priceless

I am having a terrible day today missing my girl, and Jay sent this along to brighten my spirits. Clearly she's happy as a pig in shit during her Costco trip with her daddy. Isn't she the cutest?!?

on being a mom

Maura is 12 weeks old this week, and I feel like our life is finally settling. I've been sick for the past two weeks (sinus infection AND a virus) but the blessing in all of it is that I got to spend a few extra days at home in the past week or so and feel like I've finally solidified the bond with my girl. We played together, napped together, smooched and cuddled a lot, and overall, it feels like she knows I'm her momma. My jealously has subsided a bit with Jay; I know for sure we're in this together and that if we could switch roles, he would do it in a second. And it's been a greater joy than I imagined watching the two of them bond. Sometimes when I leave in the morning the two of them are cuddled in bed or on the sofa, and the misery I feel at leaving them is softened by the fact that they seem just melded to each other, like some cheesy physical manifestation of the love between them. She's a lucky girl.

I've been feeling a bit out of sorts, very much missing being pregnant with my girl. In an effort to come to some kind of peace (always a struggle for me), I've been trying to examine what I loved so much about being pregnant that didn't carry over into being a mom. Don't mistake me -- being Maura's mom and Jay's wife has brought me more love than I ever thought possible, and is a thousand million times more fulfilling then I imagined -- yet I very much miss being pregnant, carrying Maura in my belly and protecting her all by myself (and I didn't even do a very good job at that; poor thing got no nourishment from my body from 34 weeks on). I am getting more peace from being a mom than I thought I would, and it's not as if I feel something is missing, but I think I realized today what is going on . . .

(Please note I am not at all fishing for compliments here, and I know to some people I may sound delusional. Be that as it may . . .)

I have never been comfortable with how I look. My biggest issue is that I have never been anything above ordinary. I'm a little shorter than average, a little fatter than average, and while I certainly have my talents, I wouldn't be considered one that stood out in a crowd, particularly physically. My only defining characteristic was that I had big boobs, and I had those reduced when I was 20 years old so I wouldn't be defined by it anymore. But I guess since then, I've had nothing that physically gave me character. I've always done my hair a bit different, cut it short and dyed it many colors. Yet now, at 31 years old, I have finally stopped dying my hair, a trend that started when I was 14. I always wanted to be a little on the saucy side, and I so admire women who are, yet I feel like I've never quite achieved that. But yet when I was pregnant, I was SOMETHING. By belly made my thighs less ginormous (my other obvious characteristic), my belly made people smile, made people notice me, made people care how I was doing. Frankly, my belly looked better in clothes than my non-pregnant body did. Finally, I had character. I had something that defined me physically. And now, as a mom, I'm back to invisible.

I know new moms struggle all the time with their identity and that my feelings are nothing new, but it really does give me something to contemplate. I worry that I'm not as good of a mom as I could be because these stupid things occupy my brain space, and I worry more that my beautiful and perfect daughter will one day think these same things about herself, which might literally break my heart.

But it's a concern; it's there, no matter how much I try to ignore it. And I've tried everything I can: gotten some new clothes that fit my new weird body, cut my hair when needed, gave myself a pedicure. Yet in a little tiny bitty way I feel like I'm losing it.

But then, I look at myself in these moments with my daughter, moments that truly matter, moments I'll never get back, and I know that my love for her is truly more important, and more real, than any feeling of insecurity I face:
Good God I love her.

growing like a champ

We officially have a 10 lb. girl on our hands! Last week's visit to the doctor was a success, minus the first round of vaccines she had to get that made her cry her poor little head off. She's growing really well, and is even up to almost 22 inches! That seems remarkable to me that she's grown almost 4 inches in 10 weeks. Her little bones must ache! She's been having some growing pains lately we think, and I totally can understand why. She's finally filling out her newborn-sized clothes, and has jumped from the 10th percentile to the 20th for height and weight.

Her personality has also blossomed. She's smiling all the time, reacts when we make funny faces, and loves being sung to and danced around. She's such a joy. Her sleeping has gotten a bit more regular, although I don't think we'll ever get used to being so tired. She's the most portable baby I know, and loves to be taken just about anywhere. We went on an airplane last weekend for the first time to go to my brother's engagement party, and she slept through the whole thing. Jay and I still haven't recovered from an overnight trip, but its as if she never missed a beat.

All in all, things are going well. The stress of our schedule and the lack of sleep are making things a bit difficult for us to be rational at times, but I think that goes with the territory. And maybe because of stress, tiredness, hormones, whatever, I can't seem to shake this terrible habit I've gotten into of preparing myself for worst-case scenarios. It started with the terrible thought I couldn't shake for the first few weeks she was home: one day I'm going to die and leave her. I still think this daily. (Is this normal? Someone please reassure me.) But now I've started to play out circumstances in my head in which this happens. Case in point -- the airplane ride. I had planned out what I would try to do if the plane crashed. I figured that if we were on the ground, crashed and engulfed in flames, I would use all my strength to try to throw her as far as I could away from the burning rubble, thinking she would survive the impact of the throw better than she would survive the flames. In fact, I thought, if it looked like there was a way to throw her out of the plane right before impact, there would be a better chance of survival than if she stayed with me on the plane and burned. And when they found her, they would know who she was because we had registered her for the plane trip even though she didn't need a boarding pass to get on.

The next scenario is that I have her out with me on a walk, strapped to my chest in the baby bjorn. It's dark, and someone comes up to us and tries to murder me. I plead with them to let her go and they do, and they let me toss her into some bushes nearby before they kill me. Then, when they find my body, I will have been carrying my wallet on me and they will be able to ID us. But who carries their wallet on a quick walk? I never did, but because I'm so scared of this circumstance, I actually went out and bought a special wallet that has a place to hold a cell phone, so no matter what I'll always have my wallet and phone on me, my wallet containing her health insurance card to ID her. Of course, this morning I decided that wasn't enough, so I made up an emergency contact sheet, wallet-sized, with my name, her name, Jay's name and all of our info on it, in case something bad happens to me and they need to contact Jay, or if they need to ID the baby. Trust me, I understand now why people advocate for microchips to be implanted in all children with their emergency/medical/personal info on it.

Am I nuts? Could be. I've never been a paranoid person, and I've always been one to feel very safe. I took risks when I was younger that I would DIE if Maura repeated, and I came out OK. My life has never been in danger, and I've never been traumatized. I'm hoping this is just a normal (OK, maybe the far end of normal) reaction to loving Maura and wanting to protect her and that it will go away soon. Good thing I work at a psychiatric hospital if it doesn't . . .