On Multiplying

I know what we would need to do to have a second baby.

We would need to be able to live off one income. We would need to be able to pay for five days a week, full-time child care with a lot of babysitters on the side. We would need to be prepared for some hospital stays. We would need to be prepared to live as a one parent family who nursed a sick relative 24 hours a day.

And that's just the practical logistics.

The emotional toll is high as well. For me it's accepting the possibility of 9 months of disabling illness. Losing my job again. Having every scent in the known world be nauseating. Ruining what's left to ruin of my teeth. For JTS it would be being a full-time caregiver again. For Lil' D it would be not having a mama for 9 months. Or at least not a mom she recognizes.

As more and more of my friends move on to welcoming their second child and as more of Lil' D's school class gets new siblings I'm starting to feel (for the first time in my life)

left behind.

I never cared when everyone started getting married and I didn't. I never cared when people were having children and I wasn't. But this second child thing. Man, it eats at me every day.

There is a 65 - 80% chance that if you've had hyperemesis before you will have it again. But the thing with me is no one knows if I had hyperemesis in the first place or if my no good, horrible, very bad pregnancy was all a side-effect of my uterus making a slow migration to the other side of my body or some kind of horror show combination. And no one knows if any of it would happen again.

"Probably not."

But.

"No promises."

Nothing in the wide world makes me sadder than thinking about when I was pregnant. My nightmares still involve a positive pregnancy test and I can get to PTSD levels of anxiety thinking of being trapped in that sick, very pained body again. I missed out on the happy parts of pregnancy and that makes me sad. I never got to have a baby shower and that makes me sad. I never got to "enjoy" pregnancy or plan for a nursery and that makes me sad. I never got to ruminate on the baby with love and that makes me sad. My only thought ever was "Please God let this end." And on some dark dark days I didn't really care how that end came about. The only thing that kept me going was my weekly ultrasound and that there was an end date. On a hospital calendar.

And at 8:46 am on week 38 your suffering shall end. Amen.

So probably everyone out there is now wondering why in all the hells would I even be thinking about risking this again?

The first, and most obviously wonderful reason is: babies are awesome. If I had known how addictive they were I would have skipped the whole elaborate cake and cafe lighting wedding and just gone straight to the baby.

How can you resist this drooler?

After you get through that o-so-tough first 3 months it's all pretty fun. The smiles, the giggles, the utter silliness. Sure, everyone loves to moan about the bad nights, the crying in restaurants, etc. etc. But when a little pint-sized goofball tries to make a "joke" (in this case, imagine Lil' D accidentally running into a pole, not hard, but then getting a sly look across her face, falling flat on her back with her legs in the air and then waiting with a smile to see if anyone laughs) it's just SO. WORTH. IT.

The second answer is more complicated and has, honestly, more to do with guilt than my true feelings. I will feel guilty if Lil' D didn't have a sibling. I will feel guilty on those Sunday afternoons when she is bored and could be playing with a sibling. I will feel guilty she won't ever have anyone to discuss how nuts her mom is over a latte. Well, anyone who really knows.

And then the mother of all guilt. There is an unspoken code I feel that you don't really count as a mom until you have two. Until you're outnumbered. That somehow you have it easy with this fake, only* child and you haven't yet joined the ranks of mom.

But I waffle.

On difficult days one seems like plenty. On the super happy days I don't know how I could ever love another. When all is well I would never want to diminish the amazing amount of attention I can lavish on Lil' D. She soaks it up. And in all my obsessive research over one child families, only children do really well with all that undivided attention and love.

And of course the very traumatized soul of my pregnant self never wants to go through those 9 months again. And even pretending the next time will be different doesn't make it so.

I don't know how it will all shake out. But I'm feeling really behind. I'm feeling disappointed in my body. I'm feeling disappointed in myself for not having an answer. With every new baby that enters my world I feel a disturbing combination of happiness for my friend and wrenching jealousy.

But I have figured out that's the reason why I've been wanting to get a whole new wardrobe or redo my living room. To take my mind off the fact that I just want something I can't make happen. I want to be a normal woman, with a normal pregnancy. Something to celebrate, not something to dread.


*Side note: What a terrible term ONLY child is. On so many levels.

Putting Your Baby Out There

Does anyone besides me worry about putting their child's picture online?

Moms I love run the gamut — from those who absolutely believe in NO pictures on Facebook to the moms of my favorite blogs who Instagram and blog a constant stream of photos and stories with their kids' names.

I'm not sure how I feel.

There is the constant struggle between the proud mom in me who wants to share and shout "Look at my cute baby!" And then there is the practical side of me who wants to protect what little privacy she will have available to her as she grows up. I guess it's the constant struggle of moms everywhere. Your child is your child but also their own person. And finding that balance is hard.

I was posting pictures away on Facebook without a second thought and then I read this story. It gave me pause. I never want Lil' D to become a meme. And who are my 800+ "friends" anyway?

And then Instagram. Just like Facebook (actually more than Facebook) I'm "friends" with people I don't really know. What will they do with Lil' D's face? I post pictures of her there almost every day.

While there is an inherent oddness of strangers staring at your baby's face, I mainly worry about advertising and how I portray Lil' D to the very public world. How will all these posts I generate contribute to a company's ability to market directly to her? How will people label her based on my content?

While I don't currently post my blog posts to Instagram or Facebook (and my readership hangs on around 20 people) it is still out there in the wide world of trolling and sharing and commenting.

I think my rules right now are just to keep her name off the blog (oops need to go back and edit some old posts). I'm sure people could figure it out no matter what but that seems like a small protection. And I think I'm not going to be a traitor to her bad days. My favorite mom blogs don't harp on their kids personality qualities especially not the negative ones. I personally abandon blogs or people that tell everyone all about their kids' bad characteristics or bad days. That seems private. In the words of B.B. King, " Nobody loves me but my mother. And she could be jivin' too."

Here on Lets Blog it Out, I'm trying not to jive.

And at some point near the beginning of the middle school years I might have to abandon ship altogether. Although Lil' D ain't gonna be allowed on social media till she goes to college (only sorta kidding) her friends probably will be and no 7th grader needs more fuel for the fire.

So what do you think? What are your social media rules when it comes to your precious baby faces?

ALL that being said.

LOOK HERE! At this brochure (and banner and info board) I created for  The Mothers' Milk Bank of Alabama.  That is one cute baby right there.

In print. (Feels different to me?!)

Sundays on the Train With Daisy

One of my favorite New York City moments is the moment when one crazy person on the train runs into another crazy person. It's simply the best show on earth, like Gladiators for the less muscular.

Have you ever seen when two babies meet for the first time? Their mothers plop them down on the floor together and for the first five minutes they just size each other up. The look in their eyes questioning, "There is another one of me out there? No one told me." And then they drool.

That was the scene today as I returned home from way up at 191st and Broadway on the 1 train. Crazy man #1 was wearing an umbrella hat selling whistles for $1. Crazy man #2 was wearing a cardboard sandwich board that proclaimed the end was near while selling M&M's. They came from opposite sides, met in the middle, and sized one another up.

I was the plebian on the orange seat rooting for a whistle/sandwich board showdown that ended up with the exchange of the blue whistle for a bag of peanut M&M's in what could have only been described as the New York version of the Coca-Cola commercial where everyone holds hands, but alas, just like the babies, their eyebrows arched in worry, one of them had the fortitude to wipe their mouth and they moved past each other. Crazy ships in the night.