Parenting Two Kids = NO JOKE

Today marks two weeks since I had my second child, Val. Let me start this post by saying that in these last two weeks I have gained more respect than I ever thought I could for mothers and fathers of two+ children. Holy crap, this job is no joke. I have so much to report that I could separate this one post into many, but I am going to just give you the facts. 

Here is Mama J's two week report: 

- I have a house husband. And I freaking love it - and love him even more than I did before for taking over all of my responsibilities, except breastfeeding baby Val. He has pretty much taken sole responsibility of M, he is taking the dog to the park every day, he lets me sleep all I want, he does the dishes, he does the grocery shopping and any other errands that need running. I rue the day he has to go back to work (next week at some point) but as he explained in order to keep our house, he needs to work, so I guess he needs to go back. Boooooo. 

- My boobs were made for breastfeeding. As I have mentioned a million times, I didn't breastfeed M. I pumped for 14+ weeks. This time with Val I was determined (and scared shitless) to breastfeed. Well, she took to it like a champ and my giant melon jugs are falling right in line with her. I am not in pain (except when milk comes back in), nips are good to go, and she latches like she was born to breastfeed. In the last 2 weeks she has put on one pound 5 ounces! 

- It is nearly impossible to get out of the house with two children. I used to laugh when my friends would talk about how hard it is to get out of the house with two kids, when I should have been giving them the benefit of the doubt. This shit is no joke. Just the sheer packing of the diaper bag for two kids takes 15 minutes. Diapers, wipes, change of clothes, burp cloths, snacks, drinks, tissues, Nose Frida, boogie wipes (M has been sick the past week), my wallet, phone, keys, nursing pads, hooter hider...and guaranteed I go up and down the stairs at least 3 times during the getting ready...and have to go back in the house once we are already out of the garage. And this is with two parents at home! I think when my husband goes to work I am just going to stay home all the time. 

- M loves Val, but does not like her. When M came to visit us in the hospital she was on the brink of tears the entire visit (only 15 minutes) and said repeatedly "I wanna go home." The second visit was even less successful and resulted in tears, for both her and I. When we got home she wouldn't even go in the same room as Val. A few days later we got her to remain in the same room, and a few days after that we got her to give Val a high five...and then a kiss on the head. And that is about as far as we have gotten. I tried to take a photo of the two of them (see right) and this was the best I could do after basically throwing Val down on the couch next to M and her realizing what was happening and trying to bolt (notice my husbands hands holding her down and the look of fear on her face). I am doing my best to include M in all I do for Val, but she has not shown any interest at all as of yet. I keep hearing it gets better - hopefully that will be sooner rather than later. 

- The second child is much easier than the first. When you have your second child in the hospital you are immediately in a different class than people who are there having their first. The nurses check in on you much less often, and basically give you your space as they feel like you have been to this rodeo before so you know what you are doing. For the most part that is true, but you really do forget a lot about living with a newborn. They like to be held, a lot - which I have no problem with of course, but trying to run after a 2.9 year old with newborn on your shoulder is not easy. They sleep a lot, and poop a lot, and like to eat a lot. All of this scared me the first time around, but this time around I feel like it is so much easier in general. I can change her diaper in 5 seconds flat. I find myself basically throwing Val around (not literally of course) where I was so freaking scared to move M when she was little. 

- The hard part isn't the baby, it is the toddler. I have found that since Val has been home M seems to be regressing a little bit. She is constantly asking to be picked up and given hugs and kisses (which I love, but most times it is when I have Val in tow, or we are out and about and I can't pick her up). She has been sick with a chest cold, so I know that has something to do with it, but she has been so much more whiny lately. When Val cries or whines M starts to whine or fake cry and she will say "Val is sad...M is sad too!" We had also began attempting to potty train her, but that has gone out the window and she wants nothing to do with the potty. Hopefully things will regulate soon, otherwise Mama is going to be turning to the bottle herself - the red wine bottle!

- Everyone assumes this is your first child. Whenever I have been out the last two weeks with just Val in tow every person that I talk to assumes (rightfully) that this is my first child. My favorite scenario was when I was at Isis, and a class was released as I was checking out, and a group of young moms with babies who were about 6 months old comes over to me and says "Oh she is so cute! How old!" and I said, "10 days," and they were all "I bet you are tired! Don't worry it gets better...I remember when my daughter was that age and...yada yada yada." I just smiled and acted naive - but I wanted to say "in about a year that sweet child you are holding won't be so sweet anymore!" 

So life is good - crazy and tiring - but good...actually great. I truly feel like our family is complete and love having baby Val in our lives. Stay tuned for many more posts about being a mother of two! 

Breastfeeding Anxiety

It is late Sunday afternoon...all is quiet here at my house...my husband is at work, my dog is resting peacefully and M is in the fourth hour of her nap. I am sitting at my computer, putzing on the internet, looking at my bookmarked sites that I browse daily - and I have 2 weeks left till my due date. I came to the conclusion yesterday that I am actually really excited to meet my new baby girl. I am ready for my life to be even crazier, to be running around after two children, to be sleep deprived and all that comes with having a newborn. The house is ready for her (she has about 4 places to sleep set up around in various rooms), her newborn sized diapers are out and waiting, I have my hospital bag packed and I am ready to do this. Roll tide!

But just now a different feeling of anxiety has overcome me. As I sit here reading all my mommy websites and blogs I am overwhelmed as it is the end of National Breastfeeding Week and everything I am reading has to do with breastfeeding babies. If you have been reading the blog since M was born you will know that I had a great struggle breastfeeding her as she was a month early, she was smaller than my boobs when she was born and unable to latch and suckle, and I ended up pumping and bottle feeding for almost 5 months of her life. Yes I sought out support from 2 lactation consultants and tried all the nipple shields and other tricks that were recommended, but it never happened for us.

When I think back to my pregnancy with her, I don't remember much of anything. When I think back to the birth I remember dribs and drabs of the 18 hour experience of getting her out of me (3 epidurals that never really took are unable to be forgotten!). But it feels like it was just yesterday that I was in our interim room after giving birth (there wasn't a room ready on the actual maternity floor so we were put in a holding room) and they wheeled M in to me for the first time (as she went to the NICU for an hour or so to be checked out because she was so small). My delivery nurse had become my BFF in the long hours we spent together, but this new nurse was the polar opposite - all business and no love. She took M out of the bassinet and gave her to me and said "she needs to be fed." I wanted to throw up.

I had taken a breastfeeding class, read a few books, watched instructional videos, but nothing really prepares you for that moment when you are first handed your child, and all eyes are on you with your giant naked boob just laying there and your new child screaming in hunger in your arms. I remember the nurse saying something like "just shove your breast in her mouth..." and me being like "what? don't I have to do this? How should I hold her?" and just wanting to die of embarrassment.

Is this how every other new mom felt? Did this come totally naturally for every other person delivering at that time? What the hell was I doing wrong? I thought I was supposed to enjoy this?

After a few minutes with no success we ended up giving M formula. I tried and tried to breastfeed her while at the hospital, with the help of a lactation consultant there as well, with no success - and even less hope for when I got home. It all ended up working out fine, and I was happy pumping so that my husband could share the feeding burden with me, and M is now healthy and very happy.

But as I sit her so close to meeting my new baby girl I have agida over attempting to breastfeeding her when she comes into the world! She has already made it 2 weeks past how far M was inside me, so she will be more developed which is great, and I know I could be fretting all for naught, but seriously I can't stop thinking about that moment when they hand her to me to try to feed her in the hospital. Will I be successful this time? Will she be a natural and latch right away? Will I want to throw up like I did last time? Will that same mean nurse be with me during my first try?

I have spent the last hour looking at all these photos of women breastfeeding their babies like it is as easy as breathing, and reading all these stories about how these women were born to breastfeed, and it isn't helping my anxiety at all. There is so much pressure to breastfeed your baby nowadays, all for the right reasons of course, but I am feeling that pressure from all sides right now.

All my friends and family ask me if I plan to breastfeed this new baby, and of course I say yes, but if it doesn't work out, won't they think of me as a failure? Even today when I went shopping for nursing bras and tanks the woman at the store was talking non-stop about the wonders and joys of breastfeeding. I didn't have the heart to tell her that it didn't work out with M, so I just told her that I did breastfeed M so I didn't have to go into the whole story.

When I do tell people the story of how I was unsuccessful with M I always get the comments about how I should have sought out more support and help - or have done anything to make it work. There is so much pressure on new moms to make breastfeeding work...sometimes that pressure makes it all that much harder for it to click in the first place.

I wish I was one of those mothers who was a natural breastfeeder, and who knows, with this next child I might be. For now I just need to go take some Zantac and a few Tums to settle this nauseous feeling I have in my stomach...stay tuned for the boob report once the baby is here! I am sure I will have a lot to say.

My "Fur"-st Born: When good dogs go bad

Shortly after my husband and I were married in 2005 we started kicking around the idea of getting a dog. We had just moved to a very dog friendly neighborhood, where every other condo had a dog. We knew we were going to start trying to have kids in the next couple years, so why not get a dog and try this parenting thing out on a smaller scale.

Neither of us grew up with dogs, or were really around dogs a lot during our childhood. I had friends who had dogs, and loved being around them, but never really thought about having one myself. We did know that if we were to get a dog we would rescue, or adopt, one, as opposed to paying for some fancy breed of over populated dog. So we began to look on petfinder.com to see if there was any pup that caught our eye.

Within a few weeks we came across what we thought was the cutest puppy we had ever seen...she was a "beagle mix" from Virginia, and said to be about 35 pounds fully grown. And to our excitement she would be at a local "puppy open house" in a few days, and would be up for adoption.

The day of the open house we arrived an hour early, and were first in line to pick out our puppy. Out came the puppy we saw on the website - she was brown and black with white marks, and was jumping up and down like a crazy little thing. Then, they brought out her sister - she was white and tan, and sat very calmly in the corner. They called us forward and literally just said "OK, pick out your dog." Everyone in line behind us wanted one of these two puppies - I could hear the moans from the crowd as we went towards the two beagle mix dogs because they knew they were going to miss out on the dog they wanted. My husband and I looked at each other, and we knew instantaneously that we were changing our minds and going for the quiet sister of our first choice. She was just too cute to pass up. So he leaned over and picked her up, we signed some paperwork, paid our little fee, and we were dog owners.

As we were driving home, and Ellie, our new puppy, pooped all over the crate we had in the back seat because she was petrified,  and I immediately regretted our decision. WTF did we just do? Did we really think this through? Why did we get this dog? Why did we make this decision so hastily? And for about a week I was fully committed to returning her to the dog shelter. She was sleeping in a crate in our room and would whine the entire night. Because she couldn't walk up and down stairs, and was only 9 weeks old, I had to get up with her multiple times during the night, to carry her up the stairs to the main floor, out the back deck, down the stairs to the patio to "go potty" - what? Foreshadowing for parenthood maybe? Well, without the bringing your kid outside to go potty of course...

Holy Crap I'm Having Another Kid

They say that the second trimester is the best trimester of pregnancy. The morning sickness has most likely subsided, you aren't nearly as tired as you were in the first few weeks, your body is used to being pregnant by now, your energy levels are up, you aren't as big so that you can't do everything you did in your normal life...blah blah blah. LIES! Lies I tell you...at least that is what I am finding with my second pregnancy.

I am sitting here at almost 21 weeks pregnant and a whole lot of shit is going on - in my brain, in my life, with my body. I am on Amazon.com right now in another tab looking at those gigantic pregnancy pillows that you wrap around your body and between your legs. I laughed at people who used them when I was pregnant with M - those things look ridiculous! Is there room for your husband in bed with you and that giant contraption? Just use a regular pillow - well to the me of 3 years ago I say "shut your piehole you skinny judgmental bitch!" If this is what I need to get a good night's sleep that I am willing to push my husband a few feet more away from me.

I have gone from a person that never got up to pee in the middle of the night, to now getting up at least 5-6 times a night. And of course each time I go to pee, my mind starts racing, so then I can't fall back asleep for a good 20-30 minutes. And my back hurts so bad that it is hard for me to even get close to comfortable - hence the shopping for the preggo pillow. Strap in for a lot more complaining from this Mama in the next few paragraphs! Ha!

It's a...

For the last few weeks everyone has been asking me the same question, "do you have a gut feeling as to what you are having?" And my answer has always been the same "not really."And that was pretty much an honest answer. Can you really have a gut feeling? There is a 50/50 chance of having a boy or a girl, so the odds are pretty good in your gut feelings favor, right?

So I didn't really have a gut feeling either way, but I had feelings about this baby being a boy or a girl of course, and a secret desire (well, not so secret) for it to be one over the other. I felt guilty having these feelings because of course I will love this child unconditionally no matter what sex it is.

Of course I have thought about it non stop over the last 18 weeks...

I have a girl. I know girl parts, I love all the girliness that comes with being a girl. I have an amazing wardrobe ready for a baby girl. I love seeing my husband interact with our daughter. The thought of my daughter having a sister to grow up with, someone girly to play with, a possible best friend...warms my heart. I love saying "the girls..." But then there is the fact that I already have a girl, who is my "baby girl" or my "best girl in the world," as I sometimes call her. And I have a younger brother, and love the dynamic between a girl and a boy.

And if it was a boy we would have one of each - a complete set. I have always wanted to see a little clone of my husband running around (not that M looks like me really, but one can dream.) I love the relationship between a son and a mother, and would love to experience that. But then there are the boy parts, and the crazy rowdiness that comes with little boys. And the fact I love dressing up a little girl, and making her tutus and barrettes...what would I make for a little boy? It just seems so foreign to me, as I only have experience with little girls.

So I knew going into my 18 week ultrasound this morning that I would be both happy and a little disappointed no matter what the outcome. My husband went into it knowing that we would be told we were having a girl. He has said since the day we started to try and get pregnant that he knew he would have 2 girls. I on the other hand was nervous as hell as I had such mixed emotions with either outcome, but I was so excited to finally found out.

And we found out it's a...

I just ate way too much cookie dough

So I am sitting pretty right now in my second trimester. Just about 16 weeks down, not feeling like I am seasick every second of the day anymore and the belly is starting to show. Not the cute round beach ball type showing, but the I-can't-suck-it-in-anymore-and-this-baby-is-now-pushing-out-all-my-belly-fat-I-used-to-hide type showing. But whatevs - this time around I don't care, I am showing it off. Of course people probably think I am 30 weeks pregnant, and not 16 with the way that I look, but I don't care. I don't seem to care about a lot of things that I cared about the first time around either...

When you get pregnant for the first time you are so freaking excited to finally be a mother (especially when you wait 2 years like we did), that you do everything exactly by the book. You don't eat the things they tell you not to, you exercise and take care of yourself, you get massages, you read baby books, you take belly photos...blah blah blah. You bask in the glow of being a glorious pregnant woman! Well, none of that is happening with this pregnancy. None.

I just ate way too much raw cookie dough. I had a Medium hamburger last weekend. I had tunafish for lunch yesterday. And yes mom, I am eating my eggs runny. I even had some unpasturized cheese!! Citizens arrest! I am not eating all this to intentionally cause myself and the baby harm of course, but I am just being way less careful than I was the first time. I am not eating any lunch meats, or sushi or raw meats, but everything else has been pretty much fair game - in moderation of course.

Infertile Myrtle: A Festivus Miracle

I just looked at the Blog Dashboard (where we edit posts, manage settings, etc.) and noticed that this post will be our 500th post! So what better way to celebrate two and half years of Boston Baby Mama, and our 500th post that sharing a little secret.

Now let me tell you, I am not the best at keeping secrets. If someone tells me something juicy and asks me not to share it, I will of course keep my mouth shut, but one look at my face and you know I have something that I want to spill. Well, the last two months I have been keeping a secret from my family, friends and my loyal BBM readers...

There is a bun in Mama J's oven!

After our second failed IVF attempt (one canceled cycle, one failed implantation) in November I was all set to take off a month and start over with a third round. My doctor took me off all my meds and I thought I wouldn't be hearing from her for a couple months. Well, after I got my period I had a very long chat with her, as I was so depressed and needed to have some glimmer of hope that it would actually work at some point for us. We came to the conclusion that my body most likely does not respond to the pharmaceutical estrogen I had been on, and we needed to see what would happen when I was free of medicine.

I went in for blood and u/s two weeks later (not having taken any meds) and lo and behold my uterine lining was twice the size it had ever gotten while on the meds! So without telling any family or friends, we scheduled an IVF for the following Monday. I had one of our previously frozen embryos implanted, and then we waited two weeks...

And on my birthday in December I found out that it actually took. It was the best birthday/Christmas present I could have asked for.

Of course as the news of my pregnancy sunk in I started to freak out as the whole idea of two kids scares the crap out of me. And I am getting little bouts of anxiety daily about it, but I assume that is the norm as having two children is so much harder than the one I am used to.

My life is going to be turned upside down but I am excited about this whole adventure, and look forward to sharing everything with all of you!!

One last point I want to leave you with - if you are experiencing fertility issues as we have, talk to your doctor about ALL possible options, including a med-free cycle. When I met with my IVF doc last week for the last time she explained to me that her colleagues wanted her to talk to me about looking for a gestational carrier (or surrogate) as they didn't see any hope with me actually getting pregnant. Well, my fantastic doctor (Dr. Rachel Ashby @ Brigham & Womens, Boston) wasn't going to give up hope, and here I am feeling like I want to throw up all day and looking at baby names.

It is a Festivus Miracle!

PS. Due in August :)