Mommy Ever After » second child

i’MHERE.

Rebecca Fox Starr — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 13:15:09 +0000

Something interesting happened to me this week; my iPhone stopped working.

It was on Thursday, New Year’s Day, and one minute it was sending and receiving texts (despite being shattered and an eyesore) and the next minute the screen became completely dysfunctional. I could not use it at all, which meant that I could not swipe the screen to unlock my phone, as I watched the growing number of text messages that were coming in.

If this were a year ago, I think I would have had a panic attack at best or, more likely, a nuclear meltdown. I used to be very dependent on my phone, as it was my lifeline to the world (I thought).

Instead, I sent emails to the people with whom I was communicating, just so they would know I wasn’t ignoring their messages, and powered the thing down.

I made an appointment at the Apple store for late in the day Friday, but because I ended up being sick, I could not go. I made an appointment for Saturday afternoon, so that my husband could handle it for me. And on Friday, my friends helped me by taking care of my kids, my husband worked a full work day and, amazingly, I was still able to communicate with them, as well as the doctor whom I called, the nurse who called me back with advice, the pharmacy and several other people via email. I am someone with separation anxiety, so the idea of not being able to communicate with loved ones is a very scary one for me, but we found ways.

So, yesterday, my husband gave my phone to the people at Apple and they said it should be ready by 5pm. But guess what? We didn’t go out to pick it up. We will go at some point today.

That is right; I deliberately chose not to run for my phone the moment that it was ready for me;

Let me tell you why.

There were many times in the past few days when I have wanted to reach out to people quickly and easily, or snap a picture or log in to my Instagram; but instead of experiencing my children from behind the lens of my semi-decent 5c camera, I just lived with them. I savored the cute moments, and got used to watching them, as opposed to snapping their picture, editing it with the right filter and posting it for my friends (or the world) to see.

I was much more present.

While my friends spent time at my house, I did not think about how snap a photo of my daughter cuddling under the covers with our guest; I watched them, and smiled, and felt happy.

When my husband and I watched TV, I wasn’t busy looking down, responding to emails and checking newsfeeds.

Please do not let this come off as holier than thou. I will be picking up my iPhone in a matter of hours and I’m sure that I will go back into the fray, but I have to be honest; I found being phoneless extremely liberating.

Anyone who really needed me knew how to reach me. I wasn’t beholden to any thing.

This really struck me, as think I enjoyed the faces of my friends and family a little more this weekend.

Just this morning, I held my son as he fed himself his morning milk. He tried to find a position in which he could access the milk flow, but also nuzzle into me. My son, who is usually moving at a mile a minute, wanted to get close to me, and although that may seem like a given for most people, it is not for me.

Recently I wrote about adding our son to our family, and the love we all have for him. Just last night I was talking to my husband about it, as the combination of not having a phone and spending a couple of days in bed has given me a lot more time to think and reflect. I was thinking about that thing that people always say, about how they didn’t know how they could possibly have any more love, but then, as soon as their next child was born, their hearts grew instantly. It’s like a thing.

But for me, I have to be honest, I don’t feel that way. I don’t feel as though I now have more love than I did before.

Please do not misinterpret me. I love and cherish my son; I find him to be extremely cute and silly and loving and hilarious and he has taught me to be stronger and braver than I ever thought possible.

But, as I said to my husband last night, I feel like the love for him was always there, in me. It was just waiting for him. My heart did not grow when he was born; he just filled the space that it had reserved for his presence.

I know this is an odd perspective on things, and I can assure you with great confidence that I do not have less love in me than others; in fact, I have been told that I am a walking heart, brimming with love.

I think that I feel emotions more deeply than the majority of others. I don’t wish to sound cliched or insincere, but it is definitely a blessing and a curse to feel the amount of passion and adoration and intensity that I do, as there is a flip side, where my lows can get pretty low. I am sensitive, get hurt easily and deeply and hold onto pain that perhaps others can compartmentalize or shed.

The way I felt this morning, when my son tried to find my nook in which to rest his head…

I don’t even have the worst to describe the swell I feel inside my chest right now.

After finishing his milk, he and his sister played a little bit with some toys, before discovering an enormous cardboard delivery box in our entry way (our Amazon subscription fulfilment) and they crawled in an did all of the things that children do with a cardboard box. They had the best time together, squealing with laughter. And I didn’t even think to reach for my phone to snap a picture of their cuteness. I just watched, savoring this moment, branding it to my memory.

Now, I am guilty of sitting in front a screen while my children play. In fact, my daughter asked what I was doing and I said, “I am blogging.” and she said, “Oh. Mommy, Ever After?” as I recently explained to her what it is that I do.

But I have put down the laptop several times to watch them, to answer their questions, and to thank my daughter when she walked past me and said, “You look very beautiful. Well, you are my mom.”

I am going to try to be better about this moving forward, as I will certainly feel the itch to snap and share once I have my phone back (though J and my husband have decided that I am strictly forbidden from using my phone until it has one of those crazy, bulky protective cases).

Now, this is in direct conflict with the blog and brand I am trying to build; I constantly need to snap featured images for my posts, and sometimes that takes time, as you may have noticed, on my public site and Instagram account I do not post photos of their faces, but instead, they are a bit hidden.

(By the way, I realize that I broke my cardinal rule in the featured photo of myself of my site, as I asked the tech people at Brand Revive if they could “please Photoshop out the baby from that picture?”, which I guess they could not, as there is a baby on my lap, but you don’t know if that is my baby or a stunt baby, so I feel a bit less disloyal to myself.)

But I am going to try to snap the cute or funny or powerful photos when I see the moments happening, and then put down the phone. I can edit them later. They can wait to be posted.

I said that I was going to strive to be a better person, and while I am not attaching any value judgement to the use of smartphones and screens in child rearing, for me, I truly am not, I know that for me, personally, I am able to be more attentive when I am not trying to type and post.

And on that note, my kids are playing together with a cardboard princess castle and I am going to sit on the floor and join them, with my lap top closed and put away.

And since I typed that last sentence, they started to fight over the castle.

But this is life, folks. And I have to live it.

No. Let me correct that.

I want to.

The post i’MHERE. appeared first on Mommy Ever After.

#secondchild

mommyeverafter — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 12:15:59 +0000

When my daughter was a baby, I used to buy these little plastic table covers. If we were ever to eat out at a restaurant, I would first sanitize the high chair and then I would lay out two or three of these sticky plastic placemats on the table, so that her reaching radius was completely covered. You can go back to 2010 on this very site and see many stories where I was horrified to change her in a public bathroom.
I was never without hand sanitizer. But only the organic, natural, no chemical kind. Obvi.
Fast forward 4 years.
My son just came with me to the bathroom…
and LICKED the toilet seat.
Enough said.

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Happy half birthday.

mommyeverafter — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 23:36:47 +0000

Today, my son turned six months old.
His half birthday.
I had such a hard time finding the words that I wanted to use to express how I am feeling. I want to do him justice. But these six months, man,
they’ve changed my entire life.
And without a doubt, this little (huge) guy has changed my life for the better
and for good.
I look back to the post I wrote for my daughter’s half birthday, three and a half years ago, and I am such a different person now. I am no longer a new mom. I don’t mark every milestone as fastidiously. I don’t plan princess parties to mark each month’s occasion.
But I love no less.
No less at all.
So in thinking, this is what I want to say about my son and his half birthday:
There’s this thing that I do with my daughter.
It’s like when I grab her hand from the driver’s seat in my car,
but even more powerful.
I hug her, hold her tight, breathe her in, and all of a sudden, the rest of the universe disappears.
I enter a new place.
This place is home to me. It is my place in this world, where I feel most at peace and most right.
When it comes to my son, the second child,
I feel as though I haven’t fallen prey to many of the common stereotypes. For instance, I still take a boat load of pictures of him, I still am tickled by each new thing he learns or does, I still honor his schedule,
but I realized, just yesterday, that I had yet to create a place in the world for just us.
I tested it.
It was in the middle of the day, right before we were set to pick up my daughter from school. And we weren’t busy playing on the floor or wrestling with a bottle. I was holding him and talking to him and all of a sudden, the urge to hold him close came over me.
And so I did.
And just like that,
home.
My place.
It is my place to be their mom.
These six months have been the hardest of my life, but not at all because of my son. His presence has brought me such joy.
He has blue eyes and strawberry blonde hair and smiles coyly, playing games already.
He sits with great facility, rolls all around, giggles at his sister, and on this past Easter Sunday, squealed with delight while eating smoked pork butt.
He is gentle. He is soft. He is sweet. He is round.
He is home.
And so while I may be in a new place, it is a place better than I could have ever imagined. I love my family in a way that I never thought possible.
And even though it’s been hard,
even though a lot of crap has happened,
I feel so blessed,
so lucky,
that I get to call them mine.

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On Motherhood

mommyeverafter — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 23:49:15 +0000

By today’s standards, I waited a good while before having my second child. I get the whole “two under two” and “done with diapers” things, they just weren’t my bag. Instead, my kids are three and a half years apart to the week. In hindsight I am so glad that I did wait; (for so many reasons, not the least of which being my current journey.)
This past week my family went away. I was with my husband, my parents, my daughter who is a month shy of four years old and my four month old. This trip got me thinking a lot; a lot about where I’ve been most acutely and recently, and also in my “career” as a mom.
When I was getting ready for my second child, I did not anticipate how utterly, astoundingly and completely different everything would be (from penis to postpartum.)
But I am different now. So much has changed in the world and in my life and in me.
For instance, in shopping in the hotel sundry store for a rash guard for my daughter, I did a few things that I never would have done 3 and a half years ago: First, I bought the shirt in navy blue. Then, I joked with the woman behind the counter about my stretch marks. And then I voluntarily shared with her that I am no longer nursing my son. (I am still the queen of TMI, some things just don’t change, evidently.)
Later that day, my son had a poopy diaper at the pool. The family bathroom was occupied (seemingly indefinitely) so I braved the regular ladies room and changed him right there on the floor. A far cry from how I used to agonize about taking the baby anywhere, let alone changing him.
When people ask me how old my son is, I say “four months”. Really, he is four and a half. With my first child I would have said something like, “Oh he’s a day shy of 18.5 weeks” (and I am totally making up that number of weeks as I have no idea how many weeks my son has been here.)
And I really got to thinking about this on the plane ride home. By the way, I still don’t like to fly. Why couldn’t that have miraculously changed?! Come on, man!
And I thought about the Flight Attendant’s instructions. In case of a decrease in cabin pressure, you are to put on your own mask before assisting anyone else. Including the person next to you. Including your child.
This goes against every inherent instinct we have and also against the grain of what we are taught as mothers; we are taught that sacrifice=love.
But now I am beginning to realize, slowly, the healthier mom actually=healthier baby. That is why I gave up nursing my son at 10 weeks, despite my desperation to remain a “breastfeeding mother”.
I was just putting on my own oxygen mask.
And because I was able to breathe, to suck air into my lungs without passing out, I have been better equipped to take care of my children than I would have otherwise.
During our flight’s landing I was able to ease my son’s ear pressure by sticking my finger in his mouth and letting him suck. My hands were clean, but still…Never would I have dared to touch my baby’s mouth with my finger three and a half years ago. But I didn’t have my boob to go-t0 and the finger did the job and he was happy and did not make a peep the entire flight. And it soothed him. Which soothed me.
So sometimes sacrifice just equals sacrifice.
But love always equals love.

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A Birth Story–My Sequel: Part 1

mommyeverafter — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 21:05:24 +0000

Hello, there. Or, to many, I should say Hello, Again. Welcome. Or Welcome Back. Right now, you can find me mostly over at 511 Ever After, but I’ve decided to return for a post that could only be written here; here where my mommy roots are anchored in deep, in stories of joy, enchantment, confusion, pain….my stories from the trenches. So much is different now. First off, I now have two kids. It’s funny; I wrote this post literally a day shy of two years ago. I was grappling with the idea of a second child. And now, spoiler alert!, he’s here. And he’s just as magical as my first baby was, but the experience has been totally different, starting with the birth. If you want to start from the beginning with many of my past stories, including my birth stories, in all 5 parts, you may. Or you can just start here, at the sequel. So, like any good story, let’s start at the beginning. It was a cold morning in March and my husband was out to brunch with my dad and some of their friends. And I was a week late. So I took an old HPT that I had in my linen closet, peed on it, and two lines appeared in 20 seconds. And my daughter was in the bathroom with me. And I said, “Holy shit, I’m pregnant.” And she said “I’m Cinderella.”I was stunned. When trying for our first, we tried. This pregnancy happened immediately. I hadn’t expected it to happen so fast, as we had barely unpacked the boxes in our new house. But I was excited. Thrilled. And I was even more enthused when I had my daughter hand my husband the positive pee stick upon his return home from brunch. Our little family was growing and my heart was bursting. And a lot happened in the 9 months following, and perhaps I’ll go into them some day on here, and perhaps I will not, but for now, I shall cut to the chase. The birth story. In parts. For the last two months of my pregnancy, I was experiencing painful Braxton Hicks contractions; so strong that these moments of uncomfortable tightness would show up strongly on the monitor. I went into labor and delivery 4 times for “false alarms”, as the contractions were present, but not doing anything to induce real labor. I should mention that because of my previous C-Section with my daughter, I was scheduled for a repeat surgery on October 28, 2013. Not only was this a routine repeat, but my little boy, in all his enormous glory, was lying in the transverse position, which means instead of being head down (or, in breach cases, head up) he was lying smack across my stomach. I looked like I was smuggling a watermelon under my shirt. It was ridiculous looking. I was all belly and my belly had a belly. I had mixed feelings leading up to my c-section. I was relieved, in some ways, to have the luxury of planning my second child’s birth; to schedule a day, to make sure that I gave the proper preparations and goodbye to my daughter, to make sure that my nails and toes were perfect….but I was also scared. And pardon my French, but I was scared shitless. I remembered the scary parts of my first C-Section: The Spinal and the feeling of not being able to breathe; the kind anesthesiologist who put a wet sponge to my parched lips; and then the whole BABY thing. The idea of another baby terrified me. And I teach babies. I love babies. I am kind of a baby expert. But I was so scared about how to expand our little tribe. We had things down over here, and I worried, every minute, about going through surgery, surviving surgery, and then surviving parenthood. I grew increasingly nervous as the date approached, talking to my husband, parents, friends and OB. He would refer to the scheduled C date as a “birthday party” and I looked at it as a day of dread. It is hard for me to admit this (especially in hindsight) but I was just terrified. And all of my trips to labor and delivery did nothing to assuage my fears. Four times I said “Bye Bye” to my little girl, saying “We may be going to meet your brother!” and then having to waddle on out hours later with a closed cervix and tons of embarrassment. And pain. And contractions. And, in one case, sleepy baby. And then, at 4 am on the morning of October 24, I awoke out of a dead sleep in pain. Real, can’t really breathe, stomach-tightening pressure and pain. It was so painful that I woke up my husband. I was 38.5 weeks pregnant. My C-Section was scheduled for the following Monday. And so, I said to myself, “Self. You are NOT going in again for a false alarm. You are not. If this means that you are having this giant transverse baby at home in your bathtub so be it.” I even went as far as to pack my daughter’s lunch note reading “Four days until you meet your baby brother!” I gave her a regular kiss goodbye. “See you after school!” I said. But by 10 am when the contractions were becoming more painful and regular, I called my OB. And he asked me if these contractions felt different. And they did. And he told me I had to come in. “It may be party time!” He said. My nails were chipped, my hair was dirty and I had not said goodbye to my daughter. It could not be time. But the contractions were hurting so badly that I was almost in tears. So off to the hospital I went…To be continued…(and trust me, it gets a lot better…)

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