Things that make me cry

1.  Exhaustion.  I mean this one is pretty expected, I sometimes feel like I'm about to keel over at any minute.  Samantha actually has some fairly decent sleep habits, but has maintained an absolute aversion to her father.  And they share a face, ha ha.  Genetics schemetics, this baby *only* wants attention from me.  I'm flattered kid, but being your servant 24 hours a day is getting a little rough almost 4 months in.

2. This book:


OMG.  This was a gift from a friend, another RPL warrior.  Niblet picked it up and read it alound to her sister,  When she was done, my usually snarky, eye-rolling, too cool for school 9 year old was gobsmacked.   "Whoa," was all she could say.

3.  You Are My Sunshine.
Every week we have been going to the public library for "Mother Goose on the Loose" story and nursery rhyme sessions designed for babies (they're pretty awesome by the way).  It's one of those things I really appreciate on my long maternity leave, something I never got to do with Niblet.

But every week we sing "You are my sunshine."  Jesus this song fucking breaks me.
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy, when skies are gray
You'll never know dear, how much I love you,
Please don't take my sunshine away.

Am I the only parent with PTSD who is broken by this song?  It's insane, I'm sitting around with a bunch of moms, dads and grandparents, and welling up every. single. time.

4.  Having to return to work.

I am one of the few Americans offered a 6 month leave (much of it is unpaid).  I still have until July 19th, but it's looming.  Even with the sleep deprivation, thrushy nipples and feeling like a neglected cleaning lady/family chauffer, I am loving my time at home.

Being a SAHM isn't on the table.  I was recently promoted, I will make a comfortable income, way more that the cost of day care.  My work-husband was also recently promoted and can take a lot of the stress off of work for me.  But more importantly, I am the source of the family's health insurance.  Thanks America.  Sure, Viking can family coverage (we used his coverage for IVF), but it would cost a lot.  My benefits are insanely good - no deducible, no co-pays, 100% coverage on virtually everything for the entire family, dental, vision, Rx drugs.  You can't walk away from a benefits package like this.  I also get a small child-care benefit.  And four weeks vacation a year (which I burned on this leave).  Not to mention I have a pension, an actual pension. And my hours are for the most part, flexible.  I come and leave the office mostly when I want, and my VP lets us take our kids into work. It's like fucking fantasy land. Samantha will have to be in a day care center, but I can mitigate it a bit with shorter hours on a fairly regular basis.

She's going to the same center we sent Niblet to, though Niblet was about a year older when she started.  It's a great place, many of the care givers were there in Niblet's time, and those low turnover rates suggest the place could be a lot worse.  Niblet thrived there.  But I'm not happy about any of this.  I imagine the days that I drop Samantha off, and my eyes start to well up.  I feel fortunate to have the resources to make it all happen, but man, Scandinavia looks awfully good right now. 

People see what they see

Sammi looks so much like her sister did as a baby that I sometimes call her by the wrong name.

It's sort of funny though, how people see what they want to see.  My parents are gaga over her and visit about once a month from NYC.

"She's beautiful, and looks like you," said my Mom.

"Well, you know that really isn't possible," I had to remind her.  Also, this baby is a strawberry blond cherub, something I am decidedly not.  She has giant blue-gray eyes, although her sister did too, until around 6 months old.

"I don't know, you carried her for nine months, you had to influence something in there.  She's pretty, like you."

Okay Mom, if you insist.  Really I am just a vessel for my husband's babies, and I'm completely on board with that.  They're cute as hell.

Niblet's dance abilities are starting to really become apparent, and I say this not as her mom, but as a former ballet teacher.  She's taking three ballet classes a week (kind of a heavy load for a nine year old).  One of them is with older kids, it's called a "push" class that's only offered to one or two kids who are ready to be challenged.

Sure, I had some dance talent.  My Mom did too.  But where did the nature end and the nurture begin?  Without my exposing her to dance (she was into soccer until she saw me take a class one day), without my driving her to classes downtown every other day, without my ability to afford to pay for her instruction, and without her ability to do well in school and get her homework done (our pact), it would all be sort of moot.  The same held true for my parents and me, by the way.   Is something wired in our DNA?  Or were a myriad of environmental factors at play?  Or both?

We'll never know, will we.

Names

So I've mentioned before that Niblet named her sister.

We had a list we put together of names we could all live with, if not agree upon.  Viking and I were keen on one, Susannah.  My great-grandmother was Suzanne (French), and we thought we had lots of nicknames to play with.

"But she doesn't look like a Susannah," said Niblet in the hospital.  "She looks fun and cool.  I think she looks like a Samantha."

Viking and I looked at each other.  She was a sort of spunky looking baby.

Hmmm.  This wasn't on our list.  I always liked the name and knew some cool girl Sams.  But I also associated it with too many TV shows, especially 80's soap operas (Sammy Jo from Dynasty, Sammy from Days of Our Lives - both favorites of my grandmother Celine - came to mind).

The white board in our hospital room had a blank space where Nutmeg's name should be.  We wrote out Samantha.  "I think it looks sort of clean and aerodynamic," Viking said.

I pulled out my phone and googled the etymology of the name.  In Hebrew it roughly translates to "God Heard."

Her name is Samantha.

confession

When I'm roused up by cries at 3am and looking at Viking, sleeping cozily and soundly (on a new plush mattress, may I add), I am actually cursing him and his worthless nipples.

Therapy and Relief

So let me note how amazing it is to be 6 weeks postpartum and NOT be a weepy, depressed mess.

We were steeling ourselves for the worst.  Colic.  Crying (both me and the baby).  Sure this baby can show off her lungs, and no I am not sleeping at all in case anyone is wondering, but we're pretty well-adjusted for a household that is functioning on a lot of take out food with the mother who is literally getting 3-4 hours a night, TOPS.

I mentioned before, my slight anxiety as to how to unpack all of this baby's origin story to Niblet, and god bless my therapist for getting me to a good place about it all.  I don't have to.  It's not her story.  She'll learn it in time, but not before we unfold it for her sister.

We plan to discuss Nutmeg's origins with her early, and often.  There are some decent kids books on the topic, and we want her to be comfortable with the knowledge about her DNA.  (Niblet may read these books to her as a means of opening the discussion).  But we also want her to be matter of fact about it - in other words, we want it to be a non-issue.  I never want her in therapy years from now, describing the day that mom dropped the hammer on her and blew up her world by sharing insane information about genetics.

On other fronts, I am now cleared for exercise.  THANK GOD.  I've lost about 2/3 of the weight I gained in pregnancy, but man I am just so fluffy.  I hope that spring actually arrives so I can strap this baby on me and take many many walks up the steep hills in my neighborhood.  If this child can ever be torn from my considerable bosom and the virtual geyser of milk it contains, Imma take a ballet class soon.

So what's it like, mothering a baby from a different gene pool?  As it happens, it's EXACTLY like mothering a baby from your own gene pool.  Exhausting.  Fun.  A dream come true.  This baby is so stinking cute.  Which helps after the 3am feed, when it's 4am, and she's not going to sleep at all, she's staring up at me smiling goddammit, and I'm all "it's a good thing you're so stinking cute baby, because it's 4 am right now and I could absolutely keel over."

when your life is surreal

I am pretty lucky to be one of those people who can survive on very little sleep.  When people were all "But justonemore, those sleepless nights!" I kind of tuned them out.

Don't get me wrong.  It's a SLOG, especially if you're breastfeeding.  Nutmeg is still eating every 2-3 hours, though she'll give me an occasional 3 hour stretch of sleep at night.  But aside from a few one off nights of discomfort, she doesn't appear to be the colicky disaster her sister was  - and I say this out of love and utter sympathy for my first daughter, who Just. Couldn't. Cope.

Nutmeg is particularly cuddly, also a change for me.  In the million years of infertility after Niblet was born, I never imagined holding a snuggly baby who would enjoy burrowing into me the way Nutmeg does.  Niblet had to be swaddled within an inch of her life (we called it the "angry swaddle" in our house), and in constant motion.  Nutmeg thoroughly enjoys being worn, or rocked in a swing, but is really just a ball of chill.  With big soulful eyes and multiple chins.

Her resemblance to her dad and sister is pretty striking.  Sometimes I will look down at her and notice her nose - the one feature she carries that is very clearly not of either of our gene pools - and wonder if she will dwell on it when she's older (it's lovely for the record).  But most of the time I just can't believe we made it here.

Settling in to a new life

Sometimes it doesn't feel real.  Sometimes I get really stupid thoughts in my head, like, did we really get here?  Was my IVF cheating the universe?  How did we get so lucky?

There are two children in my house, and they are sisters, nine years apart.  They look strikingly similar, if I were inclined to breach my kids' anonymity and show side by side baby pictures of the two of them you would catch your breath.... though the moments where Nutmeg looks like her donor do occasionally hit me.  Not in a punch in the gut way, not at all, more in a scientific observation sort of "ahhh, look at her mouth.... and there's that expression that doesn't look quite familiar to my or Viking's gene pool" sort of way.  I know that babies tend to evolve (Niblet started taking on some of my features when she got older), but I also feel comfortable that few will ever even question her genetic origins.  There, I admitted it.  Third-party reproduction can be a minefield of emotions and inadvertent intrusions, and I absolutely breathed a sigh of relief when she came out looking so much like her father - and in turn, her sister.  I've already started talking to her in quiet moments about her origin story, as practice really.  I want it to be matter of fact.  I want her to always have known, as opposed to having a memory of the big day where her mother revealed something outrageous. Honestly,  the bigger issue I still need to work through in my own mind is when and how we reveal this origin story to Niblet. Since Niblet is the designated "reader" to her sister, we may approach it through a book....

But she's two weeks old, I don't have to have all of the answers right now.

A C-Section recovery is a bitch.  I have dodged a PPD bullet, I think, but I have definitely experienced moments of anxiety that I know for sure are related to my not being able to exercise.  I mean, I'm walking ok.  But the incision still feels like an incision, and I am constantly panicked that I am going to lapse into a dance move (as I tend to do without thinking) and somehow re-open it.  But I've been off the opioid painkillers for almost a week, so that's something I suppose.

I can't even begin to describe how amazing Niblet has been these past two weeks.  She's just into it.  She confided in me that she was sort of baffled and disappointed in her friends, who never really talk about this momentous thing with her.  She is the ultimate mother's helper, grabbing all kinds of things when we need them, she's all in on this adventure.  Thank God.

It also helps that the universe granted us a relatively easy baby.  We are treading carefully around this around Niblet, because man, she was HARD and we don't want to give her a complex about it... but the colic, oh my god, it was three months of hell, for all of us.  Nutmeg is pretty fucking easy-going in comparison.  Her nighttime cries can be muffled with white noise machines blasting in both girls' bedrooms, and she's something of a night owl to begin with (she was in utero as well).  We're nursing fairly easily, which also means she eats every 2-3 hours, which means I get roughly 2-3 hours of sleep - total - a day.  Unfortunately, I'm not good at napping during the day.  (Case in point, I am sitting here typing this when I should be asleep). So I get 2-3 hours of cumulative sleep at night, in between her feeds. 

I'm piling on the moisturizer and eye cream, because I started out old as fuck, and have no intention of looking like this baby's grandmother anytime soon.