1. Offer to stock up on easy foods.  New moms often have plans about eating healthy, but during the first few weeks, it can be downright tricky to get food to your mouth at all.  Stock up on her favorites – animal crackers, pretzels, granola bars.  Anything that she can grab out of the pantry and eat one-handed.  Meals are great, but they’re only part of the picture – my feeling is that the meals are more about feeding the rest of the family and absolving the new mother of guilt for stepping out of the kitchen.  She’s lucky to have time to sit down for dinner.  Cans of diet soda might work, too.
2. Offer to go with her to her six-week doctor’s appointment.  This is tricky.  Even if she’s headed back to work and has childcare arranged for her child, odds are that’s AFTER the six-week check-up.  Doctors’ offices recognize this dilemma and tolerate newborns.  But have you ever had a pelvic exam while your infant cries in her carrier?  Yeah.  Babysitting at your house raises the crazies – packing, preparing, worrying – but if you can arrange to tag along to the appointment and calm the baby in the waiting room while mom does her thing?  That’s huge!
3. Bring over brainless magazines, if the mom is into them.  She can’t concentrate on Russian novels right now, but having the new People or Cosmo to skim while breastfeeding?  It’s a nice indulgence.
4. Bring over baby wipes.  Everyone brings cute togs and stuffed toys.  You can’t guess about diaper size or preferred brand.  But wipes are fairly universal, and every one seems to run short on them early days.
5. Offer to babysit an older child, especially one who likes you and is old enough to see an afternoon outing to the zoo with Aunt So’n'So as a treat.  Alternatively, walk the dog.
6. Offer to tag along on her first public outing avec baby.  It will get the reluctant new mom back into the world, and help the enthusiastic one feel like she’s got a reason to go.  An hour in Starbucks is like a night at the opera after you’ve given birth! 

And yet I am nervous.  Change always make us nervous, right?

I think there are a bunch of things that have me rattled.  Here’s the list:

1. I used to be a hyper-competent, well-respected member of a professional community who could probably find her next job without much drama.  But now I’m just completely unknown in this new city, after two years completely out of the workforce.
2. On my (other, real) blog, I’m starting to get a good following and I suspect that if I monetized, I’d make some cash.  I’ve been asked to guest blog on a major site, so I’m really not dreaming.  But I wouldn’t make enough money to make it worth my while … and certainly not enough to substitute for a full-time job.  So I wonder if this should just remain a hobby?
3. Blogging, combined with my responsibilities in my last position, have convinced me that my talents are in a slightly different field than the one I last called home.  So factor that in – new city, no contacts, need to redirect my job search.

Add in sleep deprivation, new motherhood, guilt about not spending any time with my husband and toddler, worries about the economy and Jimdear’s job and it all adds up to a general feeling of jumpiness.

I’m sure I’m not alone right now, with the wild mood swings.  My days tend to go like this:

Mid-morning:  Spot a pair of real shoes – y’know, with heels, not splattered with mud from walking around the ‘hood with baby and toddler in tow – and think wistfully of the mornings where I left the house showered and dressed in something that wasn’t a tee on a regular basis.

Lunchtime:  Practice answering interview questions, especially coming up with a quick response as to why I’ve been out of the workforce for two years.

Late afternoon:  Chloe smiles at me and it all flies out the window.  I think that I could never leave her.  

Three minutes later:  Chloe screams during a diaper change.  Or I remember that she won’t be little long, but I’ll be a grown-up until it’s over, so I’d better get my act together – or I’ll be rehearsing answers explaining why I’ve been out of the workforce for three years.

3 p.m.-ish:  Tune into CNBC for grim economic news.  Despite my personal tendency towards optimism – and my oft-repeated mantra that, in finance, when they declare the apocalypse is nigh, it’s usually time to get out of the way, ’cause it’s gonna look like Pamplona in a few months – jobless claims do rattle me.  Why would anyone hire me, I think?

4 p.m.-ish:  Cruise Monster and USAJobs.  Consider applying for a few things.  Realize I’m either horribly over/underqualified for most.

Later that night:  Realize there is one USAJobs spot perfect for me.  Begin application process.  Realize job closes at midnight and it’s practically impossible to supply the reams of information required by the witching hour.  (I’d need to, for example, upload my college transcripts.  Even if I could, in theory, find and scan them quickly, I know I can’t do it while holding an infant.  And I know the infant won’t sleep long if I put her down.)  Sigh.  Vow to be more diligent about searching the site and devote more time to job searching.

Reflect that I’m probably more likely to get a non-federal job, and likely to be happier in a non-bureaucratic role.  But realize that they’re more likely to interview quickly, meaning that there’s no point in applying until year’s end – I can’t go to the interview wearing my daughter in her Baby Bjorn.

Jimdear does not help this process.  He tells me I should be aiming higher – but after finally recovering from a serious case of career burnout and a strong sense of missing our firstborn’s early childhood, I’m afraid to aim too high.  I want to aim just high enough – but then I realize that with my master’s degree and work history, many employers won’t consider me for a less responsible position.  Jimdear’s assurances that we’ll figure “it all” (meaning our life) out do not settle my nerves.  I imagine a life of messy kitchens, wrinkled laundry and forgotten everything.

Okay, sounding a little daffy again, right?  I’m sure that I will look back someday and laugh.  I’m sure that someday it won’t matter if the kitchen wasn’t spotless.  I’ll have a place to wear that pair of shoes, I will.  And somehow it will all work out.  Optimism, right?

Right?

1. Yes, the job market is tough.  But it’s not nearly as bad in our metro area as it is in rustbelt manufacturing towns, like the one we left behind.  A friend of mine there is really feeling like she’s facing an uphill search.
2. Yes, the job market is tough.  But it’s not as bad in my field, in this town.  I quickly found two jobs that seem like they could be perfect fits.  Would I get an interview, much less an offer?  Who knows.  But I can find jobs to apply for, and that’s half the battle.
3. While leaving a newborn is rough, odds are pretty good that my daughter will be three months – probably older – by the time I’m back to work full-time.  That’s a lot of transition time.  I couldn’t leave her in two more weeks.  It would crush me flat.  But I don’t have to leave her that quickly.

But here’s the one thing that still bugs me: our annual pilgrimage to Disney World will almost certainly become an every-other-year, every-third-year or even less often outing.

I’m missing the Mouse.

In my real life, I often pretend to be ambivalent about Disney World.  Part of me wants to be the kind of parent who takes her kids backpacking in a nature preserve or riding antique carousels in Paris.  Disney isn’t cool, and that troubles some piece of me.

But it’s all an act.  The truth is simple:  I love Disney World.  I love it from the second we both the Magical Express at the Orlando International Airport.  I love riding the monorail.  I love the music, the lights, the resorts.  I love everything about Disney.

But my love is conditional.  I only love Disney when we’re staying at a Disney resort.  I loathe staying off-property, fighting the crowds to park and make our way to the gates.  What I really hate is feeling pressure to get our money’s worth from our day in the park.  You don’t dare go back mid-day for a nap in your hotel, because you’ve paid to park.  (Plus, it would take hours to pull this off.)  And on your days off, while you’re stuck in your time share or off-price hotel, it’s hard not to feel like your days away are bleak and colorless compared to your time in the World.

Yeah, Disney has me.  Behind the Wall of Mouse, I actually relax and enjoy knowing that we have nothing to do but enjoy ourselves.

But Disney requires around $4000 for our family to spend a long weekend on site.  Actually, it’s probably closer to $5000 once we add in every little thing.  When Jimdear was having rock star years in Big Law, that sum represented a tiny fraction of his annual bonus.  Not pocket change, no … but not an amount that we felt was problematic.

If things are tighter, there will be SERIOUS pressure to cut back on the big Disney trip.  I can’t say it will be misplaced, either.  That’s a lot of money for something that is, ultimately, frivolous.  Can I really justify taking that kind of indulgent vacation instead of saving the money?

It’s sort of a Gift of the Magi situation, though.  All of our vacations since Jimdear went to Big Law have been fraught with uncertainty.  If a Big Deal was pending, he often found himself juggling work and vacation.  I’ve watched Jimdear work his Blackberry while in line for the Flying Dumbos and in between building sand castles with Kyd.  I’ve watched him drive around a tiny town in the Napa Valley trying to find reliable internet access so he could deal with a last-minute problem on a deal.  (At the time, his boss was on a remote island off the coast of Italy doing the same.)

So I’m trying to remind myself that while Disney might become less frequent, it would be free of that particular tension.  I’ll never forget watching Jimdear grimace as Tinkerbell helped him connect to the Disney internet system as I bundled Kyd off to the swimming pool.

The one thing that looms as a possibility that really troubles me is being tucked into a timeshare with my in-laws.  They love time shares in Florida.  They own three weeks.  I can’t explain that, and hey, to each his own.  But spending a weeks’ vacation with my in-laws?  Yikes!  If it’s what I had to do to make my kids happy, I guess I’d suck it up.

But oh, I am so much happier behind the Wall of Mouse.

I’m so happy and yet I’m shivering with anxiety, too.

Dear reader, I need to find a job.

When Kyd arrived, I couldn’t wait to get back to my desk.  Parenting was rough.  I was clueless.  Returning to my office meant handing off my son to a childcare center where people knew what they were doing with a newborn, and going back to a place where I knew what I was doing, full stop.

Don’t get me wrong – I wanted a child, couldn’t wait to start a family.  I cried the months we tried and I wasn’t pregnant.  But I had no idea how tough it would be to go from being out in the world to being cocooned at home with a tiny, defenseless, utterly dependent and not terribly responsive infant.  

Newborns take.  And take.  And take.  It can be shocking, especially in this era of children-as-fashion-accessories.

Nearly four years later, I adore my son with an overwhelming mother love that sometimes scares me.  And my newborn daughter?  What I feel for her defies words.

We had a plan – a tentative plan – about how we’d handle baby #2.  I left my job when we moved back in the spring of 2006.  It’s now been nearly two years since I earned a paycheck.  For the first few months, it was impractical – our new house wasn’t finished, our son was still waiting for a space to open at his nursery school, our life was in boxes.  And then I was pregnant.  And now, now I have this fragile little life in my arms.  

The thought was that I’d take some graduate classes, maybe earn a second master’s degree.  It’s a pricey proposition, but not out of our reach.  The challenges were more around finding enough childcare to cover the classes, which were offered only in the evenings.  Jimdear would keep his demanding Big Law job a little longer, until I was finished and our second was walking.

Then Wall Street started to unravel.  

With things going from bad to worse, it’s pretty clear that Jimdear’s job is in jeopardy.  Nothing’s written in stone, of course, but even if he holds on through year’s end, we just don’t have enough confidence for me to contemplate beginning a graduate program.

And that’s okay.  Really.  I don’t need the degree.  And I’ve felt guilty long enough about not bringing in an income.  It makes my normally cheap tendencies go into overdrive.  I feel guilty about every latte, every tee shirt from Old Navy, every … well every little thing.

The good news is that even if (when) Jimdear loses his Wall Street job, we’re not in New York.  We’re in Washington DC, and odds are that new regulations will create enough careers that he can find a spot in the government.  Given his background, it’s a natural transition that he’s contemplated long before the downturn.  For him, a layoff would be scary, but exciting, too.

For me, however, this job search has me on edge.  Will anyone hire me?  Will our combined salaries actually cover the costs of childcare for two, our mammoth mortgage on a modest home and the associated expenses of living?  Because the government might hire, but the pay cut could easily be 50%.  Our hard=won financial stability could vanish in a matter of months.

Even if we clear the practical hurdles, will my life go back to the blind slog that it was before we moved, where I was always working – a playyard in my office, waking up at 3 a.m. to send an email because I couldn’t get a work related issue off my mind.  Arguing with my husband about who got to go in early/stay late and who had to take the kid to the doctors/stay home on a snow day.  And will I continue to carry the burden for all of the housework?  Jimdear thinks my standards are too high and doesn’t much trouble himself with them, but I remember the grit and grime and disorder of our old life.

And most of all, how will I leave my little girl for eight hours a day?  It sounds crazy coming from my mouth.  I’ve always wanted to work – believed that I’d be a better mother if I worked, really.  But right now it just feels so soon.  Too soon.

Practically speaking, Jimdear doesn’t expect me to look until January when she has a part-time spot at our childcare center.  And it would be crazy to try to juggle a job search with caring for a newborn.  She’ll be twelve weeks in January.  That’s old enough to be apart for twenty hours a week, isn’t it?  It still leaves so many hours in the day, in the week, in the life.

And yet every day I don’t look for a job, I fear that I’m letting it go too late.  That I’m risking my family’s financial security by failing to try to find an income.  Or worse, that I’ll have to take the first job I’m offered because I’ll have to.

When Kyd was born, I kept my heart hard.  I had an armadillo skin inches thick, and it kept me sane.  Sort of.  But I missed so much.  Now I’ve misplaced my shell, and I fear I need it right now.

I’m scared.  Scared I can’t take care of my family financially without abandoning them emotionally.  I want more time, but we don’t have it.

Somewhere, my inner optimist tells me I’ll look back and it will all be better.  It’s fear of the unknown that’s holding me back.  Moving and leaving my old career behind had me in knots, too, and I now admit it was for the best.

It’s just not making this moment any easier.

When the rain poured down in sheets, I turned to our trusty friend – the DVD player.  At the time, Jimdear carefully skipped past the opening scene in Kyd’s favorite flick, Finding Nemo - the scene where the Bad Fish devours Nemo’s mom and all of his potential siblings in their eggs.

At the time, I thought it was silly.  But I found myself starting the movie one scene later, too, and now that Kyd has discovered Babar, I’m glossing over yet another maternal demise.

I’m just not ready to explain the horrors of the world to my toddler.

I don’t remember edited versions of anything as a child.  But then, I vaguely recall falling asleep during a viewing of Bambi at the drive-in.  If it had been available 24/7 in our home theater, would I have worried more about hunters taking out my mom, too?  As for Babar, it is possible that my mother omitted the gory details, too.  I recall the future Elephant King meeting the Kind Old Lady, but not the bits about his mother dying.

Still, it strikes me that maybe, possibly, I’m going too far.  I also skip the part about how the current Elephant King eats a bad mushroom and meets an untimely demise, thus clearing the throne for Babar.

Surely that wouldn’t traumatize my child.  Would it?

I let Kyd play Guitar Hero, but I won’t tell him that elephants die.  Am I really protecting him from anything?

 Maybe this isn’t about him.  Maybe this is about me and what I don’t want to talk about.

My father died when I was 14 going on 15 – by unhappy coincidence, his funeral coincided with my birthday.  Kyd knows that people come in pairs – sort of – and asks about his Grandpa from time to time.  Despite my own fractured faith in eternity, I tell him that Grandpa is in heaven.

But do I really want Grandpa to be spending eternity with the elephants drawings of Jean de Brunhoff and a Pixar Studios clownfish?

I can’t decide – is the death of cartoon characters a helpful way for children to understand that nothing lasts forever, or is it a painfully strange way to think about the very real losses that mar our lives?  

You never completely come to grips with losing a parent, especially when it happens young.  I want my father here every day.  If anything, I feel his absence more as an adult than I ever did as a child.  So many questions are unanswered – his stories, his preferences, his thoughts are lost, and they fade with every passing day.  There are fictional characters I know better.

And so I don’t want Kyd to know that Babar and Nemo’s moms are gone too early.  I can’t stand to talk about it – not because I find explaining the cruel realities of the food chain or the ivory trade impossible, but because I hate to even imagine the possibility that Kyd will grow up without both of us, or that we’ll eventually have to deal with more loss in our lives.

I don’t want him to know that fear before it’s necessary.  And I’m not ready to respond to that fear, either.  How can I, when it’s a constant presence for me, too?

Oh yeah.  Her feet are tiny little anvils.  I feel her heels beneath my skin.  Sometimes she kicks hard enough that my entire midsection jumps.  She’s kickin’ and I’m grateful for every little whack.  It’s good to know she’s alive – and fond of orange juice, the sound of my voice and the touch of her father or brother’s hands, pressing back on her feet to let her know she’s not alone.

Despite the discomforts – I’m awake at odd hours, eating strange and unhealthy things (an entire box of Kraft mac’n'cheese for linner yesterday, 8 molasses cookies for my mid-morning snack), waddling where I used to stride – I’m truly enjoying these last few days of pregnancy.

It’s my last chance to enjoy these sensations, and I’m trying to be Very Aware of it.

When my daughter kicks, I feel an unmistakable link to every woman, every where, who has ever carried a child and dealt with the mystery of life.  Our fears, our uncertainties, our dearest wishes somehow all come wrapped up in these tiny feet that wake us.

There’s nothing subtle about the wail of a hungry newborn.  But the kicking of a nearly full-term babe in the womb is more like a gentle prod.  Be aware, Mommy.  Life changes soon.  The universe changes.  Any day now.

When I was expecting Kyd, I was too busy trying to deal with work and other commitments to treat the impending change as anything other than a project.  I missed just how very amazing the whole experience can be – it flew right by me.

Now I look at Kyd and I’m dazzled to realize that he grew inside.  From two cells to tiny feet and hands, to this independent creature who wants dessert and to read Babar and to play with trains and baseball and ride his tricycle with his friends C. and S.

I’m not exactly spiritual.  And I’m rarely sentimental.  But these last few days of gestation do feel magical.

We’re fairly certain that baby #2 is our last child.  Because we’ve been able to choose when to have children, we’re arrogant about our ability to determine family size based on convenience.  It’s contrary to our faith, but honors the absolute realities of college tuition, house size, balancing work and home life.  Could there be an accident?  Maybe.  But I hope not.  And I’m 35 now, so hoping that declining fertility favors our plans, despite the fact that my own mother found herself pregnant at 37.

So here I am, awake at 4 a.m.  Dat baby is kickin, and I’m in awe.

In precisely ten days, you will be in my arms.  I know this because we have chosen to schedule your birth.  It’s the first of a long list of choices I will make on your behalf – cloth versus disposable, breast versus formula, public versus parochial versus private, to work or stay home.  And that’s not even counting the dozens of everyday choices, about your clothing and your bedtime and whether you can watch one more episode of Blue’s Clues.

In some ways, it feels incredibly unfair that I’m taking away the one bit of control you have early days and reducing it to an appointment.

Don’t get me wrong.  We didn’t make the decision lightly.  Your brother was born via emergency c-section, for reasons I barely remember.  Apparently, sometimes labor goes well and sometimes it doesn’t.  In our case, everything that could go wrong did, and so after countless hours and multiple interventions, my doctor fashioned an escape hatch and retrieved him.

Your father describes the wait while until I was rolled into surgery as the most terrifying moments of his life.  For me, I was bathed in exhaustion – I don’t remember having any thoughts.  Maybe it didn’t cross my mind that your brother would be anything but healthy.  I’m usually given to grim imaginings, so this was no small mercy.

Before we tried to conceive you, I sought out a doctor willing to attempt a VBAC – a vaginal birth after caesarean – and assumed that was the path we’d take.  But as I learned more about my choices, I vacillated.  There is a chance of rupture, so there’s no such thing as laboring at home, or laboring without monitoring.  It’s too risky for both you and me – or too risky, at any rate, for me to consider.  I also tested positive for Group B Strep – a trifling thing if caught before labor, easily treated with antibiotics, but again, requiring me to hustle myself to the maternity ward at the first sign of a contraction.  

And while there aren’t great stats on how many attempted VBACs end in repeat c-sections, it’s pretty clear that it does happen.  That was my worst case scenario – going into surgery after hours of fruitless labor, again.

Your father had Very Definite Opinions, too.  We have no family in the area.  If I went into labor in the middle of the night, he could find himself rushing me to the hospital, pulled between finding last minute care for your brother and being by my side.  Our neighbors would happily keep Kyd, but I can see that scrambling at 3 a.m. would not be anyone’s first choice.  And on the chance that no one was home exactly when we needed them – quite possible, given that I wouldn’t have the luxury of waiting to go to the hospital – your father worried that I’d give birth by myself.  Or worse, face complications or need to make decisions while he was still juggling caring for a toddler.

Easiest, then, if we somehow arranged for you to arrive while we have Grandma on hand.

We also know that odds are against us choosing to have a third child – meaning that concerns about repeat caesareans are not a major consideration.

So here we are, my dear daughter, for a combination of practical reasons and risk avoidance, we’ve decided to schedule a c-section.  We’re waiting until the very end of my 38th week, nearly my 39th, in order to give you all the time possible to grow.

You will be here on October 2, sometime shortly after 8 a.m.  Your grandmother will take your big brother to school.  Your father will be with us.  And some point after you arrive, he’ll come back and fetch Grandma – you’re going to be named after her, you know.  And then later in the day, he’ll come and get Kyd, too.

That’s the plan.

Of course, now that I’ve told you, I suppose you might have ideas of your own.  And all of those confusing, scary rushed and complicated issues could still come up.

Maybe this would be a good time to look at my “Pack for the Hospital” list and consider our choices if you decide to crash the party early.

But after agonizing over all of this, I rather hope you’ll like my plan.

Love,

Mom

In other words, I want a job that doesn’t eat my life and my soul.  I want to earn a paycheck without forfeiting my sanity, my marriage or my children’s formative years.

Why does that feel like a difficult proposition these days?

When I was preparing to leave my last job – a job that had been both occasionally rewarding and undeniably damaging – I told a colleague that I was hoping for more balance in my next job.  Okay, I was telling her this having just left my toddler five hours away with Grandma, while we were both working a 12-hour day that ended with a late dinner meeting.

But did she have to laugh so hysterically?

She’d left behind her three school age boys to hop on an airplane and spend a marathon 48 hours or so on site, serving as expert and facilitator much of the time.

Yeah, okay, laughter was probably a reasonable response.

I was not raised to be a whiner.  I am the granddaughter of an entrepreneur who built and sold the kind of Main Street businesses that were once the heart of our country; the daughter of a woman widowed young who picked herself up and raised four children on her own.  I’ve worked most of my life, and most of my life at jobs that were poorly compensated and incredibly difficult.

And while the current economic turmoil has us all on edge, that’s not what I’m fearing right now.

What feels so difficult is the idea of having Just Enough.  Just Enough job to pay the bills, but not so much career that it leaves room for little else.  Just Enough challenge and opportunity to grow so that I’m not working on an assembly line; not so much that I’m constantly putting in a few more hours to get ahead.

It seems like we’ve set up this twisted system where you can be incredibly professionally ambitious, or horribly mediocre.  The idea that there’s some middle space is elusive.

I read a “Bright Sides of the Downturn” article the other day, where the author joked that all those Wall Street financiers will finally get to spend time with their families – as soon as they figure out which of the children rattling around their mansions are actually theirs.  It sounds absurd, but I can recognize that reality – the too busy for my own life reality.  Jimdear works in the belly of such an industry, and the fact that he remains an involved and committed father is something of a miracle.

Somewhere out there, there is a job that allows me to be firm about needing time for my family, to grow and evolve professionally and to earn enough money to pay the mortgage in this incredibly expensive city.

Why does that feel like such an ambitious wish list these days?

Still, I love Ross and he’s the only one of my three siblings to have as tortured a path as I had through the college years.  (It took me six years to earn a bachelor’s degree.  Ross is on track to smash that record by at least a year, probably two.)  We’re not close, but I love him.  And I suspect that I understand him, more than I ever will most other people on this Earth.

Except that there’s an outside chance that my baby brother Ross, at the entirely too young age of 23, might be headed for premature parenthood.

First things first: yes, plenty of people have kids at 23 and do just fine.  But Ross is Not Ready.  He lives in my mother’s basement, and while my mother doesn’t mind having her not-quite-grown son amble his way through college while dwelling belowstairs, she’s drawing the line at a grandchild.

Also in residence in the basement, semi-officially, is Ross’ girlfriend/baby-mama-elect, Tara.  There was no official conversation to change the living arrangement from Momma Bear/Baby Bear to Three’s Company.  My mother reports that one day his girlfriend was just there An Awful Lot and then she started getting mail.

We’ve since learned that Tara was Raised By Wolves.  Her father is a mere two years older than me, meaning that he was all of an august 15 when Tara joined the human race.  Better yet, Tara wasn’t his first child.  Nor was she his last.

My family’s attitude towards Tara is mixed.  We’re rather understanding that she hasn’t had much of a chance, but she’s still not our first choice for our brother.  Ross tends to be a bit of a slacker – I took years to finish college, but I never actually failed out of a school.  And while I had a lot of jobs and teetered on the edge of financial ruin, I always pulled through and righted myself without help.  Tara tends to quit jobs just ’cause and run up credit card debt with cavalier disregard for future consequences.

If Ross loves her, we’ll love her.  But we’d rather he love someone with a bit more gumption.

Complicating factors is the fact that Tara is, well, heavy.  Not just heavy – over 200 pounds.  Tara is downright fat.  In a family of active women who are a bit obsessive about what we eat, she stands out.  Way out.  Her wardrobe consists mostly of XL sweatshirts and jeans a size or three too small, paired with sneakers.

This is mean of us, to hold this against her.

As it turns out, her doctor suspects that the reason for Tara’s Very Delayed Cycle is all of that weight gain.  She’s put on 45 pounds in the past few months, making her well over 100 pounds overweight.  So while she’s gone for a blood test to confirm or deny her impending motherhood, more than one urine test has already come back negative.

I’m hopeful that I’m not about to be Aunt Indie, that Kyd and Chloe aren’t about to have a same-aged cousin.  It’s just not what I want for him – early parenthood, almost certain to trap him in a cycle of dead end jobs and render him permanently reliant on our nearing-retirement mother’s largess.

It’s a hopeless cliche to talk about how raising kids is so hard, but there it is.  The toughest job you’ll ever love, blah blah blah.  And while Jimdear says that maybe it’s what Ross needs to grow him up – finally – I can’t help think that no child deserves to come into life as an experiment.

I’m not ready to be Aunt Indie.  Not yet.

And suddenly, I’m back to that early first trimester exhaustion that leaves me unwilling – even unable – to do much of anything.

Okay, that’s not exactly true.  It’s just that I can’t do all the things on my list for any given day.  Basically, I can exercise or clean the house or get lots of writing assignments done or cook.  I used to do all of the above and then some, but I’m just not able right now.

I know I should give myself a break, but that drumbeat reverberates:  it won’t be any easier once the baby arrives.

Which is in D-14 days and counting.

If I weren’t so sleepy, I might be freaked out about that.