Bodywork

When I got pregnant with my daughter, 25 years ago, I was a skinny post-adolescent hippie with long dreaded hair. A womanly shape had thus far eluded me. I was as tall and straight as a beanpole, with budlike breasts and a "negative ass," as one boyfriend had put it. So I was happy when my hips began to spread and my chest began to inflate. I finally felt like a girl.

During that pregnancy, my daughter's father, David, and I traveled from Key West, Florida, to the Russian River Valley in California in a red VW Beetle. We slept in the back, which began to feel increasingly cramped as my stomach grew.

In my sixth month, we finally settled in a cabin that lacked a working well, that is, running water. With the dry California summer hitting temperatures over 100 degrees, I did battle with the heat during my last trimester. Every afternoon, I'd trek on foot down the mountain on the dusty dirt road into the valley to cool off in an irrigation ditch.

Everything was raw for me during my first pregnancy. My body was bony and sharp-edged. My stomach practically grew out into a point. We lived close to a subsistence lifestyle. David dug fence post holes to support us. I baked bread and drank raw goat's milk. When my time came, I squatted in a trailer with the lay midwives, my dog and cats as labor coaches. Jade was born by the light of a full moon. Her father cut the cord.

After Jade's birth, my body never returned to its pre-pregnancy form. My hips were childbirth-tested, and my ass became "positive." After 20 months of breast feeding, I was no longer nubile. My belly never regained it's taut teenaged form. As a mom, my body became strong but also cushiony.

Two and a half decades later, to my surprise, I became pregnant again. This time, I was middle-aged. Suffering from a chronic illness, surviving cancer, and being 45, the last thing I expected was new motherhood. But it came, like a warm breeze in December.

I attribute the surprising healthiness of this pregnancy to the fact that I'd been practicing yoga for several years in my 40s. Yoga changed my body and my life. The contraction, stretch, and compression practice in a highly heated room sent blood and oxygen to all the right places, including, I guess, my ovaries.

My belly ballooned though in this pregnancy. Jericho was big, but my belly looked as if it contained twins. Every day on my way to court, I confronted packs of strangers in the elevators of the Criminal Justice Center in downtown Philadelphia. My belly was the main topic of conversation, loosening the tongues of total strangers.

I never liked the men who would say things like, "Wow! Looks like you're ready to pop!" Or the coworkers who would shout across the hall, "Oh my God!" and point to my belly as I got huge. Or posit, "You look really uncomfortable." And they were right. I was uncomfortable. And the childbirth was a lot less far out than Jade's. Instead of a trailer, I bore Jericho at University of Pennsylvania Hospital in the company of a team of doctors and nurses. It wasn't a natural childbirth. I was the happy recipient of an epidural.

But I felt proud of the fact that I pushed out my big baby and didn't have to have a Caesarian, as everyone thought. "The old girl still works," I said to my doctor, in a fit of pride. We all were proud and happy as we stared at the perfect little miracle baby. All those female parts that are so labeled and scrutinized and judged and demeaned and fantasized about. They all just come to this.

The Mommy Wars Inside My Head

I gave birth to my first child, Jade, when I was 21. I had dropped out of college and, at the time I became pregnant, Jade's father and I were hitchhiking around Florida, sleeping on beaches and camping in abandoned lots. I learned I was pregnant that winter while working as a waitress at Rick's Cafe on Duval St. in Key West. (That sounds more romantic than it was.)

That spring, Jade's dad and I gradually made our way West in a 1971 VW Bug that we purchased in Florida for $400. We slept in the back, along with our puppy, as my belly grew. Eventually, we landed in a mountain cabin in Mendocino County, California. It was summer, and temperatures were in the low 100s. Our cabin's well was dry. I peed in a bucket in the loft at night and I cooled off in an irrigation ditch during the day.

After Jade was born, we moved to Eugene, Oregon, a college town. During her toddler years, now a single-mom, I returned to college. I ended up earning three degrees from the University of Oregon (a triple Duck). Throughout Jade's childhood, I constantly strove to better myself and develop my career, actually multiple careers -- from environmental activist, to journalist, to lawyer.

As Jade got older, I guess I began to put my career before being a mom. I started law school during her senior year and remained somewhat willfully ignorant of the mischief she engaged in. The summer, after her first year in college, I chose to do an internship in Washington, DC. I had rented out the Oregon home she grew up in. Jade returned to Eugene that summer and had to get a job and live in a house with friends. There was no safety cushion for her. I was building the new life that would sustain me in my empty nest. I had pushed my chick out, hoping she would fly. (In my defense, Jade claims this was a good thing for her, and fly she did.)

So belatedly, in my late 30s and early 40s, I experienced many things I had missed in my 20s. I went to law school, got a job as a public defender, moved across country, partied heavily, dated freely, hung out with kids younger than me. It was a good midlife crisis. Finally, I also achieved success in my career. Then I met my husband and achieved a personal happiness that had thus far eluded me. Life was good.

My husband and I talked about having kids. He's a few years younger than me and is the type who everyone assumes will be a good father. At parties, he can often be found out back, throwing a baseball with the kids. But we were unsure, a bit loathe to give up our precious freedom. I went off birth control pills after our marriage; but we had no concern about an accidental pregnancy. I was 45 and had been told my fertility experts that I would need professional help to get pregnant. That seemed like too much work and money -- especially since we weren't sure about parenthood at our age. We talked about adopting and even (for a minute) surrogacy. But during our first year of married life, we were happy with our life the way it was.

Apparently, I was more fertile than everyone thought. Or maybe my eggs were partying too, after years of being suppressed by birth control pills. When I saw the blue line in my pregnancy test strip, I was happy. So was my husband. The fear came later. But we both felt that a miracle had occurred, a gift had been given to us. As my belly grew to a ridiculously huge mound, my husband and I looked at each other and shook our heads. Was this really happening?

Jericho is a blessing and a gift. We are joyful, but not always smiling. This article from New York magazine explains this apparent contradiction well. Parenting is work! Fulfilling work, but work just the same. And sometimes work is no fun. In fact, good parents are often party poopers. They have to be.

I also find it interesting and contradictory that, after spending Jade's childhood trying to build my career, and after having finally achieved a measure of professional success, I am ready to give this up so I can spend more time with Jericho. Because he's such a gift, I feel I must cherish him all the more. I am trying to arrange a job share at my workplace so I can work half-time. If we could afford it, I would take a leave of absence.

Part-time work though may be just the ticket. Studies say mothers who work outside the home part-time are the happiest moms. (I can't find a link for this, but I've heard it's true.) I also was cautioned by reading Ayelet Waldman's somewhat interesting memoir, Bad Mother. In it she describes giving up her career as a public defender to stay at home with her children and the depression that ensued.

I am finding, now in my fourth month of maternity leave, that I'm beginning to miss adult conversation more and more. As exhibited in the reprinted blogs from the New York magazine article, I also am finding that I have very little to converse about with friends. Not many people, aside from my husband and mother, are interested in Jericho's poop schedule. It's difficult to overcome the isolation of stay-at-home motherhood when you live in a lefty hipster modern culture and not within the domain of Traditional Family Values (where I assume stay-at-home moms get more support and company).

Perhaps, like Ayelet Waldman, I'll use this tension -- between wanting to be with my precious miracle baby and wanting to reap the fruits of my career labor -- to find yet another career. But I'm too tired to think about that right now.

Crash and Burn

Jericho is becoming more and more of a delight. He smiles! He smiles and even laughs! He is getting a sense of humor. I can tickle him under his chin and he chuckles with one definitive "Ha!"

He remembers things like "Pat a Cake," or at least smiles when I begin the rhyme, knowing that it will lead to tickling. He knows me. He wants me around, which is both a blessing and a curse. Or it is a curse only because I must soon return to the workforce, a prospect that I face with a growing sense of dread.

June has been the easiest and brightest month thus far in the life of mothering Jericho. My mother came for a visit, and I was given the pleasure of sharing my rapture and infatuation with my baby with someone who feels the same way, his Grammi. We had such fun trying to capture his elusive smile on film. He always stops when you break out the camera. But we did finally get one.

Luckily, my mother took this photo. Because tragedy struck last week when my computer hard drive crashed and I lost all the photos I had taken of Jericho, along with many others. It's not a problem I ever had with Jade, of course. The problem there was that I didn't have the means to take many photos or videos of her. I wish I had. I think only one video exists of her childhood.

I had already many videos of Jericho, such as the one posted here. I even had a video of his bris (not the cutting part -- in fact, we had a bris without the circumcision, more on that later). But most of that is gone. It's my one damn fault -- I should have backed up -- but that doesn't mean it isn't a real shame.

One Froggy Baby

So Jericho is two months old, and he has started "social smiling." In the mornings, when he's well rested, I can perch him on my lap with my thighs to his back, and he will often smile at me. He doesn't smile on cue, but he does seem to respond to certain interactions. I haven't figured out what those are yet. I think when he's in a good mood and has something to smile about (he feels rested, well fed, not gassy), then he smiles. It's the first thing that babies really give back to their parents. Seeing him smile makes everything -- the sleep deprivation, the complete uprooting of life as I knew it -- worth it.

I've been unable to get a photograph of Jericho smiling, however. He'll be smiling away until I pull out my camera. Then it's glumsville. He reminds me of the frog in the classic Warner Bros. cartoon "One Froggy Evening." That frog, excavated from a time capsule in an old building, would sing and dance for the workman who uncovered him. However, as soon as the workman tried to get the frog to sing for anyone else, it would revert back to a glum croaking amphibian.

Here is a video of me trying to get Jericho to smile again, after he'd been smiling.



Here's the classic Warner Bros. cartoon.

"

By the way, that cartoon is based on an old legend of the "toad in the hole" and also real reports of entombed frogs and toads coming back to life. Some consider it the best short film ever made. I'm in that camp.

But back to babies. I remember Jade smiling very early in life. At six weeks, she was interacting with people. They would smile at her, and she would smile back. She always was a flirt and a ham. Her dad and I took her to a neurological specialist when she was six weeks old, and the main observation the doctor made was of her beautiful social smile. My mother had made the appointment for us with a San Francisco pediatric neurologist because she was terrified that Jade had Crouzon Syndrome, like her father. I had no such worries, and I kept the appointment only to appease my mom. I was carefree, even though the odds of Jade inheriting her dad's serious genetic abnormality had been 1 in 2.

Those are much higher odds than they were for Jericho having a chromosomal defect of the sort that are more common with mothers in their 40s. With him, as well, Bryan and I chose to think positive. I did not get the amnio or the CVS, choosing to forgo an increased risk of miscarriage; however, I did get the noninvasive first trimester screening. Regardless, we decided that we would welcome a baby with Down Syndrome into our home.

Still, I found it ironic that Jericho's risks of problems were much lower than Jade's, even though I was 21 and healthy when Jade was born and 45 and diabetic when Jericho was born. Both my kids beat the odds. And like an entombed toad in the hole, my motherhood -- and optimistic outlook -- reemerged.

Elephant Man

I was proud of myself the other day. I figured out how to post a video on Facebook. It's one of those annoyingly cute videos that people post of their children. In this case, Jericho is filmed "fighting" with mobile-tethered elephants while sitting in his vibrating infant seat. He looks very aggressive and cute, between yawns, as he swats at the tiny elephants. He wears a camouflage jacket that his aunt gave him, so he looks very boyish and tough.



Immediately after I posted the video on Facebook, Jade posted the following comment:

here is evidence of early maternal investment in tropes of masculinity and militarization. small brother, do not hit the elephants; honor their continued efforts at survival through threats of ivory hunting with tender caresses. and please someone take the camouflage off that child. are we cultivating a warmonger over here?!

I smiled at first, though I wasn't sure if she was joking or not. Then I thought: Can't I post a cute video of my baby without her deconstructing it?! (Did I mention that Jade is an editor at a publisher specializing in books highlighting academic theory, such as post-structuralist feminist criticism and gender theory. I am sure I just explained that wrong, and if she's reading this, she will be highly offended. I'm sorry.)

But I later realized that Jade had a point. I was invested in Jericho's masculinity as I'd never been invested in her femininity. I mean, in 1985, I never would have posted a video on Facebook (if Facebook and digital video had existed) showing Jade in a tutu doing some gendered female activity, such as baking cookies or tenderly caressing elephants. I was all about empowering her and teaching her that she could do anything she wanted, regardless of her sex. And she became a strong feminist woman, much to my delight.


But I find I am not as eager to fight the stereotyping of boy children. Jericho wears a lot of blue, albeit, most of it hand-me-down. (Why do baby boy clothes always have imagery of dogs, bears, cars, or sports?) We are already talking about the sports Jericho will play. One friend has prematurely signed him up for Mt. Airy Baseball. I go around bragging about how big and strong he is. And worst of all, I impulse-bought him a Chris Jericho action figure. Yikes.

Masculinity is my son's ticket to acceptance and participation in society (read: happiness). I guess my maternal desire for his success (read: power) is trumping my feminist desire to overthrow patriarchy ... just in his case. Of course, I will teach him to respect women and do the dishes, but even that presumes his dominant position vis-a-vis the other sex.

So I guess I don't want to deconstruct it too much. I assume I will be supportive if he grows up to be a Ferdinand, sniffing the flowers instead of fighting.



I'll try not to invest in Jericho's masculinity. But I'm not going to discount it either.

The Motherland

Jericho has started to smile. But he doesn't smile at me. He smiles at strangers and his Bubby (my mother-in-law). He smiles at his father and looks around when he hears his father's voice. But I don't get the sense that he recognizes me as a separate person. I'm more like a landscape.

That makes sense, since 7 weeks ago he was literally housed inside of me. And he continues to be nourished by my body. He sleeps on me. I carry him around. I am (almost) always there, part of him. This is good. But it doesn't get you appreciation.

It's a little bit of an ego trip to be Mother Earth for someone. You feel so ... essential. It's so primal. You feel a lot more important than just being someone's lawyer. I am his landscape. Of course, without me, life would still go on for him. Lot's of people love him and can take care of him. But I like feeling so needed.

I also hate it sometimes. Like the other night, Bryan, Jade, and I were going to go see a movie. Of course, it was last minute and I hadn't pumped, so we figured we'd take Jericho with us. It was after 9. He'd (probably) stay asleep. So we drove into Center City to the Ritz Five Theater (where Babies was playing, coincidentally). We bought our tickets and got in line to buy popcorn. I detected some apprehensive looks from other theater-goers. Before we could go into the theater, the usher said, "You can't go in there with a baby. No one under 5 is allowed entry. It's been that way for years." This was confirmed by the manager who gave us our money back. We dejectedly went home.

Duh! If we had thought about it for a minute, we would have realized that one never sees babies in movie theaters. No one wants to hear a baby crying while they are trying to enjoy a movie. I don't know why we thought we could just waltz into a serious foreign film carrying a baby, who would hopefully keep quiet, but most likely cry, at some point.

And then last weekend, Bryan and I wanted to go out for dinner. I have been feeling some serious cabin fever lately. We drove through Manayunk, a nearby trendy strip, which was hopping on a Saturday night. The thought of going into one of those pubs or nice restaurants with a baby made us feel like wallflowers at prom. We ended up driving from the city into the suburbs to dine comfortably with our baby at a Jewish deli. The waitress rushed us because they close at 9.

I know what you're thinking. Get a babysitter, stupid. We're working on it. Bubby is ready and able. But it takes orchestration. And I'm not especially good at orchestrating things these days. I mostly just get through the day. It's hard being Mother Earth.

Thanks Philadelphia Inquirer for reading my blog

She must have read it. That's what I thought when I read this Thursday column by Malina Brown in the Philadelphia Inquirer. It very much echos my post about how many people discard politeness when confronted by a pregnant woman. Either that, or the experiences we both shared are all too common.

Changing Hats

One unexpected issue with having two children nearly a quarter-century apart is that I can't just be one mom to both of them. I have to be two moms to each of them individually. I guess this is true no matter how far apart kids are spaced. But it seems that when all your kids are kids more or less together, they can eat together, play together, get scolded in turn, and basically follow the same rules and have the same expectations of family life.

Not so when you were an irresponsible hippie for your first kid and a married professional with your second. And not so when your kids belong to different generations. My daughter is squarely in Generation Y, she fits it like a glove. My son ... ? Will they have a Generation Z when he comes of age? Who knows? My husband thinks Jericho's generation will be the one that must address the fall of civilization as we know it -- and he's jealous. (I'll get to my husband in another post.)

But the biggest problem I have mothering across generations is that I must change hats -- actually, more than hats -- states of mind, biological foci, intellectual capacity, rules, language, everything -- when I switch from one kid to the next. I mean, I'm with Jericho most of the time. Mothering him basically entails nursing, rocking him, singing to him, walking with him in the stroller, trying to get him to sleep, nursing, soothing him, getting stuff done in a flurry while he sleeps, napping, nursing, showing him off. That's about it. We obviously don't have deep conversations yet. Or if we do, they're pretty one sided.

Jade is my intellectual equal; actually, she's way smarter, more articulate, more well-read, and far more capable than I. Mothering her mostly entails keeping up. She schools me more than I school her. I try to be a sounding board and support system, when she needs it. And she only needs mothering once in a while and, in those cases, it's immediate and acute and temporary.

That doesn't mesh well with the steady white-noise of mothering an infant. It's hard to drop everything when necessary. It's hard to focus on a conversation. It's hard to change hats.

Jade and Jericho at Mother's Day brunch.

The closest I've gotten, so far, is on Mother's Day, when my husband took Jericho to his mom's house for dinner. Jade and I went to yoga by train and also went shopping. It was wonderful. But it was bittersweet, because I know how rare such occasions now have become.

It was the longest I've been apart from Jericho -- 4 1/2 hours. But it felt like an instant. And it felt inadequate. And while, in the coming months and years, I'll be able to talk to Jade on the phone or by email and see her during visits, life as we knew it is over. I am no longer just her mom. I am Jericho's mom and must consciously change hats to be her mom for those times when she wants me or needs me to.

Jericho's Early Mother's Day Present

Today, I feel for the first time in months that my life is semi-under control. Maybe it's because Jericho gave me 3+ hours of napping in a stretch. I was able to actually pump breast milk (really, I have not had "time" to do this over the past two weeks) in anticipation of Mother's Day. On Mother's Day I'm going to ditch my baby with his dad and paternal grandma, aunt, uncle, and cousins and spend some quality time with Jade. Jade is coming for Mother's Day. Even though she's grown, she's adjusting to having another creature sharing her mother's love. So we're going to hang out together on Mother's Day without the boy.

I also reorganized the books in the house. This sounds like something a Type-A housewife would do because she has too much time on her hands. But believe me, I'm no Type A, and it needed to be done. We just moved into our new house two weeks before I had the baby. It's been sheer chaos. The house is finally starting to feel settled. Books are important, and they need to be settled.

It's amazing how my mood can improve so much after a couple extra hours of sleep and time to myself ... time spent cleaning/organizing, usually, but still time not listening to a crying baby. Did you ever notice that babies have the most annoying pitch to their voices, kind of like an alarm buzzer? Human babies may be the most helpless creatures on the planet, but shit are they loud. You can't ignore them.

Jericho is approaching, according to the pediatrician, the most fussy time of his life (I hope). Six weeks apparently is when they peak in fussiness. True to form, he's been a real pill, until today, that is. Yesterday, I had to let him cry it out in his crib for 5-10 minutes a couple of times because nothing would console him.

Today he was an angel though. And all the fiction and nonfiction are in their places.

Quarter Century Dula

An old friend gave me a huge gift last week. She game to Philly all the way from Oregon to help me with the baby. I was surprised and pleased that she volunteered to come, as we haven't spent much time together over the last 10 years or so.

My friend, Margaret, was a huge part of my daughter's life. When I moved to Oregon when Jade was 6 months old -- homeless and not knowing anyone -- I looked up Margaret. We grew up in the same hometown, and my mom heard from Margaret's mom that she lived in Oregon. Margaret welcomed Jade and me with open arms. When she met Jade, they instantly connected, and she became Jade's "other mom." She was always there to help me out when necessary. And gradually Jade and I became integrated into Margaret's group of friends. Without her, I would have had a lot more trouble making it in a new place as a single mom.

When I moved to Oregon, I was a big advocate for home birth, because I'd had such a great experience delivering Jade with midwives in our small trailer in Northern California. Of course, I was 21 and healthy then. Birth was truly a trippy experience for me. A couple years later, when Margaret and her then-boyfriend became pregnant, she decided to have a home birth as well. She too became a home birth champion. She later worked as a doula (labor coach and postpartum helper), a midwife, a childbirth educator, and a lactation consultant. Basically, Margaret became a baby guru.

Margaret and her husband (they got married after the first one) had two more kids. The second two also were born at home, in water in birthing tubs. In her late 30s, Margaret delivered a 10 lb baby in a tub, basically by herself. She is a true believer in empowering women to take charge of the childbirth experience, rather than meekly following the orders of risk-adverse doctors and hospital nurses.

We've kept in touch over the years (mostly through our parents), but I haven't spent time with Margaret for a while.I spoke to her when I was pregnant -- this time managed by "high-risk" doctors in one of the country's premier teaching hospitals. The docs were making it clear I was looking at an interventionist birth -- induction or C-section. It would be a far cry from my natural home birth in the cow pasture with my cats and dog as labor coaches.

And, sure enough, the docs did intervene, inducing me into labor at 38 1/2 weeks. The anesthesiologist eagerly pushed the epidural. Before I knew it, I was pumped full of drugs, attached to the hospital bed by tubes and wires, with a team monitoring every peak and valley of the baby's heartbeat, my blood pressure, blood sugar, anything measurable.

But I did manage to push Jericho out myself, avoiding a C-section. And I insisted on breastfeeding him when he went to NICU for a day, due to a low blood sugar. Small victories against the American health care system, which would rather treat everyone as a statistic, usually the product of a risk-benefit analysis equation.

I spoke to Margaret about all this. And I was happy when she volunteered to leave her family for a few days to come help me with Jericho. It was good to have a visit from a verifiable Oregon earth mama. She taught me the double-swaddle, which is helping Jericho sleep in his bed. And when Jericho was up one night because his nose was stopped up, she told me to drop some breast milk in his nostrils. It miraculously unclogged his nose, acting like a saline solution but with those natural antibodies. Mostly, she calmed my jittery everything-old-is-new-again mom nerves.

What goes around comes around. It's something to be thankful for.

Minding the Gap

Big generational gaps run in my family. My grandmother was the youngest of 7 and was raised alongside her nieces and nephews. She was more of a contemporary of her niece -- her best friend and enemy -- than of her brothers or sisters.

My grandfather had a child out of wedlock who was my age. My father had a son in his second marriage who is younger than my daughter. Jade's "Uncle Cameron" is two years her junior. And Jade is much older than her cousins, my sisters' kids. She's more like an aunt to them than a first cousin.

So the pattern continues. It must be our family's floral print. A generation out of sync with other limbs on the family tree.

And like my dad, who was 50 when Cameron was born, I'll be "old" when Jericho is hitting his stride as a teenager and young adult. With Jade, I was a cool mom, at least according to her friends. With Jericho, I'll be the age of some of his friends' grandparents.

That's a sobering thought. And it was sobering to think that, when Jade was born, my own mother was 47. At the time, not ready to be a grandmother, but she grew into the role. She's now a young 72, but it's scary to think that I'll be about her age when Jericho is Jade's age.

Time and age are relative. That's going to be my mantra.

Just like I had to pay extra attention to my health when pregnant with Jericho, due to my age and other health problems. I'll have to keep myself healthy so I can see this kid into adulthood and beyond.

Ignorance Is Bliss

When I gave birth to my daughter, Jade, in 1985, I was young and dumb. I wasn't dumb so much as clueless. My bible was Spiritual Midwifery, a great book in its way, but hardly a how-to of child rearing. But there's something to be said for a clean slate, or a blank mind not cluttered with unnecessary facts. I was a very confident mother.

Mind you, I spent most of my time breastfeeding. When people would wonder how many times per day my daughter fed, I would say, "Once." That would be once, from sun up til sun down, and also from sun down til sun up. No matter that there would be the occasional projectile vomiting episode. My baby was chubby, happy, and secure.

I never read any books on child raising or babies. I just went by instinct, and, for the most part, my instincts were pretty good. It didn't matter that when I was seven months pregnant, we lived in a cabin in the mountains of Northern California with a dry well -- so no plumbing or water. I would pee in a bucket in the middle of the night and walk down the mountain in 110-degree heat and dive into the irrigation ditch to cool off. Jade had about three onesies, a doll, and a crib. I washed her diapers at the laundry mat. We lived for a while in a homeless shelter when we first got to Oregon. I collected Welfare for the first year of her life. Yes, I doubted my ability to navigate relationships with men and to empower myself as a woman, but I never doubted myself as a mother. The proof was in my perfect, smiling little girl. She proved me right.

Flash forward a quarter century. Today, I am a confident professional. My clients trust me with their freedom. I am in a loving and happy marriage with a wonderful man. We live in a house with water and we are economically secure. But I am a bit of a basket case with this motherhood thing. Today, I spent an hour examining Jericho's dry scalp, wondering if I should take him to the doctor. Saturday, I freaked out at a party because his eye was goopy. I peruse random books on child rearing given to me by my husband's uncle Barry. I have boxes and boxes of baby clothes and every infant gadget, even a Beeba baby-food maker. Yet I still wander the house in a fog of sleep deprivation and self doubt.

Perhaps, it's because I hold myself to higher standards now that I feel so insecure. Or maybe the stakes are higher, because his birth was such a miracle. It all feels so ... precarious. Or maybe it's because I'm surrounded by so much more information now, from that dreaded Internet, and "helpful" hints, from friends and relatives. When I had Jade, I was the only one I knew with a kid. Now everyone I know is an expert with advice to dispense.

Knowledge is relative. With Jade, it was as if I was alone on a deserted island among the wild beasts. In that context, I excelled. Today, I am raising Jericho among a host of competitive high-intensity moms and former moms. In that context, I am mediocre. But the proof will be in the pudding. By any measure, Jericho will have a hard act to follow. But maybe he'll decide that it's not his job to validate me as a mom, which would probably be OK.

Hey You, Back Off of My Kid

One of the most annoying things about being pregnant is the inexplicable erasure of certain boundaries. I worked in the courts while pregnant and saw a lot of people everyday, especially during daily rides in a packed elevator to the 10th floor. If I had a nickel for every time someone -- a total stranger -- asked a personal question about my body, my due date, or my family history, I would have a nice nest egg for Jericho's college fund. At first I didn't mind it. Not from older ladies who were polite and certainly meant well. "When are you due?" they would ask. "Looks like you're carrying a boy. Your belly looks just like a football (or basketball)." That was fine, even kind of sweet. But after the 100th time, it got old.

And I never liked the men who would say things like, "Wow! Looks like you're ready to pop!" Or the lawyer who gave me a running history of his sex life with "pregnant women," namely his wife, due to the fact that they have 7 kids. Or the coworkers who would shout across the hall, "Oh my God!" and point to my belly as I got huge. Or posit, "You look really uncomfortable."

"Back the fuck off!" I wanted to say so many times, but didn't. Instead, I just smiled and attempted to extract myself from the scrutiny as quickly a possible. I guess because childbearing is such a powerful experience -- and one that so many people share -- the impulse to ask about it overcomes social barriers.

I had done the same with other pregnant women, in the past, saying something that I thought was interesting or original about her growing belly or my own experience being pregnant (the first time, back in the '80s). I now realize that any comment one can make is completely unoriginal, and that a pregnant woman has probably already heard versions of it 10 times that very day. I will keep my mouth shut in the future. Hear this loud and clear: The best gift you can give a pregnant woman is to say nothing about her belly. JUST IGNORE IT, and give the poor woman some peace.

Now that Jericho is out, I still get comments. But the social boundaries seem to be reestablishing themselves. "How old is your baby?" is the one most often heard. People also tend to ask, "Is it your first?"

I don't know why people ask this. They asked it when I was pregnant as well. Do I look like a first-time mother at 46? And this question always put me in a tizzy because I never know how to answer it.

Sometimes, I just say, "No, it's my second." That seems to satisfy them. But most times, I feel the need to add, in the interest of full disclosure, "No it's my second, but the first was a long time ago." Why do I need to say this? I don't know. I should just let it go. But I can't seem to.

Maybe I think I owe it to them. Maybe I have a deep-seated desire to be a carnival sideshow. I don't know. But once I disclose that I do have another child, but that child is now 24 and one-half years old, that usually stops the conversation.

Blog Worthy

I have mixed feelings about blogs. I read them, but, deep down, I have always found bloggers to be either pathetic or arrogant. You're pathetic if you spend hours and hours blogging about a TV show or celebrity culture. I mean, c'mon. Get a life. You're arrogant if you blog about yourself, or your obsessions. I mean, c'mon. Who really cares?

That's why I never thought of blogging before. Now, mind you, I read both of the above-types of blogs and often enjoy them and find them entertaining. I just couldn't see myself joining the blogosphere. Too much of a snob, I guess.

But now I feel I have an issue that jumps my own psychological hurdles or modesty/prudery or whatever you want to call it. I have been given the gift of living two lifetimes, as it were. I have two children -- only two -- spaced nearly a quarter-century apart. My daughter was born in 1985. 1985, when the first Back to the Future movie came out! 1985, when nobody had ever heard of Bill Clinton! 1985, a year that saw the first inklings of hair metal!


It was definitely another era.

So now, back in the second decade of the Aughts (a time only dimly conceived when my daughter was born -- remember the obsessive references to 1984 and Y2K as the century drew to a close?), as my daughter was approaching her 25th birthday, I found that I was pregnant (much to my surprise) at the age of 45. My husband and I were shocked. In March, I gave birth (without complications) to a bouncing baby boy named Jericho.

In the '80s, a time when I diapered my daughter using cloth diapers and DIAPER PINS, I essentially lived life off the grid as a single mom in the backwoods of Northern California and Oregon. Today, I am a married urban professional in a big city. I am a different person. I am living a different life. Are my children being raised by different people?

I feel the need to sort out these questions, which is why I have done the cliched 21st Century thing and started a blog. Few women get to (or would want to?) live this situation. Men do. But having the opportunity to raise children in essentially two different eras, without overlap, is both confusing and interesting.

I feel it is also blogworthy. I hope you do as well.