8 weeks

Our girl is growing, faster than I can grasp. The change is so gradual you don't notice as it's happening, but I think back to a week, two weeks, ago, and I am in awe of how far she's come.

She smiles a lot. A LOT. She just beams up at you, her mouth open wide and her eyes squinty (like me) so that the smile is her whole face. And she's so close to laughing--you can tell she's trying.

She's strong and has been since birth. She's stronger than I knew a baby could be. Sometimes she fights me when she's nursing, rears back and throws her hands at me (I don't know if it's aggression out of excitement or frustration).

One of my favorite things is her dramatic stretching, particularly on her changing pad after a nap. She  stretches out those legs, stiffens them, grunt-squeaks, kicks, and does it again.

She's just the best. The best there is. How was I me without her?

I finally started feeling like a me again, like I had a semblance of control and understanding of this new way of life, around six weeks. Now I'm back at work for the first full week on Monday and hoping that I can pull of a fully-there work me and a fully-there home me and feel like I'm whole. There's a lot to manage from all angles, and I'm having trouble making space for to-do's. I'm relying heavily on lists and reminders and still leaving out chunks of life (like communication with friends and family). I am struggling to stay un-anxious when Phillip is on second and third shifts, particularly when he's here but asleep or here but not here. I am struggling to give Scooter the attention he deserves and is used to when I have new demands and priorities. But I am loving motherhood, even if it's going to take months to get used to saying I'm a mother, to not feel silly saying Mama when I talk to my daughter, to saying This is my daughter.

I have a daughter. All I want to do is build her up, give her every early opportunity to learn and grow through play and song and stories and art. I'm going to show her the good of the world but also how she can make it better. She will know her voice and how to use it. And I can't wait to hear what she has to say.

Paige Eleanor

Eighteen days ago, Paige Eleanor Mailloux came into our world. It wasn't easy, it wasn't quick, and it wasn't what we had envisioned, but our girl came out beautiful, healthy, and glowing.

When the terrified of labor phase hit around eight months, I was convinced that because my pregnancy had been so easy that the labor would be hard. The doctor said that was highly unlikely. But my blood pressure was high going into week 40, baby was estimated at eight pounds, and my body was not dilating or softening for labor. The result was this--in abbreviated form because I'm processing it and will be for some time: 48 hours of induction with no progress resulting in a c-section and our "It's a girl!" moment at 2:15pm on Friday, October 16 when Paige was born.

But the other thing was that on the morning we went to the hospital to induce Phillip found out he had Shingles. And because he had Shingles that could be transmitted to immune-suppressed people at the hospital and, namely, babies, the head of infectious diseases said he couldn't be at the hospital. And because he couldn't be at the hospital he couldn't be present for his baby's birth. And because he couldn't be present for his baby's birth his mom took his place with me and Facetimed him in the operating room, trying to keep him involved since he was at home a mile away but so far, far from where we were. It wasn't until Sunday when the medicine had dried up his lesions that he got the okay to come to the hospital and be with us, his girls. Again, it's still too fresh for me to tell the whole story, to tell you how it felt to watch my husband leave my hospital room when I was lost in my first childbirth experience and process the fact that family would see and hold our daughter before he would.

In the end, we came home on a Monday after five days in the hospital. We came home together. We cried through challenges with breastfeeding and sleeping in the night and pain at standing upright, and here we are at day eighteen with a little girl who's growing measurably by the day and revealing her strong and sweet personality and making us love her with all that we are. We are incredibly blessed and excited to watch her grow.

In days

Happy due date, Baby M!

I'm a day--no more than four--away from baby. I'm tuning in for signs of labor. I'm whispering don't you want to come out to my belly amid the bumps and rolls.

The last few weeks have gotten harder. Carpal tunnel in my right hand, with tingly, numb fingertips. Swollen ankles and calves to where only tall boots fit, and now even they are tight to zip. Heartburn in the evening that wakes me up from the sudden rise in acid. Higher blood pressure at one appointment that led to a 24-hour urine collection testing for pre-eclampsia (none). A belly so big and hard that last night Phillip had to help me take off my shoes and pants. No dilation, no change, to the point where Dr. "aggravated" my cervix Wednesday to try and spark something. Exhaustion but sleep that I wake from every 2 or so hours--practicing sleep deprivation, yes. Am I complaining? A bit.

But because of the check for pre-eclampsia and the lack of progress, we had a 39-week sonogram that we weren't expecting to make sure everything was okay. And it was. And I got to see my baby's chubby cheeks--and hair!--in the womb, making me all the more anxious to kiss them in person. Phillip keeps looking at the picture and saying I can't believe how cute our baby is! And it's true, and come on we want to meet you, sweet Baby M.

39 week sonogram

I am now officially on maternity leave after finishing and preparing everything I could on Friday. Though I'm using these first two days to rest, I don't want to waste too many days of leave without the baby. December 7 will come too soon, I know.

Last minutes at work before maternity leave.

My mind right now is calm with the knowledge that all I can do is wait, but a piece of me is anxious in the limbo and startled at the fact that I will undergo an entirely new and life-altering experience within the week. I'm ready for this. I'm ready for you, little one.

On purpose

"The life I live now is not a dress rehearsal for something greater afterwards; it empowers me to focus on the here and now. That is how I find meaning and purpose in what might seem a meaningless and purposeless existence; by concentrating on what I can do, and the differences I can make in the lives of those around me, in the short time that we have." - Dr. Buddhini Samarasinghe, molecular biologist

"We invent comforting lies to distract us from one simple truth: Oblivion looms. So, what are you going to do about it? I choose to live, laugh, love, travel, create, help others, and learn. And I'm going to do as much of this as I can manage, because the clock is ticking. We create our own meaning, and there's more than enough to be had. Seize it where you can." - Stephen Knight

"Because there is no 'right' answer to life, there are far fewer wrong answers--if you're doing something you love, and you aren't harming other people, you're basically on the right track. I find compassion in atheism: It makes me want to help people, because the idea that I stood by and watched someone's one shot at life go badly in a way I could have prevented makes me enormously sad. It's also why I reject the idea that atheism leads to a selfish mentality; it leads me to the feeling that we all have the same vanishingly short time to enjoy, so it's incumbent on us all to try to make society work for everyone." - Michael Marshall

"Our efforts must aim at restoring hope, righting wrongs, maintaining commitments, and thus promoting the well-being of individuals and of peoples. We must move forward together, as one, in a renewed spirit of fraternity and solidarity, cooperating generously for the common good. ... 

Politics is, instead, an expression of our compelling need to live as one, in order to build as one the greatest common good: that of a community which sacrifices particular interests in order to share, in justice and peace, its goods, its interests, its social life. ... 

Let us treat others with the same passion and compassion with which we want to be treated. Let us seek for others the same possibilities which we seek for ourselves. Let us help others to grow, as we would like to be helped ourselves. In a word, if we want security, let us give security; if we want life, let us give life; if we want opportunities, let us provide opportunities. The yardstick we use for others will be the yardstick which time will use for us." - Pope Francis, today in his address to Congress

21

21 thoughts or memories for the 21 days until our due date

1. It could happen anytime now. I've known of three babies born in the last month: one a few days late, one three weeks early, one on the due date. Any one of those could be our case.

2. Balance. How do I balance trying to get everything done for work ahead of maternity leave while also allowing myself to cave to exhaustion and rest? How do I be responsible to everyone and myself? How do I both focus and release?

3. The doctor told me to get compression socks after seeing my swollen ankles and feet on Wednesday. I spent $20 for one pair, wore them two days and only noticed a slight difference. But that's all I got because Scooter ate the foot of one of them, the only thing I recall him destroying since we've been in Kansas. Is he anxious, too? Does he think his licks should be enough?

4. What's bothering me most right now is my tingly right hand, the carpal tunnel that makes it hard to grip and aches my joints.

5. Last night after reading stories with Jack, we had our usual "talk." It's the final wind-down, lights out, between stories and the closing of the door for the night. He gets to choose; it's his time to tell us whatever is on his mind (zombies, tornadoes, Bloodborne).

"What do you want to talk about?" I asked him.

"Daddy," he said. Phillip was at work. "I love him. He's my best friend. I love Daddy's games. And you're my best friend."

"Oh, buddy, you're our best friend, too. We love you, and we're always here for you."

"You have a baby in your tummy or you not have baby in your tummy?"

"I do, for three more weeks. And then you get to hold your baby brother or sister."

"Can I hear it?" It's been a while since he's wanted to listen to my belly, so when I lifted my shirt his eyes got big and he sat up straight. "Woah! I've never seen a belly that big. I've never seen that." He said this about a dozen times. "You should show Daddy."

"Oh, he's seen it."

6. I currently weight 167.6 pounds. I am still five feet tall.

7. I can't decide what to hang above the crib or in what order to hang it. It's the last detail in there, and I can't figure it out.

8. I completely stand behind our decision to not find out the baby's gender. But, damn, the gender neutral options are abysmal, particularly in any of our local stores. At least there are white onesies.

9. I'm anxious for the fact that my alone time, my freedom, my spontaneity is about to end. I still need it--stretches of time that are just mine--from Phillip (hello, seven years of living alone and introversion), and now all of that alone time will be with an infant. It's daunting. But maybe it's also the kind of alone time I'm ready for. We'll find out.

10. I went to Health-e-quip on Friday to turn in my prescription for a breast pump (yay, insurance!). The woman asked, "Is this the result of an injury or accident?" She laughed and said she has to ask that every time. "No, this was planned."

11. After spending yesterday morning listening to my Baby M playlist of 100 of my favorite songs, I'm now sure I want music in the delivery room. That music. My music.

12. Jack, for the last month, likes to point to older pictures of me around the house and say, "You not have a baby in your tummy." In the photo with all of our siblings from our wedding day, he goes down the line of (mostly) men and women: "Her not have a baby. Her not have a baby. Her not have a baby...." (We're working on the pronoun confusion.)

13. I haven't done enough yoga or other exercises. I hope I'm strong enough and remember how to breathe.

14. Thing most eaten this pregnancy? Cereal. Rice Krispies, Cracklin Oat Bran, Oatmeal Squares.

15. Phillip finally admitted this week that he's anxious about the birth. He's anxious that he'll be at work when I go into labor and he won't hear the phone. He's anxious that I won't get an epidural and I won't be calm during the birth and he won't know what to say or do with his hands. I told him it's highly unlikely that BAM I'll be in labor and need to go to the hospital, that I'll know I'm starting labor but we'll have some lead time before we have to go to the hospital. And the truth is, and what I've been trying to reassure him, that neither of us know how it will go and that we have to be willing to figure it out as we go, together. I know enough about myself that I'm not going to be yelling at him during birth, that I'll want him with me at all times. What I don't know is if I'll want to hold his hand or if I'll need him to give me positive affirmations in the midst of the pain. But, for me, just knowing he'll be there is comforting enough for me not to be worrying about it.

16. The baby's heartbeat has pretty consistently been 135 for the last few months.

17. My dreams lately, though I don't remember many of them, have been dealing with strange or unwanted guests.

18. Normally I bite my fingernails on Monday mornings at work, unconsciously. But it's Sunday night and they're gone by #18 of this blog post. Back to that balance point, maybe?

19. We have everything we need if the baby should come tomorrow, and the few things we don't are being delivered this week. Like diapers (biodegradable), a nursing bra, a Miracle Blanket, and more Ikea Skubb drawer organizers.

20. It's been three months since Snickers died. I can't help but think she would have been snuggling on my belly to feel and share the warmth. She would have broken in the rocker. She would have curled up with us on the couch.

21. When I was 21, I was with a man who never wanted to get married and who never wanted children. I was young and naive enough to think I would change his mind. I'm so glad I didn't. I'm so grateful that more than three years ago I reconnected with a man I became good friends with at 18, that he inspired me to move back home, that we got married, that I've shared the experience of part-time raising his son since he was 2 1/2, that we agreed we would start a family in 2015, and that, in a few weeks, we will do just that. Phillip is my greatest blessing, my best friend, and I can't wait to meet this little one who is half him and half me and, all together, grow in love and life.

Puff

I am inflated: fingers, feet, face.

I hope it is mostly water and that, once baby is here, I will shrink back up to some semblance of my known self. That most of this weight will flush out on its own. That my feet will once again fit into my shoes.

Meanwhile, baby is dropping. I can tell because I can take bigger breaths than a week ago and my belly rests on my thighs when I sit.

Meanwhile, baby gear and big empty boxes fill the kitchen. Where will we put it all? Where will it live?

Meanwhile, baby is thirty days away.

Perspective: 35 weeks

Perspective: Four

All photos by Jack, age four, from my iPhone. 

Dear baby

Dear Baby,

We've come a long way together these last 35 weeks. I am watching you now as you push or squirm against my belly, and I wonder if you're comfortable or if you're wondering, too, what life on the outside will be like. Your dad and I finally settled on names, so we're prepared if you're a girl or a boy, and we think you'll be pleased with your name either way as a simple beginning to a last name that you'll be correcting people on for all of your life. But be proud of that, too--Mailloux, MAY-you--for you'll be one of only a few. 

Big brother Jack keeps asking why you're still in there. I tell him you have to grow big enough and strong enough so we can hold you, and he worries that you will come out bigger than he is. I assure him that he will always be bigger than you (unless you overtake him in height one day, but I won't tell him about that now). You two will share a room themed in nature--including dinosaurs--that's decorated with books and prints from books and pieces of our family, like the koala handkerchief that belonged to your Great Grandma Lentz. 

Great Grandma Lentz passed away nearly two years before she could meet you, and I regret that you'll never hear her Aussie R's. Your Great Grandpa Lentz, too, has been gone nearly a decade. And your Great-Greats, well, I was lucky to know them when I was young. But you'll have four Greats when you enter this world: Great Grandma & Grandpa Jackson and Poppy & Great Grandma Turkle. And four grandparents, too: Grandma & Grandpa Jackson and Papa & Grandma Mailloux. I want you to know them, and I want them to know you. You will learn much from them, just as your dad and I have. 

Daddy and I are anxious to hold you, to let Scooter greet you and lick your feet, to take you to storytimes and parks and on hikes. We long to know the sound of your coo's, the shape of your smile, the color of your eyes, the particular way you like to be soothed. 

As for me, you've been kind to me as you've grown. I didn't have morning sickness, only fatigue and some nausea. I didn't have food cravings, only a preference for cereal and ice cream. But I'm ready to reclaim my body as you learn your own. I'll have pounds to lose and stretch marks to shrink and muscles to build back to some endurance for walking and lifting. But, though I don't recognize my face or my body right now with the shape and weight of you, I will need you and your dad to remind me that all of these changes are the most natural changes for a woman because they mean I have created and carried life. I am not myself because I am two: me and you. And when I am just me again, I will have the reminders of you--some for all of my life--and I shall be grateful for that. Because I will have you. 

In the five weeks until we meet you, I will probably break down a few times, overwhelmed by the changes you will bring to our lives. But then I will go sit in your room in the rocker and realize I'm ready because forty weeks is so long when you start and so short when you think of the end result of a living, breathing, burst of love that you get for it all. 

So, please let me sleep and eat and breathe without too much trouble for the next few weeks. I'll repay you with a love-filled life, I promise. 

Love, 

Mom

Collecting heartaches

I'm not down, but I'm collecting heartaches. Perhaps I'm over sensitive right now or perhaps the aches are more real, frequent these days.

Bears, wild bears, euthanized for being bears caught in the midst of peak tourist season. I was in Yellowstone a month ago, and I get it. I was a human in a car and felt trapped by the number of other humans in cars and couldn't wait to get out even though I would have loved to linger and actually experience the beauty. But when there are so many humans, and then there's a human near you and your cubs, and then you protect yourself and your cubs because you're stressed and closed in anyway, how can we blame you for killing the human? How can we kill you for that? Oh, because we can. Because we get so indignant when a bear or a shark or a sand tunnel kill us, as if we should be invincible, as if we're not invading their territory or testing the limits of gravity. We have the responsibility to understand our place in the world--not as the center but as a player--yet we choose again and again to blame the other. Oh, mother bear. Oh, Cecil the Lion. Oh, great white. We are we, not versus.

In Hutchinson right now, it's homebuilders versus progress, versus the future. The great debate of 2015 is sidewalks, and it's largely a debate over $1200 per home. Sidewalks, such a seemingly simple thing, must be advocated for to get us at least on par with what other communities have been doing for dozens of years. Sidewalks or no sidewalks is a hundred year decision. We decide the future now.

And then there are shootings and people who say "that's just Hutch" and little people being moved without warning and women who only get a week of maternity leave and the fact that my Grandma Lentz will never meet the baby and the exhaustion of Facebook and the unknowns of childbirth.

Otherwise, joys:

Mobility and immobility

Week 29: Baby somersaults. Body contortions to make room for movement, to contain the limbs that seemed to want to break through.

Week 30: Quiet. Little nudges and rolls here and there. A sleepy week.

Week 31: Rolly polly baby. Wiggly baby. Keep it up, baby.

Me, well. My stomach is in my chest, so I'm not hungry and the heartburn comes as it pleases. My lungs are squished, too, so I'm short of breath. My weight has shifted, so I can't bend over or reach up repeatedly without straining my back. My hips are loose and I'm heavier, so hip pain wakes me up at night after hours of lying on my sides.

I miss my mobility. I miss being able to do. But I have two more months of growing, of lending my body to love.

Correspondence

Dear stretch marks
on my thighs,
Why? I give you
my belly, rightly so.
Please don't take my
right to wear shorts.

Dear appetite, I can't
remember what it's like to crave
fajitas or pizza or queso, to say
I want or know what I want
of food. But let's keep this up
post-baby so I can lose
the weight and continue to live
on cereal.

Dear baby, I'm okay
with you kicking, sticking
an elbow into my rib, because
it means you're trying out joints,
learning how to dance, stretching
those limbs that might be long
like your father's or asserting your
own right to motion like me. I'll take
the proof of your heartbeat, the quake
of your meaning, your good morning
and good night, even when I need
to sleep.

Lessons

"A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest ... shapes it, renders it, loves it.” – Joan Didion

"The art that speaks most clearly, explicitly, directly and passionately from its place of origin will remain the longest understood." – Eudora Welty

"You see, I have never felt the need to invent a world beyond this world, for this world has always seemed large and beautiful enough for me. I have wondered why it is not large and beautiful enough for others — why they must dream up new and marvelous spheres, or long to live elsewhere, beyond this dominion ... but that is not my business. We are all different, I suppose." - Elizabeth Gilbert, The Signature of All Things

“Stories teach us how to be human. As I understand it, becoming fully human means learning to savor the world, to share in community, to see through the eyes of other people, to take responsibility for our actions, to educate our desires, to dwell knowingly in time and place, to cope with suffering and death. … We need one another. Yet our souls and communities are divided by fear and ignorance and strife. We walk in beauty, yet much of what we do is ugly. We inhabit a magnificent planet, yet we devour our home. Stories are not instruction manuals; they do not teach us in any simple way how to lead our lives. By inviting us to participate in imaginary lives, however, they deepen our understanding and enlarge our sympathies for other people, for other creatures, for the places and purposes that human beings share, and for the earth. That is a good beginning." – Scott Russell Sanders, “The Power of Stories”

“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.” – Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, June 26, 2015

On life, on loss

Baby is squirming now, sometimes nudging. I felt the first true jolt the afternoon after our sonogram and then all that weekend. It was like the baby knew we had been looking at her/him and wanted us to know she/he had something to say, that her/his arms were meant for moving. But we're largely still coexisting quietly. Almost 24 weeks already. 16 more to grow. Except for a few days when it has felt like I'm stretching, being pushed from the inside out (which I am), I still can't complain.

I miss Snickers. I'm mad that Snickers was taken so suddenly, that she was alive one second and dead the next. I'm mad at the neighbor cats who still lurk for her and her food in the morning when I back out of the driveway, mad at the car that hit her, mad that I didn't bring her inside that night. But she had a good life, a happy life, a much-loved life. I gave her eight years of mine, adopted her on clearance from the back bottom cage at the PetSmart in Topeka, stuck with her through peeing-on-my-bed spells and packed her up with me wherever I moved. I loved her, and I will always love her, and I will keep expecting her face on the back step when I open the door.

But I can't complain. Last night nine people were murdered during a prayer group at a church in Charleston, shot by a young man who they had welcomed in. The fact that some people can carry so much hate with them that they would hurt people in their most vulnerable and trusting state is unfathomable.

The fact that some people think more guns is the solution to gun violence is unfathomable.

The fact that our governor can boast that allowing concealed carry without a permit is a win for our state because it protects the second amendment, that you can buy a gun and carry it into a zoo, a daycare, a grocery store at your whim, is unfathomable.

The fact that our governor can claim a .5 percent sales tax hike statewide is not a tax increase, while 330,000 small businesses pay no income tax, is unfathomable.

The fact that people are "trading in" their aging pets for young ones at shelters, and that people are posting photos of these dogs as they watch their owners abandon them, is unfathomable.

I am sensitive to injustices, feel it in my gut the people and animals that are sacrificed just so a select few can feel powerful. This is what I am bringing my child into: a delusional world where fear begets fear. Can I raise my child to combat this? To be the change in the world I wish to see? I believe I can, but it scares me. It scares me because I can't control the decisions other people make. I can't stop the car in the night from hitting my cat. I can't prevent a hateful man from entering a church. I can't shake leaders out of the grip of money and power. I can't make you love your dog until death.

But that is part of making yourself vulnerable, of living with wholeheartedness. If you shut out the bad, you also shut out the good. If you turn off your trust, you turn away everyone. If you don't walk into life expecting good, you will only experience the bad. And who wants a life filled with fear?

Trust, my child, but be aware. Love, my child, but know that hurt may come. Sing, my child, but listen to all of the other voices. We are all in this together.