The Nursling and the Pump

Ahhhhhh breast pumping. There really is nothing like it. Well, being milked by a farmer is probably pretty close. So often while sitting in my office attached to a vacuum, I find myself inundated with mental images of cows on a dairy farm. As attractive as it sounds, I promise you that it manages to feel even less so. I love that I have the flexibility in my work schedule to pump, however. I am very fortunate that I have the perfect environment. A private, comfortable room with a door that locks and the freedom to make my own schedule around when is best for me. I don't enjoy the financial benefits however, because in my line of work you only get paid for face to face time with clients and I don't own one of those cool desks like Lucy had to hide behind during sessions so I am stuck pumping for free. But I love the idea that even though I can't be home all day with my little love, he has the comfort of a familiar taste in his bottles while at GG's house. Plus I get to feel like I am doing something good for him, even though as a working mom I can't be right there with him all of the time as I would like.

Some pumping sessions drift by with textbook ease. Sit down, pump a few ounces while getting notes or a blog post done, then two more sessions with clients followed by another hour for pumping. I skip out of work with around 15 ounces of milk on ice for my little guy. Bada boom, bada bing. Then there are days like yesterday...

At my first pumping session of the day I hooked myself completely up to my machine, cups, bottles, hoses, cords, all of the bells and whistles. Then realized that I hadn't warmed my lunch yet. So, with a sigh I unhooked everything, got dressed, went out into the break room to heat my lunch, then came back. I got all hooked up again and started eating only to realize a half hour in that I had forgotten to turn my machine on... So I guess for that first half hour these funnels and hoses were pretty much just decorative.

The second session of the day went fine, until I went to unhook, slipped and spilled a good ounce of milk on my pants... The struggle is real. I literally wanted to cry over spilled milk.

Overall, that is a good analogy for breastfeeding in general. A wonderfully rewarding and beautiful experience, wrapped up in the cluster-f that is the actual practice. Prior to having a baby, I pictured breastfeeding as a very ethereal act. I have always held breastfeeding mamas in very high regard. They always looked so lovely and angelic with their little nurslings tucked safely in their arms. It is something that I always hoped to do.

Now, before I go any further let me just clarify that this in no way is meant to put down any woman who for any reason chooses not to or is unable to breastfeed. I was a formula baby (well, the crazy concoction that they called formula in the 80's) myself and I turned out just fine. I have grown up healthy and strong and I am extremely close to my mother. So please do not feel that I am in any way judging if you pull out a bottle of formula to feed your baby. I'll thank you to do the same when I pull my boob out to feed mine. As long as you are taking care of your babies and loving them like they deserve to be loved, then you are perfect in my book.

I was just always excited to breastfeed. It was something that I felt compelled to do. In all honesty though, I didn't really ever expect to actually be able to do so. With all of the trouble that I had getting pregnant in the first place and how my body didn't want to cooperate while I was actually having Archer, I kind of just assumed that breastfeeding would be a shit show too. But I really wanted to try. I read everything I could find on the subject and watched a lot of YouTube videos. I felt ready and well-informed, but I didn't know if it would be something that my body would finally do.

As it turned out, I was one of the lucky ones. My little guy was a fantastic eater from day one and while breastfeeding is difficult and very painful in the beginning for everyone, it really was an overall easy experience for me when compared to that of many others.

It's very funny how breastfeeding alters how you feel about your own body. At this point every member of my family has seen my boobs so often that no amount of therapy will ever clear their memories. My poor mother sees my boobs more often than she sees her own in a day and I am always amazed at how little I even care anymore. They are working boobs now. Move along people, nothing to see here. My poor husband doesn't even like boobs anymore. I've completely ruined them for him.

It's strange, you hear people complaining about women breastfeeding in public and hear people say that they are attention seeking and a number of other negative things, but the truth is, you sort of stop thinking of your breasts as breasts. You forget that these things ever even garnered attention. It's like they have a job to do and little else matters. It is far from the idea that I carried in my mind all of those years of the elegant mother, nursing her child surrounded by singing birds and flowers. It's more like juggling. But instead of balls or swords it is a 20 pound, 2 and a half foot muscle man who is grabbing and fighting both boobies at once. He is very easily distracted by every tiny sound he hears and the minute he tilts his head to look in the direction of the sound there is milk spraying everywhere. Not at all as beautiful as I had imagined.

Some days however, the weirdness is not even the baby's fault. In late September, on our way out to New Jersey for a family wedding I was very nervous. It was our first overnight trip with Archer, at that time about two and a half months old and the first time I would be breastfeeding around strangers.

Stopping for a snack, Jim ran inside the store to pick up lunch and Archer and I stayed in the car. We had parked away from the building to offer privacy for Archer's lunch. At this first stop, I managed to set off the car alarm from inside, something I did not even know was possible while feeding the baby. And with the keys being nestled comfortably in my husband's pocket, it was a significantly less inconspicuous feeding than I had hoped.

At the next stop, we tried again. My husband again ran into the restaurant to get our food, but this time he left the keys with me. As my little lovie ate, I looked up from his peaceful face to glance out through the car window. An ambulance had pulled in, and the drivers were talking a few feet from my window. Slightly irritated that they parked so close, I turned my attention back to the task at hand. The next time I looked up however, five more of the trucks had pulled up and parked. Significantly more confused now, I turned to look out the back window to make sure there wasn't some kind of emergency happening behind me but the restaurant appeared quiet. No news there.

Finally full, Archer's soft snoring caught my attention and I turned to focus on him, getting my shirt closed and putting the baby back in his car seat.

I looked up and there were no less than 12 ambulances parked all around my car. All of the drivers out, mingling around and I thought, “Geeze guys... I mean, I know a boob is a boob but really?!” Well, my husband has never met a person who was not a friend so of course as he walked up to the car, he started a conversation with a few of the drivers and it turned out they were not actually congregating from across the state to see my boob, but were actually meeting up to head to Philadelphia to be on hand for the Pope's visit. I was relieved and amused to say the least.

Breastfeeding is hard, often uncomfortable and strange in mixed company. But if I am being completely honest, nursing my son is absolutely one of the best experiences of my entire life. After a long day at work nothing makes me feel more bonded to this little person than being able to give him comfort in a way that no one else can. I love the health benefits for us both and the convenience that now, 6 months in I can finally truly enjoy.

My advice to anyone out there who is at the beginning of their breastfeeding adventure is to keep your sense of humor. It's tough to do at 3am when you can't get a good latch to save your life, your boobs are like enormous boulders about to explode and your nipples feel like they are on fire, but those times will come when you can and should laugh. A healthy sense of humor will come in handy many times over. And I promise you, it really does get easier (but never less funny.)

When in doubt, chart it out

    Very little feels within your control when you have been trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant for a long time, least of all your own body. You marvel at how easy it is for everyone else around you (although I am learning only after starting this blog, that I was far from alone in my pain.) I did find one thing however, that not only gave me a sense of understanding and control but also eventually gave me the answer that I had been searching for.

    About 6 months into our endeavor, I began to worry. While I had fully expected to get pregnant as soon as I decided I wanted to, I also knew that it was normal to have to put in a little effort. I wasn't a teenager anymore and my eggs were a bit more hard boiled than ideal. So, as any well educated individual would do, I began to look up blogs of random strangers whom I had never met and knew nothing of their background or motivations to help me to determine my next step. And I thank you now, blog reader for returning the favor. In all fairness, these blogs were a lifesaver. Not only were they a comfort emotionally... I'm not alone. But I did actually gain a wealth of knowledge from this band of sisters who had been in my shoes over the years and had generously decided to share the results of their legwork in trial and error.

    I learned the codes for things. LO means “little one.” 2WW is “two week wait” or the Luteal phase of a cycle. AF is “aunt flo” meaning a period or if you're super fancy (or age appropriately mature), your menstruation. I learned that the cute little emoticons of a smiley face with wings represent babies who have passed either through miscarriage, stillbirth or as infants, and that a “rainbow baby” is a baby that is born following one of these losses. I learned that at one moment you can be reading a silly post recommending standing on your head after DTD (“doing the deed”) and the next find yourself crying tears of sympathy for a post written by a mother who had suffered her forth miscarriage in a row. I read about women who got pregnant very easily over and over again, only to suffer the loss of those pregnancies over and over. In those moments I felt grateful that I had at least been spared that pain. I couldn't then and still now can't even imagine what they must go through each time they experience that loss. My heart absolutely breaks for them.

    I fell into the category of women with a completely different issue. We were women who had never in all our years actually seen a positive pregnancy test, never even had a pregnancy scare. This concerned me. Even though I had always been careful, and even though always within the confines of a serious, monogamous relationship, I had had a lot of sex from the age if 18 to 33. Based on odds alone I felt like I should have had at least a scare at some point. But never. My period always came early it seemed. It was always a surprise. What had seemed like nothing of note for the majority of my life, now began to reveal itself as a real issue. Something was wrong.

    I've never trusted doctors. I'm not sure where this distrust of them came from, but I will tell you working in a hospital didn't help... So I knew I wanted to avoid the medical route as much as possible. At least at first. About a year into my adventures in blogs I had come across quite a few women who had found success with acupuncture. If you aren't aware of this alternative medical practice, it is the key component of traditional Chinese medicine. It involves having thin needles inserted into the body at different acupuncture points to achieve various medical outcomes, most often pain relief. Yet, a number of women have successfully utilized acupuncture to achieve pregnancy by improving the body functions that regulate fertility. I was game. 100 percent.

    My experience with acupuncture was a very good one. I never felt calmer than after I left a treatment and while it wasn't successful for me, I believe that if my schedule (and wallet) would have allowed for more frequent treatments it could have helped. I did gain one huge step in the right direction from this treatment, however. My acupuncturist suggested that I begin charting. This was the single best advice that I had gotten from anyone during this time, and while I didn't chart seriously for another couple of months, she had planted the seed.

    I knew of charting. I knew it was a thing people did. I had seen the pathetic, middle aged TV characters who joked about their temperatures and needing to have sex that minute due to their temperatures changing. All I knew about charting was that I didn't want to be that. I didn't want to be that woman. That woman who made sex a job. Well, get your time card ready Jim because there's work to be done!

    But I didn't mind charting to help the acupuncturist. She needed to know where I was in my cycle for appointments. This is how she knew which acupuncture points to utilize at any given session. So she needed me to chart.

    If you are interested in charting I highly recommend “Taking Charge of Your Fertility” by Toni Weschler. Truly, it should be required reading for every woman the day they start their period. You should get that book, a box of tampons and some chocolate as a “welcome to womanhood” gift basket. It explains exactly how your body works and I can tell you, you will be shocked by what you don't know. I had no clue just how amazing and complex the reproductive system actually is. It is the end all be all book of charting and it became my bible. It is amazing the amount of information that you can gain from a seemingly simple chart.

    When charting, there are specific things that you check everyday or almost everyday. These include your basal body temperature, your cervix position and your cervical fluid, oh my! It sounds gross, and to be honest it kind of is, but the amount of information that you can gain over seeing your monthly patterns is invaluable. Sometimes things go as planned and you feel like, “hey! Look at me, ovulating right on time. Good job, ovary!” While other times, I found myself checking my cervix position and like so many Pinterest crafts, mine just didn't seem to do that. But there is real information in both of those situations that gave me an actual direction.

    Thanks to charting, I was able to determine that my fun early periods were a real issue. A luteal phase defect that had real answers and things that I could do to remedy the situation. Without charting that likely would not have been discovered due to the medical community's methods of testing and treatment. It truly made all of the difference in the world for me. While you can chart on paper, I found it easier to use an app. Fertility Friend, pictured above was the one that I chose to use but there are many other options out there. Generally they all calculate for you when they believe that you ovulated or your new cycle began based on the information that you enter.

    Charting is an interesting experience. You become very aware of yourself. There are very specific rules and guidelines to charting that make it about as unpleasant as possible without being actually painful. But you actually do get used to it. Everyday you wake up with a weird sense of anticipation almost like when you were a kid and you had an experiment to do for science class. It's not your favorite class and it kind of stresses you out and the teacher is a real bitch but you're curious to see how the experiment is going to turn out. Before even opening your eyes you pay attention to the position of your lips. Was I sleeping with my mouth open? No? Good. Then you begin barely moving the muscles that it takes to reach a silent, tired arm out from under the warm covers to the nightstand where your hand perfectly finds it's target yet again. Your basal body thermometer. The one that Amazon says is the most accurate out there and it has to be true because a woman in a blog from 2012 says this is the one she used when she conceived her miracle baby. Opening your lips just the sliver that it takes to fit in the tip of the thermometer you wait for that sweet beep. Those 30 silent seconds are filled with questions of your future. What will those little digital numbers have in store for you today?

     Beeeeeeep. You leap from the bed as if on fire and gaze at the tiny numbers on the gray screen. Your resting body temperature. A wealth of knowledge some days and a crusher of dreams on others. I loved temping. I felt it gave me a sense of control where I had none. I also feel that it saved my marriage. It allowed for days that you really don't feel like having baby making sex, or any kind the of sex at all frankly. It allowed for downtime. I knew the days that it was important to do the deed and the days when we could just relax and be us.

     Your temperature will be low right up until you ovulate. After an egg is released, your temperature will spike (known as a thermal shift) anywhere between approximately 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit to a full degree. Some lucky ladies may also get a brief warning temperature dip the day before to really accentuate this rise. Your temperature will stay high until the first day of your next cycle when it abruptly drops back to normal along with all of your hopes and dreams for the future... or it doesn't.

Well meaning, unsolicited, misguided, horrible, awful advice

    Friends. Friends are great. I love my friends. I hate to brag, but I have absolutely amazing friends. They are supportive, understanding, generous; all of the qualities that you would want in your friends. I have never hesitated to share my struggles with them and I have never regretted doing so... Until I started trying to have a baby. Now, let me preface this by saying that I do not mean to offend anyone with what I'm about to say. Please, if you recognize your own advice in the following paragraphs do not A.) think that I am in any way angry or upset with you, or B.) feel the need to apologize to me. It is completely unnecessary. I adore you. Always have, always will. Every piece of advice discussed in the following post was given to me by multiple people, so please do not feel singled out. I know that all of my friend's hearts were in the right place; their advice however, was not. It is important to me that everyone who is still out there, struggling everyday with the pain of infertility knows that they are not withstanding the unintentionally hurtful advice of friends and family alone. For the most part, this advice is doled out by people who tried for like, a minute to get pregnant, or got pregnant while actively trying not to do so. They have no clue what it's like to want a baby more than anything on Earth or the devastation of failing at this goal month after month after month.

    I'll start with the crown jewel of crappy advice. “You're thinking about it too much, just relax and stop thinking about it and it will happen.” “Stop trying so hard.” Feel free to insert any variation of this garbage advice that you like. I believe this is the absolute most irritating and misguided thing that people say to someone trying to have a baby. Not only is it a total blow off answer, but it is also annoyingly inaccurate and places the blame on the poor woman trying to conceive. It's my fault now because I'm thinking about it and wanting it too much. As soon as someone spouts this piece of wisdom at me I immediately know two things. One, they have never struggled to have a baby and have no clue how impossible it is to turn off the thoughts and emotions that accompany this wish. And two, that they know very little about how reproduction actually works.

    Getting pregnant, even when attempted between two healthy adults whose reproductive systems are working perfectly is still a timing game. An egg only lives twelve to twenty four hours following ovulation. Sperm can live from two to five or five to seven days in a female's body after intercourse (depending on who you ask. Over two and a half years, I've asked everyone.) These little swimmers need time to swim up to where the egg is, however so sex at the time of ovulation is often too late to result in a pregnancy. (I know more about sperm than I ever dreamed or wanted to.) I learned that male sperm swim faster but die sooner and female sperm swim slower but live longer so if you ovulate right after intercourse your chances are higher of having a boy. If you ovulate a few days after intercourse your chances are higher of having a girl. But I digress...

    The point is, relaxing and not paying attention to timing is horrible advice. If there is an issue, relaxing will rarely fix it. Women who deal with miscarriages and a lack of ovulation will not find that relaxing solves these problems. Relaxing will not fix a luteal phase defect, an issue with implantation, a low sperm count or a lack of cervical fluid. It could, however give a little problem the time it needs to grow and become a big problem. This is the worst advice ever and should never be given to anyone at any time, ever.

    “Have sex every day all month long.” (This gem almost led to me getting divorced, not knocked up.) What's less sexy than baby making sex after 2 years? Feeling pressured to have it every freaking day sex. Even if you are successful at doing this, you are wasting your time anyway because a man can't even make sperm that fast so really, after the first time you were just having fun sex and who the hell wants that?! Save that crap for after you're pregnant. These are working sperm not leisure sperm. Not to mention, as I stated before, conception is a timing game. You can have sex ten million times a day and if it's not at the right time of your cycle you have exactly zero percent chance that it will result in a big fat positive on a pregnancy test.

    I had multiple friend's tell me after two and a half years of trying that I “really haven't been trying all that long.” Ummmm. Okay. Taking your temperature every single day and feeling completely crushed every single month for 30 consecutive months in a row seemed long to me, but I guess it just flew by for them. Not to mention, that for a woman my age the medical community recommends testing after 6 months of trying without success. So yes, I actually was trying for a very long time even by medical standards.

    I've been told by more than one friend immediately after opening up about my struggle, that they just had or were currently having a pregnancy scare of their own and how much they hoped they were not pregnant. During my time trying to conceive, I frequently found myself just looking at people, wondering why I ever opened my stupid mouth. And more so, why they ever opened theirs. I rarely felt better after telling anyone about what I was going through.

    Fortunately, there were a few exceptions to this statement and I credit these people with allowing me to retain the small portion of sanity that I did. One was my mother, who has an uncanny knack for always making me feel better. I guess it's just a mom thing. The other is the one friend who got it. Her's is a story for another day however. The short version is that she didn't offer me any advice. She encouraged me, she validated my pain and she gave me hope. Friends who were currently also trying to get pregnant and friends who had suffered with infertility themselves always knew what I needed. They never tried to fix my feelings. They just validated them and that is what I needed.

    Often, I think people just wanted to make me feel better. They didn't like seeing me sad and the knee-jerk reaction is to try to fix it. But there is no fixing this. My feelings were valid and while I know that everything happens at the time that it is meant to, that is not comforting at all to hear in the midst of a breakdown. Nor is hearing that God will give me children when he feels it is time. Why was it time for the drug addict I saw that morning to have her fourth baby in God's eyes? Regardless of your beliefs, this conversation is not the time for that logic.

    Bad, unwanted advice is one of the parts of trying to conceive that is the most frustrating and difficult to navigate. God love them, your family and friends love you and that is what is important to remember. My advice to you if a friend of yours confides in you that she is having trouble trying to conceive is to just keep your freaking mouth shut. Especially if you didn't have any trouble starting your own family. Just listen. Struggling with infertility is an incredibly isolating experience. You find yourself not wanting to share your situation with anyone around you.

    I found that when I did share what I was going through with friends, they would either offer advice that was irritating to me or misguided, or they would just blow me off. “It will happen when it's supposed to,” and move on to their own latest crisis. I also found that after telling friends, they would treat me with pity when they talked to me about other women in our circle getting pregnant. This had a tendency to make it much more difficult for me to be excited for my friends when they announced their subsequent pregnancies.

    I also found that I didn't want to tell the people who were the absolute closest to me, my family. I had, well have a nephew who I absolutely adore. I loved him (and still do) to the moon and back and I was afraid that if my family knew just how hard I was struggling they would feel weird about telling me when they became pregnant and I just couldn't bear that. At that time in my life my nephew was one of the brightest spots in my world. I couldn't stand thinking that if my sister became pregnant again (which she eventually did) that it could be “an issue” of some kind for her to tell me. That would have broken my heart into tiny little pieces.

    Anyone who is even a little bit close to me knows how I feel about my nephew. That little boy has had his aunt Sissy wrapped tightly around his little finger since day one, and I adore it. Unfortunately, the relationship that I have with him also became the topic of another stupid thing that people would frequently say to me during this time. “When are you guys having kids?” they would ask. “Well, we are trying. Have been for a while it just isn't happening as quickly as we would like” I would reply, heart in my throat and tears just behind my eyes. “Well, at least you have your nephew.” And off they would go. Leaving me standing there, dumfounded. Let me assure you, that I would absolutely take a bullet for my nephew. To say that I adore him cheapens how I actually feel about him. But a nephew is in absolutely no way like having a child of your own. It is unequivocally not the same thing, and should not ever be compared. A nephew does not a son make, even when he is as cute as a button and the light of your life, as mine is.

    I am tackling this uncomfortable topic for two purposes, neither of which is to make anyone feel badly. First, I hope to remind the people currently dealing with infertility that they are not alone and to hopefully give them a chuckle. I want to explain why so many people suffer in silence with infertility and don't feel comfortable opening up to even their closest friends. And secondly, I want to let anyone in the position of giving advice to just stop. No advice is wanted, warranted or necessary. I promise you, your friend has been fixating on this subject for much longer than you realize and you are not going to give them any new information. Instead, just listen. Validate their pain and how difficult this time in their lives must be for them. Tell them what a wonderful parent they will be when it does happen for them and wish them all of the luck in the world. That way you can be the person who really gave them comfort at a time when little else does.

From TTC to BFP to boymom

    

    As I sit at my desk in my fancy office at work, professional license surrounded by multiple degrees framed on my wall, laptop at my fingertips, topless with each of my breasts tucked snugly into a funnel, that familiar swump, swump, swump ringing in my ears I wonder with a pretty even mix of gratitude and embarrassment... “How the hell did I get here?”

     The truth is, it wasn't an easy road to get here. I had expected for it to be easy. I planned for it to be easy. But it was far from easy. Throughout my reproductive years, I did what I was supposed to do. I was a virgin until college. I responsibly put myself on birth control at age 19. I waited until I had my degree, and then my post graduate degree. I bought my house. I got married. Check, check, check. I went in order. I planned for things. I saved. I specifically waited until after a planned vacation to start trying to conceive because of course, I was going to become pregnant immediately and I wanted to be able to have a drink on the beach. I planned. And then, at long last we tried. And tried. And tried...

     I'm a planner. I'm an achiever. I'm a controller. I have a case load of 75 people for whom I help to navigate their daily lives as a clinical social worker, yet over the course of two and a half years I couldn't navigate one tiny egg and an even smaller sperm to do the main thing they are built to do. Insert funny yet ironic “you have one job” meme here... This time in my life took me from a logical, well adjusted, professional woman to a raving lunatic.

     I ended up dressing my cats. They dressed for Halloween, for Christmas, you know, special occasions. I was the one at every baby shower with a huge smile plastered on my face, because if I didn't I would be in tears. I charted. Relentlessly. I read thermometer reviews on amazon like they were the latest best seller and at one point I ended up with 9 different thermometers. I cried in public bathrooms and in the shower nightly.

     In a fit of hopelessness about a year into my journey, I spent the entire savings that I had been putting away to give myself a paycheck during maternity leave on a cruise. If we couldn't be parents then we would just travel.

     Days spent navigating through the long list of well meaning friends and their unintentionally mean advice. Nights looking for information online. What is the missing key? Looking for information, looking for answers, looking for hope.

     I half halfheartedly scheduled tests. What would it matter? Most women don't get a definitive answer as to what is causing their infertility. We couldn't afford IVF and I was afraid to adopt... What could the future hold? I felt defective. I felt hopeless. I wondered if my husband would leave me. He wanted a family too. Would he want a woman who couldn't give him one? And even if he did still want me without the hope of children would he want the crazy person that I had become?

      And then finally, after two and a half years, I saw it. The illusive “yes” on a home pregnancy test. My bigfoot. And it was real.

      During my time trying to conceive I poured over blogs and chat rooms reading the stories of other women who shared my struggle. It was comforting to know that while I felt completely alone, I wasn't. I read of the various techniques, products and natural remedies that these other women were trying. Some I tried, some I prayed that I would never have to try only to find myself frantically searching for the conversation again a year later to make sure I was doing it right. The one thing you don't find however, are many success stories. I assume they are out there, but in general the conversations just drop off into history.

     Near the end of my journey I searched for women who conceived naturally after two and a half years and found very little. The stories that were there included medical interventions that I could not afford. While I'm sure I'm not a medical anomaly, I do know that mine is a story that can offer hope to women who need to see that it does happen. That women from our team do get pulled off of the bench to play in the game.

     I went into my pregnancy knowing very little about the process. I could tell you everything about how a baby is conceived but next to nothing about what happens once it is in there and absolutely nothing about how to get it out and what to do with it after. But I am now the proud mama of my little buddy, Archer. He is 6 months old as I write this and the reason that I get up in the morning. 

 

     This blog is intended as a comfort and ray of hope to the women still out there trying to start their own little family, and a source of entertainment to those of you who like me, are just muddling through trying to figure this whole motherhood thing out. Some posts will be TTC related, others will focus on pregnancy and the rest will be about the often crazy gig of being a mommy. Sometimes it will be funny, other days less so. But my hope is that for the time that you are reading you will feel a little less alone. Welcome to my blog!