Oy! Motherhood.

Bourbon-Glazed Corned Beef

Yep, you guessed it, another slow cooker home run. This one cooked for 11 hours with a 15 minute finish in the oven to set the glaze and it's a killer! We were still talking about it this morning. Of course, it wasn't really all that long ago that we finished eating it. 10 pm last night, to be exact. No, we're not on holiday in Spain, we just have two kids and a couple of nutty relatives, all of whose issues collided suddenly in one 12 hour period.

The Girl's cutting teeth, The Boy's having behavioral issues related to allergies and asthma, my father had to be taken to the ER for a swollen ankle, my mother was in the throes of trying to figure out how to pull off a little soiree in spite of the swollen ankle, and my grandmother needed to be transported here, from her home, which is just under an hour away, for the arrival of the rest of my immediate family who are vacationing here for the next two weeks.

So, the last couple of days have gone something like this:

The night before last The Girl went down at 8 pm, as usual, right after her bath. By 10 she was screaming. I went back up and nursed her down again and she slept until midnight, at which point she was up screaming again. I rocked her and held her and then finally just plopped her in her crib. She was up again at 2:30. So, I brought her in the bed and we both promptly fell asleep. She stayed there until 6am when she woke up happy and chirpy and testing her lungs in a way that was surely designed to wake the dead. What woke me up was a great big slap in the eye.

Then about ten minutes later The Boy woke up with a barking cough. And I should have known this would happen because his ears were bright red the day before and his eyes were bothering him. The Boy is normally a very happy, gentle, sweet kid, but when he's having an allergy attack he becomes another person entirely. Whiny, crabby, clingy, depressive, prone to fire-engine style crying in public places, and most fun of all, threatens to puke every time he smells something even remotely odiferous. I'm not exaggerating when I say that he can smell things that wouldn't even register in the average human olfactory system. So, as you might imagine, it's no picnic to dine in a restaurant of any kind with The Boy when his allergies are acting up. In fact, he did once puke on the table in Friendly's, so my fears are not unfounded. In spite of all that we stupidly tried anyway.

During the meal I left the restaurant twice. Once to admonish The Boy for his incessant gagging and whining and the second time to nurse The Girl who was uncharacteristically refusing to eat her cereal because I had the parental gall to mix it with cold water. And it was only lunchtime.

(Note: Any parent knows that the above paragraph doesn't even BEGIN to describe what went on in that restaurant--there was whining and gagging and crying and jumping in and out of seats. That was just The Boy. The Girl was grabbing and screaming and spitting and throwing. She's in the octopus stage.)

After that a trip to the grocery store seemed like a fun thing to do (um, can you say MORON?). Of course The Boy gagged his way through the deli section and then insisted on using the bathroom. Luckily my mother was with me or I would have had to abandon the cart and take both kids into the stall with me. Now, public bathrooms are not the most pleasantly aromatic places on Earth, and in fact, this one smelled like--and there's no nice way to say this--ASS. But did my little super smeller even bat an eyelash? No. Did he gag? Not even once. In fact, it was the happiest I'd seen him all day.

I'd contemplate what exactly that might mean, but I'm too afraid to find out.

The next day at about 8:45ish i called my mother to ask her something and she informed me that she was going grocery shopping and to the post office and then would be going home to take my father to the emergency room.

um, huh?! i was all like, "mom, WTF? first of all, WHAT happened and secondly, WHY are you shopping BEFORE the emergency room???"

she had planned a little soiree for last night and needed to do some shopping for it and in her infinite wisdom decided to do that first. maybe some kind of weird denial, maybe payback for last year when he refused to accompany her to the ER for her umpteenth CT scan (all of which revealed absolutely nothing except perhaps a need for some serious therapy) whatever it was, she was already out of the house and on the road when i talked with her.

apparently dad's ankle had swollen up to five times its normal size overnight and was red and hot and he could barely walk. sounds like something that could wait to me, how about you?

SOOOOOOOOOOOO, i said, you're both nuts, i'm going over to get dad and will take him to the ER. I made it out of the house with the kids in record time--i believe it was under 15 minutes and i was still in pjs with no makeup and the kids weren't even dressed when i decided to do this.

off we went. i got there and he was UPSTAIRS painting. i told him i was there to take him to the ER and he washed his brushes (priorities people!) and came down to CHANGE CLOTHES. i ran around closing windows and putting the dog in the laundry room and locking doors so he could just head right out and then i sat in the car and waited for him. with the kids, of course.

and he finally hobbled out and i drove him over there. during the ride over he said he just wanted me to drop him off and go, which i was refusing to do until he said he didn't want the kids exposed to anything and i got nervous about sitting in the germy hospital for hours on end. so i pulled up and unceremoniously dropped him at the entrance to the ER. i felt awful leaving him there, but he insisted he'd be fine because he had his phone and would call my mother as soon as he was done. he figured he had gout and just needed a cortisone shot.

so after i dropped him off i called my mother to tell her that she should take her groceries home and then head over to the hospital to see what was up. she started whining about having to go all the way home and then all the way out again. then i just told her to stay home and if he called while i was doing errands i'd pick him up. i purposely stayed out until noon (i'd dropped him off around 10, i guess) but he still hadn't called, so i went over to their house to wait.

he didn't call until 1:30 and when he did finally call it was to tell us that they were admitting him for observation because his ankle could have been swollen from infection or a spider bite or any number of things. they drew fluid out of the joint with a big needle (ouch!) and gave him a lot of ibuprofen.

my mother told him she'd be right over--that is, after she cleaned up the kitchen and took a shower!!!

i was horrified, but of course couldn't go over there with the kids. she eventually made it there and they actually released him last night with some meds for pseudo gout, a type of gout that is not diet induced and often the only cure for it is to flush the joint using some kind of surgical procedure. if the meds don't work he'll have to go in for the surgery.

and in the meantime, i've discovered that my parents are even crazier than i'd imagined.

and, no, i haven't seen that episode of desperate housewives, but three of my friends have told me about it in the last 24 hours.

Monkeying Around the Grocery Store

So this morning I decided to make Jamaican Jerk Chicken in the slow cooker. I'm all about the slow cooker lately, but I can't seem to get myself prepared early enough in the day to put something together. Today I was determined to get out the door in good time to pick up the groceries I needed. The first sign of trouble was when The Girl fell asleep in her swing at 9am.

"Okay," I thought, "so we're a little delayed. No biggie. If I get everything put together by noon we'll eat by 6pm, no problem."

So, I puttered around, got the boy and myself dressed, and waited until she woke up. We headed out the door at 10:38am.

Yesterday I discovered that the jogging stroller had a flat tire, so I wanted to stop at Walmart for a patch kit. While we were in Walmart I thought of at least a dozen other things we needed, fielded a phone call from my mother, entertained several old people who stopped to chit chat with the baby, and was spit up on by the girl. Even though I now expect everything to take longer than I initially assume it will take, I still underestimated how long we'd be in there. The good news is that we made it safely out of the store and back into the car (despite The Girl's screaming about being put back in the carseat and The Boy's howling that his seatbelt was stuck) without major incident.

Shaw's was a quick trip across the parking lot from Walmart and even though I didn't bother looking at the clock I thought we were making good time (clearly my head was up my ass). As we bumpity bumped across the store's threshold I said to The Boy, "I want to run in and run out, no fooling around."

"But mom, how will we buy anything if we run in and run right out again?"

Good question, but I was too tired from being up half the night with The Girl to give him a proper answer. "Let's just get this done, okay?"

"Okay," he said, as he hopped amiably onto the end of the cart. The Girl was sitting in the seat in front of me looking up at the lights on the ceiling. All was well.

Have you ever gotten that chain email that describes certain tasks one can undertake in order to prepare for parenthood before the baby is born? One of the tasks is to take two goats to the grocery store and keep them together and out of trouble for the duration of the shopping trip. Today it wasn't so much like goats (although The Girl did eat my grocery list), it was more like monkeys.

The Boy was all over the cart. He was on the front, under it, at the back with me, and was either hanging off the cart in one way or another or hopping off it to touch touch touch everything he could find. At one point he was walking in circles around me, talking to himself, or his imaginary friend, banging himself on the head with his fist. The Girl was either happily chewing on something or screaming in frustration at me for taking whatever it was away from her. Towards the end of the trip The Boy decided to sit in such a way that his head was right beneath The Girl's chubby little bare feet. She started kicking his head and squealing with delight while he shouted "Ow, ow, ow, ow!" People were stopping to watch them as if they were some kind of circus sideshow.

Lest I lose my mind I continued on my not-so-merry way until we were fully checked out and back in the car, where I noticed it was 11:48am.

So much for Jamaican Jerk Chicken.

(Okay, so I'm lying--I did end up doing the chicken, but we won't be eating until about 8pm.)

how?

It wasn't easy getting here. It wasn't as hard as what some of my friends have been through, but it definitely had its moments. According to my doctors I'm subfertile, but beyond that we know nothing. No one has ever discovered the cause of my subfertility, yet it persists, or at least I assume it does--we're not actually going to try for a third child because I'd probably be 40, at the youngest, before I conceive again and I'm just far too tired already to expect my body to be able to deal with pregnancy again at 40.

Our first pregnancy took a year to achieve, which in the grand scheme of things is a pretty short wait, but while it was happening it seemed like an eternity. Before we even got started I found my way to Internet bulletin boards peppered with other women trying to conceive. I did my research, read the Holy Grail of babymaking--TCOYF (Taking Charge of Your Fertility), and started charting my cycles. I dutifully watched for EWCM (egg white cervical mucus) and checked cervical position. I learned to refer to my husband as "dh," even though it just didn't seem quite right. I mean, he can be a dear husband, but he isn't always, and frankly, I'm not nearly that cutesie.

The long and short of it is that going into the whole trying-to-get-pregnant thing I knew my cycle like the back of my hand, so when we did finally start in earnest I just knew we'd be pregnant in no time. Suckerrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Three months into our first blissfully unjaded attempts I found a lump in my right breast. It was pea-sized and it moved around. I didn't think it was cancer (mostly out of denial), but thought I'd better tell my doctor anyway. He unceremoniously warned us to stop trying because we "wouldn't want to be pregnant with cancer."

Um, how about we just wouldn't want it to be cancer?

After waiting a very anxious week and a half to get in for a mammogram (some hold up with the insurance not wanting to approve one for a 30 year old--geniuses, all of them!), the lump, thankfully, turned out to be much ado about nothing and we were able to start trying again immediately.

Six months in I decided that something might be wrong and I started peeing on ovulation predictors. Time marched on and the tide of pregnancy tests (ordered in bulk online) began to flow. All of them turned up negative, no matter the quality of light or how hard I squinted at them. My husband's sperm count, motility, and morphology were perfect--better than perfect, they were great, and for at least a week following his semen analysis he walked around, chest puffed out, declaring that he was "a bull." So the problem, it appeared, was with me.

We moved on to the next step, an HSG or hysterosalpingogram, during which a contrast solution is squirted through a catheter into a woman's uterus and hopefully out through her unblocked tubes. Some people experience great pain during this test while others report mild discomfort. Having read everything I could possibly find about the procedure I was terrified. I mean, it's just not normal to have a catheter rammed up through one's cervix, is it?

The first attempt at this test was totally unsuccessful. They didn't have the right equipment, but my doctor made a valiant effort in an incredibly UNprivate x-ray room, in and out of which a veritable parade of hospital employees marched while I lay there naked from the waist down under a very bright and very hot light. (I remember someone calling out to a nurse named Fabio at some point.) With great disappointment, and at that point, even greater fear, we were forced to reschedule. The next appointment couldn't be scheduled until February and it was only November.

We continued trying during that time, but I wasn't hopeful that we'd get pregnant on our own. We didn't, of course, and went ahead with the HSG in February. It was relatively pain free, save a few menstrual-like cramps as the dye pushed through my tubes. I watched as it flowed out both tubes and was happy (and disappointed in a weird way) to see that everything was as it should be. We went home and followed doctor's orders to do the deed within several hours of the test. It wasn't particularly enjoyable, but we got the job done and continued watching my chart for signs of fertility. I got pregnant that cycle, most likely due to the therapeutic effect of the HSG, and carried the baby to term. He came out exactly on his due date with all his perfect little parts after 36 hours of labor and 2 hours of pushing.

The Boy was colicky and didn't sleep much for the first two years, so we weren't in any particular hurry to get pregnant again. We started getting lazy with birth control when he was about 18 months old. I was still nursing him and when we didn't get pregnant in six months I thought it might have something to do with high levels of prolactin, so I found a new OB (we'd moved since The Boy was born) and had him run some tests. Prolactin was normal, so he performed another HSG (a barbaric one, at that) and sent me home to try some more. While I was utterly convinced that the HSG was what did the trick the first time I knew this second one wasn't going to have the same effect--mostly because I bled for a full seven days afterwards. This particular doctor wasn't terribly inclined to help me out since I'd already had one child. It was his opinion that it happened once before and it would happen again, I just needed to give it some time. After several trips back to his office resulting in no new information I decided to switch OBs, but couldn't get in to see anyone for another three months. By that time we had been trying to get pregnant for 20 months and I was beginning to believe that it would never happen.

Once I switched doctors we started immdediately on Clomid and checked for diminshed ovarian reserve. My eggs, it turns out, are fine, but Clomid dried me out, made me nauseous, and didn't work (although it did make my ovaries feel like they were going to explode). Two rounds of it produced nothing and still believing that it was an issue with my tubes, I asked for a third HSG. I'm a glutton for punishment. My doctor said I should do the third and final round of clomid the same month I did the HSG, so, in spite of my instinct not to take clomid, I did and we failed to get pregnant again. I felt like I had wasted my one chance to get pregnant.

The following month I wanted a break, so I tried to not try (and anyone who has been through this knows that's an impossibility). I just knew my period would arrive as usual and I distinctly remember crying to my husband that cycle that I should just start smoking crack since it seems to result in a large number of pregnancies. A few days after my outburst the stick-peeing began (more out of habit than a belief that I was pregnant) and much to my surprise I began to see second blue and pink. They were so faint I had to take them down in the basement under the fluorescent light to see them.

I was so stunned (and fearful) that during those first weeks (okay, days!) I peed on a grand total of 36 sticks (Clear Blue Easy, Answer, First Response Earliest Result, Confirm, CVS brand, and EPT) before I finally believed what I was seeing. I can now say that (at least in 2004) The Most Sensitive Pregnancy Test award goes to Clear Blue Easy. Without a single doubt.

I carried that pregnancy to term also and now we have The Girl, a sweet little six month old who flew into the world drug-free and four days early after 10 hours of labor and four very hard pushes.

I write for a living, but it's not usually about the things that mean something in my life. One of the things about motherhood that has really made me want to write about it in a public way is that most mothers lie. They lie about how advanced their kids are, they lie about how much fun it is to be a mom, and most of all, they lie about how hard it is to be a mom. This lying, which is really just the basis of one giant greatest-mom-in-the-world competition, begins the moment sperm and egg unite and begin dividing. Though I can find no scientific data to back this up, I actually believe that pregnancy produces a lying hormone. The sensitive (okay, gullible) among us take all of this lying to heart and while we're trying to survive whatever child-induced crisis is happening at any given moment we're also killing ourselves with the guilt that we can't quite keep it together.

The truth is, parenthood is a wild ride for which none of us is even remotely prepared and anyone who says they are is lying.

Why?

So, here we are. Me and my thoughts, all of which, it seems, have suddenly disappeared. This is something that happens often since I gave birth. In fact, it's more pronounced now that I've had a second child. I'll wake up with a head full of important stuff and somewhere between changing my daughter's diaper and negotiating with my son over what will be consumed (0r not) that morning for breakfast it all just floats right out.

I'm not sure what precipitated the creation of this blog. Maybe I don't feel like I have enough to do at the moment (apparently being home with two kids and writing a book isn't time-consuming enough), or maybe it seemed like a good idea to create some kind of record of these remarkable days--years even. Whatever it was, for better or worse, here it is. Here I am, and since I spend so much time online while I work, I might just be able to keep this thing going.