I’ve decided it might be fun to do a Sunday Stitch Count post each week to keep track of my progress with various knitting projects–and hopefully keep me honest about starting too many without finishing the ones that came before! Ravelry has such features, of course, but much to the astonishment of every knitter who’s ever asked, I am either unable or unwilling to learn them. Full disclosure, the only reason this blog is evenly remotely usable is because I’m married to a very patient and helpful IT guy (thanks, Love!).
So anyway, here’s a look at what I’m currently knitting!
The yarn is Avalon by Cascade Yarns in Sandshell. And yes, I am currently on Row 1 and have been on Row 1 since Tuesday, but in my defense this is the second of two panels, so it’s not quite as pitiful a start as it looks!
The yarn is Sarasota by Cascade Yarns again, in blue, green and gray (thank you Captain Obvious!). But I seriously can’t find color names anywhere on the label, so I’m assuming there aren’t names…in which case I really think I should offer up my color naming services, don’t you? And since this little number is being knit in the round, it is absolutely refusing to photograph properly…but it really does look promising!
And a completely unrelated but totally adorable picture of Asher to round things out:
Look how long those legs are! He’s already 9 inches taller than when he was born!
Through my circle of “mom friends”, I recently met a lovely woman who is expecting her first child this fall. We hit it off right away and had a lot in common, so I invited her to go paint some pottery together a few weeks ago (side note: how is it that I can tackle just about any knitting pattern I want badly enough, and yet I barely made it through writing the words “Father’s Day 2017” on a mug with my sanity intact?).
(Asher decided the mug should really be his, since it has his footprints on it.)
As we were painting, my friend asked oh-so earnestly, “I’ve always wondered, what do stay at home moms do during the day?” Now, that could definitely be a loaded question, but in this context it wasn’t, so I tried to give her thoughtful and honest answers.
I told her about how much time it takes to feed Asher every day (he’s never been a very motivated eater, a trait he definitely didn’t inherit from me!); about how I read him both picture and chapter books each day; about singing and dancing along to my Baby Einstein station on Pandora; about watching Sesame Street together; about how he usually prefers to nap in my arms; about how any errand I need to run now takes about 3 times longer than it used to. It’s truly not a stretch to say that knitting is an analogy for motherhood–I do the same few things a whole bunch of times every single day.
Which is why I think that “how do you get through the day?” is a more interesting question than “what do you do all day?” to ask a stay at home mom (or anyone else, but I’m trying to stay relatively on topic for now!). The answers to the first question probably say a lot more about who a mother is than the answers to the second–after all, every child needs nurturing, so it’s not terribly enlightening to hear that a woman feeds and entertains her little ones. The first question, however, gets to the heart of the matter–it can be extraordinarily lonely to operate outside the workforce, and if the weight of that loneliness is not managed it will ruthlessly crush a soul.
These are a few of the ways I get through the day being home with a baby:
Audiobooks. Honest to goodness, I don’t know what I would do without the Audible app on my phone–I have a book playing for at least a few hours every day. I try so hard to continually talk to Asher, and I read scads of books to him (I just looked and I have 25 books checked out of the library, zero of which are not from the children’s section!). But it is so. dang. hard. to carry on a one-sided conversation all day, and even with a stack of books I eventually just run out of things to say! Audiobooks help so much with the *cricket*cricket*cricket* feeling I get when I’ve run out of words. Plus, I love that Asher gets to hear a wider range of voices and accents than I could otherwise expose him to, so it’s like a two-for-one bargain!
Knitting. That’s a super shocker there, huh? But seriously, knitting helps keep me tethered to my identity as someone other than just “Asher’s Mom”. In the tough moments of mothering (like teething, *shiver*), I can slip into a misery loop of “the only thing I will ever do for the rest of my life is try to comfort a crying child and my child is still crying so I’m not even good at the one thing I can still do”. It can be a bit ugly, to be honest. Knitting is tangible proof that I’m still in there somewhere, that I can still do things and do them well.
(“Mama, this tastes like sheep!”)
The New Yorker. This is another identity thing, because I’ve enjoyed this publication for years now. I honestly skip most of the articles about politics these days, so sometimes I’m only left with a handful of the columns each week; but even then, learning about things that are happening in the world makes my soul feel fizzy.
The local farmer’s market. This only happens once a week, but I really look forward to it! It’s so fun to listen to the live music, smell all the yummy things for sale, chat to other moms with strollers, and stock up on things like marinated mushrooms and homemade biscotti. And it’s probably made more precious by only occurring once a week!
Coffee. Trader Joe’s organic, fair trade kind. Need I say more?
So now, let me ask you–what do your days look like, and how do you get through them?
Now hold on just one second–this blog is supposed to be about motherhood and knitting, so why exactly are we busting out funeral words on post two?
As I’ve thought through the stories I want to tell about life with my favorite tiny human, I realized how many of them are either related to, or informed by, the passing away of the wonderful pediatrician that Asher went to for the first 4.5 months of his life. So, before we go any further I’d like to take a moment to tell the world about the man who cared for so many young lives and who honestly, truly, in the marrow of my bones, made me believe I was a good mother, when I was absolutely convinced otherwise.
Dr. Richard Lon lived from 1956 until his sudden passing on May 24th, 2017. He was only 60 years old when he died. His family has chosen not to disclose his cause of death, so I, along with scores of other parents and patients old enough to understand, can simply hope and pray that he died at peace, knowing how much we adored him.
Because we did. If you look him up online, you’ll immediately find the heartbroken outpouring of love, respect and appreciation for this man. He wasn’t warm and fuzzy, but he was kind, he was patient, he was humble, he was caring, he was open, he was good. Pediatricians are some of the lowest paid physicians out there, and yet Dr. Lon invested himself in his patients and their parents, and he made himself available quite literally 24/7/365.
I once called Dr. Lon at 10 p.m. on a Saturday, and as a nurse who has been fire blasted by a doctor for calling about his patient at the “ungodly” (his word, I’m not making this up) hour of 7:30 a.m. on a weekday, I was bracing myself for a torrent of abuse. I never got it. He gave me advice for the immediate problem, and told me to call him the next morning with an update. In the morning we talked three separate times, sorting out a prescription, dosage and plan of action if that prescription didn’t help the problem. On a Sunday.
I cannot stress this enough: I do NOT trust doctors. Not in the more common “they’re not out for my best interest” way, but in the pernicious “they’re not good people and I’d like to run the other direction” way. I come by this honestly (one can only be called names, hung up on and shouted at by physicians so many times before concluding that they are not a nice sort), but I’m at least self aware enough to try and consciously overcome it. I’m getting there–I like my OB just fine, the hematologist I was sent to at 7 weeks pregnant was very nice, my husband’s psychiatrist seems genuinely invested in his well being; but the moment I met Dr. Lon I knew Asher was safe with him, and by extension I was safe, too.
The real crux of the matter, though, came at Asher’s 1 month appointment. Asher was born “late pre-term”, meaning he was almost done cooking but not quite (that’s another story for another post!). As a result, he was sent to the NICU for about 12 hours, and while he was there he was bottle fed–there was no other choice but a tube down his throat. Three lactation consultants later, my child was deemed too small, too weak and too unmotivated to breastfeed. Now, breastfeeding was the ONE thing about motherhood that I was holding to with an iron grip. The rest could come and go, but my baby would be breastfed, come hell or high water–I didn’t care how much it hurt, how many times I cried, how much sleep I lost, this was non-negotiable for me…because I didn’t know that breastfeeding doesn’t only “fail” because Mama can’t do it, it can “fail” because Baby can’t, too.
So I pumped, and pumped, and pumped. I pumped breastmilk that Asher got from a bottle, and my heart broke a little more every time I pumped, because it meant I wasn’t nursing and was getting that much further away from my vision of what being a “good mother” was.
And then, with a three and a half week old baby, my milk dried up.
I know some women who have been able to fool their bodies for nearly a year, and have given their babies breastmilk almost exclusively in spite of an inability to nurse. My body wasn’t buying it. There was no baby connected to this setup, so why put the effort in to producing sustenance?
So by the time of Asher’s one month appointment, he was drinking Similac full time. When Dr. Lon asked me how breastfeeding was going (he had recommended the third and final lactation consultant at our newborn visit), I had tears in my eyes and I honestly felt like I was confessing a crime when I told him that Asher was on formula. I had failed as a mother, my body had failed, and my baby was going to suffer the life-long consequences of that failure.
And do you know what that good, kind doctor said to me?
“Your baby is thriving. He’s gaining weight, and he’s healthy. You’ve done exactly the right thing. He’s not going to be any less smart, any more allergic, any more obese, any less healthy, because you gave him what you could and now you’re making sure he’s getting everything he can get. You are a good mother.”
If that sounds too good to have really happened, you can ask my Mom–she was there, and we both could have kissed him.
Other people in my life (i.e., my husband, my mother, my father, my sister, dear and trusted friends) had told me the exact same thing that Dr. Lon did that day; but they loved me and were obligated me make me feel better (right?). He was in the unique position, as a relatively unknown but trusted entity, to say the right words at the right moment that released me from my shame, my guilt, and my conviction that I had failed. He believed I was a good mother, and because he believed, I could, too.
(Dr. Richard Lon’s Facebook profile photo)
I wept for a full week when I found out about Dr. Lon’s passing. I still get teary when I think about it (like in writing this post). We are now with another pediatrician, and she is fun and spunky and lovely and informative and everything I could ask for; but she’s not Dr. Lon. No one ever will be, of course, but as much as I’ve grieved his loss, I am so thankful that we had those few short months with him to know what it feels like to immediately trust a doctor, to learn from him, and to be the recipient of a truth only he could give–I am a good mother, even when life looks different than I’d planned.
