The quest for baby #2

When I think about how difficult the adjustment was to being a first time mom with my son, I have to question my sanity over the fact that we're currently trying to get pregnant again. The truth is, I want another baby for multiple reasons, but deep down I'm terrified at the idea of having a second kid, also for multiple reasons.

One of the pros of having another kid means a sibling for my son. I have six siblings myself, and while I definitely do not want to have six of my own kids, I'm happy with the fact that I've been blessed with a hoard of brothers and sisters who all have my back and who I can go to when I need support. And lemme tell you, we are a diverse bunch. It gives me perspective about the big wide world and the variety of humans that inhabit it. I want my kid to experience the joys and pains of a sibling; learning how to share space and share toys and share a car and a room and how to coexist with others and what it means to make sacrifices. Also, hello, built-in playmate! It can be difficult getting dinner ready or doing any kind of menial task when your kid is pulling you this way and that way and wants to be held and wants to take your hand and run back and forth and fall down because he thinks it's hilarious. A sibling, when old enough, is the ideal playmate for my son when I have to get shit done. Another pro for having more than one kid: knowing that when I'm old and dying, my son can lean on his sibling(s) to help him bear the burden of whose house I'm going to move into and who gets to take care of their dear mother when she can no longer care for herself.  Time for someone to change MY diapers, am I right?

Simply put, I have baby fever. I've had three miscarriages, and I felt those losses deeper than I ever could've imagined. And even despite that, I still have the motivation and desire to continue trying. Now, that may not last too much longer because I might just decide I'm too old for this shit if I'm 40 and still trying for that second baby. But right now, I'm not ready to give up. When I was pregnant with my son, despite the gestational diabetes and the constant worry in the back of my mind that I would lose him, too, I had a pretty easy pregnancy, and I loved just about every minute of it. Every day that I was lucky enough to carry that sweet baby, I was grateful and happy to do it. Selfishly or not, I want to experience that again.

Obviously, a second baby is not without its disadvantages. Though temporary (I hope!), the jealousy my son has in his heart any time he sees his mama holding another baby is stronger than the radiation emanating from a thousand suns. This kid is a jealous Joe to the max. The other day when I was holding my 3 week old niece, my son came out of nowhere, made a beeline for me and tried to claw his way up into my arms to right the treasonous act of me holding another human that isn't him. It was sweet.

I tend to not handle stressful situations involving the kiddos the best I probably could, but I am learning to do better. For example, when I'm bone-tired and my kid will not settle and go to sleep, I can't just put him down and walk away like a normal person, so I usually find myself fighting back tears of desperation and frustration. I've had my share of crying episodes while my kid sits on my lap and stares at me with curiosity. It's magical, let me tell you. But most of the time in these moments where I'm feeling like I'm hanging on by a thread and I'm sobbing in front of my child, that little jerk will inevitably do something to make me laugh, and then I remember why I decided to give up my life and my freedom and my sleep.

A few months ago, I actually did get pregnant again, only to miscarry immediately, aka chemical pregnancy. Of course I was sad and disappointed, but I figured it was super early and honestly if I hadn't been tracking a possible pregnancy so closely with test strips and an app on my phone, I wouldn't have even known I was pregnant. So if a miscarriage was inevitable, it's probably a good thing that it happened when it did. And to that point, I am actually pregnant right now, but I'm also spotting off and on and have been for several days, so the outlook isn't good. In my heart of hearts, I'm almost positive I'm going through another chemical pregnancy. That would bring my total miscarriage count up to four, which feels rather shitty, to be honest.

To the point I made above of still feeling motivated to try even after having multiple losses, I will concede that each loss I have does indeed chip away at my defenses, and I do believe it will eventually weaken me to the point where I will need to make a conscious decision to stop trying to get pregnant. Time seems to stop when you're trying to get pregnant, at least for me. I wake up thinking about it, I float through my day not focusing on work because I'm thinking about it, I probably don't put myself 100% out there for my family because I'm preoccupied with it, and I go to bed thinking about what test strip I'm going to pee on the next morning. It's mentally and emotionally exhausting, and it's starting to wear on me. I know I'm not doing my best as a wife because experiencing miscarriage does something my brain; I think it makes me more guarded and standoffish for whatever reason.

After the chemical pregnancy I had a few months ago, I was able to sort of let the quest go and I didn't chart anything for days at a time and I didn't open my fertility app much, mostly because I was so sick of being consumed with all of it. I hope I can get back to that state of mind, because I feel like I'm in this kind of limbo, and it sucks ass. Adulting is fucking bullshit.

The struggle is so fucking real, man.

Is it possible to have post-partum depression 21 months after giving birth? Because things in my head haven't been all that great lately. It's probably not PPD; it's probably just the fact that parenthood is HARD AS FUCK. The balancing act of wearing multiple hats--mom, wife, friend, daughter, employee--is taking its toll. I feel like I'm in a place right now where real issues are possibly being mistaken for just the natural rut that most people my age may find themselves in on any average day. Nothing prepared me for motherhood. And while I'm so in love with my kiddo and wouldn't trade him for the world, the small (and large) adjustments I've had to make in my life have added up to a mountain that I have trouble climbing sometimes.

Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself that no matter how rosy those pics of people and their families on IG and Facebook appear, they, too, have probably felt the same way I feel now. I am certainly guilty of comparing myself to others based on their life reports from their social media. I know that people out there are so much better equipped to handle stress and anxiety than I am, and I'm learning to accept my weaknesses as a mother, wife and human.

I'm constantly asking myself "am I doing enough?" Am I remembering to touch base with my friends? Did I remember to text a dear friend to see how she's coping with a stressful life event? Am I checking in with my pregnant friend/family member enough and being as supportive to them as they were to me when I was pregnant? Am I giving enough attention to my marriage? How many times this week did I unnecessarily snap at my husband? Did I thank him for making dinner last night? Is my son spending enough time with his grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins? Is he getting enough quality experiences each day? Is his diet balanced? Am I giving the pets enough attention? Am I letting my life interfere with my job? (other than being late to work every single day)

Being a mom, a wife--a human--is difficult and exhausting, and the struggle is, indeed, real. But man, I'm so fucking lucky for everything I have. Every day I get to spend with people I love is such a privilege, and this is what I have to remind myself of, even when I'm having the hardest of days. Things can always be worse. Case in point: a co-worker recently lost her son, her firstborn. He was older; early 40s. Not that that matters; the pain and anguish to go through losing a child has no age limit. So each day I get to hold my boy, kiss my husband, have a drink with dear friends makes the stress and anxiety just a little easier. I do hope to seek professional therapy in the near future. My personality and impulsivity don't always make for the best of coping skills. I'd like to learn how to channel some of this stress into a positive outcome, and I feel like I'll need more help figuring that out.

WTF is wrong with me?

Anyone who watches "Modern Family" remember that episode where Cam is jealous that Lily is giving all her attention to Mitchell and as he tries to elbow his way back into her favor, he inadvertently keeps causing her to get hurt? Like, he accidentally throws her into the pool; he gives her one of those motorized mini cars and she drives it into something and gets hurt; he throws rice during a fake wedding and some gets in her eye, etc. Hilarious!

Not so funny when it actually happens to you. Especially if you're having a stressful day or you're anxious already for whatever reason.

To make a long story short because I have some shows to catch up on, I was at the zoo with my kiddo enjoying the Halloween stuff they had going on. At one point, I stopped to check and see if his diaper was poopy, and I stood him up on the bench of a table in a food area so I could better see down the back of his diaper. I didn't have a great hold on him with the one hand, and my other hand was pulling his pants away from his body, and in this five seconds my kiddo took a step back into nothingness, and he fell off the bench onto the ground under the table. Obviously he was terrified because he thought he was stepping onto a stable surface and there was nothing there but empty space, and we've all done that before with a stair step or something, so we know how startling that can be. Luckily he was bundled up in a thick hoodie so he didn't hit his head at all; he kind of just fell on his side and rolled a little. But in the split second I saw my poor baby hit the ground, I almost died of fright and panic. Of course he immediately started crying and I'm trying to pick him up as he's struggling to sit up to check him for injuries and apologizing profusely for not catching him and also holding back my own tears because I don't want to have a meltdown myself in the middle of the fucking zoo. After sobbing for a couple of minutes, he calmed down when his cousin gave him a little stuffed football and some pieces of cookie from her ice cream cup. I watched him walk around for a little bit to make sure he wasn't hurt, at which time I managed to hold back my tears of guilt and shame. I let my baby fall on the fucking concrete...who does that??

Fast forward to the next day, we're playing outside and he wants to put the basketball in the basketball hoop, like you do. I'm a short person. I have short arms. My kid is still pretty small, so he doesn't have long arms either. The idea crosses my mind to try and sit him on my shoulders so he can reach the rim. I raise him up over my head, but I can't quite get my head under him properly because he's wearing these stupid sweat pants with the drop crotch. Well, in my attempts to get him on my shoulders, I'm completely unaware that we're standing almost right under the backboard, so when I lifted him up over me, I accidentally hit his head on the corner of the backboard. Yeah, that's right; the pointy, sharp, METAL corner of the backboard. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST. It's a good thing I'm so weak, because it was just a slight bump, but the fact that it happened at all was crushing to me. I had just had a scare the day before with him falling at the zoo and now I was pulverizing his soft little head on a metal shard. MOM OF THE YEAR.

These aren't the first instances where the kiddo has fallen or had a head bonk on my watch, and of course they won't be the last. And these certainly weren't instances of life or death. All kids fall or trip or bonk heads or get scrapes or bruises. Those minor injuries throughout childhood are probably helping teach the little ones how to survive long enough to get to adulthood. I just couldn't help but feel like I failed at being a mom in those moments, and the thought of that brought me to tears and stressed me the hell out.

Being a mom is hard. Some days are harder than others. I guess those days are what Target and wine are for. Cheers!

HBIC

Most of the time now, I feel like motherhood has turned me into a snarky bitch who's quick to attitude. Not to my kid, mind you, but to everyone else. Anyone else feel the same? Just me? #wifeoftheyear

Just be cool, man

A lesson I've learned since becoming a mom: you have to have a sense of humor about most things. And you have to accept that things are going to happen that you'd normally freak out about but you mostly just have to keep your cool for the sake of your kid and your own sanity. If you're as neurotic as me, that's a tall order.

In a recent post, I lamented about the fact that my kid got hand foot and mouth disease, and I mused about what affliction would befall him next. I specifically mentioned pinworms. And guess what? A couple of months after HFM was over with, I got a call from my kid's school. *DUN DUN* 

I was at work and had missed the call from school. When I listened to the vague voicemail message, I immediately panicked and figured my kid had gotten hurt. I called back, expecting them to tell me he fell and broke his arm or something. Instead, the secretary attempted to explain that while his diaper was being changed after a poop, his teacher saw something hanging out of his butt, and she had to pull it out. She then informed me it looked like some kind of worm. After mentally breathing a sigh of relief that my kid wasn't maimed, a fresh wave of dread washed over me as I came to realization that he probably had pinworms. I had read about pinworms before. I was disgusted by them in general and horrified by the methods you have to take to confirm that your kid has them. For those who don't know, it involves flashlights and tape and checking your kid's butthole at night. I know, right?

I explained to the secretary that it was maybe pinworms and quickly commented that I had read it's a common occurrence in daycare settings, at which point she informed me that she'd never heard of them and that another administrator who had worked there for 20 years had never seen anything like it. Awesome, thanks ladies. The secretary informed me that they saved the worm so I could take a look at it. I told the secretary I would call my kid's doc to see what to do, hung up the phone and proceeded to internally melt down. As I said before, I had already read up on pinworms and knew what was in store for me. But I called the doc and spoke with the nurse a couple of times. I decided that after work I would hit the pharmacy and get the OTC med, which actually sounded pretty simple; one dose and then a follow up dose a couple weeks later. Pretty easy for such a disgusting malady. 

Fast forward to later in the evening after my kid has gone to bed. I'm getting ready to head out to the pharmacy to pick up meds, and I thought "lemme just take a quick gander at that worm they saved for me." I put some gloves on, open the plastic bag up and proceed to unwrap the paper towels and baby wipes that were stuffed in the bag. Obviously since they collected the specimen during a poopy diaper change, it was super pleasant to be pawing through a bunch of shit-stained wipes. Eventually I got to the worm in question. While it certainly looked like a little, white-ish, grub-like worm, I quickly realized with immense relief that it was definitely not a pinworm. Looked nothing like it. And then I recalled that the night before, my kid had zucchini noodles with his dinner. And I realized that's exactly what this was. A fucking zucchini noodle. Oh. Em. Gee. See, this is why a sense of humor is a necessary quality in a mom. 

I don't think I've ever been more relieved in my life, other than maybe when my kid was born healthy. With the giddiness of a fucking school girl, I broke the good news to my husband that we, in fact, do not have to get our kid out of bed that night and put scotch tape on his butthole to collect pinworm eggs. Nor do we have to launder every single piece of fabric our kid has come into contact with. YESSSSS!!!!! 

Honestly, the most mentally-taxing part of the whole scenario of my kid having pinworms was the idea of having to get him up in the middle of the night, two nights in a row, to check his butthole. Anyone with any sense knows you don't wake a sleeping baby; well, I guess pinworms and a poopy diaper are the exceptions to that rule. 

Little of this, little of that

A few things have been swimming around in my mind recently. First, the death of John McCain. I found myself transfixed while watching his memorial services, funeral and television tributes after he passed away. I don't know why; it's not like he was my Senator or anything. Maybe it was my admiration for his political stances in the last few years of his life. Maybe it was the abruptness of how quickly he died after declaring that he was stopping his cancer treatment, which only highlighted the glaring reality of our mortality. Maybe it's because my own father, though not as old as McCain, is retiring at the end of this week after a 50 year run, and I'm starting to think about what his twilight years will look like. I know lots of people whose parents passed when they were relatively young, and I'm grateful that I didn't have to deal with that when I was younger and way more self-destructive than I am now. Obviously I'm counting on my dad to be around for a long time to come, but as we're all aware, we are not promised tomorrow. I've been lucky enough to have both my parents around my entire life, and I'm not ready to face what life would be like without both of them.

Speaking of fallibility, I threw my back out recently while playing with my toddler, and it has really opened my eyes to the fact that I chose to wait so long to have kids. I'm kind of regretting not having them when I was younger and in better shape. To add insult to injury, we're trying to get pregnant again, and nothing kills your confidence like throwing your back out at age 36. I say it all the time: I need to get back into the habit of exercising and paying more attention to my physical fitness. And as a mom of a toddler with a full-time job, also me: I have no time to do anything for myself. Of course this isn't entirely true. Instead of spending an hour at Target tonight, I could've worked out. Instead of planning drinks and dinner with my girlfriends, I could plan a walk on the canal. Here's the thing, though: by the time I'm done with my 8-hour work day, picking up my kid, making dinner with multiple interruptions from my kid, feeding the kid, cleaning up dinner, bath time and bed time routines, laundry, grocery shopping and whatever else needs to be done, I'm exhausted. I'm spent. So I allow myself time to sit and veg and drink wine and mindlessly scroll social media because I feel like I deserve it. I suppose with that mindset, though, I also deserve my sexy beer gut. Rock and a hard place. And now, we're trying to add another human to the fray. What? Why? How?

I had something else I wanted to put down, but I've forgotten what it is because now I'm thinking about what I'm going to make for dinner tomorrow.......and how much time I have to get my work trainings done before they're due...... and why I've been feeling like I'm on the verge of an ulcer for the past three days.....and maybe it's actually a heart attack...... and how it's crucial I get to bed earlier.... and oh look it's almost 11pm and I still have laundry to put in the dryer...... and I can't forget to get a new toothbrush out for my kid because he threw his in the trash yesterday...... and I still need to make a vet appointment for the cat..... and the dog needs his flea treatment........ and I need to get a card for my dad.......

MOM LIFE, YO. 

Ick

If you're a germaphobe like me, you'll be able to relate to my recent near-death experience in which my kid caught hand foot and mouth disease from daycare, and I almost killed myself out of disgust.

And then I caught it from him and felt like I was actually going to die. *cue the foreboding music*

On a Saturday, I had put my kid down for a nap and escaped the house for a bit to get groceries. When I got home, I walked into a shit show. Well, more of a puke show. My husband greeted me at the door, holding the crying baby while trying to maintain control of the baby vomit that was running down his shirt and arm. He informed me that when he had gotten the kid up from his nap, he attempted to give him a snack and a drink, but the kid puked two times and wouldn't stop crying. I grabbed my kid, felt how hot he was, walked to the kitchen to get the thermometer and then got puked on myself. Great! After taking his temperature and confirming that he had a fever, I gave my kid some Tylenol and spent the next two hours cuddling him in bed while he calmed down and rested. After a few hours, his fever was gone and we did a bland dinner of crackers and applesauce, just in case he was still pukey. He didn't puke for the rest of the night and never spiked a fever again.

The next day, he was seemingly fine and all better. No fever, no puking and his appetite was normal. Against my better judgment, we attended two family events that day with forewarning to everyone that my kid had a fever and vomiting the day before but seemed fine now. Nobody seemed too concerned, so I thought everything was ok.

(Bear in mind that just a week or so before, my kid's teacher had told me in confidence that HFM had affected several kids in an infant room and in another toddler room, and that the school had supposedly posted a notice at the front desk. Yeah, I never saw that notice. But whatever.)

Later that night, I noticed my kid had some red spots on his fingers. Since he tends to chew on his fingers when he's teething, which he was at the time, I didn't think much of it and just assumed that's what the redness was from. NOPE. Turns out, they were the tell-tale blisters of HFM starting to blossom on my kid. By the next day, he had very obvious blisters on his fingers, hands, feet and around his mouth. We could see one little blister on his tongue. Eventually, blisters broke out on his elbows, legs, butt and genitals. He pretty much had them everywhere except for his trunk.

Aside from what I assume was general discomfort and some itching, he seemed ok overall after that initial fever. His appetite wasn't as good; he didn't eat or drink as much in the ten days or so it took for the blisters to crust over and fade. He got extra clingy that week and stayed extra clingy for a couple of weeks after. But all in all, I suppose it wasn't that bad. I've certainly heard worse stories from other parents about their experience with their kid getting HFM.

Now, the real tragedy: I caught the HFM from him (how could I not?), and it was ROUGH. The last time I was really sick, it was a bad sinus infection that also brought on bronchitis. This was so much worse. I haven't had the flu in many years, but the HFM made the flu look like a fucking hangnail. I can't remember the last time I felt so horrible, to the point that I couldn't function. I mean, the night it hit me, I didn't finish my glass of wine. I KNOW, RIGHT?? I had the world's worst headache and sore throat, coupled with body aches from hell. I had hot flashes earlier in the day, and by the evening I was freezing my ass off. This torture lasted for about two days before I even started to feel marginally better. I'm usually not one for medicine, but I ate pills like they were candy, just to get through the day and be able to take care of my kid. Screw waterboarding. Real torture is taking care of a toddler while you feel like you're knocking on Death's door.

Overall, I was sick for about a week; the first two days were the absolute worst of it. I did get blisters as well, on my hands and feet. They basically felt like pins and needles for about five days, which wasn't great but also wasn't the worst scenario possible. My husband didn't get as sick as I did. He had a sore throat for about a week, that's it. Lucky bastard.

Now that HFM has come and gone, I'm curious as to what's next. Mono? Norovirus? Lice? Pinworms?? Gee, I can hardly wait.