Gratitude in the anything-but-normal

Every now and then a mood strikes me and I spend an afternoon reading old journals. I've been filling journals my whole life, ever since my first diary with a teddy bear on the cover, given to me shortly before Christmas when I was six. At the tender age of fifteen, I burned them all, weeping. I swore I'd never do that again, and while I did shred all the pages of one old volume several years ago (and I have no regrets about that one), I still have a lot of them, even after burning nearly a decade's worth.

Today I thought about my own teenager, and about how one of the unexpectedly beautiful things about this year -- a year in which everything is absurdly horrible -- is this time with her. I never would have wished her high school years to begin this way, attending class through a screen, hunkered down alone in her room. I especially never would have wished this when we chose to choice her into my school when all of her friends headed off to a different one.

Then again, as terrifying as it still is to send my baby girl into a new school (I was beside myself with anxiety the entire summer before she started kindergarten, and I didn't sleep at all the night before she started middle school), this time I knew in advance that I was trusting her with the best of the best, that she would be in good hands. If anyone can make connections during a global pandemic, through a screen, it's the folks I work with. I know exactly how hard they're working, and I've always been proud to work alongside them, but now I see the results of their efforts in a brand-new and deeply personal way. My girl is doing well, feeling supported, even making her own connections in this strange new environment. And that's everything to me.

I was always sort of excited about having her at my school. I didn't harbor ideas that she'd want to spend her lunches eating with me in my classroom, but I loved the idea of having her close. And that's what I love now. I love that we sign off of our last period of the day and eat lunch together at our dining room table. I love that she'll walk by me sitting at the table, getting ready for my afternoon office hours just as she's getting ready to practice her trumpet or finish her homework, and lean in for a quick hug, for no reason. 

In many ways, I wish she could just have a normal ninth grade year. Of course I do. But I also know exactly what I'd be missing in a normal year as my teenager grows up and grows into her own independence.

So this is the journal entry that stayed with me today, written when Suzannah was about three months old:

I used to be a terrible insomniac. College was the worst, but I've always been a light sleeper, and when I go to bed I have a hard time turning off my mind, which is not always a good place to hang out in the middle of the night. If something is bothering me, even something relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, I toss and turn and ruminate and obsess to a ridiculous degree.

I used to, anyway. Now, when I snuggle into bed with Suzannah in my arms, all of that evaporates. I hold my baby and watch her sleep and smell her head and everything else is just gone. I may sleep lightly, but it's a peaceful sleep.

Sometimes she's not completely asleep when we lie down. Sometimes if she's not completely asleep, I get up and walk with her, or nurse her a little, and she conks right out. But sometimes we'll just lie there together, and our eyes will lock, and she stares at me for what seems like a long time. And then she smiles sleepily. It just doesn't get better than that.

People ask when we're going to move her into her crib. People say she needs to learn how to sleep alone. People say she'll grow up clingy. But one thing I am learning to do is trust my own instincts instead of a book, or someone else's experience, and nothing feels right about trying to get her to sleep away from me. These moments are too fleeting already.

After I birthed my babies, I decided that no matter what, I would try to write something every single day, even it it was only a sentence, even if that sentence was just "sometimes motherhood is really fucking hard and lonely" scrawled across the page. Because something in me knew that if I didn't capture those moments, they would pass too quickly and fade into a blur. I wanted to keep and hold the moments I could, even the mundane ones, even the hard ones. Now, looking back, I'm so desperately glad I did. I love all the pictures we took; of course I do. But the words tell a more complete story, and a more honest and tender one. Many of them I'll just hold close; they're not for social media, or even this blog. They remind me to extend myself a little grace when we're all out of sorts. To apologize readily. To hold my arms open, always. To stop and breathe when I need it. To love our children as the absolutely unique people they are, rather than some idealized version of ourselves. To experience all of our moments, feel it all, and resist the temptation to rewrite the narrative for public consumption. I've written this before -- that sometimes it's hard to see the big picture when we're stuck in the small one. Looking back over our stories, though, and when I look at our lives right now, it occurs to me that this is exactly what I've always wanted. This, right here. These people. This partner, this girl, this boy, this family.

I've written this before, too -- that we don't ever turn dreamily to our partners and say, "Let's get pregnant and have teenagers." But it occurs to me now that this is exactly what we wanted: to raise these babies into people we love to spend time with. Those early journal entries show so clearly that our children have always been so very much themselves, and it is not lost on me how lucky I am to have have so much time with them now. In a normal year I'd be greedy for it. In this anything-but-normal year, I'm grateful for it.

This fall, I stole an idea from one of my favorite colleagues and had all my students sign up for five-minute one-on-one check-ins during office hours. It's probably the best thing I did all quarter. We didn't talk about school at all, unless the kids wanted to; rather, they chose a question from a list and we talked about that. Who's one person you really admire? What's one thing that makes you really happy? What's something that annoys you? What's the best book you've ever had?

And this: What is your biggest dream in life?

One of my kiddos chose that question, but she struggled to answer it. "I guess my dream is just to make a lot of money somehow," she said. "I want to make my parents proud. They've worked so hard, so I feel like it's my responsibility to really make something of myself." She paused, and then said, "What's your dream, Ms. Winslow?"

"Hm. Wow. Honestly? What I've got," I said. "I knew in high school that I wanted to be an English teacher, although honestly, I couldn't even have dreamed then that I'd love it like I do now. Like, I couldn't have imagined what it would actually look like. And I always knew I wanted kids, and mine have brought me, just, so much joy. Anything else, I guess, is a bonus."

"That's really cool. Wow. I love that a lot," she said. 

What I didn't have time to say, but what I wanted her to know, is this: there are things I want, sure. There are things I wish for, hope for. But something I've realized as I've gotten older is that I don't need to get everything I want to be truly, deeply joyful. To be happy. To realize that if I never have more than what I have now, it will be more than I knew to dream for when I was seventeen. It will be more than I could have asked for. It's more than enough.

Happy Birthday, my little carrot.

Tonight, driving home from IKEA with my mother and my sister-in-law and my beautiful daughter on the eve of her seventh birthday, we reminisced about the time she was born -- about how sick I felt the night I went into labor but refused to admit I was in labor at all (since she was born a month early), about how sick with jaundice she was after she was born, about how overwhelmed and scared I felt. There were other, happier bits in the storytelling too, of course, but tonight I keep thinking about that because of what came next.

“How long was I sick?” she asked.

“You were really sick for about a week,” I said. “Remember those pictures we have where you’re tucked into the bili box right on top of our kitchen counter? We had a nurse come out to our house to check on you every day.”

“But what day was I better?”

“Well, you spent about a week in those blankets,” I told her, “but you looked like a carrot for about three weeks after that.”

She burst into peals of laughter. “A carrot! Mom, that’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.”

She was just delighted. A carrot! How absurd!

And suddenly I wished that I could somehow go back in time and give my new-mom self a huge hug. I remember -- and not fondly -- sitting in the brand-new blue glider, rocking my daughter who wouldn’t nurse off my rapidly filling, rock-hard breasts, wondering how I would get her to eat or how I would manage to take a shower. I bathed us both in tears, and every time some well-meaning person reminded me to enjoy every moment I felt a little more of my sanity drain away. Somehow it gives me a little comfort to imagine the mother I am tonight whispering to the mother I was seven years ago, “Someday, your daughter will want to hear every single word of her story.”

(Eventually, of course, we figured it out together. She learned how to nurse, and then eventually it stopped hurting. I learned that we both slept better when I brought her into bed with me. We learned each other’s rhythms. I tried to write it all down, even the messy parts, the hard parts, the parts that didn't go in the pastel-colored baby books. Those were the stories I needed from other mothers, because they made me believe that I could fall fiercely in love with my own, imperfect as it might have seemed at times.)

She’ll be seven years old in the morning. Seven. She’ll have memories of her own, memories of me, of this time in her life, of our family, and I realize that she really is the author of her own story. Not me. It’s a humbling thing, really, to realize our separateness long before she probably will, but I take it seriously. I struggle with how much of her life to share publicly now, because it really is hers. I feel so plugged into her psyche sometimes it terrifies me, even in -- especially in -- our more challenging mother-daughter moments, but at the same time I struggle with projecting myself onto her. One of my friends once wrote about how it’s only natural to see our daughters as idealized versions of ourselves, but that can be dangerous territory. I can see myself in my daughter, but she is not me. Nor do I want her to be. I wish I could put into words what I feel sometimes when I look at her now, when she doesn’t realize I’m just watching -- maybe she’s just brushing her teeth before bed, all long-legged and slim and slightly tan, and she leans over the sink to spit, gathering her hair in one hand and holding it back all by herself so she doesn’t get toothpaste in it. It’s such an ordinary, heartbreaking, wonderful thing, to watch this beautiful girl just be.

I really can’t write her story anymore; I can only write my own. There’s a loss in that, I suppose, but even on her first birthday I wrote that I would never wish her back to babyhood, as much as I ultimately loved it. Watching her become her own beautiful self, whatever I might wish for her -- that is my life’s greatest blessing and my deepest joy.

And all I have is gratitude...

Last weekend, Matt and I were invited to our doula's wonderful Birth Preparation Workshop to be guest speakers. (I promised Matt that he wouldn't have to actually speak, but I may have lied a little bit.) I have to admit, finding myself in a room full of pregnant women made me feel a little wistful, because for the most part, I really loved being pregnant (no matter what I said during the last two weeks, okay?) and because soon, these lovely ladies will all be meeting their babies, and OH NEWBORN LOVE! See, technically I guess Isaac is a newborn for another week or so, but he just seems so big to me now. And I love it. I love watching him grow, I love how he's rounding out -- all belly and cheeks, YUM! -- and turning into such a solid little guy. I love how alert he is. I love all the little glimpses into his personality -- little gifts of insight each day.

It's just that it goes so fast. Every parent says this, and it's one of those things you hear so often it loses its meaning -- until it's your babies outgrowing all their newborn clothes and rolling over and learning to walk and starting kindergarten. Watching my children grow is the single greatest joy of my life, but still, sometimes I wish I could hold each moment just a little longer.

As we left the workshop, I may have turned to Matt and said, "So, let's have like SIX MORE BABIES, okay? I want more new ones!" (Ladies, just a heads-up: this type of declaration is probably a really great form of birth control after you have a baby. It's just not sexy talk, is what I'm saying.) Matt stared at me and said, "Man. You have a newborn addiction."

People say that when you're done having babies, you just KNOW because it feels THAT FINAL. I remain unconvinced. I'm pretty sure I'll always feel a little wistful when I see pregnant women or hold a newborn -- and that doesn't mean I actually want to have eight babies, despite the fact that Matt and I broke off eight rings of our kransekake at our wedding reception. And honestly, I am more than happy to focus on the two children we have, because they're more than enough and more than I could hope for. I just really like babies, and I often do miss being pregnant. (Although I have to admit that this time I did feel quite ready to be done.) But in the spirit of not wasting too much energy mourning the past when I have so much to be grateful for today, here are some things that are particularly awesome about the right now of my life:

-- Getting into bed and getting comfortable is so easy. I'm not remotely picky about what position I fall asleep in (when Isaac isn't nestled against me, anyway) and Matt doesn't have to listen to me grunting as I heave my huge belly into bed and struggle to create the right arrangement of the twelve pillows that make sleeping even slightly comfortable.

-- There is no tiny human pressing against my bladder. Which means I sleep as long as Isaac will let me, as opposed to having to heave myself out of bed and waddle into the bathroom every ninety minutes, all night long. (Five hours in a row the other night! Can I tell you how easy it is to be completely in love with your kid after five whole hours of sleep?)

-- I haven't had to take a Zofran since early December. I wake up feeling like I could sleep for ten more hours, sure, BUT! I don't spend the first ten minutes of my day hunched over a toilet bowl, and that feels fantastic.

-- I can breathe again! I don't miss pregnancy sinuses. I don't have to spray forty blasts of saline solution into my nose three times a night just to sleep.

-- I can put on my socks all by myself! Because I can totally reach my feet!

-- I was going to write something about how great it is that I don't have to wear maternity clothes anymore, but it's not like I have my pre-pregnancy body back, so I'm going to have to pass on that. Plus, there is a distinct advantage to maternity jeans. When everyone else was unbuttoning their pants at Thanksgiving and saying they'd just like a tiny piece of pie, I was all, I'LL HAVE BOTH KINDS, PLEASE, with whipped cream. So get back to me when I fit into my real clothes again, and until then, nevermind.

-- I miss feeling my baby kick, which is absolutely my favorite part of pregnancy, but I also really love kissing his feet outside my body.

-- I love seeing Isaac's expressive little face, especially after he finishes nursing. He's beginning to smile (love those milk-drunk grins!), and the rest of the time, if he's not just sacked out peacefully, he makes the goofiest little faces. (Many of them remind me of Suzannah's newborn expressions, and while Suzannah and Isaac are obviously very different children, I also love noticing the things that connect them in such subtle, intimate ways.)

-- Witnessing the developing relationship between Suzannah and Isaac is a blessing and a privilege. This deserves its own entry -- probably lots of entries -- but for now, I'll just say that each day I'm struck by how lucky I feel that Matt and I were chosen to be parents to these particular children. It may seem rather obvious, but I'm still kind of amazed by how perfectly Isaac fits into our family, how he's exactly the right sibling for Suzannah. I can't articulate why; I just know that he is.

-- Little onesies and little jammies and little socks. ALL FILLED WITH BABY.

-- That newborn smell. You know what I'm talking about. That newborn smell pretty much destroys all sense of reason.

In other news, tomorrow begins my third week of staying home with my babies. We're hanging in there. Last week I actually ventured out with them almost every day, and it was much less scary than I thought it would be. It's also very, very good for this mama's sanity, which is probably why this Sunday seems a little less daunting.

On being enough...

Some days are like this:

You wake up late, your arm aching and bent awkwardly because a baby boy is sleeping there with you, tummy to tummy. You rush through a shower, chug a cup of coffee while nursing the baby, and forget to eat breakfast altogether. You bundle your little family into the car and head to church, confident that it will be smooth-sailing because! There are two of you against the two of them, one for each, and you are equipped with colors and books and you're old hat at this business. Things begin to unravel almost immediately. You have to slip out and nurse the baby, but you neglected to clear this with your three-year-old first, and moments later you hear her wailing behind you. By the time everyone has calmed down, the service is nearly over and you and your husband have grown snappish with each other. It's been a long time since your firstborn has behaved this way in church, and you are certain that this is somehow a reflection on you -- forget your earlier optimism. You drive home, remembering the chaos that awaits you there, the remnants of soggy cereal still in the bowls, piles of dirty laundry, a floor badly in need of vacuuming, and an endless array of little projects that didn't seem quite so daunting the day before, but suddenly their completion seems both stupidly important and totally impossible.

You grow a little weepy.

Your husband makes espresso on the stovetop, and the kitchen fills with the smell of coffee and something scorched and foul because of whatever spilled on the burner last night. Later, you steal a moment to wipe it down and somehow slice your thumb wide open. Before you can wrap your bleeding hand, the baby wakes, the three-year-old cries for you, and the dog barks to go outside. Your husband takes the baby and suggests that you take a nap, but you've finally managed to strip the bed and throw the milk-stained sheets in the wash. You opt for the couch, but you can't quite relax enough to fall asleep, and soon enough the baby needs to nurse again anyway and no amount of swaddling and swaying and shushing and changing will satisfy him in anyone else's arms.

You curl up on the couch with your baby boy, feeling suddenly as emotional and hormonal and wrecked as you did five days after he was born. You're so ridiculously in love with him; you trace the soft curve of his cheek, you listen to the sounds of his contented swallowing, you cup his head in your hand. You burp him and bury your nose in the soft hair at the back of his head, in his neck. You kiss his cheeks, you tickle his toes, you kiss the tip of his nose. You realize it's all going too fast; already he feels so solid, so unlike the tiny newborn you birthed four weeks ago. You haven't had nearly enough time to just stare at him, to memorize every sigh, every goofy newborn expression, every single little detail about the baby he is in this moment. He's the baby who gets strapped to your chest as you go about your day with your daughter; he's along for the ride. You'll never have the luxury of lying with him for hours, just the two of you, breathing in his newness, the way you did on those lazy summer afternoons with your girl three-and-a-half years ago. And you feel guilty. You feel guilty for shortchanging him. You feel guilty for disrupting your daughter's life. The rational part of you understands that you shouldn't see it this way, that their relationship will be important, that siblings are a good thing and you never wanted your daughter to be an only child, but the rational part of you is also trying to function after a night of fractured sleep. The rational part of you is lost underneath the spit-up staining the shirt you couldn't be bothered to change.

You look at your tiny, perfect little boy and think of your beautiful, perfect little girl and wonder if they deserve better than this -- someone who isn't so wrecked and crazy and completely undone by ordinary life some days.

But finally, the baby goes to sleep and your husband says, "Go have that bubble bath." So you grab the novel you'd hoped to finish reading before you gave birth and lower yourself into a tub full of water so hot it nearly scalds you. Your husband opens the door, glass of wine in hand, trailed by your three-year-old. He suggests that they give Mama some privacy.

"No, I wanna stay here. I wanna stay with Mommy," you daughter insists. You sigh and close your eyes. Your husband suggests any number of things to her: a puzzle, a story, even a movie, but --

"No. I just wanna stay with Mommy. Please," she says. You open your eyes again and there it is, that trembly little bottom lip, those huge blue eyes -- they break your heart. Nothing about the allure of fifteen minutes alone is powerful enough to compete with your little girl's need at that moment. You sigh and tell your husband, "It's all right." And it is, sort of. Your daughter closes the door firmly after her daddy and returns to the side of the tub, where she dips her fingers in the water, offers her own rubber duckie, and beams. She stays with you for awhile, totally content to hang out next to the bathtub, chattering happily. Every few minutes, she says, "I'm staying with Mommy," as though she needs to make sure it's real, this uninterrupted time, just the two of you. You remember how thrilled she was ten days ago when you took her to Starbucks, just the two of you, just for a half hour, drinking hot chocolate and sharing a cookie. ("It'll be just Mommy and Suzannah," you'd said to her, and she grinned and grinned and echoed, "Yeah. Just Mommy and Zannah.")

And it is okay. It's even good. Suddenly you don't really care about the book you wanted to read, and somehow this moment is enough. It's enough to make you get out of the bathtub and smile and mean it. It's enough to make the chaos seem manageable. It's enough to bring you back, to do it all again tomorrow.

The thing about boys...

So I'm still learning about boys. Like how changing a boy's diaper is different from changing a girl's diaper.

I know, this should be obvious. It's something I understand in theory, and most of the time both Matt and I are good about keeping a spare diaper handy for strategic placement when the DANGER ZONE is left uncovered. But we're prone to careless moments, because we are human and because we are not getting a great deal of sleep these days. And you know perfectly well that any child of mine is going to take advantage of those careless moments, even a sweet little babe like Isaac. So we've had those sudden little fountains erupting in the middle of perfectly ordinary diaper changes, and so far they've just made us laugh.

Until this afternoon, when I was trying to change Isaac and give Suzannah the attention she needed and get the dog fed so she'd stop barking angrily at me because I was five minutes late doing that. I settled Suzannah at her little work table with her new stamps and ink pad, got the dog fed so she'd stop bothering Suzannah who would in turn bother me, and rushed through a diaper change. Rushed too much, as it turns out, because I left my little man not only uncovered but stark naked on the changing pad in his crib while I rummaged around for a new diaper and some new jammies.

Not only did he manage to pee straight up in the air, all over me, over the side of the crib, onto the floor, and back on to his own belly, but he chose that precise moment to shoot a violent stream of seedy yellow newborn poop out of his darling little bottom. That stuff managed to get smeared all over his back while I grabbed a handful of his cloth prefolds to mop it up. (Sidenote: I love our cloth diapers so much. We started with disposables to get us through the icky meconium phase and to get used to using the cloth in general, but I won't miss those at all. I have not had one single leak with our cloth diapers. Plus, they're so much cuter.)

Suzannah appeared in the doorway and regarded us with mild interest.

"Well, your brother needs a bath before you do tonight," I told her. "Want to help Mama clean him up?"

She considered this for a moment and then replied, "Okay."

Isaac takes his baths like a man, so that was pretty uneventful. He wasn't pleased about being suddenly UNSNUGGLED and PUT IN WATER, but he settled down quickly afterwards. When I emerged from the bathroom with my swaddled little boy and his Dangerous Equipment, I finally noticed that my other child was covered in smeary pink ink from her new stamp set. She had hot pink fingers and colorful smudges all over her pants and sweatshirt. Her table was all inky, and I found myself thanking God that I'd put an old towel underneath it over the carpet because that was decorated with hot pink smudges as well. Normally, Suzannah is almost freakishly neat and tidy, but perhaps I still shouldn't leave her unsupervised with art supplies. (Which is obviously something else I understand in theory, but this is the girl who didn't even need a bib as a baby because she so disliked being messy. I'm sure Isaac will be the child who gives himself a mohawk with sweet potatoes.)

Next week I'm officially a stay-at-home mother of two children, all on my own, for the next eight months. Say a little prayer for me.

(And good grief, I haven't even changed my shirt yet. For some reason I thought it'd be better to rush in here and share this with the world first.)

Those four-letter words...

He's four days old, and we think we'll keep him.

I have to admit that it's a bit of a struggle to write here, not so much because I could really use a few extra arms (although that's part of it) but because it's almost impossible to complete a sentence in this household that doesn't include the words boobs or poop. These things consume our days around here. Any update I could possibly write at the moment pretty much has to include them.

We began our morning with a nice long nursing session, followed by Isaac pooping enthusiastically through his jammies and all over me. He sighed and seemed quite satisfied after that.

Little Man is nursing really well -- his big sister had a much harder time of it and we had to struggle with it for a long time before it was remotely "easy" for either one of us, so despite the inevitable discomfort of the first days of breastfeeding, I'm just thankful that he's eating well and happily filling his diapers.

We took Little Man back to Nancy on Wednesday. He promptly had his first diaper blow-out, and while I'd brought along extra diapers and wipes and blankets, I completely neglected to bring any extra outfits (clearly, I'm out of practice -- sheesh). She cheerfully scooped him up and changed him herself and pulled out a spare onesie, like this is something she does every day. Which she probably does, actually, but I laughed at the thought of our regular pediatrician (who we quite like, and who we'll be seeing at some point) just scooping up the kiddo and changing him for me.

He's lost the appropriate amount of weight, and he's eating well, so I'm not worried there. He also has not one hint of jaundice, which I admit to worrying about, even though in full-term babies it's both common and usually not something to worry about. (Suzannah, as some of you may recall, was very jaundiced within a day of birth and she quickly became dangerously dehydrated -- which was terrifying, and also contributed significantly to our nursing issues. It's amazing how much easier this feels without that added worry -- or the added round-the-clock pumping sessions.)

It was a little surreal to go back there with him and sit in the same room where he was born. I'm actually nostalgic for labor and a little sad that it's over -- which might sound crazy, but there it is. I actually got a little weepy over it, even, because I miss his little kicks inside me and labor was such a fabulous experience this time and now it's all done, it's ALL DONE, and aahhhhh. Tears.

But that's the extent of my hormonal meltdowns so far. I mentioned to Matt that hey! I'm crying a lot less this time! And right away he said, "Yeah." Poor man. When Suzannah was born, I'm sure he felt like he had a new baby and a new wife, and he only liked one of them.

But check back with me after Christmas, when Matt will be back at work and all the grandparents will have gone home and I'm alone with two children and lions and tigers and bears, oh my.