Slumber

I hold Charlie, with her head resting against my breast. Through heavy eyes, she looks around and focuses on my fingers. She sleepily reaches up and latches onto my index finger, pulling it close to her cheek as her eyes slowly drift downwards. Her other had works over the curly fur of Pink Puppy as she vigorously sucks on her pacifier. She snuggles in even closer to me as the sucking slows down and she drifts off to sleep.

She is completely trusting of me. It never even would occur to her to think that I might not be there to meet her every need. I can't mess up, as long as I give her her bottles when she demands them, smile and talk to her, cuddle her, change her diapers. She is so innocent, and I am entrusted with the care of this perfect human being. What did I ever do to deserve the love and the admiration that my children give me?

Even as they grow older, as they reach the preschool years like Alexis and the teenager years like Elizabeth; even as my flaws do become apparent to my children...they still love me. I am still their mother; I am still one of the most important people in their lives. The role that a mother figure plays in a child's life is huge, whether that be the person who gave birth or the person who raised them. The trust that a child has for this person is one that does not get replicated in any other relationship. It is truly unique.

My hopes for my children, as I sit and hold Charlie a little longer than was probably necessary to get her to fall asleep, are that they know that their mother will always be there for them and that they are able to take the love that I have given them and multiply it in their own lives. I want my children to remain forever innocent like the slumbering babe that I held in my arms, but I know that this will not happen. They will grow up, learn about all of the evil in the world, be hurt and devastated, and yes, even eventually get to the point where they think they might hate me. But the one constant that I can offer them as they navigate through this crazy thing called life is my love and support. I hope they can take that and multiply it in their own lives.

Happy Mother's Day!

Conversations IV

Elizabeth: So the plural of cactus is cacti, right?

Me: Uh, yeah???....

Elizabeth: So if Christians teach that Jesus is three people in one (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) why don't we call him Jesi?

Alexis: Mommy, I wish I had a really long tongue. Like a frog. Or a horse...

Me: Why, so you can eat flies?

Alexis: No, so I can lick my nose.

Photographs

Apparently I take an obscene amount of pictures. At least this is what Elizabeth tells me on a regular basis. Every time that I reach for the camera to capture a moment, she rolls her eyes and I get the typical "Moooooooooooom! Do you HAVE to DO THAT?" Sometimes she tries to hide from me and sometimes she will make a face in an attempt to "ruin" the picture. However, like all teens, she has sorely underestimated the complete lack of coolness that her mother possesses and has yet to realize that protests such as these only serve to strengthen my resolve to capture the moment. Hence, the picture taking continues and I continue to obsessively (in her world, that is) document every waking moment of their lives. Her friends actually commented on it too. Just this last weekend, it started to hail outside. Like pretty good sized hail, enough of it that it would cover the grass and was bouncing around on the ground like little Mexican jumping beans. I, naturally, reached for the camera to take a picture of it. Her one friend said, in amazement, "I guess your mom really does take pictures of everything!" It baffles me. I truly did not think that I was bad about this. I guess I am known for being the one who pulls the camera out at family gatherings to take pictures of us pretending like we are a functional unit for short distinct periods of time. I also document the times when the facade falls and we show our true colors. Like the one time when my brother in law was dressed as a keg for Halloween and we took a picture of my then 8 year old daughter doing a keg stand (pretend, of course...she has enough time to get her technique down when she is in college. Parents shouldn't teach their children EVERYTHING, ya know...) I take pictures of my kids playing. I take pictures of us dyeing eggs for Easter, unwrapping presents at Christmas, having a fire in the yard during the summer, jumping in leaves in the fall. I do know this though...that in the future, there will be plenty of photos for my girls to go back and to look at. Even if it is only to talk about how insane their mother was with that damn camera.

Dealing

I am going to be without a vehicle soon. Hopefully, the situation is temporary. I am selling my Liberty to my brother and looking for a new ride. If the situation were different, I would totally go for some pimped out Hybrid cause that's how I roll (kinda crunchy, but with consumeristic tastes). Alas, our crushing mountain of debt prevents this, so I will be looking for a vehicle that we can pay cash for. If I don't find something by the end of the weekend that I like that is in my price range, I will have to use my in-laws' Ford Freestyle. This is a bit akin to Faust's deal with the devil. Past experiences have shown me that allowing them to do, well, ANYTHING for us gives them, in their book at least, a free ride to attempt to control every other aspect of our lives. Since I do not live according to that book, the story lines often don't mesh and you are left with a plot similar to that found in The Beast of the Yucca Flats (one hint as to who is the mutated monster in this analogy...it ain't me, that's fo shure...) So this means that we will have to wheel and deal our very best tomorrow. Ugh. I hate doing this. There is a reason that I am in the social sciences and not sales...I have a too soft heart. Hell, the salesman could probably tell me some sob story about his crippled child needing a major surgery that this commission will pay for and I would buy it. OK, maybe not really as I do desire to get out of debt and I am not that naive...but you get the drift. This is why I am so glad that we are not on the barter system anymore. I would totally get fucked regularly. And not in the good way, unfortunately...

Clarity

Who knew? You can wake up in the morning and feel rested. You can smile back at your baby...and mean it You can want to have sex again. You can see things just a little bit sharper. You can have clarity. Why didn't I do this a long time ago? I will have to live with Sjogren's for the rest of my life. I will have to live with Antiphospholipid Antibody Syndrome for the rest of my life. I will always be on blood thinners, have dry eyes, be prone to sinus infections and pneumonia and yeast infections. I will not have to feel like I am slogging through quicksand. I will be able to get 8 hours of sleep and not feel like I have to get about 8 more. Pills don't teach skills, this is true. But...pills do make you feel normal. And it is so easy to forget normal when you have not been normal for so long.

PPD

Today I finally acknowledged something that has been going on. My mood is not right. I think I have Postpartum Depression.

It is very hard for me to acknowledge this. As a mental health professional, I know all of the causes and the treatments. I know that the people who come into my office often struggle to just make it through the day. I know that this is not weakness on their parts, that this is not how they would live if they had a choice. I know I have no choice in this...and yet...

The depression is steadily growing worse. It is not particularly disabling yet in that I am still able to function. I feel nothing though. I see my kids laugh, I play with them, I talk and laugh with my husband....all the while I feel dead on the inside. I have no motivation to clean my house, to exercise, to make sure my family is taken care of and eating their veggies, etc. Just tonight my husband and daughter went outside to practice hurdles for track and I had no desire to join them or watch. I even told Elizabeth that I did not want to go outside with them. I could happily sleep for hours on end and still be tired. I feel listless, overwhelmed, and yet so very very ice cold all at once.

I must be very good at hiding this because Charles almost fell over when I told him. He asked why I had not mentioned this before. I say it is because I thought it would go away. And I truly did, she who should know better. I thought that it was due to sleep deprivation. But wait...Charlie basically sleeps through the night. I thought I was being over dramatic. Then why is it getting worse? I still laugh, right? I still get out of bed and get the kids to school, go to work, maintain my hygiene. Why do I need to FEEL? I am certainly not ACTING depressed. But inside is a different story.

Inside I am screaming. I know there is something wrong. Just a few weeks ago, I was ok. I did not even get the baby blues too terribly badly this time around. I thought I was out of the woods. Not so much. Inside there is ice surrounding what used to be the warmest parts of my heart. I still love my family and I am NOT having thoughts of hurting them or myself...I know enough to make sure that this never ever goes that far. But what kills me is that I feel nothing now, and while I intellectually know that this should bug me...really, it does not. And that is not fair to my children, my husband, or me. I refuse to live my life like this when a few short weeks ago Elizabeth's accomplishments at school made me burst with pride; Alexis's antics made me laugh; Charlie's smile made me into a pile of mush, and Charles's touch never failed to turn me on. Now, I lack even the motivation to pursue the things that I know used to bring me joy.

That is not life. I saw how good things could be, and I am not going to let my brain's screwed up biochemistry take that from me. So I will get over myself and drag my ass to the doctor's. I will go on antidepressants. I will go to therapy if needed. I will not do that to my children or my husband. I WILL live life.

This will not beat me.

Commands

So the bad part about going PRN for my job is that I am now in the office more often than I was when I was doing home-based therapy. Much less stress, because I don't have people calling me saying, "My son is holding a knife to my throat, WTF do I do?" Too bad I am always professional, because I usually really want to say, "WTF do you mean, 'WTF do I do?' Why the hell are you on the phone with me? CALL THE COPS!!!"

Anywho, being in the office more is not bad because I particularly dislike it there or any of the people that are usually at the office. It is bad because of the abundance of chocolate that is there. Specifically, Dove Dark chocolate. One of my colleagues has it on her desk, just free for the taking. I think I want to have her babies...but again, I digress. And I can usually do pretty well with avoiding it, but I have had my monthly free pass for chocolate (AKA my period) coming up, so I indulged. If you can call "indulging" being the same thing as "you have eaten enough of this chocolate that you might need to enter a 12 step program for chocolate addiction ".

I slowed down enough in my frantic shoveling in of the chocolate to notice that there were little sayings printed on the inside of the wrappers. Things like, "Enjoy a sunset!" or "Hug someone!" Just little sayings, giving you commands on how to improve your life. And of course, this got me thinking about how sometimes I feel that there are so many vague entities in my life who are giving me commands. "Look this way!" "Be this thin!" "No, be thinner!" "You need to do XYZ or you are a horrible parent!" "You need to do XYZ to be a good wife!" "Oh, and don't forget to make time for yourself...but you are horrible if you do!" Etc., Etc. These invisible forces, sometimes a creation of my own socialization/mind, sometimes overt messages, sometimes covert messages...I often feel as though I am bombarded by these commands that I can never obey. Or that if I do obey this command, I will be bombarded with commands from the invisible entity on the other side.

Perfect example...I really wanted to nurse Charlie. I nursed Alexis like I was born to do it (which some will argue I was!) It was easy with her. Charlie, not so much...but I was lucky that I knew I had 8 weeks to take off work, so I had time to work through the issues. And we did. Then I found out that I had to stop after I stopped taking my heparin because of the medicines I would take that replaced the heparin. Holy guilt.

The commands were telling me that my baby was going to be slow, unhealthy, get cancer, and die a horrible death if I did not nurse. They were also telling me that a good mom sacrifices EVERYTHING for her child. Then I had the ones on the other side...that being formula fed was not a death sentence (Elizabeth was formula fed, and she is just fine), that I had to take care of myself to take care of my baby...the war was on. Ultimately, I stopped nursing because I am pretty fond of this thing called life, and my medications have saved my life. But the commands keep coming, usually unleashed by an unwitting source...the ads for "Breast is best", a coworker who innocently assumes that I am still nursing...

So those little labels on the inside of the chocolate? Innocent, yes. However, I really wish that I had not seen them as they just remind me of all the things I "should" be doing. When did society make women HAVE to be superwomen? When will I learn to ignore the commands so I can just enjoy my PMS relief?

Lucky

I have been thinking about my son a lot lately. I am not really sure of the reason why. It has always kind of been like this for me....while I do think of him each and every day, there are periods of time when I seem to be more consumed by it. (Side note here...I never thought that it was possible to think of someone who was deceased every day when I was a child. I remember reading something about a woman who had miscarried and how she did this and distinctly remember thinking, "Yeah right. Surely there are SOME days she does not think of that." Boy, was I wrong...) Sure, there are the obvious ones...the day he was born, my due date, etc. But the end of February/beginning of March has no obvious correlation to anything to do with Gabe, really. It seems to come and go with out rhyme or reason; sometimes triggered by a song or a movie or an innocent comment. Sometimes triggered by nothing at all. This is one of those times.

As I was driving to work yesterday, I heard on the radio Carrie Underwood's "This is Just a Dream". While the song actually appears to be about a woman who loses her husband to a war, it has always resonated to me with regards to Gabe. It did and still does feel like a dream. I still can't believe the events that have sprung from losing him. I lost so much more after I lost him. A child; most definitely...but also my innocence when it comes to pregnancy, my beliefs that I do in fact have my health, and lastly, my sisters-in-law on my husband's side.

Honestly, that last one is mostly not that big a loss to me. I never had much use for my husband's sisters. I tried, truly I did. We are just cut from very different cloth. So I kinda went along with having a semi-good relationship with them until they both made the decision to not come to Gabe's funeral. I have no use for them now. People tell me to forgive and move on, but I lose no sleep over losing these relationships. I actually have significantly LESS stress than I did before. In a way, cutting them off also enabled me to take a look at other relationships in my life and evaluate what I was getting out of them. This may seem cold, but I learned a valuable lesson here...you DON'T have to stay around people that are sucking you dry. Conversely, I learned that you can't expect perfection out of people. You do, however, have the choice to weigh whether the good outweighs the bad. In this case, the answer was that it did not.

I am speaking of this because tonight my husband told me that his one sister wants to see Charlie. My first reaction is why the hell should I allow them to see her? Fair weather family is what that is...only wanting to be a part of our lives when things are all good. I am sure for people around me that it is hard to acknowledge my son. I even wrote about having to forever apologize to people for his existence in past posts. But IMHO, a TRUE family member won't try to brush the uncomfortable under the rug. My husband's family has a habit of doing this. I won't allow it when it comes to my son. He existed, and it hurt the hell out of us. So sorry if that is not convenient for you. Life SUCKS sometimes.

My second reaction was that it is always like this with her. She has moved out of state, and every time she comes back she expects everyone to fall all over themselves to run out and see her. It was like this even before Gabe, and quite frankly, it annoys the shit out of me.

My third reaction was one of concern for my husband. I know that if he takes Charlie over there, his mother will have thought that she has "won" and that he will magically forgive his sisters and all will be all better and she can pretend that nothing is wrong. While there may come a day when he decides to attempt a relationship with them again, it is not now and nor will it be because his mother demanded it. As irritating as her thinking that is, my main concern is that he will get hurt, again, because of the selfishness of his sisters. That they will demand from him now what he is not willing to give yet. I asked him to not let Charlie be alone with them if they do go. He has agreed; this shows me yet again how much this man truly loves me. He is willing to stay in a room with someone that hurt him deeply (and mind you, he was closer to this sister as well...) so that I don't have to go through that discomfort and pain again.

That is the final thing I learned from Gabe. How very lucky I am.

Expectations

I went to the doctor today because I was dying (or so I thought...) Turns out that I have a raging sinus infection. When the doctor was getting ready to write a prescription for me, he asked if I was breastfeeding or not (I had Charlie with me).

My first instinct was to respond, "I was, but I had to stop because my rheumatologist wants me on a baby aspirin and Charlie's pediatrician won't let me take aspirin and breastfeed because of the risk of Reye's". WTF? Why did I feel the need to justify my parenting choices to a physician? Why wasn't my first instinct to simply respond, "No"?

Society seems to have this expectation that mothers sacrifice all for their children. You must breastfeed, you must have the best car seats on the market, and GOD FORBID if your baby accidentally catches a glimpse of TV. On days when a SAHM is feeling crappy because of, say, a sinus infection, and her 4 year old watches a little too much TV, she also feels guilty because of the rotting of the brain that is going on. When our 13 year old wants a cell phone, we are made to feel horrible if we don't get the best one on the market...but then when we do get them a phone, we are made to feel horrible because OMG, you are giving your child BRAIN CANCER!!! (On a side note, it is really probably the 13 year old trying to make you feel like crap for not having the best phone...but that is besides the point.)

Never, ever, in a million years, would any of these actions be judged horrible and awful if they were performed by a man. Men, you see, have this reputation of being clueless, and therefore just the fact that they were aware that the child was a.) in the house, and b.) watching TV/having a cell phone/eating crappy food/etc. means that they deserve the superhero awesome totally cool that he is so involved title for the ENTIRE YEAR.

No one ever stops to think of the disservice that we are doing to each other with this kind of thinking. All that people who judge your parenting are thinking of is the guilt that they carry, and how looking down on someone makes them feel better. Women are expected to be consumed by their children, and men are expected to not be involved. Neither option is very good, both for the child and the parent involved. Yet we continually perpetuate these as the only choices for each as we bemoan the fact that things are like this. What has got to give? The answer to that is probably a lot more complex than people realize. It goes way deeper than a simple "we must support each other". It lies in the notion that you must be strong and independent and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. It lies in the notion that there are biological differences in the sexes that make it impossible for men to be nurturing and women to be independent (though when women ARE independent and assert themselves thusly, there is something incredibly wrong. Same for men who are nurturing...) It lies in the notion that despite all kinds of lip service to family values and supporting families, children and those who raise them are still very much at the bottom of the totem pole.

So did I try to justify myself to that doctor? Nope. I caught myself and simply responded "No". I highly doubt that he realizes that like so many other things in life, my "No" was the very simplified answer to a highly charged question. I also highly doubt that he cared about the back story to why I was not breastfeeding. His main concern at that moment was that I was sick and he needed to know the proper medications to prescribe to get me better. Why wasn't that my focus? Right. Maybe I need to read my own posts...

Hostage

Dear Rhinovirus,
I must say, I do not appreciate being taken hostage by your wily and unanticipated infection of my sinuses and throat. I do not appreciate the violation of my body. As someone who fully supports the right to bodily autonomy by ALL human beings, I must say that your hostile attempts to override my immune system is all the evidence I need to tell you that you are a hater. I hereby order you to vacate the premises and never to return.

Sincerely,
Management