Two weeks back at work

So, I was nervous to head back to school. It was nice hanging out at home with Gracie and my mom, going to exercise together and play with my nephews when they came over. The boys both fawn over Gracie and it’s so cute to see! But a girl’s gotta work.

So I headed back Jan. 6. Everyone was very warm and welcoming and happy to have me back. The first day was a work day and our boss had sent us an email that the morning would be “teambuilding” and “prepare to get messy.” I figured it was going to be some collaborative thing involving teams and shaving cream or something. Instead, we got to paint! He invited someone from a painting studio to guide us! Only thing missing was the wine. I told him later that it was like he had planned the activity just for me, because it was the perfect way to start back. I also got to visit with teachers and get my mind back in the game, and it was a nice easy transition. My sub had made me copies for my newcomers and told me where the other classes ended up and by the end of Monday, I felt prepared.

And then the kids came Tuesday. I have great kids. They’re sweet and excited. My first period “homeroom” class (we call it Academic Enrichment) are a group of sixth graders that seem to enjoy whatever I give them! Or at least go along with it. One of the activities we do is a community-building thing where we toss a ball to each other and take turns answering a thought-provoking question like “When is a time you have felt rejected?” After the first couple of times doing it, the kids have asked every day since if we can do the “ball throwing thing.” Which is adorable because try asking a group of eighth graders to stand in a circle and be serious about answering a question about themselves!

I’m starting to get my “sea legs” under me where I’m getting used to getting up at 6 a.m. and getting home at 5 p.m., and not seeing my baby all day…! :( I value the weekends all the more now where I can spend all day with her. She has been waking up once during the night since I started back to work. This means I might get up with her at 2 or 3 a.m., and then go back to sleep for a couple hours. If I sleep! Sometimes my mind starts racing, knowing I have to get up soon.

However, over the last two nights, I’ve added a tablespoon of rice cereal to her bottle, and she slept through the night until about 7 or 8 a.m.! So this week, we both might be getting more sleep! I worry about my mom watching her all the time, wondering if she’s doing OK. However, mom says she LOVES it and I shouldn’t feel at all guilty. Which is just nice because mom is amazing and so giving. And she loves this time spending so much time with her granddaughter.

Last week, Mom texted me as I was about to leave work and said, “Look, Gracie is starting to reach for things!” And I shot back, “Stop her until I get home!” That’s the annoying thing, missing milestones. We’ve had a talk - Gracie and I - about how she’s not allowed to say her first word or start crawling or walking until I’m there. She tracks toys with her eyes but it’s not been until recently that she actually reaches for things and interacts with them. Yesterday, she actually moved a toy ring to her mouth! Which I found exciting.

Oh, also, everyone in my family is getting into the Keto/fasting thing. I find it great and horrifying. We’re all cutting down on carbs and sugar but also, I don’t want to be one of THOSE people that always orders bunless burgers in restaurants! But also, it’s good, because it’s healthy. 

Livin' with the parents...

I came into the baby’s room the other day to find that mom had put a giant comforter over the entirety of the crib because Gracie keeps scooting out from underneath her little pink blanket and mom was worried that she was “cold.” Sleep sack, mom! And I’m all, “but she might suffocate!” and Mom’s all, “She won’t. You kids never got SIDS, my mom’s kids (there were 14) never had SIDS, she’ll be fine.” But she MIGHT NOT BE, MOM. The nice thing is that when I do say, “Well, that makes me uncomfortable, I need you to let me be a first time mom on this one,” she smiles, pats me on the head and says, “Okay, Jess” while thinking about how there were a lot less parenting rules when she was my age.

Mom likes to stay up really late at night. She’s a night owl, like I would be if I didn’t have to work and didn’t have a baby now. I love staying up late and sleeping in! So the printer will go off at random hours like 11 p.m. And mom comes clattering down the stairs to make copies and something crashes to the ground and I roll over in bed like, “whaaa…?”

Or when she wants to put things away! And I’ve said, “Night, mom, going to bed,” and I’m lying in bed reading and starting to doze off, and suddenly she’s traipsing down the stairs, turning on lights (because she can’t see!) to put things away in the closets in the basement right next to my bed (which are a communal space).

Also, everything sounds loud and echoey in my basement room. Let’s not leave dad out here, like at 4 a.m. when biking shoes are clomping across the kitchen floor (right above my bed) and it sounds like he’s rearranging the entire upstairs furniture. Or if I’m trying to take an afternoon nap, it’s usually my nephews storming through the house playing cars, knocking things over and I’m like, “OK. Never mind. I’m not tired.”

That was the roast; here are the nice things:

I help mom cook a lot and she never fails to say how much she’ll miss me when I go back to work. 

Whenever I’m trying to leave the house with the baby, Mom’s always there to help, making sure I have a bottle and burp clothes as I’m putting the baby in the car.

My nice pea coat had holes in both pockets and in the lining, and Mom spent a couple of hours one evening sewing them up.

Whenever I have something to hang, even though I can operate a hammer, Dad takes the projects on, pulls out his tools, and makes it look just right on the wall. :)

Dad will come home some evenings, wordlessly pick Gracie up, and carry her around the house for an hour or two. The best sight in the world.

There have been many times when I've been up with Gracie in the night, that I hear her wake up in the morning and, groaning, I roll out of bed... only to hear mom gently close my bedroom door and go to get the baby up. My parents are the best.

The holidays!

Christmas and New Years were amazing. We did our traditional fondue as a family with Danielle’s family on Christmas Eve and attended a candlelight service. Then I put Gracie to bed and we opened presents. I gave Gracie her storybook on Christmas Day and she adored it. She also got clothes and toys from friends near and far. Christmas is WAY MORE FUN with a baby.

I visited my friend Jo for New Year’s and was enraptured by all the fun I have to look forward to as Gracie gets older (Jo has a feisty two year old boy). Getting into everything and needing your attention constantly and just having those really grumpy days. But also. His sweet toothy grins! He's not one to like people other than his family. But for the first time when he saw me, he had a reaction other than fear and anxiety. He saw me, quietly took my hand, and led me into the living room to watch Sesame Street. Then, as I tried to tickle his feet, he leaned into me as if seeking a hug, so I obliged. 

So I’m not doing resolutions. We all know they don’t work. I had to circle the parking lot at our recreation center Thursday morning to find a space and when I got inside someone said, “It’s the resolution keepers!” Oh right! Those guys! But I am excited for a new year! Last year involved my third year of teaching, being pregnant, buying a house, moving houses, renting out a house, helping my parents renovate their basement, moving home, coming to terms with moving home, having a baby and getting to know my remarkable, beautiful Gracie. This next year I expect to lose weight, find a boyfriend, make a lasting difference in the lives of each of my students (or at least a couple of them) and watch my darling girl start turning into a real person. But if none of that happens, at least I have my good nature, my sweet daughter, my wonderful family and a loving God.

Gracie turned 4 month old on Dec. 31. She smiles at everyone and I’ve gotten her to giggle a few times. The other day she giggled uproariously at Benjamin as he jumped around saying “water bottle” over and over, because him acting like a clown while saying a nonsense word was TOO FUNNY. She’s now working on her screaming and spitting skills, as she likes to alternate a light “I’m not crying but maybe I will soon” scream and burbling juicy raspberries. She loves getting her diaper changed and is still calmly accepting of baths. She slept through the night, 11-12 hours at a time, for about two weeks and then decided, no thanks, 7:30 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. is plenty of time before it’s time for food. After her last bath I just COULDN’T help it and tried out a ponytail and later, pigtails. Oh my, I almost died from the cuteness.

Getting ready to go back to work!

I visited school again on Wednesday and brought the staff homemade marshmallows and went around visiting teachers and finding out where my substitute teacher left off with the kids. 

The words still bouncing around my head are my principal saying to me with a teasing smile, “Are you ready to come back? Your vacation is over!” Thanks, man. Thanks. I have two weeks left. Let me enjoy them! But yes. Then. Back to work. It’s always hard for me to get back into the right mindset after a long break. I sometimes get depressed. So I’m already coming up with ideas of what to do with the kids this semester to prepare myself mentally. Grading again and… getting kids to listen to me… and teaching. I can do this, I can do this. Plus time managing so I can spend time with Gracie at home and still get enough sleep! Deep breaths.

It was also important to make myself talk to the sub about what to start with in the spring semester. Because that also helps with the mental preparedness. She has left me in a really great place with my all my classes, especially my newcomer group. She knew exactly what curriculum to use and how to get going with them, and it seems like she worked the students hard and kept up with recoding grades in our online system. A couple of my students saw me while I was visiting another teacher and said, “Our teacher says you’re strict? Are you strict?” Apparently, the three weeks I spent with them at the beginning of the school year is long forgotten. “YES,” I said. “SO STRICT.”

Baby milestones

Gracie is 15 weeks old and will be four months at the end of December. Two milestones so far this week.

She has slept through the night, 11 hours at a time, since Friday, Dec. 13 (weird, on Friday the 13th!). That was the night Mom and Dad watched her while I had a girl’s night in Estes Park for my birthday. And I told my mom, “Remember, you have to listen for her because she’ll get up at 3 or 4 a.m. to eat!” And she DIDN’T. And I was like, hey, no fair! But then she has continued this habit ever since (knock on wood - now she’ll probably wake up every two hours tonight). On Saturday night, I woke up at 4 and couldn’t fall asleep again for the next few hours because I’m so used to getting up with her. And I kinda missed our little middle of the night bonding sesh where she stares up at me adoringly. But then I was like, no, guess what, you get more deeper sleep now, which is good, because you gotta go back to work soon! Enjoying it while it lasts because who knows if developmental leaps will cause her to relapse!

Gracie laughed for the first time at around 8 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 17. I was changing her and about to put her in pajamas and did what I always do, blew a raspberry on her tummy and made goofy noises at her just awaiting the moment when she genuinely responds. Usually, she just stares up at me, maybe smiles because she’s staring at my face and she likes it. But THIS time, she did a hiccupy giggle, hih-hih-hih, where she inhaled quick and successively. It blew my mind so I repeated the same action another dozen times while yelling for mom and dad to come in, and she did almost the same reaction every time. You’d think by my reaction that she had suddenly learned to walk and say “Mama.” But still, she GIGGLED, instead of just staring at me blankly, she RESPONDED APPROPRIATELY. Gracie, you are the best.

(Yes, yes, I know I’m not the only one to have ever had a kid. But I’VE never had a kid before so I’m enjoying my joy).

Maternity Leave

The first few weeks of maternity leave were TOUGH because I didn’t feel well, I was sleeping on a couch sitting up because of c-section stitches, and I was getting up several times a night to feed Gracie or try to pump. It’s a blur of surviving and getting to know my new baby. I had this overwhelming sense of impeding doom/fear/excitement/worry/trepidation. I had thoughts of: life is so brief and my parents will die some day and I love them so much and they’re so supportive so how will I bear it and will they get to see Gracie grow up? And will I be alone forever? Will I have to do it on my own forever and will Gracie have siblings? And is Gracie going to survive or will I wake up one night and she’s not breathing? And it would be nice to go on family vacations with a husband! Etc., Etc. Thoughts exacerbated by hormonal upheaval and sleepless nights.

I survived all that by praying quite a bit and coming to the conclusion to live in the moment and enjoy what life is giving me now and not worry about the future and everything that could possibly go wrong. And God sure has blessed me so I thank him for that and am just enjoying where my life has taken me. A year ago I had just started taking steps to TRY to have a baby. And look! WHAT? I have one! And she’s the most marvelous thing I’ve ever made.

After about six weeks, I was basically completely healed and I felt GOOD again for the first time in like a year! I wasn’t pregnant anymore and I was suddenly realizing how AWESOME that was. I could eat uncured meat and drink alcohol again! And I could move around without every muscle in my back and hip aching for days. Since I wasn’t working yet, I had time to do things!

So I restarted a blog, and I designed a children’s book for Gracie. I’m going to read it to her as soon as she is able to comprehend things and tell her the story of her birth. I don’t want it to be a surprise that I spring on her one day, I want her to know how she came to be from the very beginning. So the story has simple language when she’s a baby, accompanied by my crude illustrations, and then along the sides or bottom, it has the complete story full of details, which is basically what I wrote here in this blog.

Also, I looked in a mirror and was like, “Enough is enough!” so I responded to a Facebook ad for a kickboxing challenge in Fort Collins. The challenge went for six weeks and this is the last week. I was supposed to lose 25 pounds or six percent body fat. I’ve lost about 12 pounds so far so I may not make it by Friday. However, I feel good that I’ve taken the stepping stone of exercising and getting in shape again. And that I made SOME progress.

Now it’s December and I have just a few weeks until Jan. 6, when I return to school. THAT will take some getting used to again! This has been a glorious time of bonding with my adorable daughter and spending time with family. I have to get my head back in the game of commuting to work and making a difference in middle schoolers’ lives and not being able to take mid-day naps! While still possibly attending to Gracie in the middle of the night!

Front and back page of my book for Gracie:

A few inside pages:

Kickboxing:

It's my birthday

Today is my birthday. I am 40. As each birthday has passed, approaching this day, I’ve dreaded turning 40 more and more because I hadn’t started a family, I hadn’t met a man to enjoy life with. I tried to tell myself that I didn’t need to wait for life to start until I had a family; that a man wasn’t the end all to life, that children are sticky and messy and keep you up at night. And for the most part, I’ve had a great life. I love my family and my nephews and my friends and my job. But you know, I WANTED children! I got sad when I saw moms and their cute kids at the store, when I saw my friends on Facebook getting married and having kids, when I watched my sister with her family, and all the special little moments with her boys (and I’ve enjoyed some special moments with them, too!). It’s just that envy I think one gets because of social media, and how perfect everyone else’s lives look! So I constantly reminded myself that I had a great life, and also I stayed off Facebook. :)

So I’m turning 40. And it’s still annoying because I still feel like I'm 25. But I couldn’t feel more lucky that I’m starting a new adventure with Gracie.

Starting the holidays!

Gracie is 14 weeks old, and just turned 3 months! Her sleeping has settled into a routine for the moment. She goes to bed around 7-8 p.m. and sleeps eight hours before she starts making noises to be fed around 3:30-5 a.m. After that feeding, she sleeps another three to four hours until 7:30-8:30 a.m. Mom used to take her for part of the night when she woke up multiple times a night, but now it’s all me. I feel like I get a pretty good night sleep, as long as I go to bed by 9 p.m.! I continue to be blessed by Mom and Dad being willing to get her up sometimes, or watch her while I run to the store, etc. 

Gracie seems to love getting changed and hanging out on her changing table while I change her diaper and dress her. She only gets mad about it in the middle of the night when she’s hungry. A few nights ago, she slept for 11 straight hours and I woke up a few times, petrified and checked on her like three different times.

She talks at me a lot right after she wakes up, cooing and making “o” faces and being absolutely adorable. That lasts about 30 minutes and then it’s a downhill spiral to her next nap. :). 

Emmet likes to include her in everything going on. Like when we played a game the boys invented where one person was Santa while the others pretended to sleep upstairs, and then “Santa” would loudly proclaim he was leaving, and all the “kids” would race downstairs to find out what toys Santa had left them. When I got there, Emmet was all, “So when Gracie is Santa, someone will have to hold her,” automatically including her in the proceedings like it was obvious she would be playing. Both boys also like to get super close, touching her face and hands until she gets annoyed.

During Thanksgiving week, we went with Danielle’s family, Mom and Dad and Nathan to Steamboat Springs for a few days before Thanksgiving Day. It was nice to hang out with the family! Benjamin and Emmet immediately got absorbed into the condo we rented, and we didn’t hear from them for hours as they played in the various rooms. We took two cars; Danielle and Ben’s large Flex Ford, and Nathan’s Tesla. Gracie and I got to ride in the Tesla and it was amazing, although Gracie was fussy most of the way. 

We cooked meals in the condo and swam two different evenings at the hot springs. I got a 6-9 month swimming suit for Gracie at my baby shower, and it fit okay over her size 3 swim diaper, which was the smallest size I could find (she just turned three months and has just started wearing size 2 diapers). Gracie is tolerant of water and accepted being in the hot springs, which was a moderate temperature for all the kids (like bath water). She seemed to accept the experience but not particularly love it. 

Nathan always seems to have an interesting experience on road trips with his Tesla. On the second night we were there, he plugged his car into a handy plugin that was next to his parking space (in a garage door wall). The next morning, he came out to find the plug had been yanked out of both the wall and the plugin port of his car. The cord was missing and the port was damaged, so that it was unable to be charged again. The Tesla recorded some video showing the cord lying in the middle of the road and a snow plow running over it. Our theory is that a black bear (which we saw the night before!) may have messed with the plug and pulled it out of the wall, leaving it in the street, and then the plow yanked it out of the car, damaging the port.

Wednesday morning, with about 78 percent power, Nathan, Mom, and Dad drove straight to a service center in Denver, about 3.5 hours away. They made it with 17 percent power left!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving Dinner on Thursday at my sister’s mother-in-law’s house. There was a table filled with appetizers, and three differently-prepared turkeys! I made my signature mashed potatoes and chocolate mousse pie.

Sleeping

Emmet and Benjamin are completely in love with their cousin. Emmet likes to say, “Can I hold her, can I hold her?” every five minutes, which is a hassle because it involves a boppy and a couch with an arm. Benjamin likes to jump up and down and make silly faces, which sometimes, she responds to by stopping mid-cry in surprise at this new development.

Gracie has the widest, prettiest eyes in all the land. Sometimes, after her middle-of-the-night feeding, she’ll look up at me with those large, soulful eyes as if to say, “Well, we’re all up now, what should we do? Maybe a craft?” Cooing and smiling and my heart melts, even as I’m thinking, “Go back to sleep, child.” I’ve learned that I can rock her and put her back in her crib and she’ll cry a little bit and then go back to sleep. 

Sleeping is that thing one strives for as a new parent. So far (KNOCK ON WOOD), she's a great sleeper. Which makes me SOOO happy. Especially since this isn't always the case! My friend's daughter didn't sleep through the night until she was four! I told Gracie early on that she had to be a good sleeper. So far, she's listening.

Baby and I co-slept for the first couple months. Yes, we co-slept! While I’m normally a pretty athletic sleeper who will find myself on various sides of the bed in the middle of the night, I slept still as a rock every night she was in bed with me. I think it’s instinctual, the knowledge that there’s a tiny human next to you so the body tells itself, “don’t crush the tiny human!” I found that we both slept better when she was next to me because I could reach over and pat her if she fussed, and I could easily sit up and feed and change her. Occasionally, I'd put her on my tummy to cuddle her and help her fall asleep, and then I'd wake up a couple hours later, surprised that time had passed and she was still there, a little bundle on my tummy with her hands curled at my collar bone.

A few weeks ago, we started putting her in her crib to sleep. I didn’t sleep as well the first couple of nights, but now I sleep better because I’m not waking up every time she makes a tiny noise. I do have to tiptoe in to check that she’s still alive sometimes, though. Like when she slept for nine straight hours and I shot out of bed, completely terrified that she wasn't breathing. (She was).

Also. Shhh. She sleeps on her tummy. Her head is strong and she’ll whip it from side to side to get comfortable, but she sleeps really well on her tummy. So. Don’t tell anyone because this is against the rules.

Sleeping has gotten so much better and it’s no longer a matter of getting through each night and dreading them as they approach (knock on wood). So that’s nice for now. However, I hear tell that she’ll make a developmental leap at four months and will suck at sleeping well at night again so. I have that to look forward to. :)

I was supposed to go back Dec. 2 to start work. However, due to the fact that it’ll be really hard to go back to school three weeks before Christmas break when I’ll have to get the kids used to my routines only to start over again after Christmas, and the fact that my sub really wanted to finish the semester with the kids… I asked to extend my leave through Christmas. Which means I don’t go back until Jan. 6. Which is just marvelous because I get extra time with my kid and a little more sleep before I have to start making the commute to work again!

Also, apparently people at work are nervous about me and my commute. It’ll be fine. I love what I do and who I work with, and I love where I live. So I have to deal (with a 55 minute drive to work and back each day). People in California do it. I can do it. And I get lots of breaks as a teacher! I can do this!

Breast feeding... or not

Gracie is 10 weeks old now. She makes me feel happy and full and terrified and overwhelmed and at peace and petrified. You know. The feelings of being a mom. She’s in a tentative routine now that could change at any moment. She has been going to sleep these last couple of weeks between 7:30 and 9 p.m. and sleeping 6-8 hours before waking once and sleeping another 3-4 hours! The Internet says babies often sleep better when they’re bottle-fed. Oh yeah. She’s bottle-fed. It’s not because I didn’t want to breast feed. It’s because after she was born, I found out that my boobs were broken. 

I had a breast reduction at age 25. Not that you would notice because they got HUGE during pregnancy. Just so, so big. I remember the doctor who did the reduction saying she thought she had saved my milk ducts pretty well. I think maybe she saved like five of them or something (the Internet says each breast has 15-20 ducts). I wasn’t producing much colostrum and also, my nipples didn’t want to play nice. Gracie just couldn’t latch while in the hospital so the nurses made me pump every couple of hours to keep the milk flowing. 

Then began the saga of trying to breast feed. I tried getting her to latch, which involved many a session of me wrestling a screaming infant to my breast while mom assisted with positioning her on a pillow (did I say that my boobs were HUGE). I tried using a nipple guard, which is placed over the nipple that the infant should be able to suck on and through, but it always slipped and got dislodged. When I went to the baby’s first doctor’s visit after the hospital, the pediatrician asked me the same question every doctor liked to start with, “So how is breastfeeding going?” I told her I had had a breast reduction so it wasn’t going well so far. “Oh,” she said a little grimly. “I’ve been in this field for over 15 years and I have to say that only a handful of mothers who had surgery produced very much milk.” I teared up because it was heartbreaking to think I wouldn’t be one of those normal moms that breastfed and gave all their nutrients to their kids and decreased the risk of viruses and infections… All those things you learn about why you have to breast feed. She rushed on to say that it was OK to not breast feed, that my baby would still grow up perfectly fine and healthy, and she was sorry she’d put her foot in her mouth. Then she sent me home with about five cans of infant formula.

Two days after leaving the hospital, I attended a lactation support group. All the other moms sat there, their babies serenely suckling away in various holds at regular, modest sized breasts. Meanwhile, Mom and I wrestled a screaming baby to my pillow boobs, while trying to work with a nipple guard and a little tube of milk attached to my shirt, so that the baby would be sucking on something and learn to latch. The doctor walked around to check on the others, and then sat with me most of the time offering tips and advice. Mom and I were both sweaty and practically panting at the end and I left, traumatized and determined NEVER to go back. 

I continued to pump for the next few days (and put away the nipple guard and the stupid little tube thing). I only produced a couple tablespoons each time, which I added to Gracie’s bottle. There finally came a day when I said, “It’s OK to stop.”

I had to come to terms with not feeling like a failure as a woman and mother. And somehow not feeling guilty that I wasn’t giving my baby my life-giving milk. Then I talked to many women who had found that breast feeding wasn’t for them, or that they weren’t producing enough for their baby so they stopped. And I had to tell myself that it was OK to bottle feed. Plus, there are many benefits. My nipples aren’t sore. I can bring a bottle anywhere with me and not have to whip out a boob. I get more sleep at night. 

When Gracie woke up every couple hours, my mom routinely came to get her at 5 a.m. to give me a break and do her last feeding of the night, which made me feel not alone and safe because I had support. She’s better than a husband in some ways!

That first night out of the hospital, my parents went to bed and I sat there on the couch where I slept for the next couple of weeks (because I couldn’t sleep lying down yet due to the c-section). I stared at my newborn infant, who stared back at me with wide eyes, and I started crying because I was freaked out and scared and felt very alone that there was no one to share the burden with me, who had ownership in this with me. I wondered for the first time if I had made the right decision. Then my mom came down at around 2 a.m. and said she would take Gracie to bed with her and I worshiped at her feet in gratitude. I wasn’t alone. I have the best family in the world.