sudden

i got news yesterday that an old friend lost her baby. her son. full term. all i know is that she went into labor, and he was pronounced dead after delivery. her first child.

my friend and i are not close anymore. we grew apart in our 20s after an intense, high-school-best-friend- youth-group-christians-against-the-world kind of friendship. as far as i know, she still lives in that world. we occasionally say hi on each other’s facebook walls. i gave her tips for morning sickness.

my heart aches overwhelmingly for her. i remember us at 16. this kind of tragedy never registered on our radar. it was impossible. God would protect us from suffering this big. i think of her as a mother. a mother with empty arms. her milk will come in soon. oh god. how will she survive this?

i’ve been so very weepy and afraid since hearing the news. i wrap my arms around my growing belly, and focus focus focus on feeling the swishy somersaults of my zig. i bury my nose in my daughter’s hair and inhale her sweaty, shampooish aliveness. my mama bear heart tries to send a force field of protection around my children. please live, i pray. i couldn’t bear to lose either one of you.

this is such a selfish reaction, but a true one.

i want to turn my own fear and grief into care for my friend, whatever that can look like after years of estrangement. my teenage self wants to hurry to her side, hold her hand, and pray with all the faith i once had, until relief comes.

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sling recall

hi all,

not sure if any of you use this sling, but wanted to make sure everyone knew that there is a massive recall, due to infant deaths by suffocation.

i highly recommend passing on the link.

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20/1 months.

my darling jude,

when you’re reading through these archives years from now, and wonder where your 20 month letter is, let me reassure you: it’s not lost. it is here. with your 21 month letter. i’m sorry i didn’t write last month. here are my excuses: continued nausea/exhaustion from incubating your sibling, the fact that you and i fell down the stairs and i saved your life, but broke my tailbone, and well, the leftover energy from the previous reasons was used to chase after your fast, toddler self.

i really don’t know how to begin to describe life with you right now. i’m gonna go with this: it’s equal parts ordered and chaotic. your days have become comfortably routine.  here come the bullet points!

• you wake up, watch sesame street or curious george (lovingly referred to as ‘that damn monkey’ or ‘tdm’ by your mothers),
• you feed yourself your morning yogurt, steal sips of my coffee and bites of my bagel with cream cheese
• you head off to bobby’s house with mama and play with his toys for a couple hours
• you have lunch
• you sleep for about 3 hours
• you demand to go outside, where you playplayplayplayplay until you’re lugged back inside against your will
• you eat dinner
• you play/watch dora or yo gabba gabba, etc
• you have a bath
• you run to the door to greet me as i arrive home from work
• we read books together, you nurse for about 1 minute and then you ask to go to bed
• you sleep for the next 11ish hours, usually without waking

in the middle of this schedule, this order, the chaos ensues. your independent streak grows stronger and more defiant every day. you gnash your teeth at the outfit choices presented to you. you wail angrily when you’re thwarted from dangerous activities. you hit when you’re frustrated. you run away when we say “come here”. all of these behaviors? awesome, in its true definition: adjective – extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear.

the good news is that you are still pretty easy to distract or redirect. your mama bought an egg timer to help you with transitions, like bedtime. you’re great with five minute warnings. i love that timer. you seem to want to move out of the chaotic moments, back into the snuggly, fun ones.

you hug with great passion and strength. you went through a phase where you called me daddy, and though it was SO funny, my heart melted the first time you purposely called me Mah-meeeee! now, you often throw your sticky arms around my neck so we’re cheek to cheek, and you say, loudly in my ear, “ohhhh mah-mee! ohhhhh mah-mee! ohhhh!” and you squeeze me tightly. you’ll never know how much i love when you do that.

you’ve become a whiz at names. you love to correctly identify your people and pets: maMAA, mah-meee, choo (jude), sal!, dahchee (charley, also morphs into “doggy”), deggy (uncle g), bah-bee, dabby (gabby), etc. you’ve also developed a love affair with trains (choo choo!) and, oddly enough, the word “hot dog”, which you say over and over all day long. we’ve taught you to use it as an exclamation. you also love to count, and though you can’t get past 3 yet, you like for us to keep going as you point to countable objects. you’re equally enthralled with letters, and can correctly identify O, E and J.

at the time of this writing, you have purposely peed in your potty exactly once, by the way. you have peed and pooped on the floor more than once. that’s all i’ll say about that.

you have a crush on dora’s holier-than-thou cousin diego. you hate to have your hair brushed. you have 12 1/2 teeth. you still love cheese. every day, there is nowhere i’d rather be than playing with you.

i love you,
mah-meeeee

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hi.

here we are. second trimester. nausea bowling me over like a motherfucker. tailbone and hip make me whine and limp. i’m a mess. a grateful mess, but still, a mess.

how are you?

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portrait of the artist as a young fetus.

this morning was ziggy’s first photoshoot. and aside from the nasty looks given to me by the receptionist for not having bloodwork done to do genetic testing, the whole experience was delightful. (she couldn’t fathom why we would want an ultrasound without having the genetic testing done.)

in the ultrasound room, h wrangled jude. jude pointed at the big tv screen a lot and said “hi’. uncle g sat silently taking it all in. and i lay there, reminding myself to be present to the reality that i was watching my baby, my son or daughter, skooch away from the transducer. right in front of me was my baby’s face, arms, legs, heart beating 163 bpm. jude was staring at her sibling, my 2nd child. all of this–the pregnancy, the hopes, the fears–is so very real.

dear readers, meet ziggy, at 12w2d:

waving hand:

headshot:

(that nose! those lips!)

full body shot:

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isolation.

the past weeks have been strange ones. balance has been precarious (as evidenced by my spectacular fall) all around me. an airplane crashed a moment behind me. last weekend, a (thankfully unoccupied) house around the corner from us BLEW UP at 2 am, days after thieves stole the oven and left the gas on. our house shook. the neighborhood was full of smoke and the bright orange and blue of a gas fire. the safe womb of home i’ve worked so hard to create feels like it’s been encroached upon. my hackles are raised. my heart is fearful that we’re next, that disaster is looming in a close, darkened corner.

this precarious balance has been exacerbated by how little i’ve seen my wife and daughter this week. h has taken a babysitting job caring for bobby, jude’s bff. it’s only 2 hours a day: 10am till noon. this past week, however, h has been needed from 8-12. every morning, i’ve blearily kissed my girls goodbye from bed before getting myself ready for work. every day, i arrive home within a half hour of jude’s bedtime. i’ve interacted with my child for half hour a day this week. h and i go to bed soon after jude does.

i’ve felt very alone all week, as i hobbled through every workday. i am grateful for my job, for insurance, for stability, but it does not do much for feeling awake and alive to the wonder of the world, if you know what i mean. with my wondergirls missing from my day, i watched the proverbial tumbleweed roll by.

but today is saturday. h is off at the home depot, with big plans for composting and gardening and weed-eating. j is stirring but still napping. she wrapped herself around my legs this morning, screaming “MOMMMEEEEEEEE! MOMMMEEEEEEE!” she debuted some new words for me too: charley! choochoo! hotdog! we have two whole days together. tonight, h and i have a date with some friends, as uncle g spends the eve with j. oh connection. i’m so grateful.

and on monday, as a fambly, we’ll gather to watch ziggy for the first time on a big tv, and we’ll wonder altogether at just how blessed, and connected, we are .

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11w5d

i really, really want to get back into the habit of writing regularly here. there are so many stories to tell, as always. but aside from my busted ass and continued morning sickness, i’m in the land of sinus infections again. motivation to string words together is loooow. motivation for sleep is high!

so here’s a pic of me today, 11w5d pregnant, and way thinner than my last photo, not even 3 weeks ago. sheesh. ambivalent about that.

how are you all doing?

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