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it never sits for more than 48 hours i don t beat myself up if i occasionally miss a pumping session when we re out an about i can choose to breastfeed or bottle feed depending on the situation i can go up to five hours without breastfeeding or pumping which gives me a great deal of freedom because michelle can take the early morning feeding i get to sleep for eight hour stretches on weekends while i was home on maternity leave i heard an npr story about elisabeth badinter s book le conflit in which she suggests that societal pressure to exclusively breastfeed is anti feminist it became an npr driveway moment for me i was just a few weeks from returning to full time outside the home employment and was just settling into bothfeeding while i don t necessarily agree with badinter on her premise that women become oppressed by their children in their pursuit of ideal motherhood i had to acknowledge my own privilege bothfeeding in concert with having 40 week of paid childcare a full time outside the home job and an equal coparent seems to give me more space to be an autonomous woman not that i m doing anything special with that freedom at the moment but there s a certain rush in knowing it s there july 6 2010 at 9 10 pm 25 comments one year ago today i woke up early took a test with shaking hands and wrote this this morning i m waiting waiting waiting for my sweet boy to wake up so that i can feed and cuddle him i am so blessed and grateful may 26 2010 at 1 27 pm 7 comments instead of bullets let s call them vignettes with dots okay i ve had a horrible case of blogstipation lately i think of things i want to write about then can t quite get the words out kyan is starting to express feelings of jealousy and replacement and it breaks my heart not just because she s hurting and not just because there is no magic fix for such sadness but because she s on to me as much as i want to say that i love them exactly the same i don t they are different people and i love them differently i m doing my best to assure her that she is deeply loved but that doesn t feel like enough my love for him is unconditional and fierce and my love for her sometimes i worry that it seems conditional if that makes any sense i m going to need to spend more time on the previous vignette with dots obviously rilo is just wonderful lately as sad as we were to see michelle return to work our new childcare setup three days at daycare four days at home two with my mom two with us seems to be perfect for him he smiles so much that his whole body wiggles and he appears to be on happiness overload with all of the new caregivers and other babies he s meeting i m starting to hate pumping with a capital h and a and t and e given that i spend an hour of my working day over two sessions and only get 6 8 ounces it feels like a huge waste the only thing that s keeping me going is my desire to maintain as much supply as i can for the times i m with my boy i really do cherish that time especially since my low supply experience has taught me not to take it for granted but the pumping meh we re trying to plan some good family adventures for the memorial day weekend kyan s at an age where relaxing at home is anything but so we need to stay on the go some ideas include a drive to portland for pancakes and a trip to the zoo oooh and some bacon donuts if we have time or a day exploring vashon island we re lucky to live where we do because there are lots of great options but i must say i wish it were warmer at this time of year i think i m going to play hooky one day next week i ll spend a few hours blissfully alone at home i don t think i ve been properly alone since december then pick rilo up early from daycare and spend the afternoon sitting in the grass with my sweet boy guilt how can i even think about spending just rilo time without planning some just kyan time too i think i shall take her to a movie over the weekend i m glad i bulleted vignetted some of my thoughts out but there are still more more more our life is now exponentially more complicated it s what i always wanted and it s harder than i thought it would be and i m struggling with all kinds of guilt about that may 25 2010 at 8 08 pm 6 comments a boy and his mommy you may recall that i viewed my maternity leave as a babycation meaning that i focused most of my attention on rilo took downtime when he slept and treated chores as tertiary given that circumstances finances and my general temperment don t qualify me to be a sahm i knew that my days were numbered and needed to be relished it was wonderful and worked just as i hoped it would after i returned to work michelle spent five weeks at home with the small man during her short leave she discovered that she would love to be a sahm and i discovered that i want her to be at home at least part time a rather surprising revelation given that she didn t feel this way when kyan was a baby weird rather a moot point since we do rely on her income and our childcare setup is an absolute steal at 600 month he s with my mom for two days then at daycare for three but still our minds are now open to the idea i could wax on about how wonderfully she kept the house in order or how delicious our dinners were but that would be superficial and not quite true some days the house was rather chaotic some nights dinner was mia sometimes i came home to find her frazzled and eager to hand both kids to me but that s normal and expected the greatest benefit to our family was time i ll try to explain how why this was by comparing her work life and her leave life michelle s normal schedule leaves her horribly crunched for time and stressed out she wakes up at 4 18 leaves the house at 5 works from 6 2 30 rushes to kyan s school for the 3 40 dismissal handles homework dinner kid care until i get home at 6 then we tag team until kyan s in bed at 7 30 and rilo s down at 8 30 then she has a small sliver of time to prepare for the next day and goes to bed at about 10 after seven hours of hopefully uniterrupted sleep she s back to it again the pre dawn wakeup is difficult but the hardest part of her day is from school pickup through dinner kyan is clearly overwhelmed by kindergarten and spends the first hour or two in a very grumpy and demanding funk rilo hits a witching hour around 5 and doesn t like to be put down dinner has a terrible habit of not magically appearing all in all a frustrating time one which i can t help with at all my schedule is adjusted later so that i can do the morning routine and school dropoff at 9 a m her leave schedule was idyllic by comparison she didn t need to wake up until 8 or later as i fed rilo and 6 and put him back down for another few hours but she often woke up to spend time with kyan during our morning routine after i took kyan to school they had a few hours to play until rilo s midday nap she loves to be on top of chores so she would knock out an impressive list by lunchtime afternoons were still challenging but michelle s sense of calm seemed to carry over to both kids just last week i came home to all three of them laughing they discovered that kyan can make rilo crack up by dancing and singing and they d been at it for 15 minutes straight it was the cutest vignette evenings were nice too and michelle and i got to spend some good time together since she didn t need to go to bed early given that michelle had time and flexibility to be on top of house chores our weekends were really mellow i would do one or two substantial chores like cleaning the bathrooms shopping for the week or mowing the lawn but most everything else was handled it was wonderful and allowed us to plan all day adventures on the weekend which we ll still do just with more grumbling on sunday nights michelle was also able to do pta planning meetings during the day we ve agreed to be co secretaries for next year and the other officers are all sahms volunteer at lego club put together darling snack bags for the soccer team and just generally be that mom as of today she s back to work and we re both really sad about it i know that rilo will be fine in his new schedule i know that we ll all adjust but i feel for michelle it s like she just interviewed for the perfect job and the company really wants to hire her but they just don t have the budget to afford her speaking of turns of events who would have ever guessed that the woman who wasn t sure she even wanted a second child would fall so deeply in love with this little boy it s a joy to watch while i must admit that she was right that our life would be exponentially busier and more challenging with two kids she s also admitting that i was right our family really was missing someone and now he s here i ll close with a photo of rilo with his mommy last night it s a little blurry but it shows how comforted he is by her we were at the sold out seattle storm opener it was loud thus the earplugs but he just snuggled into her shoulder they re a sweet little duo those two may 17 2010 at 8 59 pm 11 comments what if i ve been riveted by project if on stirrup queens if you haven t read or contributed to the list you might find it cathartic or heart wrenching or both this post is in response to part 2 of the project write a post about your own what if it bears noting that i ve been working on this post since last thursday i ve avoided thinking and or writing about this for a long time what if despite my ultimate success i never let go of the emotional baggage i picked up during my struggle with subfertility just one cycle shy of my self imposed end point i saw my third faint positive three years and one week after my first iui rilo completed our family i felt his profound absence for so long that his presence is still a wonderful surprise i can t believe that he s here that he s ours my subfertility journey should be over and yet it isn t i m still dragging the baggage i picked up along the way some of that baggage was inherited four years before i was born my mom lost a baby late in the first trimester the doctor who performed her d c warned her that she wouldn t be able to carry a child to term given her small stature the woman wears size 3 3 4 shoes and weighs just over 100 pounds she continued to try avoiding other people s babies and social situations where the inevitable question would arise and then she had me her only living child my mom s fertility struggle has always been part of my narrative she wanted me to understand that i was a wanted child a beloved child a special snowflake i did come away with a sense of specialiness a sort of inflated self esteem that didn t go over well on the playground but i also picked up an incredible sense of responsibility and guilt my mom knew a lot of other women who were infertile or subfertile although how they knew each other without benefit of the interwebs will forever baffle me when she shared their stories i could always sense the unspoken postscript that was almost her story too when michelle and i started going to maybe baby a glbtq family building support group we discovered how differently we viewed the journey michelle wanted children but she could have happily lived childfree as well she wanted to try for a set amount of time six months or six tries then get on with her life she was stunned to discover that there are people who feel differently about such things people who would deeply mourn their childlessness should they not be able to conceive or adopt she was even more stunned to discover that one of those people was me michelle s ttc process was relatively quick she got a little bit pregnant on her first try a chemical pregnancy then lastingly pregnant with kyan on her fourth even though they were short in the grand scheme of our lives those six months were hard michelle struggled with the uncertainty of the process not knowing how our lives would change in the next year i struggled with a deep longing for our children i could feel their absence and it already hurt once michelle was convincingly pregnant all thoughts of ttc were put back into our mental hope chest to be revisited when kyan was two or three at least that was true for michelle for me knowing that the next round was my turn it was hard to put it out of my mind entirely i had a feeling that my journey wouldn t be as blissfully simple for one thing i have a family history of subfertility at least four generations back there are signs of both primary and secondary infertility generations are spaced more than 30 years apart first and second children are four five and seven years apart and there s a certain melancholy when it comes to reproduction for another i had suddenly gained weight more than 30 pounds in six months and was far more hirsute than i wanted to be i suspected something was wrong and just a few weeks before kyan was born an endocrinologist confirmed that fear my testosterone levels were out of control my girly hormones were all atilt she diagnosed me with pcos and put me on metformin 2000mg day and encouraged me to lose as much weight as i could it took me almost a year to take action with weight loss but once i did i threw myself into the project i kept telling myself that in order to be ready for ttc i had to be as physically fit and hormonally balanced as possible by the time kyan turned two i was down 60 pounds had great abs and had picked up a raging case of baby fever and yet it just wasn t quite time michelle wasn t all that excited about starting again and was even backpedaling on the two kids plan altogether this sparked major relational discord and triggered a major depression for me that was a horrible time i had all the longing and angst that goes with trying to conceive yet no idea if or when my actual ttc process would commence it was torture but things slowly improved we went to couples counseling i found equilibrium and stability in the combination of drugs and therapy our lives evened out kyan continued to amaze us with her wonderfulness yet we could finally agree that we d rather she be a big sister than an only child the time had come in january of 2007 i cycled for the first time there was a wonderful and exciting newness to the process and yet i was already scratched and dented i feared for my own fertility due to my family history and my pcos diagnosis i was worried that michelle would suddenly change her mind and pull the plug i was worried that my own worry would sabotage my chances i only made it through three cycles before i had to take a long hiatus while i knew that ttc would be stressful i wasn t prepared for how much each negative could hurt how a coworker s accidental pregnancy could send me into a tailspin or how easily i could slip back into depression during the hiatus something changed for me i realized that i had put way too much pressure on myself i realized that what i already had was pretty wonderful i realized that when i returned to ttc i would need an end point and i woul...