Bedrested Development

Today is Day 18 of my latest development, possible pre-term labor and bed rest. Because of cramping (read: contractions), it appears I am progressing in ways I shouldn't be. So I've been living on the couch for going on three weeks. Praise the Lord for the Internet and company-issued BlackBerry, but it's tough on The Boy.

Every day I wake up before 6, when The Boy's alarm goes off. I get Mirabella dressed from bed and give her "piggy tails" when she asks for them. At my daily 8:15 conference calls, they ask me how my jammies feel, but there hasn't been one day I've stayed in pajamas. I shower every morning, put on makeup and do my hair before taking my daily trip down the stairs to the couch. I've been busy with work, which makes me incredibly grateful; my relatively new found ability to work from home has enabled me to avoid taking disability. But, necessarily, I'm out of the loop. My team at work has been wonderful-- concerned about the right things, working with me however they can-- but I'm not nearly as valuable to them as I would be if I were there. And that feeling isn't unlike how I feel at home; I am not useful. I have completed 3/4 of our Christmas shopping, but there's not much more I can do.

Last week at a check up we discussed positive test results from an ultrasound that indicated the baby's birth was not impending, which is great. In the past two weeks, my contractions have gotten better (most days) and I haven't dilated any more. All good signs. So they told me to continue on bed rest for at least two more weeks, "ambulating" a little more to see how it goes. I still cannot lift Mirabella, which means I can't feed her without help, I can't put her to bed; I can't really be alone with her for long. We ambulated to my parents' house for Thanksgiving, which was really nice, but I had contractions most of the day and into the night. Saturday was a lot better and I was able to escape to get my hair done and even have dinner with The Boy, but it was a quick trip, then back to the couch. Last night-- out of nowhere-- the contractions came back, and they've been coming off and on today.

The uncertainty is probably the hardest part. I'm thrilled to know that the baby looks and sounds great. She is growing well-- a week ago she was 2 lbs, 12 oz-- which they tell me is good. My greatest fear, obviously, would be that she come very early and have to spend time in NICU and might not be healthy. Aside from that, and even though I long for the things I used to take for granted, I fear going back to real life. I don't think I can do it. The days I've been up a few hours, for the most part, have not gone well. I can't imagine re-entering work at a point where it's 6-7 days per week, frequent 12-hour days, plus primary care for my sweet little girl and the house stuff. I think part of The Boy fears I won't be able to come back in any capacity-- it's incredibly hard for him to keep up the pace, and it's gotten the best of his temper only a couple of times, which I was afraid of. I never want him to be resentful, but I'm sure it's hard not to.

It's all pretty complicated and, ironically, hardly restful.

I'm Every Woman

Today a co-worker asked if my daughter understands that a baby is coming soon.

"I'm not really sure that I understand it," I told her, "So, no. Probably not."

Tonight, when I asked Mirabella where her baby sister is, she pulled up her jammies and stuck out her tummy. "In a beddy, Mommy. Baby in MY beddy."

My days have been coming and going so quickly that, most days, I can't remember how far along I am in the incubation of Daughter, 2.0 (oh yeah, it's a girl). I'm also incubating my first project at work, due two days before Christmas, followed closely by my second project at work, due two days before the baby. Deliver a proposal on Friday and a baby on Sunday? Ain't no thang. Should it be disconcerting that I actually know what I'm in for, but I'm still looking forward to childbirth, sleepless nights and breastfeeding as a break?

I'm struggling with the lack of balance in my current life. Though I'm getting better at recognizing that the now is not forever than I used to be, I still have hopes for the relatively near future that look a whole lot different than the reality of my present. I'm not sure how I got to married mother of two-- I don't feel nearly old enough or grown up enough or ready-- yet here I've been. My youngest brother is getting married, my little sister is talking about college, my nearly two-year-old tells me stories from her day, I nonchalantly mention my husband of more than three years, all the while my second child flips and kicks and flails nearly non-stop in my growing belly and I'm the boss at work without ever actually being the boss of anyone.

I happened upon a discussion among coworkers yesterday about why men seem to age better than women, and I think it's because they don't tend to have to juggle quite as much as we do. Not typically as many roles, responsibilities, or hats. It's why I can get up well before 6, make breakfast and lunch, sing pre-school songs on the way to daycare, and deliver homebaked goods to a meeting I'm running in which I have to issue professional admonitions, all before 9 AM. But not without hearing, "You look tired," three times by 10 AM. A bit of wisdom: if you know a woman like this, please don't tell her she looks tired. Just don't.

Snapshot of our Life

We sat on a bench eating ice cream and listening to a band cover Billy Idol. Mirabella, in her jammies and clutching Hank, her tiny stuffed hamster, stood on the bench and kissed The Boy. "Bye Daddy. See you soon," she said. She kissed me good-bye too and tried to wriggle off the bench.

"Where are you going?" I asked her.

"I going a work," she announced. Right before she screamed and arched her back and told me "Top it Mommy, top it, I GET DOWN!" because I wouldn't let her walk around the sidewalk in her socks. Welcome to our life these days with an almost 2-year-old and another on the way.

"Where's Mommy's baby?" I ask Mirabella. She pulls up my shirt and points to my "beddy."

"Mommy's baby in a beddy," she says, then points to her belly, "and Lella's baby in a beddy." She doesn't quite get it yet.

I am exhausted most of the time, but I'm not sure who's to blame. Last time I was pregnant, I had a stress-free (if also fulfillment-free) job and all I had to do was make it through the day. A challenge, to be sure, but once I did it, I could crash on the couch. It was okay if I didn't make dinner, even if I felt bad about it. Now, I like what I'm doing much more, but the days are crazy. I certainly don't have time to nap in my car, as I had done last time. When I get home I'm chasing a toddler and making dinner and there's bath and bed and, if I can stay awake long enough, I'll check in with work. If I can't, I mumble an apology to my husband and pass out midsentence. Life is crowded and joyful and we are excited, but if I hear one more person tell me how tired I look, I can't be responsible for what happens.

So in the middle of all the mundane, we look forward to February, even as we try to soak in the now. We took Mirabella to the fair yesterday, amid plenty of double strollers, but we relished this time with just her. She said hello to every animal, attempting to speak to each in their native tongues. She rode the carousel for the first time, and she squealed when her daddy won her a teddy bear in a Ravens letterman's jacket.

"Look at us, doing family things," The Boy said, over a shamefully large cup of cheese fries.

"I think maybe that's what we are."

"Maybe so."

Roadtrip Retrospective

Since we got married three years ago, I have paid particularly close attention to what families with young children go through on beach vacations.  It seemed to require so much stuff.  And it has always required stuff for me anyway, because I like to have a variety of sunscreens, towels, blankets, books, beverages, lunch and snacks at the ready-- I don't like to go back inside.  Over the last three summers I have motioned to those families and groaned, "One day that's going to be us."  I've watched their minivans and SUVs pass our sedan on 95, OBX stickers on the windows, bikes on the back, car top carriers on top, smudged fingerprints on the windows.

 

Now said sedan has a white leopard print car seat on the backseat and dismembered "fishies" and crumbs strewn everywhere.  When my friend Mindy visited last week, she got Mirabella out of her seat and tactfully said, "Wow, it must be hard to keep a car clean when you've got a toddler."  I laughed.  Because here we are, having accepted that our trunk cannot accommodate suitcases and a Pack and Play, and a stroller, and food for breakfasts and lunches for the duration, and everything else we need, renting an SUV to take our little family of three, plus my sister, on vacation.  I have bought shovels, pails, sandcastle molds, sunscreen, a beach umbrella, a sunhat, a tiny tankini and flip flops. We are borrowing a cooler and boogie boards and scrounging up folding chairs.  We're going to the beach!  When I used to watch those families trudge, loaded down, through the sand, I was not envious.  But did you hear me?  We're going to the beach! Who cares what we have to bring?  This morning we were running late, as usual, but The Boy folded laundry on our bed, "to make it easier for you when you get home," he said.  We have piles arranged throughout the house, and lists galore.  He stooped to kiss the baby goodbye, and our usually nonchalant little girl didn't want to let go.

 

"Guess what?"  He told her, "After today, we're going to the beach!"

 

"Beach!"  She said, though she doesn't know what it is.

 

"We're going to get to spend all kinds of time together!"  I got a little choked up.  I might have grumbled about not being able to take a week off or about having to bring my laptop with me, or about going to Virginia Beach instead of somewhere warmer or more exotic.  But we're going to the beach. And I couldn't be happier.

Pomp and Circumstances

Nearly seven years ago, I sat in an auditorium surrounded, mostly, by strangers. Because I graduated in the summer, a year early, I did not graduate with my friends. We came from all over. The girl beside me had been in college, living there, for 8 years. There were some traditional students, like me, but there were also graduate students and adult students. My whole family had come-- my parents, both sets of grandparents, all of my siblings, and even my boyfriend's family--everyone was there. But to me, it didn't seem like that big of a deal.

When a representative from the program for adult learners spoke, I tried to understand the emotion, but I couldn't. The speakers kept prompting graduates to give their families a round of applause because they were responsible for getting the graduates through. I saw extended families clutching these graduates after the ceremony, bawling. Everyone wanted pictures taken. And I just didn't get it.

But then I married a man who, despite early claims to the contrary, had not finished his Bachelor's degree. He had started college right out of high school while working full time, took a job that moved him to Baltimore and to me, and took classes sporadically. I encouraged him to keep at it, and he did when he could, but with homeownership, marriage, demanding jobs and then parenthood, often it got pushed aside. When he looked to change industries, we began to realize that potential employers probably weren't even getting to his (professionally written, ahem) resume because he didn't have a degree. He vowed to get on it and I vowed to make it possible for him.

He worked through one class every five weeks with only a couple breaks, enabling him to graduate on his birthday last month. I threw a huge party-- parents and siblings and uncles came from up and down the east cost, and we had to borrow space for the extravaganza. But first, I sat with his mother and stepmother and father at the ceremony. I thought about why I felt more nervous and excited for his graduation than I did for my own.

"I never really doubted that I would graduate from college," I told his mom, "It's just what came next." But I watched him face significant fear that he would never finish. And maybe that's why those people at my graduation were so emotional. Because they really believed they might never get there.

So I sat just about as high up as I could at the Meyerhoff and though I'm grateful for my now better-than 20/20 vision, I still couldn't really see. But I listened to the speeches and I got it when the representative from the class thanked his wife for enabling him to be there and spoke of his kids as his inspiration. "How can I speak of the importance of education if I never finished college?" he said. And I understood.

I cried a little when the keynote speaker spoke. I felt energy in the room. The Boy would later say that the students were all friendly to each other. No one was "too cool" to be there. In the lobby I saw a woman in a cap, gown and stilettos with three young children around her feet. I saw grandparents walking across the stage. I saw hope. There was no other place I would have rather been.

We threw the party, despite obstacles of remote location and threatening clouds, and I lit the candles on The Boy's favorite banana dessert as my family clamored for him to give a speech. He deferred, "This was really all Christina. A typical night for us over the past year and a half would be her coming home and cooking dinner and taking care of the baby and cleaning the kitchen and keeping the house running so I could have time to do homework. She edited papers late into the night. I couldn't have done this without her."

But really I couldn't have been prouder, even if he really did have all those degrees he said he had when we met.

Override Me

It's true. There was a time when I couldn't say the word "budget" without flinching. It wasn't so long ago. Obviously, it's also true that people can change. Dramatically.

Now there is a sloppy chart on a dry erase board in my kitchen that is updated multiple times per week. I've winced at its placement often as I see our guests studying it. "Does the color indicate anything?" My sister-in-law asked one day, gesturing to a board full of red.

"No," I laughed, "Though often that would be accurate." We track gas, personal expenditures (allowances, if you will), dry cleaning and, most notably, groceries.

I subscribe to the Baltimore Sun so that every weekend I can sit at our dining room table and clip coupons, then sort them in my check file. I look up Safeway's weekly specials and build my meal plan and list around them. I put the list and the coupons in an envelope and head to the store. Every week. Our friendly neighborhood Safeway is celebrating their "Re-Grand Opening," as one of the employees kept stating over the PA. In anticipation, they sent out coupon books and new club cards pre-loaded with 10% off May purchases. As Mirabella and I made our way out the door, I said, "I think this is going to be a good trip."

About an hour later I worked to maneuver my cart around turns in the floral department, but it was heavy. I had three pounds of chicken, four pounds of sirloin, four pounds of pork loin chops, four 12-packs of Coke products, 5 boxes of Quaker Oatmeal Squares, and lots of produce and weekly staples. I even got flowers for our upcoming company. Throughout my shopping trip, someone would announce over the PA, "We have an iPod winner on register 9!" or wherever. When selecting a checkout line, I tried to find one that hadn't given an iPod away yet. I watched the screen while the cashier deducted my coupons.

And then he said, "I'm sorry ma'am, but I'm going to have to get a manager to do an override. You saved too much money." Sweeter words I've rarely heard! Needless to say, I did not win an iPod. But I felt like confetti and balloons should have dropped on me anyway. I saved more than $115, and I ended up paying only $183. When I got home I pinned the receipt to the bulletin board in the kitchen and wrote my savings on the board under the heading, "A New State Record." And then I called my mom.

See? People can change.

Certainly Unsure

There's a line in a Straylight Run song that says, "You take in everything with a certainty I envy; it's somehow all I need," and when The Boy and I were first dating he said it reminded him of me. I was so sure, he said, of so much. I had conviction and definitive answers. This sounds like a compliment, I guess, and I think it was meant as such, but I don't think it's accurate now.

It's not that my conviction is gone. I'm pretty confident those close to me would still label me passionate, and there are still a few things I wholeheartedly know. I'm still animated, I still talk when I should listen, I still embrace opinions with too little information; I still think I know more than I actually do. But not like I did then. Then, there were so many things I just knew. I just knew I had made certain choices that were necessary for me to find my destiny. I knew, despite all evidence to the contrary, that I was going to marry the Other Boy, now referred to as the Marital False Start. I knew there were certain issues that others struggled with-- others I judged, by the way-- that would never plague me. I knew what I would do in just about any situation I had not actually encountered, especially marriage. And parenting. I just knew.

Here's the thing about just knowing: If you're wrong, you're screwed. Let's take the False Start. Turns out I was wrong-- heartshatteringly wrong-- and I had to start over. The logistics were a challenge, though not insurmountable, but the mindset change took much longer. I had built a future on a fantasy, and I had to reframe it all. In fact, I had to throw it all out and learn to wear a wardrobe full of uncertainty. And for a long time, it didn't fit. I had to stare my assumption (previously loudly stated) that there was "one person for everyone" dead in the eye. Because if that were true, I was done. And how could I be comfortable saying I was done for a lifetime at 21?

So when I met The Boy and it started becoming apparent that he was The One, I made the itchy and utterly unromantic statement that I didn't actually believe in The One, or at least I didn't think I did. We still have all the same reminiscent conversations, like, "If I hadn't met Jenn, I'd never have met Erin and I wouldn't have been in that place on that night and I never would have met you," but it's not like I believe that to mean I never would have married or had a family or been happy. I would have, I'm pretty sure, and I would never have thought of what might have been if the door hadn't slid because I wouldn't have known to. "Might have been" doesn't carry much with me because it's so arbitrary. I'm grateful it doesn't.

At our first marriage counseling session, I told our Pastor I was nervous about getting married because so many people get divorced and I have to believe most of them felt like we did at the start. "I just feel like there's nothing that makes us different than them," I said, "and it scares me." I was embarrassed; this was not the kind of thing a blushing bride was supposed to say. He told me he would be worried if we didn't fear divorce; if we thought it was something that couldn't happen to us just because we said we didn't believe in it. It was comforting, in a way, but also disorienting.

I'm much less sure of things than I used to be, which sometimes feels like regression, but probably is progress. I'm working on broadening my view and judging less, or at least later. I think having a child has helped that. I have trouble now looking at someone who is a nuisance or an outcast or a rebel without thinking of the whole of his life. I can't help but think there must have been somebody at some point who really loved him. It may not always be true, but I imagine he probably had a someone who dreamed of his future; who longed for great things for him. There's just so much that I don't see. Maybe it's growth that at least I see that now. I know that I don't know what I don't know.

Mirabella and I went to lunch with my little sister today, and the child threw a fit in front of everyone. More than once. I carried her away from the situation and softly reprimanded her; I put her in time out on a public bench. I didn't actually know what I was doing, but I did what I told her I would. Lately I can see it in people's faces, the internal proclamation that "my child would never behave that way." I'm trying to learn not to care, even while I wince and wish I could apologize to those I've condemned similarly in the past. Being sure was easier.