Porter's story, part 1

It's hard to know where to pick up on Porter's story. My pregnancy, labor and his birth are so entangled in the larger narrative of our family's last year that his story can't easily be pulled apart from ours. Maybe that's how it goes with third babies?

The months leading up to that very surprising, very positive pregnancy test were some of the hardest for our family. Just nine days before I flippantly took that test, I described our fifth year of parenting like this:

"Ya know that scene in the Lion King when all of the wildebeests run down the valley and trample Mufasa? That's year five.

The abbreviated background: The company Chris worked for from home unexpectedly closed their doors last April leading to several months of underemployment (re: MAJOR stress). I was twelve hours away from accepting a job offer back in Dallas when Chris got a job offer here that was too good to be true. And although his job is truly that good, it brings us to full-time preschool and daycare, which brings us to complicated drop-off schedules (all four of us spending our days in four different townships), packing (what feels like) suitcases every night, full of clothes and food and bedding and favorite nap-time stuffies, all the while trying to remember who needs to be dressed up for Dr. Seuss Day, who can't bring nuts in their lunch box, and which class needs St. Patrick's day napkins. It brought us vomit that splashed all over the walls, strep x2, the flu x3, adenovirus, four double ear infections, and Children's Motrin by the jug. And if that paragraph reads like a run-on sentence, just take it as a metaphor for our life." (ICYMI)

But the weeks of 105-degree fevers and color-coded iCal schedules were just the background noise. With the transition to our new family rhythm, came increasingly intense tantrums, not from our toddler, but from our almost five-year-old. You'd think that I'd be uniquely prepared to help Mary Allison given my graduate degree in behavior analysis, and almost a decade of training by some of the most brilliant clinicians in the field. Instead I found myself woefully incapable and helpless to help her. 

Our bright, enthusiastic daughter was still months away from her diagnosis with ADHD-HI (the hyperactive/impulsive subtype of the disorder that is characterized by intense disruptive behavior and deficits in self-regulation skills). Her diagnosis, exactly seven days before kindergarten, was finally an explanation for a long list of maladaptive behaviors that made Mary Allison-- my own daughter-- almost unrecognizable to me. If you haven't had a similar thought before about someone you love, it's impossible to understand how deeply that thought can cut. Many nights after surviving hours of suffocating tantrums, afraid of the next time I would step on a land-mine, I would hide in the bathtub, sobbing, re-watching her baby videos trying to remind myself that it was still her. She was still my daughter, and I would re-learn how to be a good mom to her.

So right there. That's where Porter's story began. With texts to a couple friends at 6:30am on a Monday morning right before work, with a picture of two very pink lines and uncharacteristic expletives. If the indescribable stress and exhaustion of watching my child suffer every day, sitting on waiting lists to be evaluated by developmental pediatricians while I failed time and time again to help her, as a mother and as a behavior analyst, a shit-ton of progesterone wasn't going to make anything easier. 

And it didn't. 

This pregnancy proved to be the most physically draining and mentally exhausting of my five. My postpartum mind has tried to dump and bury the 20 weeks of nausea and lightheadedness, the ten months of insomnia and exaggerated anxiety, the heart palpitations and the heartburn, the back pain that sent me to the chiropractor twice a week, and the damn lightening crotch that regularly made me do awkward squats and yoga poses in public places. (If you haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing lightening crotch, the bolts feel exactly like you think.) 

My experience is decidedly not unique. It feels silly to mention and inconsiderate to describe, especially since I know the hollow feeling of (secondary) infertility when all you want is to be doubled over by morning sickness. And unlike other pain and illness, these discomforts were signs of health! How could I complain? (oh, but I did..)

Everyone kept telling me that the third birth is the “wild card.” Your first is long and brutal, the second one usually much faster, and just when you think you know what birth will be like, you do it a third time and it’s nothing like the rest. Nonetheless, birth had been good to me before and you would think that I’d feel confident in my birthing powers after two unmedicated births that both left me eager to do it again. (Really, who wants that!?) But unlike my other births, I didn’t trust my body to do it’s thing. 

Although Declan’s birth was all things empowering and all things healing, I still look back and wonder why it didn’t begin on its own. That nine and a half pound baby head-butted my dilated cervix for WEEKS and my body still didn’t get the memo. I’m still haunted by his dry amniotic sac, with barely a teaspoon of fluid left by the time my midwife broke my "water,” and I will always wonder what might have happened if I hadn’t had some maternal alarm bells that told me to move my induction up by one day.

By the time we made it to Porter’s due date, we had climbed to the top of the waiting list for Mary Allison and had landed on the right medication to regulate her dopamine levels, which made her more receptive to the behavioral strategies we'd been using for years. Our home no longer felt like a war zone, and our daughter felt far more familiar-- still spunky but more calm. But my mental endurance was depleted; my body couldn't keep up with my white-haired mom at the grocery store (in my defense, my mom is a member of the "Silver Sneakers" club), and I carried new motherhood scars of inadequacy and self-doubt.

All that to say, when I finally did go into labor, in many ways it felt like I had been laboring since the moment I took that pregnancy test last May.

Desiree Hoelzle Photography

but year five

Some parts of motherhood come easily to me. I'm one of the lucky unicorns who escaped two full-term(+) pregnancies without any stretch marks on my belly, and slipped back into my old jeans the day after I came home from the hospital. I snubbed my nose at pain relievers during my 40-hour labor with May, and delivered my 9-and-a-half-pound baby boy standing up and felt like a damn birthing queen. 

Newborns weren't as hard as everyone said they'd be either. I didn't mind all of the wake-ups or the yellow poop, and I got so good at breastfeeding that I still haven't stopped. I dodged PPD, and avoided an existential life crisis about losing the "old me." In fact, having a baby finally justified the old-lady lifestyle I've been living my whole life, and instead, brought my Pinterest boards to life with the most beautiful baby girl, and then boy, at the center of it all. 

But year five. 

Ya know that scene in the Lion King when all of the wildebeests run down the valley and trample Mufasa? That's year five.

The abbreviated background: The company Chris worked for from home unexpectedly closed their doors last April leading to several months of underemployment (re: MAJOR stress). I was twelve hours away from accepting a job offer back in Dallas when Chris got a job offer here that was too good to be true. And although his job is truly that good, it brings us to full-time preschool and daycare, which brings us to complicated drop-off schedules (all four of us spending our days in four different townships), packing (what feels like) suitcases every night, full of clothes and food and bedding and favorite nap-time stuffies, all the while trying to remember who needs to be dressed up for Dr. Seuss Day, who can't bring nuts in their lunch box, and which class needs St. Patrick's day napkins. It brought us vomit that splashed all over the walls, strep x2, the flu x3, adenovirus, four double ear infections, and Children's Motrin by the jug. And if that paragraph reads like a run-on sentence, just take it as a metaphor for our life.

But that's just the background noise. And although I'm an AWFUL mom-nurse, and just the thought of getting the kids out the door by 7:10am (with said suitcases in tow) sends me over the edge, that's not why year five is so hard. It's hard because we've been sprinting this parenting marathon day and night, and night and day for half a decade, and if I could pick my biggest parenting flaw (besides sleep-training), it's that I'm really, really bad at asking for help, or even accepting help when it's offered.

But year five.

Year five is the year that I am asking for help, because my daughter needs help, and I don't know how to help her. Although she couldn't wait to stay at school for lunch bunch and thought nap time (which she hasn't done since she was 20-months old) sounded cool, the reality of her new full-time school schedule uncovered yet another similarity between mother and daughter-- anxiety. There is so much to say, and so much to learn, but to protect her privacy, I'll just leave it at that.

Year five is the year that I am asking for help, because the only way to be a working mom with a working spouse, and no family for thousands of miles, is to ask for help. There's something about being a recovering over-achiever that makes asking for help nothing short of miserable. And even though my colleagues and bosses quickly and empathetically come by my side to shoulder my load, and our parents happily squish their legs into tiny airplane seats to come bear my load, I still think it's just that-- my load-- responsibilities that I wish I could carry on my own. 

Let me rewind to when my parenthood began, before five years of interrupted sleep left me bone-tired, back when my God-given strengths matched my child's needs and I felt perfectly suited for motherhood. The thing I didn't account for at that time, is that parenthood, as unremitting as it is,  is fleeting. It should be obvious to all parents that we won't get to keep our babies forever, or to hold on to the season that fits us best. Our parenting will have to grow and change right along with our children, who outgrow three shoe sizes a season, and whose whim and whimsy is more like a curlicue than a straight line. But no matter how basic this concept, I've stumbled and tripped learning and relearning how to be a mom and although I still feel like I'm buried under a herd of wildebeests right now, I've finally learned how to ask for help.

compassion, dignity, humanity

A couple weeks after Declan was born I wrote down our story. The one where we waited, and labored, and birthed together. But now, we're only 3 days away from completing our first lap around the sun, and different pieces of our story are brighter and bolder-- more vivid, today.

I've managed to escape vulnerability most of my life. I bathe myself, clothe myself, and care for myself. I can pop my own zits and clip my own toenails; I feed myself with a steady hand, and use the bathroom in privacy. My mind and body are healthy, free from disability, illness, and old-age that might engender dependence on others.

I am a white woman, the daughter of an honest lawyer, and a skilled teacher. I grew up in a four-bedroom home with white bricks and green shutters, and fuchsia geraniums lining the patio each summer. I was afforded an education that led to a professional career where I am valued and respected, far from many of my brown brothers and sisters who were born in different neighborhoods with failing schools, or countries devastated by drought, famine, and war. My privilege shelters me from the indignities of hunger, poverty, and humiliation.

But my privilege and pride buried one of humanity's greatest virtues from me: compassion. 

Birth, the vehicle for all humanity, renders the mother naked, persevering through waves of intense pain, and profound vulnerability. So there I was. Standing, naked, hugging a birthing ball draped in a white sheet while the immutable surges washed over my body. My midwife, Yelena, knelt below me on the hard hospital floor, massaging my perineum, tenderly cleansing my body, and ensuring Declan's safe arrival. My nurse, Esta, steadied my legs, and washed blood from my feet. 

Four hours earlier, Yelena was a kind acquaintance, and Esta, a complete stranger, but now these women were sharing the most intimate of experiences with my family, treating me with the tenderness I've only known from my own mother-- the kind of compassion that is only understood when one human suffers and another takes on that suffering, the kind of compassion I had never known.

Since his birthday, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the uncomfortable, private parts of being a human, and why we try so hard to hide those parts from one another. How might we look more closely to see suffering and join alongside our brothers and sisters in their pain? How might we look deeper to see the suffering in strangers-- the ones who cannot bathe themselves, or clothe themselves, those who do not look like us, or cannot hide behind their privilege. And let us kneel down to relieve their pain, to wash their feet, to look upon them with compassion and dignity, and see our humanity in one another.

"The future is, most of all, in the hands of those people who recognize the other as a 'you' and themselves as part of an 'us.' We all need each other."- Pope Francis

Kristy Powell Photography

Kristy Powell Photography

hard things

People can do hard things. Women can do hard things. Mothers can do hard things. I can do hard things.

Mothers grow humans just underneath their own skin. We love our babies when they are just a dream and when they are the size of a poppy seed. We impossibly carry on after we mis-carry our child. We can do hard things.

Mothers birth children through stretching, cramping, ripping, cutting. With pain, needles, scalpels, and bravery. We can do hard things.

Mothers feed our babies with bruised and bloody breasts, day and night, and night and day. We bounce and rock and shush our newborns while we are still bleeding. We can do hard things.

Mothers worry. Not just about the next virus or scraped knee, but about our sweet daughter becoming a mean girl, or not making friends. We worry about what our worries will be in five years and 10 years. We worry that we might do something that separates us from our children once they have grown. We can do hard things.

Mothers stay at home doing the work of raising children. The unbroken, thankless, guilt-ridden, lonely, post-partum-depression-y work of raising children. We can do hard things.

Mothers work outside of our homes. Our alarm clocks howl too early and our inboxes stay open too late, our home and work responsibilities wrestle like our toddlers, and some days our pumping equipment weighs almost as heavily as our guilt. We can do hard things.

Mothering is hard. But mothers can do hard things. And in turn, our children will learn how to do hard things too.

Kristy Powell photography 

The months of Declan: six... and seven (and a half)

My good habits of cataloguing my babies' happenings has made its way to the bottom of my to-do list because life with two kids (who don't sleep through the night... or even mostly through the night), a full time job with an annual evaluation fast approaching, a do-it-yourself kitchen remodel, and an unrelenting list of things to remember for preschool is  N O  J O K E. So, in short recap: trick-or-treating in rabbit bonnets, learning to sit, crawl, and stand, meeting his aunts and uncles all the way from Kentucky to Kathmandu, celebrating birthdays and Thanksgiving with the Hogues and Christmas with the Smalls, speed crawling to the Christmas tree to pull down the lights time and time again, and on pace to be eating a whole grilled cheese by nine months just like his dad. Our darling boy loathes the snow, has never seen a power cord he doesn't want to chew, can take his sister's heat, more or less is a little koala perched on my shoulder most hours of the day, and only knows how to smile if his whole mouth is open wide. 

The months of Declan: FIVE!

Last October we made it to the twelve-week mark of my pregnancy and began to cautiously believe that our rainbow would finally come (and that my nausea-starvation combo might begin to subside).  A year later and our little Doc is laughing, army crawling (and face-planting), and doing his best to keep up with the tornado that is our three-year-old. This month he owned the dreaded 4-month sleep regression as if he had read all of the baby sleep books that I haven't even read! He loved his visit from Lolli who smashed herself in between two carseats to keep his tears to a minimum during our adventures around central New Jersey. A couple weeks ago we headed back into the city where Declan rolled around with his little baby friend in my childhood friend's Harlem home, looked at dinosaur bones and listened to an opera at the Natural History Museum, and swung at a playground in Central Park. Other firsts this month include: trips to the pumpkin patch, a perfect fall morning spent at Princeton University's campus and it's art museum, and his first legit brunch experience at our favorite grown-up restaurant. This little one has been along for so much in just a few months and the best is yet to be! 

 

The months of Declan: FOUR months!

Our squishy little Declan is so, so good. He upped his cuddle game this past month and prefers to sleep forehead-to-forehead with me while his gummy little fingers hug my cheeks in place. I have a feeling his sister is giving away all of our secrets when the kids lay together sucking their thumbs with arms tangled around each other; he is her Velveteen Rabbit. Declan spends much of his day exploring his hands, feet, and toys like it's his job, rolling and scooting around the living room so to keep up with the family buzz while dodging his jumping, twirling sister. The rest of the day, he is perched on our hips, joining in household chores, and lurching towards any food that comes near him. Once he threw his head back like a great white shark, nearly snapping his neck off trying to get to a bite of Chris' chips and queso. It's taken four months, but he finally made it through a single car-ride without screaming, screeching, wailing, and sweating through his nose pores. Let's hope it's not another four months before we have another quiet ride. 

We cherish this good-natured boy.