Living Aloud Allowed

My husband is a saint. At the most, one month from today, we’ll be parents.  I thought I’d take the time to thank him out loud, since in a month we may get a little busy with this baby…

Thank you for putting together every piece of crib and stroller and baby gear that came into the house. I still think Ralph thinks that his canine life is much improved by a stroller, and Penny still wants that stuffed owl we bought for herself, but we’ll all learn to share together, won’t we?

Thank you for making a nursery with me that makes me feel like we put together something so completely our personality that I couldn’t imagine our little kiddo starting off anywhere else more perfect. We have always said that we find “home” within each other,  and his room is the embodiment of that belief.

Thank you for every time you told me I wasn’t fat, I was pregnant. and for calling me – dare I say it here – “sexy”, because Lord knows when you can’t put on your shoes, the last thing you feel is desirable. Thanks for telling me my grey hair looked like highlights, and that I never needed make up.  Feeling like a science experiment takes a toll on my confidence, and you were always there to pick me up.

Thank you for washing every single solitary teensy piece of clothing that came into our house. I have no idea how our kid will ever wear all of it, but goodness knows, he’s prepared to!

Thank you for every date night that we went on. Those last adult-nights-out are precious and memorable. I know we’ll try to maintain that in this next stage, but continuing to date you through our marriage means a ton to me.

Thank you for coming to every.single.solitary.doctor’s appointment. Thank you for being amazingly involved in the care of our kid. Thank you in week 6 when I thought we were losing him, for saying repeatedly that everything was going to be okay – and it was. You never faltered even when I thought it was all over. Thank you for your faith – it’s unreal.

Thank you for every bit of support when we decided to switch doctors in the 32nd week. I know you couldn’t help as much as you wanted, but being there and telling me it didn’t matter what it cost and that we were doing the right thing helped me get through all that paperwork and chaos.

Thanks for killing that snake in the middle of the eighth month – and walking me out to the car in your bare feet to show me that the snake was “all gone”, you have no idea how much I cannot jump vertically and how much I would have needed to. You’re my hero for that.

Thank you for every egg and toast that you made me at 5AM when you could have slept in, so that I stay on track with my gestational diabetes diet. Then, right behind that, thank you for every lunch where you detailed out to me what lunch and snack and thing I was eating to make sure my blood sugar stayed where it needed to be – especially since towards the end, putting lipstick on seemed to be a massive task.

Thanks for the massages when I needed them – especially since you have aversions to toes. Thanks for telling me to sit when you could help me with something, thanks for helping me off the couch when I felt like a turtle stuck on it’s back.

Thank you for all of the advice on how to deal with people who only saw me as a pregnant thing. Thanks for asking how I was doing, thanks for still seeing me as a wife and a friend and a numbers person and a volunteer, thanks for making me feel human, instead of a human incubator.

Thanks for tying my shoes. Holy mother that got hard. And thanks for that compression sock application – I’ll never forget it.

Thank you for supporting my want to get back into shape as soon as possible by indulging me in every thought I had about gym equipment, memberships, corsets, programs, diets and the like. But thank you more for never making me feel like I “had” to for you to love me, but only because you knew that’s what I wanted for myself.

Thank you for putting up with every tear and emotional break that I had – we both know it’s far more than most husbands with pregnant wives put up with – and you did it with such grace. You have no idea how much it means to have a partner who doesn’t hold a grudge and who genuinely wants to become better so we are better as a whole. You continue to be my best friend, who I can share everything with – and that’s a rare person in this world.

Thanks for hiking things back and forth and up and down, out of attics, to and from storage facilities, and from every shop in between to help us get every tiny thing imaginable needed for our little unimaginable tiny thing! I know he and I appreciate all the sweat equity you have put in.

Heck, thanks for just listening to me babble about every aspect of whatever it is that I had to say that day. Sometimes just being heard was all I needed. I know you wanted an instructional manual on how to deal with a hormonal chick, I swear one day I’ll write one, but you did the best you could.

I know I missed a million small and big stuff in between the fog of these last 35 weeks, forgive me for not noticing all of them, there are too many things to count, but not one of them should have been missed – I know as soon as I hit publish on this piece, I’ll remember 12 more.

You are going to be an amazing Dad, thank you for being the man that I want our son to be. (and thanks for sharing your name.)

and most importantly, thank you for loving me and even considering this adventure with me. I have dreamed of this moment for more than 15 years, and it’s absolutely surreal to me that you and I are here, and it’s happening. I know we’ll love this baby more than we can ever imagine, but I couldn’t even do this, if I weren’t in love with you more than I could have ever dreamed of.

Sorry, I know. Sorry I’m not sorry. It’s been such a whirlwind that I don’t even know how to start saying “I’m still here”. That said, I’m still here.

I know these were on my list for quite awhile now as a to-do. And today I’m proud to say, they are done and on his bookshelf (with copies stored virtually when I know pages will be mutilated by little hands).

That said, I’m pretty proud of them. I’d love your feedback. Click to see them!

I consider myself a realist, if not even veering off into pessimist at times. I don’t like “preparing for the worst and hoping for the best” as it’s an emotionally exhausting way to be, but I naturally do it because I’m an anxious person.

I recently posted that I wasn’t sleeping well to facebook and had immediate responses from several moms telling me that I should “just get used to it.” Implying that lack of sleep would be “all I get” when the baby is here.

Ever the person who remembers that people are icebergs – wherein 90% of their mass (emotions) lie below the surface. It annoys me to no end that my sleep deprivation had to do with anxiety attacks and nothing to do about being a mom. In fact, I’m a mom right now, but I’m not only a mom.

Lately though, it’s everything I can do to keep chanting what Amy Poehler writes so poignantly about other mothers in her book Yes Please!. “Good for her. Not for me.”

I’m trying to pick myself up, and it feels like I’m alone sometimes. I can’t help but deal with the weight gain and the fact that I’m giving up my “status” at work as able to stay late or come in early or to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Sure, I’m giving up plenty of things that I used to have, and may never or won’t have for some time coming. Disposable income. Size 6 dresses. Late nights out of dancing.

I want to be a mom more than anything, and I’m happy to give up those things, but I’m not thrilled about people reminding me what a hopeless, lifeless, lifelong, death march motherhood apparently is. I have a hard enough time with my current state dealing with day to day. I realize when a child gets here I will have no sleep, no sex drive, no social life, nothing – but perhaps it’s more I won’t have that in the “same way” that I used to.

I will have a whole new normal to adjust to – and I’m excited about that.

I’m excited that I will get a fresh start on parents who become friends who go to day care and understand the woes of first time mommy hood. I am excited that my husband and I have to change our schedule of everything up partially because we are so comfortably in a rut now that I love it, but I could see any routine getting stale after a year or two. I’m excited that I will be up for hours with my son, because I realize in ten years, or even five, that moment will be gone, and something else will replace it.

I knew this is what I’ve wanted since I knew what motherhood was, and spent many years crying tears watching my exhusband go through his medical struggles, accepting we would never have kids. Then I went through four years of what was the most ignorant relationship and self esteem murder I could have put myself through. But I did that all with good reason – because those experiences placed me where I am now. The fact that I’m even here, let alone over the moon with my husband who made this child with me, I can’t even imagine that I’m here. I just can’t. I often  ask Ray if the baby is still in there. Because it’s just amazing to me. Shocking even.

I got everything I ever wanted and never thought I could have. You can’t BUY this. You can’t even EARN it. Ray said that the other day – we were just meant to be – there’s nothing I could have done to get me here. There’s no way I’m going to spit in the face of God’s plan and be made to feel shitty about it.

It’s heartbreaking to me to have mom’s tell me how little sleep, and how horrible their lives have become. It hurts me for their own children’s sake. I know I’m probably sounding like the biggest and naive-st freshman out there when it comes to all the knowledge that these moms have and that I haven’t experienced it yet. I know that I will have puke on my dress, or that my child will get sick, or that I will forget the concept of sleeping in or what being “put together” even means.

I knew the whole time what I was getting into. I know it’s going to be hard. I’m tired of being told by others that the only thing I am is a Mom. Nope. I’m not. I’m a wife. I’m an analyst. I’m a band booster. I’m a oil and gas group member. I am a swing dancer. I’m a crafter. I’m a friend. I’m a daughter. I’m a photographer. I’m many things. I know Mom will be the title that requires the most work, but I’m tired of that being the only thing that I am, as it’s not the only thing that defines me.

If I want my child to be “all the things”, I need to maintain being “all the things” with my child. We forget that we’re still other things other than moms. We have husbands. We have fashion wants. We have body issues. We have interests. We have jobs. We have aspirations. Those things didn’t die just because we added something amazingly massively life changing to the mix, they just got reallocated. They aren’t gone. and guess what,there are ways to join kids in! I swear to God I know there’s a way to have it all. I’m hell bent on making sure I get it. Life is too short, too big, and too amazing to go around wearing one label for the rest of my life.

Why can’t we all work together and do that? Why do we spend our time doling out the pessimistic advice and tearing down those who we could be using to lift us up?

I guess in the end, if I have to be the lifter of the doom cloud, is that why don’t moms lift each other up? I mean, I have so many mom friends. but very few of them seem to want to actually gather together as a force to be reckoned with. I don’t want someone to be naive and in denial about what I’m about to journey in on, but whatever happened to “Yes! Those hours of missed sleep suck! What can I do to help!” …..or “Let’s meet for a playdate so you don’t feel alone and we can vent and destress while our kids get exercise!”….or “Hey! Nice new stroller, let’s go do squats and grab a smoothie while pushing them because lord knows I want to get postbaby body a little more managed!”….instead it feels like we retreat to our corners and lose sight of the idea that it “takes a village”. I don’t care how tired I am. I don’t. I can’t have a plan, because planning is a futile exercise – but I do have a goal. and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let my child watch me not achieve what I want to. Not at their expense, but finding our own way to do it all. One of the few things I want to make sure they do is learn how to get the things they want by using what they have and that what they want, no matter how massive or outside the lines it seems, is achievable.

Instead of treating me like the new kid to a school and banishing me to eating by myself at lunch, what if we took just a bit of time to remember the positive, to lift each other up in such a time of uncertainty. Remind each other what an amazing gift life is – whether your a Mom or not. Every day we get to live on this Earth is a gift. Share that. Remember that. OWN IT. Quit telling me I need a lack of sleep to earn my stripes – remember that this stripe can’t be earned. This is fate where I am. Deal with it.