New Beginnings...

A week ago, I found myself awake at 6 am and everyone else was asleep. Ahhh, I thought, I should get up and do some writing. And, of course, five minutes later a boy was awake and needing something from me. So much for that, I thought, maybe tomorrow. I had some vague thought that writing would make a great New Year's resolution and, surely, in January it will all work better.

But here's the thing, nothing in my life will just work anymore. I have 4 young children, all of them busy boys, and if I keep waiting for the right time to come, I'll never write another word. My aunt said years ago that the goal should be to write something every day, it didn't need to be profound, it just needed to be. I've reminded myself of this endlessly, perhaps it is time to actually act on it? I'm not even sure on what I'm waiting anymore. The baby is sleeping through the night, so sleep is as much mine as it can be at this stage of my life. The move is complete, or as complete as they get. The boys are in school. My life is certainly not going to get less complicated than it is now.

I do find myself wondering what it is that I have to say that is important enough to put on paper and have others read, realizing that the answer to that question is quite likely, nothing. But then, most people who write don't do it for others. While everyone would love to find an audience that appreciates their words and heaps praise on them, if you ask them most people would say that they write for themselves, not for anyone else. It's true for me. I started this blog when we were trying to sort out life after CJ was diagnosed with a learning disability. I did send the link to family so they could keep track of our journey, but the point wasn't whether anyone else ever saw it, much less read it. The point was always that it helped me to make sense of what was happening around us. So maybe I don't need a theme or an angle, maybe I just need to write about whatever I'm trying to understand on any given day. Some days it might be a topic others care about, some days I might be the only one who bothers to read it.

Nonetheless, read it you can, starting today and every day. I can't guarantee more than a sentence, but there will be something to see if you care enough to check.

Opting out of the mommy wars...

I was talking on the phone to a friend, who works, and said I needed to go so I could head out to the gym. "Oh, rough life," she said, with the slight sarcasm that women seem to have so often when talking to each other these days. "Nope," I replied, "it's not. And I'm okay with that." It was funny how taken aback she was at my response, as I think many women would be. Somehow, we all seem to have gotten caught up in a competition over whose life is more stressful, working moms or stay-at-home moms. It is a competition in which I try very hard not to take part, because I don't see the point.

Is my life stressful at times? Hello, you're talking to the woman who shaved off all her hair last week because she just couldn't handle one more thing that day. Yeah, I have some stress. Is it more stressful than anybody else's? I doubt it but, and this to me is the central problem with the whole debate over whose life is more difficult, how on earth do you measure stress? How could you ever quantify the difficulty of any given life and decide how to balance that against another? Even within the two camps it can become an absurd endeavor to determine who has more stress. Is Michelle Obama's life, as she balances kids, a stressed-out husband and a very demanding job as First Lady, more or less stressful than that of a single mom who works in a factory and is constantly worried about money? Is this really a question we want to waste our time trying to answer? I don't think so. I'd rather stop worrying about who is more stressed out and put my effort into creating a balanced life for myself within which I can meet my needs and those of my family.

Yep, you heard me, a balanced life. The Holy Grail of parents, right? Everyone wants it and wants someone to tell them how to achieve it. But there's not a simple formula you can follow, because, and here's the rub, no two people see stress the same way so no two people will have the same balance work for them. What would seem unbearable to others might not bother me at all, and vice versa. To find your balance you to have find your greatest source of stress and then shift your life so that area is minimized, realizing that it will probably mean accepting a little more stress in other areas.

I figured out my greatest source of stress was not doing something 100% (so not shocking to anyone who knows me). I can't just punch the clock at home or at work and so I tried to do both as if the other didn't exist. I ended up unhealthy and unhappy and I'm sure unpleasant to be around. It didn't work for me or my family. So, I gave up a job I loved and left the city and my friends behind to live in a place with a lower cost of living. Except for 2 days in Williamsburg last March and time we spend with friends each New Year's, we haven't had a family vacation in years and we don't eat out much or buy a lot of clothes or new cars. I admit not having all those things is hard, but it's stress I can handle because in return I get to enjoy seeing my kids every day without wondering when I can get away to do work and I get to know that they enjoy seeing me because I'm smiling and happy and not rushing to get somewhere in a bad mood. This is what works for me. Craig's balance is different from mine because for him, my introvert, the stress of being around 4 loud and demanding boys all day is huge. He could never stay home full-time, even though he loves the boys just as much as I do. Neither of us is a better or worse parent, we're just different.

Hence, my answer to my friend's comment. I'm not ashamed to be in a good place right now and I won't apologize for it. She's right, I don't have a rough life and I've worked hard and given up a lot over the last few years to make it that way. Being the most stressed-out person in the room is not a prize for which anyone should be competing.

Forever 21...

Tomorrow is the first birthday that Samantha won't celebrate. It is also the first concrete marker of her absence since her funeral. I have been throwing away reminders from The Atlantic for a while now because there is no reason to renew the subscription Craig and I have given her in the past. I've recognized that I can ignore the nagging sensation that I'm forgetting something. I don't, in fact, have to talk Samantha or her mom to sort out what she'd like for her 22nd birthday, because she will never turn 22.

Birthdays are naturally a time for reflecting on the past, even without a loss. I remember that I actually missed Samantha's birth all those years ago. When I got the call that Janine was in labor and heading to the hospital, I was on the way to a movie. All I knew about labor what that it went on for hours and hours, so I assumed I had nothing but time. Not true, by the time I was heading there Sam was already born. When I did see her, she was a cute little thing with very strong lungs and over the next few months brought lots of evidence of her personal strength and determination. She was not going to be a pushover.

I was there for her 2nd birthday, the first time she really got the idea of presents. She took the first one handed to her and opened it with joy, immediately trying to open it and play. The look of confusion on her face as Janine took it away and handed her another gift to open instead was classic, as was the enormous grin as she realized that she was getting another toy. She opened it and then was further amazed when another was given to her. She immediately starting tearing through all the gifts, recognizing that this was truly a wonderful day. Just thinking about it makes me smile.

There are lots of other memories, the year she got a tutu, crown and wand and spent ages dancing around Meme's house. Clothes she loved, books we read and discussed and always the smile she had on her face when opening them. When I was pregnant with AJ, his due date was Oct 15th and Samantha was very clear that this was not an acceptable birthday for him. If he had to be born in October (which in itself was something of an affront to her), it needed to be 10 days away from hers. So, he needed to be born by October 8th or not come until the 28th. Luckily, he was born on the 8th so a crisis was avoided. Samantha generally did get her way.

All the happy memories help and hurt, which is pretty normal for a situation like this. There are still periods of time where I just can't accept that she's really gone, also normal. The next few months will be full of times when avoiding that reality will be impossible. Her birthday, obviously, but also coming is Thanksgiving, the last time our entire family was together. We finally took that group picture we've been talking about for years so we have a record of her last family holiday. The first Christmas without her is also coming. While we will still find joy in the holidays and our time together, there will also be a sense of loss and a knowledge that something is missing. The challenge, of course, is to remember Samantha at these times without making that loss the center of the events, particularly for the other children. A challenge we all acknowledge and I think won't have a problem meeting.

We may never get to see Samantha at 22 or 32 or 42 and get answers to questions like whether she would eventually have had kids of her own, but we did get 21 years with her and that is a lot of wonderful memories. Samantha will always be part of our family and those memories will keep her alive over the years to come.

How easily we forget...

I have, over the past few months, been slowly trying to de-clutter our house. For a good portion of the last 8 years, we would often find ourselves with something that we couldn't quite figure out where to put or we didn't have time to handle at that moment. Inevitably, we shoved it in a drawer or a basket or on a shelf to deal with later. This has been my chance to sort it all out, throwing away what we didn't need and finding a home for all we wanted to keep.

A week or so ago, I found a stack of pictures from a trip I took with CJ when he was only 3 months old, visiting a pregnant friend at her mom's in Montana for a week-long baby boot camp. One in particular made me stop cold. It was a shot of me and CJ sitting on her couch. There was nothing particularly special about the shot, I was looking at him and he at me and we were both smiling, but it shocked me because I looked happy and content and thrilled to have this little guy next to me.

It shocked me because I suddenly realized that I never think of myself as being happy when CJ was a baby. I know I must have been, obviously, but to me his first year has become a time of continuous crying and sleep deprivation. My strongest memory from that time? The night when Craig woke up and came into CJ's room at 3 am to find me yelling at him in his crib that he HAD to sleep because I couldn't take it anymore. Craig calmly took me by the shoulders, led me out of the room and put me back in bed and then handled CJ himself. Definitely not my strongest mom moment, but a pretty accurate picture of where I was at the time.

During one of CJ's occupational therapy sessions last year, I was speaking with the director of his program and talked about this time. Another mom overheard and chimed in with her story, almost identical to mine. She actually said that she felt like she was suffering from PTSD by the time she made it through her son's first year. The director said that it was completely typical behavior for infants like CJ and her son, the crying and inability to sleep consistently are an early symptom of their disability. It was amazing how relieved this made me feel, even after all these years, knowing that I wasn't alone in my experience and that it wasn't something I was doing wrong that made him so different from his brothers.

Still, I realized last week that I haven't put it behind me because I haven't managed to rebalance my thoughts of that time. As challenging as he could be, CJ was a sweet and adorable little guy who had lots of wonderful moments and I'm doing him and myself an injustice by not focusing on our happy times together as well as the struggles. I've never sat down and put together an album of his first year as I did with his big brother. I'm thinking this is the time to do that and revisit ALL the memories of that year.

What exactly is doing nothing?

It was definitely the most inane conversation I've ever had that did not involve a 2 yo, perhaps because I was taking on that role myself.

Craig: "Are you heading to bed?"
Me: "I suppose, but how am I supposed to be tired? I didn't do anything today."
Craig: "Of course you did, I've been sitting here watching you do things all day long"
Me: "No I haven't, not really."
Craig: "Yes, you did." (Proceeds to list things I did yesterday.)
Me: "Well, right, but those don't count. That's not really doing anything."
Craig: Wisely walks away shaking his head.

So perhaps I was pushing it this morning when I mentioned that if we left the dining room the same color we would only need to paint the one wall near CJ's seat instead of the whole thing. Craig did agree with me on that point. When I went on to suggest that I could easily paint that one little wall, however, his response was pretty clearly against the idea. (Side note: I never realized how many different synonyms there were for the word crazy.)

The problem, of course, is that I feel fine, which is great. My trip to the hospital a couple of weeks ago gave them a chance to get a look at my heart, with no new signs of trouble, and adjust my meds. I am now back on something for my spasms (they took me off at the beginning of the pregnancy) and it is working beautifully. I'm back where I was weeks ago and so happy about it and about the rapidly improving odds of this pregnancy having a wonderful finish.

But, honestly, it is easier to sit around endlessly when you don't feel well than when you do. When I went to the OBs this week, I assumed they'd release me from purgatory given my big smile and glowing reports, but there was no change. I do still need to take care of my heart and now they actually have to add additional baby concerns into the mix. The new meds (channel blockers) are themselves completely safe for the baby, but my blood pressure just doesn't like all the meds and was at 84/54 at last check in. They need to make sure the little guy is getting all the blood he needs to grow and thrive and this is more likely if I'm sitting still than jumping up and, say, painting walls.

So Craig is right that I find myself becoming a master of rationalization. Cleaning doesn't count as doing something as long as I do it in small increments and don't do things like carry vacuum cleaners up and down stairs. Cooking is okay as long as the kitchen isn't a sauna. Going one place a day is all right as long as it is really important and I make up for it by not doing anything else the rest of the day, and so on. Thus far, I'm still feeling good, helped largely by the fact that the boys are at my mom's so there is no other chaos or stress here. Still, as long as baby seems okay, we might have found a good working definition of doing nothing that balances my sanity and health.

And, I'm going to take good advice given by a couple of people and start a baby project that does entail a lot of sitting. Maybe a hand-crocheted baby blanket will keep me occupied and sane.

Most important is realizing that we only have 15 weeks left in a pregnancy that didn't always seem like it would make it this far. Only 15 weeks until I get to meet my newest little guy and see what incredible new combination of genes Craig and I have managed to create this time. Can't wait!

Facebook as therapy?

I have thought about writing about Samantha many times, but haven't been able to bring myself to do it yet. Mainly because every time I try, I cry instead. (See, I just had to take a three minute break.) One day I will write about her and what she meant to us all, but not yet.

Instead, this is about something I have found fascinating over the last few weeks. Samantha, like all 21 year olds, had a facebook page and very kindly allowed her old, un-hip relatives to be her friends. In the days right after the accident, there was the expected outpouring of grief on her page, as family and friends posted their reactions to her loss. I visited her page that week and was moved reading what everyone else had written. It was nice to know that she had been so loved and I felt comforted.

What surprised me was when I returned to her page a month later. Facebook had suggested I write on her wall and I found myself wanting to connect to her in some way as we reached the one month anniversary of her death. I wrote her a message and it was oddly soothing. It felt like visiting her grave and talking to her, as if part of her essence was there among her lists of favorite music, goofy tattoos and random thoughts. As I finished, I suddenly realized that I was not alone in visiting her there. Several friends and family members had done the same, prompted either by habit or a similar note from Facebook. Again, it was comforting to read about other memories of Sam and know I was not alone in still missing her.

I returned again tonight, prompted this time by a graduation photo a friend of hers had tagged and posted. I was less surprised to see there were more posts, but noted another change in that some of them now referenced other posts on the page. Samantha's Facebook page has become a place where those who miss her can connect not just to her, but to each other, lessening the feeling of isolation that grief can bring.

I'm sure all this will pass as our grief becomes less immediate and Samantha's page will come to a natural end. For now, however, it is nice to know that I am not alone in being unable to imagine a world without her beautiful smile.

High Risk vs. High Hopes

I vividly remember one summer at my grandmother's searching for something to do and coming across an Erma Bombeck book. I actually enjoyed reading about the life of a housewife and thought she was pretty funny. One part I remember vividly was a conversation she had with her husband about cleaning out their attic. He noted that they would have lots of space if they parted with their crib and other baby gear, given that their children were teenagers. She vetoed him, reminding him that the quickest way to get pregnant is to clear your house of all you would need should you have another baby. Alas, I neglected to take the lesson to heart because on March 27th we emptied our house of the last of our infant and toddler supplies and, on April 6th, we found out I was pregnant with our fourth child. Let this be a warning to you all.

Craig actually took the news well, his primary concern being that the baby never felt unwanted or less loved because it was "an accident." (Which I consider further proof that I made an inspired choice in husbands.) I had been told not to get pregnant so I approached my doctors with some concern. They weren't thrilled but did agree that it was not, in fact, the end of the world. They simply wanted me to take extra precautions and warned me that I would need to have some extra doctors on board and would be seeing everyone more often than in previous pregnancies. I also have no choice in hospital for delivery since the only one in the area that has both a maternity ward and critical care cardiac unit is WHC. I'm a little bummed about this since I didn't have a great experience there with TR. Still, it seems like a small price to pay for a healthy mom and baby.

I do, however, have a lot of doctors, which is somewhat amusing. My regular OB is great. I've seen her twice and she's pretty laid-back, we do have to talk about heart stuff but she deals with it and always emphasizes that her expectation is that I will have a normal pregnancy and delivery and she'll keep thinking that until something occurs to make it otherwise. In addition to my regular cardiologist, I now have one who has a little sub-speciality in pregnancy and heart disease. He is, as he told me, "really excited about this pregnancy. I'm going to have think of things I've never thought about before." I'm assuming this is meant to be reassuring and it is somewhat since I really believe he is spending spare time working up different protocols "just in case." I'm also going to see a Maternal Fetal Medicine specialist, a combination of a high-risk OB and perinatologist. So far they are my least favorite since they seem to spend a lot of time focused on what could go wrong (plus they told me I can't have any caffeine at all, not even chocolate). I get that it's their job, but it is kind of a downer.

There is something of an element of mystery surrounding this pregnancy since no one is really sure what to expect. Only 150 documented cases of SCAD (Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection, in my case postpartum) have occured since 1931 and, since only about 45 people survived, there is not a lot of data out there. We're also pretty sure that no one else has been dumb enough to get pregnant again so I'm probably a first. Anyway, since they don't know they are all preparing for everything and that means seeing me all the time (every two weeks now and by the end it will be 2-3 times a week). We'd be in pretty bad shape if it weren't for Bonnie, who has volunteered to watch the boys this summer when I have appointments (yay, Bonnie!!). She and dad are also heading down to Florida early this year so they can come back and be here at the end of the pregnancy to provide whatever support I need. There is no consensus on whether or not I will actually make it to my December 8th due date, but we are operating on the assumption that I will.

Actually, we are working on our positive thinking skills in general. I haven't had any problems to date and there is no reason to think I will in the future. We know what the main risks are for me and for the baby and how they will know when there is a problem. We also know what they'll do at different stages of the pregnancy should the need arise. I refuse, however, to spend my time worrying about it and 80% of the time I'm able to ignore it all. I may be high-risk, but every pregnancy should be centered around high hopes.

Besides, I have bigger problems, like replacing all that baby gear we gave away. Oh, and did I mention I'm having another boy? Yeah, go ahead and laugh, everyone else has.