Counting at the Conference

1. I have arrived in Charleston for a conference for the next few days. As I kissed Owen goodbye at the airport, I almost cried. But now that I'm here, I've allowed myself to imagine all the exciting things I will be able to do. These include taking a bath, sleeping uninterrupted for possibly eight hours at at time, eating meals without having juice cups flung at me, reading your blogs, writing my blog, watching porn.

2. I'm traveling with a colleague who looks like Taye Diggs only my colleauge has a slightly better body. Because he's one of the ridiculously beautiful people, the party goes where he goes. I'm supposed to meet him for cocktails at 6 p.m., but I'm so old and lame that I actually want to stay in, climb in bed, catch up with all my bloggy friends, and then watch Curb Your Enthusiasm. I do not recognize this woman I have become.


3. Maybe it's because this woman I have become turned 35 on Friday. Fuuuuck me.


4. Aside from Friday having been my birthday, one of my best barren friends - the one who was still trying even after I'd gone on and finally produced offspring - had a son. I'm still crying about it.

5. I just remember that it's like 80 fucking degrees outside so I can wear open-toed heels - a fact that has just given me motivation to go out with Mr. Diggs.


6. So I must get in the shower now and get ready to go out.

7. Which means you have a drunk post to look forward to, luck you.


8. I don't want to alarm you, but someone gave my baby permission to turn into a kid:

In Search of Sleep

I was bleary eyed and having my morning pee (why I’m sharing that detail, I don’t know) when my equally dazed husband entered the bathroom unannounced groping for the shower curtain. I didn’t even protest. The water went on, the room started to fill with steam, and from down the hall I heard it:

“Ahhh. Gooo. Mamamamam. Mooooo.” And then, “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH”

“Holy. Fucking. Shit. Is he really awake already?”

The last two nights have been, let’s see…I don’t want to be dramatic, so I’m just gonna go with “little slice of rotting hell on earth.” I’ve adjusted to the general lack of sleep one gets after her baby arrives, but I’m now verging on two nights with nearly no sleep. Owen has devised a torture protocol that would make Dick Cheney proud.

I should assume some of the responsibility for this sleepless insanity. On Wednesday night I drove down to Philly for – yeah, you guessed it – a Pearl Jam concert (they are currently playing the final shows at a concert venue that was a staple of my youth and is set to be demolished, so I couldn’t miss it, you see) and then drove back the same night, knowing I had to be at work on Thursday. I got home at about 1:30 a.m. and jumped in bed. By 2 Owen was up and looking to play and no amount of pleading, crying, bribing, soothing, patting, singing, and shushing could convince the boy to go back to sleep. So I picked him up to try to comfort him and rather than put his cute little head on my should and drift to sleep, he was craning his neck and whipping his head around, surveying the room and pointing at everything he could make out in the dark – which is a lot. Kid sees like a bat. Or wait, bats are blind right? It’s their hearing that’s so superb? Well, Owen sees the way a bat hears. How’s that? Workin’ for you?

Anyway. I finally couldn’t take it anymore and at 4 p.m., Ted took over, bringing him downstairs for what he calls “sooka sooka,” which basically is Owen sleeping on daddy while daddy sleeps on couch. No idea where the name came from, but Ted’s been using it since Owen was about 2 days old. He KNOWS what sooka sooka is. The truly distressing thing was that even sooka sooka wasn’t working. Owen cried until 5:30 and I laid there listening to him until I gave up, showered and got ready for work.

So last night, we put Owen to bed and a few hours later I retired myself, anticipating a full night’s sleep after his nocturnal nonsense the night before. Imagine my horror when I heard him crying at 12 fucking 50 A.M. I attempted to help him get back to sleep, but again he wasn’t having it. The difference was that either was I. And so begand what would be a three-hour stand-off that consisted of Owen crying and trying to climb out of his crib, while I sat outside his door also crying and trying to keep myself from plucking him from his room and tucking him in bed with us.

I’ve had friends who have kids who just don’t do bedtime. Every night it is a knock-down drag-out fight to keep from going to bed and then a war of wills to keep the children in bed. Entire evenings are spent scooping children up from behind the couch or the washing machine and returning them to bed, over and over and over. Before I ever had kids this was my biggest fear: that my husband and I would spend several years devoting each night to a bedtime battle with our children. I just don’t want anything to do with that. As much as I love and adore Owen, when 8:30 rolls around, I’m happy to give him a kiss and send him off to dreamland. He needs his rest and I need my downtime.

I’m really hoping that these last two nights are an anomaly, but I’ve read enough blogs to know that it could just be the beginning of a pattern that is very, very scary to me and must be resolved before he gets older. So tonight, we will lower his mattress and remove the bumper so he can’t get out of the crib and I’m going to get all Ferber on his ass and see what happens. It could be a very long night for all of us.

Or he could just be having trouble sleeping because he’s apparently got seasonal allergies and they’ve been acting up this week. So hopefully the TB household sleeps tonight!! We shall see.

I don’t know if it’s a function of our serious fatigue, but last night I was saying that I didn’t know how people who had their children spaced out by 3 or more years did it. Right now, I’m on auto-pilot. I’m a robot. I’m in go mode all the time. Between the baby, the demands of work, maintaining the house…I’m always going unless I’m asleep. But he’s getting older and he’ll go to pre-school and grow more independent soon. After you’ve reached that point as parents, I’m not sure how you start over. I expressed this to Ted, feeling more than a little bit guilty about it because there’s something about having dealt with infertility that makes me feel like I should never be tired or frustrated, just always and forever grateful. His response?

“Yeah, I figure we’ve got about a six-month window left for deciding to do number two. After that, there’s no way I’d go back to square one.”

Okaaay. So we’re on the same page there, apparently. I guess if you’re not reading about my next IVF cycle by April, it’s a safe bet we’re taking the one and only approach to child rearing.

Which really isn’t so bad. My administrative assistant has 4 kids – two high schoolers and two elementary-age children. They text her all day with complaints and demands and then after school, she’s on the phone for more time than I’d care to calculate, just fighting with them. It’s so bad that it interferes with her workload, but I’ve been hesitant to approach her about it. I mean, what can I say, “Ahh…could you please let Lisa and Alexander kill each other with the kitchen knives they are wielding because I really need the guest list for the donor event. Your seven-year-old is crying? Don’t care – please get this mailing out.”?

But truly, she makes me want to go home, pick up Owen, kiss him all over his cute little face while repeating “one and done.”

Then there’s the other side of the coin. A woman I recently hired to run a campaign for me – she’s about my age – seems to like to taunt me with her carefree life. So much so, actually, that I’m beginning to suspect that she too might be an “infertile” and is engaging in the very familiar anti-mom tactics I used to practice. The stuff where you brag about the amazing restaurant you ate at or the huge quantity of sleep you get every night or the exotic vacation you’ve got planned, as if all of your freedom and fun will somehow make the mother type feel like shit about having a kid when you couldn’t. She hasn’t made me put Owen on the baby black market, but I do admit to drooling just a bit when I asked her how her weekend was and she looked me dead in the eye, all big-smiling, and said, “Relaaaaxing.”

Now is that bitch a closet infertile or what?

Meet Macho

As we think more about Owen’s future and some of the risks involved in contact sports for him, we’ve become more and more comfortable with the idea of trying to turn him into a golfer. He received his first set of clubs for his birthday and we’ve assigned him the nickname Macho because I think it will make him more marketable in terms of endorsements.

The onesie he is wearing in this picture has a cool story behind it. About five years ago, Ted and his brother A we’re teaching at the same boarding school and while on the bus, returning from an away lacrosse game, they came up with an idea for a new comic book, called Wh.ale. Gen.ius. Apparently WG was about a gen.ius wh.ale who could predict the future, but could only communicate via telepathy, a method of communication that most humans are unable to take advantage of. So they made up all these stories about WG trying to save people and he’d begin all his messages with, “I wanted to warn you,” and then when his warning went unheeded by the clueless humans, he would dive back into the sea, saying, “Pity,” while disaster struck. So, A remembered this and actually drew an issue of the comic, starring Owen, and then he had a t-shirt for Ted and onesie for Owen made that have a picture of a whale on it and the back has the tagline, “I wanted to warn you.” They’re awesome.

Just thought I’d share.

Birthday Bash

The best decision I’ve made in quite some time was when I woke up exhausted a few days before Owen’s birthday party and decided to scratch our elaborate fall-themed menu and call a caterer. It made for a pricier first birthday than I would normally think is appropriate, but it saved my sanity and possibly my mother-in-law’s life considering that the only thing I had to make myself was the cake and I was going to dunk the woman’s head in the batter if she grabbed one more ingredient out of my hand to prepare it more properly. The woman can NOT let go in the kitchen. Doesn’t matter whose kitchen it is…she can’t let go. Love her. But holy shit…

But let me just say this about my cake. It was awesome. Quite tasty and actually beautiful. I have no proof of this because our house was so packed, thanks to constant downpours that day, I couldn’t keep track of either of my cameras, so I was unable to document the day as well as I would have liked. One of our guests, however, is producer and has been a personal chef for America’s Queen of All Things Domestic – her initials are MS – and she couldn’t believe I hadn’t purchased the cake. It was a triple layer chocolate fudge with butter cream icing, tastefully decorated with a few black, orange and white candies on top.

I was mocked, actually, for just how beautiful my cake was. “Wow, Owen has some pretty sophisticated taste in baked goods for a one-year-old,” my brother said.

To this I responded that this was probably the only birthday party I’d be able to throw for him before he was indoctrinated into our brand-obsessed consumer culture and I’d be finding myself at party stores buying overpriced plastic party gear featuring charismatic yellow sponges or fuzzy red infantile monsters (the two children’s entertainment icons that seem to have attracted Owen’s fancy at this point).

But I don’t know why I try to reason with my brother. “Oh. Did Owen request the sushi, too?”

Fucker.

Anyway, the party was fun though I must admit to being just a little bit happy that it’s behind me. It came at a time when I’ve had board and committee meetings several nights a week and I worked the entire weekend before the party because it was homecoming and reunion – both day-long events that are run by my department. Getting ready for such a large party was not unlike preparing for a marathon. But Owen had fun, so did the guests – many of whom didn’t leave until – almost 10 o’clock. He got a really cool Radio Flyer wagon and awesome red and blue cap, that his grandparents bought him in France:

We call him Owen Zissou when he wears it.

So overall it was great, with the all the typical first birthday stuff like tearing up wrapping paper, smashing cake, smacking fellow baby guests in the face (Owen, not me), and showing off crawling, standing, pivoting, clapping, whistling, and fish faces (me, not Owen) to a room full of ooohs and aaaahs.

The whole evening came to a close with my great aunt – a woman, mind you, who devote herself to an opera career, never had kids and can’t related to anyone under the age of 60 – taking a seat on the couch next to me and saying, “He’s such a gift. Don’t worry that he’s a little slow. It’s to be expected because of his surgery. And his chubby legs will thin out when he starts walking. Don’t worry.”

Thanks, but he’s not slow and I’m not worried. Bitch.

And I love his chubby legs.

One

Last night, I was working out at home on our elliptical, listening to music, sweating and thinking about the next few days and suddenly found myself sobbing. I kept going though, increasing the resistance and my speed as tears ran down my face. In case you’re interested, you do burn calories at a slightly higher rate if you break down while working out, but my lungs hurt today.

Owen turns one on Friday and as this major milestone approaches, I’m surprised to find my emotions as mixed as they were the first few days of his life. That strange and mostly awful period when the surge of love and devotion I felt when I stared at the brand-new, wiggling stranger in my arms was quickly replaced by fear and dread.

The doctor listed the things wrong with his heart – four in total. Open heart surgery would be necessary for him to survive. The blood not yet oxygenated mixing with the oxygen-rich blood. The pulmonary artery too narrow, making it more difficult to pump his inferior blood throughout his body. An overriding aorta, whatever the hell that means. A hardening of the heart muscle from overworking.

Owen wasn’t in the room with us when the cardiologist sat down and delivered the news, but I didn’t have to see him to know how tiny he was…how fragile. How could a creature so vulnerable survive with so much up against him? Crack his chest and stop his heart? Impossible.

“He’ll never see his first birthday.”

That thought ran through my mind the first night I knew about Owen. My memory of that night involves Ted tossing and turning in the cot next to my hospital bed. The arrival of the lump in my throat that would stay for weeks. Sobbing. In the background The Bee Movie played, my own selection as if Jerry Sienfeld as a brightly-colored bee might somehow fend off at least some of this grief.

I was robbed.

I try not to be a bitter person, but a part of me carries this anger – at whom or what, I don’t know – that after all those years of trying to have a baby and failing, I had less than 24 hours to revel in all the possibility of this little being before his mortality was flung in my face. Until he had open heart surgery at the age of three months, I couldn’t look at Owen without thinking about his death.

It’s surprising to many, I’m sure, that I choose to write about such a sad time during what should be nothing but a festive and happy period in our lives. Owen will live to see his first birthday and he’s a growing, happy, loving little boy. My thoughts should be all about birthday cake and balloons, not bypass surgery and broken hearts, but unfortunately the birth of my son – the most incredible experience of my life – will always be linked to the day we learned about his heart, which was, without a doubt, the most devastating day I’ve ever endured. “To fall from such heights,” someone said to me then.

I need to get over it, I know.

But there are some things that you just never forget.

And to be honest, I don’t want to forget. Owen’s surgery is a part of him and one of the things I love about him. It’s like his smile, his wild hair, the sounds he makes while he sleeps, his chubby thighs, his big blue eyes, his monster growl, his insistence on barking at the cat, the way he pops his binkie out of his mouth and flings it across the room, his waves, his whistling, how he hugs me by burrowing his face in my neck, his patched-together heart, the fading scar that parts his chest, memories of handing him over to the anesthesiologist just outside the door of the OR. I love all of these things about my son. They are and always will be part of who we are as mother and son. I can’t forget.

Happy Birthday, my little love.

Doin' It For The Boy

Hi Girls!

Please join me in welcoming TB and her one-year-old son Owen to the group!! TB is a working mommy so she won’t be at our weekday events but we hope she’ll have time for us on the weekends or evenings!!!

Also don’t forget tomorrow’s ice cream social from 3:30 to 5:30 and bring your old sneakers so we can turn them into a playground surface for the eastern park!! Hope to see Owen and TB tomorrow!!!!!

Yes, little J is 3 months old and I did return to work (work for me is working at home with my 3 kids and taking care of other kids)! I thought I’d be exhausted but I’m not!! I guess more kids just gives me more energy!!!!!!!

TTFN
Alpha Mom

This is an actual email distributed to 60 local moms.

I have really done a terrible job of making sure Owen has exposure to other children. To remedy that, I have joined the local Mom & Tots club. This is not some loosely organized group of moms that meet up at the local Starbucks for coffee and conversation. These are women who are militant about their mommy roles. Today alone I have received emails with the following subjects:

Extra pan of ziti need for tonight’s dinner playdate!
Holistic Mom’s group presenting vaccine discussion!
More Holistic Mom’s group presentations in the area.
Can we split locations for tonight’s dinner playdate?
Pumpkin picking postponed until Sunday.
Weigh in on kid-size picnic tables.
Host needed for next week’s dinner playdate.
Remember infant play dates for 12 months and under.

I suspect this is going to be painful, but the boy needs to be around other kids. At least I should get some good blogging material out of it.

Stay tuned.

Mr. Manners

On Saturday, after his flu shot, we took Owen out for a walk and ended up having lunch at a family restaurant – the sort of kid-friendly establishment that used to comfort me during my darkest infertility days. You know what I mean: “I may not have a baby, but thank god I don’t have to eat in THAT place. Good god it’s all bright lighting and fry batter.”

So there I was in the frog-themed restaurant trying to convince Owen that it was a better idea to eat a piece of pasta instead of the plastic frog pencil topper he was given upon our arrival, when another couple with a baby about Owen’s age were seated next to us. I figured the parents were in their early 40s, so while a little bit older than us, I decided to scope them out as potential friends. Then I decided really quickly that they were not friend material when the mother went to work preparing all surrounding surfaces for the arrival of her son. Out came the disinfectant wipes which she used to scour the table, all chairs, the high chair from floor to seat back, and the wall nearest her son. Then she rolled out this plastic sunctiony stuff and covered the table she’d just disinfected. The out came a huge plastic dish that clips onto the table. Next was a plastic ball – you know the kind that you usually fill with dog treats to distract Spot for 20 minutes – which she also wiped down with the disinfectant, before pouring some puff treats into the dish. Any time a piece of the kid’s food touched the table, she’d snatch it away from him because it was “dirty” – though personally I think you could probably have performed surgery on their table.

The little boy, who was wearing one of those helmets babies wear when their heads are flat in the back, was dressed in brown leather boots with thick brown socks pulled up over his brown corduroys. He was also wearing a brown turtleneck under a brown and orange argyle sweater vest. There were no food remnants on the wool sweater. No pea stains (note that I wrote PEA, not PEE here, please) on his pants. When his mom removed the helmet for a few minutes, I saw that even under that apparatus, his hair was neatly combed.

His parents brought their own bottled water to the meal.

Compare this to our table…Owen’s feet are bare, he’s wearing retro cowboy print pants, with a striped long-sleeved onesie, under a white t-shirt that that says “Chicks Dig Scars” (which is funny because of Owen’s open heart surgery). At first glance you might think his t-shirt has some detailing sewn into the neckline, but upon closer inspection you realize it’s just soggy teething biscuit crumbs. The cowboys on his pants do battle, not with Indians, but bright green splashes of smooshed peas from his mid-morning snack. His hair….well, it was some incarnation of this:

We ordered beers.

Their son sat quietly in his seat, eating his food one little patient bite at a time. Getting it all in his mouth, chew, chew, swallow, repeat.

Owen was being hand-fed pasta by his mother, kicking his legs and laughing at the way the motion made him bounce around in his seat, stopping only long enough to gag dramatically on the food when he didn’t chew it enough.

I noticed the differences between our boys– it was like a study in opposites and mentally I was thinking, “Why don’t you force him to wear shoes and larger bibs, and maybe Ted’s right? Maybe you should cut his hair?” But then I stopped myself from going down that “what a crappy mother” road, because I was basing it all on superficial things that say nothing about what kind of a mother I am or what kind of kid Owen is.

Then Owen, who had his back to the other baby, somehow caught sight of the little boy, and twisted all the way around in his seat to look at him. He’s staring at the kid, staring hard –keep in mind, there are plenty of kids around and the only one Owen is bothering to look at is the poor child in a helmet. So I’m trying to pull Owen’s attention back to our table when my son actually leans all the way over the side of the high chair to get an even closer look at this baby and he just stares.

So I try to physically turn him back around and he just whips himself around in the other direction and leans back in the other baby’s personal space. His parents are starting to look annoyed and I can’t really blame them. I was so mortified – both for us and for them – that I wanted to pull Owen’s shirt up and let their kid stare at Owen’s heart surgery scar in a “now we’re even – yours has a flat head and mine’s got a scar” sort of way.

Of course, I didn’t sell my boy out like that. Instead I distracted Owen with the opportunity to put his hands in the plate of hummus we ordered and started whispering under my breath to Ted, “Het gets this from you. You’re a gawker, too!” Ted doesn’t respond and when I look up, I follow Ted’s fixed gaze to an extremely large man whose stomach was sticking out from beneath his Jets jersey, dotted with dozens of skin tags.

“Really, Ted?” was all I could say before I Owen started climbing over my shoulder in search of the baby with the helmet.