Category: Parenthood (Page 1 of 2)

Calla

September 25, 2019 / Stephanie / 4 Comments

More big news around here: we welcomed a new baby, Calla Rowan, on September 17. I maaaay have forgotten to mention here that I was pregnant. Oops. I am chalking this up to Third Child Syndrome, in which the third child gets, if not short shrift, somewhat abbreviated shrift. Calla is only eight days old but she’s already proving herself a great third child: she can sleep through the shrieking of her older siblings, she doesn’t mind little fingers touching her tiny feet, and she more or less goes with the flow (although she objects vociferously to diaper changes).

My pregnancy and Calla’s birth came at an interesting time for me, professionally. In the last nine months, I’ve had two stories accepted for publication (one in the Chicago Tribune, one in Bayou Magazine), and I’ve sent my novel manuscript out to agents. Six years into writing fiction, I’m starting to see some career momentum and it’s very exciting. However, now that Calla’s here, I must put my writing career on hold while I devote myself to taking care of my newborn.

Unlike when I had my last two kids, however, this time around, I’ve prioritized getting help. I’m hoping the extra support around the house will help me get back into writing sooner than I would have otherwise (and will preserve my mental health).

In the meantime, I am enjoying my sweet Calla, who really is an irresistible little nugget.

Anxiety and Kavanaugh

September 28, 2018 / Stephanie / 2 Comments

I am one month away from my thirty-sixth birthday, and it’s only within the last year that I’ve realized that I struggle with anxiety (or, as I often think of it, Anxiety). My anxiety waxes and wanes. Some days, it hardly bothers me at all. Other days, it rises up like a wave and crashes over me, flooding me, making me choke. Sometimes, my anxiety manifests itself emotionally; I feel sad, or angry, or defeated. And sometimes, I don’t even realize I’m anxious until I start to have physical symptoms. Sharp prickles in my pinky finger, as if it has fallen asleep. Neck pain. Back pain. Painful, raised bumps on the sides of my hands. Headaches. And, my least favorite, insomnia. When I can’t sleep, all of the things that worry me, distress me, and enrage me rise to the surface. Try as I might, I can’t turn my brain off. And this past week has been a particularly sleepless one for me.

I didn’t realize at first, when the accusations against Brett Kavanaugh started piling up, how much this particular news story would affect me, would spark feelings of helplessness and rage in me. But this story has wormed its way under my skin, making me itch. I spent all of yesterday watching and listening to the testimony of both Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh, and I came away from the experience shaken, disturbed, angry, sad, moved. Both of their testimonies brought up complicated emotions and memories for me.

Watching Dr. Ford testify, I was astounded by her sincerity, her rawness, and her bravery. She didn’t want to be a public figure, to relive the most traumatic event of her life in front of the world. But she did out of a sense of civic duty, and she was right to do so. When she says she’s 100% sure Brett Kavanaugh was the person who assaulted her, I believe her. She has chosen, reluctantly perhaps, to torpedo her own personal safety and well-being in order to do what she thinks is right, and I have tremendous respect for her decision. I kept thinking: could I do this? I honestly don’t know. I’ve already talked about how I’m still too afraid to name a man who sexually harassed me when I worked for him twelve years ago, who now holds a position in the Virginia state government. Small potatoes, compared to what Dr. Ford faced.

Then, watching Kavanaugh testify, I felt my heart-rate pick up and my hands tighten into fists. His entire testimony was spent angrily denying responsibility for any of his past behavior. The righteous indignation he showed (the yelling, the lecturing, the finger wagging) was a stomach-turning display of the unbridled sense of entitlement that runs rampant among a certain type of spoiled, rich, obnoxious man. I’m very familiar with this type of man; I’ve met many of them at Stanford, Harvard, and in the larger world (especially, and not at all coincidentally, in the legal profession). This type of man feels that because he has come to a certain point in his career or academic life, he is owed whatever prestigious thing comes next. Brett Kavanaugh went to Yale Law School. He became a judge. Therefore, he is owed a life-time appointment to the highest court in our land, and how dare anyone try to snatch away the fortune that was promised to him? How dare anyone bring up things he actually did or said in his past? (I’m leaving aside the extremely partisan tone he struck in his testimony, which makes me fear for his ability to leave politics out of his judicial decision-making, because I don’t even have the bandwidth to go on a separate rage spiral right now).

Putting the gross sense of entitlement aside, the thing that struck me most about Kavanaugh’s testimony was the ease with which he lied, and his refusal to admit any wrongdoing whatsoever, no matter how small. He said he never drank to excess, never blacked out. (Riiiight.) Even more ludicrously, he claimed he’s spent his whole life promoting women’s equality. One look at his high school yearbook page, in which he refers to being a “Renate Alumnius,” puts the lie to that assertion. When he claimed during his testimony that this reference to Renate was not sexual, was not intended to humiliate or demean her, I nearly pounded on my TV screen with my fists. He was lying; anyone with half a brain and any experience of the type of entitled, shitty high school boy that Brett Kavanaugh clearly was can see that. (And the woman he was referring to, Renate Schroeder Dolphin, was hurt and humiliated when she found out about this, thirty-some years after the fact). Men who spend their whole lives promoting the dignity of women don’t refer to girls and women the way Brett Kavanaugh did in his yearbook. Period. The whole Renate Alumnius thing really touched a nerve with me because it reminded me of something that happened to me in college, in which I found out that a guy I liked had made humiliating insinuations about me (on Facebook, no less). It was one of the worst things that happened to me in college, and I doubt that guy even gave it a second thought.

Which brings me to the possibility that Kavanaugh believes his own hype: that he’s either convinced himself he didn’t assault Dr. Ford, or, more likely, that he simply doesn’t remember, because it was such an unremarkable event in his life. As Rachel Reilich put it, “The scenario in which Kavanaugh truly doesn’t remember this night, or this party, or having ever met Christine Blasey Ford, and is truly astounded to find himself accused. How could he forget something so horrible? Maybe because, for him, to Mark Judge, ‘the night was unremarkable.’ The incident didn’t sear into his brain. It didn’t eat away at his conscience – what he did was normal. He, like so many entitled, carelessly brutal men before him, assaulted a young woman. It was just a regular party. A regular day with his horse and plow.”

And so, the day after the Ford/Kavanaugh testimonies, here I sit with my anxiety, reflecting. My anxiety and my increased reflection on the past are woven together, often interlocked. If you tug on one thread, the other comes along, tied tight. To be clear, the things that happened in my past do not cause me anxiety in the present. Instead, I worry that not enough will change by the time my daughter is making her own way in the world. Usually, I tell myself that the world is getting better for women, that things keep improving, and mostly, I think that’s true. But I wonder if the world will ever be as good as it needs to be for our girls and the women they’ll become. In the meantime, I deal with my anxiety as best I can, and focus on living my life the best I can in the present moment. Last night, I gave my kids extra big hugs and said a silent prayer that, years later, when they revisit this moment in history, the world of 2018 will be nearly unrecognizable to them. As Theodore Parker once wrote, “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.” Let’s hope.

A short list of things I’ve felt guilty about as a mother

November 8, 2017 / Stephanie / 1 Comment

An abridged list of things I’ve felt guilty about as a mother, in no particular order:

Hurting my kid while clipping his or her nails
Letting my kid have a lollipop
Taking away my kid’s lollipop so she wouldn’t choke on it
Not potty training my almost-three-year-old
Not saying prayers before bedtime
Not saying prayers before mealtime
Not saying prayers ever
Letting my kid have the cheap plastic toy she asked for at the grocery store checkout
Throwing away said plastic toy a few weeks later while picturing the desiccated landfill it will likely inhabit
Giving up on cloth diapers with my second kid and going through approximately 75 diapers/day, plus approximately 4800 wipes/day, and once again, picturing that landfill
Letting my kid sit in a poopy diaper for longer than half an hour
Putting chocolate syrup into my kid’s medicine dropper
Letting my kids drink out of the same cup
Not talking to other moms at the park
Not talking to other moms at preschool pickup and dropoff
Not enrolling my kids in activities, lessons, or teams
Working
Not working
Letting my kid roll off a bed onto his head not once but TWICE
Having a toddler who hates vegetables, is obsessed with bread products, and loves grape Tylenol
Weaning my second kid at ten months when I breastfed the older one for over a year
Not ever learning how to wear a baby
Ignoring one kid while dealing with the other
Leaving my kids with my parents for the weekend
Skipping events because I’d have to bring the kids and I just don’t want to
Letting my kids “cry it out” during sleep training
Wasting money on cute but overpriced baby clothes
Not ever wanting to paint or do PlayDoh with my kid; I’d seriously sooner be waterboarded
Letting my runny-nosed kid go to school because she’s not THAT sick and I need this
Not washing my kids’ hands before every meal
Hiding my kids’ books that I hate
Not reading as much to my second kid as I did with my first
Not teaching my kids a second language
Wishing for time to speed up sometimes so that we could skip the chaos and go straight to the calmness

The end.

JUST KIDDING THERE ARE LIKE A MILLION MORE THINGS.

Breastfeeding: the agony and the — yeah, just the agony.

June 7, 2017 / Stephanie / 2 Comments

Hello! It is I, woman who used to regularly update her blog. My shocking absence can and will, as usual, be blamed on my two adorable children, who are slowly but surely sucking the life-force from my now husk-like terrestrial body. NOT TO BE DRAMATIC!

No, but really, things are good. Ewan is now a whopping 6 months old, and Lucia is 28 months old. They are both very cute. And they are both very exhausting. I love them so much! But man, they’re a lot of work. But they’re so cute. BUT OH MY GOD I AM SO TIRED.

I want to talk today about breastfeeding. Again. I’ve already talked about it here. But breastfeeding continues to occupy a lot of my mental, emotional, and physical bandwidth. I have so many thoughts and feelings about it, it’s hard to know where to begin. But mostly, I want to talk about how breastfeeding is hard (for me), and how it’s only now, with my second child, that I’m starting to hear that it’s hard for other people, too.

Until recently, I always felt rather alone in my struggles with breastfeeding. It seemed like everyone else just effortlessly nursed their babies (or happily went to formula) while I toiled away, cursed with every breastfeeding affliction and pathology in the book. Let me quickly enumerate the issues I’ve had with breastfeeding. With Lucia, it was oversupply, engorgement, plugged ducts, mastitis (two bouts), undersupply, bottle refusal, and a hellacious recovery process after her three frenectomies at four months old. Somehow, despite all my trials and tribulations, I nursed her for a full year (plus two weeks), and I felt an overwhelming sense of relief when I weaned her. I was so glad to be done with it and to have my body back to myself. Two weeks later, I got pregnant with Ewan. Oops.

With Ewan, I was anticipating a repeat of all the issues I had nursing Lucia. But instead, I got a whole host of NEW problems. Starting when he was about a month old, I began to suffer from stabbing, electric pains in my breasts that felt like I was being burnt with cigarettes from the inside. My symptoms led healthcare professionals to assume that I had a bad case of thrush in the milk ducts, but after over two months’ worth of thrush treatments for me and Ewan (heavy duty oral antifungals for me, washing everyone’s clothes in hot water and bleach, wiping my boobs down with vinegar, treating Ewan’s mouth with everything from nystatin to gentian violet, which stained his entire face purple, etc., etc.), with no relief, a midwife I saw figured out that it wasn’t thrush after all, it was breast spasms. I went on a blood pressure medication that successfully got rid of those. Hooray!

But then, I got the stomach flu twice (thanks, pernicious preschool germs) and my milk supply tanked, and poor Ewan fell from the 40th percentile for weight to the 20th. This concerned his pediatrician, so I began a pumping regimen that has increased my supply but has also left me so uncomfortable in the middle of the night that I have to wake up from a dead sleep to pump, usually at three or four in the morning. Also, half a year in, my boobs still hurt occasionally, either while feeding the baby or between feedings. I am still constantly teetering on the brink of getting a plugged duct. I constantly worry about Ewan’s weight (despite his utterly delicious thigh rolls) and my supply. Breastfeeding, for me, has been and continues to be stressful, most of the time.

And yet, I soldier on. I’ve tried to figure out why I keep doing it, and I can come up with a lot of reasons, none of which are particularly great. I tell myself that I owe it to Ewan to nurse him for at least a year since that’s what I did with Lucia. (He’ll definitely care about this, right? RIGHT?) I tell myself that breastfeeding is more convenient (…debatable) and cheaper than formula (although it drives me insane when people say that breastfeeding is “free,” because it most definitely isn’t). I tell myself that since breastmilk is more varied in flavor than formula, Ewan is going to have a more adventurous palate when it comes to solid food (although Lucia’s refusal to touch a vegetable with a ten-foot pole puts the lie to this theory). I tell myself that burning 500 calories a day without having to exercise is a nice perk (although while breastfeeding, I end up eating an additional, like, 3000 calories a day since I’m so frigging hungry all the time, so I’m not sure that math works out). I tell myself that I’ve come this far, so I might as well keep going. And so I do.

I’m not going to stop breastfeeding yet. But I wish that mothers could talk more about how hard breastfeeding can be and really think deeply about why we choose to do it or not do it. I wonder if, had I not felt weird societal pressure to exclusively breastfeed Lucia, and hadn’t been told from day one that it should be “easy” and “natural” and “pain-free,” if I would have made a different choice. Maybe not. But I probably would have felt less alone in my difficulties.

Two under two

February 20, 2017 / Stephanie / 0 Comments

On November 29, we welcomed Ewan William into our family! He is, as you can see, very cute, and has incredible arm rolls.

For those of you doing the math, Ewan was born almost three months ago and this is the first I’m writing about it. Yeah. Sorry about that. Turns out, the whole “two kids under two” thing IS, in fact, all it’s cracked up to be, and I am just now getting my head above water. And yes, I am comparing having two children under two to almost drowning. The thing about having two under two (and now, technically, one under two and one who has been two for a couple of weeks) is that it is very hard logistically, emotionally, and physically. Hard in every way, in other words. But, as with all things parenting, the wretched is accompanied by a large dose of wonderful, and in the end, the wonderful wins out. But let’s discuss the wretched, shall we?

Logistically speaking, Lucia’s schedule does not tend to sync up with Ewan’s (and Ewan’s schedule changes every day because trying to get a twelve-week-old on a schedule is like trying to put an octopus in a winter coat), so I often find myself trying to nurse the baby while cutting up chicken for Lucia’s lunch, or holding a pacifier in the baby’s mouth and rocking him while reading a book to Lucia, or trying to figure out which child to unload from the car and which one to leave while I get the other one inside, or wondering whether I can leave Ewan fussing in his bassinet while I put Lucia down for her nap, or whether I should try to bring Lulu into Ewan’s room while I put him down for his nap, even though she is constitutionally incapable of not shouting everything at the top of her lungs because she is two. In other words, everything is just more complicated with two.

Emotionally, I constantly feel like I’m not paying enough attention to one child or the other. It’s sort of impossible not to short-change at least one of my kids at all times, because there is only one of me and there are two of them. I know this will get better as Ewan gets older and his needs become less immediate, but right now, I spend a lot of time nursing or burping him while trying to listen to Lucia tell me something, or putting Ewan on a mat and letting him chill by himself while I feed Lulu, and so on. One kid is always being slightly ignored.

And physically, parenting two very small children is, to put it mildly, taxing. My chiropractor has his work cut out for him now that I have to lug a giant newborn in a heavy carseat up a flight of stairs in order to drop off Lulu at preschool. Then, when I pick her up from school, I must navigate said giant newborn and carseat down a flight of stairs while holding the tiny hand of a toddler who insists on walking down the stairs like a big girl, which takes approximately fifteen hours and may, in fact, be the thing that finally kills me. Then I have to stop the toddler from dashing into the street as I get the newborn into the car (or, alternatively, I leave the baby on the sidewalk while I wrangle the toddler into the car). This, while holding Lulu’s backpack, my purse, and assorted baby detritus, like a burp cloth, a blanket, and a pacifier. GOOD TIMES. While we’re on the topic of the physical toll of parenting two very small children, did I mention I’m breastfeeding, and that breastfeeding makes everything 1000% more difficult (at least for me)? I’ll leave it at that because if I start to list my many boob-related woes here, things will quickly spiral out of control.

Photo by Heather Ryan Photography

BUT! It’s not all doom and gloom! To the contrary, actually. The thing about having a baby and a toddler is that now, on top of my hilarious, sweet Lucia, I also have this marvelous new person to love, and he is, objectively speaking, irresistible. Lucia has been such a wonderful, sweet big sister to her baby bro, which is a joy to see. She “helps” by picking up his pacifiers and diapers and bringing them to me, stroking Ewan’s head very gently, and rather forcefully rocking him in his Rock ‘N Play. I can already see how awesome things are going to be once Ewan is a bit more mobile and is nursing less. I really hope he and Lulu will be great friends. And, if not, at least they’ll eventually be able to split my nursing home costs.

So, as hard as it is having two little people to take care of at once, it’s definitely worth it. All of those cliches about your parental love expanding with the addition of a new child are, in fact, true (thank God, because I was worried), and I know that Lucia’s life is being enriched by having a sibling. If nothing else, she’ll thank me for giving her someone to boss around for the rest of her life. And, I’m happy to report, things are getting easier with each passing week.

Well, that’s all she (I) wrote for now. Both kids are sleeping and I need to sit still with my eyes closed for the thirty seconds that this will last.

Book round-up: pregnancy, birth, baby-care, and parenting

November 10, 2016 / Stephanie / 0 Comments

A friend who is expecting her first baby recently asked me for recommendations on my favorite pregnancy, birth, and parenting books, and, to my surprise, I found myself brimming with suggestions. I used to tell people (proudly) that I didn’t read parenting books — but I see now that this is not actually true. What’s more accurate is that I read parenting books selectively. I’m sure it’ll shock everyone to learn that there is a lot of noise out there around pregnancy, birth, and parenting, and one must be in tune with ones own values and aspirations as a parent in order to tune out the large quantity of nonsense. And boy, there is a LOT of nonsense and gimmicks and fear-mongering out there. So, with my own parenting values guiding the way, here is my short list of favorite books on pregnancy, birth, baby care, and parenting.

PREGNANCY AND BIRTH

Great With Child: Letters to a Young Mother, by Beth Ann Fennelly: This slim, beautifully written book is a collection of letters that poet/writer Fennelly wrote to a young friend pregnant with her first child. Fennelly shares her observations about pregnancy and motherhood and the challenges (and joys) of balancing being a mother, wife, and writer. I found the passages about finding balance in one’s work and home life to be particularly resonant. I leant this book to our former babysitter when she got pregnant and she told me she found it reassuring and sweet.

Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth, by Ina May Gaskin: This is a must-read for anyone considering having an unmedicated childbirth. Gaskin, considered one of the mothers of modern American midwifery, has written an essential guide on what happens during birth and how the process can be made easier and more comfortable for women without the aid of medical intervention. In a society in which medicalized birth is considered the default option, I think it’s important for women to understand the natural, physiological and mental processes involved in childbirth so that they can make informed decisions about how they want to give birth. The book is also full of empowering (if somewhat hippy-dippy, woo-woo) birth stories from the Farm Midwifery Center in Tennessee. I read this book before I had Lucia and then read it again recently to psych myself up for childbirth. I especially love the reassuring birth stories, as airy-fairy as some of them are, and the photos of real women and babies.

INFANT CARE (SLEEPING, EATING, ETC.)

The Sleepeasy Solution, by Jennifer Waldburger and Jill Spivack: We had to sleep-train our dear Lucia at six months of age because she was THE WORST SLEEPER EVER, no exaggeration. We eventually hired a sleep consultant (Annika Brindley in DC), and the method she used with us closely resembled The Sleepeasy Solution (although Lucia ended up being a tough case who required THREE FULL WEEKS of training, with many tweaks to the system, before she stopped screaming every night at bedtime, so the book alone would not have been enough for us). This book is a good starting place for those looking for answers to common infant sleep conundrums. It is a “cry it out” method, which I understand makes many new parents nervous, but when you’re desperate and the “gentle” sleep learning methods are not penetrating with your willful, spirited, STUBBORN-ASS baby, sometimes you gotta pull out the big guns. I have referred back to this book many times as Lucia has hit little bumps in the sleep road. It is a sensible and loving approach and not draconian, but yes, it does involve some crying.

The Happiest Baby on The Block, by Harvey Karp: I didn’t actually read Karp’s book, but a friend leant us the DVD, which sums up his “five S” approach for soothing infants, and we found it really helpful for calming Lucia when she was very little. These methods are especially helpful for getting an infant to calm down in the early months before sleep training is appropriate.

The Amazing Make-Ahead Baby Food Book, by Lisa Barrangou: I reviewed this book on this very blog and still stand by it as an excellent, straightforward method to introducing solids to baby. At 21.5 months, Lucia is a very good eater (although her palate for vegetables is pretty much limited to broccoli and spinach, but it could be worse, right?) and I suspect a lot of that comes from being exposed to many different healthy foods (in puree form) as an infant.

French Kids Eat Everything, by Karen Le Billion: Le Billion is an American married to a Frenchman who is raising her children in small-town France. When they first moved to France from the U.S., Le Billon’s kids were picky eaters, but by immersing them in French food culture, she was able to expand their palates, cut down on mindless snacking, and initiate a ritual of sit-down family meals. I enjoyed this book (which is a combination of memoir, instruction manual, and cookbook) and found the insights into the French perspective on food and mealtimes inspiring. However, I didn’t take all of Le Billon’s recommendations onboard, because not everything that works in France would be appropriate or even desirable for the U.S. For example, French children are only given one snack a day, period. No exceptions. Le Billion describes the nasty stares she got from other parents when she brought fruit to a school event, outside of the apportioned snack time. This rigidity is not realistic or, I think, necessary for raising kids who eat healthy, balanced meals. Lucia, for instance, gets two snacks a day. I don’t let her graze between meals because I want her to eat heartily at mealtimes. But sometimes she gets a snack at a random time and it’s not the end of the world. Also, the French have a very different perspective on breastfeeding (they’re not super into it past the first few months), they eat really long, late-running dinners, they eschew eating the same food twice in a week, and they have very good systems in place to support all of this. So, take Le Billon’s recommendations with a grain of sel and implement what works for you and your family.

CHILD DEVELOPMENT

The Wonder Weeks, by Hetty van de Rijt and Frans Plooij: Dutch researchers van de Rijt and Plooij have mapped out the ten biggest developmental leaps (or “wonder weeks”) that babies go through during the first twenty months of life. Each leap represents a different developmental milestone, which is great, but each one is also accompanied by crying, fussiness, moodiness, clinginess, bad sleep, and other less-than-awesome behavior as your baby’s brain rewires itself. The authors of the book have helpfully developed a free app that uses your baby’s gestational age (due date) to alert you when your child is about to go through one of the leaps, so you get a little warning before your sweet baby (temporarily) morphs into a hissing demon. The app is actually very good at predicting, down to a day or two, when your child will probably hit each leap. I found it reassuring to realize that my baby’s sudden bad mood and constant fussiness was serving a developmental purpose, and was normal and even predictable. More information here.

PARENTING

My parenting guru is Janet Lansbury and I highly recommend all of her books. Lansbury is a proponent of Respectful Parenting, based on the teachings of Magda Gerber, the basic tenets of which Lansbury describes here. Her perspective makes perfect sense to me and I try to implement it every single day with Lucia. In fact, I wish I had discovered Lansbury’s blog, books, and podcast earlier, when L was an infant, because I think her advice would have brought me a lot of comfort and reassurance. But I’m glad I discovered Respectful Parenting when Lucia was still a toddler, because Lansbury’s wisdom on discipline (particularly the idea that we need to be calm, firm leaders who hold boundaries for our children) has been indispensable for me over the last six months or so. I highly, HIGHLY recommend her book No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline Without Shame.

JUST FOR FUN

Bringing Up Bébé, by Pamela Druckerman: Say what you will about Druckerman, who comes off as somewhat of a nut in this memoir, Bringing Up Bébé is a fascinating, highly entertaining read about an American raising children in France. Again, it’s important to take Druckerman’s advice and observations with a grain of salt and to appreciate the different cultural contexts in which French and American parents operate. But the book is thought-provoking, well written. and fun.

Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads, by Jeannie Hayden and Gary Greenberg: Al and I had a lot of fun paging through this book before Lucia was born. Makes a great gift for any new dad (and does contain practical baby-care advice!).

Real Talk Wednesday: a plea for (occasional) honesty about parenting

October 26, 2016 / Stephanie / 0 Comments

People use social media to lie about their lives. This revelation should not come as news to anyone who even casually uses Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or whatever cool new app The Kids are using these days. These platforms provide wonderful opportunities for all of us to lie to each other, to create sparkling, sanitized, envy-inducing holograms of the lives we’re actually living. No one is totally honest on social media.

This is not news. I know. But I want to talk about it anyway.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how parents of young children, in particular, use social media to craft certain, let’s say, misleading narratives about our lives and what it’s like to be a parent day to day. If you scroll through my Instagram feed, among the cute dachshund pictures and soothing portraits of succulents and heirloom tomatoes, you’ll see an abundance of Shiny Happy Parents and their Shiny Happy Children. It’s hard not to be bowled over by the #joy emanating from these pics. EVERYONE. IS. SO. HAPPY!

Except for the occasional “funny” picture of a kid scowling in a cute, photogenic way, there is nary a tantrum — or even a frown — to be seen. Parents are polished, kids are well-behaved, and no one has boogers stuck on their faces or spit-up on their clothes. Everyone is well-rested and smiling and and wearing cute, fashionable clothes! Everyone is doing SO great, you guys! Hey, look at us picking pumpkins! Look at us snuggling lovingly on top of a crisply made bed! Look at us tidily baking muffins together! We’re so happy! Our house is so clean! We’re so #blessed!

It’s all bullshit, and we all know it. And yet, we all do it. I do it. I’ll admit it.

Do I post pictures of Lucia having her fourteenth meltdown of the day because I wouldn’t carry her upstairs when she can walk and I’m 36 weeks pregnant with a bad back? Nope. Do I post pictures of myself right after waking up after a horrible night’s sleep, looking like I’ve been dragged behind a truck for several miles? Nope. Do I post any pictures whatsoever that would give anyone the impression that my daily life with a toddler and a metaphoric bun in the oven is anything but idyllic, full of laughs and smiles and cute hijinks? Heck to the nope.

There are so many reasons I don’t post pictures of tantrums and insomnia and scrambled egg on the hardwood floor. First, I figure no one wants to see it. My guess is that people prefer the shiny, happy version of others’ lives because it’s less upsetting than the raw truth. Honestly, if I posted a video of one of Lucia’s epic tantrums, I’d have to post a trigger warning with it, letting other parents of toddlers know that what they are about to witness could be disturbing or even traumatizing for them and to practice self-care. For real, it’s rough stuff. Why would I want to inflict that on anyone else? Other people are already suffering through their own quotidian nightmares, I’m sure, so why would I want to spread the misery?

Relatedly, I don’t want to see the bad stuff about my own life, either. When I post the Shiny Happy pics, I’m practicing a form of proactive memory erasure for my own benefit. A year from now, if I’m scrolling nostalgically back through my own posts, I don’t want to be reminded of the myriad horrors of parenting. No, I want to see the good stuff: the dimples, the toothy smiles, the times I brushed my hair.

I learned this lesson the hard way. When I first had Lucia, I kept a diary, in which I faithfully recorded my thoughts and feelings about new parenthood. Big mistake. I should have censored. I should have edited. I should have crafted a version of my own story that I could live with more easily. When I look back at that very honest diary now, I cringe, because it reminds me of all the bad stuff about having a newborn that I would have forgotten about otherwise: the sleepless nights, the worries about poop and pee and spit-up and jaundice, the struggles with breastfeeding and pumping and bottles.

There’s a reason our brains choose to skip over the trauma that inevitably comes with new parenthood: it’s so our species can continue on. If we all had to be reminded constantly of how hard having a baby is, no one would have more than one child. Not to make too big a deal out of this, but our reproductive destiny as a species is one reason to be thoughtful about your social media posts. And if not for that, do it for your own mental health. When I look back at my own Instagram feed now, 21 months into being a parent, I’m filled with warm, fuzzy feelings of love and affection for my family. If my feed was filled with raw footage of diaper blowouts, tantrums, and insomnia, I’m not sure I’d feel the same way.

However, despite the very good reasons that we all edit our parenting experiences for public consumption, there are some very good reasons to let the occasional brutally honest post slip in. The main reason, I think, is solidarity. As a parent of a young child, it’s easy to feel isolated, like you’re the only person in the world whose kid does whatever annoying or trying or worrisome thing she’s doing. You can know, logically, that whatever you’re going through is probably normal, but if you don’t see any evidence of other parents struggling, it’s extremely discouraging. I can’t count the number of times I’ve told Al that I think we must be the only parents in the world whose child does [x]. Al, eternal voice of reason, always reassures me that whatever infuriating or baffling thing Lucia is doing is perfectly normal, but as the pessimist and official Doubting Thomas in the partnership, I want to see proof, dammit. But if you’re hoping to find evidence of other parents’ struggles on social media, you’re going to be sorely out of luck. Because, as discussed above, social media is where we lie to each other about how easy and fun and beautiful our lives are.

So wouldn’t it be great if, once in a while, we all just posted the real stuff that was actually going down with our kids? Along with Throwback Thursday, we could have Real Talk Wednesday (#rtw), where we share the things that we’d normally keep hidden about our lives as parents. I think a tiny, weekly nugget of honesty would go a long way in reassuring each other that, in fact, we’re not alone. I’ll start! Today, my adorable, sweet, funny toddler took a break from being adorable, sweet, and funny to throw a tantrum when I wouldn’t carry her up the stairs. Important background information: her legs are not broken, I am the pregnantest, and I’ve recently thrown out my back. Also, this was pre-coffee. Yeah. You feel me, right?

Here’s my question: if you, a fellow parent (or even a non-parent) read a post like this on social media, would you feel a little less alone? I promise I’d go right back to posting beautiful, beaming pictures of my gorgeous child in cute clothes and picturesque surroundings right afterwards. I know if I saw the occasional honest post from my fellow parent friends, I’d appreciate it deeply. So here is my little plea for some (limited) real talk on social media. I’m not advocating that we all constantly bitch and moan about how hard our lives are, because that’s obnoxious (and depressing). I’m just saying that we can afford to lower the digital curtain just the tiniest bit and let some real honesty shine in, once in a while.

Please?

In the meantime, here’s a cute, happy picture of my daughter! #blessed

Pregnancy, round two

August 24, 2016 / Stephanie / 1 Comment

Big news, everyone: I am expecting a second baby!

… This is not exactly breaking news, since I’ve been pregnant since March. But I haven’t seen fit to write about the impending bundle of joy here because I just haven’t had time. There have been too many other things demanding my attention: working on my manuscript, freelancing, taking care of my toddler, LIFE. Anyway, this failure to write one word about my pregnancy until six months in kind of sums up the vibe of a second pregnancy, at least for me. It’s not that it’s not important or special. It’s just less of an all-consuming fact of my life, because having another child means I have less time to sit around and contemplatively stroke my belly, or whatever the hell I did for nine-ish months with the first one.

I’ve been doing some thinking about what a different experience a second pregnancy is from a first, and I think the basic distinction is that the child who already lives on the outside of your body demands so much of your time and attention that you can’t really focus as much on the one inside your body. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. When I was pregnant with Lucia, I was so attuned to every little twinge (and you get a lot of twinges, among other weird happenings, while pregnant), that I worried more, about everything. The second time around, as long as I’m not going into labor, I’m not worried. Sure, I’ve Googled a few symptoms here and there, but there have been no panic moments (so far).

The thing is, you can’t sit around obsessively counting fetal kicks when you have a toddler who’s about to hurl herself face-first into a baby pool. If something were actually wrong with the new baby, I would take time out and focus on it, of course, but what I’ve quickly realized as a second-time preggo is that most of the time, everything’s fine, so I should just get on with life. In fact, there are days when I forget, for huge swaths of time, that I am pregnant. Then the baby will kick me in the ribs or someone will look at me funny while I’m running on the treadmill, and I’m like, “Oh, right. That.”

This pregnancy has also put more pressure on me, time-wise, than the last one did. When I was pregnant with Lucia, it seems that I had all the time in the world to work, loll around, nap, do prenatal yoga, visit with friends, etc. Now, as a work-at-home mother of a young child, the time I have to myself each day is tightly limited, and the extra demands of pregnancy suck up every last drop of that time and energy. I have a babysitter for four hours a day, five days a week. Maybe this sounds like a lot, in theory — four hours a day to myself, wow! — but in practice, it means I have twenty hours a week to do all of my writing work, go to the gym, run errands, take care of the house, cook, and, now that I’m expecting again, practice Hypnobabies techniques (I am a huge Hypnobabies believer and practiced it diligently before Lucia’s birth, but the practice and study schedule they recommend feels pretty demanding this time around). So I find myself scrambling, constantly, to get as much work as I can done while still doing basic things to keep both my body and my household running semi-smoothly. This leaves very little time for reflecting on the beautiful mystery of pregnancy. Which is sad, I guess, but is also just a fact of second-time pregnancy.

With this pregnancy, for better or for worse, there is very little journaling happening, very little lovingly cradling my belly while listening to positive affirmations. But you know what? That’s okay. This child (a boy, by the way) is going to be born into a different Green family than Lucia was. When L showed up on the scene, it was just me and Al, terrified and overwhelmed and tiptoeing around our house like it was rigged with land-mines. When New Baby Green shows up, it’s going to be me and Al, old parenting hands (ha), and a rambunctious twenty-two month-old sister who does not know that you can’t scream when a baby is trying to sleep, among other things. This child is going to have to be adaptable, and flexible, and easygoing. And we’re starting that training early, in the womb.

Even though I haven’t had time to focus on the wondrousness of pregnancy quite as much this time around, I am still thrilled to be having another baby and can’t wait to meet him in November. Until then, I’ll just be chugging along, growing a human and doing a million other things, too.

International travel with a baby

May 31, 2016 / Stephanie / 0 Comments

Over the years, I’ve blogged quite a bit about travel. Before we were parents, Al and I were pretty big travelers. Al has been to 100 countries (!!!) and we’ve done quite a bit of international travel together, including extended stints in South Africa and the U.K. But since having Lucia, our travel has pretty much come to a grinding halt. I did take Lucia to California to visit my family when she was ten weeks old, but traveling with a tiny newborn is a far cry from bundling a wriggly, restless toddler onto a plane. Tiny babies are adaptable little lumps who can sleep anywhere. Toddlers, on the other hand, are whirlwinds of activity and opinions and demands, who don’t deal particularly well with sitting in one place for extended periods of time.

For many parents, myself included, the idea of packing up one’s toddler and all of her attendant things (travel crib, travel bath, travel stroller, car seat, toys, books, spoon, sippy cup, snacks, etc., etc., etc.) and flying anywhere — let alone overseas — is enough to induce heart palpitations. But Al and I decided to go for it, anyway, our cardiac health be damned. We just got back from an almost three week trip to the United Kingdom to visit Al’s family, and it went… surprisingly well? I’m still kind of shocked we all survived without at least one of us being institutionalized/arrested, but we did!

Here are a few things I learned and tips that we found useful in our travels with baby. As with all things parenting (and all things travel), your mileage (and/or kilometrage) may vary.

Take an overnight flight whenever possible. Here’s the thing: you want your kid to be asleep as much as possible on the plane, because an awake baby on a plane is a bored/restless/whiny/uncomfortable baby on a plane. On the way to Scotland, Lucia slept the entire flight, because the flight took off around 7 pm (her usual bedtime). Of course, the flight was only six and a half hours, and Lucia usually sleeps 12 hours a night, so she was an utter disaster once we landed, but having her sleep the whole time on the way there was nice.
If your kid’s going to be awake on the flight, pack lots of snacks. Normally, I have Lucia on a pretty strict schedule. She gets up, goes to bed, and eats meals and snacks at the same time every day. She has two designated snacks during the day, one at 10 am, and one at 3 pm, and I don’t let her graze or pick at things between meals. However. On the long-ass flight back from the UK to the US, during which Lucia was awake for six out of the seven hours we were in the air, I gave that kid as many snacks as she wanted. Oh, you’re bored and whining because we have read every board book we packed six times and you’ve thrown all of the in-flight magazines on the ground and ripped the barf bag to shreds? HAVE A SNACK. I gave her rice cakes and rice puffs and cheese and bananas and whatever else I could find and it was wonderful because it kept her occupied. Pro tip: give your toddler a snack cup like this and let her slowly pick up and eat small snacks like these. It takes forever and it keeps her quiet (at least, until the snacks are gone). Another pro tip: give your kid something to eat or drink (a straw cup is ideal) during takeoff and landing or pressure changes, because it helps relieve the pressure in her ears.
Take more diapers than you’ll ever think you’d possibly need, and pack a change of clothes for both the baby and yourself. I learned this the hard way when I flew with Lucia to California. She had a poop explosion in the airplane lavatory — the less said about that, the better — and I’d only brought diapers and wipes with me into the lavatory (rather than her entire diaper bag with the extra onesie). Consequently, I had to walk a half-naked baby back down the aisle of the plane in order to change her clothes and get a new shirt for myself (yes, it was that bad). People were nice about it but, you know, my advice is to go ahead and bring the whole diaper bag into the lavatory with you. In general, it’s always good to have extra diapers and wipes when traveling because you never know what kind of delays you’ll experience, and Lord knows babies’ digestive systems don’t always cooperate with our best laid travel plans.
Pack smart. I spent a long time thinking about what to bring with us to the UK, given that we wouldn’t be able to borrow baby stuff from anyone there (since Al’s cousins’ kids are all older) and we didn’t want to deal with renting or buying stuff there. Here is our packing list, which was barebones, but ended up working out well for us: a super-light, super-portable travel crib (which we put in Lucia’s suitcase); her stroller base; her infant car seat (which we clicked into her stroller base); our Ergobaby carrier; a select number of board books and toys (maybe four books and three toys); a portable, battery-operated white noise machine; clothes for various weather situations (but not too many); travel packs of Dreft; baby spoons; weighted straw cups; a silicone bib; a silicone feeding mat; the aforementioned puffs; a jar of Crazy Richard’s peanut butter, and, probably The Most Important Thing, three lovies. Next time, I probably would have packed more puffs and board books and skipped the feeding mat, but pretty much everything else was essential.
To counter jet lag, expose your kid to lots of sunlight during the day, do your best to replicate the home routine, and hope for the best. We had a remarkably easy transition with Lucia once we were in the UK. She only had one Bad Night (and hoo boy, was it a doozy), and slipped right into her normal schedule of one two-hour nap during the day and then twelve hours of sleep at night. I am not sure if this is normal, but I’m not questioning it. However, since we’ve been back in the US, she’s been waking up an hour earlier than usual in the morning (ugh), which I am assuming is jet lag and will go away. I hope. I pray. Because Momma doesn’t like getting up at six unless there’s a Royal Wedding on TV.
Just do it. Al and I are really happy we took Lucia to the UK. She got to meet tons of family, see new places, and have new experiences (including petting lambs, playing in Soft Play areas, and trying meringues). The trip was really good for her, and for us. Yes, there were rough moments, and a lot of hauling around of baby gear. But it was worth it. If you’re debating whether or not to travel internationally with your kid, don’t let the daunting logistics or fears about time changes hold you back. You’ll all adjust, and it’ll be fun. Do it.

Lulu in Exmouth, UK

What are your best tips for international travel with a baby? Am I missing anything key? Would you let your baby pet various farm animals that may or may not be carrying weird, farm-animal-borne diseases? Because I did! (And yes, we spent a long time having our shoes disinfected by the Agriculture people in the Philadelphia Airport).

Writing and motherhood, eleven months out

January 7, 2016 / Stephanie / 0 Comments

As the mother of a baby, I spend a lot of time — I mean, a LOT of time — thinking about the balance between motherhood and my would-be career as a writer. Unlike women who work outside of the home or women who embrace the Stay At Home Mom designation, I feel as if I’m caught in a murky limbo wherein I do stay at home with my child, but I also work at home — or, at least, I try to work at home. I’ve heard women in my situation referred to as Work At Home Moms, but that doesn’t quite capture what it is to be a mother as well as a struggling writer or other creative professional whose job is largely unstructured. The problem with having an unstructured — or, rather, self-structured — work life when you have a baby is that the demands of your work — which are often self-imposed — are quickly crowded out by the demands of your child. Eleven months into this motherhood thing, I am still trying to figure out how I can succeed and feel satisfied both as a professional writer and as a mother. Here are some thoughts I’ve been turning over lately.

Life as a writer, before and after baby

Before I had Lucia, my work life was blissfully predictable. I rarely worried about whether I’d have enough time each day to get everything done. I’d set high word-count or revision goals for myself every day and I’d almost always meet them. Every morning, I would get up, make coffee and breakfast, sit down at my computer, and write for several hours. If I were working on a manuscript, I’d bang out 1500-2000 words, minimum. Then I’d go to the gym, eat lunch, run errands, and finish up any loose ends in the afternoon (freelancing work, short fiction, blogging, etc.) before calling it quits for the day. It was awesome.

But now, my work schedule, such as it is, must bend to Lucia’s schedule. This makes sense; the baby thrives on a predictable routine of feedings, changings, play, and naps. In the morning, my first priorities are getting Lucia changed and fed, and pumping milk for the bottle that she will have before bedtime. After L has had breakfast and the pumping is done, I play with her until it’s time for her nap, two hours after she gets up. When she goes down for her morning nap around 9 am, I have my first sliver of free time. Hooray! But, as it turns out, by 9 am, there’s always a bunch of crap around the house that needs doing: laundry, dishes, picking bits of discarded food off the floor and walls, stashing toys, answering emails, paying bills, returning phone calls, etc. And now that L is almost a year old, her morning nap is rarely longer than an hour, which means by the time I’ve done all of my annoying chores, I’m looking at maybe a half-hour window in which to get work done. I’m a fast writer, and a half hour is sometimes a feasible timeframe for me to crank out a freelancing piece, but for my fiction work, I need longer stretches of time to get any quality work done. It’s a real dilemma. At the moment, my freelancing work is chugging along (yay for deadlines), but my manuscript is languishing. Those halcyon days of cranking out 2000 words in a sitting are behind me, and I constantly struggle to feel productive or like I’m making any progress on my fiction work at all.

Breastfeeding and babysitting

The obvious solution to the problems I’ve just laid out would be reliable childcare, right? Well, yes, except there’s a wrinkle: breastfeeding. It’s true that things on the work-life balance front have gotten much better since I’ve hired a babysitter, who comes three days a week and watches L for three to four hours at a time. Having the babysitter come allows me to leave the house to work (and go to the gym and grocery store and do other adult human activities, sans baby), and it’s great! I’ve gotten more writing done on my manuscript in the past five months of having a babysitter than I did in the preceding six months of no babysitter. But this is complicated by the constraints of breastfeeding. The thing is, I can’t leave for much longer than three or four hours or I will miss several feedings and have to pump to make up for them. I already pump twice a day as it is (in the morning and at night), and the idea of adding a third or even fourth pumping session into the day strikes dread into my heart. When I set the goal for myself to breastfeed L until she was a year old, I didn’t anticipate the crimp it would put on my work life. And now I’m wondering how anyone makes breastfeeding and working work.

I don’t really see this precise issue written or talked about much online or in my group of mom friends. I think this is because most moms who work outside the home stop breastfeeding and/or pumping soon after going back to work because it’s such a giant pain in the ass to try to pump at work, clean and wash all the bottles and pump parts, and then transport the milk home every day. Moms who stay at home (and who don’t need uninterrupted stretches of the day for work) and want to breastfeed can continue to breastfeed (and maybe don’t need to pump much at all) because they’re always near their babies. But what about those of us who want to keep breastfeeding but also need to be out of the house to get work done? The options aren’t great.

For those who have never breastfed or used a breast pump, you might be thinking, “What’s the big deal? Just pump the milk and quit your whining.” The thing is, pumping suuuucccckkkks, literally and figuratively. I’ve been doing it for six months now (since L started taking a bottle at 5 months old) and it’s still the most annoying part of my day. You have to get out your pump, put on a special pumping bra, wash and assemble your pump parts and bottles, hook up the parts and bottles to the machine and your bra, and sit down with a giant bottle of water for ten uncomfortable minutes wherein you can’t move more than a foot away from the pump. Then, once you’ve pumped the milk, you have to pour it into a new bottle, store it, wash and disassemble the pump parts, take off the pumping bra and get re-dressed, and put away the pump. The entire process takes a good 20-30 minutes and it’s just the worst. I really don’t know how any woman does this at an office, since even doing it at home is such a time-suck. (Moms who pump at work: I salute you.). As Hanna Rosin said in her piece in The Atlantic, “The Case Against Breastfeeding,” “[Breastfeeding is] only free if a woman’s time is worth nothing.”

Weaning and writing

The other option, of course, is to just stop breastfeeding and pumping altogether and put L on formula. The thing is, she’s only three weeks away from being a year old (i.e., weaning age), and dammit, I’ve come this far, and I’m not going to quit now! I guess I’m hoping things will get easier once she’s weaned, because I can leave her for longer stretches (say, five to six hours) without having to worry about pumping. In my fantasies about my post-weaning work life, I return to getting real work done on my manuscript every day. I have enjoyed breastfeeding my child and I will certainly miss the sweet, bonding moments I’ve shared with her, but damn, I can’t wait to be free of that damned pump and its terrible accoutrements.

All of this makes me wonder how I’ll handle breastfeeding with my next baby. Right now, at the peak of my frustration with pumping, I’m thinking I won’t breastfeed for as long, or I will do a combo of formula and breastmilk to allow myself some more freedom. Who knows what my writing career will look like by then, anyway. Only time will tell.

Do you have any thoughts about balancing work and baby? I’d love to hear them.