One Year of Smudgie; or, January 13

On January 13, 2011, I sat across from my husband in a Le Pain Quotidien on the Upper East Side eating a yogurt and granola parfait and waiting for the wizards at our fertility clinic to finish doing whatever voodoo they do to the samples before show time. LG looked at me and said, "This is going to work. This is going to be the one that works." He looked tense and sounded like he wanted to believe the words more than actually did believe them. I smiled a little and didn't respond.

Later that night--as LG likes to remind me--we tried to make some magic of our own at home, or at least some insurance in case the nurse's aim was off that morning. And at some point that day, this amazing, sweet, adorable, dome-headed, twitchy-legged, smiley, perfect little boy was made.

I think about the last year of Smudgie's existence and marvel that he has grown from a couple of teeny tiny little gametes to the warm, cuddly weight that curls against my neck when I hold him in my arms. I think about the girl I was on that day last year--sad, worried, afraid to hope, but determined--and can hardly believe that today she's a mother. A mother who, whatever frustrations and irritations she has to handle, is happy right deep down to her core.

Happy one year of being in this world, my sweet son. You have made it glow brighter than I ever thought possible, and I love you.

This Time Last Year; or, Champagne Wishes and Baby-Filled Dreams

"This time last year" can have such a sad ring in our little corner of the internet: This time last year I thought things would be different. This time last year I thought 2011 would be my year. This time last year I had hope.

I'm remembering what I wrote at the end of 2009. At the end of 2010. How I looked back at years filled with loss and sadness and desperately clawed my way to whatever measure of peace and fulfillment I could. How I tried my damnedest to dwell on lovely vacations and home renovations and every happy moment with Lawyer Guy in order to fight back the darkness that threatened to overwhelm me.

I'm sure I don't need to say how stunningly joyful 2011 was and how gloriously grateful I am that this was, in fact, finally "our year." For me, there is an additional element of reflection, though: the cycle in which Smudgie was created started on New Year's Eve 2010. At every OB appointment, when they asked "When was the date of your last menstrual period," I remembered crying in the Bahamas as I watched the fireworks over the harbor. I remembered holding LG's hand as tight as I could and challenging the future to do it's very best to break me. And I remembered the surge of strength I felt in spite of my tears, knowing that I'd learned how to survive. And once that sort of reminiscence begins, it's hard to stop: I think of my first yoga classes two years ago, how I finished every session crying silently in shavasana and would walk home in the cold and dark praying that all we needed to get pregnant again was a little exercise.

For those of you with new babies or big bellies this year, I hope you spend New Year's Eve drinking in their sweet faces, their beautiful kicks: the most intoxicating champagne I can think of.

And for those still waiting and wishing and despairing, I hope 2012 is the year in which life finally turns sweet again. I'm proof that it can happen more suddenly than you'd believe.

Happy New Year.

Anger Management; or, Past, Present, Future

I've met many new mothers over the past few months. We're all sleep-deprived. We're all adjusting to new routines, new emotions, new bodies. We bond over breast-feeding and bottles, over going back to work or thinking about staying home, about the amazing and exciting strides our little guys and girls make almost every day. Some are younger, some are older, but we've all got something in common.

Still, I don't know if anyone else lost babies. Or if anyone else knows what it's like to sit with pants off on a paper-covered table waiting for doctors to help you make a baby. Or how it feels to stare at your umpteenth negative pregnancy test. Or what it's like to cry as you buy another package of tampons at the drug store. Or how it somehow hurts even more when you stop crying and pick up the tampons like business as usual.

I'm sure there are other people with other stories like mine or stories that put mine to shame. This post isn't really about that. It's about one important discovery I made the other day:

I'm not angry any more.

I can hear about an accidental pregnancy without tears. Or learn that a friend was mostly just freaked when she saw the positive sign without wanting to shank her.

I'm glad my Smudgie was as wanted as a baby could possibly be. I'm glad I knew with every fiber in my heart how lucky I am to have him, how lucky I've always been. There are possibly sad times ahead (though possibly--hey, why not try a little optimism?--we've paid our dues already). But right now, every moment with my little man is a precious kind of perfection.

Thank you for healing my heart, Smudgie dear. I love you, sleepless nights, constant laundry, and all.

Autumn Afternoons for Two; or, Nine Weeks

Smudgie and I are listening to Bach as the winter sun dies outside. Our Christmas tree (his first Christmas tree!) is glowing in the corner of the room. He had his two-month vaccines today, so he's a little out of sorts, fussing and sleeping in his swing.

It's been a busy but happy few weeks. We've met new moms in our neighborhood for walks and yoga classes and happy hours at local bars (nothing like 6 or 7 moms with pints and zonked-out babies occupying the bar stools with their diaper bags and ergo carriers). We've joined a knitting circle of new moms at a local coffee shop. It's both wonderful and heartbreaking how easy it is to meet people with a baby. In the past two months we've made more new friends than in the previous 3 years of living in Park Slope, which I love and feel a little guilty about. We're in the club now, and it's great, which makes the hardness of those years on the outside even sharper. Or maybe makes the happiness of this time even keener.

We've had lots of lovely autumn walks through the park together, just the two of us, Bella sometimes riding along in the lower basket of Smudgie's stroller. We've had lots of leisurely lunches at quiet restaurants chosen. He's a pretty great lunch date.

Smudgie is still teeny-- only 9 lbs 5oz today at 9 weeks and 22 inches. He's in the 25th percentile for length and the 5th for weight. The doctors tell us he's gaining just fine, perfectly on track, and that being small is not a problem. We think he's going to be long and lean, just like his daddy.

Smudgie loves to trade smiles in the mornings and he lights up when he's held up to see the colorful artwork over his crib. He stared mesmerized at the decorated tree last night, most likely captivated by the twinkling little lights. He can flip from belly to back and has been since he was 7 weeks. He's a tummy time champ. He's not the greatest sleeper, but we're getting one 4+ hr stretch a night and hoping he'll start to lengthen that soon.

We've also been dealing with reflux for the last few weeks. Smudgie's constantly wearing a bib these days. Tummy time may at any moment turn into an explosive situation. Spit-up has been known to coat his face and hair, though it doesn't seem to bother him. We've got a prescription waiting in my bag but are waiting to see if he improves at all on his own over the weekend and next week, as the past few days he's fussed and cried and spit up less.

Life with a two-month old is physically and mentally exhausting. But also very sweet.

Giving Thanks; or, Planning the Unplannable

It's way too early for us to be thinking about second (or later) children. And yet it's also only natural to say things like, "We'll do x/y/z when we have another one" or "In my next pregnancy I'll [blank]."

We still qualify with the infertile if. "If we have another child." "If I'm pregnant again." People must think that we're undecided about having more kids, when really we are (or I am) just careful after learning in a hard school not to count chickens. Don't want the universe to suspect we're making assumptions. No good ever comes of that.

But I did assume. I assumed we'd approach the task of giving Smudgie a sibling with the same dedication we went after parenthood in the first place: everything on the table and all our chips in. Now, after a brief, preliminary, and by no means definitive conversation with Lawyer Guy, I don't know anymore.

He wants a second child (and is possibly open to considering a third) but perhaps there are limits to what he'll do to have one, limits that didn't apply in the same way to the first. He suspects he wouldn't want to adopt. Or at least not to blithely assume it's a possibility for us without giving it serious thought. IVF also is a question mark.

I want Smudgie to have a brother or sister. I also love my husband and need him to be comfortable with any family-building method we choose. We've tabled these conversations until we actually need to have them (i.e., not for at least another year and likely even longer). But for the first time, I'm considering that Smudgie could wind up an only child, a scary proposition to someone with three siblings.

I feel angry that IF and loss are still rearing their heads in our lives, angry that we can't plan out our family with the railway timetable precision that so many of our family and friends can apply. I feel worried and a little sad that I may never have the family of my dreams. I feel tired at the thought of more ART and the tough conversations it inspires. I feel hopeful that we wont have to fight as hard this time, that we'll conceive again on our own and this time it will stick.

Mostly, though, I feel grateful for my son. I held him this weekend and stroked his unbelievably soft little velvety head. And I thought back to that conversation with LG when Smudgie woke me for an unexpected third time last night. Because this might be it. This might be my one shot at mommyhood, my one time with a newborn, and I don't want to miss or wish away a single moment of it.

I guess that's true for everyone. Maybe I should also feel grateful that I, at least, know it.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Remembrance Day

Sometimes when I think with excitement about how very much I have to learn about Smudgie over the beautiful decades of our lives together, I remember you and then I realize how much I know about him already.

I never got the chance to discover that you hiccup almost as much on the outside as you did on the inside-- at least four times a day all through the third trimester. I never felt your knees or elbows through the barrier of a tight swaddle and recognized their familiar pointiness from their poking against a very different kind of enclosure. I never compared your ultrasound images to your peacefully sleeping form, marveling at the little hands that extend above your head in your crib, just as they did before you were born.

I knew nothing, but I loved you anyway and missed you like my best friend when you were gone.

Today, two years later, I hold your sleeping little brother on my lap and don't know how to wish for anything more or anything different. When I look at him, I see perfection. But I don't want to say "It all turned out for the best' or "Everything happens for a reason." Because once upon a time you were here and then you weren't, and it broke my heart for me and for you. I wanted you to live and love and be happy. It is still so sad that you never got the chance to.

I wonder sometimes if I would love Smudgie in quite the exact way I do if it weren't for you coming and going first. I think of you when I look at him. I think of you when I hold him to my chest at night and kiss that smooth, precious place where his neck meets his shoulder.

Be at peace little one-- little ones. You are knit into the love that makes our family everyday. So you'll always be with us.

Calms and Storms; or, One Month!

A good friend (with a four month old daughter) sent me a care package after Smudgie was born, and in this package was a novel, A Big Storm knocked it Over by Laurie Colwin, an author I love. I spent the past week reading the novel in fits and spurts-- a few pages in bed before collapsing to sleep, a chapter or two in a coffee shop around the corner from my house, a big chunk lying on the floor of the bathroom while Smudgie chilled out in his bouncy chair, lulled to sleep by the bathroom fan and running shower (yes, it wastes both water and electricity, but it calms him down so that's that).

Toward the end of the book, I found a post-it note in the novel left by my friend. She wrote: "To me, this is the perfect description of mothering a newborn." The paragraph she described is this one:

Motherhood is a storm, a seizure: It is like weather. Nights of high wind followed by calm mornings of dense fog or brilliant sunshine that gives way to tropical rain, or blinding snow. Jane Louise and Edie found themselves swept away, cast ashore, washed overboard. It was hard to keep anything straight. The days seemed to congeal like rubber cement, although moments stood out in clearest, starkest brilliance. You might string these together on the charm bracelet of your memory if you could keep your eyes open long enough to remember anything (Colwin 225).

My little boy has had quite a stormy day, which succeeds the calmest and easiest night since he was born 1 month and 1 day ago. (So long a time! And so short!). He weighs 7 lbs 10 oz, which is almost two pounds more than when he was discharged from the hospital. He's awake for longer during the day and notices more and more-- lights shining through blinds, the orange hanging squirrel on his activity mat, his puppy sister Bella, his mommy's and daddy's eyes. He has formidable neck strength and is lulled to complacency (most of the time) by a running hairdryer. Last night, Lawyer Guy and I laid pillows and blankets on the floor of his room so we could run the hairdryer until Smudgie slept without worrying about burning his room down.

(I felt like a kid who had made a secret fort. We kissed under the blankets and it was one of those perfect moments I know I'll never forget).

I figured out how to get out of the house on my own-- snap the baby in his car seat, carry it down the stairs, negotiate getting stroller base/baby/diaper bag (and sometimes dog) out the door in shifts and down to the sidewalk and putting it all together, and then walk or meet a new friend or sit and eat lunch and read. It does make a difference to see the sunshine. The time passes faster until LG returns home.

And yesterday, on his One Month birthday, I thought that Smudgie gave me his first smile. We propped him against the boppy to photograph him and he looked right at me and smiled. I smiled back and he did it again, and I snapped this picture:

And then he pooped. A lot and loudly. Which is maybe also a metaphor for motherhood.

Looks like there's a stormy night ahead. I'd better go and get him from his daddy so we can batten down the hatches.