Suburban Bliss:: Birth Control Via The Written Word

Farewell nursery...

I painted Madison's room just over 7 years ago. I came up with this cute color scheme based on the colors in the platter Logan had made for me for our wedding. Unfortunately, the color Madison, at nearly seven, wanted simply did not go with my previous color scheme. Which was fine except that my diamond wall, the wall I painted with a tiny brush and an 8.5 month pregnant belly weighing me down. My back begging for mercy, didn't make the cut.

Today as we painted Madison said, "I love this new color, even though I sort of want to cry about the old color."

And it made me want to say, "Madison, please stop being like me. It's hard to be me and I want you to have it easier than me."

But yes, as we painted I couldn't help but remember how excited I was when I first painted that room. I didn't know if I was having a boy or a girl. I didn't know what it would be like to have a baby at all. All I could do was paint flea market finds, a bench, and a tiny chair and the walls. I was so proud of that room when I was finished. In the weeks before Maddie arrived I would walk past the room and peek in every time I passed by to pee....because I did a lot of that. I smiled imagining a little boy or girl growing up in that room.

In the last few weeks I've spent a lot of time thinking about how the children we have are not actually blank slates we make into the people we want them to be. We are supposed to try to help them become who they are meant to be. It's hard to know when you're doing that correctly really and that's why I feel horrible sometimes. How much is who I am changing the course of who they are?

I never in a million years would have had a purple room in my house. When I was pregnant I created the baby room I chose. The room I thought of as beautiful and the perfect place for a baby. Madison is now nearly seven and it's almost too perfect that we painted her room today. We painted her room in the color of her choice and we painted over the idea I had for her "perfect" room.

I'm going to miss my diamond wall and even more so the excitement of waiting to meet a new person. But what I realized back when I painted that bedroom is that I was going to be meeting a new person. A new person who would grow and change. And now so is her bedroom.

Bumpy Transition

I've been meaning to tell you a story about another mother, Leslie, from preschool. Leslie is one of the mothers (there are many of them actually, some are in my actual life and not just taunting me on the internet) who give me hope that not all mothers have to make me want to jump head first out a plate glass window.

It appears I've created a monster with the comments here (no you didn't imply that my fair beautiful friendly funny friend Leslie has a hairy ass. Oh no, tell me you didn't do that just now!). When I say I "hate" Leslie, what I really mean is I "hate" the fact that I can't do it like she does. That I'm jealous. That she's a wonderful woman and if I were choosing someone to have babies with, I would choose her over me because I am certifiably insane and also very bad at navigating those weeks when you are suddenly NOT pregnant anymore.

However, I still hate her and I can't help it.

One Thursday Leslie came to preschool dropoff looking particularly pregnant. Since I've known her (her little boy joined our class midway through the school year) she'd been a cute pregnant person. And honestly, I didn't want to hate her for it, I wanted to rise above it and like her for her funny sense of humor and her adherence to my strict policy of not sugar coating the hardest parts of raising small children. But there it was, I hated her for being a cute pregnant person.

Leslie carries a baby like Maddie's pregnant barbie does, with what appears to be a pop off belly magnetically laid over the top of her tight abdomen. She is what people call "All Baby". People said I was "All Baby" which means my baby was seeping up into my fat face and squirming around to take residence in my ass. Also, what pregnancy does to this woman's hair makes Chrissy and I sit and talk to her, as if we're paying attention, but we're really fantasizing about pulling it all up into a thick and luxurious pony tail and gnawing on it.

That Thursday though, Leslie finally looked pregnant. The kind of pregnant I remembered, except with better hair and no baby seeping into her face. She had another month until her due date and I felt so bad for having hated her for being such a cute pregnant person when she would have another month of being particularly pregnant all while caring for a 19 month old, a 2.5 year old and a 3.75 year old.

The following Tuesday, 4 weeks before her due date, Leslie came to morning drop off looking, once again, particularly not pregnant.

I didn't think things could get much more cruel. How could she suddenly not look pregnant when, at 4 weeks before my due date, I hobbled around crying all day because my legs were falling right out of my hip sockets. Which hurts if you'd like to know.

I stared at her thinking about what to say. How could I tell her she didn't look pregnant like she did on Thursday? Wouldn't that imply I'd been looking at her on Thursday thinking, "Wow, you look so HUGE today"

It never once occured to me that between Thursday and Tuesday she'd actually given birth. She didn't look like someone who'd given birth. At all.

After I gave birth, each time, I looked like the walking dead. You might see me and think, "That reminds me of Melissa....except sort of crazier looking." I was not myself. I was like a big sponge of hormones and if you touched me I would dissolve into a salty pool of hormones. If the baby cried, I would dissolve into a pool of hormones. If there was no vodka left in the freezer, I would lay on the floor sobbing in a heap....never mind, I still do that.

But there was Leslie, in real pants, with an actual face not marked with red welts from the crying and the rubbing. There were no visible signs of dementia or signs she might bolt into Canada if we all stopped looking for just one second. She looked like herself, only without a baby in front and she seemed fine with that. Maybe even "Joyous".

Leslie noticed me staring at her having an internal dialogue about the kindness of telling her she didn't look fat today but last Thursday, Jesus! You were HUGE!

She saved me and said, "I wish you could see your face right now. I had the baby!"

And I squealed, louder than I've ever squealed about the arrival of a new baby.

I think I also squealed because what I sort of wanted to do was throw her down on the ground and beat her senseless for being so good at being pregnant. For being so good at giving birth (6lbs ish at 4 weeks premature!?). For being able to walk around in public just a few short days later (keeping in mind she has a three children already, 3 and under) and for looking not pregnant when she stopped being pregnant.

Squealing seemed like a nicer reaction than a body slam.

Four days postpartum you wouldn't have found me out in the light of the regular world. You'd find me standing in a hot shower soaking up my own hormone tears. The first time I left the house without the baby after having Madison I stood in the bank looking around and adding the two checks I had for deposit over and over and over because, gosh, What is $100 plus $50? What is it! OH MY GOD.

Then the sobbing started again and I told the teller I didn't have the baby with me, but I did have a baby and I am now stupid. Can you add this up for me?

She said, "Sure I can help you but it looks like that baby left behind a twin....in your ass."

I killed her.

But there was Leslie, looking just like herself except not pregnant.

Last Friday we had a playgroup at my house and we cracked open the very first drink I've ever seen Leslie have with us (since she's been pregnant since I've known her). While chatting about the new baby, who drank a bottle and slept for the rest of the day, I mentioned what a calm baby he is.

She replied, "Well yes, but he's only 2 weeks old."

I realized I thought he must be at least 6 weeks old because I was unable to leave my house with all the psychotic episodes and the tears and the feeling I was living inside my skull but not really inhabiting my body.

But there was Leslie, hanging out like she'd never been pregnant at all. So we toasted to her! And to us! And I secretly toasted to Logan's vasectomy and Zoloft because I really suck at transitioning to new motherhood.

I also leaned over, and without Leslie noticing I stuck a tendril of her hair in my drink, just to soak up it's thick and good at newborn parenting goodness.

Adding: Today at the park, Leslie said to me, as she burped one child in her right hand and two others sat on her thigh gnawing on crackers, "I feel like there's some velcro stuck to me." and I, being an asshole, looked at her shoulder wondering how on earth a piece of velcro got on her back. But she was referring to the children sticking to her.

I know you want to hate her but she's so fucking nice and funny and calm. That witch!

My Own Job

If I'd read this before I had children I would not have understood it at all. I would have thought this was some run down mother who didn't know how to keep it together.

I've said for quite a few years now: I love my children, I just don't necessarily love the day to day work of raising them. When I complain about that simple fact, the simple fact that raising a child is not fun all the time. It's not always profound and awe inspiring. In fact, most of it is anything but miraculous. When I have said this in the past I have actually been asked, in a mean spirited way meant to cause me personal grief, "Why did you even have children?"

Here's a tip: Never say that to anyone who has a uterus.

Our Vacation Home In The South Of France

Madison was a surprise. Not like 'Surprise! There's a baby jumping out of a cake!' But a surprise in the sense that I was taking the pill, and 'Surprise!' several pregnancy tests kept showing me two lines even though there was "Just no way in hell I could be pregnant."

The day I found out I was pregnant with her was a day of deep denial. A day I spent in our home working on a paper for my Organizational Comm class, while drinking water...lots of water and taking short breaks to urinate on small sticks. When I'd run out of sticks to urinate on, I'd drive to several different drugstores in town to buy several more sticks I could pee on.

I was in a denial so deep I didn't really pay attention to the double lines after a while. I just kept drinking pint glass after pint glass of water, then I'd head to the bathroom, pee on the stick and then head back to the computer to finish typing up the paper. The paper which was probably littered with lots of incoherent 'Oh My Fucking Gods' throughout the text.

Several hundred dollars later and more water than I'd ever like to drink again, my urine was as clear as the water I'd been drinking and still that God Damn pregnancy test had the fucking nerve to show me two lines.

After that rocky beginning and an even rockier post partum period, when I had Madison it was like I was supposed to have had her at this exact time in my life. Even though it didn't seem like the exact time to me while I was peeing on all those sticks. It was all much earlier than we'd planned. We'd only been married for 8 months when we found out we were growing her.

My God, I Absolutely Love This Potty!

Ineffective Things I Have Said (or thought about saying) While Trying To Convince My Son To Use The Potty.

"You know, I'm cool with not changing your diaper anymore. I mean I'm not 'married' to it. Really, it's fine if you want to use the potty instead. Seriously, I'm not going to freak out about it or anything."

(While I am on the toilet) "WOW! This is fun! I really love using this potty."

"Why can't you be more like your sister? She was using the potty at two and a half! On the side of the freeway! In the middle of Philadelphia!"*
*Did not say, but if I had it would explain a lot of the brewing sibling rivalry we're cultivating in this house.

Sleep Centered

I've decided to write a book about parenting. I have a few working titles.

'It's All About Sleep: Letting Sleep Guide You Through Parenting.'

"Making All Your Parenting Choices Based In Sleep"

"Raising Your Child In A Sleep Centered Household"

My three year old is still sleeping in a crib. Do you know why? Because I know that the minute he is not sleeping in a crib, he will be disrupting the very nice sleep plan we have going. So I've decided he'll have to stay in his crib until he's a teenager and I have to yell at him to 'Get out of bed and do something' at noon every weekend.

I know this decision seems a little selfish of me, since he might really like sleeping in a bed, but I'm just not ready to lose any sleep for the transition.

He still has a binky, he uses it at night and I can't see taking it away from him because doing so will result in quite a few sleepless nights and like I said, I like to make all the big decisions about my children based mainly on the amount of sleep I'll get.

I started thinking about my book when a friend and I were discussing her new baby and how he sleeps so much better on his tummy than on his back.

I admitted a dirty little secret of mine, my babies slept on their tummies.

It's not something I talk about a lot, not because I'm particularly ashamed of the choice, but because I worry someone will hear that I let my babies sleep on their tummies and they will then think it's a great idea to let their babies sleep on their tummies and let's say the unspeakable happens and then I'm left feeling like an asshole for saying it was a great idea.

So, I just don't talk about it but it's kind of a drag they haven't figured out what causes Sudden Infant Death because I really don't believe it's the tummy sleeping thing. Because if babies were supposed to sleep on their backs why the hell do they startle themselves awake all the time? And why would biology torture us by giving us such peaceful babies on their tummies who die because of it and such restless babies on their backs who don't sleep very well?

But you know, until I start my research foundation and discover what the real cause of SIDS is, then I can't actually endorse the shameful practice of putting your baby to sleep on it's tummy.

But I did it and I'll have to put it in my book because, for me, it's all about the sleep. But I'll have to put it in there with a whole bunch of disclaimers and the footnote/disclaimers will take up half the book.

In my book I'll talk about how I fed my babies Poisonous And Evil Formula, even though I know how great breast milk is for them. Even though I know how natural it is. Even though it is actually easier to breast feed your baby once you get the hang of it and you don't have to pack bottles to travel and you don't have to wash bottles and you don't have to mix the EVIL formula each and every night. I'll make sure to tell people how great breastfeeding is in my book.

I realize I'm evil because I gave up after the 87th strike of the hammer on my nipple. I know I'm a terribly selfish person because I felt like the forceps and the 40 some odd stitches was enough pain really. I know that I'm weak minded because I really liked the comfort of knowing that my baby had eaten exactly 4 ounces and so I wasn't guessing if she was hungry or tired. Since she ate 4 oz twenty minutes earlier, I knew she was most likely tired. I also know I'm going to hell because I liked that formula took about 3-4 hours to digest and breast milk appeared to take about 30 minutes.

I mean I realize now I have retarded and sickly children who will never get into the ivy league, but God Damn it I'm well rested, and like the title of my book warns...I have a sleep centered household. If you're going to be a Sleep Centered Parent, you're going to have to make some really tough choices.

When my book hits the stands, they'll probably keep it in brown wrapping behind the counter with the porn because really it's shameful to care so much about sleeping when you're supposed to be just plain happy about raising the miracle you just birthed.

But I believe people will buy the book anyway, even though they'll have to mumble at the clerk that they'd like that, uhm, sleep centered book and they'll shove it into their bag so no one can see it and they'll take it home and furtively glance through it when no one is looking.

And when I write my book, we'll all start a secret society and we'll have zzz's tattooed on our asses and we'll have a secret handshake and we'll share our passion for sleep and our dirty little secrets, because there are lots of people like me. People who love sleep, people who think it's at the foundation of a good or bad day of parenting.

Because we all know everyone is a better parent after 8 hours of sleep than they are after 2.

The best time I didn't know I was having.

I think I may have mentioned how bad I am at having babies. How I lack any grace in dealing with the transition between having a child growing in my uterus and having a child in my arms.

I might have mentioned long showers, where I bathed in salty hormone filled tears and felt like I had made the biggest mistake of my entire life.

I may not have mentioned how I cried everyday at 4pm for the first 2 weeks of my daughter's life. Coincidentally, or not, this was also when Oprah aired. I'd call Pants at work, sobbing into the phone. He'd patiently say, 'Is Oprah on? Why don't you stop watching Oprah.'

But really it wasn't Oprah making me cry. Something about 4pm made me consider the looming nighttime hours, the hours of the unknown. She wasn't a bad baby, she was actually very good at being a baby. In fact, we thought quietly to ourselves (so other people wouldn't have to feel bad) that she was the best baby ever, even in spite of her frighteningly non-photogenic nature.

It wasn't her, it was me. I was just very bad at being a new mom.

I love sleep, and she didn't have the same fervor for it I did. I guess she was 'hungry' at night and sometimes she wanted to have a little 'together time' in the night and I don't really like 'together time' in the night. She'd look at me in the dimly lit bedroom and say, "You know, I feel like all I really do is sleep and I think we should start getting to know each other. Right. Now."

I wanted to get to know her, don't get me wrong, but I thought maybe we could get to know each other while we watched Oprah and I cried every afternoon.

There were other things that made it hard to be a new mom, not sleeping was just one thing.

There was also the dramatic plunge in my hormones. Given that I've never been the most well balanced person, this was very pronounced for me. The first time I felt the plunge was in the hospital the day my doctor came into my happy place, the cocoon of my private hospital room where there was no work and no cooking or cleaning and really no life outside of me, Logan, our perfect little creation and a well placed nurse to chip in when I needed it...like, all the time.

The doctor came barging in and ruined my happy place by saying, "I think you're ready to go home."

I'm not sure what made the doctor think I was "ready" to go home. Was it the inflatable doughnut I sat on? Was it the fact that I couldn't shower without back-up in case I passed out?

Probably he confused my contentedness for readiness to go home. He didn't realize I was actually just content to be laying in a bed with no expectation I would ever rise again.

There is no doubt he was totally wrong to even think I was ready to go home.

Immediately I started to feel the anxiety bubbling up, adrenaline traveling through my body out into my arms making me feel weak and scared and then traveling up into my eyes giving me tunnel vision.

I began to get dressed and ready to leave and it was entirely apparent I was not at all ready to go home.

My clothes, the fat overalls I bought at 3 months along, didn't even fit me. I cried.

Logan helpfully said, "You're just two days post partum, of course your clothes don't fit!"

I wasn't crying because my clothes didn't fit. I was crying because the whole thing didn't fit, and I had fooled everyone into thinking it was a good idea to send a helpless newborn home with me.

I've never dealt with change very well.

I regained control of myself once the anxiety passed and we dressed our baby in her 'going home outfit', which turned out to be sized perfectly for taking a fully grown two year old home from the hospital.

Maybe that's what I'd hoped for when I'd bought the outfit, that they'd help me raise my baby for the first two to three years in the hospital where a nurse was just a buzz away.

"Excuse me, when is dinner?"

"Hi, I'm about to hop in the shower, can you take the baby for me?"

"It appears my baby has a wet diaper, can you come take care of that?"

"I think my baby is ready for potty training, let me know when you've wrapped that up."

I guess my insurance wouldn't cover a two to three year hospital stay, plus Logan wasn't enjoying sleeping on a cot, so I had to go home.

As new parents, we were fond of videotaping pretty much everything involving our newborn child. In those early days she didn't do a lot of things most people would feel worthy of capturing on video, mostly she slept. But we taped things like the way she'd move her head back and forth in her sleep. We held up her tiny hands in front of the camcorder and bent her little thumb back, to show how she was born with the same hyper extending thumb her father has.

Even though I wish I thought that was a stupid thing to capture on video, it really wasn't. It was all really kind of amazing at the time, her simply being a living thing and not just an idea tucked away in my uterus was pretty amazing at the time.

I videotaped her arrival at our house, we even fell so deeply into goofy new parenthood that Logan gave her a 'tour' of her new home...on video. We walked through the house like a couple of brainless idiots and said things like, "This is the kitchen and I'll be cooking here." and "This is your room and you need to know up front, we take sleeping very seriously in this house."

The most poignant part of the tape is at the very end, once we showed her the entire house, Logan looked into the camera and said earnestly:

"Okay, now what?"

The tape goes dramatically black at that point.

If I'd kept the tape rolling to answer his question I would have had to say:

"Well, I thought I'd sit down and try to settle back into our life, where nothing's really changed, it's the same as my old life except that every single cell of my entire being has been changed by this life altering event we just went through and I'm not sure how I can even process that.

And then I was thinking I'd start crying a few times this afternoon as I felt totally out of place in my life and at around 4 o'clock once our guests have all left and it's just you, me and the promise of a night offering my raw nipple to a hungry baby every 2 hours, then I thought I'd really try to illustrate what it means to suffer through 'The Baby Blues'.

If the baby starts crying, at all, I will start saying over and over again in a very disturbing way: 'She has colic, I know it. She's going to have colic. I can't do this if she has colic. I can't be mom if she has colic. We're never going to sleep again. Ever. Oh God what have we done, how could we do this? No I'm not overreacting, I don't think you understand what is happening here. Our baby has been crying for 30 seconds and this means one thing, she has colic and we are doomed. Do not tell me to calm down, I can't calm down.'

Or, you know, something like that. Because that's pretty much what I did that first day home with my new baby.

I'm telling you all this because you need to know I am seriously deficient when it comes to transitioning from 'pregnant mom' to 'new mom'. This information will be important as we move on and it's imperative that you understand what I mean when I say, 'I really suck at parenting newborns.'

I'm not kidding, I really couldn't be worse at it if I tried.

Calming My Uterus

It seems everytime I read about a new mom blogger and how fucking tired she is, how utterly exhausted she is, my uterus magically releases me from my desire to pretend I actually deal well with sleep deprivation and post partum hormones and I really could have just one more!

That is probably the worst idea I've allowed myself to entertain this year. Even worse than when I considered selling my son for a pair of pants.

It's amazing what watching a baby honeymoon will do to a person.

But the sleep....I think I love sleep more than I could ever love a third child. I'm sure this makes me an evil person who will get all classes of hate mail because, 'How could you love sleep more than your own child, you reatarded [sic] bitch?'

I love my children, probably more than sleep, but I've never been forced to choose between the two. I'm pretty sure I'd choose the kids, but the sleep would be pretty painful to say goodbye to. An unborn and unconceived child though, I'm positive at this point, that I love sleep more than the idea of another child.

I mean, it helps that the unconceived child will never be. But if I had it to do over, I'd still make the same choices, not just because I love sleep.

But because I really suck at mothering a newborn.

I think new moms are really surprised at how tiring it is. I think they are taken totally off guard by the conflicting feelings of being the happiest they've ever been in their entire life, madly and insanely in love with this new little person, but still totally exhausted, anxious, emotionally drained, sad, scared and insecure about just about every aspect of their new life.

It's hard to explain how it's possible to have such conflicting feelings about motherhood, especially first time motherhood. It's hard to convey how you truly are happy, how you truly are madly in love but how you still feel there is a very real risk of throwing yourself or the baby out the window in the middle of the night.

It's even harder for new moms because there's really no way to tell a pregnant mother what it will be like. There's no way to warn them. You can try telling them, but the words are hard to come up with. Like explaining the pain of childbirth. You can say, 'It hurt like a bitch.' but it really has no meaning to someone who hasn't experienced it themselves.

Telling a mother-to-be: 'Those first 6 weeks were really hard.'

Really Hard has no real meaning. They hear that and think, 'I survived adolescence, and that was really hard too.'

You can try going into detail: "There was one morning when I put the baby in her crib, went into the shower and held onto the wall because I thought I might fall right down the drain in a defeated puddle of hormones and tears."

And then, you may prepare for the horrified stare of a woman who doesn't know if you are actually insane and have just been doing a great job of hiding it all this time or you can face the look of horror on the face of a woman who is already facing huge fears of things like episiotomies.

I'm not sure what the solution is. It seems unfair not to give a warning, but it seems the warnings would not be heard. People told me it was hard, people told me to get lots of sleep, people told me it would hurt, people told me it would change my life. But they couldn't really tell me, because it's far too complex to explain in a meaningful way that does anything to prepare you for your own experience.

Someone once said, 'The thing about parenting is, you don't know you can't do it until you already are.'

So I guess you just do the best you can all things considered and wait until the day you can sleep again.

From week four, after many nights of no sleep, I wasn't really sure it was worth it. I loved her, but I was not yet convinced it was worth what I was giving up. From here, after a night with 10 hours of uninterrupted sleep, it was worth it.

I think there is one thing we may conclude from this entry:

Babies should come out sleeping all night, every night. This is a basic flaw in human development and should be resolved immediately.

Also, it might be nice if they came out smiling because that upped my belief it was all worth it almost as quickly as regular and uninterrupted sleep did.