Bewbs!

I stopped nursing Miles in public when he took to pulling off my breast and leaving my nipple exposed to the world at large. Plus he makes noises while he eats--Tasmanian devil noises straight from a Warner Bros. cartoon. He is just such a high maintenance nurser, rhythmically kicking his top leg while using his free hand to either smack me in the face or pick seeds out from between my teeth, that I decided to make sure he was well-fed before we left team headquarters.

Also? I am rocking a 34G bra right now. When my boobs get engorged, that bra shrinks and clings to my chest like hole covers on a bowling ball. So there is pretty much no such thing as modesty. The Motherwear shirts I bought with their advertised panels and delicate, lacy shelving for "discreet" or "versatile" nursing were not meant for what I've crammed into them.

But when Miles and I flew to California, I had no choice but to nurse him in front of others. I initially tried to rig up some privacy with clips and a blanket, but he kicked and yanked that whole thing down before pulling off and sending a stream of spurting milk into the seat-back table (which was in the full upright, and locked position). I got really frustrated, to say the least. It made me even more determined to nurse him in private.

One day on our trip, we went to the beach. I love the beach. I find the mass expanse of the ocean to be really soothing and humbling. Miles and Patsy and I walked around in the sand, jumping out of the icy tide, watching the surfers, and Miles needed to eat. I was inspired to just stretch out on a driftwood log and feed him right out in the open. No blankets, no hunching, no looking both ways to check for passersby. I just hoisted my udder out into the salty air and let Miles go to town. It was great!

He ate like a gourmand and I forgot to feel tense, forgot to look all around to see who might be staring. Miles was true to form, digging in my nose and kicking me in the crotch while he made loud oinking sounds and ate. I kept thinking, "It's like he doesn't see anything embarrassing about this at all!"

And of course he doesn't! He is just eating. I sometimes make moany sounds when I eat something delicious, and I sure do fidget and kick my legs when my feet don't reach the ground. Why shouldn't my baby do the same thing? The whole experience really recharged my batteries. I didn't even try rigging up machinery to fake privacy on the rest of our trip, not even on the flight home and not even in the holding tank waiting for my rescue in Cleveland.

When Miles was hungry, I fed him, no matter where we were. And you know what? He wasn't as kicky or flaily when there weren't curtains or blankets or "hoods" dimming the lights on his feeding operation. When I wasn't super tense, he relaxed, too. My whole body just surrendered to the process. I haven't had the opportunity to leave my house since we returned, what with snowmageddon and all, but when I do, I will feel free to exercise my right to publicly nurse my baby. I reclaim the ability to not feel embarrassed by that act.

People will probably stare a little bit--I would stare, too, if I saw a boob that enormous--but since when (before Miles) have I cared about that? This is going to be a liberating revelation. I can just tell.

In Which Miles Goes Flying

My two overarching fears in traveling with Miles were screamsicle relapse and explosive poop mid-air. I did a lot to alleviate my other anxieties (rented a carseat, spent the weekend cobbling together replacement straps for the Ergo when someone in my family lost the chest strap hoisting MW up the stairs in the Cathedral of Learning, etc.), but knew I couldn't control the things that came out of my son. As it turns out, these things were the least of my worries! What I should have been leery of was "free" parenting advice! (And also morons)

My first bit of free parenting advice happened when we went through security. I had MW in the carrier, declared his liquid medication, got through the metal detector with ease. When it came time to reinsert him in the carrier and gather up all my belongings (they even made me take off Miles' shoes!!!), I suddenly lost my ability to function. I just didn't have enough arms to buckle the baby in the carrier and grab things off that damn conveyor fast enough.

I got my first parenting tip of the day from a business traveler who shoved me with her hands: "Move faster! You're holding up the line."

I felt a fiery, raging beast well up inside me. The only other time I felt such anger was when an opposing rugger dangerously cheated in a scrum once and I called her an Effing C right there in the middle of the field. This time, I screamed at the top of my voice, "STOP SHOVING ME! DO NOT SHOVE ME!" It was my first use of a Mom Voice and I found it to be effective in getting people away from me. I earned a huge bubble of space, concerned looks from the TSA people (though no assistance from these same persons), and finally got everything strapped back on.

We just went on our merry way, boarded the plane, and happily discovered it to be nearly empty! Hurrah! A whole row of seats to ourselves! Until a moron got on the plane.

I was sitting by the window and had started nursing Miles in anticipation of takeoff. The moron sat in my row--not in the aisle seat, but right there in the middle. Pressed up against my person. In a nearly empty airplane. It was so unbelievably strange. After takeoff, she looked around and asked me, "Isn't this B2?"

I told her I had no idea what she was talking about. She showed me her boarding pass stub and said, "My seat. Aren't I in B2?"

Let me pause to mention that MW and I flew Southwest. Every person in the universe knows that Southwest doesn't have assigned seats. And if you don't know that, by the time you get on the airplane you should because they say it over and over and over again: There are no assigned seats on our planes! They are all open. Open seating!

I reiterated this to the moron, who just nodded. AND THEN DID NOT MOVE. She sat there, pressed up against me, the whole 2 hour flight to Chicago. Also? She gave me odd looks when MW kicked her as he nursed.

Apart from this moron, the flight was amazing because not only did my baby not cry, he giggled and laughed the whole time. What a flirty, happy kid! I entered the long leg of the trip feeling strongly positive.

We had another nearly empty flight, but this time a little grandma-looking woman had the aisle seat while we took the window. At first, I felt like this grandma was a great seatmate, but each moment I spend thinking about the flight brings new little timebomb memories of truly shocking things that she said during transit. She had all kinds of advice to give out, such as:

"You need to get him on a schedule so he doesn't eat so frequently."

"He only sleeps a few minutes at a time!! He shouldn't have woken up from his nap yet. You need to get him sleeping longer!" (My immediate reaction to this statement was the thought, "Oh! Of course! That's what has been wrong with my life. We just all need to sleep for longer increments. I should have thought of that myself but didn't.")

"I didn't know his knees were so fat until you took his pants off." (This is not really advice, but is also really not nice)

"Just change his diaper right here on the seat. Nobody cares." (This was only bad advice because he had pooped a mighty poop and it sort of got all over the seat. Note to future travelers: your airplane seat might have baby poop remnants on it and you should wipe it off before you sit)

And, my favorite, "You change his diaper too often. He sure does pee a lot."

Now, this woman did hold Miles so I could eat my sandwich, so the flight was not a total bust. Also, the babe was a dreamboat the whole time, so I chalk it up as a victory.

As I mentally prepare for my flight home I realize I am an experienced enough mother to handle a baby on an airplane. I won't tempt fate and predict that he'll repeat his awesome travel debut, but even if he screams I feel like I'll just handle the way I always handle it if he screams. What I doubt is my ability to avoid arrest when reacting to people handing out great tips about baby-raising.

A very wise mother once told me that I am not bitchy enough when it comes to Miles and people touching him or otherwise affronting his aura. I suspect that is rapidly changing. Go ahead and give me a little shove or some judgment in the airport on Saturday and try out my new armor!

Top Gifts for This New Mom

I would be remiss to express gratitude for Operation Angel Miles and not also mention the other things that made my life better during the first months of motherhood. APART from 3 months' of weekly friend-helpers, the best, best, best things I got (in no specific order) were:

1. Coupons for Wheel Deliver. Corey and I could pick any restaurant we wanted and have our favorite food delivered! We chose, I believe, Mediterranean.
2. Money specifically designated for a housekeeper. I cannot begin to tell you how wonderful it was to not care about dust or filth while we used that gift.
3. Free babysitting. Beware, all ye who said, "Just give me a call if you ever want/need me to watch Miles." If I haven't already called you, I will soon.
4. Freezable food.
5. Commands/requests to leave the house for a walk or beverage. I was forcing hermitage upon myself when Miles was a screamsicle, so my friends who insisted I leave the house did me a great service indeed.
6. Beauty products. Corey's mom gave me some frou-frou stuff just when I was beginning to feel gross and disgusting. Afterward, I still felt gross and disgusting, but I had healthy, clean skin and a pleasing odor about my person.
7. Electronic pictures of my baby. It is shockingly difficult to remember or find time to upload pictures and everyone far away wants to see them. I love it when people take pics and put them online FOR me!
8. Moral support. Emails and voicemails and facebook messages reinforcing the fact that I could indeed be a great mother were (are!) an invaluable gift.
9. Romance. We got a gift certificate for a date as a Christmas gift. It was our first date in 6 months. I tried to make Corey hold my hand, but his eczema felt scratchy...
10. Disinfectant wipes. Now, I am trying to rid my household of bleach-based cleaners, but I must say that having a baby is messy and those tubs of wipes are pretty darn awesome for quickly eliminating poop from the bathtub or sweet potato from the television screen or even Corey's fried chicken oil splatters. When they are all gone, I will probably even buy more (even though they are cost-ineffective). So there's a gift that changed one of my household habits!

Now I am just waiting for a few of my friends to give birth so I can copy some of these fantastic gift ideas and make some other mom's life a little bit easier. Isn't that the best feeling???

What Rugby Means to Me

In college, our coach always gathered the team in someone's living room or a hotel room before a big match and made us share what rugby meant to us. Things always got emotional as people laid bare their souls and talked about the transformation the sport catalyzed in their lives.

Well, I'm not in college anymore and I'm not even playing rugby at the moment, but I feel called to share what rugby means to me right now. I have been searching for months for the right words to express what rugby has meant to me lately, and I just can't find them. There is no way to measure in words what my rugby team has done for me. But I'll try.

One morning in November, as the Angels headed to Texas for nationals (without me), I woke up horribly depressed as Miles suffered a major sleep relapse. I sat on my sofa, shaking and rocking, with my head under a blanket and sobbed as we blared static through the house and Corey marched the screaming baby up and down the stairs through the wee hours of the night. I decided to check my email and found a note explaining Operation Angel Miles.

My teammates knew we were having a hard time. They knew I was finding it impossible to cope with the isolation of months spent in my living room, marching a baby up and down the stairs. They knew that the sleep deprivation was compromising my mental and physical well-being, that I had to stop driving and that my eyelashes fell out. And so, before they left for Nationals, they left me an IOU.

My teammates set up a schedule and, every single Tuesday for the past three months, two of them showed up at my house to do whatever we needed. I have had ruggers washing dishes and getting Fenugreek for me. They swept my floors and took out my trash and marched my baby up and down the stairs. They engaged me in adult conversation, helped me decorate my Christmas tree, and took dictation while I nursed.

And that was just the surface. The true benefits of Operation Angel Miles were not just the immediate help with chores. The ripple effects are immeasurable! Some nights I got an extra two hours of sleep because my work was finished, which snowballed into a more coherent day and better mothering. Or certainly better teaching. Who knows what student benefited from my regained ability to think critically?

And, the part that matters most of all, I gained confidence the hard times would pass. I got to close my eyes every second and know I was supported by this amazing network of women who would not let me disintegrate. This gift was a boundless gesture of grace. I never knew what it really meant to experience grace before, but I will not forget how it feels enveloping my family.

How do you begin to express gratitude for such an act of love? How do you put into words what the bonds of this sport have meant to me in my darkest and most difficult hours? Operation Angel Miles saved my life this year.

What does rugby mean to me? This:

Circles

Six months ago this very moment, I was standing in the shower at Magee moaning in time to Snatam and waiting for Miles to evacuate my body. Man, I was hungry. Why can't laboring women at hospitals eat food? Anyway, for the next few months AFTER July 17, I spent most of my time marching up and down stairs as this was the only way to soothe my high needs, screamy baby.

Many other wonderful people in my life took stints marching those stairs. Corey spent more time, more hours marching up and down stairs wearing Miles than anyone in the world. I remember like yesterday those long, multi-hour stretches of Corey marching while the static blared and we prayed and begged Miles to just go to sleep already.

Today, to celebrate his half birthday, we took our giggly, farty, rolly baby on the adventure of his lifetime. We took him stair climbing in the Cathedral of Learning! We marched his ass up 36 flights of stairs over and over again. It was like giving him a million dollars or 80 bars of super dark chocolate or a blank check for the bike shop or anything else you can think of that constitutes your ultimate fantasy.

I wish you all could have seen that kid in his Ergo on Corey's back. He loved himself! He fell asleep a few times, he stared at things, he giggled, he chewed on the straps. And Corey and I moved our bodies and felt good. It was like a great family date.

As we wound circles up that giant building, I couldn't help but think of the exercise as a rite of passage. I felt like telling Miles he'd better appreciate this stair climb, because it is probably the last one he'll ever get. I am so thankful that he no longer needs such endeavors to be a calm and happy baby! How very far we have come together...

Such Validation

I have not made it a secret that I felt (and feel) traumatized by my birth experience. I am currently hard at work researching an article about this very topic, a process which I find completely therapeutic and enlightening. I learned a statistic today that both floored me and gave me such validation, I can barely express my relief at having read it.

According to research conducted by the Childbirth Connection, lots of women experience trauma related to their childbirth. This doesn't even necessarily mean women experience emergency C-sections as I did. Plenty of women who have had vaginal births have things go wrong or are treated in such a way as to make them feel un-listened-to or unimportant. The result?

18% of American women demonstrate some signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after giving birth. That's nearly 1 in 5 women.

9% of American women demonstrate ALL the symptoms of PTSD after giving birth. Nearly ten percent of the women in this country, 400,000 women every year. These numbers are staggering. We tend to associate PTSD with soldiers returning home from war, not with women having babies, bringing "bundles of joy" into the world.

But Birth Trauma is a real thing. Having a healthy, beautiful baby and mothering that baby do not take away from the experience of bringing that baby into the world. It is still possible to experience the birth process separately from experiencing motherhood. The birth process is important to women and in many, many cases this birth process leaves them feeling...well...traumatized.

My great hope as I work on this article is that one mother out there will read my writing and recognize her experiences are real and valid and that she is not crazy. Most important, I hope just one mother will discover that she is not alone. Far, far, far from alone.

Information about the New Mothers Speak Out survey can be found here.

No Idea

Warning: This is a post about poop. Lots of poop.

This morning, Miles farted a mighty fart. The force of that fart lifted his butt and legs off the ground, like Denise Austin working her lower abs. He then proceeded to loudly poop right there in the living room, like what's the big deal? I'm pooping here!

I gave him some time to finish and then carried him upstairs to change him in his crib. He had still been in his pjs, so I took those off thinking it was time for some clothes. Then I opened up the diaper and started to clean things up. Only, he wasn't done pooping! More and more and more poop just started coming out. I didn't know what to do. I wasn't fast enough with the clean diaper, so it was just flowing out of the dirty diaper.

I knew one thing: I didn't want poop in the crib because I had just changed the sheets and anyone who has ever changed a crib sheet knows what a miserable freaking job that is. But what I didn't know was what do to about the poop.

Panicking, I scooped up the baby and ran into the bathroom with him, catching the poop in my hand as he pooped it out. I held him above the toilet, where he started to scream and cry. Probably because there was icy water splashing back on him as his poop feel into the bowl.

So I'm standing there covered in poop holding him while he poops and cries and I'm saying, "It's ok! You're such a big boy! Look at you pooping on the potty!" But I can't figure out how to clean us off. Should I put him on the cold tiles on the ground? Should I put him on the bathmat? I had no idea.

In the end, I used my elbows to get some toilet paper, ripped it with my teeth, and did a sort of cursory wipe job. Then I put him in his crib.

I turned around to take off my shirt, covered in poop as it was, and grab a diaper. But then I heard a horrible splashing sound.

I turned back around to see Miles, sputtering and choking as he forcefully peed into his own mouth. He started trying to swat the pee away, getting it all over the walls, the pictures on the walls, the toybox, the crib rails, the floor, and of course the damn crib sheets. Then he started to cry. And also shiver, because he was naked (remember, I was going to put clothes on him and had taken off his pjs).

So I clutch my pissy, shivering, crying child to my naked chest and I have no idea what to do. I mean, what do you do? Where do you put the baby down while you gather your thoughts? What can you touch without contaminating it? Why doesn't anyone tell you what to do when you have poop on your hands and pee and poop on your chest and you are holding a piss-covered, naked, shivering, crying, cold baby?

There is certainly not a chapter in ANY parenting book (I'm looking at you Dr. Sears) telling you what to do in this scenario. I had no idea. I pretty much stood in the middle of the room saying, "It's ok! It's ok! Everything is ok!" as the pee dripped onto my slippers.

I was paralyzed by my inability to know what to do. Should I touch the doorknob on the closet to get a towel, spreading more feces and urine around the room? Should I just put him on the hardwood floor and then have to mop later? I had no idea! No freaking idea!

Here is what I did: I put Miles back in the urine-soaked crib. I ran into the bathroom and prepared a warm, wet, soapy washcloth. I gave him a vigorous scrubbing and put him on the carpet on the floor of his room, draped a blanket over him, and immediately secured a diaper over his junk.

Then I washed my hands.

Then I ran back into the room and put him in a warm, fuzzy sweatsuit.

Then I moved all the furniture away from the walls so I could scrub pee-pee off the crib, the floor, the toybox, the walls, and the artwork. I was still mostly naked, wearing pee-pee slippers. I heaved all the dirty toys and sheets and mattress pad into MW's hamper and just scrubbed and mopped up and scrubbed, saying, "It's ok! You're such a good baby right now!"

Meanwhile, Miles rolled himself over, got one arm stuck in the ottoman for his glider rocker, and started pulling the pissy toys out of his hamper and putting them in his mouth. Which I didn't notice because I was cleaning and muttering.

At this point, my mom tells me I should have cleaned out the inside of his mouth. It makes sense. He had peed directly in there and was then sucking on urine-soaked animals. But I had no idea.

I put Miles in a safer area (the floor of my bedroom), finished cleaning, wrestled with the sheets for a half hour to get the crib back in order. At this point, Miles was hungry. But I was all covered in pee still, so I had to take a shower since I didn't want to put a pee-pee nipple in his mouth after all of that. Then I gave my baby some milk and some cuddling time, because we both needed it.

Demoralizing, Soul Sucking Torture

My baby still won't sleep at night. I can't stand it. It has been six months and he still wakes up repeatedly. Corey and I had what I thought was an acceptable system where I would diaper and feed him during one waking and Corey would do the next so we both could get a little bit of sleep.

Only now, Miles has changed the rules on us. He no longer goes back to sleep after eating and getting his ass wiped. And he's too damn heavy to march up and down the stairs anymore. His night wakings take a minimum of 75 minutes and usually include screaming and yelling from both frustrated parents. Ok, it's me doing the screaming and yelling. Corey just angrily gets back in bed and fluffs the covers over and over and over again, silently.

Miles makes me ache. Just when his sleep resistance shreds me into a writhing heap, he sticks out his little arm and holds my finger with all his strength. I just know he is equally devastated that he can't figure out how to fall asleep. He seems to be begging me to help him, but I have NO IDEA what else I can do for him.

We get two schools of support through this situation. One group of people tells us it's time to let Miles cry it out, that he needs to learn to self soothe and that enough is enough with this nighttime bullshit. Another group of people tells us that parenting is a 24-hr job, and that we should view his night wakings as nighttime parenting and just surrender to our hungry, high needs baby. This group reminds us how long it took us to get Miles gaining weight, that he really seems to need all the night time calories. Again and again and again.

It always seems like those are the options: martyrdom or Ferberizing.

My gut tells me not to let Miles cry it out. I can't bear it. Plus, when he becomes really upset he vomits. He vomits so much vomit that he smears it in his hair, in his ears, on the sheets, on the walls. When we leave the room, frustrated that he won't sleep, we inevitably come back 10 minutes later to a vomit whiteout. That doesn't feel like good parenting to me.

I just wish I could figure out what the hell this kid needs. There is still no consistency from one day to the next. A nap could be a half hour or 2.5. He could wake up for the day at 4am or 830. And so I stagger on, sleepless, filled with the high anxiety of never, ever knowing what will come next for this baby.

This, too, shall pass. That mantra has been the only consistency in my life since July. This, too, shall pass is all I have left. It seems those words will have to spell me a little bit longer.

Judgey Judy

I took Miles to Whole Foods yesterday because we had eaten literally everything in the house. I'm talking we had even consumed those random little half bags of whole wheat pasta hiding in the back of the pantry. We were stocking up on non-perishables!

So we made it through most of the store and saw there was a sample lady in the cheese section. Excellent! I'm back on dairy anyway. I shot out my left paw for a cheese sample when this douchebag lady in stretch pants grabbed my arm and said, "You know that's RAW cheese, right?"

I said, "OK" and popped that cheese in my mouth.

She looked at Miles, dangling from the front of me in his polar bear costume (so cute!) and said, "Oh. (sniff) You must not be nursing."

First: nursing moms aren't supposed to eat cheese made from raw milk. Just like we aren't supposed to drink alcohol. But I can have a glass of wine now and again and by God! I can eat a cheese sample from the cheese lady in Whole Foods!

I became so enraged by this woman's audacity. I thought of all the many months I have just spent struggling with nursing, the many hundreds of ccs or whatever of Fenugreek I ingest daily. The hours I have spent watching this video (where the woman's yield is truly staggering and makes me feel competitive/inadequate). And this grocery store judgey woman wants to get all up in my face for indulging in some local cheese?

What if I weren't nursing? She doesn't know anything about us. Maybe I had some sort of breast disease. Maybe Miles was adopted. The way she emphasized NOT and NURSING implied that I was totally garbage to her. I was so agog I just stomped away and told Miles he wasn't allowed to be like her when he grew up.

People NEVER have any sort of filter when it comes to sharing their ideas about your baby. When I was super pregnant and walked around with my skirt tucked into my underpants it took many blocks on a crowded city street and many floors in a crowded building before anyone said something to me. But dangle a baby from your chest and eat some cheese and everyone has an opinion to share!

Sometimes I know I am a pretty judgemental person, but I like to think that I would never approach a stranger in a grocery store and judge her parenting choices.

Paranoia

We did not take Miles to see Santa this year. Because of Swine Flu. Yes, I know it's his first Christmas and you only get one first Christmas and my parents took me to see Santa for my first Christmas so Miles should have gone and cried on his lap like all the other babies. But there is so much Swine Flu! And he's fewer than six months old. Just the thought of him getting this terrible disease, or any disease, makes me shiver.

I went through so much with Miles just getting him to enjoy being outside the womb. I am feeling way too vulnerable (paranoid?) to take him out of the house, let alone stand with him in line and hand him to a germy old man.

So, with this fear in mind, I headed to the grocery store on Friday. Not for bread (which I bake now) or milk to weather the blizzard, but for moist towelettes, barbecue sauce and avocados. The point is that Miles and I were in Giant Eagle in a strip mall one week before Christmas on the day of a big snowfall. It was mobbed.

The crowds didn't bother me too much at first. I had Miles in the Ergo and was planning to speedily weave in and out of the lanes. I always think of my college rugby coach in such situations and practice evasive running. Only this time, I had a super cute baby wearing a polar bear fleece outfit. I'll tell you what--every single person in Giant Eagle tried to stiff arm me, tell me my baby was adorable, and then touch his face.

I was looking at the different choices in the condiments aisle when I felt a tap on my shoulder (GERMS!). "You have the cutest baby!"

"Well, thank you!" And I continued to look at the sauce, not realizing the stranger was not done yet. Oh, no! This woman wanted to touch my baby's face and coo at him. It's ok to coo at my baby. But touch his face? I did a little spin move to escape. Little did I know, this old lady was but one of a zillion incidents where I had to evade a would-be face touch.

This happened again and again and again. Every stranger in that joint was all up on his skin. I'm not trying to keep him in a plastic bubble, but can you not touch my too-young-for-a-vaccination baby with your swine flu fingers in the grocery store, strangers?

I know he is irresistibly cute. For heaven's sake, he just learned to blow raspberries and has been sticking out his tongue and smiling:



Can you imagine how cute he was doing that dressed like a polar bear, facing out in the Ergo carrier? It's intense.

But, no matter how cute, he is still a vulnerable little dude. I don't know why people think it's ok to touch strangers' babies. I would never reach my hand out and touch a stranger's baby! On the face! Each time someone tried to touch Miles, I saw the whole thing in slow motion: the withered, leprosy skin sagging from a ragged, boney finger. Festering disease and boogers under the fingernails. Lice, possibly Ebola incubating on the finger's surface. A mess, I tell you. I'm sure of it. And the Swine Flu!!!

By the time I left the store, I was dizzy from so many spins and twirls and sidesteps (plant, shift the weight, stiff arm out!) to get away from these touchy strangers. Now, ordinarily, I am a person who eats food off the floor. Once, in a shameful, hungry moment when I was working in the dining commons in my college dorm, I even ate an (apparently) untouched piece of sausage.

But this is a baby! In a polar bear outfit. Totally different story.

Call me paranoid, crazy mother, standoffish asshole, whatever. But I am hereby instituting a rule:

If you are a stranger to me, you are not allowed to touch Miles. At all.

SAHM

Stay At Home Mom. That's me now. I did not renew my teaching contract for the spring because, at the time we needed to do that, I was only getting about 90 minutes of sleep each day and my eyelashes fell out of my face. Not to mention I wasn't safely able to operate a vehicle. I thought, "teaching might not be the best activity for me in this state of health."

So that leaves me at home with Miles from now until at least September 2010. This makes me extremely uncomfortable. I'm a workaholic, you see. I have my freelance writing, but it's super hard to write and simultaneously take care of an infant. I've had to turn away work from many of my favorite clients. Some days I can get a sporadic hour of work done while he stares at his mobile, but that's only enough concentration for fluffy writing or perhaps some editing. As for writing actual sentences? Not happening so much. I want to know how writers manage to work from home while their kids are there. Seriously! How do they do it? Send me an email!

Anyway, the biggest blow to my identity is having to rely on Corey financially. Like, we are combining our bank accounts and he is the breadwinner. I still can't really believe it. Can Corey and I afford this situation? Sort of. I didn't really take maternity leave when I had Miles, and I had saved up a pretty nice cushion for that time period. Plus I'm due for a string of overdue freelancing checks that will give us a nice little cushion. We'll manage. It's not like we're going out boozing or hitting the movies at night time!

There's a part of me that is excited about this change because I'll get to spend a bunch of quality time with my baby who gets more delightful every day. It's not like I'll be spending my days marching up and down the stairs like I was this summer. Now we eat sweet potatoes and read books and blow raspberries at each other. So that's cool.

But the other half of me, the one with an MFA and several master's certificates, longs for a different kind of stimulation, maybe a nice conversation about pedagogy every now and again. It's a complicated place to be in. How can I rejoice in this gift of time spent raising my baby and still fulfill the competitive, intellectual slices of my identity?

Because I'll be staying at home, elbow-deep in laundry and diapers and Miles, I have decided it's extra important to have goals and to stick to them. Right now, I resolve to do the following for the first quarter of 2010:
1. Leave the house every single day at least once
2. Work out at least twice a week
3. Attend 4 "cultural" events (movies, lecture, ballet, etc.)
4. Read 2 books

Just looking at that list makes me feel overwhelmed, like maybe I added too many things. And that reaction right there, the armpit sweat and heart palpitations, tells me that somehow, the intellectual part of myself will be ok for the time being because the mom part of me is still in basic survival mode. There will be many decades of opportunities to work myself ragged. I have a rare, rare opportunity here to mother my own child. I'd better get started.

Call the locksmith

Corey and I have this inside joke where, whenever one of us (usually me) is overreacting, the other says, "Call the locksmith." This is because, and I can't remember where we were living at the time, I once lost my keys for like five minutes and was running around screaming, "We need to call a locksmith!!!!"

I jump to conclusions...

I also tend to lock myself out of my dwellings. A lot. In college, I was famous for running down to the Toftrees office in my undies and pjs, barefoot, in the winter time when I would lock myself out en route to the laundry room. I blame my parents for this habit, because I grew up in a house where the doors were never locked. I didn't learn to internalize the notion of, "Do I have my keys with me?"

Anyway, we used to have a hidden key outside our house, but brought it in when we got the driveway redone and never remembered to put it back. Plus, Corey always has his keys, so who ever thinks to check?

Friday night, we headed to our friends' house for dessert. MW was being a little angel and even FELL ASLEEP IN THE CAR on the way home. I'll say that again. My son fell asleep in the car! Look out! We were so happy, my husband and I, gazing at the lights, talking about life, licking pie off our lips, when I said, absentmindedly, "so where did you find your keys this morning?"

Because Corey had misplaced his keys that morning before work. Which wasn't a big deal, because I wasn't going to leave the house and lock him out during the day. Even if I did leave the house, I was unlikely to lock it. I'm famous for going to the grocery store and leaving the front door OPEN, literally hanging open, not to mention unlocked. I don't fear thieves because Frank is always keeping a vigil from his porch.

So anyway, Corey said, "I don't know that I ever did find my keys."

"Well, did you leave the front door unlocked?"

"No....Don't you have your keys?"

"Of course I don't have my keys! I didn't even bring my purse!" (I also never take my wallet or identification or anything of that nature with me...I know! I suck at this!)

So we pulled in the driveway and Corey went around to see whether fate smiled upon us. She had not, as all the windows and doors were sealed up tight. I sat in the back seat with my sleeping baby and phoned people who might potentially have keys to our house. They were all out, of course, because it was 745 on a Friday and we're the only ones who go to bed that early.

Corey eventually looked back at me, sucked in his spit, and said, "We might have to actually call the locksmith." I laughed. And laughed. And laughed some more. Then I googled "locksmith, Pittsburgh, PA" from my phone.

Corey left the car to knock on doors to see if any friends of the previous owners still had keys. After a half hour, we hit paydirt when the previous owner's mother (who lives a few blocks down the hill) agreed to drive up with a spare and a good nagging session about the importance of leaving a key with a neighbor. Thanks! Noted!

But the moral of this story is not that we drove straight to Home Depot to have copies made and delivered to our neighbors, nor did we re-hide the outside key. The moral is that we had this potentially emergent, stressful situation and I remained calm! If it weren't a locksmith situation, Corey would never have had the chance to even make a locksmith jokey reference. Because I was totally chill. And Miles kept on sleeping. Something about the previous four months spent ceaselessly nurturing an inconsolable screamsicle has given me perspective!

I knew that, worst case scenario, we'd call the proverbial locksmith, be down one inside joke and out $100. I have never had such vision, such composure. I found it refreshing. I feel like a whole new woman.

(Corey later found his keys in his pants and we took that old-owner's-mother's key and gave it to a trusted neighbor)