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RIP BFF

Published April 29, 2012 bling blog , tv! 12 Comments

I realize this blog has been a bit babycentric as of late and I’m sorry for that but, hey, I had a baby. Did you know that? Well, I did. It’s true. I swear! I’m going to switch gears for a minute, though, to talk about one of my favorite topics: tv. I have been watching an exceptional amount of tv lately. I don’t have much of an attention span for other activities that can be done with an eight-week old baby such as, say, reading. You know what? I’m not even going to defend myself against any judgment you may have about this. I love television and I watch a lot of it. There, I said it.

There has been a lot of buzz about the new HBO show ‘Girls.’ I read about it in US Weekly, as well as The New York Times Magazine. Terry sent me an article about it from The Washington Post. I wanted to like the show but the truth is, having seen two episodes, I just don’t. I feel bad about this, but it’s true. I appreciate that the Times and Post writers highlighted its exceptional difference to current women-centered shows like The New Girl and Whitney – two shows I also don’t particularly like or watch (though I have seen). Shows like The New Girl and Whitney have little, if anything, to say about how women live or feel or think, though I don’t think they’re attempting to, either. ‘Girls,’ on the other hand, seems to be a sincere attempt to say something. I guess I’m just not sure I like what it’s saying. For starters, the sex scenes make me more than a little uncomfortable — frankly, they scare me a bit. I know I can be a prude, but watching an early 20s woman voluntarily participating in sex acts she pretty clearly has no interest in makes me uneasy and sad. I’m certain this is deliberate, of course, but I don’t particularly enjoy feeling uneasy and sad. Then there’s the whole privileged business. I know the economy stinks and I feel for anyone unemployed, particularly the country’s youth who may not have much of a shot at economic prosperity, but I find it two parts ridiculous and three parts obscene that the lead character, Hannah, doesn’t even seem to attempt to obtain a paying job. In fact, it seems as though she thinks such a thing is beneath her. “What??” you ask. “Yes, it’s true” I say. “She is a 24-year old woman, two years out of college, living in New York City on her parents’ dime. Or, more accurately, thousands.” You see, Hannah wants to be a writer (don’t we all?) and has an internship that she continues to hope (after two years) will turn into a paying gig. It seems, though, that Hannah can’t be bothered to also get a job in, say, retail or the restaurant industry to pay at least her electric bill. The Washington Post blames my repulsion to paycheck-averse Hannah on my age. You see, I’m over 35 so I just don’t get it. Maybe that’s true; I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure my 25-year old hard-working cousin, Maggie, would be confused by Hannah’s lack of employment and find it off-putting, as well. But although I find the sex obnoxious and the privileged status of the lead annoying, neither of these are reasons for me to condemn the show. And I don’t condemn it but, as I said, I don’t really like it. And why not? Because I haven’t found it particularly funny. I smiled or snorted knowingly (yes, I can snort knowingly) a time or two during the episodes I saw, but I didn’t find the show to be funny or clever overall. I just didn’t laugh. Or at least not laugh laugh.

You know what show did make me smile and laugh? NBC’s ‘Best Friends Forever.’ This apparently little-watched gem has, according to Sarayu, already been canceled. It’s too bad and I’m genuinely sad about it because I was really looking forward to seeing where it was going to go. The show stars its own writers (move over, Whitney!) Lennon and Jessica as, you guessed it, BFFs. The series starts with Jessica and Lennon Skype-ing when FedEx comes to Jessica’s door to deliver surprise divorce papers. Ouch. Jessica then promptly moves in with Lennon and her boyfriend in their cute Brooklyn apartment and the adventures begin. This show totally nailed the rapid-fire, inside joke-laden banter that often occurs between two women who have been great friends forever. TV and the movies so rarely get female friendships right. Too often writers make the relationships too heavy, drama-soaked and tear-stained. It’s almost as if women can’t have friendships on the big or little screen unless they’re held together by some great tragedy. Or they can have friendships a la Sex and the City, but this means each woman is a particular ‘type’ and no one woman may step into another’s territory lest the viewer get confused. In ‘BFF,’ though, we are given two smart, pretty, funny women who were close friends before tragedy hit (hey, they were Skype-ing about bikini waxes). The divorce gets the two friends back together, but not for drunken talk about what went wrong or who was at fault but instead for daytime viewing of ‘Steel Magnolias’ and debating whether Shelby would have had that baby if she’d really known what was in store for her. Lennon and Jessica are different people, but they aren’t so different that I could imagine anyone ever saying, “Oh, you’re such a Lennon with Jessica undertones” or whatever the kids say about SATC characters (see ‘Girls,’ Episode 2). I’m not saying BFF was the best show ever, but it was the best new show I’d seen in awhile and I wanted to get to know my new friends better.

And more on the pressures of motherhood…

Published April 26, 2012 baby stuff , bling blog 8 Comments

Hanna Rosin says everything better than I, so I’ll leave it to her. I want to say, though, that I really appreciate her voice and her timing, for me, is just about perfect. In addition to formula’s role in allowing women to return to the workplace, I’d like to give it a shout out for allowing Aaron to feed Baby Girl in the middle of the night. And the middle of the day. And, really, whenever Baby Girl wants to eat. I don’t want to speak for him, but I think he’s grateful for those opportunities, too. Ok, maybe not the middle of the night ones, but being able to feed her is being able to participate in a pretty major part of her life. Although I feel ashamed when I buy the formula, and ashamed when I’ve had to make a bottle in public, I’m extremely grateful for its existence. And for the folks who strive to make it better.

You know, I have to wonder if some (or all) of this parenthood pressure of late — the attachment parents v. whatever the opposite is called — has more to do with parents making a choice that works best for their family and then feeling the need to defend it. And these individual choices and subsequent defensiveness of them has then been amplified to a nationwide debate. For example, I don’t doubt that co-sleeping, or family bed, works really well for thousands of healthy, thoughtful families. But it won’t work for me because I can’t sleep like that. So, when I am in the presence of a co-sleeping mom, if I get defensive about our decision not to share a bed and say something like, “I worry that I’d roll over on Molly,” it may sound to the co-sleeping mom like I am saying, “Why are you trying to kill your baby?” And the same, of course, goes for breastfeeding, baby wearing, cloth diapering, organic whatnot, swaddling and all the other myriad choices parents make every day. If we could all just accept that pretty much every parent wants to do what’s best for her child, and every parent’s decisions are not a judgment on their neighbors’ parenting decisions, then I think we could all take a deep breath and try to enjoy this nutty, exhausting, amazing adventure.

Unrequited love

Published April 20, 2012 baby stuff , bling blog 5 Comments

This week I made an announcement that startled even me. I declared, ‘Friends don’t let friends have babies.’ I posited that the reason other parents are so happy when they hear a previous non-procreater is with child is so that there will be more folks as unhappy as they. Misery loves company and all that. ‘It’s awful,’ I stated. I was kidding, of course. Or I was mostly kidding.

It’s not as if I went into this whole thing with blinders on, or even rose-colored glasses. I knew it was going to be hard and challenging and maddening. I knew I was going to lose out on a lot of sleep. I knew I would have to change my life dramatically — no more just heading out to the movies or dinner or Chicago. Not that I was a particularly spontaneous person before, but everything now requires more planning and thought. I knew pregnancy would be uncomfortable, labor would be painful and the postpartum period would be a little gross. I knew that babies were difficult and demanding; needy, you could say. I knew, also, that babies don’t really do too much — they cry, they pee, they poop, they sleep, they flail. That’s really about it. What I didn’t know, and what I couldn’t know, is how all of this would affect me.

I don’t have postpartum depression and I feel very lucky to be able to say that. I do feel, though, pretty unsatisfied. It goes without saying (though I will) that I deeply love my daughter. It’s a beautiful, wondrous love that is completely new. I look at her and I ache. It is, though, one-sided. People may say, ‘Oh no, she loves you,’ but I don’t buy it. I don’t blame her, or me. I just don’t think she’s capable of love yet. And that’s the thing: my intense love and devotion is completely unrequited. And that’s hard to handle day in and day out, largely alone. Unrequited love is painful enough when you’re not required to change diapers, bathe and feed the object of your unreturned devotion. Add in that this love is furlongs deeper and stronger than that previously known and the object not only doesn’t love me back, but she often screams at me and I think you can begin to understand where I’m coming from on this.

Molly has just started to do some social smiling, as they say, but it’s too inconsistent to rely on or thrive on. Yesterday, though, when she smiled at me for a good minute, I started to cry. It was so amazing. People often tell me that being home alone with a newborn made them thirst for adult conversation, but I haven’t had too much of that yearning. Instead I have hungered for eye contact, smiles and, quite simply, some recognition that I am here.

I know that those things will come with time and I appreciate the ways in which Molly is already significantly different than she was seven weeks ago when she flew out of me and into the world. For now, though, the hardest thing for me is the unrequited love.

Pictures

Published April 19, 2012 baby stuff , bling blog , life and pups 8 Comments

I remember when I was a kid, I really liked looking through my parents’ wedding album, which was kept under the living room loveseat. Hmm. That seems strange now that I think about it. Why wasn’t it on a shelf? I have no idea. Mom, care to clue me in? Anyway, that album is the only family album I remember. We had boxes and boxes of slides, though no slide machine on which to show them. Instead, when I wanted to look at old pictures, I took out the slides and held them up to the light. This wasn’t very satisfying. When I got a camera, I stuck my photos beneath the plastic sleeves of crappy drugstore photo albums. I didn’t have a lot of these albums because the whole enterprise was deeply unsatisfying. Almost every single one of my photos was out of focus and far from level. Often it was unclear what I had intended to take a picture of. Was I trying to take a picture of the upper half of the boathouse door or my friends standing to the left of it? No one will ever know. And the albums themselves were terrible because they just had one big sheet of plastic paper on each page so the photos never stayed put and, with the photos at odd angles and underneath one another, they made my pictures look even crummier. Egads. I cringe when I think about those albums.

Today, though, things are a little better. Ever since the digital camera came into my life, I’ve pretty much loved taking pictures. I’m still not particularly good at it – I don’t really even understand how a camera works – but digital cameras make it possible for unskilled ignoramuses to get off a good shot once in awhile. And iPhoto and the like make it possible to level out my crooked pictures. In the past, I printed just the photos I thought I’d want to frame so my orders from Snapfish were always for just a couple of photos at a time. I haven’t bought a photo album in years. But now that I have a baby sweet potato, I think I’m going to change that. I registered for some photo albums and we got a few at our showers. I have started slowly with this new endeavor: I ordered copies of all of the photos the hospital photographer took. A couple went into frames, but the rest went into a photo album! As long as that album stays safe — and it’s on a shelf, not under the couch — Molly will be able to page through it some day, giving her the opportunity to see her very first moments. I think that I should do the same thing with our wedding photos and maybe even our honeymoon. And maybe that trip to London and Malta we took. And maybe our family vacations to Presque Isle. I think if I were Molly, I might want to be able to page through pictures of my parents’ lives before I came along and changed everything.

And along came Molly, postpartum TMI

Published April 7, 2012 baby stuff , bling blog 8 Comments
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WARNING: this post is a little grody. Sorry about that. I try not to be as explicit as I could be, but I’m not at all offended if you skip this post. I probably would if I were you. I’m writing less in an effort to gross you out and more to tell the story in case this happens to anyone else and they’re looking for info on it; when I googled it, I couldn’t find much.

I just want to *briefly* chronicle things I experienced in the first five weeks postpartum.

The first 48 hours (all in the hospital) were marked by serious joy, exhaustion and a state I can only describe as dazed-and-delirious. What the hell just happened? We slept off and on a lot, but never for more than two or three hours at a time. If that. I was most excited to be able to sleep on my stomach again, but every time I fell asleep I had horrible nightmares and felt all sorts of non-existent discomfort. I felt as though I still had the blood pressure cuff around my arm and the IVs in my hand. I would wake up startled to find that not only were there no foreign objects in me, but my baby girl was sleeping quietly, peacefully six inches from my head, and my sweet husband was sleeping (somewhat loudly, but cutely) on the couch six feet away. All was good in the world. Except, of course, when I went to stand up. Ouch! When asked to rate my pain on the pain scale, I always hesitated. I was so relieved not to feel labor pains that I felt a smidge whiny complaining about postpartum pain. Anyway, I was given Ibuprofen every four hours, stool softeners every twelve and Vicodin every now and then. More info than you wanted? I know. You know what was more information than I wanted? When I was told that it was a second-degree laceration that they were stitching up on me post-placenta delivery. Ew. That whole idea of a cut down there has always been something that is almost more than I can stomach. Ew, ew, ew. Alright, moving on…We had some visitors during this period – special thanks to my mom, Aaron’s mom, Heather, Lucy, Gwen and Steve for stopping by with your smiles and good wishes. The hospital stay was nice enough — and the nurses were unbelievably nice and kind and knowledgeable and sweet and amazing — but we were ready to get home on Sunday. As much as I was sad to give up the call button, I longed for my puppy, bed and home.

Once we were home, I would say the spectrum of emotions expanded. While we still felt joy, exhaustion and the dazed-and-delirious state, we added in frustration, crankiness, and desperation. I can only speak for myself, of course, but I had moments of, “What the hell did we do? This is FOREVER!” and a lot of “This poor, sweet, precious baby girl is stuck with me and I feel terrible for her” and, from time to time, “Oh no! She is going to have to go through middle school – why would we do this to her?” Goodness. Then, of course, are the moments when the tears of love just came pouring down my face – tears of fear but also of insane devotion. The range of emotion was almost unbearable. In fact, I would say that it was unbearable expect there is no choice but to bear it. Aaron and I were snappy with each other, but also very grateful for one another. I worried I was neglecting Gracie, but she seemed more interested in sleep than attention. I worried Baby Sweet Potato was unhappy with us. And then, as you know, Dear Reader, came the plethora of weigh-ins at the pediatrician and the ultimate instruction to supplement Baby Girl with formula. Thud.

But we did it and she grew. And, I’m pretty sure, she continues to grow. And we continued to supplement.

And then mastitis struck. Ugh.

And then that got better so we continued on our way. Feeding by breast and bottle, introducing and using the pacifier, mastering (sort of) the cloth diapers, doing more laundry than I thought possible (she’s so small – how could there be so many loads!? oh – see cloth diaper comment; cloth diapering means laundering them about every three days), Aaron going to work, me being at home, Gracie settling into things, Sweet Potato sleeping for some semi-decent stretches of time, Sweet Potato’s first trip to Costco and open houses (two of our favorite hobbies), and things seemed to be maybe getting to a more manageable point.

On Monday, April 2, things were ok. I had some discomfort in an area I won’t get into, but it was something I figured I could cope with. Molly and Gracie and I met Aaron downtown around noon to take Graceface to her haircut at Tabby & Jack’s on the Square. It was actually fun to walk Grace to her appointment with Molly in the stroller – I felt so family-oriented. Hee hee. After dropping Grace off, the rest of us took a walk down State Street and bought some lunch from carts and sat in the April sunshine in Library Mall listening to UW undergrads give high school students and their parents tours of campus. All was well. We were even treated to a run-in with Molly’s great-uncle (in all possible meanings of the term) Steve as we headed back up to the Square. Steve was kind enough not to brag about how he had just returned from a trip to Puerto Rico. Sigh. A pretty blissful day.

Tuesday, April 3, started off normally enough. Molly was up off and on from about 3 am and was breastfeeding off and on most of the time until about 9 am, when she finished and I was about to get dressed. The three of us were going to head out to check out a day care (because our first choice, for which we have been on ‘the list’ since last September just told us it was unlikely we would get a spot there this September). As I was searching for some clothes, I noticed some blood on the floor. And then more. And I realized it was coming from me. I was startled. My postpartum bleeding had ended about five to seven days earlier and I hadn’t seen this bright red blood since … well, probably before I was pregnant. It scared the crap out of me. After a trip to the bathroom during which I could feel clots passing through me, I called the doctor. I was told it was probably my period, but that I should call back if it continued. I thought that was so weird, but ok, I could deal with that, right? After things seemed kind of under control, we went off to the day care. I admit I was a wee bit distracted during the tour, but I tried to concentrate on Baby Girl in my arms and the kids in the center who looked happy and bright and like they weren’t being beaten. After awhile, we left and headed to Walgreens to buy pads for my bleeding. I needed something more serious than anything we had in stock at home. While at the store — AO and Molly stayed in the car — I was checking out the options. You see, I hate wings on pads. I feel like they never work as intended and instead end of sticking to my leg or curling up on themselves, which really annoys me. So, I’m looking around trying to find ‘super’ pads – as directed by the nurse at the doctor’s office – without wings. As I’m looking, I see blood on the floor. Again. Blood is dripping down my leg. Oh my God. I’m mortified and horrified and scared and embarrassed and supremely disgusted. I grab something from the shelf, walk as quickly as I can to the check-out counter and, of course, have to wait an eternity for the clerk to hand the woman in front of me two hundred dollars in pennies, while counting out each individual penny. Or so it felt. I run to the car, speed home (taking care that I have a beautiful newborn in my car), and park in the garage. Our neighbor comes out, “Is the baby in the car with you?” “Yes,” I say, “but I have a bit of a medical situation,” and run off to the bathroom, leaving Aaron and Molly to fend for themselves. More blood, another clot. Holy what is going on?

Ok, this is gross and annoying and I’m sorry. The doc still thinks it’s just my period and this seems more plausible when, the next day, things seem to subside down there. Phew. Now, the only thing I have to worry about is, you know, the baby, the other side of my health problems (minor, really) and the fact problems keep cropping up with some of my cases at a work.

Thursday begins normally with Baby Girl awake and asleep, eating and fussing and whatnot. We begin what turns into a marathon breastfeeding session late morning. Shortly after it ends, while I’m still sitting down on my bed, I feel blood pour out of me, along with another clot. I can feel it. So. Gross. I rush to put Molly down and race to the toilet. My fear is confirmed: there is blood everywhere. I am dying of grossness at this point. And also maybe dying. I call the doctor’s office again and relay the information. When I get the return call, the nurse tells me that they need me to come in. Aaron comes home from work and I head to my 2:40 appointment solo. The doc I see (not my doc but a partner of hers) orders blood work and an ultrasound, telling me it’s possible that part of the placenta was left in my uterus, but he still thinks the blood is most likely the result of my period resuming. He thinks that the supplementing has brought about my period (since I now sometimes go more than four hours without boob-feeding her) and that the breastfeeding was causing my uterus to contract and forcing out the large amounts of blood. This explanation seems plausible, but it sure doesn’t make me want to keep breastfeeding. Anyway, I’m sent to the lab for blood work and then back to the doc’s office for a transvaginal ultrasound (ugh), which is supremely uncomfortable at this point postpartum and extremely embarrassing given the amount of blood involved. Then I wait and wait and wait. Finally, shortly before 5:00, I get the call to go back and see the doc again. He tells me, sadly and with kind emotion, that he can see that there is residual placenta in my uterus, which was also confirmed by the blood work. I am just devastated. “No!!!” I scream. Ok, I didn’t really scream it, but I said it. The doctor is super nice about all of this, handing my Kleenex and patting my leg. He tells me that I need to have surgery and that there’s no reason to delay it. A D&C. I immediately think how strange it is to have an abortion procedure after our baby has joined us, but then my mind quickly goes to what a D&C really is and I get super grossed out (not because I am not pro-choice, because I vehemently am, but because I think the human body is mostly gross and the gerunds ‘sucking’ or ‘vacuuming’ have no business getting near it). And I tell the doctor so. This gives us some levity as I now pretty much do scream, “Gross!!!!!!!” The doctor tries to assure me that all of this is not a huge deal, while having me sign a consent form and talking “risk of death” and “do not resuscitate” and all that colorful language.

On Friday, April 6, the doctor’s office called and told me to head to the hospital because my surgery was scheduled for 11:30 am. So, exactly five weeks after joyfully greeting Molly O’Neil, I am forced to leave her in the loving care of my mom and Severa, while Aaron and I head back to the hospital of her birth to have what I hope are the last physical pieces of pregnancy taken out of me.

March 2026
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