Insecurity

Most of the time I really do think I am a good mom.

Probably not the best mom of all time or anything. I lose patience, sometimes I yell, sometimes we watch Cars twice in a row because I'm exhausted and need a break, sometimes we go through the drive thru and eat french fries because why not. And none of those things make me a bad parent and I know that.

But sometimes I wonder if everything that's wrong is because of me. Not the things I did wrong, but the things I could have done that I didn't. That instead of throwing balls all the time always because that's what he wanted to do I could have been teaching him letters or colors or whatever else it is he is supposed to know by now that all the other kids somehow know by now that no one told me I was supposed to make sure he knew until he was already supposed to know. Why didn't I know? Why didn't I try to teach him even if I didn't? Does everything have to be educational?

WHY IS THIS PARENTING THING SO HARD?

It seriously leaves me feeling more vulnerable than I ever could have imagined being before.

 

Full circle, almost.

Tycho's birthday is in a week and a half and I am being completely consumed by nostalgia. I have no idea where the time went. I stayed up late last night looking through my weekly belly photos from when I was pregnant, and it was like looking at a stranger. I barely even recognize the person that I was just a year ago. Motherhood is awesome, in the true sense of the word. I don't think I am one of those women whose entire personality gets taken over by the mom identity. I have a job and interests outside of my offspring, and I can still have adult conversations with people about things other than my kid. But at the same time, I have become a completely different person. Motherhood can't help but change your priorities. Life has more gravity. I shake my head looking at the girl in those pictures. She has no idea what she is getting  herself into.

You can expect a lot more navel-gazing and introspection in the coming weeks, I think. How in the world did we get here?

Light

Tycho is almost nine months old, and he is so much fun these days. I haven't been struck at all by any post-partum mood disorder, nor was Tycho a "hard" baby by any stretch of the imagination, and I've loved him to pieces since before he was born, but I won't lie. I didn't love parenting a newborn. It's not hard, per se, but it is endless and thankless and BORING. Yes, he was adorable, but adorable only gets you so far. Like, twenty minutes. The all day, every day monotony was so not for me.

But now. Now. You would call him a toddler if he could, well, toddle. (He did finally learn how to crawl the other night, yay!) He plays and interacts and has a big toothy grin. He looks like a little kid, not a baby. Sometimes the days are still long, and I can't imagine how I'm going to survive one more hour until bedtime, but for the most part, this stage is AWESOME.

     

When I was taking a shower this morning I was thinking how I kind of miss being pregnant. I am SO not ready to actually think about having another baby, but I do miss the dreamy potential of it all. Give me another year or so. But at least now I can actually imagine doing this again. If you asked me a month or two ago... I don't even know.

Via

Stealth cat!

24 Weeks! Fetal Viability! I win! 

I feel like I am getting boring. Pregnancy is still going well. I feel good most of the time, I'm big but not huge. No complications. Etc., etc. I did pull a muscle in my ass, but I'm pretty sure that's just an unrelated annoyance. I don't really have anything else to say about that. Sometimes heartburn wakes me up in the middle of the night and I can't get back to sleep and sometimes it's hard to get up out of a squatting position, and sometimes baby boy kicks me in the cervix, but I think if that's the worst of it, I'm doing pretty great. Still  no stretch marks or swollen ankles or any of that superficial nonsense. I almost feel like I am being cheated out of those experiences, but I suppose I should count my blessings. That said, I can't believe how time is flying. I can't believe it's almost April. I can't believe I'm going to have a baby in less than four months! 

In a couple of weeks we are flying out to Ohio to visit Kyle's friends and family. I am actually quite excited. His family is so awesomely excited for us, so I can't wait to see them all in person for the first time since I've been pregnant. Baby boy will be the first great-grandchild on both sides of his family, so this is, I guess, a really big deal. And there hasn't been a baby in his family for about 6 years now, which for them is a pretty long stretch.  So, yay! In the past I've been a little irritated that so many of our "vacations" end up being to Ohio, since we typically can't afford to take the time off of work/buy plane tickets for more than one destination every year, but right now I want to be surrounded by family and just hang out, which is exactly what I will get to do.

However, Ohio coming up means that baby shower the first is also coming up, and for some reason I am inordinately anxious about baby showers. But I'm all worried that everyone will hate my registry or that all I will get is a metric ton of diapers, even though I want to use cloth, or every single piece of clothing I receive will say some nonsense about how baby is "cute like mommy" and I still won't have any of the things that I actually need like a car seat and a breast pump and ACK! I guess I can't really get upset about those things, even if they all do happen, since I can't demand that anyone buy me a crib or a stroller or whatever, but baby stuff makes me crazy. I'm starting to worry about how in the world we're going to pay for everything, and how much this birth is going to cost, and what are we thinking(!!!) again. I know we'll work it out because we'll have to work it out, but I can't stop myself from regularly hyperventilating about it. Oh well.

Ok. I don't really have anything to tidily wrap up this entry. The end.

Week 23

Yesterday was 23 weeks. Yesterday was also my mother's birthday. I spent a very exciting evening with her eating finger foods and doing a puzzle. Not exactly heavy lifting, you know. But then when I got home I was having these horrible cramps. I thought maybe Braxton Hicks? But the hurt, like menstrual cramps, and Dr. Google diagnosed that as BAD NEWS. So I freaked out, obviously.

I called Kyle to COME HOME NOW from wherever he was out with friends because I couldn't handle it on my own at all. I couldn't be sure if it was okay to be worried or if I was being an insane paranoid hypochondriac or what. He was hesitant that I needed him, but when I started sobbing he said he was heading home.

I curled up in bed and cried. Curling up in bed helped with the pain, like it always has with my period, and by the time Kyle got home it had stopped. But I was still a mess and I wasn't sure if I should call and wake someone up in the middle of the night or not but how would I live with myself if anything happened? Kyle called the on call midwife for me and we decided things were probably okay if the cramping had subsided, and to keep an eye on things. But even after being reassured I just could not stop crying.

Today I felt much better after getting a full night's rest, so I went to the zoo with my mom as we had previously planned. We had a good trip. I love the zoo. I hope baby boy will love the zoo, too. Certainly we'll take him there often. But as the day progressed I started getting antsy again, because I hadn't felt him move all day. I wouldn't have been so worried under normal circumstances, but after the cramping episode last night... well I couldn't get it out of my head.

I ended up going to see my midwives after their last appointment of the day. Everything is peachy keen of course, and I'm feeling slightly stupid for being so worried, but I was SO. WORRIED. And while I'm no longer fearing any present danger, I can't shake this cloud that's hanging over me. I just don't know what I would do if something happened. It makes me feel physically ill.

I can't imagine this will get any easier once he is on the outside.

What's in a name?

How in the world do people name their children without have a complete nervous breakdown? I feel like this (and every other decision we have to make involving pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting) is the biggest, most important thing I've ever had to do and the consequences if we get it wrong... well, I don't know what they are, but they are hanging over my head, nonetheless. A name, a car seat, a parenting philosophy... it's all so overwhelming.

Names in particular are so important to me. I have a "weird" name. I also had a weird nickname as a kid. I love my weird name. Maybe it's because of the millions of times my dad told me how much thought he and my mom had put into choosing it, and the reasons the had, and so on, but I'm so glad I'm simply Astrid, and not Jessica R. or Jenny, because there's already a Jen and a Jennifer in my class/workplace/whatever. And yeah, it was often pronounced incorrectly or completely misheard, and yes, there were a couple of weeks in third grade where the older boys called me "ostrich," but none of that really matters. What matters is that my dad thought it was really important for his daughter to have a strong feminine name, one not too dainty or diminutive. What matters is that I was the only Astrid around, and my name was mine, all mine, and almost nobody has any preconceived notions about who I am or what kind of person I should be. I get to make that first impression.

We talk so much about teasing when we talk about names. When we talk about anything, really. Don't name you kid after a fruit, she'll get made fun of.  You have to circumcise your son or the other boys in the locker room will bully him. Your daughter will have a hard time making friends if you send her to school with a pita and hummus instead of a PB&J. I think the moral here is not that we can protect our kids from taunts and bullying by normalizing everything about them, but that our children will be teased no matter what we do, and that shouldn't be a good enough reason to name them John, or preform elective cosmetic surgery on a newborn, or whatever. And I think I'd so much rather be Astrid/Ostrich than Sarah number seventeen.

So my kids are not going to be Aiden or Emma, or whatever is at the top of the charts right now. But I think picking a unique name is so much harder than just going with the flow, or following some family tradition, or what have you. When you have all the freedom in the world, you can become paralyzed with indecision and get completely overwhelmed with all the choices, not to mention the lifelong consequences they'll have for your children.

We have a little less than six months to figure it out. Let's hope that's long enough.

I need a vacation

Okay, I am tired of being pregnant. While I am aware that most women feel this way at some point during pregnancy, I'm pretty sure that usually they last longer than ten weeks. But I'm ahead of the curve. Or something. Really, though, I'm over it. I don't want to like, not be pregnant, either, since I'm rather heavily anticipating the prize at the end, but I wish there was a pause button somewhere, so that I could maybe take a week's vacation from it all and then start back up where I left off. And I could eat raw fishes and soft cheeses and rare steak and have a god-damned cocktail. A girl can dream.

But seriously. I feel like I'm in some sort of pregnancy limbo-land right now. I'm definitely not showing yet, and we're still not sharing the news. The people that do know about it I think have gotten over their initial excitement, and so it's not LETS TALK ABOUT THE BABY!!! time anymore. Our first ultrasound isn't until January. And most of my early-pregnancy symptoms have tapered off. My boobs are still a little sore, but not all-the-time distracting. I'm periodically nauseous, but no longer vomiting. I'm not dead-tired anymore, but I'm still only running at about 80%. I suppose I should be happy about these things, but it just makes me feel like I am in no-man's land. At least I got to be constantly reminded that I'm growing a BAYBEEE! And, you know, I kind of like having something to complain about. Weird, but true. Now it's just whatever.

Lately I have also completely lost my appetite. Food does not interest me. Except for maybe chocolate. But nothing, say, nutritious. Or filling. And as such I forget to eat. And then my stomach starts growling and rumbling and it's uncomfortable and my body is telling me it's hungry, but my head? Still not interested. So then I eat some chocolate ice cream to quiet my stomach so that I can get some sleep. You think I'd be doing everything I could to make healthy choices for my fetus, but um, apparently not. At the end of all of this it's entirely possible that I will give birth to a baguette, since French bread is the only thing that doesn't seem completely unappetizing right now. Great.

Also, I am kind of freaking out. Interestingly enough, I am not really scared of becoming huge and swollen ankles and varicose veins and stretch marks and back aches. I don't fear contractions. I am not afraid of labor, or the "ring of fire," of any of it. I'm pretty sure it will be hard and it will be painful, but I'm completely confident I'll come out on the other side just fine. I think this is the result of spending oh, the last two years reading everything I could get my hands on about pregnancy and birth. Pregnancy and birth are old hat to me. Totally fine.

But everything else? I'm at a loss. I can push a baby out, but what the hell do I do with it afterward? Seriously. I've never babysat, ever. Never changed a diaper. I have given a baby a bottle twice, with supervision, and one of those times I was eight years old and I wouldn't even remember it except for the photographic evidence, so I'm pretty sure it doesn't count. I don't know a thing about car seats or strollers, and I'm pretty sure that babywearing sounds awesome, but as soon as I start thinking about the myriad options for slings and carriers I start panicking.

Lately I've been spending my time reading the archives of Alphamom, because it's so much more interesting than doing the dishes, or like, putting on pants. So last night it occurred to me, all of the sudden that not only am I going to have a baby, but at some point that baby is going to become a school-aged child, and perhaps a  TEENAGER and we'll have to talk about SEX and what the hell have I gotten myself into?

When did I get so crazy? Before getting pregnant I had all sorts of modern, positive ideas about age-approriate lifetime sex education and blah blah blah and this sort of stuff never worried me before and then hormones and you read one silly blog post about teenage boys and internet pornography and your brain explodes.

Did I mention I need a vacation? Welp, we go to Paris in nine days (holy crap!), so there is that. I will probably be pretty lax on the avoidance of fancy cheese and bubbly alcoholic beverages, because really, I need a break, and moderation and all that. Okay.

Sorry, blog!

Hey friends in my computer. I'm sorry I haven't been attending to your care and feeding. I hope you're still alive in there!

Yeah, so it's been a bit since I've posted. I'm sorry about that, truly. Recently my husband posted this video on his facebook, and it's been making me think. I wanted to share it with you, but I also wanted to add my own thoughts, and I was having a hard time figuring out how to word them. (I know that 20 minutes is a lot of time to ask of a casual blog reader, but I promise this video is super worth it.)






The problems with our education system has been an issue that's long been very important to me. Up until recently, it's been from my perspective as a student. I failed out of high school. And it's not because I'm not intelligent. Because no one would suggest that. In fact, most people assume I did very well in school based on their interactions with me. But I didn't. I am one of those people that schools fail because I don't fit into their mold. I dropped out of college for somewhat of the same reason. I wasn't happy sitting in a chair all day listening to someone blather on about something. I wasn't learning, I was spending the required amount of time sitting in a lecture hall that some administrative professional deemed necessary for me to be educated. But really, most of my real education has happened on my own time, and on my own terms. I love learning, but I hate school.

When I was nineteen I ran for school board in Seattle. (Please do not Google this, because this was a time of a very unfortunate haircut.) There were three different school board races going on at the time (two candidates in each district), but the newspapers lumped all six of us together when discussing the issues. I was the only one who had any interest in challenging the status quo of the school district and the systems in place, while they were all squabbling about petty issues to distract everyone from the real problems.

I had a campaign fund of forty dollars and I was facing a candidate that was backed by a $15,000 political action committee. Needless to say, I didn't win. In fact, the news reported a "landslide" victory for my opponent when he won with 66% of the vote. I, however, think it was pretty amazing that simply based on my voters pamphlet statement (because like hell did I do any advertising) that I was able to garner so many votes. I was blown away. And I can promise you it was because I was actually saying something different. And it truly resounded with an amazingly large amount of people.


Anyway, I've now started thinking about education not just from my experience as a student, but also from the perspective of a future parent. Yes, I realize that I am many years away from having to deal with my children's entrance into the public education system, but still, its something that I think about. Actually, it's something that scares me. Neither Kyle or I did exceptionally well at school. We both succeeded because we are very smart, and that allowed us to get around the fact that the system wasn't made for people like us. But I'm worried that our children will also be people like us, and that possibly they won't be so lucky.

I don't know what the answer is. Oftentimes that scares me. Radical change, especially on the scale of something as big as the public education system is monumental. I don't even know where do start. But I do know from my experience as a school board candidate years ago that people are ready and open to change.