, but Mommy doesn’t feel like sitting around on footstools in the dark for indefinite periods of time at 3 AM, so Mommy takes her to bed, where everyone goes right back to sleep. This isn’t extremely bothersome, really–she hardly kicks me at all anymore, especially if I wedge a pillow between us!–and has decreased since I started making a big deal out of it on the mornings when she wakes up in her own bed (now she often reports it to me upon waking that she’s in the crib, “no Mommy’s bed”). And I like to have someone with me when I’m falling asleep, too (as long as they are utterly silent and don’t try to, like, touch me, or block my way to the bathroom), so I can hardly fault her for it. But I would prefer her at least to spend the majority of her sleeping hours in her own bed, if only because then there’s no risk of my having to change my sheets because somebody soaked them in pee.

I planned to nurse, and she didn’t go with it. I planned to co-sleep, but we bothered each other. I thought these issues were all sewed up, and here they’ve popped back. Children. One weird situation after another. At least I am always armed with anecdotes.

My parents divorced when I was little and in the summers I went to stay with my father, where, unlike at my mom’s, eating was permitted without commentary. Since most of the year my mother thoroughly and forcefully controlled what was served and how much of it I ate and then how much of it I burnt off on the Stair Master, I had learned no internal monitors, and so always came back a little chubbier, much to my mother’s vociferous dismay. One fall I even overheard her lamenting the situation with my teacher. I got the message, and when I was 13, put myself on a diet of half a granola bar for breakfast, the other half at lunch (and one 1.5-calorie breath mint), a few figs and plain tea for a snack after school, and as little dinner as I could get away with. It was highly effective. I still remember the compliments Jeremy the Saxophone Player paid me that year. My mother was delighted. I was riding horses competitively then and remember deliberately tantalizing my algebra tutor by showing up to sessions in my jodhpurs, showing off my leanness.

But eventually I went off to college. The cafeteria, with its limitless grilled cheese sandwiches and amazing assortment of cereals, helped me gain twenty pounds freshman year. My sophomore year I went off the meal plan and ate a lot of boxed mac and cheese. Junior year it was pizza and enchiladas, and senior year pretzels and orange-flavored milk chocolate accompanied by Lady Grey tea with heavy cream. I went to college a size eight and left it at 16.

Then I moved and got married and fell into a series of depressing jobs and eventually suffered two and a half years of infertility. These things did not encourage me to stop eating for comfort. If something bad happened, I deserved ice cream. If something good happened, ice cream to celebrate! The fall I got pregnant I did start working on my diet and exercising of my own volition for practically the first time since childhood, and lost a bit of weight; I had just gone back to grad school, made some new friends, gone on an anti-depressant, and was feeling brighter and up to making the changes.

I got married about forty pounds north of where I am and now am nearly thirty pounds under my pre-pregnancy weight. Now I’m sometimes even wearing mediums, which is a constant surprise (have the sizes changed?). I can wear a lot of my clothes from high school. Honestly the weight loss hasn’t been very purposeful. It’s mostly just the by-product of being busy and caring about Little Girl’s nutrition and thus my own, and eliminating high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oil, and going vegetarian (and often vegan). I use an exercise bike but even for the spells I do it regularly my weight seems to stay the same, but it gives me energy, time to read, and a feeling of accomplishment. Breastfeeding was evidently quite the calorie-burner for me; I’ve only lost five pounds or so since weaning. I’m overall much healthier, though, whatever the cause; my blood work is improved, my energy, my shape.

What’s interesting now is meeting people in my average (slightly overweight) state. Like it or not, people often group themselves by appearance and assume things about others depending on their looks. I distinctly recall negative reactions I got as an overweight woman–like having to be moved from one bed to another after my c-section, before the epidural had worn off, and the disdainful look and faintly remembered comments one nurse gave another upon seeing me–and I don’t sense reactions like that anymore.

But I do others. A new acquaintance was recently very surprised when it came up that I used to weigh quite a bit more, and I realized she now saw me differently, as fundamentally unlike herself, a person drops her twins at the gym day care multiple times a week to get rid of the last few pregnancy pounds, pounds she is careful to assign ownership of to the children and not to herself. No, unlike her, I’m someone who once was fat, with all the connotations that confers, many of which were true for me. Her change in attitude interests rather than bothers me. I get it. But I am now pretty well at peace with my weight and my looks as a result of being happy with my life (rather than the other way around), and feel fortunate to have arrived at this place.

+++

I’ve been enjoying making healthful efforts, my chocolate stash notwithstanding. I’m also trying to pay more attention to Husband–to notice him, to engage him. We tried Wii Fit this past summer at my brother-in-law’s in Sweden and we all loved it (Little Girl even tried her hand at golf, and particularly enjoyed watching her daddy and uncle spar) and we’ve talked about getting one ourselves but we already have the exercise bike so it seems difficult to justify the cost. The social and competitive aspects of the game system are very appealing and I think sometimes it would be a great way for me and Husband to pay attention to each other, instead of the laptops, in the evenings, and to make exercise less of a special occasion, conducted only in the walk-in closet where the bike lives. If we had a Wii, we’d put it to good use. I’m a grown-up, now, and taking control of my well-being.

[This addendum is for Magpie Musing's Wii Fit contest which you should consider entering. The post follows its own logic and not always the contest's, as I started writing this before I knew about it. Yet since I was posting about fitness anyway I figured I should not pass up the opportunity to participate in the generous offer to win one of these systems, which I would be truly delighted to get to use, especially without an audience of in-laws.]

from Christy.

When I have post ideas but not the time or inclination to write a whole post, I will jot a note and save it as a draft with some pithy title. Later it is not always entirely clear to me what I was talking about so these potential gems just go, um, I don’t know, uncut? Even if I can guess my point, oftentimes I just don’t care about that topic anymore. In the interest of clearing out my draft folder, here some are:

Title: My favorite chicken
Text:

Title: Antarctica is not one of the states
Text: Also, there are only 50 states. Hawaii, yes, is one of them. No, Alaska is not part of Canada. Mexico is not in the southern hemisphere, sorry. [FYI I guess?]

Title: It sucks to be a penguin [I was really affected by the March of the Penguins movie]

Title: AWWW
Text:

Title: Sick as a cat
[no text, but I am going to assume it was to be about cat vomit]

Title: Snack station
[God, this one is so old. Back when Baby was just starting to walk, she liked to take snacks at a step stool in the kitchen. Well she sometimes still does it. BORING.]

Title: Bad dog
[no text--I think this might have been intended to be about the time one of our dogs kind of snapped in Baby's direction. That sucked.]

Title: Preposition proposition
Text: We have been working on prepositional phrases. Under the basket! In the box! Out of the tunnel! Over your head! [still true]

Title: Veto power
Text: My father [What on earth?]

Title: The language of word verifications [I've seen some dirty things]

Title: Please try not to pass out from jealousy [the backyard???]

Title: I bite my nails for the good of the family
Text: It’s true! [I think because otherwise I injure them? But it's not true now. I stopped biting altogether suddenly with no cause. Still have to keep them cut.]

Title: I wasn’t a virgin pumper
[This was going to be about the time when I was working at a farm and this goat had triplets and the mama goat didn't want to feed one of the kids so I milked other goats and fed that third goat milk in a bottle. Not a bad story but also not all that long.]

Title: Talar du svenska?
Text: Last week in class I taught a lesson in Swedish.
[This is fully a year old. I can't imagine what interesting I could have said about this. Hence the unfinished draft.]

Title: Everything is a pumping metaphor
[Back when I was exclusively pumping, I would relate a lot of things to pumping. Can't get the job you want? It's like not being able to make enough milk. And etcetera.]

Title: Creams for baby
[Since birth: anti-yeast, estrogen, anti-eczema, triple ointment, and many more; wish I'd posted about it so I would remember them all]

Title: It’s like a playdate that I don’t attend
[Baby's in-home day care experience--she plays with other one-year-old girls, runs around, etc.]

There are more but I will spare you. Do you have drafts sitting around?

I’ve had a lot of therapy and I don’t think any of it really has anything to do with my current level of happiness, which is high. If there were coping tools it gave me , or realizations that altered my worldview, or subconscious changes that came about as a result, I don’t know what they might be. No, I think it’s all circumstance. These days I have exactly what I want (by this I mostly mean a baby), I am doing what I like (largely whatever I want), and I am getting lots of fresh air, sunlight, exercise, socialization, and healthy food. Simple as that.

I don’t mean to minimize depression; it was very defeating and self-perpetuating for me and I know how debilitating and painful it can be. I am simply not convinced that, for me, living more healthily wouldn’t have been just as good a solution as therapy and medication, if someone could have gotten me to do it at the time.

I first visited a therapist shortly after my parents divorced, when I was five. I remember it quite well. The woman, who was affiliated with my mother’s church, became excessively concerned when I told her that one of the many fun things I enjoyed doing with my father was playing horsie (you know, he would get on all fours, I would ride on top–I do the exact same thing these days with Baby; it’s all fun and games). A sensitive child, it was clear to me that she was getting the wrong idea, though I couldn’t conceptualize exactly what she was thinking, and I became quite anxious about talking to her. My mother didn’t make me go back.

When I was in college I was quite depressed (I think all it was was my super-dark room and my melodramatic long-distance relationship with my now-husband) and ended up in talk therapy twice a week. What we talked about, beyond my complaints about my mother, I can’t recall at all. Really, I didn’t have a lot going on at the time. I think once when my husband bought the house we live in now we talked about real estate in New England as compared to the Southeast. There was some more serious stuff I certainly could have benefited from airing out, but I never felt comfortable enough, or motivated enough, to do so. My main recollections revolve around the time I saw my therapist at the mall with her two small kids. At our next session, I asked her her children’s ages, just being friendly, really, and she wouldn’t tell me, wanting, instead, to know how her having children made me feel. I quit therapy shortly after that.

Finally, when I was going through my several years of infertility, I entered therapy again. I knew something like nine pregnant people, including many at work, notably two supervisors in succession, and was just miserable at my job and had developed some obsessions about making sure stoves were off and curlers unplugged, things like that (if I couldn’t control my ovulation, then by golly, I was going to control something). I started seeing a very smart woman who turned out to be a lesbian who repeatedly expressed her confusion about why people want children, and kept trying to talk me out of it, telling me about studies that showed how marital satisfaction decreased greatly upon procreation. Still, we had a good rapport, and we spent a huge amount of time talking about my tortured girl-crush on my then-supervisor, and she encouraged me to apply to grad school, which led to all kinds of good things for me. Eventually I visited a psychiatrist who prescribed an anti-anxiety medication which I took, with great results, until I found out I was pregnant a few months into grad school, at which point I quit the medicine and the therapy both.

Once while pregnant, and shortly after Baby’s birth, I did go visit the psychiatrist, who specialized in “women’s issues,” but it wasn’t because I felt like I needed it; I just felt like I should, to be on the safe side. And I visited my anti-baby therapist when Baby was six weeks old, bringing her along, struggling to feed her by various methods during the whole visit, unable to converse really at all. Given my nerve-wracking pregnancy, scary birth, miserable breastfeeding, and agonizing cold-turkey weaning experiences, combined with my history of depression and anxiety, I kept expecting to have some serious post-partum problems in that area, but no. Maybe all that therapy did fix me up, possibly getting treatment for my PCOS helped thus leveling out some crazy-making hormones, or the medication rewired something, or, and this what I think, my life and my psyche are finally in harmony. I think that was my problem all along.

This morning my best friend D. gave birth to a healthy baby boy who weighed nine pounds. Labor and delivery took less than two hours from when her water broke, with no time for the planned-for epidural. They are both doing fine and the infant is nursing well.

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Yesterday my sister-in-law in Sweden announced her first pregnancy. They’d been trying for a month or two. She missed her period two days ago, so of course it was high time she made sure everyone knows. Anyway, she had told me last summer she was planning on having her first baby when we had our second, though I told her that kind of organization is difficult to orchestrate. Perhaps she got tired of waiting for me (we’re not even trying). When I was pregnant, and told her our baby name ideas, she insisted we relinquish the boy one as she wanted it. If it’s a boy, I bet she won’t even use it.

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I’m sounding a little bitter. Really I’m not. While I am happy for these people, yes, extremely, I can’t help but be struck, though: so many other people seem so much better at reproduction than I am. Well, good for them! It’s just as well somebody is! Congratulations.

We met my friend D and her little boy Z at the park. There was climbing and sliding and swinging–you know, the usual. There were two teenagers canoodling at the top of out of the play structures, lying indolently on the platform and blocking it off from children. Pissed (I just started my period; that’s my excuse) I climbed up there with Baby on my hip and gave them an earful. I said things like “you aren’t between the ages of 2 and 5 at all, and that’s what the sign says this playground is for!” and used the word “inappropriate” an unaccountably large number of times and I think I once paired it with “behavior.” I’m surprised I didn’t conjecture anything about what their mothers would think. After they skadoodled, one little girl told me plaintively, “they were here for an hour!” That’s me, a crazy and apparently quite aged lady who enjoys yelling at innocent teenagers just looking for a shady place to flirt.

This park is also frequented by a chubby, red-haired little boy about eight years old. He always wears black shoes, black pants, a black Batman T-shirt, and, oh yes, a black cape and mask. He talks a lot about bad guys and carefully selects various sticks to pretend they are some kind of weaponry associated with his craft. He would be a lot scarier if he weren’t constantly nibbling on a drooping corner of his mask like a little bunny. My friend’s kid thinks this kid is amazingly awesome (he calls him “The Man”) and follows him around. And of course Baby follows him around, so they formed this little duckling-like parade today while Batman brandished assorted bits of tree detritus and ate his costume.

Next to the park is a library where we later went to get new books and return old ones. As we were walking out, I ran into the woman (with her kids) who was the leader of my local La Leche League back when Baby was a newborn. I said hello, she didn’t recognize me, I didn’t expect her to. I told her it had been a while, I asked her was she still leading, she responded, we bade each other farewell, and that was that. I didn’t feel the need to regale her with tales of all my insane pumping (though if she could have placed me, I’m sure she would have wondered what happened with that) or justify my stopping or anything like that. Refreshing to consider how far I’ve come on that.

And nice to feel like a member of a community–involved, familiar, cantankerous.

At least twice a month the ten-year-old girl who lives next door comes knocking on my door, having somehow been locked out of her house upon her arrival home from school. She uses my phone, some relative zips home and opens the house up for her, and that is that. Sometimes I give her a snack while she waits.

When Baby was very young, these intrusions used to drive me batty (especially if I was pumping), and I spoke with her mother about leaving a key with us (she never brought one over). But they don’t bother me now, especially since we have gotten to be friends with this girl and Baby loves to see her. Invariably when we are out in the front yard reading the mail or doing yardwork she will pop by to play with Baby, and sometimes when we’re in the backyard, too. She once helped me immensely while I was picking up downed branches by keeping Baby busy doing the same with small sticks. Sometimes we’ll chat about topics like the inadvisability of kissing boys. I think she does all this because she wants me to ask her to babysit, but judging from her inability to keep herself from being locked out of her house I don’t think she’s quite responsible enough.

So I wasn’t surprised to hear pounding on my door around three thirty this afternoon. I asked her and the buddy she had with her if she needed to use the phone, but she surprised me by saying no.

“Because I’m wearing pants.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m only supposed to wear skirts.”
“Skirts? It’s cold outside! Why can’t you wear pants?”
“Because I’m a Christian” she said with exasperation, flapping one hand dismissively.

Apparently, her mother doesn’t want her to wear pants (which I see her in all the time, which made this exchange even more confusing) because of their religion (they’re members of some group that spends Saturday night at church and doesn’t celebrate Halloween). After she explained that if she called her mother, her mother would see her wearing pants, which she said she wore for PE (I told her she didn’t have to justify her pants usage to me), I offered her the use of my phone and a skirt. I dug up a size 4T skirt I had gotten secondhand for Baby a few months back, and the skinny little thing managed to put it on.

“Won’t your mother wonder where you got this new skirt?”
“Oh, I’ll just tell her she bought it for me and if she forgot it’s because she’s old.”

And just think–one day Baby will probably lie to me just like that! So much to look forward to. Shit, I hope I don’t have a neighbor like me who helps her, though. But I didn’t want her to get in trouble for wanting to wear pants to PE on a cold day!

What do you think I should have done?

Recently, a Real Life friend of mine discovered my blog (hi B!). When I realized this had transpired, I had a little freak out, and then I wondered why. I’m really basically the same on this blog as I am in Real Life; it’s not like I, in actuality, am a 66-year-old ranch hand who likes to skeet shoot and speculate about government conspiracies. Those of you who have met me (hi C!) or talked to me on the phone (hi a different C!) or emailed with me (assorted) and so forth can attest to that. Though I don’t use our names, I do (uh, obviously: see below) post pictures with no compunction, and so haven’t made this blog especially anonymous.

And yet I enjoyed the pleasant division between blogging life and Real Life (why I insist upon capitalizing that phrase I don’t quite know) that I had cultivated. Husband does know I have a blog, but (claims) he doesn’t read it since he’s “sure [I'd] tell him anything important, and besides, it’s not like [I] share my innermost feelings on the internet.” I don’t know about that, but at any rate, no one else knows about it; most notably, my friends are/were ignorant. In fact, I originally went public with this blog in an effort to have an outlet for my endless need, at the time, to ruminate about pumping and breastfeeding issues, so as to reduce the burden of my friends who otherwise kept having to hear about it, so it was explicitly intended to be a separate, supplemental part of my social life. And so it continued until recently.

It’s been a few weeks now since B may or may not have started reading (I know she knows the address and has visited, but I don’t know how much reading she has done, and we haven’t really talked about it yet). Before posting about this development, I gave myself some time to see if my blogging would change in some qualitative or quantitative regard, and it hasn’t. My interest in blogging has not been affected, and I’m glad. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to start telling all my other friends about this space (and I swore B to secrecy as though we were still in the sixth grade). Sometimes a person needs some kind of private life, I suppose. Though I guess it’s rather ironic to think of a public journal as a form of private life. How very modern.

What’s the status of your blog with regard to friends and family readership? How do you feel about it?