Tag: Motherhood

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Asher's Adventures Reflections

Pre-pregnancy jeans and newborn hats

Happy September! It’s been crickets around here lately, because Asher and I got to spend some time at a beach house down in Long Beach Island and I left my computer behind! Unfortunately Dave didn’t get to come with us, because he was home waving his fingers over his keyboard and making magic things happen. He tells me about his work all the time, and I still manage to have absolutely no idea what he does because it all just sounds like Swahili to me.

It was actually pretty cold while we were in LBI, hence the layers of fleece and wool in this photo:

“Mama, what exactly are we doing out here? It was warm inside, and there were snacks!”

And those layers are what I’d like to talk about today. First of all, you see that hat? There’s a story behind that hat. My wonderful and extremely talented friend April made it, in a class at The Blue Purl that she and I were supposed to take together…and which I, in my pregnancy-brain haze, COMPLETELY forgot about! She ended up texting me 15 minutes into the first class asking if I was coming, to which I was like, coming to what? So, because I was too spazzed out to even write down a multi-week class on my calendar, Asher got a hat–he’s lucky I have such good friends! It’s a gorgeous yarn (Madeline Tosh, I think!) that has lots of flecks of color in it, so it’s masculine without being just straight blue.

I knew it was going to be chilly when I was packing for our trip, so I decided to bring that hat along. It kept Asher’s little head warm throughout his first several months of life, when it was just so cold and damp all the time…he even wore it home from the hospital!

Stick a fork in me, I’m done.

And therein lies the problem. This gorgeous hat is newborn size. It was big on him for so long because he was born quite tiny, but I failed to account for how much his head has grown in the months since it got warm enough to ditch wearing a hat…and his head has grown a lot.

Yeah, we’re not getting another winter out of this one!

Sigh. I guess April will just have to make him a bigger one (wink wink)!

Speaking of things that are tighter than they once were…those are my pre-pregnancy jeans you see in that first photo. Now, I fit back into them by the time Asher was 3 weeks old, a meaningless feat that, at the time, felt like I had won an Olympic medal. However, they have since been put in Time Out for saying rude things about my body. I really don’t know how they managed to sneak into my bag, but in packing up the 7,364,129 things needed to take an 8-month old child away from home for more than 4 minutes, they got in when I wasn’t looking.

The jeans fit. They zip and button just fine, and I can even sit down in them…but they went in Time Out anyway, because they seem to feel that my body should still be shaped like it was before carrying and delivering a miracle, and insist on pinching and poking until they get their wish. If we can get up close and personal for a second here, I actually weigh less now than I did when I got pregnant…but the skin on my stomach is looser, my rib cage is wider, and I still have to get up almost every night no matter how much I dehydrate myself before bed.

Having a baby changed me, body and soul. Elizabeth Stone says that to have a child is to have your heart walk around outside your body, and she is spot-on–everything about me feels more vulnerable now, in part because I know there is so much I can’t protect Asher from, no matter how hard I try. But I also feel that my edges are softer than they used to be, that I am faster to empathize and to at least try to understand, because I’m practicing for the day that this tiny little person will need me to do both…probably in spades.

In many ways I’m still the person I was before Asher came rushing into the world; the basic shape remains the same. But the details are slightly different, and I see no point in trying to pretend otherwise, in trying to force myself into ways of being that don’t lay quite right anymore. So, my schedule looks different, my hair is longer so I can get it up and away from grabbing baby hands, my days are primarily spent pouring into my two guys instead of trying to save the world, and I don’t wear the pre-pregnancy jeans. In the future some, or even all, of these things will certainly change yet again, but this is where I am today…and honestly? I like the new jeans better anyway.

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Motherhood

Wendy Whale for President

Just to be clear, this is not about politics. It’s about the fact that Wendy Whale is probably responsible for my sanity still being relatively intact, and as such I am her biggest fan. She was made by Gund, she’s soft and squishy, and there are little blue ribbons sown to her spout to look like water. She has a swirly button on her tale, and when it’s pushed she plays soothing, oceanic music and moves through a series of gently pulsating lights. She is very calming, and she was the breakthrough with Asher’s daytime sleeping.

This picture wasn’t posed, I went in to check on him and found them like this.

Asher has slept through the night since he was a little less than 3 months old. The fact that he was on formula by then could definitely be a contributing factor, but he also seems to just be a naturally good sleeper…at night. But during the day, he was like a different person…a person who didn’t like sleeping.

At bedtime, we go through Asher’s little routine, and barring an unusual circumstance like a tooth poking through to make him grouchy, he goes down in his crib awake and promptly falls asleep. He sleeps all night, then he wakes up in the morning and starts chatting with himself until someone goes in to retrieve him. I was convinced he would have a terrible sleep regression at 4 or 5 months, because it just seemed too good to be true, but he never did. So far, so good.

This is not how it was during the day. Getting that child to nap while the sun was out was like herding cats. Actually no, worse than that, I’m surprisingly good at herding cats (I think it’s because I understand their nervous energy, but that’s a topic for another day). Asher has fought going to sleep for an hour and a half, only to wake up 45 minutes later in a bad mood because he’s still tired. Sigh. It didn’t matter how exhausted and in need of a nap he was, he didn’t want to sleep so he wasn’t gonna sleep.

I was honestly at my wit’s end about his napping strike, and it was especially confusing because he was such an angelic sleeper at night. A number of other moms dismissed my woe out of hand, saying that it didn’t matter if he refused to nap because he was always getting a good night’s sleep. I know they were just trying to put a positive spin on it (or, let’s be honest, they were jealous), but to be harsh for a second, they were wrong. It did matter that he wasn’t napping, because he was exhausted and unhappy all. damn. day. And with an exhausted and unhappy baby, I’ll give you one guess at MY emotional state!

Then one day my Mom came over to visit, and she brought this cute little Gund whale with her. She knew I would like it because I’m a sucker for aquatic creatures, and it was soft and cuddly so Asher was totally into it. I honestly can’t remember now if it was her idea or mine, but the next day I tried putting Wendy Whale in Asher’s crib with him during naptime. This wasn’t an instantaneous miracle cure, and he didn’t become a good napper on the spot; but let me tell you, my child no longer tantrums for an hour and a half before going to sleep.

When it’s time for a nap, Asher drinks his bottle, cuddles with me for a few minutes, then I put him down in his crib and turn on Wendy Whale…and he falls asleep. Every so often Wendy Whale’s timer will end before he’s completely out, a situation I am promptly alerted to by his indignant hollering. And on more than one occasion I’ve gone in to check on him because he’s slept for so long, only to find him wide awake and playing with Wendy Whale, totally content.

Wendy Whale’s official headshot!

I don’t know if it’s the lights, the music, the shape, the color, the ribbon spout, but something about that little stuffed whale makes my nap-resistant son think, “huh, I bet falling asleep right now would be super pleasant and refreshing”. And I know it’s not just a coincidence, because I’ve tried putting him down without Wendy Whale, only to swiftly recant on my foolish decision and return her to her rightful place (indignant hollering is very effective on me!).

So, sometimes help comes from an unlikely source. After trying absolutely everything to get Asher to nap, the breakthrough was good old Wendy Whale. The two of them are happily snoozing away as I write this. I don’t know why it works, I’m just glad it does!

Have you ever gotten help where you weren’t even looking to find it? Was it as surprising as a singing whale?

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Reflections

How a spoon works

“But he definitely understands how a spoon works?”

Asher didn’t have his 6 month appointment until he was a few days shy of being 7 months, because that was the soonest we could get in to see the pediatrician a neighbor had glowingly recommended after Dr. Lon passed away. Now, this wasn’t a problem, but the thing about people who are that young is that a month can make a world of difference developmentally. So, while he hadn’t officially turned 7 months yet, Asher was sort of looking like a super-baby by the 6 month old standards. He had 4 teeth already, he was not only sitting up well but was actually standing on my lap while the doctor took his medical history, and as she judiciously put it, he was very aware of his surroundings–enough to cause way more drama than was actually warranted by the situation, i.e. screaming like a banshee when the stethoscope came near him.

But the thing he wasn’t advanced on was his diet, specifically how many solid foods he had eaten. By the time of the 6 month appointment I had scheduled with Dr. Lon, Asher had tried all the solid foods Dr. Lon recommended by that age–cereals and pureed fruits and vegetables. I had anticipated discussing the next dietary steps at that 6 month visit…

And then I called his office to confirm the time of Asher’s appointment the following day, and the voicemail informed me they were “closed due to the passing of Dr. Lon”. In addition to some other very serious concerns (like the fact that there was initially no covering physician for Dr. Lon’s patients, and I had no access to medical records if an emergency happened), I also had no idea what to do with Asher’s diet. Yeah, feeding a baby isn’t rocket science, but we couldn’t see the new pediatrician for 3 weeks, and I had no one to call in the mean time if he developed a rash or his breathing got weird. With no safety net, I was just too scared to give him any new foods.

Cue the 6 month appointment that happened at nearly 7 months. I could tell the pediatrician was a little surprised that Asher was only eating solid foods once a day, and only from a very small pool of options, but once I explained why I hadn’t advanced him she was totally sympathetic. She immediately gave me carte blanche to feed him anything except honey, as long as he could manage the texture and consistency. And then, she threw me the “softball” question:

“But he definitely understands how a spoon works?”

Asher Chewing On A Spoon

“Don’t worry Mama, I’ll take it from here!”

See what she did there? Obviously he understood how a spoon worked, I had just listed all the things he’d eaten off of one! She wasn’t actually asking me that question, she was affirming how far we’d come from the days when he didn’t know what a spoon was for. Rather than making me feel bad about his lack of culinary variety, she chose to focus instead on what I had already done right.

Oh, how I wish I could learn to talk to myself like that doctor talked to me! I will discount an entire day of good mothering because Asher pitched a fit in his car seat and I couldn’t calm him down while driving. I’ll beat myself up for not immediately realizing that he’s crying from hunger, not tiredness, at what would normally be naptime. I feel awful when I lift him out of his stroller and his back is sweaty, even if he’s been serene and happy the whole time he was in there. And yes, I went into that 6 month appointment embarrassed that he hadn’t tried more foods.

I am so much harder on myself than I would ever think to be on anyone else. Heck, I’m too hard on myself about being too hard on myself! There will always be things to improve on in my mothering, my marriage, my homemaking, my professional development, really any task or relationship I can think of. But if I could learn to pause for half a second and give myself credit for what I’ve already gotten right, I bet I’d be a lot happier and calmer about how far I still have to go.

So, my baby knows how a spoon works. That seems like as good a place to start as any in recognizing what’s going well, what I’m already good at. My baby knows how a spoon works, he knows he is cared for, he knows he is safe, he knows he is loved. I’m not a perfect mother, but I am a good one.

What about you? Are you too hard on yourself sometimes, like me? If so, what are you already doing right? I bet it’s a lot!

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Reflections

Ode to a stretch mark

I was surprised you came alone, because I always assumed your sort traveled in packs.

But no, you had the strength of character to forge your way all by yourself.

In fact, I didn’t even know about you until the baby had been born for two weeks.

You were stealthy, stowing away on the underside of my belly where I couldn’t see you until I was the only one living inside my body again.

Did I scare away all of your friends with the slightly obsessive cocoa butter applications? The ones I would get out of bed to perform if I had forgotten, ignoring the protests of my husband that, “it will be fine if you skip it this one time”?

If so, this behavior of mine would definitely fall into the “sorry, not sorry” category, although I do feel bad for dooming you to a life of solitude.

Not too bad, but still.

I have to say though, at the end of the day I’m glad you decided to appear.

Of course, I liked the idea of making it through an entire pregnancy without any of your kind popping up, but that’s all just vanity–a point of pride that would only be meaningful to me.

But seeing you causes me to pause a moment and remember the flutters, hiccups and kicks. The rolling waves of my belly when the baby wanted a different pose. The way everything about my body changed to accommodate this new life. The way I longed to meet the stubborn little person who was simply convinced he could kick his way out into the world through my liver.

You are a tangible reminder of just how lucky I am to have carried and delivered a healthy baby.

You’re not the prettiest thing I ever saw, little stretch mark, but you remind me that I got to take part in a miracle.

And for that, I am grateful.

For you, I am grateful.

Just don’t invite any of your cousins over if we have another baby, okay?

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Reflections

Don’t sleep when the baby sleeps (and other heretical advice for new moms)

Look, I know she meant well, but the wrath I felt towards the first person who cheerfully told me to “sleep when the baby sleeps!” while I was battling a terrible case of postpartum depression and had a baby with reflux, was truly a thing of awe. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve definitely been that angry before, but usually over something that was actually meant to incite anger–not over some innocuous, if entirely unhelpful and ridiculous, platitude.

One of the potential symptoms of postpartum depression is an inability to sleep, and talk about adding insult to injury. It took many prayers, a very specific pillow setup, just the right amount of light, Dave reading to me from a particular kind of book, lavender essential oil and the blood of a virgin to get me to sleep at night. Jay-kay on the virgin blood part, but dang, I got desperate enough a few times that if it would have helped… ANYway, sleeping during the day was simply out of the question, because I physically could not do it. So being blithely told to “sleep when the baby sleeps” was a slap in the face, not only because it was dangling a carrot of something I absolutely could not have, but it made me feel like I wasn’t “doing it right” as a new mom.

So, here are my pieces of borderline heretical advice for new moms, because I really could have used some of that in the beginning!

Don’t sleep when the baby sleeps unless falling asleep is what you want to do and actually can do. If you can’t sleep, have a nice warm cup of something soothing, put your feet up, and enjoy a few moments of relaxation–don’t make yourself miserable trying to sleep if that’s not a reasonable expectation for you. Just take care of yourself however you need to be cared for at that moment.

(That’s not a trick of the light, I really had circles under my eyes so dark they looked like bruises. And awwww, newborn Asher!)

Keep your kitchen clean if that will make you feel more sane. Newborns truly are precious and miraculous and stay that small for a blink of an eye; however, it is NOT a crime to take 5 or 10 minutes to tidy things up if you want to. My baby came almost 3 weeks early when my OB had told me he’d be at least a week late, so absolutely NOTHING in our home was ready for his arrival. We’d installed the car seat, but that was only because I wanted the big box out of our cramped apartment! I was in a haze of shock and bewilderment for quite some time after Asher was born, and felt like I’d completely lost control of my life–except when I did the dishes. Washing dishes gave me a well-defined task, required only skills I was already adept at, and had a definitive end point. Nothing about mothering a newborn who couldn’t nurse and who arrived a month earlier than he was expected gave me any of those things, so the idea of ignoring the small stuff like dishes actually made me feel worse, not better.

If your child is an unlikable wretch in the evenings, it is not your fault. Asher did the very classic “witching hour” from about 5 weeks til 10 weeks–I called it “staging a coup”. He would cry relentlessly from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. every. single. night. We could have set our watches by it. We tried ev-er-y-thing to calm him, and actually only discovered the thing that worked best by accident–we made a pillow fort around him on the bed and then just sat by him while he kicked his legs and flailed his arms to his heart’s content. I still suspect that we may have been winding him up more with all of our efforts at soothing. Insert eye roll here. But anyway, when I went looking for advice about this, I kept finding articles that told me it was MY fault that he was so miserable, I clearly wasn’t giving him a good day since he was so unhappy at night, I was feeding him wrong, I was blah blah blah. It was total B.S., but I was exhausted and desperate enough to believe it. IT WASN’T TRUE. If your baby is throwing a fit every night, check with your pediatrician to see if she has anything to say about it, and then hunker down and do whatever it takes to get through it–drive around the neighborhood, put baby in a wrap and walk the halls, give her a warm bath, cry along with her, but do NOT believe that you are causing this problem. It is, unfortunately, just a thing that some babies do. And then someday, when they’re good and ready, they stop doing it. Sigh. Which leads me to my next point…

For the love, don’t Google everything! Or at least only click on the pages that look like respectable sources of information. If you want to know if something is normal, ask an actual person you trust, like your pediatrician, a friend with young children, or even email the author of a mommy blog (and I’m not just being cute there, I actually wised up and started reaching out to a couple mommy bloggers who seemed like women I’d be friends with in real life, and got some super encouraging responses for my trouble!).

And, perhaps most importantly, you don’t have to love every minute of new motherhood to love your child unconditionally and be a really good mother. I am so thankful that I was lucky enough to carry my own baby, so I love having been pregnant, but I honestly didn’t love being pregnant. In the same way, Asher’s newborn days were some of the most precious of my life, and I coo over my photos of him at that age all the time; but, they were also some of the hardest and scariest days of my life. I often got down on myself for not “loving every minute”, and I so wish I hadn’t. I love that I got to have a newborn, but I didn’t always love having a newborn–and that’s okay. Not every season can be your favorite, and there is nothing wrong with you if you don’t adore this particular one. Just take lots of photos to drool over when he or she is older, because that really is fun!

I’m not far down the road of motherhood at all, and I still have more to learn than I could dream of right now, but I have learned these things so far. If you are a new mom and need someone to just listen and say, “yeah, me too”, please send me a message or write a comment. You don’t have to go it alone, your motherhood is precious, and you are the mother your child needs.

Now go take a nap…or don’t!

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Reflections

How do you get through the day?

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?

Categories
Reflections

A eulogy for a pediatrician

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.

I just wish I could thank him one more time.

Categories
Reflections

One stitch at a time

“Look, I’m almost done!” I proclaimed proudly as I held up my nearly complete lace cardigan. Just 3 more rows of 1×1 ribbing on the hem, and I could cast off and wear my lovely mint green creation. After weaving in the ends. And blocking it overnight. Even when you’re done knitting, you’re still not actually done.

“Wow, how long has that taken?” my Dad asked.

“About two months.”

“Wow,” he said again, “you’re really patient”.

Now, this struck me as funny, because in my mind completing an entire lace cardigan in two months had been remarkably fast. In fact, a few days later I texted a picture of myself wearing it to the knitting buddy who had been with me when I purchased the yarn, and her response was, “damn you’re amazing”. But when I thought about it a bit more, I realized the absurdity of considering something that took 2 months to achieve anything other than glacially slow. It’s 2017 after all; if it’s coming from the right warehouse, I could buy a mint green lace cardigan on Amazon right now and have it in hand before bedtime tonight.

But I didn’t set out to knit my cardigan because it was the most efficient way to obtain an article of clothing. I did it because I love to knit, the pattern looked challenging and fun (Hitofude by Hiroko Fukatsu), and the yarn was scrumptious (Madeline Tosh Twist Light in Havana).

(This was my triumphant announcement photo sent to my knitting buddy)

And as I thought about it, I realized how much knitting and motherhood are exactly alike. Neither knitting nor motherhood is a terribly efficient endeavor; ask any woman who has carried a child, and she will tell you about how relative time is, and that it slows all the way down in the last month of pregnancy. Adoption can be an even longer and more assiduous journey. If all you wanted was a cute little creature to love and raise, a puppy is a much faster solution that will have absolutely zero impact on how your favorite jeans fit. And as we’ve already established, two months is considered “quick” for knitting a cardigan that could have been bought in two minutes.

By both knitting and mothering, one is often tossed from a high of “this is the best and most beautiful thing I’ve ever done in my life!” to a low of “what was I smoking when I thought I was capable of pulling this off?” in approximately 7.4 seconds.

As both a knitter and a mother, people will sometimes peer at you suspiciously as you say, “I really do love this” while tears ruin your mascara.

In knitting and mothering, you have no choice but to faithfully do the same thing over and over and over again, day in and day out, and trust the designer that you’ll eventually end up with the finished product you dreamed of when you first thought, “what if…?”.

So, I knit and I mother, one stitch at a time. I am an expert at neither, but if I am anything, it’s a try-er! Knit Up A Child is about my life doing both. I’d love for you to join me!