DotMoms

The pregnant pause

By Lindsay

"I'm sure I'll be much more relaxed the second time I'm pregnant," I assured my obstetrician three years ago while pregnant with my first child.

"Oh no," she said. "You'll worry more. Everyone does. I think that women know more about all the things that can go wrong, and they start to obsess about them."

Now, four months pregnant with my second child, I'm finding her words to be terribly true. The first time I had a Tetra screening done, I promptly forgot about it and was suprised when the phone call came five days later that the results were negative. 

"Oh, so that's what that bloodwork was all about," I told the nurse. It was the last thing on my mind; I was too busy looking up drawings of 17-week-old fetuses on the Internet and waiting to feel the first kicks of my unborn child.

This time around, I've already read all of the pregnancy books and growth charts and Web sites.  What's left to look up on the Internet but "tetra screening?" "Down's syndrome?" "Trisomy-18?"  "Spina bifida?"

After which, I'm a bundle of nerves, wondering if the nurse will ever call me back. Wondering why I had this stupid Tetra screening, with its well-documented high rate of false positives, done in the first place.

Gone too is the happy anticipation leading up to the ultrasound. During my first pregnancy, I naively thought the entire purpose of the ultrasound was to determine the sex of the baby. I was pleasantly surprised when the technician began looking at the baby from different angles and saying, "Blood circulation looks good. She has 10 fingers and 10 toes, great. Heart valves are all there and normal-sized." 

Huh. They were checking all that stuff, too?

It's taken the wind out of my sails a bit for baby number two. Please let everything be okay, a small voice whispers in my mind whenever I think about the upcoming appointment. Please, please, please.

Generally, I succeed in pushing those nagging fears to the side. I'm eating right, gaining the recommended amount of weight, feeling tiny baby kicks throughout the day and night. I don't have a history of birth defects in my family ,and my first child is astoundingly healthy. Chances are, everything's going to be just fine.

Now, I just have to remember all these things the next time I'm sleepless and staring at the ceiling at three in the morning.

Lindsay is a freelance writer and television journalist raising her 2-year-old daughter and 13- and 15-year-old stepdaughters.

Me, too

By Lindsay

When my baby was 4-months-old, I took her to her first play group. It was as much for me as it was for her; I had spent the last six months pretty much in what felt like solitary confinement and desperately needed to interact with other women again. After a few weeks of getting to know the moms there, I tentatively made an admission.

"That bonding thing that everyone says you feel right after giving birth?" I said. "I didn't feel it. I mean, I loved my baby of course, but she had, like no personality for the first few weeks, and I wondered why I didn't feel closer to her." I looked around for affirmation, but got only stares and silence.

"Well, I adored my baby from the moment I laid eyes on her!" the mom beside me said shortly, before changing the subject. I shut my mouth, chagrined, and decided that I must've been a freak of nature. And the pathetic thing was that these women didn't even know the half of it.

I still remember the early weeks of Baby's life. Breastfeeding was painful and exhausting, I hated my deflated post-partum body, and I was sick to death of the endless string of relatives staying with us to "help." Late at night, I'd get up to change one of Baby's explosive poopy diapers and as I held her tiny body in my arms, I'd think of how frail and vulnerable she was. Thoughts would come to my mind, completely unbidden, of just how easily she could crack her head open if I were to drop her on the hard bathroom floor.

The gory images of various forms of infant death, always carelessly or even intentionally caused by me, buzzed in my brain during nearly every night changing. I knew deep in my soul that I could never, ever hurt my baby and I didn't really feel crazy, so why were these images nagging at me? Where were they even coming from? I wanted to tell my husband, but was afraid he would think I was a raving lunatic and a danger to our child. Instead, I kept them to myself. And eventually, as Baby got bigger and stronger, they went away and I forgot about them.

And then I read this post by Meghan at My Dog Harriet, describing the very same thing that had happened to me. And I read through the comments of dozens of women, many of whom I respect and admire, saying they'd had similar thoughts as well. As it turned out, I wasn't a freak of nature and I was far from alone. I had had what seems to be a fairly common (though scary) symptom of post-partum depression and not even known it. Thank God I read Meghan's post and can talk to my husband and my doctor about it if it happens again this time around.

It is really difficult for me to write about this even now, two years later. I think it's pretty obvious that I love my Baby with all my heart and seriously don't even know how I'd live my life without her in it. Yet I worry that people will read this and think I am a bad or unfit mother, or that I have mental issues. I worry that much of my audience will be filled with well-adjusted moms like the ones in my first playgroup, who will give me the written equivalent of the shocked stare of outrage.

But I couldn't not write about it. Because if one reader out there sees herself in these words some day and is able to get help, then it's worth every tear shed in the writing of this post and every negative or hurtful response it might provoke.

Thanks, Meghan, for your courage in writing about your post-partum experience, and for inspiring me to do the same.

Lindsay is mom/stepmom to 15, 13 and 2-year-old girls and has another child due in March.

Lessons From Daddy

By Lindsay

Leave a 2-year-old with her father for a few hours and you can expect some unpleasant surprises upon your return. Maybe you'll find peanut butter tangled in her hair and crammed up her nose. Maybe she'll have decorated three of your coveted first editions with crayon squiggles.

Maybe she'll have learned a new phrase.

"Mommy," my 2-year-old said solemnly from my husband's arms when I returned from the gym, "I have green poo poo."

Immediately, I looked to my husband, then back at my toddler.

"You what?!"

"I have green poo poo, Mommy."

Hubs shrugged. "She ate a lot of broccoli yesterday. I showed her what her poop looked like."

Irritatedly, I took the baby from Hubs. "There is a reason I haven't made a big deal about what's in her diaper," I said. "That's not a phrase that needs to be in her vocabulary right now."

"You're making a big deal out of nothing," he responded as Baby and I left the room.

The next day, I took Baby to the supermarket. She munched contentedly on a free cookie until we got to the register.

"You're a pretty little girl!" the cashier said, smiling at Baby.

Baby grinned.  "I have green poo poo," she said happily.

The cashier's smile faded. She looked nervously at me.

"She, well, she ate a lot of broccoli!" I stammered.

A few days later, Baby and I met our play group at the local science museum. Excited to see her friends after a few weeks off, she ran to them calling, "Babies! Hey Babies!"

Oh please, I thought, watching her, Please please don't say it, don't say...

"I have green poo poo!"  she shouted. The play group mommies giggled while my face turned red.

"She stayed with her father the other day," I explained darkly. 

Their laughter turned to clucking and concern. 

"It could've been worse," one mom said stoically. "My baby's started saying, 'Honey, bring me a beer."

Husbands. Can't leave the kids with them, can't live without 'em.

Lindsay is a stay-at-home mom/stepmom to a 2-year-old daughter and 13 and 15-year-old stepdaughters.

Measuring Up

by Lindsay

During play group a few weeks ago, my 23-month-old, Lily, decided to stir things up a little. 

“Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen. Twelve…,” she began loudly, taking blocks out of a bucket.

The room grew quiet as moms turned to stare.  Sensing her audience, Lily continued with gusto, counting all the way down to “…Three! Two! ONE! Yayyyyyy!” she clapped wildly for herself.

“She can count backward from fifteen?” one of the moms asked flatly. “Charlie’s a month older than Lily and he barely knows five words.” 

Immediately, I entered apology mode. “Oh, she’s just a good mimic,” I said quickly. “I was, too, at her age. It’s nothing. She didn’t walk until she was almost 15 months.”

I held my breath. I knew Charlie had been an early walker and luckily, my explanation seemed to work. Mollified, Charlie’s mom began talking about an upcoming consignment sale. I exhaled and looked over at Lily. Little show-off, I thought with a mixture of pride and embarrassment.

Although I secretly think Lily is the smartest toddler the world has ever known (Doesn't every mom feel the same way about her baby?), I don’t want the other moms to know that. I want Lily to fit in with their kids. Heck. I want to fit in with the kids’ moms. And so I find myself downplaying her vast vocabulary, passing it off on freakish genes, her talkative older sisters, or even too much TV.

But when the tables turn, watch out.

“My husband was very concerned when I told him Lily’s already counting to 15,” Charlie’s mom told me a few days later on the phone. “I told him not to worry, though, because Lily was a late walker. I mean, she doesn’t even run yet, and Charlie’s been running forever!”

“She can too run!” I sputtered defensively. “She’s a great runner. She’s really fast! In fact, she's running right now!”  I looked down at Lily standing below me and patted her on the bottom to try and get her moving. In response, she plopped down on the floor.

“Hey Lily!  Come back here!” I panted into the phone for effect. “I can’t keep up with this kid!”

After all, I can’t have anyone thinking her child’s better than my Lily, now can I?

Lindsay is a freelance writer and television journalist raising her 23-month-old daughter and 12 and 15-year-old stepdaughters.  You can read more about her life on her blog, Suburban Turmoil.