Tuesday, January 21, 2020

New year new anxiety

Ahh it was bound to happen. The past two years have been, all in all, bliss. Good health, happy healthy babies.  Things were bound to veer a bit, right?

Abnormal mammogram results in left breast. Could be nothing. Reasonable brain says, hey that was the milking work-horse. It's only been three months, maybe the milk ducts are still visible and causing a wonky image.

Or not. Sigh.

Meanwhile, I have some work stress - nothing do or die, nothing that will lead to any kind of housing or health catastrophe. But I'm currently doing my job plus another (our policy analyst resigned) and well, it's a lot.

Add this to the general fuckery of daily living (who else out there has like 10K in credit card debt hat they're trying to bring down, that wasn't the result of a new car or fancy vacation but racked up on things like their children's ballet lessons?)

All of this shall pass.

Wednesday, January 15, 2020

If I could do it all over again

Samantha is turning two.  SAMANTHA IS TURNING TWO.

Her sister just turned eleven.  ELEVEN.

If I could do it all again, if I knew then what I know now.... I would have started earlier.

Now, functionally, I'm not sure what this would look like.  Viking and I were together for 5 years before our marriage. Making it legal was inevitable, but maybe I would have pressed harder. I was 33 when we married, 34 when Niblet was born.

My mom and I have talked about how I should have ignored my job worries and started trying for a second baby immediately after Niblet was born. Yeah, I lost a year or two there. Who knows. And that's leaving aside the five straight years of  pregnancies and loss.

Please don't misunderstand, I wake up every day unbelievably grateful for my daughters.  Daughters with an S! But the reality is I might be one of those crazy women who had more, if given the chance. Sure, maybe the environmentalist in me would stop at two. But god help me I love babies, and it seems, I crave babies. And if the eleven year old is any indication, I still like them when they become old and snarky and indignant of your very existence.

"Gonna try for another?" my vice president asked me the other day. My jaw dropped.  "Do you realize how old I am?" I responded.

But in a different universe, in an alternative reality, the honest truth is yes.  Yes. I would.