Well, I’m 4 months post­par­tum and since this is the first I have posted in quite some time, I believe it goes with­out say­ing that (unlike my 10+ weeks on bed rest) time is no longer my friend. Yes, I am now a happy, exhausted, thrilled, exhausted, ecsta­tic, exhausted mother of 2…I will be back after my 10 minute catnap….

Ok, here it goes, my life as a mommy:  take 2 (in a nutshelf…afterall, com­puter time is a lux­ury these days).  After a less than desir­able preg­nancy, I was taken off my med­ica­tion and bed rest at 36 weeks and was fully con­vinced that after a walk around the block (ok, who am I kid­ding, a walk around Tar­get) that I would be admit­ted to Colum­bia Cen­ter that evening, be blessed with a quick and pain­less labor and deliv­ery, which of course I felt I fully deserved, and a few hours later, we would wel­come happy healthy baby boy! Boy oh boy, my boy had dif­fer­ent plans. The days passed, as did the weeks.  The aches and pains of doing noth­ing but watch­ing TV for 3 ½ months caught up with me quickly, and as my hus­band so del­i­cately put it, I was walk­ing like a hunched over 90 year old carry a bowl­ing ball.  As I con­tin­ued my weekly appoint­ments, my won­der­ful OB agreed to induce at 39 weeks.  Since my daugh­ter came almost 3 weeks early, a com­plete sur­prise (includ­ing the part of her being a daugh­ter), it was strangely unset­tling know­ing the exact day, date and gen­der of this lit­tle one. How­ever, at this point we fig­ured we had our share of sur­prises and were very excited about the antic­i­pa­tion of our pint size man mak­ing his appear­ance.  Fast for­ward to June 25^th, 2012…

Our big day was here, we arrived with open arms and smil­ing faces to Colum­bia Cen­ter, and as most moms can prob­a­bly attest to, the wide range of emo­tions swirling through my head were giv­ing me the same feel as the glass of wine I hadn’t vis­ited in 9 months.  I have said it before, and I will say it again…the nurses at Colum­bia Cen­ter are AMAZING. If it wasn’t for the patience, under­stand­ing, sweet­ness and over­all com­pas­sion of these won­der­ful women, I may still be preg­nant today, defy­ing all pos­si­ble science.

The lovely ladies got to work, though, and hours passed, labor increased, 2 rounds of epidural were admin­is­tered (appar­ently my body did not think the pain of labor was enough tor­ture, so I was poked 6 times before the first epidural line was in…of which did not take and I was given more of the happy juice) and before we knew it, the doc­tor put on his catcher’s mitt and got in posi­tion. 15 min­utes of push­ing later, our sweet and not so tiny 8lb 3oz lit­tle mon­ster was here, beau­ti­ful as can be.  After a long, scary preg­nancy, I was finally hold­ing baby Eas­ton in my arms. I would like to say what most mom­mies do, that once you see your baby, all the trou­bles and com­pli­ca­tions dis­ap­pear out of mem­ory, but the truth is, I still to this day look at his lit­tle face and think of every­thing we both went through to get to where we are at this moment in time.

In this moment in time…life is grand. Big sis­ter Aybree (AKA lit­tle momma) has filled her role like a total champ. Only a few days after com­ing home, daddy and I could have gone out to din­ner and let Aybree babysit as she seri­ously has one up-ed us on numer­ous occa­sions on how to calm down her lit­tle brother.  Life is crazy, life is busy, life is messy, life is expensive…but life is grand. Every day is a learn­ing expe­ri­ence, a life les­son and a reminder of how for­tu­nate and lucky we are to have been blessed with such a beau­ti­ful fam­ily.  Daddy thinks we should even­tu­ally add to this bliss­ful life…I say why mess with what is already so wonderful…only time will tell who will win this debate, but for now, life is grand.

I’ve decided to try single-tasking. It’s not going to be easy. But let’s face it: doing mul­ti­ple things at once isn’t nec­es­sary a good thing. You’re unable to do either task well. I’ll admit there are plenty of times I want to check my email on my phone while I feed Con­nor or while I’m get­ting myself ready in the morn­ing. But what ben­e­fit does that pro­vide? Ulti­mately, it slows me down and takes away time that I have with the lit­tle guy. I really think that tech­nol­ogy is mak­ing Amer­ica lazy and impa­tient. It’s going to be hard when I have a spare moment not to reach for my phone with thoughts of work­ing ahead. I think rather in that spare moment I should reflect on the day or sim­ply just take a few deep breaths to relax. Single-tasking. What a con­cept. I’ll admit how­ever that these sen­tences were orig­i­nally recorded on my voice recorder as I was dri­ving to work. Inspi­ra­tion hit me for a blog and it was my nat­ural instinct to just grab the phone and get my thoughts out ASAP. … This is going to be interesting.

As you all are aware it’s been pretty darn hot here in south­east­ern Wis­con­sin. After a few days of the heat I could hear the sounds of moth­ers with small ones near and far scream­ing inside their heads for some­thing to do indoors to keep their chil­dren occu­pied. I am here today to sing the praises of forts.

Forts are inex­pen­sive. It does not take make to cre­ate one—old blan­kets or sheets, maybe a few clothes pins, per­haps a din­ing room table to be a more durable roof. And they are mag­i­cal. Any food eaten inside a fort seems tastier. Flash­lights make read­ing a book more fun or play­ing with Legos more excit­ing. Pil­lows can go in, naps can hap­pen. Every­thing seems amazing.

Be sure to make your fort big enough for a grown up or two to enter quasi-comfortably—-but do not assume you are allowed to go in unless invited. Some­times our chil­dren want us in there and some­times they really want to rule the Fort King­dom them­selves. Do not be offended if you are not wel­come. Your chil­dren can only con­trol so much in life and forts are a good place to begin.

You will prob­a­bly sigh a few times as you maneu­ver around the fort to get from point A to point B in your daily life. It can be a lit­tle awk­ward to climb over carefully-laid blan­kets that are barely bal­anc­ing stay­ing in place. You may won­der when you will get your home back again—-a din­ing room that actu­ally looks and feels like a din­ing room instead of a way­side camp­ground for kids and Legos and pil­lows and who knows what else.

But in a few years, when your lit­tle ones are taller than you and will no longer fit into a fort let alone have any incli­na­tion to do so, you will notice that the din­ing room looks empty. And that your path from point A to point B never requires the acro­bat­ics of Cirque du Soleil per­former. You will sigh as you walk past the din­ing room table and wish with all your might that it was a fort again.

Ok, so maybe my accom­plish­ment isn’t com­pa­ra­ble to that of a Hol­ly­wood star­let walk­ing the red car­pet and giv­ing an accep­tance speech; how­ever, to me, sur­viv­ing 10 weeks of bed rest, stay­ing home by myself, miss­ing my daugh­ter who was put into day­care full time, not able to do any­thing on my own and rely­ing on very gen­er­ous fam­ily and friends, along with an amaz­ing hus­band, for every­thing, was about as close to win­ning a major award as I will prob­a­bly ever get.

At 36 weeks, after hav­ing preterm con­trac­tions at 26 weeks, I was given the thumbs up to stop my med­ica­tion and begin resum­ing activities…what sort of activ­i­ties you may ask? Well, accord­ing to my doc­tor, I could have par­tic­i­pated in a flash mob dance if I wanted….my hus­band was a lit­tle more reserved and sug­gested I start with some­thing more along the lines of orga­niz­ing some baby clothes and maybe walk­ing to the end of the block and back. Lit­tle did I know that he had the right idea, as I was com­pletely clue­less as to how dif­fi­cult the tran­si­tion would be: an extremely sore, unex­er­cised back, weak mus­cles, along with an major lack of energy, all results of doing absolutely noth­ing for 2 ½ months, proved to be quite the wake-up call, and sud­denly caused con­cern as to how I will be able to deliver this baby.  Thank­fully, I have been able to slowly regain some strength and energy through light exer­cise and stretch­ing, but I cer­tainly was not doing the vic­tory dance I was hop­ing for.

My expe­ri­ence was just that: quite an expe­ri­ence, and if I may I will say just 3 things about it (I will keep it short to avoid the awk­ward “wrap it up” music.

1)      All jok­ing aside, I have to thank my hus­band, who (although I didn’t think it was pos­si­ble) made me fall in love with him even more after every­thing he did for me and our fam­ily dur­ing that time.  He is beyond words incred­i­ble, and undoubt­edly the best hus­band and father I could ask for.  My amaz­ing fam­ily and friends also deserve the upmost recog­ni­tion for all their help and for keep­ing me sane when I was inch­ing towards a rub­ber padded room.

2)      My time on bed rest made me a stronger per­son on many lev­els. Oh how hum­bling it was learn­ing to ask for help when I typ­i­cally avoid the idea, and hav­ing a semi type-A per­son­al­ity, it proved to be a very pos­i­tive thing for me to accept the fact that things may not have got­ten done when I would have liked them to, or in the man­ner in which I would have done them.

3)       And most impor­tantly, after an extremely easy preg­nancy with my daugh­ter, I learned to value and appre­ci­ate smaller things, the lit­tle mile­stones, this time around. After strug­gling with the idea early on of shar­ing my time with another child, I was for­tu­nate to have a won­der­ful bond­ing expe­ri­ence with this lit­tle boy, and feel a con­nec­tion I was fear­ing would not surface.

So once again, this may not be a true Oscar party wor­thy accom­plish­ment to many, and you cer­tainly won’t catch me in a fit­ted Vera Wang gown any­time in the near future, but my jour­ney cer­tainly has made me feel like I won…and at 38 weeks along, with not much longer to go, I know my tro­phy will be much bet­ter than some silly lit­tle gold piece of metal.

Con­nor has decided he’s a big boy. He’s done breast­feed­ing, no longer needs a bot­tle, and has made the leap to only drink­ing from a sippy cup. Over the week­end I was putting away the bot­tles and breast pump and was sur­prised by all of the emo­tions com­ing over me. Part of me was def­i­nitely happy. No wor­ry­ing how we’d make the tran­si­tion off the bot­tle. No more lug­ging the breast pump with me every­where I went. No more hav­ing to rush home to feed him at the end of the day since he liked to drink around 5pm. No more find­ing time in between patients to hide in my office and pump. Pic­ture this (or on sec­ond thought, maybe not)… There I’d be try­ing to get paper­work done or try­ing to dic­tate with my breast pump whirring in the back­ground…. Oh, what the tran­scrip­tion­ists must think. … How­ever, at the same time I was rather sad and melan­choly about the whole thing. I always knew this time would come when he wouldn’t need me to feed. It’s excit­ing and I’m glad I had that time to spend with him.
Of course he still needs me and loves me, but I was sad about that part of our rela­tion­ship being over.

We have entered a new phase in our house hold, the won­der­ful world of Ter­ri­ble Two’s…and my daugh­ter is tak­ing her role quite seri­ously. So much in fact that if she takes a job in the future half as seri­ously as she does this one, she will have no prob­lem quickly climb­ing to the top of the cor­po­rate ladder.

It’s been a strug­gle for my hus­band and me to decide on the proper and cor­rect way to approach our daughter’s “strong will and inde­pen­dence,” as we like to naively refer to it as. The teacher in me con­stantly leans towards the rain­bows and but­ter­flies approach, and wants to focus solely on pos­i­tive rein­force­ment and praise:  “Oh Aybree, what a great job sit­ting like a big girl eat­ing your din­ner!” …even though 3 min­utes ear­lier she chucked a piece of turkey at the dog. My hus­band, on the other hand, believes that con­se­quences are a neces­sity, espe­cially when a warn­ing has been given, and there is no doubt that she knows what she’s doing is wrong. He will put her in a time out (which, even though it kills me to see, I know she deserves), and as she sits fac­ing the wall she cries for mommy. It breaks my heart…and she knows it.  Don’t get me wrong, my hus­band is amaz­ing with Aybree and praises her con­stantly for good behav­ior, jump­ing up and down, big hugs, stick­ers, the whole 9. And because of that, I fig­ured it was time I tried his approach as well.

Bed­time has proved to be one of Aybree’s favorite times to test out her new role as sassy tod­dler.  We are con­sis­tent with our nightly rou­tine: read a cou­ple books, sing her a song, then she picks 2 pup­pies to sleep with (she has about 100 to choose from, and between those and her other ani­mals we refer to her room at the Becker Fam­ily Zoo).  I always bragged about how great of a sleeper she is, when it’s time for bed she goes to bed. “I can count on one hand how many times in 2 years she’s got­ten out of bed,” I would say. Carma, irony, jinx­ing myself…however you want to look at it, I guess I had it com­ing.  For the past few weeks we have encoun­tered every know excuse in the book for com­ing out of her room. “I have to go potty!” Fine, you just went 4 min­utes ago, but we are potty train­ing, so we will let that one slide. “eh eh (pic­ture the world’s worst fake cough)…I have a bad cough mommy, I need water so I don’t get sick.” What­ever, here’s your sip of water, even though I’m sure that will lead to another potty break in 15 min­utes. “What’s that on my wall daddy, it’s scary, come here let’s go.” It’s the same light switch that has been there since you were born, go to bed Aybree.  My fin­ger hurts right here, what’s that on my foot, we have to read this book, oops I never got my candy for going potty…and the list goes on. Finally, I decided to try the con­se­quence approach.  When she came out of her room for the 9^th time one night I brought her back to her room, put her in her bed, and laid down the threat…”Aybree, you need to stay in bed. If you come out again mommy is going to take one of your pup­pies out of your bed.” She said, no no, those are my pup­pies, and at the same time gave me the “yeah right, mom, who are you kid­ding?” look.  No more than 3 min­utes later she was out again, this time for a snack…my hus­band looked at me as if to say, “you have to do it,” so I walked back into her room with her and said, “I’m sorry honey, mommy has to take one of your pup­pies now.” And now pic­ture the world’s worst mom cod­dling her child, try­ing for 15 min­utes to get her to stop cry­ing, and even­tu­ally giv­ing her puppy back. Yep, I gave it back…but the new irony is that this sweet and sour approach actu­ally worked. Since the hor­rific inci­dent, she has only attempted to come out of her room twice, and a quick puppy threat has put her right back to bed.

I know I say this often, as I believe it holds true for so many sce­nar­ios when rais­ing a child, but I don’t think there is a right or wrong approach when it comes to many aspects of par­ent­ing, includ­ing dis­ci­pline and deal­ing with the ter­ri­ble two’s. Each child is dif­fer­ent, each par­ent is dif­fer­ent, and each sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent.  It’s a mat­ter of trial and error (and don’t be con­cerned if there seem to be a lot of errors). No one ever said this job was going to be easy…not every job is as easy as that of a two year old.

Ear­lier this week, I was pre­sent­ing at the Colum­bia Center’s child­birth class. I stood there and was telling expec­tant par­ents how to care for their new­born and I couldn’t help but think about how just a lit­tle over a year ago I was in their shoes. It’s amaz­ing. One year ago I was excited, ner­vous, scared, and happy all at the same time. Would I really know what he wanted when he cried? Would I really know how to take care of him? What would I do if I couldn’t get him to stop cry­ing? Now, I’d like to think that I could earn a gold medal for the speed with which his dia­per gets changed. Not to men­tion the fact that lately he has an aver­sion to lying on his back and I’ve learned how to change dia­pers with him lying on his stom­ach. Well, wet dia­pers at least.

A lot sure changes in a year. Par­ent­ing changes you. It teaches you patience. It teaches you how to truly mul­ti­task. It teaches you how to do things with one hand. There’s always all sorts of hype in the media, includ­ing the recent TIME mag­a­zine arti­cle, about how to par­ent, things you should do, and things you should not do. As far as I’m con­cerned, as long as you love your child, try your best, and never put them in harm’s way, you’re doing a good job. Congratulations.

I awak­ened this morn­ing to the news of TIME magazine’s lat­est issue. As their Moth­ers Day gift to Amer­ica they chose to go after par­ents who choose any par­ent­ing style other than that of “chil­dren should be seen and not heard”. The purposely-inflaming cover photo of a mother nurs­ing her 3 year old (with him stand­ing on a chair) was set up by the pho­tog­ra­pher because he thought it would be “edgier” and claimed that chil­dren that age don’t sit still eas­ily. I sus­pect there was a lit­tle some­thing extra in it for him if he got tongues a-waggin’. And wag­ging they are. But for all the wrong reasons.

I’ve been tak­ing a med­i­ta­tion class but even med­i­ta­tion is not help­ing me to cool down on this one. TIME is claim­ing there is a bat­tle in moth­er­hood in Amer­ica. Really?!?! Where have they been for, oh, I don’t know…forever? My old­est is 24 years old. Back then (and time eter­nal before) if you worked, you felt guilty for not being at home. If you were at home, you felt guilty for not work­ing.  If you breast­fed, peo­ple pushed for­mula on you. If you formula-fed you were beaten up for not breast­feed­ing. Shall I go on? The world’s old­est pro­fes­sion is not pros­ti­tu­ion, it’s moth­er­hood and guilt is the gift that soci­ety hands you as soon as you find out your’re pregnant.

The shame­ful thing is that TIME had a golden oppor­tu­nity to open up a real dia­log on par­ent­ing. Instead, they allowed the “sex­ier” “hot­ter” top­ics of breast­feed­ing beyond what the AAP rec­om­mends as being extreme to become one of the mov­ing tagets. Extrem­ism is the nasty mon­ster under the bed. 

Feel the need to hold your baby rather than let him cry? Extreme! Want to eek every moment out of your time with your lit­tle one? Extreme! Feel­ing exhausted because you’re try­ing to jug­gle things? Extreme!

And to make mat­ters worse, they hold  Dr. William Sears up as the evil mas­ter­mind of attach­ment par­ent­ing. He took a beat­ing today that is beyond believ­able. Let me just say this: attach­ment is as old as human beings. TIME could have read the whole library wing on this topic but decided to blame the poor pedi­a­tri­cian for some­thing that was never his to begin with.

Par­ents, ignore the smoke and mir­rors that TIME and soci­ety are using to alter your sen­si­bil­i­ties. Here is the truth: Par­ent­ing is unbe­liev­ably hard. It’s also unbe­liev­ably won­der­ful. And it would be much eas­ier if edi­tors, writ­ers and the lady stand­ing in line behind you at the mar­ket didn’t judge you so hard. But, they will. So the solu­tion is to take a really deep breath and then smile. Because guess what: YOU“RE the par­ent. Which means this is your child to raise, to learn from, to teach, to cry over, to cher­ish, to cheer, to break your heart in a thou­sand and one lit­tle ways and then mend it again with one big, sloppy smile. If your per­se­cu­tors want to step in and do it for you, tell them to come on in at 3 am when every­one except the baby is exhausted and take over. But I can promise you that not a one of them will.

As for me, I’ll not be buy­ing an issue of TIME mag­a­zine again. If I want mind­less chat­ter I’ll read some­thing more worth­while, like PEOPLE magazine.

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!!!! You are doing a great job, whether any­one else acknowl­edges it or not. And I respect each and every deci­sion you make as the mom. Now go give that sweet baby a hug

As I con­tinue to sit here day after day, the time sur­pris­ingly going some­what quickly, one thing I have learned about bed rest is the impor­tance of mile­stones.  Hav­ing that “some­thing” to look for­ward to has cer­tainly been cru­cial for my san­ity, and in my last few weeks on this preg­nancy jour­ney, the “some­things” will con­tinue to keep me going.

I am a happy 32 weeks along now, and noth­ing could have put a big­ger smile on my face than my doc­tor giv­ing me a con­grat­u­la­tory high five at my weekly appoint­ment. That reas­sur­ance from him that this was mile­stone #1, and if, for some rea­son, my lit­tle one would make his appear­ance now, the chances of him being happy, healthy and thriv­ing at this point are excel­lent (insert gigan­tic sigh of relief). Sud­denly, the com­plain­ing and feel­ing sorry for myself for the last 6 weeks seemed petty, and the moti­va­tion and desire to push through till my next mile­stone (34 weeks) took full force. 6 weeks already down, what’s another 2 or 4…or even bet­ter another 6?! My ulti­mate goal, my biggest mile­stone, is 36 weeks, and I will be here on the couch dream­ing about it, but regard­less of when this baby boy comes, I know that we have made it this far and the light at the end of the tun­nel is get­ting big­ger by the day.

I believe that for an expec­tant mother, on bed rest or not, goals and mile­stones are won­der­ful. Even in the eas­i­est of preg­nan­cies it can be hard: the fun aches and pains, real­iz­ing you can’t paint your own toes any­more, the day where you make 2 stops at the fast food restau­rant and wash every­thing down with a choco­late shake, then feel guilty after­ward, or when you meet that lovely stranger who can’t help but say, “wow, you must be hav­ing twins, you’re huge!” I’m sure we have all been to the point where we just can’t wait for it to be over and hold our sweet baby in our arms. Hav­ing a goal or mile­stone to look for­ward to makes that day seem so much closer, and helps to real­ize that, even though we already know it, some­times we need a lit­tle reas­sur­ance that it will all be worth it in the end. Maybe that “some­thing” to look for­ward to is a weekly mile­stone, like myself, maybe it’s a baby shower, maybe it’s an ultra­sound appoint­ment… what­ever the case, just keep push­ing through and work towards it. Before you know it, this big day will be here, and there will be a whole new set of mile­stones to look for­ward to with your pre­cious lit­tle baby.

All the signs are there: need­ing to buy big­ger clothes, grow­ing out of shoes, receiv­ing email updates from baby web sites refer­ring to your lit­tle baby as becom­ing a preschooler, and the sheer inde­pen­dence this lit­tle per­son is exhibit­ing.  But I recently had that ‘Oh my gosh, my baby isn’t a baby any­more’ moment. It wasn’t a light­ning strike moment by any means, she didn’t solve a qua­dratic equa­tion or stun us by doing a back flip, but for me it was a sim­ple moment of words that just made me stop, get a lit­tle tear in my eye, and think to myself, “my lit­tle girl is grow­ing up.”

I have men­tioned before that my 2 year old daugh­ter Aybree is quite ver­bal, in fact she has been referred to by many as my lit­tle mini me. She will say things that make us laugh because as sin­cere as she is about it, hear­ing cer­tain words or phrases com­ing out of a toddler’s mouth is just hilar­i­ous.  The other day, as we were all sit­ting on the couch together read­ing a book, Aybree decided to grace us with her words of wis­dom beyond her years once again.  She slowly slid off the couch, walked into the kitchen, and stood by the pantry.  It was then that she yelled, “daddy, can you come here for a sec­ond, I need a snack?”  For a moment I looked in to the kitchen and was fully expect­ing a teenager to be stand­ing by the door, and at the same time had a flash­back of hold­ing my infant daugh­ter in my arms won­der­ing what life would be like when she was this age.

Again, I do real­ize that this wasn’t a mile­stone moment by any means, but it was my moment. The point in time where for just a split sec­ond I was pray­ing that time would stand still because the thought of her get­ting any big­ger was heart break­ing. The moment passed, we laughed about her lit­tle com­ment, and of course daddy got up to get her a snack. But I still can’t help but to replay it in my mind.

I’m sure all par­ents have had their moments, a sim­ple word, phrase, act or mile­stone that has brought about sim­i­lar emo­tions. For me it is impos­si­ble not to think about the past and won­der about the future, but the here and now is such an amaz­ing point in time. To see the lit­tle per­son my daugh­ter is becom­ing is such a reward­ing feel­ing, even on the days where she has obvi­ously woken up on the wrong side of the tod­dler bed. I know the words are cliché, but if I can offer any advice to new mom­mies, it would be to enjoy every sec­ond because it goes by so fast.  Before you know it, your 16 year old tod­dler will be sur­pris­ing you every day.

Need a good laugh? Check out this cute web­site about the silly things kids say and do!

www​.fun​ny​thingsmykidssay​.com