Letting Go.

First it is summer.  We are finally sleeping at night, we have time for us, we are in a routine.  Our babies are toddlers, and they are delightful.  We are the small family we always wanted to be.

In creeps this unfinished business.  Suddenly I feel like this IUD is exactly what it is - birth CONTROL.  I can't escape the thought that infertility taught me to let go and yet inside my body is something with CONTROL in the title.  I need to face the unknown.  Need to face possibility.  Need to test my strength now that I am where I wanted to be.

We talk.  We discuss.  Do we want to open ourselves to possibility?  We feel pretty balanced as we are.  Kyle worries I will end up where I once was.  Heartbroken.  Depressed.  Disappointed.  Desperate.  And I say, therapeutically, I need this.  I remind him that it wouldn't be about trying for a baby, but to just let life happen.  He listens. 

We decide together.  Ditch the IUD. 

I feel free.

We move on.

Within a month I am disappointed in myself.

I suddenly don't want to nurse the babies anymore.  Could I be pregnant?

A week later.  I still don't want to nurse.  I feel tired.  Am I?

I start craving spice.  I describe my favorite Vietnamese and Thai foods to friends and feel like crying in my desperation to eat it all, now.

I have a talk with myself.  You don't even want to be pregnant right now.  It terrifies you.  You're back at your old tricks...one sleepy afternoon and it MUST be pregnancy, huh?  You're psychotic.  You made a mistake, removing that IUD.  You weren't ready for the unknown.  Don't let Kyle know you're obsessing over this.  Just don't.  You promised him you wouldn't go back there. 

I decide I will take a test on the sly.  Clear the slate.  Confirm what I know must be true.  I am not pregnant but I am insane.  Move on. 

I don't buy a test.  There's no good time.  No good time?

I am tired.  I want spice.  I am peeing awfully frequently.

I fess up to Kyle, sheepish.  I am obsessed with this idea that I'm pregnant.  I can't shake it.  I'm so embarrassed.  I need to take a test, and then I will move on.

I have no idea what he thinks. 

He buys a test on his way home from work. 

Seven weeks have passed since my IUD was removed.

I tear off the cellophane wrapper and run into the bathroom.

I look forward to breathing again.

I pee.

I start to set the test on the counter when I see the blue plus sign.

A blue plus sign.

A blue plus sign.

A blue plus sign.

The symbol I dreamed about through three years of infertility.  The moment I coveted with every desperate cell of my being - casually taking a test, only to find that, indeed, I am pregnant.

magnitude

For the first few months after Rhys and Quin were born, I was certain that throughout the world and throughout history, no mother had ever loved her babies as I loved mine. This thought wasn’t a reflection of my opinions about other mothers, it was simply a matter of capacity and an irrational certainty that loving my babies any more than I already did would cause the universe to explode into a hundred billion pieces of sopping, heavy heart. I wasn’t prepared for the magnitude of motherhood; the idea that other mothers felt the way that I felt and were able to pull it together and function was completely incomprehensible to me. I looked out at the world, feeling perplexed and at a total loss in trying to make sense of the suddenly re-written familiar. Images I’ve seen hundreds, thousands of times immediately took on new meaning. Commercials about the starving children in Africa, news stories about a runaway teenage boy, television dramas about kidnappings and murders. Although I’ve always considered myself a compassionate person, it suddenly seemed as though my former self must have been a cold and heartless shell of a human being to be able to stomach these ideas without urgently forming what had recently become my inescapable conclusion: somebody’s baby. That is somebody’s baby.

As time has passed, I’ve become slightly more acclimated to the experience of being a mother. Of creating life and loving beyond the bounds of understanding. I have come to realize that as much as I love my babies, it is not only possible, but in fact quite likely that other mothers love their babies just as much. Initially, that realization stung a bit. Then the stinging turned into an emphatic, “huh.” And now amazement. What a collective power.

I suppose that’s what knocked me off my center in the first place. Human beings. Creating them. Raising them. Loving them. The impact that we make on the world and on one another. Single influential individuals, good and evil. Martin Luther King. Gandhi. Hitler. Joint movements for change. The Emancipation Proclamation. The suffragettes. The daily fabric of our world, individual lives woven together in a delicate yet inescapable chain reaction. It’s not just about mothers. It’s about all of us and all of our actions and all of the beautiful and mundane details of life. But right now I can only speak as a mother. I want to hold on to this moment; here, where I sit and see the magnitude of what I hold in my hands. Two babies, for whom I simply want peace and love and true happiness. Two babies, who make me want to mold the world into a place that welcomes and nurtures and is safe.

I know that in time I may become desensitized. We haven’t hit the terrible twos yet. I have never attempted to parent a teenager. Just as I’ve slowly come to realize that the universe is not in danger of explosion under the pressure of my love, perhaps in time I will feel at ease with the fragility of it all. But for now I am here. Writing to ask myself to remember what it felt like, peering out at the world with my babies wrapped tightly in my arms.

armor

I think I was in the third grade the first time that I realized that my world wasn't fully comprised of butterflies and cinnamon. I knew that THE world had dangers and sadness. I had seen the starving children on TV. But I didn't know MY world was susceptible. Ignorance? Innocence? Gluttony? Ethnocentrism? Being an American? Probably a combination. But then the news broke that the US was embarking on the Gulf War. I remember sitting in the living room with my family and begging my parents to cancel their upcoming trip to Florida. I pictured bombs falling from the sky and soldiers on street corners like in the books I had read about World War II. Surely plane travel and a trip to sunny Florida were perilous activities in the war-torn country I was certain we were about to become.

But then life went on. Our favorite shows were still on TV. I didn't know anybody who died. We could still buy microwave popcorn and ice cream at the grocery store. I licked my wounds and moved forward. In time, the illusion of safety settled in around me once again, with only the slightest ding in its shiny varnish.

And that's how things went. I became so accustomed to that illusion of safety that eventually it felt like an armor. People were killed in Kosovo and the armor suffered another ding. Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered, there was genocide in Rwanda, and hundreds of thousands of people died from cancer: ding, ding, and ding. I got it. Terrible things happened in the world. I didn't feel invincible. I just felt safe.

I was living by myself for the first and only time in my life when two planes crashed into the world trade center. This time, there were no dings. The armor shattered. As the dust settled, I looked around and felt stupid. Ignorant. I never had any armor. Luck, maybe?

A little over a week ago, not far from where we live, a mother and daughter were picked at random and attacked in their home while they slept. Four teen boys with machetes and knives stabbed the mother to death and slit her daughter's throat. They say the little girl is going to live. I wonder what they mean by that.

I don't understand this world we live in. A world with apple cider and fall leaves. Where miracle babies are born and learn to smile and laugh and crawl. Where incredible people overcome incredible obstacles. Where we strive to save the forests, save the whales, save the ozone. A world with tulips and warm puppies and grandparents. A world of good. Beauty, love, peace, and harmony.

This world. With poverty and disease. Where we send our children to war. Where we get up in the morning and make our coffee, knowing full well that somewhere, right this instant, there is rape, torture, hunger, and worse. Where four bored teenagers break into a home and massacre a sleeping family.

I don't know how we piece these worlds together. I don't know how to build an armor around my children. How to make that armor real.

I'm not interested in illusions this time.

Building on Obama's Nobel Prize...

...(and let's just start with a big old Hooray and Yippee, Mr. President!)...I've been reflecting on the ways that I work to contribute to global peace. When I can, I buy Fair Trade, eat organically, and support non profits that I feel are making a positive impact on our world. All nice things, but, let's be honest, a little lacking in creativity.

So the other day I was preparing to depart on our long trek to Trader Joe's, and remembered that, shockingly, I was without cash for the toll. I am too stubborn to break down and pay for an E-ZPass, so I run into this issue every time I have to travel a toll road. With the babies already loaded into the car and strapped into their car seats, I considered for a few brief moments that perhaps I would just speed through the toll without paying. Since we hadn't yet left the driveway, I decided the better course of action would be to sprint into the house, grab some change, and pay the toll like the good little law abiding citizen that I reluctantly admit to being. Grabbing a few quarters turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated. Our change jar was full of pennies and various world currencies never converted back into US dollars after Kyle's last business trip. Rather than throw a handful of pennies at the toll attendant, I grabbed a few Euros and ran back out to the car. Because I'm a member of the global community, people. Euros are worth more anyway.

Apparently the toll attendant didn't agree. And so even though I quickly pressed my Euros into her palm and sped away, she still found the time to press the alarm buzzer and make the red light go off before I was through. So now I'm waiting for the grainy photograph to arrive in the mail, which will show me and the babies speeding through the toll like tax evaders and be accompanied by a hefty little fine. And I think it's totally unpatriotic and un-world-peacely that I will be fined for trying to broaden the global horizons of this fine state. Besides, I had no quarters, and everyone knows that pennies aren't money any more.

I like to think that our fine President would be proud of me. Or that he would tell me to stop making pathetic attempts to pass off my coin shortage as a stand for world peace. One of those.

Unrelated and far more exciting...

Thank you! to Musings of a Wannabe Mommy for the Kreativ Blogger Award! The accompanying rules are as follows (and remember...I am law abiding!):

1-Thank the person who nominated you for this award.

2-Copy the logo and place it on your blog.
3-Link to the person who nominated you for this award.
4-Name 7 things about yourself that people may not know.
5-Nominate 7 Kreativ Bloggers.
6-Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.
7-Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know they’ve been nominated.

Ta-da:

So...seven things you may not know about me (good god...is there really anything I haven't shared?)

1. Fall is my favorite season.

2. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I think Paris Hilton is a comedic genius.

3. I make delectable maple sticky buns.

4. I enrolled in culinary school and dropped out a week later, before classes even started.

5. I was a cheerleader in college, and ultimately left the sport to become more active in the Feminist Collective.

6. I gag when I touch dry sand, chalk, or cotton balls.

7. I can not be counted on to not half-ass most home improvement projects.

So, to share a little love, peace, and goodwill, I'm passing this award on to the following talented bloggers: Freckletree, Nourish the Soul, The Maybe Baby, Parsing Nonsense, on the m104, Poop and Boogies, and Maybe If You Just Relax.

And on a closing note, I'd like to add that I ate a huge piece of chocolate cake for breakfast, and it was really awesome.

I'm Pregnant, Not Kind.

I said that today. Twice.

But let's be honest, I actually am fairly kind. I like puppies and kittens, and I believe in the possibility of world peace.

It's just that lately, I'm feeling a little ferocious. I always envisioned that as a pregnant person, I would be ethereal, wise, and emanating love. Instead, I find myself to be frumpy, sarcastic, and emanating the f-bomb. It's not quite what I'd had in mind.

And so I suppose I need to be honest with myself. I have probably never been destined for ethereality. Is that even a word? For one thing, I don't have the hair for it. Everybody knows that you need long and flowing hair to be ethereal. Go figure, mine is short and far from flowing; unless you count the profusion of peach fuzz on my belly. And although I have very recently grown some breasts, I'm probably not quite voluptuous enough either.

Wisdom, I think I might have a shot at. I mean, sarcasm and wisdom are basically one and the same. Some of the funniest, wisest old people I know just so happen to also be very sarcastic. Sometimes, if I'm having a bad day, my sarcasm can be a little mean-spirited. But nobody is nice ALL of the time, and I think the fact that I can be honest about that probably means I am a little bit wise.

If I'm having a good day and the hormones aren't completely steering the boat, I sometimes emanate love. Certainly towards my sweet babies and husband and quite a few family members. But then I also seem to have this little swearing thing going on. And the demeanor of a crusty, grumpy old man.

Part of me is sad about this. Because I think everyone would really love me an awful lot if I was ethereal and wise and loving.

I am instead like a hairy sailor with a big belly. And although this probably makes me slightly less lovable, I'm not so much minding. Because while pregnancy has not brought with it all of the pretty-princess images I conjured up over the past 27 years, it has brought on some new life perspectives. Small things, like peace and acceptance.

P.S. The hormones are steering the boat.

Who took my map?

After living life for three years as an infertile, I have a confession to make. Four months ago, I would have cringed and threatened to slap myself across the face at such a confession. But I have no self control, so confess I will: I do not know how to be a pregnant person.

Infertility is the cruelest and most painful waiting game I know. Monthly reminders of the lack of conception. Waiting for the next test. The next set of stirrups. The next cycle to start. The next. The next. The next. Waiting to find out if you will ever become pregnant.

Oddly, I got pretty good at all that waiting. I would even say I found peace in it. I accepted the unknowns, not out of some beautiful zen moment, but out of the sheer reality that I had no other option. I embraced the idea that infertility, for me, was a journey. I often even felt lucky to have the opportunity to turn a painful experience into a time of growth, reflection, and acceptance.

And now I am pregnant. I start my fourteenth week today, and I am still in quite the state of shock. I am beyond excited. I feel blissful, lucky lucky lucky, and totally confused.

I don't quite know how to look back and make sense of this most recent development. For me, living infertility was a bit like being suspended in space and time. Becoming pregnant has launched me back into the real world. Living infertility was the most polarizing experience I've ever had with the rest of humanity. Even among my most beloved friends and family, I separated everyone into an "us" and them" sort of alignment: the fertiles vs. the infertiles. Where do I fit in now?

The infertility/fertility journey doesn't end at pregnancy. I never knew that before. I don't know if it ends at birth. My infertility induced clarity, acceptance, and balance seems to have at least momentarily been replaced with a gluttonous appetite for all things baby. I glide from peaceful moments of loving my pregnancy to impatient and frustrated longings to finally hold my babies and see their tiny faces.

And maybe this is really what it's all about. I have about six more months to reflect and sort things out. That's the same amount of time my babies have left to live in the safest and most sheltered environment they'll ever know. And then together they'll join this crazy world. I don't care if my babies grow up to be doctors or lawyers. I want my babies to know that life is beautiful and confusing. And once they know that, I want them to choose to jump right in, with wild and reckless abandon.