As I type this, Mama Jae is in Boston on a job interview. Thankfully I am in exhibit installation hell, otherwise I probably would not be able to contain myself. Also thankful for Grandaddy and Bubbe coming to stay with us while Mama Jae knocks em dead in Beantown. Please keep your fingers crossed for us!
2011 was a good year. It was a hard year, but a good one. We are really looking forward to all that 2012 has to offer us, though:
- Mama Jae getting a job!
- Moving to a new place! Hopefully a liberal, on-the-east-coast place. Or at least one that is close to our families. (As I type this, Mama Jae is applying to a job at a school that is like an hour and a half away from my hometown.)
- Essie turning two!
- TTC ROUND TWO!
And hopefully, if we are lucky:
- Being successful in TTC ROUND TWO.
- Mama Bea getting a job in our new place.
Also, probably Essie’s first words. I wonder what she’s going to say. She’s been chattering up a storm recently. Holy crap: I just realized that she is going to be 18 months old in two days. How is my baby a year and a half already?
Yesterday was a magical blue moon day, in which I had the day off but daycare was open. I took the opportunity to go to a yoga class, which I hadn’t done in…a year and a half, give or take. It felt so good. I guess that in addition to my goals of moving, getting a new job, and getting pregnant, I would like to add “take better care of myself” to the list of things to do this year. No prob. (Actually, things are definitely improving in the self-prioritization department recently. On the weekends, instead of using Essie’s entire nap to do housework, I have been spending the first hour cleaning and the second hour doing whatever I want, which usually means reading on the couch. Also, Mama Jae and I have taken turns getting up with her first on weekend days and that has been super nice.)
My sweet, sweet Grandpa passed away eight days ago. I have decided not to write about it here—I’ve been thinking and talking and writing about him with family and friends, and I think I want to keep it separate from this blog.
For Jews, it is common to name a baby after a beloved relative who has passed away. So, if we are lucky enough to be successful once we try for a second bao (knock wood and please don’t let this jinx us), we have a name ready.
I am ready to begin again. I ran out of my regular vitamins a week or so ago, and instead of buying a new bottle of them, I bought prenatal ones. Yesterday I bought some OPKs to have on hand. We probably are not going to start trying again for a few months—we will start sometime this spring—but once we do, I will be ready.
here’s a sneak peek:
- i see you!
I’m kind of shocked that y’all are still reading, but I wouldn’t be shocked if you need the password again. Email me at moms [at] bao in the oven dot com if you do!
A friend of mine once had to listen to an hour-long instruction by a person who had a speech tic that led to him saying “and things and stuff” after every sentence. (“So you take the hammer, and things and stuff, and you hammer the nail into the siding, and things and stuff” etc etc ad hilarity.) But I am tired of titling posts like “bullets!” and “so much has happened!”. So [insert requisite mea culpas about being a bad blogger and exclamations about how long it's been and move on].
November: month of sick. Essie started her new daycare in October, and since then she got Fifth Disease AND Hand Foot and Mouth. This after 6 months of what my mother calls something like Neurotic Jewish Women Daycare Where No One Gets Sick, Ever (and at which Essie never got sick, ever). Oh well. At least her immunity will be nice and strong.
Thanksgiving: so much fantastic and so much angst all packed into one long weekend. On the fantastic side: seeing family. Spending time with my ailing Grandpa and watching him watch Essie play was a definite highlight, while also being just really hard. He hasn’t been doing too well this past month, and it seemed like maybe this would be his last Thanksgiving. It’s something I can’t write about right now; maybe later.
Also on the fantastic side: a great date with Mama J; the delight in my parents’ eyes as they watched their granddaughter play; the delight in our dog’s gait as he ran through fields and jumped through the woods; a really great shop & QT with my sisters and mom. Cooking Thanksgiving dinner together. Eating Thanksgiving dinner. Time to lie on the couch and read.
On the not-so-great side: some family drama with one of my sister’s significant other’s families; some drama with some of Mama J’s family; some sleeplessness for Essie, who did not want to sleep in such an unfamiliar place (and who was just starting to break out in the rash we would later realize was hand foot and mouth [shaking fist] DAMN YOU DAYCARE!) and associated sleeplessness for me. Mama J’s realization that she was allergic to the antibiotic she was on—realized because she broke out in a head-to-toe itchy itchy miserable rash. And then what will go down in our family’s lore as The Worst Car Ride Ever on the way back. It’s supposed to be 8 hours; it was over 10 because of rain and traffic. Essie covered in hand foot and mouth rash and miserable. Mama J covered in allergic reaction rash and miserable and doing most of the driving. Dog puke. Thankfully I was rash-free, and was able to spend what turned out to be the worst day of Essie’s hand-foot-mouth experience in the back seat trying to entertain her. (I’d only gotten like 3 hours of sleep the night before though bc Essie was SO miserable. I got those 3 hours thanks to my mother, who took Essie to sleep on the couch with her when I lost my shit in the middle of the night.)
Anyway. We are back at home now and have returned to relative normalcy. Which for us, recently, has meant an intense amount of work, which is the reason for our radio silence for the past however long. Mama J has something like eleven weeks to analyze her data and write her dissertation so she can submit it and get feedback and revise it and get it approved in order to graduate in May. At the same time, she has been applying for jobs. Soon, hopefully, she will be flying all over the country going on job interviews. This process is such a roller coaster—she gets contacted by these search committees and suddenly we’re like OMG we could be living in Vermont at this time next year! and I start googling museums in Vermont and picturing Essie all bundled up in a snow outfit and wondering if I can really handle the cold/dark/lack of diversity, and then Mama J talks to the committee on the phone and it’s not a good fit. And then someone from Chicago calls to ask a clarifying question and then we’re like OMG we could be living in Chicago! and I start googling museums in Chicago and picturing Essie all bundled up in a wind outfit and wondering if I can really handle the cold/wind/being that far away from my parents, and then Mama J hears from the committee that they still haven’t decided who they’re going to bring to campus for interviews. This may go on for months. (Just in the time it’s taken to write this post, she has heard from yet another school. Can I really handle the outdoorsy-ness/Ducks fans/being that far away from my parents?)
Meanwhile, I am working my tail off. One major exhibition is up and done, and I’ve got most things in place for the second, which will open at the end of January. Right now I’m in a major push on a third project, which involves digitizing huge chunks of the museum’s collection to prepare it for entry into interactive computer stations in the museum. I am about ready to throw my scanner out the window. (Good thing my building has no windows)
Anyway, this has nothing whatever to do with Essie, other than the fact that little does she know that in a few short months we will be packing up and moving to the next place. It’s wild to think about what she is going to be like then. She turned 17 months yesterday. 17! She is walking like she’s been doing it forever, and loves to run (!) around the house and be chased. “I’m gonna get you!” is the funnest game ever. She is also totally and completely enamored with my mother, her Bubbe (I’m sure I’ve used it before here, but it’s “Grandmother” in Yiddish). If I’m holding her, she never wants to go to anyone else, including Mama J or her beloved teachers at the old daycare, but she squirmed away from me to get to her Bubbe on numerous occasions while we were in my hometown. Fine by me! She also saw many decorated Christmas trees while we were home, so this past weekend we went and got one. She loves that thing. SO MUCH. (Here’s hoping she finds the menorah equally fascinating in a couple of weeks.) She’s obsessed with lights. She loves pointing at them and turning them off and on. So the timing with the holidays is kind of perfect.
Not a single word, though. No one seems to be worried about it, so I’m not worrying about it. The few signs she does know help her communicate, but her desires and interests are becoming more complex, and we’re thinking that words are just around the corner. Exciting things and stuff!
This just happened:
Mama Jae: she just climbed onto the futonme: WHATMama Jae: yepme: by herself?!?oh shitMama Jae: standing there, looking at the bookleg went up, i laughedme: omgMama Jae: i looked downme: omgMama Jae: then looked back upme: omgMama Jae: and she was kneeling on the futonme: omgwe are in troubleMama Jae: yepbut then i took her downand she didn’t try to get back upme: no more leaving her in a room by herselfMama Jae: yepme: oyi want to coat our entire house in foamdo you want to go to a pumpkin festival at a park on halloween?Mama Jae: {…/////////¨unme: hi essie!Mama Jae: ]lljkm,mme: i know, right?Mama Jae: =[]\-+<]\me: you are a math whizMama Jae: ]\=’all doneme: tee heeMama Jae: k loviesme: loviesSent at 9:31 AM on FridayMama Jae is offline. Messages you send will be delivered when Mama Jae comes online.
Mama Jae is out of town. Hoo, lord, I am exhausted. Essie and I flew to DC on Friday, played with her first cousin on Saturday morning, went to a fancy party on Saturday night, and flew home Sunday morning. Mama Jae left on Sunday before our plane landed. She comes home tonight and I am so excited. Aside from just generally missing her, I seriously don’t know how single mothers do it. I have been half an hour late to work every day this week, the house is a wreck, and I have barely managed to feed my child, who also has a cold with a pretty bad cough and has not pooped in three days. Poor baby.
She took independent steps on Saturday, in my sister’s kitchen. I couldn’t believe it. Walking! Finally! So exciting. Not a moment too soon, because she’s 15 months today. I can’t believe our wee babe is such a big girl now.
Or, “Back in the Saddle Again”
Also, warning: TMI ahead.
So, I am back in physical therapy. The “fun” kind where you have to remember to shave and homework involves dildos. (If you’re new to this blog, before I got pregnant I had hardcore speculum anxiety and pain during regular checkups, so my gyno at the time sent me to physical therapy.)
I remember a certain sneeze when I was pregnant: a sneeze that made me realize it was more important than it had ever been before to listen to my bladder. I was at the local university library’s special collections doing research. I sneezed, and peed a little, and a light came on in my brain. I had been doing kegels when I remembered, but after that I upped my commitment.
Fast forward to several months after Essie was born and I got some sort of terrible, horrible stomach flu that had me vomiting constantly. And every time my stomach would empty, so would my bladder. I had no control. I peed all over the bathroom several times. And worse. It was not pretty.
So I did the obvious thing, which was clearly “ignore it and it will go away.” But after that I began to realize that I really had to focus when I sneezed so that no pee would come out.
Then my parents came to town to visit and Mama Jae and I had a wild night on the town that sent me, alas, back into the bathroom to empty various organs. PEE. PEE EVERYWHERE.
So I realized my ostrich approach wasn’t working and called my ob/gyn, and went in to see her last week. She was hopeful that physical therapy, and perhaps some estrogen cream, would help resolve the issue. If it doesn’t, I have to wait until I am done having babies and get some sort of surgery. UGH.
Physical therapy was yesterday. Basically, the answer is KEGELS. Doing kegels CORRECTLY. Doing RAPID kegels. Doing HELD kegels. And maybe some other exercises at some point once my kegeling gets better. Apparently the scar I had from my tear weakens the muscles also, so that could have been a contributing factor to my lovely diagnosis: stress incontinence. Geez.
So here I am at my desk, blogging and kegeling away. In the car, I kegel. In bed at night, kegel.
There are other weird things going on with my body too. Essie is nearly 15 months old and we stopped breastfeeding about a month ago. Recently it came to my attention that milk can still come out in…certain situations (ahem!, and sorry, Mom and Dad). What the hell?
Also, I STILL have a frizz halo from when my hair fell out after she was born and then started growing back.
One very welcome post-pregnancy bodily change is that I now seem to ovulate and have periods all on my own. Perhaps my pregnancy cured my PCOS. We’ll see. In related news, I started charting again last week. Just to see. Just to have several months’ worth of data before we REALLY get back in the saddle again.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past couple of weeks for a variety of reasons, and I’m so glad it’s the current topic for the blog carnival. For us, at this point, with a 14-month-old and two vials on ice, it’s less about unknown vs known vs willing to be known or which donor and why. It’s more about donor siblings. The recent slew of articles/stories surrounding the topic, in combination with a few blog posts I read, got me thinking. I think that our initial plan was to ignore the whole thing until Essie started asking questions. Neither Mama Jae nor I has any desire to register for the Donor Sibling Registry. If, when Essie is older, she is curious and wants to find donor siblings, then we can revisit it, but until then, forget it. It just weirds me out too much.
We’ve all read the horror stories: 150 children by one donor! Men who keep excel spreadsheets on their biological offspring and who are expecting to receive 70+ phone calls in about 16 years! Etc. etc. And it’s so weird to think about the fact that we did this to ourselves: we intentionally chose a donor that other families had used successfully, in order to increase our own chances of success. Now there are biological relatives of Essie’s roaming around out there. Possibly many of them.
Clearly 150, or even 70, is way too many. But that article linked above also included a quote from someone that threw 18 out there as a possible number, and even that (relatively) small number seemed way, way too high. This is why I will never join the DSR unprompted by my child(ren). I just don’t want to know. Especially because once you know something, you can’t un-know it. But also, it’s not about the number, it’s about the children and families behind the number. Once you put it out there and 18 other families know about you and you know about them, then won’t people, like, want to get to know each other? I have to say I am not really interested in that, much less meeting them. I would imagine that most people who used the same donor as us wouldn’t have the same values as we do. What if people want to go to Disney World with us, like some donor sibling families do? (We don’t really do Disney World.)
That said, if I could somehow guarantee that the lovely, small number of families raising Essie’s biological half-siblings were all intelligent, educated lesbians, I would probably feel differently. If it so happens that we stumble upon people through the eentsy world that is the lesbian parenting community that used the same donor, so be it. (Please note that this is NOT a call for anyone and everyone who reads this blog and may share our donor to email us.) If it happens organically and happenstance-ily, fine. But I’m not going to go looking.
ETA: For our family, what it really comes down to is this, articulated beautifully by a certain thoughtful blogger:
In a community where we strive to overcome the importance our culture places on biological connections (in the context of demanding recognition for motherhood for the non-gestational parent), what does it mean to forge relationships with strangers over a shared biological donation?
Yep. That pretty much sums it up.
