The Question of Two

As soon as that baby comes out, the question of will I have another one climbs up into that place and fills the void of the recently empty womb. It's crazy. You don't want to ask it. You want to leave that question alone. You want to enjoy the baby you have right in front of you. And yet.

I have tried to ignore the question from my mother, my father, my siblings, my in-laws. But I cannot ignore the roar of it coming from my own body. I am 36 after all. If I want to do this again, it's not like I have all the time in the world.

One is so nice. One is so manageable. And Atticus is a marvelously good baby. He really is. People comment on it all time. I'd like to take credit for that, and maybe I can insomuch as he's very well-loved and well-tended to, but anyone who knows me and my husband knows that if we have a well-behaved and chill baby, those are my husband's genes poking through. If we have another baby, maybe this baby will take after me, which is to say, this baby will be wild, adventurous, and troublesome. Those are three wonderful, wonderful traits in an adult, but docile is a much, much better word for a baby.

Do I want to go through that pregnancy again? Pregnancy stinks. It really does. Especially when you have to go through Hyperemesis Gravidarum. This is a very real consideration. If I decide to get pregnant again, we will have to arrange for one of our mothers to be here for maybe a month to get us through the worst of it. And I have to plan around work. And Atticus will have to watch his mommy be very, very sick. I don't want Atticus to see that.

Moving past the pregnancy, there's all those sleepless nights again. How do we ever survive them, we mothers? It's such a cruel, cruel time maybe meant for bodies more resilient and younger than mine.

But a new baby, a little brother or sister for Atticus ... wouldn't it be a disservice to Atticus to not have one? Wouldn't we regret it when we're older? Can I get through the first couple years of it again for the long reward of it?

I say my little family a lot now. I like my little family, but is that the right word to describe us as a permanent unit? Are we meant to be a little family or are we meant for something a little bit more? Will I ever just say family without the little in front of it?

That torturous question. I told myself I wouldn't consider it again until Atticus was three, but that's an impossible thing to avoid as this blog suggests.

Why have more than one? Why do we choose that? Is it because we have more to share? Because we love the smell of babies? Because we are careless about family planning? What are we here for? What should my life be?

I end a lot of blogs with the word Blurgh. Blurgh.

Two Years In

At year two, we have a one-year-old.

At year two, we know each other more, but talk less.

At year two, we bicker and joke in one breath.

At year two, we fight against patterns.

At year two, we know where to put each other's socks.

At year two, we travel long distances in silence and apologize for turning the air conditioning on or off.

At year two, the baby is more important than the two people who started this whole thing.

At year two, I still feel lucky.

At year two, we spend a great deal of time with our backs facing each other while we work on the computer.

At year two, he complains less about me leaving the door open.

At year two, I floss and pluck in front of him.

At year two, we think about having Christmas by ourselves and not travelling to visit family so much.

At year two, I can make at least five meals I'm sure he'll really like.

At year two, he still does not quite know how to buy the groceries.

At year two, I know very well how to buy the groceries.

At year two, we wonder if this will always be the size of our family.

At year two, we are tired of being poor all the time, but happy we are not that poor.

At year two, a gym membership is our primary social activity.

At year two, we have not seen a movie in nine months.

At year two, we do not know how we will travel 20 hours away to see a friend because how can a baby travel for 20 hours?

At year two, he has grown more handsome by any standards and not just my love-goggled ones.

At year two, there is no end in sight.

At year two, I hate to be home without him.

At year two, he went hiking with me because it's what I love to do.

At year two, we say, "I'll do better next time."

At year two, I worry he should write and read more.

At year two, I worry I get in the way.

At year two, I worry I can't get in the way.

At year two, we fight meaner.

At year two, we fight more productively.

At year two, we leave fights in the middle of them to fold laundry.

At year two, the car is filled with graham cracker crumbs.

At year two, the graham cracker crumbs have stopped bothering us.

More on Boobs

In one fell swoop, that is to say, in one day, Atticus took his first steps and made the executive decision to be done nursing. He is Mr. Independent. He needs me not.

And I'm quite fine with this. For reals. I'm not one of those mothers who freaks out when their child moves on to the next thing, though I am admittedly a little melancholy about the walking. It signals a giant shift out of babyhood and into toddlerland, but for the time being, he is still a baby.

What this post is more concerned about is boobs and what happens to them when one is done nursing. Contrary to popular opinion, nursing does not make boobs droop or malform them in any way. Pregnancy does that. Quit blaming the nursing.

While there are a billion (to be exact) websites about the benefits of breastfeeding and the good counsel of slow weaning, there is almost nothing on the woman's health in this issue. Those who have nursed understand the discomfort, engorgement, and possible mastitis that is the frequent companion piece to nursing. And it only gets worse when the baby stops doing his part.

Atticus decided to quit nursing all by himself, a self-weaner, which is a fun phrase for all sorts of reasons. He weaned fairly slowly over a period of a couple of weeks and then he was decided about it - so much so that there were actually two mornings wherein he rejectedly crawled away from me in tears because I can only assume he thought I might force him to nurse, which I of course have never ever done.

And so he's done and while I thought I would be emotionally overwrought about it, I am not. Rather than my mind, it's my body that has not caught up with the new world order of independence. I naively thought within a week, all would be normal again - my body would return once again to its pre-baby state of decoration and not utility.

This is not the case. Be warned, future nursers. The body will not stop producing milk until weeks, months, or up to a year have passed by. A year!!! Until then, infrequent, judicious expressing will keep the engorgement and mastitis away.

Blurgh. I am reminded these past many days of Al Pacino in the Godfather II. You know the line: "Just when I think I'm out, they keep pulling me back in."

This is good training for motherhood. It is not a job that ends in any satisfactory way. Before one thing finishes, the next thing starts. While I am not naturally inclined toward this sort of continuous work, it is a job I cannot get out of and a job I would never abandon. Because Young 'Cus, as one of our friends call him, is pretty freaking cool. It's just, seriously, I had no idea how much I signed on for. None. Not really. But here we are 11 months later and all is, if not easy, pretty freaking awesome.

The End of the Line

(New design for my blog. 'Thought I should shake it up a little bit and take advantage of the snazzy new templates. Plus, I like birds. I cannot resist them.)

Every morning I wake to Atticus trilling from his crib. You know trilling? That sound one makes with their tongue or with their lips? Atticus does it with his lips, increasing in pitch and volume the longer it takes me to respond. It's time to get up, his trills say. Come on, there's fun to be had.

And so I roll out of bed and go to him, groggily, but happily. He's waiting in his crib, standing up, holding the bars, and swaying back and forth to the rhythm of his own morning sounds. We nurse and get on with the day and all that fun his trills promise.

And our days are always fun, though lately, they involve less and less nursing all the time.

I am dreading its end.

It is happening far more quickly than I thought possible, though certainly many people would say that nursing for almost eleven months is not exactly quick. But alas, for me, it feels quick. I thought I'd have more time. I thought I'd have to read up on weaning. I thought I'd have some say in the matter.

But I don't. He's done nearly, ready to move on to the rest of his life, slightly more independent.

And I'm happy about it. No, I'm not. Yes, I am. I don't know. One thing I'm sure about, I'm going to cry when it's officially over. Yes, I will definitely cry. And then maybe I'll go out and buy a frilly new bra.

Swan Dives into the Ineffable

I had a professor who called poetry a swan dive into the ineffable. That's nice. I like that phrase. It's lovely and it makes the making of poetry sound terribly important, and as the wife of a poet, I do think poetry's important.

But I bring up that phrase for a different reason altogether. It has been a little over 10 months since Atticus was born and I'm still swimming madly against the rapids of the ineffable. He still doesn't make sense to me, his whole existence doesn't. I sit in the backseat next to his carseat everywhere we go and I often, frequently, almost always look at him with a sense of wonderment nearing displacement. How did he get here? Where did he come from? Is this kid really mine?

It is not without love or attachment or a great desire for him that I ask these questions, but I'm trying to figure the ineffable here: once there was no one and now there's a whole Atticus. Any parent who doesn't get horribly confused by that fact is either not thinking very hard or far more wise than me.

And self-identity is still somewhere in that ineffable ocean. I know I'm a mother, but I don't always feel like a wife. Here's an inescapable truth of having a young baby in the house. Wait for it. Are you ready? Not a lot of sex happens in that house. Not that sex defines wifery, but certainly it has something to do with it. Have I disclosed too much? Will my husband cringe at reading this? But it's the truth and one that needn't be shushed or whispered or alluded to in quiet tones between other mothers. It is really damn hard to be anything more than a mother as being a mother is so all consuming. Any other pursuits feel selfish, reckless, and tiring at the end of the day.

I don't want it to be like this. I'd like to go out for an evening and let it be okay that my son is not as comfortable as he would be if I were with him. I'd like to put my husband first sometimes. Hell, I'd like to put myself first sometimes.

But I haven't figured out how to do that yet.

Last week we met up with some old friends in my old town and I became acutely aware of the difference in our lives now. It was a reading at a very hipster bar in Grand Rapids. The readers were great, real artists with presence and content and craft; it was the type of reading that makes you ache a little bit to go home and write and be a creator of things yourself.

That was at the beginning of the evening, but as the evening wore on, my creative impulses were overtaken by my maternal ones. It happened quickly and completely. The "must get home to baby" internal chant gained momentum and volume and I forgot entirely about wanting to write or eventually have my own readings.

Will it be this way forever? Will I ever feel like Atticus would be better served by serving myself first? Am I okay with this?

Babies and Travelling

Travelling with a baby is tough stuff. Funny thing about babies - they like sameness. They like the same faces and smells and places to sleep night after night. Now that I think about it, I'm not really all that different from a baby.

It's good to be home. While there was tremendous fun and excitement to be had up north, there is nothing so tremendously fun as ones own bed.

Our travelling baby was a trooper. Sort of. Mostly. Kind of. Pretty much. But now he is in his own bed and while I have more to say on this matter, the pull of my very own bed is too strong.

More soon on other things related to babies and mothering and the intellect precariously balancing between.

Ruggedly Confused Patriot

"America: The Story of Us" is a series from the History channel that tells, well, derr ..., the story of America. I'm enjoying the show immensely, but at the same time, I am becoming increasingly queasy with the unsavory truths of our history.

This is a tired conversation. We've all become enlightened about the less glorious moments of our short American history, but then there are the those things that remain in the darkened shadow of glorified language, hidden, tucked away under that hearty phrase "rugged individualism."

What does that phrase even mean? Herbert Hoover was the guy to first bring that healing term, that salve of all salves, into our lexicon. To be rugged is to be capable of enduring great adversity, to be hearty, to be manly, to look a bear in the eye and roar right back. And to be an individual is to know your mind and give it free rein over your interests and conversations and life goals. Put those two together and heck, you have license to pretty much kill everything in front of you.

Or so it was with the patriots. And I WANT to call them patriots. I want to give them the respect they questionably deserve. What our American forefathers did was rugged and individualistic and scary as hell and you wouldn't catch me doing it for all the tea in China. If it were up to me, we'd all still be in England saying, "Yes, mum, indeed, mum, here's all my money for the Crown and sure, I'll go to whatever Church you tell me to, mum."

But that's not our patriots. Our patriots left, got on ships, landed in harsh conditions, starved or ate each other, died from smallpox, died from smallpox inoculations, died from milk disease, cut out the Erie Canal with their bare hands working fingers to literal bone, and all for what? Could they imagine the glory their sacrifices would allow? Could they imagine a highway system and sanitation and education for all? Did they know - could they have had any indication of the superpower we would become? George Washington thought it would take a 1000 years to settle America. Not with rugged individualists at the helm. No sir. We are only a couple hundred years into the great experiment and look at us. We rule the whole freaking world.

It's not hard to love the patriots, our forefathers, our bold leaders, our rugged individualists. How ungrateful would I have to be to not love them and respect the hell out of their accomplishments?

And yet.

To wit, a list of the things young America did to earn the term "rugged individualists":

1. Defeated the British who were defending Native American boundary lines

(How, you ask? By killing off the Native American guides in the service of the British and by employing sharp shooters to take out British captains. Stay classy, patriots.)

2. Defeated the Mexicans who had welcomed us into their territory only to have us take it over entirely

(Remember the Alamo? Remember when the Mexicans said, sure, come on in? Then, hey, wait, there's too many of you? Then, hey, what the heck just happened here?)

3. Indentured the free Africans who had fought for America right alongside every other America in the Revolutionary War

(Hey, somebody's got to take care of the cotton on the land we took from the Cherokee.)

4. Crossed 2000 miles to get to the gold rush in California where men died and didn't even receive decent burials

And on and on. But look how tough we are. We keep pushing through. We tame the lands and flourish despite it all.

And there are longers lists of our better deeds. History books are full of them. I am, I must admit, a huge fan of John Adams and his contribution to American history. Also, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. Pretty much in that order. And they are all that term for good or ill.

But it's the ill that has me at the moment. That Machiavellian sensibility that pervades our history and probably the history of every history. We are no different from each other. Perhaps if I had been a part of the Donner party, I would have made the same choices. Perhaps I would have believed in freedom and self preservation at all costs. Perhaps I am just as ruggedly individualistic as the next guy.

Lucky for me, my life is so posh, I don't have to find out. Thanks, patriots. Thanks for my cushy, easy life. Thanks for setting me up in a free society where I can blog about how murderous your sacrifices were. Thanks for this life, this liberty, and this pursuit of judging the heck out of you and all you have done for this great country.