An old draft

I've had this one email sitting in my "Drafts" folder for very close to nine months now. It isn't addressed to anyone -- I really am not sure who I thought I was going to send it to anymore. It's a description of the Friday before the Sunday I went into labor with Dee. She was 12 days late on arrival, 10 days that Friday. I'd had an appointment scheduled with my regular OB, but then her office called to say she was sick. I could have let it go at that -- the office staff apparently had not planned to reschedule me. But instead I mentioned that Dr. W had said she would have wanted to send me to fetal testing if I still hadn't delivered by this appointment. I gather that they took another look at my due date then and got a hustle on, shimmying me into an extra end-of-shift appointment with an OB I'd actually actively been avoiding seeing (despite my OB's practice's policy of having all pregnancy clients visit with all of the OBs -- just in case your own was unavailable at "go" hour).

The email describes that -- fateful -- appointment. I want to delete the email from my folder, but not lose the story, so I'm posting it here:

Today was a tough, rocky, and exciting day. Dann and I were in doctors' offices or the hospital for over 5 hours -- and very much on an emotional roller coaster a lot of that time. First, the fetal testing that we had done today was very positive. Lila is active, reactive, and has plenty of fluid in which to move -- and all indications are that she isn't too big, etc. I am also still very healthy -- my blood pressure today was termed "ideal" by more than one nurse. As some of you know, Dann and I had hoped to wait as long as possible for spontaneous labor to begin, so we viewed this very hopefully.

However, it has become routine practice for OBs to induce in the 41st week of gestation, and the doctor we spoke to today (our first meeting with Dr. Graves, since our own OB has contracted "walking pneumonia"), gave us a brutally hard sell on the dangers of waiting any longer. At one point he actually demonstrated the rate of fetal deaths after the 56th day with a dramatic upsweep toward the ceiling. Dann and I happen to have been doing a lot of research into latest practice/theory on this subject, however, and knew he was greatly exaggerating his case -- 1 in 1,000 births doesn't really suggest a vertical line to me. But whatever. In any case, he made a strong push for us to induce tonight. However, upon pressing, he reluctantly agreed that our due date may have been 3 days too early, so, the Monday-Tuesday induction is kind of a compromise.

Just in case we sound as though we're playing dice with Lila, I want to assure you that Dann and I actually took him very much to heart and had a chance to talk for quite awhile just the two of us before making any decisions. However, for what it is worth, he really was kind of alarmist. Case in point: he also insisted that I am not at all dilated or effaced and though initially he had offered to "strip the membrane" of my cervix, announced he was unable to because my cervix is so closed. In fact, he said, because of how unprepared my cervix is, I'm probably going to require a C-section with induction. HOWEVER, after we had agreed to induce on Monday night -- a decision which seemed to satisfy him, actually -- I asked if I needed another Strep B test, since the last one was 5 weeks ago (that's how long the results are considered good) -- which he agreed that I did. Since he was unable to perform that test without a nurse (his nurse had left for the day), we were seen by another doctor (Dr. Kim) for the Strep B test, who also checked my cervix, and pronounced me 3cm dilated, 50% effaced, and who then proceeded to strip the membrane. (I've been cramping ever since, which is oddly reassuring.)

Our prescription for the weekend is lots and lots of walking and lots of sex. :-)

Ironically, if we go into labor this weekend, we will be delivered by Dr. Graves. But really, that's okay. We're just ready to meet Lila.

Of course I did go into labor that weekend -- Sunday morning, as a matter of fact -- and indeed, Lila landed in Dr. Graves' hands -- which despite my having arrived at the hospital ready to push, he had still stuck up into my body as far as his elbows to check her position (which
was fine). I'd hate him, but I can't. At least now I can erase the email.

Sleep training is good for blogging

I am killing time between "check-ins" with Dee, who is ostensibly learning to put herself to sleep. So far, so bad. She's been screaming for over a half hour, despite my "check-ins."

Sleep training sucks.

She just discovered a toy in her bed, I can hear her playing with it. She's -- oops, was -- distracted momentarily from screaming and I can feel my blood pressure dropping a little -- if only temporarily.

The emotional tether by which I am bound to her vibrates so violently, so insistently, when she makes sounds of distress that it feels like physical pain to me. When I was "sleep training" her older sister, Kay, I sobbed hysterically right along with her (if in another room). With Dee, I still feel the anxiety of letting her suffer, but two years of life with now-toddler Kay have also taught me that my daughters' cries will not kill me -- or harm them. It's the things that make them cry that matter.

Dee is in her crib. She's safe. She's not too hot. She's not too cold. She knows where she is. She knows I'm nearby. And she's sleepy and it's time to sleep. She is crying because she thinks she needs me to sink into dreamland. But, she really doesn't. And the sooner we both learn that, the better for this whole family.

Oh, my baby, I am so sorry there will be times when you are scared and confused and feel deserted. But you aren't. You aren't. Here I am, not 10 feet away, ready to leap into action if anything bad happens. Loving you, loving you, loving you.

She's quiet now. Really, she is. It's a miracle.

Earlier today I was having one of my three mornings a week to myself and journaling. Journaling is a lot like blogging except that there is no expectation or possibility of interaction with a reader. If I happen ever to have any readers at this blog, then chances are that you probably understand this concept without my further elucidation.

I only mention it because today, as I often do during a lull between thoughts while journaling, I read past entries. Today I was reading about the first days after Dee was born. And just now, thinking about the difference in sleep training Kay, and sleep training Dee, I am reminded of the deep knee to the gut feeling I had that first night we brought Dee home, realizing that I was never going to get to be the same singly and exclusively devoted mother to Kay again, and further that I never would be singly devoted to Dee.

Even on these afternoons when Kay is with my mom, when I always think that I'm going to pore over Dee the way I used to with Kay, I don't. More typically, I take her along on whatever errands I've decided must be done, or move her from room to room as I straighten, or answer email, or fold laundry, etc. I study her so much less intently than I used to study Kay. By the time Kay was 8 months old -- the way I remember it now, anyway -- I was totally tuned into what skills she was developing, what her most recent accomplishments were. I'd seen every first. With Dee it just isn't that way.

I treat Dee more like the companion her sister can be -- less like the slowly unfolding miracle that a baby coming to her personhood can be. I was awestruck by Kay everyday, aware of each incremental movement toward a new milestone. Dee still hits me like a bolt of lightning on a regular basis, but more because "suddenly" she is doing something new like it is old hat. Paradoxically, I think of her as more of a baby than I remember thinking of Kay. Sometimes with Kay I was so eager for each new development that it was as though I could her at the next phase easier than I could see her where she was. With Dee I chronically fail to recognize how far along she really is; I see her as younger than she is.

I worry that these differences will add up to something harmful to one or both of them. That the way I treat one is not enough like the way I treat the other and that I will nurture rivalries between them that will cause their hearts to doubt my love, and my heart to ache.

Suddenly, Dee is awake again. Crying. Both our hearts ache right now. And right now, I can fix that. Bye.

24-7

So, I like to say that I work 24-7, which amounts to a 168 hour work week, and there's truth in that statement. I mean, I never stop being a mom -- defined for these purposes as the most responsible party for the care of my children, regardless of whose company they are in, both because it feels that way and because society (however much more enlightened we are than we were 50 years ago) says so.

But I've been thinking about it and when I define my job as a "stay-at-home" parent, my actual on-duty and on-call hours add up to something closer to 150. Eighteen hours a week both of my daughters are physically in someone else's immediate care, either my husband's (their father), or my mom's. And of the 150 hours that one or both of them are directly in my care, approximately two-thirds of that time they are also "directly" in the care of their father, and thus I am assisted. This includes nighttime, of course.

If the time my husband and I sleep, and/or our children sleep (including during the day), can be subtracted from that total then it comes out to something more like 80-90 hours a week (depending on much they sleep). And, if only the time that I am alone with one or both of them while they are awake can be counted then my workweek is really closer to 30 hours a week. However, I'm going to argue that anytime I am alone with them, whether they are awake or asleep should count, because I am still the primary person on-duty -- which puts me safely over 40 hours a week.

It's a full-time job.

That arithmetic is so wholly unsatisfying. But why? Why is it more satisfying to believe or suggest that I work a longer work week than other people do? Since when did the number of hours a person works become the measure of their contribution to the world, the measure of their worth? Or more pertinently, since when did I start believing it?

It is a weird thing to choose to be a stay-at-home mom, as a progressive feminist. I am alternately defensive and proud of my decision, alternately convinced it is proof of how far women have come that I am welcome to choose it and worried it is a personal failure to claim my "liberation." And then, to have two daughters! I frequently worry about what I am teaching them about what they should do as women -- my goal being to teach them that what they should do is whatever makes them happy.

And that's the nub right there. This makes me happy. And isn't that what I believe really matters? Whether I work 24-7 or really something more like 30 hours a week, who cares? I have found my right place for right now. I'd like to think that's what we're all aiming for -- that it is the only kind of success that ultimately matters. I think it is.

That said, you'll note, that I'm not changing my description of this blog. 24-7, that's my story, people. Because it sounds so good.

An Introduction

This will probably be short. It's taken me a couple of hours to set up this blog -- and my youngest daughter's nap is soon to end. It's a Monday, so her big sister is with my mom. This is one of the easier days -- one of the days when I get to focus on just one of my children.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a 38 year old "stay-at-home mom" -- a title I chafe against, but which is common parlance for women who spend their days with their children, trying to keep them alive, teach them something worthwhile, have some fun, and prepare them for the world they live in. We don't spend that much time at home, honestly. And, for me, this choice had much more to do with wanting to stay-away-from-the-office, than planning to stay-at-home.

I'm a very ambitious person -- just not professionally. I want to live as though my life matters, as though life in general is miraculous and worthy of awe everyday. I found that hard to do working at a desk, wearing hose and heels, attending meetings, and giving only my brain anything really interesting to do all day. These days it's my brain that gets the least work, I admit. But my heart, soul, and body are thoroughly engaged in the work before me now. It's not always a comfortable thing -- quite often it can be mind-numbingly repetitive, bone-achingly exhausting, and breath-takingly heartbreaking and humbling -- but it is something a lot closer to what I'm aiming for out of life.

My daughters Kay and Dee are 19 months apart -- at this writing 27 months old and 8 months old, respectively. Kay is testing every limit I never knew I had and Dee is teething and on the brink of crawling (which is also to say that she is not sleeping anymore). Sometimes they nap at the same time and I indulge the fantasy that I have something to write about -- that I can write. That's when you'll find me here. When their naps end, it might make for an occasionally abrupt conclusion -- and I won't be writing every day -- but I'll always be back eventually.

I hope you come back, too.