{Originally published on Random Musings From a Pregnant American in London}

I know that in general, drinking alcohol is a “no-no” in pregnancy. It doesn’t take an obstetrician or experienced mama to know that heavy drinking is strongly linked to babies with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) or full blown Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. I’d be reckless to put my unborn child at such risk.

Yet here in the UK I have heard and read that light drinking during pregnancy is not clinically proven to precipitate ill effects in babies. The definition of “light drinking” is hazy, but the general understanding is that if you employ common sense and have, say, one drink per week, there is no evidence to show you will be doing your child a disservice. Is there still a slight risk involved? Yes. But there is a risk in doing pretty much everything when you are pregnant: eating a hot dog at a baseball game, stretching before and after exercise, crossing the street on unsteady feet with a big belly….

I thought this seemed like sensible advice, so throughout my first trimester I had a sip or small glass of wine now and again. Particularly before we broke our news, this was an easy way to keep suspicion at bay. It’s not like I’m a heavy drinker, but when girls my age who usually enjoy a glass of wine at the pub after work turn to OJ and start making excuses about being on antibiotics, covers are quickly blown.

When I was recently in NY on vacation I received my own sacred copy of Heidi Murkoff’s What to Expect When You’re Expecting. Whoooeee! Heidi is the goddess of pregnancy advice, and I am finding her book very helpful; however, her commentary on alcohol in pregnancy freaked me out! I can’t remember the advice verbatim, but it was something to the affect of “You should not drink at all during pregnancy. The alcohol in your system will cross the placenta and will have harsher effects on your baby than you – so you may not even feel buzzed, but your baby could be drunk!” Oh, crap.

I thought I’d been so careful. I felt guilty and concerned. Then the fear set in and I started counting up the number of drinks I’d had over the previous weeks and asking my friends and family if they thought baby would be all right. Everyone agreed they thought I was fine. Some commented they’d heard it’s safer to drink lightly after the first trimester, but first trimester was where I was. Ironically, those on both sides of the pond, including Heidi, tell you not to worry about the alcohol you drank before you were pregnant. Well some girls would probably have drunk more without knowing than I did while in the know! But fear wreaks havoc with logic.

{Originally published at Mommy Needs Therapy}

Reading over my last Tales of the Breast post, I realized it was a bit clinical, and with all the talk about Mother’s milk tea, and herbs, and domperidone, etc. I forgot what my original intent was: To write about how much I love breastfeeding Kiel. How special it is.

I love when Kiel first latches on and gets that first mouthful of milk, how his eyes roll back in his head as if he’s experiencing nirvana.

I love how his hand is always moving, running over my body. Sometimes grabbing my nose, or finding its way into my mouth for me to kiss and nibble on. If both breasts are exposed he’ll head right for the other nipple and grab it, twisting and tweaking. I swear his Daddy didn’t teach him that. Such a little man already.

Sometimes, it isn’t enough for him to just move his hands over me, he has to move his legs too. Kicking at the breast he isn’t nursing from, as if he’s tenderizing it for his next course.

I love how he looks into my eyes, with his sparkly blue-gray eyes and sometimes stops and smiles, the corners of his mouth moving up and out. A little bit of milk spilling out.

{Originally published on The Little Jobber and titled, I Don’t Mean to Scare You.

If you have recently welcomed a boy into your family, or you are pregnant with a boy, or you have any interest in making a boy a part of your family sometime in the future, you might want to skip over my posts for the next few . . . years.

In fact, you may want to stop reading this blog. Just close your browser completely and never come back here. Forget the url. Lose my email address. Pretend you never met me. Dodge me when we happen to be shopping at Hannaford at the same time.

I will be sorry to see you go, but I will understand. I don’t want to scare you with my reports of the destruction and grossity grossness of boyhood. Well, toddler boyhood. Conal’s toddler boyhood, anyway. I don’t want you to think that boys are hard to handle and that they do crazy, scary things. I don’t want to give you the wrong impression of life with a boy.

Not all boys relish in the hard-core boyness of boydom. So, don’t worry! You know how on those diet ads they’ll say something like, “Results not typical” when the spokesperson has lost like a hundred pounds? Well, that might be similar to what’s going on here. You know, maybe my tagline should be, “Destructive and gross actions not typical.”

Unless they are . . .

But they might not be! I mean, I’m sure that not all boys think it is hilarious when their moms suction the mucus out of their noses and, at the end, they do a super-quick head turn so the string of mucus slaps across their faces, nose to ear. Sure, some boys think that is funny. Some boys think that when the nose suctioner thingy comes out, it is time for fun! But, not all boys do. Of course, I don’t know these boys. I only know the boy who thinks mucus suctioning is a great big joke fest.

Similarly, not all boys like to get dirty. They don’t all like to lick their dirty hands and then rub those spitty, dirty hands on their faces. No! They don’t all like to do that! It’s not fun for all boys!

But, again, I don’t know those boys.

{Originally published on Lucky Thirteen and Counting}

I used to have a daughter. I don’t have her any more. This is something that is not easy to talk about nor easy to write about, even almost two years later. But today, in the spirit of February, the month of love, I think this is an appropriate day to share some of my feelings.

I love this child. I wanted this child. I made a sacrifice for this child and I still believe I did the right thing. BUT, there are days and times, that cause me to reflect on that decision. I don’t want to tell you I question it, or that I hope I did the right thing. Because honestly, deep in my heart, I KNOW that I made the right decision. But knowing this doesn’t make it easy, or the grief any less, or the loss go away.

When The Ex and I separated Embree was four years old. The Nanny started dating The Ex three weeks later, and I fired her. My kids lost two very important people in a matter of 21 days. Embree took it the hardest. She cried as hard, if not harder, than I did. It was devastating to watch. She loved her nanny. The Nanny started working for me full-time when Embree was one. She was her primary caregiver. When Embree cried, she wanted The Nanny, not me. That loss was substantial to my child. I was not above admitting that.

When The Nanny moved in with The Ex, Embree joined them. She moved in full-time. I couldn’t deny her who and want she wanted. She visited me when they went out. However, it wasn’t me she was visiting, it was the siblings. When I scheduled one-on-one time with her, she wanted the other kids to join us.

We continued life this way for one year. We lived in Utah so I knew what Embree was doing, and I still played a small role in her life. But, when we moved to California everything changed. The Ex and The Nanny were married and having a family of their own. My life was here in California with Brandon and the kids. When Embree came to visit she cried for her “mommy”. It was painful to hear, to see, and to feel. Embree and I both knew she belonged with her dad and her “new mommy”.

I talked to her about what this would entail. Brandon and I wouldn’t be her family any more. Her siblings would still be her brothers and sisters, but I would not be her mom, and Brandon wouldn’t be her stepfather. She understood the best a six-year-old mind could understand. She was thoughtful for a moment and said with confidence, “Yes, I want that.”

{Originally posted on Preschool Mama}

What’s in a name…?” asked the bard.

A mighty lot, especially when it comes to a preschooler’s name.

Your child’s name, to her, is besides mama or daddy, the only one which is of any consequence to her. We might get over the initial excitement of looking for a perfect baby name, and get used to calling out her’s as time goes by. For her, it’s her identity - a familiar voice calling out her name or seeing her name on a gift package label, or on the inside first page of a book, means more to your child then you know.

Use it often -

• In conversations with her, or drop it within her earshot when you’re talking to others.
• Display it liberally and prominently at home – use alphabet cutouts to display it on the walls of her room, or in shimmering letters on the bedroom door.
• Have it monogrammed onto her towels, and napkins.
• Paint it on her place mats at the dining table.
• Write it on the first inner page of each of her books.
• Look for all the letters of her name on store signs, bill boards etc. Older preschoolers won’t need any prompting from you.
• Write it out on a piece of cardboard, in large block letters and paint in bright colors. Cut out the piece of cardboard into random shapes – use it as her very own name puzzle to put together!

{Originally published on Is There Any Mommy Out There?}

I’ve been obsessed with time lately and how it passes. What a trickster time is, the way he seems to hand me moment after moment of joy and love and life in slow, lazy procession until I pause to look back and I’m cut down by how far I’ve traveled. All the tiny incidents add up to the whole year that my oldest children were three and my youngest was one and my last baby was thought of and conceived. I want to yell at him for the subterfuge, but he’s handing me new moments so fast that I can’t take the time, I’ll miss something important. I’m dropping the present and it’s shattering on the floor, gem by gem as I gaze backwards. I refocus on the moment in my hands and it all slows down again, to that disconcerting, tricky lull.

I tell time I know his game, I’m onto him, but it’s inevitable that I’ll forget until I look back once more. It makes me mad. I wish he’d leave me alone, stop stealing my moments and let me have them for mine. Maybe I’ll keep them in a carved wooden box on my dresser, magpie-like, the way I kept little bits of life in high school, a note, a charm, a worn braided bracelet.

I want to keep the way Quinn walks, steady but unsteady, on his toes, his fat little belly proceeding him. I want to keep the way Garrett laughs, mouth wide open, head back, his round baby face lit from within. I want to keep the way Saige runs to me at preschool pickup, the way it feels when she wraps her little body around my middle and wraps her arms around my neck. I want to keep this baby’s first tiny kicks, barely felt today, miniature popcorn popping inside my uterus.

Determined to stop his constant theft of my moments, I set a trap for time. I know if I turn and pounce quickly enough I can catch the decrepit old man. I wait for a slow, easy moment, a little lull in time’s flow and I spin faster than the earth, outside of time, grasping with both hands.

Then I falter in disbelief, caught off guard that I actually hold him in my hands and that the arm I hold is strong and young. He is timeless, handsome and confident with twinkling eyes and a devilish smile. “You got me,” he raises his hands in mock surrender. “There’s not much time. When should we go?” He leans forward, feverishly eager, “what should we change?”

Go? Change? I don’t really understand, not yet, I want a glimpse, that’s all, to steal some moments back and save them forever to visit at will. But I have this chance and time is staring at me, waiting. I don’t want to blow it. “What if I’d taken the other job out of law school?” I blurt at him quickly. “Would I have loved it? Maybe stayed an attorney? Maybe I’d have a big career now?”

{Originally published on Sarcastic Mom}

Several nights ago I was sitting in the dark of Braden’s room; he was cradled in my arms, breathing quietly. As we slowly swayed back and forth in the rocking chair together, lullabies playing peacefully on the CD player, my mind jumped back and forth. It climbed mountains torturously, then lept off of the summits and plummeted into the valleys below. My face was slack, but my thoughts rumbled and tumbled below the surface while I felt the warm, soft life in my embrace cuddle deeper into sleep.

Suddenly, I burst out crying. Crying for the tiny life that I wasn’t able to hold onto in this way. I sobbed – quietly, so as not to disturb Braden – for a few long moments. Then I placed him in his crib and left the room. As suddenly as it had come upon me, the weeping was gone.

It’s been like that for weeks now. Since the miscarriage.

The extreme dichotomy of my feelings and thoughts lately has been a confusion at times, to me. At others, it has made no less than perfect sense. See what I mean?

I was pregnant one day. Then, suddenly, I wasn’t.

Riding the roller coasters at this Carnival From Hell that no woman wants to go to, but that is packed full of people, nonetheless, has been strange.

Some days, hearing about how many others have gone through this, multiple times, even, is a great comfort. I am actually incredibly buoyed by the scores of other women who feel somewhat betrayed by their bodies, or maybe even by God. By women who have experienced this same thing and are floating alongside me in this sea of uncertainty.

It means that I am not really standing out in the middle of a barren wasteland, alone, while a relentless wind tears and rips at my exposure-ravaged limbs, muffling my cries and carrying them silently away into the vast nothingness surrounding me, where they will mean nothing and no one will ever respond to them.

{Originally published on It’s My Life.}

“I am so tired.” She said, “why don’t they tell you about this?”

“Bu-uh-ut,” I stammered. “I did tell you.”

And I had, over and over again, for at least the last four months of her her pregnancy.

“Oh, I know,” she answered. “I just didn’t realize that no sleep, meant really no sleep.”

I thought back to all the times I’d tried to warn her and I knew I was partially to blame. It’s true. We don’t tell our pregnant friends everything, not because we don’t think they can take it, not because we don’t think they’ll believe us, but because it hurts to relive it and it’s easier to joke about sleepless nights than to go into details about how hard it really is.

So, my dears, here it is, the dirty dirty truth. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

No one tells you that you will stand in the shower day after day and sob because you can’t stand the thought of getting out and facing your baby again. No one tells you that some days you stand in that shower and it takes all your willpower not to curl up into a ball on the ground under the pelting shower stream. You don’t let yourself because you know that you’d never get up again.

No one tells you that with every lost hour of sleep you go slowly a bit more crazy and that the middle of the night is the darkest, scariest, and loneliest time. That you will dread the dusk because it’s the signal that night is coming and you just don’t know if you can survive another night.

No one tells you that you will grow to hate being touched and that some days it will again take all your willpower not to scream when someone places a hand on you, even as a gesture of love and support. By the same token, no one tells you that you will grow to hate sex or even the promise of sex and resent the person requiring it from you. Sex becomes just another chore at the end of a long and tedious day of tending to people’s needs. A chore that requires a lot of touching.

No one tells you that spending all day with a baby is boring. Mindnumbingly boring.

No one tells you that you will feel like half your brain has up and left you. You will forget everything. You will lose the ability to multi-task. You will lose the ability to form a coherent sentence.

No one tells you that you will resent, and even sometimes hate your kids, for many, many things like destroying your body and stealing your brain.