Category: Family
How my daughter taught me to see LOVE instead of fear
I’ve been pretty devastated about the recent bombings in Boston. Just like I was about the school shootings and countless other unnecessary acts of violence that have happened since my daughter was born. I can’t believe that I am raising my children in a world where these things happen…frequently. But the reality is that I AM raising my children in this world.
Today, as I was thinking about all this while mindlessly emptying the dishwasher, I witnessed my daughter do the most amazing thing. My son started crying in his rock and play sleeper and my daughter ran over to him and whispered “It’s okay, Liam, I love you, it’s okay.”
I know this may seem arbitrary to most of you, but it made me realize that I CAN raise my children in this world. My daughter is kind and empathetic and I know that one day, she’ll be the first one to help out in whatever crisis should occur. That’s all we can hope for, right? That we raise out children to be better than we are. If we can do that, maybe, just maybe the world can change. And if it can’t, at least I know that my children are doing their best to fix what is broken.
Now, as I sit here with my son on my chest, and my daughter by my side, I feel a sense of security, instead of fear. My daughter’s simple, comforting words were exactly what I needed to know that there will always be good, no matter how bad things get.
Oops! I forgot about Santa
Cooper was born at the end of September, so he was a very teeny-tiny, barely functioning poop-pantsed baby when he had his first Christmas. He spent most of the day eyes glazed, swatting at balls of discarded wrapping paper like a bored cat. Because of this, we felt no need to mark any of his presents as being “From Santa,” or setting out milk and cookies, or any of those other things that Santa-loving folks do. Next Christmas, he was barely a year old, so it still seemed basically pointless. Then, somewhere around his fourth Christmas, I realized that I kind of forgot about Santa Claus.
Most kids have horror stories from their youth about the time they found out that SPOILER ALERT: Santa isn’t real. There’s talk of betrayal, tears, and an emptiness that persists well into adulthood. I don’t have a story like that, because I don’t remember ever believing in Santa Claus. In fact, I specifically remember being five years old and not believing in Santa. I always grew up with the impression that Santa was a nice character that some parents taught their children about. He’s not real, but it’s also not polite to tell people that. So basically I equated Santa with Jesus very early in life. Continue reading
Please Stop Telling Me That I Want More Children…..another viewpoint
We’ve all read how our friend Lauren doesn’t want more children and how frustrating it can be when everyone around is asking/pestering her about it. I feel her pain, but for a totally different reason.
I have heard for years, “So when is baby number 3 coming?” “Are y’all going to have anymore babies?” “Your girls really need a little brother, you all should keep trying!” Usually I just nod or politely deflect the questions. Using a smile or general “we’ll see” to hide the pain. See unlike Lauren, I do WANT more kids. Continue reading
If Mama Ain’t Happy…
…well, you know the rest. Ain’t nobody happy. As I’ve previously mentioned, I work with a bunch of older people who find it baffling that I choose to keep my uterus free of further occupants. I had a conversation with one of these gentlemen last week. This guy, god bless him, is over 60, has one son, is still very involved with his grandson, and coaches all sorts of youth-league sports. He’s pretty awesome, and I like the guy. Except when he asks me if I’m signing my son up for sports, and I say, “No.” And I have to explain that my sanity overrides baseball.
Let’s get a few things straight. I am broke. Clearly, I’m not living in a Hooverville tent, making bum wine, and training my son to be a pickpocket to make ends meet. But a lot of extras need to be foregone. One of those extras? Pee-wee football, or Little League. The equipment is expensive enough, but did you know that my son grows about six inches every goddamn week? (That may be a slight approximation. I’m not that good at guesstimating.) It adds up. QUICKLY. Second of all, sports parents. They’re the worst. I dated a hockey player in high school, and the most terrifying experience of my life occurred at a roller hockey game when one parent threatened to “rip [your] head off and shit down your throat” when one kid checked another. I don’t believe in getting involved in scuffles between kids because it teaches them to giant weenies (clearly, with some exceptions). In sports? THEY ARE COMPETING AGAINST EACH OTHER. The point of the whole stupid game is for them to have a scuffle, at least on SOME level. Ugh.
Baby Daddy
It’s awful. Shallow. Frustrating. Overwhelming. There are so many things to think about. There are a few things we knew, absolutely knew, when we started looking at donors. Unfortunately, there are about a million ‘qualifiers’ that we didn’t even know we’d have to filter through.
You start the search and you think, “cool, this is going to be so much fun.”. It’s not. First you have to have to decide what kind of donor you want, known or unknown. Then you have to decide if you care if your donor has a graduate degree, is working towards one, has been to college at all. Why this matters I have no fucking idea. Then race, which wasn’t so hard, we knew we wanted to have a mixed race baby, preferably with some Latino flair. Then it asks you about RH factor and blood type. Shit, I don’t even know my blood type, much less what an RH factor is. We select ANY for both categories and move down the list. Next you can decide that the donor is a certain height and weight. Easy enough. Weight we leave blank and for height we put in that he has to be at least 5’8″, short dudes are weird. Eye color, hair color, hair type. We put any for all of those categories, no big deal. But, that’s just the initial search.
It comes back and there are more than a dozen that meet the specifications we put in. Again, ugh. At first we thought we were going to have so much fun with this, it’s not like everyone gets to read the complete medical history, education history and personality test results of their baby daddy. It’s not fun. It’s awful. Because now, now we have to go through the dozen plus donors that meet our basic idea of what we might want out of a donor and WHAT IF WE PICK THE WRONG ONE. This isn’t a cheap process. More than that, we’re talking about creating a little tiny human. A HUMAN.
And, It Was Valentine’s Day
There’s a lot of information out there for lesbians who want to have babies. It is 2013, there is information about, just about, everything, on the internet. Unfortunately, most of the information, on this subject, is about the equivalent of a yahoo chat room. Laws vary state to state and insurance company to insurance company and employer to employer. Nothing’s cut and dry. Being that we live in Virginia, conservative, behind the times, republican Virginia it’s not as if you can go to a government supported page and find out how to go about putting a baby in me.
Being intelligent, resourceful adults we bought a few books on Amazon that had good ratings. We read a lot of blogs. We joined the RVA Gay Parents Meetup Group. We scoured the web searching for gay friendly doctors. We contacted the sperm bank we’re using for recommendations.
We called and made an appointment, outlining the reason for our visit and our expectations for what we wanted to get out of the consultation. We requested the day off from work so we could both go. We told people how excited we were to stop talking about family planning and actually plan our first baby. We filled out the five page form they sent in the mail.
Counting to infinity
Within the first month of Ben’s elementary school career he was diagnosed with ADHD – combined type, which means not only does he have trouble focusing, he also has trouble sitting still or being quiet for long, or even short periods of time. Pretty much unless there is a video game controller, crayon, paintbrush or Lego in his hands he’s moving around, singing at the top of his lungs or laughing maniacally at nothing. Since the diagnosis, he has taken several different medications, different dosages and combinations of different medications with different dosages. I’m pretty sure any adult taking them would be disassembling and reassembling their vacuum cleaner just because. Basically, I went against everything I have ever said and drugged my child, bad mommy!
Cut to six months later and let me tell you…I am frustrated! More frustrated than October Road being cancelled and having no hope of ever finding out who that kids dad is! I am tired of the negative reports I get from his kindergarten teacher every day when I pick him up from school, just before she tells me he how much time he spent in the office that day. It really pisses me off that he is sent to the office on a daily and ends up missing out on valuable class time. And the teacher wonders why he is so far behind the other kids in his class. I am tired of the unanswered questions and not having the resources to figure out where to go and what to do next! I am not asking someone to hold my hand and skip through this wonderful world of IEP’s, 504 Plans, medication or support groups with me….just a little help.
I STILL HAVE A UTERUS!
Really. I do. My oven, far as I know, is entirely capable of cooking a bun.
So, I always wanted kids. Always. When I was a kid and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would tell them I wanted to be a mom. I didn’t ever think about the logistics of that or what my family, exactly, would look like; just like when you ask a six year old what he wants to be and he says, “Optimus Prime”, it doesn’t god damn matter what he will have to do or even what he’ll do when he IS Optimus Prime, that’s what he’s gonna be.
This longing to have children wasn’t just to be someone’s mom. I wanted to carry them, birth them, breastfeed them. As I moved from fantastical child into early adulthood I realized that being single, working in the industry I work in, that pays well, but not over the top, would present a challenge. I was determined, none the less, and around 20 I started looking into lesbian (who doesn’t want to fuck dudes to get pregnant) friendly options. There are numerous sperm banks out there and one relatively close, affordable and easy to work with.
The American Dream, Strokes and Meeting My Mother.
My mother was supposed to be a stay at home mom. That was my parent’s arrangement.
My mother made friends with the other military wives on base, where we lived. She and her best friend, Vicky, were much ahead of their time. She wanted to do more for her family. She wanted to look out for her kids, going against societal pressures. She and Vicky joined the La Leche League, they led their own group. My brother is not circumcised. We wore organic cloth diapers. We didn’t have strollers, she carried us around in slings close to her chest. We coslept. She gave birth at home, with an underground midwife. We weren’t vaccinated. She homeschooled all four of her kids for a number of years. She was really, really fucking committed to this raising kids thing.
She would go on to start her own cloth diaper business. It started out as a mail-order business. She took out ads in Mothering Magazine. She opened a small store front, in Maine, in a teeny tiny little town. She employed a few women, Part Time, as business picked up. She sold wooden toys, books, cotton kids clothes, and of course her handmade cloth diapers. It only lasted a few years and she sold the business, along with her diaper designs.
Staying At Home: I Have A Secret
Like pretty much every woman these days, I have a Pinterest account. I love Pinterest unashamedly. My boards are a ridiculous collection of delicious foods, beautiful clothing, whimsical DIY projects and gorgeous home interiors. I can and have spent hours lost in a Pinterest hole, much to the dismay of my husband who likes to do things like “have conversations” and “spend time together” when he gets home from work. However, beneath the shiny exterior of my Pinterest boards, I keep a deep, dark secret. I don’t like admitting it out loud, but it has to be said.
I suck at crafting.
I KNOW. I’M SORRY.
I feel like I’m living a DIY lie.
I want to be so good at crafting. Since I’ve become a stay-at-home mom, I feel guilty just sitting around doing nothing. The logical part of me knows that my life is the furthest from sitting around, since I am constantly doing laundry, picking things up, moving things, cleaning, chasing a toddler around, grocery shopping, etc. But the secret part of me feels that I’m not doing enough, so I have a constant need to work on crafts.
Put Your Damn Pants On! 