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THIRD LUNCH

I’m sitting in my bed at 9:00 p.m., eating third lunch, and getting ready to go to sleep at my now-standard time of 9:30.  It’s not dinner, because this morning I brought a large amount of delicious best-friend-shepard-pie to work for lunches for today and tomorrow.  At 11:00 a.m. I ate lunch.  At 2:30 p.m. I could not resist knowing it was sitting in the fridge and ate second lunch.  When I got home at 8:15 p.m., my partner had already eaten (logically) and so I figured I’d eat the second small tupperware of the same leftovers.  Third lunch.

Things are still a little hard and also way better but sometimes not as much better as I want. You know?  Like, I had an AMAZING weekend at the cabin with besties.  But there is a little moment as I am going to bed before everyone, and getting up in the night with little, and getting up early with little, that I am … wistful … that even with being able to bring baby with, and everyone loving and being great about it, my role in the world is just different.  Still great! But in moments where everyone else can be the same as we always were, it’s bitter-sweet to be in different. I still got lots of great and same and always and that was so nice! But still…different.

Along those lines, we have made a hard decision that we will NOT be going out for NYE.  Even though my beyond-freaking-amazing sister said she would spend the night at our house with baby including the middle of the night feeding/wake-up.  It just doesn’t feel right – it’s really not reasonable to ask someone to take on the task of middle of the night baby needs which range from very best scenario (to bed at normal time, with one 1/2 hour to hour middle of the night feeding and soothing) to worst (up every 1/2 hour, inconsolable).  And, if we are out and partying down, we are not available to come home or make good decisions if something goes wrong and we get an emergency call.  And if we are too hung over to be functional the next day and be excited and fun, we are not being good parents to our little.  Making this decision was both super hard and really relieving.

And, before anyone says anything about the relative unimportance of NYE let me invite you to fudge right off and make your value judgments about YOUR life.  NYE is my absolute MOST favorite holiday of the year. Not because of being “wasted” (my first pregnancy was on NYE and only the BFF and partner knew I was entirely sober and still having a lovely time).  It’s because after the stress of every family pulling every direction, and needing presents, and end-of the-year work goals, and just general meeting of every need and obligation, I always spend NYE dressing up and getting down with my most important people – not every single important, sadly – but a concerted effort to spend that night celebrating the past and welcoming the future with the people I have chosen to hold close to my heart.  NYE is about new beginnings, about taking stock of where you are, who you are, where you want to go, who you want to be, and how you want to achieve those goals. It’s about remembering where you’ve been and acknowledging the work, and sorrow, and disappointments, and successes, and joy, of the last year.

If I never ever hear another person complain about how NY resolutions are stupid, or caring about new years is stupid because it’s an arbitrary date and each day is the same, I will still have heard too many whiny people spitting on other people’s joy for no good reason. Marking the passage of time has meaning, and is important to different people in different ways. Sometimes, the only way I have gotten through an emotionally dark time is knowing that time DOES pass and even pure unadulterated misery cannot stop new days from dawning and things changing and, eventually, something pleasurable or joyful from happening.  A former partner asked me why I loved each new month and especially each new year and I said, “it’s a new year (or just month), ANYTHING can happen!” I LOVE that feeling!!  And when I realize I haven’t been having that feeling, it’s a sign I need to slow down and find a way to be present and take time to rest and renew.

We are in a place where I spend a LOT of time reflecting (despite feeling like I have no time to just BE).  I know I will be both sad and happy about my decision on NYE.  I know that this next year is going to bring some significant emotional journeying.  I know I will find a way to spend time with my most important people on NYE at some point – just different.   And I may even find myself going to bed at 9:30 and wishing that I had yet more lunch.

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EVERYTHING IS AWESOME

In keeping with the cognitive dissonance that seems to be my life, there is so much greatness running through all of the misery of the last month.  BabyX2 could not be more amazing.  Ze is great – rolling over early, talking, shrieking, babbling, grabbing things, starting to sleep at night regularly (YAAAAAASSSSSS).  Baby’s favorite things are faces, looking at baby’s self in the mirror, babbling, and having someone talk whale (from Finding Nemo).  Baby still loves Hello Animals and Hello Bugs, but is seeing color better, and will often sit through a reading of “Please, Baby, Please”.  Baby rolled all the way to one side recently, but didn’t notice thank goodness – NOT READY!  Baby has started to like bathes, some, being lotioned, some, and attention LOTS!

Our family is so amazing.  So much support, love, time, and effort for our process and for our baby – even though no one knows how long baby will be with us. My in-laws agreed to do a puzzle room as a family activity over Thanksgiving, and it was such a great time! I cannot believe how lucky I got with bonus-sisters and I am hopeful that I can raise children to be half as amazing as my partner’s amazing grown-up nieces.

My friends are so amazing! They take every call and listen to every tear – even when it’s the exact same thing we already talked about…again.  They take care of baby, they take care of me, they take care of my partner.

Despite being overwhelmed and stressed out and overworked, I have received so much support from my colleagues, both in terms of asking about baby, and recently giving positive feedback as to my work product and my future.  It’s a huge relief after a hellish week pushing through tired, sick, and busy, to hear effusive positive feedback.  I often wish I didn’t care so much about those types of feedback, but since I DO it IS awfully nice to get it.

We have our first Christmas tree since we became a couple! And, I took all my small little metal trees to work and I have a small forest of holiday trees to cheer me up every day!

We are able to take a weekend away next weekend, and my very closest inner circle is able to join us, and I am literally living for that break.  I have hope if I push really hard now in the front half of the month, I will be able to take a couple days and actually relax during the holidays, and make time to spend with family and friends, and my tiny family.  When I stop worrying about the future with baby and remember to spend the moment, it is generally pure joy (except at 2:30 a.m.  But nothing is very joyful at 2:30 a.m.)

When I texted at the last minute this morning, my inner circle jumped into gear, and we had a lovely day out in celebration of my partner’s 41’st sun-rotation.  We had food, and beverages, and played video games, and it was honestly delightful.

My foot is getting better, my canker sores have healed.  I’ve been doing my PT stretches and my neck is going to loosen up.  If I work a 14 hour day tomorrow, I will be on track for the rest of the week.  We just need to get through the next 4 days…This is doable.

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EVERYTHING IS AWFUL

This last month has just straight up sucked.  I was sick for three weeks.  I was exhausted, everything hurt, and nothing stopped.  Everyday I hauled my butt up and went to work (to everyone’s joy – everyone loves that colleague that comes to work sick…I’m pretty sure that’s how I got sick in the first place), but I was sick and was not as effective so I still fell further behind – but I didn’t miss any deadlines and got my major projects done.  Because I was working and caring for a baby, I never got enough rest, so I just kept getting sicker.  Because I was sick and working all the time, I didn’t have as much ability to help with the baby, leaving my partner to pick up the slack and cutting off my already limited time with baby.  It was a circle of hell.

It was also Thanksgiving, a time of family and relaxation.  Except that every Thanksgiving my very…challenging…FIL comes to town. Twelve days of my partner being constantly stressed to the breaking point.  Of me not working enough, to try to help and be available, and falling more behind at work.  My BIL also came to town and was honestly nothing but lovely to be around, but a houseguest is always a little extra stress.  There was partner stress, there was family stress, there was baby stress, on top of an overextended my own self.  It was not awesome.

By the time we were through Thanksgiving, I was less sick.  Instead, my achilles tendon had started acting up and I was in pain every second, and walking with an embarrassing and debilitating limp. I actually considered crutches it was so bad – and driving was a special form of agony.  I haven’t taken time to keep up with my PT for my shoulder/neck (thanks again, work!) pain, and that started up again.  I developed three canker sores.  We sat down to dinner at a restaurant one evening and I bumped my knee on the table and I literally just put my head down and started crying.

And through it all, a constant nearly overwhelming sadness and fear because we believe it is most likely our baby will go back to bio-parent(s).  Even if that ends up being a good thing (it doesn’t look good to us right now – but we deliberately keep as much distance as we can, because we have no say in the process and we have to trust the system we are a part of to do the best for these children) it will be beyond heartbreaking.  Aside from the complete agony and loss for us, I just cannot stand the thought of the curiosity and joy that currently shines out from my baby leaching away in a home that doesn’t encourage and foster learning and opportunities.  I’ve seen the older children and they do not have my baby’s spark at all – they have the deadened eyes of trauma survivors.  For very good reason.  But it makes it pretty hard to be sanguine about letting go of this baby.  It’s also a constant form of self-doubt about what we are doing – it’s hard not to feel like you are a part of a constant legacy of colonialism/racism, when the majority of foster parents are white, and a disproportionate (but not majority) of children in care are children of color.  It’s hard to wish so desperately for this child to be raised outside its culture in part because of the joy it will bring US.  On the other hand, if it wasn’t us, it would be someone else – it might as well be us.  And we, again, stay distant from the actual process.

Baby(x)3 is also on the horizon – and not-so-much a baby.  We are in a holding pattern, because everything hinges on what is going to happen with permanency planning for current baby X2, who may or may not come with babyX3 -but more likely than not WILL. But my little hands itch to get ahold of that child – because my limited information shows me that possible-X3 is not getting the help and support ze needs to get over the ACES already experienced, to get school ready, to get emotional support, to catch upon the things that have already been missed.  The longer you are desperately running from behind carrying all the weight, the harder it is to close those gaps.  Just gimme!

We made it through sick and through holiday 1, and through the entire awful month of November.  So far, December has been just as awful. The holidays are never fun for us, and I already know it is because I work too much and have too many families pulling in too many directions at an already incredibly busy time of year – and there is nothing I can think of to DO about it.  I was on the phone with a boss/colleague yesterday (that’s right, Saturday!) and he said “don’t you have a baby? Don’t work too hard!)  And it was all I could do not to say, “I’m doing work FOR YOU!”.  Argh. So rude.

It is my partner’s birthday tomorrow.  I have to work – a lot.  I got him no presents.  My baby currently shows a very slight preference for him, which is FINE he’s the primary caregiver, but it totally makes me sad.  We have no amazing plans for today (except I will not work ALL DAY!).  I’m entirely exhausted and miserable about the level of needs not being met – work expectations not met, my partner’s very reasonable need for time with me without a baby, my baby’s need for time with me. And whatever my needs are, they are so far down the list of needs not being met right now I cannot even take the time to identify them.  I’m stressed, snippy, difficult, and down.  And that’s just how now is.

 

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THE UNKNOWN

One of many many weird things about fostering is that you do not know what came before.  Even with a tiny baby straight from the hospital (so we know things like she never lived in a physically or sexually abusive home before coming to us) we do not know other things – for example, we have no idea if bio-mom used alcohol at any point during the pregnancy and, therefore, if fetal alcohol syndrome is a risk, if baby was full term, etc.  Of course, we also do not even know if we will have her with us long enough to know how she develops.  The “what came before” and “what if they aren’t smart” or “what if they are emotionally compromised” concepts were really overwhelming while we were considering adoption. . . but has been surprisingly absent from my usually worrying mind since I got my hands on this little one.  Presumably, that’s how love works!

So far, baby is developing exactly as a baby of her age is supposed to, except, of course, the not sleeping outside our arms part! (I say that, as, right now, she hits the 45 minute in the bassinet mark for the first time in a week! Perhaps I should have tried publicly shaming her for her sleeping habits sooner…)  I love the internet for its wealth of information and I freaking hate the internet for its wealth of information.  Trying to figure out what to do about a nine-week-old’s sleep habits is downright impossible.  After endless reading, I concocted a plan…because baby’s LOVE PLANS and are generally very cooperative! Right now, we are doing everything we can to teach her to just sleep at night, without regard for putting her into the bassinet.  We will hold her if we have to, we want to get her on a night-time-sleeping schedule.  THEN, NEXT, we will teach her to sleep without being held.  It seems too hard to teach her everything at once, and I am just not wiling to entirely traumatize my tiny baby through an intense crying it out scheme.  I know people do it, and I know it’s probably fine, it’s just not going to be me.  I just… can’t leave a baby in foster care to feel abandoned, even though she is tiny and doesn’t know any better, and basically has had her every need catered to since the day she landed here.  We will do everything we can to teach healthy attachment every second we have her!

Baby loves faces and smiles.  She has learned to do a hilarious ridiculous shriek of excitement that would probably be completely awful if it wasn’t so doggone adorable.  Baby likes her special black and white books and makes excited faces when she sees the black and white animals.

I think she like “Hello Bugs” just a tiny bit more than “Hello Animals” but I’m probably entirely full of shit. But I have witnesses that she really DOES love the books!

We have learned that we are likely to know more about the first leg of this journey by the beginning of next year – which is pretty soon in the grand scheme of life.  In some ways, we are luckier than most foster parents, because the court side of our baby’s case is moving faster than usual because there are other family members already in care.  There is an emotional balancing act between wanting what is best for the baby and her family and wanting, for all the obvious reasons, to keep her.  Anything that happens that is good for me is heartbreaking for her family of origin and will certainly have emotional repercussions for baby in the future.  We have spent a lot of time thinking about that balancing act and the reality is, I don’t have any control over those pieces – they are not going to give her to me because I want her, they are going to do whatever is best for her without any input about my personal wants or needs. That means, if some day, baby (or future babyXs) stays with me for good, that I can simply be happy for our family because I am not the cause of the trauma. I get to be a piece of stability that helps her heal and address that traumatic history.  With full awareness of all the complicated and moving parts, we have given our future selves permission to simply be selfish in our happiness when the time comes.

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LIFE CHOICES

The last few weeks have been both amazing and hard.  Baby(x)2 and I went to parties THREE Saturdays in a row! Space Exploration party, a housewarming party, and then a downright amazing Willy Wonka themed party for which our TV Room outfits were SICK!  Clearly we have science – or at least costumes – for any occasion. 

It was really great to get out and be with people especially before baby gets too old to just keep her contained and calm in the ring-sling. Have I sung the praises of the ring-sling yet? If not, let me extoll its virtues!  The Moby-type wraps are lovely for like…a hot minute with a tiny tiny infant, but there’s a bit of a learning curve to getting it on, and once your baby is able to acknowledge it is outside the womb, it’s not really that effective anymore.  (If you are looking for one, there are always tons for cheap on Craigslist and you can even make your own with a long piece of stretchy fabric fairly easily).  Ergo/Baby Bjorn, etc. are great – especially for long-wearing, walks, and apparently men, who seem to not love the ring-sling as much as the women I know.  BUT the RING SLING for me, is the BEST.  Baby can look around and be part of life as long as she wants, she can go to sleep fairly comfortably when she wants, and I can put the tail of the thing over her head to keep her calm and block out light.  The tail can be twisted for neck support for a tiny baby.  It’s compact and easy to pack, it’s more attractive to wear than other slings, and it’s not bulky while you are wearing it.  For obvi reasons this does not apply to baby and I, but I am reliably informed you can breast feed inside it.  Ring-sling YASSS!!  Here’s a handy tutorial on threading your sling, which can be a bit of a learning curve as well, but gets pretty natural pretty fast.  I have two, so I can have a spare when I am washing.  I am considering getting more just for pretty color variety since I wear them all the time.  I just sent an ADORABLE Totoro ring-sling off to my besties with new baby across the country!

In addition to partying with baby each Saturday, I worked my ass off last month, and I can say with absolute confidence that I did it all.  I killed my hourly requirements, plus wrote an article (that I sadly don’t love but hey, it’s DONE) and got it to the publisher today.  I’ve been half on a working vacation the last few days because I am just so exhausted…but having that time with partner and baby has been SO FREAKING MAGICAL.  When I work a lot, I mostly see my partner for mere moments in the morning and evening and therefor mostly see his reasonable frustration and stress about full-time-stay-at-home parenting – which then stresses me out.  Having us both home a reasonable amount of time gave us a chance to enjoy being together with each other and the baby. Whatever happens in the future, this is our first baby and I need it to be special even while it’s hard.  And the last few weeks recently there has been!

But there have also been the true and honest frustrations of new baby raising. Baby got her first vaccinations last week (YAY! personal and herd immunity!)  She got a fever and was so sad and fussy for the next 48 hours.  Not unusual.  And my partner was so traumatized by her little sad sounds, he literally stayed up entirely overnight with her, and then I stayed home with her the next day.  She got through it and is great…but since that day, she has entirely refused to sleep in her bassinet.  Before that, we had JUST reached a schedule that had her sleeping up to four hours in a row at night. Now, holding her, fine, she will happily sleep four hours at night. But put her in a bassinet and she is up not her prior maddening every two hours but a new and improved every 20 minutes to half an hour.  We are both. so. tired.

A few days ago, my partner tried putting baby to sleep and then putting her down only to have her wake four times in an hour. In frustration, he finally woke me up for my half of the night and I started the same process… to sleep, immediate awake, UGH to sleep, immediate awake… As I was rocking her back to sleep for the third time in 45 minutes (with great tiredness and frustration) I moved to stand up just as my giant 18 lb man-cat jumped for his usual spot on my lap in front of the baby.  My momentum pushed him off and he grabbed the seat and my leg with his claws.  As I stood there, at 2:30 a.m, with an 18 lb cat hanging off my leg, feeling his one solidly hooked claw moving ever deeper into my thigh, unable to make a sound or I would wake up the sleeping baby, with tears pouring down my face ,and blood pouring down my leg, I really did take a minute to question my life choices.  In some ways, it was such an extreme moment it jump-started my head; this is fucking absurd and it can’t possibly stay like this forever, I just have to get through it! But really, that didn’t kick in until the next day.  In the moment it was just an endless “what if I just can’t do this?”  But I did. We did.  And we will!

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PARTY BABY

We took babyX(2) to a halloween party recently and it was great! If you are wondering, baby was Baby Groot in a pot, and she looked AMAZING (if only you could see her)! Then really she spent most of the night sleeping in a ring-sling on my front and it was ideal.  My partner was Baby Driver and I was nothing that had “baby” in the name at all, to my chagrin.

Wearing a baby at a party is … interesting. A more than negligible percentage of people asked, commented, mumbled, or whispered, “is that a real baby”?  Like, up through and continuing to ask four hours later as we were leaving…which would make sense if I had a costume that needed a baby accessory, but I did not.  It would be totally weird and nonsensical to be wearing a fake baby with a punk-rock Leia outfit!

Some people are TOO excited about the baby.  I can really only hold 2 conversations right now – (1) baby; and (2) work. That is literally all the hours of my day and everything I am currently devoting energy towards.  And I am SO BORED by this fact about myself! But some people REALLY want to talk about babies, to where I am talking about my OWN baby and I am STILL bored.  Some exits had to be made – graceful or not!

One (white, obvi) woman asked me about my baby’s clearly different race than mine.  I live in very diverse community and it’s been fascinating…not one person in my community has asked even one question about my baby’s race.  This woman was not ill-intentioned at all, she was just curious, and mostly that’s ok with me.  But sort of like the question “why don’t you have kids”, asking about a baby’s race being different than its caregiver is maybe just too invasive, even if it’s an obvious thing and normal to be curious about?  Because we adopted (for infertility, for love, for religion); because the baby is mixed-race and you just can’t tell and now I have to give weirdly personal information about my relationship; because baby is in foster care; for so many different fairly private reasons that just…maybe should not be asked of a stranger. I’m not sure!

Same party, a black or mixed race (it was dark at the party) man about my age saw the baby and just GUSHED about her, for like 15 seconds, and it was great! Super charming and sincere – but without any need to talk about babies WAY. TOO. MUCH.  An hour or so later, baby woke up for a bit and he happened to walk by when her giant eyes were staring around her, and he bent over and just spent like…a full minute just looking into her face, and sharing a moment with her.  He didn’t ask any invasive questions.  He didn’t overstay his time.  He didn’t even ask to hold her he just…had this very real moment of making himself available to her in a super open way.  I’m super grateful on behalf of my baby.

Overall, going to a party helped restore a really important piece of normalcy to my life – I got to feel like ME while still caregiving and storing up baby-time for my out–of-town trip; 3 whole days with NO BABY.

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PEAKS AND VALLEYS

BabyX(2) is almost seven weeks old, and our lives are starting to be a little more…normal?  My partner and I slept in the same bed two nights in a row (as opposed to splitting the night each awake and downstairs for 1/2 night, with the other getting a whole block of sleep of like…5 hours) and our baby is sleeping 3 hours in a row!  It feels like big progress from basically unlivable to “breathe in. breath out. ok we can do this!”

Of course, baby is also adorbs and starting to do really baby things like say “gah” in a cute baby voice.  Both during the last night (when she was snorting and wheezing like a rhino in her bassinet) and during the day (when she was saying “goo” and “gah” like a movie-baby) I have been forced to ask baby if she is trolling me because it’s so “image of what a baby is/does”.  But so far, she appears to be sincere!

We’ve learned more about what is going on now with baby and her family of origin and all of the options for the future.  It’s so hard to watch the future and hope for and be supportive of family of origin and just also, really, truly, have every desire to keep this baby forever.  I love how easy it is to love her.  I hate how easy it is for me to be jealous, envious, and just sad, about the people in my life who are producing their very own babies and just get to KEEP THEM.  Getting babyX(2) definitely filled the void – it’s kind of absurd how much I’ve been enjoying having a small baby – even the boredom and exhaustion of it.  But people very close to me just had their own baby and I’m legit having a hard time with it.  I’m a comparer, and it’s just so. so. UNFAIR.  I just want to keep my adorable warm squishy good-smelling baby! It’s made me think about trying to get pregnant again, about IVF, about every option that has direct permanency.  But we stopped trying to get pregnant because the hopes and miscarriages were both physically and emotionally draining.  And we stopped considering just straight forward adoption for a lot of reasons. And IVF is real expensive, and has only 20% odds of success for my age range – maybe even less because I’ve already had more than two miscarriages.

And you end back where you started – at love this baby TODAY and tomorrow just happens.  In some ways, I think one of the reasons that I am adjusting to parenting so well (much better than any of us expected!) is because being with a baby forces you to be present In The Moment.  One of my biggest problems is that I often fail to appreciate the present because I spend so much time worrying about the future – even when it’s a waste of time and energy and I have already done everything that can be reasonably done to ensure security and desired outcomes.  Baby is helping me to be “IN THE MOMENT” all the time – even the times without baby, because each piece of time is finite and allocated to a specific goal.

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SURPRISE! BABIES ARE EXHAUSTING AND PRETTY GREAT

WOOH! Being a tiny baby parent is a non-stop emotional roller-coaster.

Last weekend my partner’s back went out and he was pretty useless.  By Monday morning the no sleep since Friday, with constant baby-care while simultaneously working led to tearful result.  Luckily, his back continued to improve, and by midway through the week he was working really hard to get me enough sleep to function at work.  Also luckily, I have an amazing family that has been stepping up to help!

Finally getting enough sleep led me to stage 2 emotional fallout – Holy Fuck I’m going to get fired if I don’t start doing my job like…a LOT more (plus more tears! Maybe I’m not quite as not-tired as it seems).  I mean, I’m doing it.  But there is not a single thing I am not behind on and nothing feels organized or in control.  So now during my little sleep times I am having work nightmares.  Which is not actually THAT helpful to our overall life.  And this is something we just have to figure out. This is what we are doing, this is how we chose to do it.  Some day, I’m going to adopt a baby, and I’m going to take my freaking maternity leave, and it’s going to be the most beautiful few weeks of my life (probably I’ll be really stressed, and feel not entitled to that time, and we will take a trip and somehow fight the whole time. Building up future experiences never turns out well!)  But until then, I have to find SOME WAY to make this work. Mostly, to make ME work!

It’s really hard not to feel stressed about our gender-reversal household and not to think that things would work better if we were going the other way. I seem to find it easier to fulfill baby’s needs over long stretches of time and have trouble letting baby-care be provided by substitute caregivers in order to focus on work – while my partner seems more in need of breaks from baby-care and more stressed to not be able to get his personal work-projects done. But I’m the breadwinner and he is the full-time caregiver and it really seems like we somehow fucked up this plan! But presumably, if we reversed we would probably still be exhausted, stressed, and mildly resentful of each other that way too.  Maybe I need to ask 500 same-gender parents about their emotional status during this time to resolve this internal debate – I’m sure they’ll love that! OK, instead, new plan: stop taking on his jobs of problem-solving as well as my own – a super-hard thing to do, because I am a problem solver.

On the other hand, I managed to make muffins the other day! WHILE wearing a baby! And a good thing, because I’m pretty sure they were the only thing I ate for a few days.  Hard to say, life’s a little blurry right now.

On the other other hand…I am surprisingly into the whole being a baby-mama thing.  There has been a long-term concern that once bab(y)(ies) arrived I might not really be that into it, because I’m not really into babies generally. I remember a pregnant friend looking down and saying “I sure hope I like this thing” – a sentiment I super-get.  But my baby is totes excellent! It’s a lot like a slightly less cute slightly less independent puppy! I love puppies! It has a big round face, is gaining weight and getting bigger, and makes cute sounds, and is a warm cuddly puddle of snorfle and snug.  It’s pretty great and it’s pretty great that it is pretty great!!

And the big pre-placement concerns about the emotional disconnect of “I can’t  believe how hard I am working to take care of a baby and it’s not MINE” is surprisingly non-existent.  This baby IS mine unless and until it’s not.

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ADJUSTING EXPECTATIONS

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!! Remember when I was going to go to work with a 6 day old baby on Labor Day?  Yeah.  That did NOT happen. I remembered I have a tiny baby, and it’s actually a freaking holiday, and sometimes, you just have to admit you cannot do everything – particularly if you are really, really, really tired.

Inability to push through tiredness is my greatest weakness.  I can handle just about anything else, and I mostly say “cool. let’s just get through this”.  But…not if I’m really tired.  Then I sort of turn into a puddle of can’t.  Luckily, my partner, who has a hard time with lots of other things, pretty much just rocks it out while being tired! But still… figuring out how to balance two hour feedings 24 hours a day and still be, like, actual people, has been a bit of a struggle.

I did get back to work, a couple hours in the evening Tuesday (7 day old baby) on Wednesday for a 1/2 day (8 day old baby), and then full days Thursday and Friday. I am a little ahead of 50% of my required hours and I’m feeling like that’s pretty doggone amazing for having our first ever newborn baby at home.  We aren’t those people who have big families and have been raising babies forever – we are just barely figuring this out as we go here!

Baby is doing great – and I was thrilled that the pediatrician we selected is a black man and, in fact, every single person working at the clinic we chose was a person of color, from the nurse, to the technician, to the doctor.  My baby is not going to see a lot of pigmented skin at our Scandinavian/European heritaged household and I need to find every opportunity to make sure she sees and retains that people of color are everywhere, in every walk of life, doing every job.  I live in a community with significant racial diversity – but studies show that babies start to prefer the skin color of their primary care givers within the first few months of life.  I literally need to find someone that I can say, “hold this baby and stare at her while being black”.  NOT something I can say to any person, even if it is for a really important develop for this baby.  I’ve been looking into local ECFE classes, but it’s hard to sign up for parenting classes when you don’t have any idea how long you will have a baby…

The two hardest things of new momming for a foster newborn are exactly what you would expect: the need to work and the difficulty of uncertainty with regards to the length of time baby will be in our lives.

Work is work. It’s hard to be smart and focused when you are exhausted. It’s hard to be away from the baby all day.  Then I come home, snuggle a sleeping baby, try to take my share of the feedings, try to squeeze in some hours of sleep, and try to stay on top of deadlines and colleague expectations in a fairly demanding profession. We are definitely eating one full meal a day at our house – with high hopes to up that to TWO by the end of the weekend.

But emotional expectations and uncertainty…those are killer.  People LOVE babies. Like, I knew this, but until I started wearing a newborn out in public to do things like grocery shop, I did not know HOW MUCH people LOVE babies.  And that love, while well-intentioned, is so intrusive! Everyone is asking about age, status, etc.  And at some point, some question happens (like when the 25 month pregnant woman at the store accosted me and asked “WILL THIS THING EVER COME OUT AND BE CUTE LIKE THAT?) where I have to say “I did not grow this baby myself.”  Which, people actually take pretty well, a little taken aback, a little rearrangement in their minds…but it is inevitably followed by “Congratulations on adopting! That is amazing! Blah blah blah”.  And then what do you do? “I’m babysitting?”; “I’m fostering”; “yes, thanks”.  Really, what/how/when is no one’s  business – but when we are in limbo, HOPING to adopt one day, accepting people’s accolades and the moment of joy/hope that comes with their expressions of excitement is not only dishonest (although I do not owe them honesty), it’s emotionally painful (and I do owe myself the minimization of pain in an unusual and hard situation).  There is no way to keep an emotional barrier while fostering a tiny baby – you love it and spend 100% of your attention on it – but at the very least I can keep an intellectual barrier that this baby is NOT mine forever.  But I HATE sharing with strangers that this tiny baby is in foster care – the looks, the thoughts rolling across their faces, the follow-up intrusive questions…I sometimes wish we had a more Victorian society where people could only talk to me about the weather and fashion and couldn’t ask my name.  It would make these lines so much easier to maintain.

Fostering is about managing a constant catch 22.  I want this baby to have the best life possible.  If her family is able to do whatever needs doing to take her home forever and give her love, and security, and hope, and joy, I want that for her.  If they can’t, I obviously want her (and basically every baby in the system.  We are very concerned there is a long-term potential for child-hoarding if we keep fostering long-term).  But I don’t want her to have all the pain and stress that comes from adoption, from knowing that you came through the system, from broken families and uncertainty about every step of who you are.  I don’t want her to have the cognitive dissonance that comes from growing up in a family that does not share your color and features and therefore can never fully share your experiences.  It’s so hard to even pick a path for hope – and to simultaneously hope for everything.  In the meantime, I just take 10000000000 pictures that I can’t share.  Wherever this baby eventually grows up, if she comes to me in the future and asks me about this time in her life, I will be able to show her how much this family cherished every second we had with her.  And yes, I’m wearing her RIGHT NOW and maybe a couple tiny tears fell on her snoring tiny head.

 

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WE’RE TOTALLY DOING IT

Two nights and three days with baby DOWN! Baby STILL ALIVE! Apparently thriving? It’s pretty hard to tell when thriving means “eat, sleep, potty, cry, repeat” but so far I’m feeling pretty good about the experience.

We have a whole changing table in the bathroom area, we have a bassinet next to the bed, we have a baby room with a crib and dresser and closet…and the whole family is basically living in the living room/dining room area, we’re changing the baby on a towel on the dining room table and baby is sleeping in a stroller bassinet (totally safety rated for early baby bassinet sleeping!). This is for general convenience of change and feed in quick succession, but primarily so that the partner not on active duty during the difficult nighttime hours can actually sleep uninterrupted for a reasonable number of hours in a row before tagging in for baby-night-nurse relief.  Babies definitely sleep every second except when you want to lay them down in their own bassinet and actually sleep yourself…they are VERY alert and needy when that time happens! The best thing about a house with a second story is the ability to go where you cannot hear the baby cry – if I hear it AT ALL it’s dramatic wake-up with adrenaline rush and no going back to sleep for at least an hour – even if the partner is on baby-duty and doing a bang-up job and it’s my limited rest time.  A small apartment would be hard in this way – and I bow down to any single-parent, it’s beyond me how they handle this early time.

Last night we went to our first party together – a very local burn-night party, featuring good friends in our burning-man-style fuck-all party-wear.  Not shown: my unicorn fighting a robot leggings! Baby is not super-stoked on costume parties yet and is too tiny to wear most anything, but we did our best – she’s wearing various ill-matching neon and polka-dots and has TWO different hats with ears…but mostly she was shoved inside the wrap where she sleeps so peacefully you actually have to wake her up to eat so her party-wear was less featured. 

Baby LOVES Moby-wrap (ours is a friend’s homemade one and it works ACES).  I am typing with baby in it NOW in preparation for the return to work tomorrow and it’s going pretty well.  I assume this is how very pregnant women feel – sort of unwieldy and very far away from the actual keyboard!  This baby is currently smaller than many newborns, so it’s hard for this never-preggers to understand how this ENTIRE THING could be shoved up inside a person!

I wish there was a newborn needs lending library.  Like, a bassinet and a Moby-wrap are GREAT for the beginning tiny baby time – but that’s a REALLY SHORT TIME.  We are so lucky that people have stepped up with so much we really aren’t having to buy much of these short-term items…but Craigslist is FULL of people trying to offload super-useful things with an incredibly short shelf-life and large cost.  In some ways, we are the best investment for your used items…we could do this stage a LOT of times in the next couple years!

Tomorrow we start stage two “make it (me) work”.  I’m literally just going to take baby with me…it’s a holiday so there will be few people in the office, she sleeps in the wrap or her stroller anyway, and it’s my awake hours so if I want to share in the parenting responsibilities, I have to find some way to work and care for baby… and really, at this tiny age, what’s the difference if I have her with me at work or at home? I guess we’ll find out!  My work includes paid adoption maternity time off, which is amazing…but we aren’t “adopting” right now – with fostering we could end up taking home brand-spanking-new babies multiple times in a year – so, with these life choices, and these goals, it’s time to Figure. It. Out.  This is, at least today, what it means to be this mother.