Chaos on the Changing Pad

     Boob, boom, clap. Boom, boom, clap. Boom, boom, clap...

     Ladies and gentleman! Welcome to the rumble to end all rumbles! Two titans of time out meet up in the ring to finally settle the score!

     In this corner, weighing in at 121 pounds that is still some baby weight so we will be patient with her and with two leaking boobs... The mother of all smack downs... She loves to hear the cheers, people... Mommy!

     And in this corner, weighing in at 22 pounds, the baby with the blue eyes that make all the girls swoon, the boy with the golden smile and a diaper full of poo... Archer!

     Ding, ding!

     It is the unnerving, unpredictable and often very messy dance of my people. The mommy/baby diaper change wrestling match and it is not for the faint of heart, or anyone wearing white...

     I still can't figure out how a child so small can be so freakishly strong. It's like he sneaks out of bed at night to lift free weights. I half expect to wake up one night to find him flipping a huge tire down the hallway. His tiny, yet meaty little arms and legs can absolutely overpower me regardless of how strong my will is to not have poop smeared all over my carpet.

     I can remember being at a music festival a month or so after Archer was born. Jim and I standing, proudly showing off our sweet little boy and enjoying the music and sun shine. My eyes drifted to a mother, sitting in the grass struggling to hold on to the foot of a small child who was naked from the waist down crawling away from her while she attempted a diaper change. I knew I was staring. Looking for way to long to be polite but I was amazed. I couldn't look away. What the hell was going on here?! I was trying to make sense of what I was seeing before me when she looked up at me and apologized for the scene. “Oh no,” I quickly replied. “No need to apologize. I feel like I am looking into my future.” She glanced over at my tiny newborn, sitting quietly in my husband's arms, then gave me a knowing smile and I felt a cold shiver run up my spine despite the warm August air.

     Ever since that day, that terrifying scene has been playing off and on in the back of my mind. I prayed that Archer would be that rare baby who hates a dirty diaper more than a diaper change. I often wondered when this hellscape phase of diaper changes would begin for me. The day when I would finally have to pay the piper. It seems like around 6 months old my little guy first realized that the 30 seconds or so that it takes me to change his diaper was just too long for him to be so bored, but at that point I was mostly just avoiding getting kicked. He also discovered his pee bug, which added an additional challenge to the mix that I had not anticipated.

     The real fun was yet to begin. As soon as he learned how to roll over consistently it was game on. All of the sudden this sweet little baby turned into the Hulk every time the yellow line on his diaper turned green indicating that it was time for a change.

     Ironically, this was also around the same time that he started eating real food. Ever since, his poops have gone from sweet, nearly odorless yellow baby poo to diapers that look like an adult did his business in them. It is nature's cruel joke that real poops coincide with diaper wrestling matches.

     When Jim and I are together, we can work like a team and while still remarkably challenging, a change without smearing human feces around the house is totally doable. But it's a special kind of terror when you look into a diaper and see poo brimming to the top and know that you are going to have to face this disaster alone.

     I usually start by talking to Archer, letting him know that a diaper change is needed and letting him see the clean diaper and wipes. In my mind, I feel like we should all be on the same page now. Nope. Not at all.

     I hold my baby boy up by his feet, in an attempt to clean him and he counters me with an impressive display of core strength as he twists his entire body around to face the floor, leaving us playing a terrifyingly high stakes game of shit covered wheelbarrow. With a panic stricken heart, I struggle to keep my wits about me as I try to quickly but effectively clean that tiny, absolutely adorable butt and wiener in mid air before he decides to let gravity win. It's a pretty balanced struggle of at once trying to overpower him while not popping any of his little limbs off in the process and let me tell you, sometimes it is difficult to maintain that balance.

     The diaper changing process consists of flipping him on his back while taking a few swipes with a wipe to which he screams bloody murder and rolls over and crawls away, to which I flip him back over and repeat the process, about five or six times. I am generally a ball of sweat and he is usually into a full meltdown by the third pass.

     I do usually remember to get a few wipes out of the pack but nothing is worse than fighting to hold a poopy, hostile butt up with one hand and struggling with a finicky pack of wipes with the other. Wipes that get stuck in the pack are the bane of my existence. If Archer's first phrase turns out to be, “son of a bitch...” I will take full responsibility.

     I toss the dirty diaper filled with soiled wipes aside, which starts the next game, try to get the dirty diaper filled with poop and dirty wipes to throw around. Regardless of how far away I throw the old diaper, my son uses his go go gadget arms to reach it with ninja speed and precision.

     The switch to a clean diaper must be fast. All time is precious. Diaper, diaper... A look of unbridled horror creeps over my face and spills across my soul. I see the clean diaper. Still perfectly folded up, fresh from the pack. Rookie mistake. Amateur... I silently berate myself for such a stupid error.

     I give in and let his newly cleaned bum touch the floor. With this, Archer is off, naked butt and unholstered pee bug going rogue. As fast as I can, I use both hands to open the clean diaper while silently praying that he chooses to just hold his pee in until I can catch him again. Chasing a naked baby is all giggles on both sides, but carrying a kicking, screaming, flailing naked baby back over to the changing pad is significantly less fun.

     I've tried toys to distract him, I've tried diapering him while he is standing up. Surprisingly, it can be done, but it's tough to get a secure diaper that way and you risk a literal shit show later when that half assed diaper job comes back to bite you. In the long run it's worth the extra fight to get that sucker on right. I followed the suggestions online. I try to include him in the decision and the process. I've tried letting him hold a clean diaper, but Archer likes to bite them and I am afraid of him eating a diaper.  Making him organic baby food then letting him eat disposable diapers as a snack seems nuts.  Same situation with him holding the package of wipes. He chews through the plastic which is less than ideal.

     I've recently tried holding him down with my feet which was traumatic for us both. I've tried songs, funny noises (which sometimes do work) and I had been giving him a small box lid to hold which worked off and on until he started eating parts of it.

     I do get a slight advantage however, when one of the commercials that Archer likes comes on the television and for a brief, shining moment it commands his full attention. Usually the Blue Bunny ice cream commercial, any drug or lawyer commercial or a handful of others that have songs that catch his attention all play in my favor. With shaking hands and excitement built up in my chest, I think “This is it! This is my chance!” Then, with the pressured precision of a surgeon I quickly open each side tab to secure the diaper around him.

     The only risk here is a shaky hand slipping and losing grip on a diaper tab. If it snaps him, the battle is back on full force and he. Is. Pissed.

     I win this battle. When the diaper change is over, I let my little warrior stand up before I squeeze him up and kiss his little cheeks. We call a truce for the time being. Until the next time that the stench of poo fills the room and I tackle my little man for a rematch. I continue to research techniques that could tip the scale in my favor. Recently however, I came across a line that stopped me dead in my tracks. “Toddlers like to play with their own poop.”

     So, you know... I've got that to look forward to...

Milestones and Mamas

      My son hit a milestone this weekend and it was a biggie. He took his first four steps without holding onto anything for balance.  These blessed steps came between our front door and the couch and I was the one in the right place at the right time to witness them. I squealed, clapped and celebrated to the point where I scared him and made him cry but all in all it was a perfect moment. While I have missed seeing a few milestones, thus far I have been lucky with the big ones and for that I am very grateful.

 

     There have been milestones that I have missed however. I missed his first time in a jumper, missed the first time he fed himself a bottle, the day he learned to open drawers and cabinets and the list goes on. 

 

     As a mom who works outside of the home, I had assumed I would miss many of his firsts. I discussed this fear with fellow working moms and a few times was given the advice to tell my babysitter the rule. I learned that in a lot of families, if mom doesn't witness a milestone, then it didn't happen. I'll admit, I was intrigued by this concept and even considered utilizing this rule with my own mother, who would be watching Archer when I returned to work after my short, 5 week maternity leave. 

 

     I grieved missing his milestones before they even happened. I couldn't imagine not seeing him feed himself for the first time, or hearing his first word with my own ears. I contemplated asking my mother to protect me from the disappointment of missing these firsts by pretending they didn't happen. But as I watched Archer grow and learn I decided that I was going to break this rule that had been shared with me by my concerned friends because at the end of the day, his milestones are his and the truth is, they aren't and shouldn't be about me.

 

     I guess my initial issue with this rule came from how obsessive I am about his baby book. He is my first and likely only child. His baby book is meticulous. It is accurate to the minute. That shit is on point. It would make me crazy if I had a milestone recorded as a few days later than it actually happened. If he masters a new skill on the 8th and doesn't get credit for it until the 9^th, what's the problem? Well, for me, it's a problem. It's a question of accuracy and that will not stand. Not in my boy's baby book. Not to mention, I feel like it takes something away from his achievement. It may be small but it's a huge difference in what it means for him. It's unfair to ask him to hold back in his life simply because I'm not ready. 

 

     I'm not a parent who thinks that every kid should get a trophy. I think healthy competition is good and that in every game there should be a gracious winner and a dignified loser. But each of Archer's accomplishments, I want to be his own. I want them to be a celebration of him and the reality is, that celebration should occur with or without me looking on. 

 

     The clinician in me is always looking for the motivation behind the action. In this case, I believe the motivation behind this rule is simply guilt. I think that in a lot of ways this method is a means of working through and processing the guilt that we working moms feel everyday for not being able to be physically present as much as we would like. It's a way for us to tell ourselves that we were there, even if in reality we weren't. It's a way of rewriting the parts of our future and history that we already know we aren't going to like. But I think that we need to remember that this, like almost every other part of motherhood besides Mother's Day, is not about us or working through our own personal baggage. That is not the role of a mother. 

 

     I worry that this type of practice is a slippery slope to being the kind of parent who threatens to leave a graduation party if their ex shows up. The one who wears white to her kid's wedding. Guess what princess, it's not your day. Suck it up and pull it together because today is not about you. The biggest role of a mother is putting your child first. This is not always possible but should always be the default setting of a parent. I'm not talking about spoiling a child, but allowing them to be the star of their own childhood, which every child deserves to be. The world will knock them down soon enough. That's not your job. Your job is to pick them up when they fall, and be their loudest cheerleader in the crowd. 

 

     My intention is not to sound harsh or to offend anyone who does follow this rule. Believe me, I understand the pull here. It sucks to miss things. Especially big things. But I think that through this practice, we miss the bigger picture and in turn set an unhealthy standard in the ongoing mother, child relationship. The truth is, as my son lives his life, none of his life milestones should be about me. His birthdays won't be about me. His achievements in school or sports won't be about me. His prom won't be about me. His graduation won't be about me. His wedding won't be about me. None of these things will be about me and for good reason. I have lived my own life milestones already. I have had my moments in the spotlight. These are his achievements. And while I fully intend to be present and encouraging to him through each and every one of these life events, they are his, not mine. I look forward to him telling me about his day in school when he learned a new skill or got an A on a test. I am thrilled to be a silent (or clapping and squealing) witness to them all, but they are his. And in the circumstance where I miss one and am simply given the play by play after, I refuse to take an ounce of that joy away from him by making him feel like I should have been made a bigger part of it. It is his time to shine. 

 

     As hard as it is to see Archer growing and learning often without me, it's also really cool to know that he is growing and learning. He is this whole new person on this planet, discovering and interacting with it for the very first time ever. It is his journey and who am I to attempt to manipulate that journey to fit into my schedule? I'm the frame to his picture, the cheerleader to his game... His one and only mother. And that alone is the biggest honor of my life.

Yes

     I had a wonderful weekend. I celebrated my first Mother's Day and it was everything that I ever hoped it could be. Over and over again I was reminded of how grateful I am that I get to participate in this amazing adventure called motherhood and as always, my thoughts inevitably drifted to how close I came to missing out. I watch my son, now 10 months old as he crawls, climbs and takes his first tentative steps toward walking and I am amazed by how much my life has changed from the years that I spent trying to get him here. Those days are never far from my memory and that is not by accident. Nor is the day that I finally saw my first glimmer of hope that it was my turn at last.

     Two and a half years into trying to conceive I had all but given up. Well, given up in the sense of a woman still actively trying to conceive in spite of losing all hope or joy in the process. What that looks like is still temping and charting daily, still timing sex but not enjoying any of it and not getting excited anymore at the end of a cycle, even one that looks promising. I had gotten pretty good at predicting when my ovulation was going to happen and pretty sick of sex so Jim and I only did the deed once that month and I was excited to see that it was right on time. I had a beautiful temp drop that month followed by a huge temp spike, which is basically the holy grail of charting. Even so, we didn't feel very hopeful. We had been trying for so long that we just didn't see any light at the end of the tunnel anymore and we hadn't done the baby dance since the month before due to the overall distaste for sex that comes from a long period of time spent trying to conceive. The sperm we used were likely old and dead by the time they even got into the game. I had actually asked my doctor if we should feel hopeful that month due to our perfect timing and was told that, “no, those sperm were likely too old to fertilize an egg.” Better luck next month. So we settled in to wait for the end of yet another unsuccessful cycle.

     By this time, the concept of actually getting pregnant seemed like a distant possibility at best, so on the fringe in fact, that it was no longer a concrete part of our future life plans. I decided to use the money that I had been saving to give myself a maternity leave from work and remodel our bathroom instead. We began the complete and total destruction of our home's one and only bathroom and I started looking at paint and tile options.

     We stayed busy that month attending the wedding of two of our friends and my nephew's second birthday. While there, my cousin announced exciting news. She was pregnant. I was absolutely over-the-moon thrilled for her and her husband. They were going to be amazing parents and I couldn't wait to have another baby in the family. But I would be lying if I said that my tears were purely joyful. In my mind and in my plans, my cousin and I were always pregnant together. We had always been more like sisters than cousins and were so close in age that we shared a lot of our life event's with one another. It had seemed only natural that we would leap into this important life milestone together as well. This was it. The thing that I had feared so much over the past few years was becoming my living reality. I was really going to watch everyone around me have their babies and start their families while I sat on the sidelines just wishing and waiting for my own. It was happening. As much as I wanted to, I honestly didn't know how I was going to sit around and discuss baby names and nursery themes with her. I didn't think I had the strength.

     The Monday following the birthday party I called my doctor. I was finally ready to find out what was wrong with me and deal with it. My fear had always been that they would tell me something really bad, like there was absolutely no hope. How would I handle that? But the tearful car ride home from the party had revealed to me something important. I was already grieving that loss. I was already there. If that is what the tests had to reveal, then I was already living it. I needed to know if there was anything more that I could do.

     My doctor was wonderful. She didn't want to waste any more time. At my age I should have started fertility testing after about a year of unsuccessful trying. We were already a year and a half behind. My husband was scheduled for a semen analysis and I was scheduled for a hysterosalpinogram which is a series of x-rays taken of the fallopian tubes and uterus and a trans vaginal ultrasound. My first test would happen on the day before Thanksgiving. The thought of getting bad news over the holidays killed me. I was terrified about what the test would reveal and I was heartbroken. Absolutely heartbroken. In my mind, all that I could picture was going through invasive, expensive procedures and still ending up with empty arms as so many couples do.

     I was at a point where every single night I would cry while in the safety and solitude of the shower. I would ask “why?” Why was this completely natural act something that I was struggling with? Why was I not worthy to be a mother? I felt completely worthless.

     I contemplated what testing would mean for us. I already knew from my chart that I was ovulating, so that wasn't the issue. I was using my progesterone cream. Often, couples struggling to conceive don't even get answers as to why. I braced myself for the coming frustration of undergoing countless tests only to be diagnosed with unexplained infertility. Tell me something I don't know.

     Regardless, I used my progesterone cream religiously. If nothing else I could continue to work on a good dose for myself. I spotted one day, but just a little seven days after I had ovulated. Implantation bleeding? I felt that familiar pull of hope, but quickly squashed it. I'd been there many times before. Too many times to fall for it again. As the days passed however, I felt my feelings of hope begin to grow without my permission. No bleeding at 8 DPO (days past ovulation), 9 DPO, 10 DPO, 11, 12... I passed the window! For the first time since March I had passed the window! My luteal phase was long enough this month! Implantation was absolutely possible. Could it be? I thought about taking a test, which usually causes my period to start immediately. Nothing... I went out and bought a pregnancy test. This almost always caused my period to start. Still nothing... I decided to take the test on Halloween since it is my favorite holiday and at that point I would be able to get a clear and accurate result.

     I didn't make it to Halloween though. I woke up a few days before and my temperature had dropped. Not a lot, but enough to cause significant concern. If I was pregnant, my temperature should still be high. I ran to the bathroom. Still no period. I decided to take the home pregnancy test that was waiting for me in the closet. If nothing else, taking a pregnancy test ALWAYS made my period start immediately. With tears in my eyes I filled my little pee cup with shaking hands. I had become a real champ when it came to peeing in cups. I could do it with one hand tied behind my back and both eyes closed.

     I placed one test in the cup, counted to 5 and laid it flat on the floor in front of me. I sat in silence in my bathroom alone, crying and praying. “Please God.” I allowed myself hope for the first time in a year. “Please God, let this be it.” I opened my eyes and saw that my digital test was still flashing the symbol indicating that it was working. I closed my eyes again and continued to pray. My emotions were running rampant. I could never even imagine a positive pregnancy test. It was the illusive, mythical creature that I never expected to catch. It was my Unicorn. My yeti. But as I sat there in my bathroom, walls falling down around me due to the impending remodel I finally realized just how much I actually wanted this to be it. And the feeling was overwhelming. Tears ran down my cheeks. The thought of opening my eyes to anything other than a positive result was too much to take. This had to be it. I never wanted anything more in my entire life.

     I opened my eyes again and through tears, I saw it. A blurry “yes.” A small word but how huge it was to me. I sobbed. I sobbed and sobbed and thanked God and then I used the pee still in my cup to take a second test because I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. Two “yes” results. There are not words to describe my feelings that morning. To this day, it was one of the top two moments in my life, second only to the birth of my son, Archer 9 months later.

     Over the next few weeks I looked back over my chart and discovered that I was actually one day pregnant at my nephew's birthday party. It is ironic that the day that I felt the most hopeless was actually the very day that my luck had changed, I just didn't know it yet. I'm grateful for that experience, however. On that day, my little Bean taught his mama her first good lesson of motherhood... Some day's seem pretty crappy on the surface, but the beauty is in the details.

     Following my positive HPT I promptly canceled my fertility tests and shifted my focus from getting pregnant to being pregnant and regretting my decision to destroy my one and only bathroom right at a time in my life when I needed to pee every five minutes. No matter what else happens in my life, I will never forget my struggle to conceive as long as I live. I allow it to always be close in my memory to remind me to be grateful when I feel frustrated and to be patient when I feel overwhelmed. I'm including my chart from that fabulous month for the other charters out there who like me, enjoy obsessing over someone else's chart. In two and a half years it is the ONLY one I ever had that looked normal, so I'm pretty proud of it. Enjoy, and lots of baby dust to you! I pray that next year, it will be your first Mother's Day that we are celebrating!

 

Filter and Crop

     Social media. Simultaneously my source for news, entertainment, information and my favorite method of staying connected to friends and family. I, like most of society love to just zone out while scrolling through my Facebook news feed after a long day of adulting.

     I often hear people, usually on Facebook, complain about the various different types of social media user. They complain about those who share too much, those who don't share anything and just creep on other people's pages, those who brag, those who complain and everyone in between. I hear complaints about people who “try to make their life or relationship look perfect,” or brag about the good things that happen to them.

     I am absolutely guilty of coming off as braggy. I know this. Especially since becoming a mom. It's not intentional, not meant to show off or anything like that. It's just that I really am so grateful for my life at the moment. I never thought that I would ever get to be a mother, especially to such a sweet little lovie as my Archer and I just want to shout it from the rooftops that I am loving this adventure of mommyhood so very much. I am the Facebook user whose life looks great on social media, but rest assured anyone who is bothered by this, photo filters only go so far.

     While my Facebook page and Instagram are filled to the brim with perfect pictures of a certain handsome gentleman I know, there are a million other pictures in my life that you will never see.

     You will not always see me in pictures, because I usually look like a homeless person when I am not at work. I am a new mommy and on my off days I wear the traditional garb of my people. Yoga pants and hair clips. My hair is rarely even brushed and I refuse to wear make-up or real pants to make a Target run. The pictures that I do venture into are filtered and cropped within an inch of their lives to allow me to maintain what small shred of dignity that I have left in civilized society. This is not to show off, it is to protect the world from the huge bags under my very sleepy eyes.

     While my baby is very pleasant, he is a human infant and therefore can also be pretty salty if the mood strikes. He melts down, I melt down, but you will have to forgive me, those are not the moments in my life that I choose to document. This is not in an effort to look perfect, but because it is tough to take a picture when you are losing your mind and or crying.

     I post beautiful pictures of my handsome baby boy and they appear quaint and picture perfect to the world. But I know that a minute before that picture was taken I was cussing to myself while wrestling a small but very strong little man to change a flimsy diaper full of poop while he rolled it around on the sofa. A minute after that picture was taken he threw a fit because I wouldn't let him pull my hair. That perfect moment between the chaos is the moment that I choose to share... and remember.

     I am careful to angle pictures so that my house looks clean, or at least uncluttered. Cropping often comes in handy for this very purpose. I find that an artsy looking crop can hide a pile of crap quite effectively when used properly. Perfect smile from my baby boy, but a huge pile of amazon boxes behind him? Crop that shit.

     I don't post pictures of poop explosions or pee fountains. This is not in an effort to look perfect but because when you are up to your elbows in human feces you don't think to snap a new profile pic. I don't post pictures of fancy meals because I don't cook any. Kudos to anyone who does. I don't post breastfeeding pictures to support the normalize breastfeeding cause because I have spent the majority of my 34 years on this planet trying to keep my boobs off of the internet. You will not see pictures, beautifully filtered of me hooked up to my breast pump as a huge hornet tries to fly into my open office window.

     You won't see pictures of the times when I really need for my baby to be quiet and he is being anything but. In those moments a picture is the least of my concerns. You won't see pictures of me struggling to eat a meal with one hand while restraining my child like he is a mental patient with the other because I don't have a third hand with which to take a picture. You won't see pictures of when my bed goes unmade or the laundry just sits helplessly in a basket for days because I just can't get around to folding and putting it away again today. You won't see the dust on my counters or the dishes in my sink. This is not to appear perfect, but because in the checklist of my life those things do not register as super important anymore.

     You won't see pictures of my son's beautiful nursery, cluttered with pirate crap in preparation for his birthday party, or the multiple bags of pump parts that are constantly falling out of my kitchen cabinets because in almost 10 months I still haven't come up with a more efficient way of storing them.

     You won't see pictures of when I am too exhausted to read my son a book, or when I get stuck at work late caring for someone else's child instead of being at home with my own. You will very rarely see pictures of tantrums, his or my own because in those moments we don't need pictures, we need comfort and I prefer to hug Archer than to document him when he is upset.

     You won't see pictures of my kid with his shoes on the wrong feet... again... Or of him trying to eat clumps of cat fur off of my carpet that needs a good vacuuming. You won't see pictures of me trying to balance my son in one arm while I try to pull a fancy dress down over my fat ass with my other arm after feeding him in a small, dirty bathroom stall at an event. You won't see pictures of me picking toys up off of the floor and giving them right back to my son because he is going to throw them a million more times and I have given up on cleaning them every time. The germs won.

     I don't take pictures when my boobs get bit or when they leak in public. I don't post pictures of struggling to retain some of my modesty when I try to stay covered while feeding him and he will have none of it. I don't post pictures of my broken heart everyday when I leave him behind to go off to work.

     I choose to document the fun days instead of the days when I take him for blood work and he gets stuck in both arms because the phlebotomist couldn't find a vein in his chubby little arms. I don't choose to document how I left the hospital in tears that day too because it just broke my heart to have to hold him down while they tried to get blood.

     What you will see however, is a smiling, happy, beautiful baby boy. This is not to be fake, or to pretend that my life is somehow perfect. It isn't perfect. But it is to celebrate the fleeting moments of my life that are.

     I refuse to complain about my child's worst days because he isn't old enough to explain or defend himself and he never throws me under the bus when I fall short, which is often. I also would never want him to do a search of his mommy's past posts and think that I was anything other than thrilled to be his mommy, even when things did not go smoothly or as I had hoped or planned.

     I smile when I see the posts about how some people try to make their lives look perfect, because I don't think that any of us are trying to pretend to be perfect. We are pretending to be sane. We are embracing the fact that our little ones are only going to be little for a short time and we are proud of each and every accomplishment that they achieve, even if today that accomplishment is just being stunningly adorable.

     We all do it. We all try to show our best face to the world and to be honest, what's wrong with that? What's wrong with sharing the positive and putting that vibe out into the universe as opposed to something negative or ugly? As long as we give each other that little wink from mommy to mommy that says, “You're really a mess? Okay. Good, me too. Here, take my picture by this organic farm. Use a filter.”