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A Mother’s Prayer: stop hurling hashtags and hate and understand that Humanity Matters

I penned this one year ago today, and I am sad to say that the racial strife and violence has not gotten any better. This is still one of my most fervent prayers. I wish we would all see each other’s humanity — not skin and uniform color. The shooting of the San Antonio police officer Miguel Moreno earlier this month and the recent jury acquittal in the Philando Castille murder trial are two recent examples of how we are still so divided. I believe in the power of love and empathy. Humanity Matters.

July 8, 2016 “A Mother’s Prayer”

How do I possibly write warm twin mommy morsels when my heart is so very bruised and battered this morning? How do I dare think of my boys and their future when I see how horribly dark and diseased our world appears to be at the moment.

I write about my boys often, but you all know that I am also the mother of two amazing twenty-something daughters. Being the mother of girls is a worrisome thing. I stress about the intentions of others toward them each and every day. They are beautiful and they are strong and they are passionate, but there are predators out there — predators who are attracted to their strength and beauty and passion because they want to own it, control it, damage it. All girl parents know this fear. Are they home safe? Are they making wise choices? Are they being cautious or are they being carefree while out in this world of breathtaking beauty and breath-taking destruction?

Worry for a mother of any child, male or female, is a very real thing. We all know the saying about having a child—about making the momentous decision to have your heart forever walk around outside your body (Elizabeth Stone). But these last few days, in the horrific aftermath of all of the violence being reported, I have tried to put myself in the place of terrified black mothers everywhere and I have tried to put myself in the place of terrified cop mothers everywhere.

I am not the mother of young, black sons. I know fear, but I don’t know that I can truly understand THAT fear. My child doesn’t venture out into the world every single day and willingly walk into a world that so often despises them for the color of their skin and the youth in their years. I have never had to worry about that fear with my daughters. Or the fear that some people will judge my child as a threat because she’s wearing a hoodie. Or that someone will twitch and shy away from her as she walks down the sidewalk. Or that someone will assume she is a troublemaker because she has a concealed carry license. Or that someone will assume bad things about her because she wears a baseball cap and carries a bat. All mothers have fears, and many of those fears are the same, and some of those fears are unfair and unimaginable and almost impossible to breathe through.

I also am not the mother of police officers. I know fear, but I don’t know that I can truly understand THAT fear, either. My child doesn’t suit up at the oh-dark-forty hours of the morning and willingly walk into a world that so often despises them for the color of their uniform and the symbol of their authority. I have never had to worry about that fear with my daughters. Or the fear that some people will judge my child as a threat because she’s wearing a badge. Or that someone will twitch and shy away from her as she drives down a side road. Or that someone will assume she is a troublemaker because she has a state-issued firearm. Or that someone will assume bad things about her because she wears an officer’s cap and carries a nightstick. All mothers have fears, and some of those fears are the same, and many of those fears are unfair and unimaginable and almost impossible to breathe through.

I am not the mother of black sons and I am not the mother of police officers. But I am a mother. I know and understand what it feels like for your heart to walk around outside your body. I know and understand THAT worry and THAT fear. As mothers, we all want the same thing: peace and respect, love and goodwill toward our babies. How can we protect all of these mothers’ hearts making their way through the world as it spins on its insane axis? I’ve taught thousands of mother’s babies in my career. I teach the children of afraid, black mothers. I teach the children of nervous, targeted officers. I see and hear these concerns every year, hell, every day. I see and feel these pains every day.

#BlackLivesMatter #BlueLivesMatter. All of this hurling of hashtags (which I’ve done, quite recently too) seems to only exacerbate the violence. Black and Blue. The colors of bruising. And we’re bruising one another. Even worse, we’re killing one another. And I don’t even like #allLivesMatter because it has become a band aid to slap over an open wound. It is causing even further divides. Love one another. Respect one another. #HumanityMatters.

There are bad guys on both sides. And there are good guys on both sides. And the good guys outnumber the bad in every direction. So what can we do so that all the good guys win? God I wish I knew. But I do know it has to begin with empathy. Empathy: putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes as best we can. Listening to their stories. Hearing their feelings. Understanding their needs. Acknowledging their fears. Respecting their lives.

Our fears are all different, and our fears are all the same. It’s Einstein’s theory of relativity. And the physics doesn’t stop there. Newton’s third law comes into play, too: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. And right now, the action has been violence. And the violence begets violence. The injustice begets injustice.

We need a sea change – in other words, a major transformation. And without empathy we’ll never get there. It takes one empathetic soul at a time to bring about change. And one feels like such a drop in the ocean. But with every drop, with every person who tries to understand, to put themselves in the “other’s” position, the tides can change.

Now I know that practically no one ever changes his or her mind through political FaceBook posts. I know people like their opinions (and only THEIR opinions) in sound bites – and this has been far longer than a sound bite — but I’m hoping someone out there has heard. One soul. Because first one and then one and then one and then one… and suddenly empathy has met Newton’s third law, and we have a Sea Change. Or should I say, we See Change. God knows we need it.

This is my Mother’s Prayer.

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July 8, 2016 0

Nitwits! Boppies! Ointment! Tweak!

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Breastfeeding. Just typing the word makes me feel all warm and cozy and capable. To have my arms cradling a sweet little one while it draws milk from my body, to feel the letdown – which is such a crazy term because it is NOT a letdown at all – is quite simply the greatest maternal high in the world. I can’t even put into words the feelings the word evokes. God gifted me with two mammarian green thumbs, and I have been fortunate enough to use them for not one, not two, but FOUR little ones.

So today, I devote my musings to the nursing of twins. Some people will tell you it is impossible. Still others, when they learn you’re doing it, will tell you you’re crazy, or heroic, or unbelievable. I’m here to tell you that you are none of those things. You’re just doing what you’re doing for the good of your tiny twosome. And I’m also here to tell you it can be done. Don’t listen to the naysayers. DO listen to the cheerleaders. Gobble up the kudos and the accolades – to carry you through the tough times — because there are plenty of those. But keep on giving it a go. It is so, SO worth it.

Now nursing twins is a bit more of a challenge, it’s true. I thought I used lanolin cream on my nipples for just one!!! I should’ve bought stock in the stuff. (And I highly recommend roughing those milk makers up early – wet washcloths and heavy tweaking as early as you can. You are in TRAINING mama!) Which brings me to the football hold that you’ll need to master if you feed them at the same time, which I highly recommend — otherwise, you are a 24-hour diner for cranky customers with the mega-munchies. (As it is, it’s STILL feels like that sometimes…) For tandem feedings, clutch those little suckers (see what I did there?) so that their noses face your underarms, their legs wrap ‘round your back. The football hold felt odd at first. I was used to babies being able to stare up at me with their sweet little milk-glazed eyes while they nursed. With the boys, I could still see their tiny faces – just not as easily – and I often had to be content with rubbing their fuzzy bird-heads instead. But what better way for a football coach’s wife to feed her mini linebackers?

Just like in football — where pads are a prerequisite — nursing twins requires additional gear: an ample, sturdy pad called a twin boppy. Now there was no such thing as boppies when the girls were babies, and I had absolutely no idea what one even WAS going into my final pregnancy. (I still don’t know why it’s called a boppy — it sounds violent and Flintstonian to me, like something Bam Bam would carry around) But I do know I couldn’t have nursed my boys without it. It saved my back, shoulders and neck from traditional football mayhem. A twin boppy is truly not like the other, singleton varieties. It is firm, flat-surfaced and fits squarely around you, latching at the side to provide the babies their own solid latching surface. We got ours from Baby’s R Us, and while it didn’t have all the latest giraffe or chevron patterns or come in poetic colors like teaberry or silver mist or pink pebble (‘twas a plain pale green), the functionality is what matters most.

Deciding to nurse and finding the right boppy is the easy part. But I’m also here to tell you the dirty truth. (And there are lots of dirty little truths to reveal.) It’s not all soft lighting and rocking chair dreams. There’s a whole lot of shit-storms (breastfed babies have WAY MORE dirty diapers than formula fed ones – and they are mustard yellow and climb up baby backs like alien life-forms almost every single day), spilled milk to cry over (that old adage is bullshit) and clogged ducts (I sported a clogged duct that turned my right breast into a cauliflower wedge for days. I packed cabbage leaves in my bra, expressed milk in a hot shower, and even nursed the boys upside down — nothing worked until, miraculously on the morning of the third day, I rose and it had vanished. I had harrowed hell), and don’t EVEN get me started on going without caffeine and hard liquor for nearly two years…

No, nursing twins is not easy. Now with the girls, nursing was fairly trouble free (self-imposed prohibition, aside). My milk supply was abundant — to quote my grandma, “I could’ve squirted a stream clear across the room and blinded a man.” When letdown hit, I would darn near choke the girls. They would sputter and mew amidst a milk facial nearly every morning. And I never, ever had to use a supplement. The boys were another story, though. Getting enough milk to feed them wasn’t the problem — but getting enough milk for storage through pumping was another story entirely. Nursing one, you can hook up the other udder to the pump and BOOM, you’ve got six to eight ounces. Not so, when there are two. For a while I tried pumping after the boys were finished nursing, but I just wasn’t getting enough to sustain them for very long once I went back to work. So I began reserving one feeding session a day for formula so I could pump and store. Besides, because the boys were in the NICU for about a week, we were required to give them supplemental formula in the beginning to insure they were getting a certain amount of food in their tiny little systems. So we chose the bedtime feeding, and Mike or my mom or visiting sister or kind-hearted friend (or any other kind, charitable soul who took pity on us in those early days) scored the sweet pleasure of feeding them and tucking them tight into their swaddles, truly one of the most magical of moments.

10301495_10203583767627316_7331122009769522744_n Now part of what makes breastfeeding so wonderful is the convenience, along with cost-efficiency. Heating bottles of formula is hard enough when you have one wee bairn, but it is downright torturous when you have two, colicky, howling lads on your hands. And buying double the amount of formula can put a family living on teacher salaries in the poorhouse. Thankfully, we didn’t have to supplement with a lot. Still, it was enough that when Mike and I discovered the Baby Brezza within that first month, we were more than over-the-moon happy; we were game-winning-Hail-Mary-touchdown happy. Simply put, the Baby Brezza is like a baby Keurig machine that mixes the formula with water and fills the bottle to the appropriate amount at the perfect temperature in seconds. It is a mechanical wonder cow worth every single, solitary, exorbitant cent. (It ain’t cheap, let me tell you. Put it on your shower registry. Like now.)

Oh, and since breastfed babes are far less likely to sleep through the night (breast milk breaks down in their systems faster and they get hungrier sooner), we strategically chose bedtime for formula time. We were playing our odds, hoping for a few more precious minutes of shut-eye. Unfortunately, I think the boys saw our hope and raised it, then watched it come crashing down like a house of cards as they jumped up and down on it for good measure — to the tune of sixteen months of sleepless nights. Now sixteen months with no sleep sounds bad enough, but quantify by stating that sometimes they were up seven times a night (times two, mind you), with us only getting fifteen to twenty minute snatches of sleep at a time, which all equates to Mike and I being up twelve to fourteen times a night for months and months and months… the whole is far greater than the sum of the parts. And by greater, I mean mammoth and brutal. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Now I’m not saying that they would’ve slept better on formula. I have no idea. I will say that nursing them when they woke up that many times a night was by far so much easier and less time consuming than preparing a blasted bottle every single time. I am saying that. Absolutely. So that’s something…

But perhaps the biggest of hurdles we ran into while breastfeeding twins had to do with Parker’s milk protein allergy. Poor little Bear just couldn’t process dairy. It caused him horrible belly cramps and constipation. Before we figured out what was wrong, there were long and torturous nights when we thought for sure that our baby had a kink in his colon or a hole in his intestines, he was so inconsolable and so contorted. Once we discovered the truth, we could only use Nutramigen formula as a supplement– which costs even more than traditional formulas – and I could no longer have any dairy at all. Now that might sound innocuous, but let me tell you, it was pure devilry, the things I had to give up. (I had thought coffee and vodka were tough!) Not only was milk now off limits, but all kinds of favorite foods: blue cheese, Greek yogurt, vanilla milkshakes, classic pepperoni pizza, mozzarella-slathered lasagna, cookies chock full of chips, carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, fresh-baked banana bread… Lets’ face it, the baked goods hit me the hardest. Cheesy foods were difficult, mind you, but my sweet tooth is legendary. It’s insatiable. I bake – I learned early so I could soothe the savage bicuspid. I have a red velvet brownie recipe that could achieve world peace. I make chocolate chip scones that could bring the Brits back to their sensibilities and reverse the Brexit vote. I thought I was a goner when I learned I had to give up my sweets. The only thing that got me through that dietary drought is Oreos. Oreos! Milk’s best friend! (oh, isn’t it ironic???) Oreos are dairy free — completely and utterly. They are also my choke collar for a savage sweet tooth that hates to be denied (because me and a hangry sweet tooth are truly a force to be reckoned with).

11229825_10206173595651398_2595925631929835405_n So what makes nursing twins worth it, particularly in the wake of food allergies and strict dietary restrictions, football holds and sleepless nights? What makes having the equivalent of four little parasites hanging off my teats (as my physicist/farmer father would say) for the cumulative sum of four years worth it? When I try to rationalize it, at least for the boys and the twenty three months that I nursed them, I tell myself that I was giving them as much of me as I possibly could for as long as I possibly could because the girls will always have twenty seven years and twenty four more years’ time with me than the boys will. I was trying to make up just a little of that quantity with quality.

I also tell myself I nursed for the medical reasons we all have read about: how our bodies produce the perfect infant nutrition; how nursing reduces a mother’s risk of breast cancer and female babies’ risks later in life; how it’s easily digestible and comes in a ready package; how it boosts infant immune systems resulting in less sick days for parents and babies, etc. The list goes on and on. You can look up the research yourself. And I’ll even admit right here in black and white that I’ve squirted breast milk in all four of my children’s eyes and ears to help combat pink eye and ear infections. – with success, mind you. And while I think all of these are part of it, it still doesn’t truly explain why breastfeeding twins and singletons for so many years of my life made it worth it. Ultimately it’s the connection that is made. And that connection is impossible to understand, much less verbalize. There is some sort of emotional and physiological cocktail created, a narcotic that hooks a mother to her child in the strongest of bonds for all of eternity. The connection is emotional, physical, and spiritual. Those babies are flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood, consuming the God-given milk and honey of my temple. It is like no other communion in the universe. It is the holiest thing I’ve ever done.

So yes, while breastfeeding twins is hard, it is not impossible. Still, it is a pretty exclusive club. If you think about it, only one-half of the population can nurse a child (and while I feel sad that father’s can’t, I must also admit that I’m selfishly happy that God made us the ovens and gave us the food trucks). Of that half, only a small portion have twins, (although the number is growing rapidly, thanks to IVF, etc). And an even smaller portion of those twin mothers actually breastfeed. So it’s an exclusive club, but we’re accepting new members every day. Come on, join the N.I.TW.I.T.S.: Nursing Infant TWins Into Toddler Stage. (So, maybe it’s not the best acronym, but I kinda like it… If it’s good enough for Professor Dumbledore after sorting first years into their respective houses (Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!), it’s good enough for us (with a slight adulteration): Nitwits! Boppies! Ointment! Tweak!

July 6, 2016 0

House of Figs and Hope

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Today, I celebrate my youngest baby girl. Not such a baby anymore. As a matter of fact, she now has a baby of her own. And as I watch her mothering that darling baby boy, I know that she has found her place in the world. (But I will talk about that precious acorn in another post.) Today, I celebrate Bethany.

Bethany Hope. She used to tell me she wasn’t too fond of her name. So many times at school, teachers and other students would call her Brittany. She argued her name was too different, too weird. Why couldn’t she just be a Brittany, like everyone else? Teachers and students called her that all the time anyway… But you know what? She is, and has always been, colorful and different Just like the rest of us in our crazy, quirky, love-jangled family. She’s a spitfire. She has the energy of the sun harnessed with a generous soul and a ready smile. When she laughs, the world shimmies. She’s that charismatic. She’s that passionate. She needed to be a Bethany. (And to tell you a secret, it’s still my favorite name of all of my children’s names.)

The name Bethany means House of Figs. Or House of Dates, depending upon what source you use. That’s part of why she didn’t like it so much. A fruity home. Really? Other people had names that symbolized beautiful things: pearls or flowers or truth. But her middle name she found a little more acceptable: Hope. That meaning goes without saying. But string those names together, and magic happens. Bethany Hope symbolizes sustenance and optimism. And sustain and uplift me, she always has. She is my baby girl. What I thought would be the last of the fruit of my loins. (Boy, was I wrong on that count.) And she is irreplaceable.

She swam into this world on a four-hour tidal wave of hard and fast labor. I kid you not, as her father and I shot down the interstate toward the hospital at 2:00 AM, I felt her shouldering her way through the birth canal and I didn’t know if we would make it on time. She burst into this world a short time later with a flourish of zest and gusto, coal black curls, and wide eyes open. My little carpe diem girl.

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Let me tell you, she was one cute kid. Her nickname isn’t Betty Boop for nothing. She had the sweetest little square noggin with brunette spit curls and china doll skin. That noggin was tough, though. And still is. I remember a few fits (she was a champion tantrum thrower) where she flung her head forward with the shining force of an electrical storm, and I’m pretty sure the neighborhood rained sparks when it hit the pavement. She was a pintsize powerhouse. Rounding out her fiery features were bottle green eyes that shot galvanized currents of pure sass with every blink, a tiny shadow of a nose (barely a line, really) and a plump, pouty lip that could curl up or down in a fickle jiffy. I’m telling you, she was Betty Boop in bambino form.

Now my grandmother would argue she was HER little carbon copy; her spitting image, a chip off the old block. And there’s no doubt she carries in her my grandmother’s genes for telling a great story, dancing a wicked jig, and for never meeting a stranger. Just like Grandma, she feels loves fast and hard, would scale mountains for family, and will break someone’s ankles if you do her or her kin any wrong.

As a second child, Bethany often found herself slipping into the cramped crevices of a busy life, the all too familiar curse of the second child, bless her. Life was busier once she came into the world. There were full-time jobs for both her dad and me by then. And day care and dry cleaning and Disney princesses and drive-thru dinners. (No, just kidding. I cooked — most of the time.) So life was life. And it was crazy fast. I remember one specific instance – at Christmas –when she got lost in the holiday shuffle. We were hanging ornaments and singing songs and nibbling cookies and taking pictures and humming right through the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. I felt she was still too little to hang the blown glass ornaments – my Christmas prized possessions – and so we let her big sister hang all of Bethany’s very own Betty Boop blown glass ornaments. Bethany quietly took a stocking from a box, a big, fuzzy felt one with white fur at the top, and slid it over her head. She slipped into a corner, stood dejected and demeaned, and sobbed. It broke my heart when I realized I had broken hers.

When you are little, when Christmas is the biggest, the best, the most amazing and blissful part of your life thus far… when you believe with all of your heart and soul in the spirit of Christmas and the mythical Rudolph of holiday specials … when your family roasts marshmallows over open fires and sips cocoa while icing star-shaped and sleigh-shaped and Santa-shaped cookies in brilliant reds and greens… when your mother spends weeks hunting for that oh-so-perfect ornament to give you the Friday after Thanksgiving just to usher in that most magical of seasons faster… and then your family, in particular your OCD mother with her Martha Stewart tendencies and her picture-perfect propensities, forgets what the whole fuss is about in the first place… Why celebrate a season of love and hope and life, if we are too self-absorbed and caught up in the hoopla to remember what love and hope and life means? If we are so blinded by the “beauty” of what we’re creating that we crush the toes — and hopes and dreams and passions — of the ones we’re creating it for. Again, why? So I gathered up my little pintsize powerhouse, my child of passion and sass, who feels so very deeply and loves so very hard (and bruises as a result) and I vowed I would never break her spirit again.

I’ve tried, from that day on, to not let the busyness of life overtake me. To not forget to love on all of my babies in equal measure. To not let the current craziness of twin toddler boys deflect any energy from my other beautiful offspring. And I still fail. I still find myself scooping up one or the other in my metaphorical arms (the girls both live miles and miles away from me, after all) and try to shower them with love.

So today, I celebrate my second born. My beautiful House of Figs and Hope. My baby girl, who sustains me and uplifts me in ways she will never, ever know or understand. I just hope I have shown you half of her love and energy, my shining, sparkling Bethany Hope: sparkplug of passion and sass and pizazz. She is irreplaceable.

Bethany

June 15, 2016 1

To my firstling, on her birthday

caitlinbeach I’ve dedicated the past week’s blog to the assemblage of ingredients and bake-ware necessary to bring my twin boys into this world, but today, I want to focus on my firstborn: the beautiful baby girl who started this whole motherhood thing off while I was barely out of swaddling clothes myself.

Caitlin Anice. Named after a childhood bestie and a beloved doctor aunt. Her destiny — as friend and physician – was sealed at birth, it would seem. As opposed to the boys, she came into this world in the old-fashioned way, a completely natural conception, easy-peasy pregnancy, and drug-free childbirth. Now that’s not saying labor was a cinch; she clung heartily to the cranky, contracting warzone of my womb for twenty-six hours before making her grand entrance. It was like she was memorizing every stage and step, in case there was a test later. I should’ve known right then and there just what this little one was made of. Simply coasting is not her style. She works hard for every single accomplishment — and accomplished she is. But I get ahead of myself…

Her hair and eyes were dark at first, like clouds at midnight, but as she acclimated to those long June days after birth, she began transforming. While nursing, her warm little body nestled up next to mine, I watched her midnight blue eyes absorb more and more light with each knew understanding. She learned sounds, then faces, then language and more. With each new skill, those eyes crackled and sparked. Out of the darkness and into the light, a child after Prometheus’ own heart. She loved to learn.

meandcait At twenty-one I was almost as much of a baby as she was — and this little girl, this little spark plug of passion and piss, taught me far more valuable lessons than I ever taught her. She taught me how to mother. From Caitlin I first learned about the tingly descent of ants stinging my breasts during letdown; how to successfully diaper an infant, midstream; how to bandage boo boos and bolster bad attitudes; how to sing lullabies and read storybooks and rock a baby to sleep in the soft, gentle breath of dusk. She taught me patience and perseverance, strength and resolve — lessons that have gone on to serve me well with both her siblings at home and my high school seniors at school. But back to mothering my girl.

I failed quite a few times. Caitlin, though, was a master teacher from the beginning. I’ll never forget the time as a baby she soared off our front porch in her walker, ass-over-teakettle. Somehow she survived, and I never made the same mistake again. Or the time as a toddler she stood amidst a swarm of yellow jackets that branded her with a dozen stings before I could reach her. I swear she wiped my tears before I wiped away hers. Or the time she contracted the shigella bacteria as a preteen. Poor girl, sick at both ends in the most violent and non poetic of ways. But as soon as the bags of fluids and fever and lethargy had passed, her loving aunts and I composed the “Don’t Cry for me, Caitlin Hester” shigella theme song and our entire extended family serenaded her during our beach reunion. It was funny; it was creative; it was in poor taste… and she was not amused. Like I said, I failed her. Sometimes shamelessly. But the ever-patient teacher that she is, she guided me right back to the drawing board, knowing I would get it right eventually.

Patience and perseverance, strength and resolve: Caitlin has them. Right along with gumption and grace, know-how and knack, compassion and courage. Her motto is “Love All,” and she lives it heartily, scattering warmth and love in her wake, and washing everyone in its sweetness and light.

For a while, life was easy for her. She basked in the summer sun of youth. She soared through elementary and high school, winning the Principal’s Award and high school homecoming queen. In college, and even med school, she rarely stumbled, light and love pouring out of her.

Now though, as an adult, she finds herself setting her courage to the sticking place and doing battle with her fiercest of competitors: general surgery. She’s been wrestling her way out of the war-torn womb of surgical residency, a long and arduous birthing process, for three years now. It is dark there. And deep. She is battered. Her light is dim. But she’s on the cusp of fourth year. She should begin seeing the light – the light that has never stopped burning inside her. The light she absorbed in those mid-June mornings in the procreant cradle of a mother’s love. After fifth year, she’ll shine that light into the dark black night of the licensed surgeon and she will soar. She will be ready. After all, she is a child born of the clouds of midnight, infused with the early summer sunshine. She has balance and grace. She has chosen the road less travelled — and it is lovely there, but it is also dark and deep – and she still has miles to go before she sleeps. But she is a child of Prometheus. She’s got this.

surgical cap My little girl who taught me so much — is still teaching me so much today. She is the model of true strength and courage, patience and resolve. And she has the most incandescent heart I have ever known. Happy Birthday, my mid-June Monkey Doodle. You have never failed me. You are my sunshine.

June 14, 2016 0

Building the Best Nest

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My fertility specialist: the grand wizard of long shots, the war-horse of reproductive endocrinology, the fertility fairy godmother of happily-ever-afters in the greater Atlanta area, and more. What can I possibly say about him that doesn’t make me sound like I worship the ground he walks on? Then again, why should I try to NOT sound like I do, when I quite obviously do? Now don’t get me wrong, I am a firm proponent of “To God Give the Glory.” Were it not God’s will that I have my two little miracle men, I know and understand that my cupboard would have remained bare. However, I also believe God grants certain individuals the ability to know His miracles, to recognize and harness the power and potential of those miracles, and to use that knowledge to propagate and multiply even more miracles in His name. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God works through Dr. Mark Perloe and the team at Georgia Reproductive Specialists. They have been granted the ability to tame the wild and natural, sometimes ticklish, nature of the birds and the bees, and as a result, rain manna from Heaven via test tubes.

So, yes, I sing Dr. Perloe and his team’s praises. They helped me feather my nest, so I’m happy to put put a feather or two in their caps.

But, back to building the best nest… Dr. Perloe took my forty-seven year old incubator – well preserved mind you 😉 but still – and began refurbishing it to ensure ample brooding conditions. He plumped up the lining with the hormonal and dietary equivalents of all the hay, and all the straw, and all the string, and all the stuffing, and all the horsehair, and all the… well, you name it, he used it.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s talk for just a bit about all that metaphorical hay and straw and string and stuffing … Let’s talk needles. Let’s talk shots. Let’s talk pills. And vaginal suppositories. And time. Lots and lots of time. It was quite the process.

First, the needles. In the beginning, the needles weren’t too bad. And that’s saying a lot because this girl has always had an aversion to shots of any type. But the first ones, the tiny jabs to the belly, those were nothing (not nothing, obviously. They played a critical role in readying my nest), but they didn’t hurt. They only even bruised me once, just below my naval. Those shots always hurt Mike more than they hurt me. I have to give him credit. He was, and continues to be, amazing throughout this entire journey. He would cringe every time he had to stick me, but stick me, he did. Because he knew I couldn’t do it to myself. He would dutifully fill his syringe, then penetrate and deposit the baby-making fluid of the day in this synthetic birds-and-bees mating ritual we were fulfilling.

But then came the nightly ritual of shots to my hindquarters. Now THOSE were a pain. (I won’t say the clichéd phrase, but you get the picture.) We did learn a trick (a little later than I would’ve liked) thanks to a nurse at GRS, and we began to ice my ass first. Still, they bruised and burned and even caused an allergic reaction, to add insult to injury. Now we were required to give those shots as close to the same time every single evening as possible to ensure maximum effectiveness; therefore, we arranged those shots to fall between 8:30 and 9:00 nightly for a very good and compelling reason. My husband is a football coach — and come Friday nights, rain or shine, the gridiron seizes center stage. That means that every Friday night during halftime, we had to find a private (or semi-private in multiple instances) place for me to drop trou so that Mike could thrust a needle into my bruised and angry buttocks. These locations were myriad and, let me tell you, less than ideal. I got shot up in the hallway of a gymnasium within audible distance of the opposing team. I got shot up in the back of a Kia Soul, my legs and torso contorted at a highly irregular and uncomfortable angle whilst a sweaty outside linebacker hunted for his mouth guard in the parking lot (and, thank God, blissfully ignorant of the slightly pornographic scene) not fifteen feet away. I got shot up in the floor of a coach’s office on a jacket chivalrously laid out by my husband across the spongy decades-old carpet. Let’s just say my arse was a pincushion that found itself jabbed in the strangest of locales.

field

Beyond the shots, I took oral medications and vaginal suppositories that turned my underwear a slight periwinkle if I forgot my pantie liners, which I was wont to do, since the hormones seemed to make my mind all fuzzy and floaty . It would seem I had contracted the infamous pregnancy brain — the chemical cocktails doing their job, just like the doctor ordered.

There were days when all of the hormones got to me. Once I wept openly when I cleaned the ceiling fan and huge, clumpy caterpillars of dust dropped from the blades. I decided then and there that there was no way I was fit to be a mother again. I couldn’t even take proper care of a ceiling fan, for God’s sake. Publix commercials, awash in rose-colored hues and sentimentality, regularly had me on the floor in a puddle of Kleenex, tears, and goo.

There were other instances, and another type of shot, a trigger, they call it, that I could recant, but this is getting to be a long post, and so, I’ll cut to the chase. Once all of the hay and straw and string and stuffing, etc. was assembled in the proper order and proportions, Mike made his requisite deposit and our truly selfless donor (who went through far more painful and labor-intensive procedures than I) contributed her part, Dr. Perloe and his wonder team tenderly laid our two precious, perfect 5-day blastocytes inside this biddy’s nest and coaxed it into successfully incubating two beautiful, bronze baby boys, hatched just shy of 35 weeks gestation.

To quote one of my favorite childhood books by PD Eastman: “There’s no nest like an old nest, for a brand new bird” – or two.

June 10, 2016 2

Our Postmodern Family

Our Real Modern Family

I’ve been thinking about starting a blog for a while now… I guess ever since we decided to bake up a couple of twins from scratch using borrowed eggs and my forty-seven- year-old oven. My daughter once called us the “Real Modern Family” – and you know, she’s right. I’m a Southern woman married to a half-Korean, half-Italian/Slovenian Yankee man twelve years my junior; I have two beautiful twenty-something daughters, an arthritic dappled dachshund and a morbidly obese cat. And now, after much thought and consideration — and then funding and injections, vaginal suppositories, and appointments — I have started motherhood all over again. This will be the story of us: our real modern family. Or maybe, more appropriately, our postmodern family. Postmodern, as in “radical reappraisal.” And our story is, indeed, a radical reappraisal of how to make and nurture a family.

Many things have changed since that summer almost three years ago when we began our in-vitro journey… I will do my best to record current happenings, as well as flashbacks to those glory days of post-modern fertilization, pregnancy pillows, and preeclampsia. I’m hoping our story will be an inspiration to those battling the frustrations of infertility, to those navigating the beautiful and rugged territory of twindom, and to those who decide to either start a family or do it all over again at a rather ripe age.

Even as I try to type this, I question why I’m doing it. I have nothing special to say. I’m nothing special. I nearly stop before I’ve begun, but then I think… I’m nothing special, true… but I do have something different to offer. I can’t imagine there are too many forty-nine year olds out there lactating. Not too many women out there with twenty-three years difference between their last baby girl and their most recent baby boys, not too many women who, as my father says, “ran the engine and the caboose when it comes to supplying grandchildren.” Not too many women out there who just suffered through a sixteen-month stint of extreme sleep deprivation. If nothing else, I can be a freak show for people to point at and ridicule. Still, I hope I can inspire a few to give postmodern family planning a go.

postmodernfamilyblog

Multigenerational Mom Muses on Twin Toddlers & Twenty-Something Daughters

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