The Opposite of Everything I Value

This election is giving me anxiety. Seriously.

I know it’s a big deal everywhere, but I live in a swing state that also happens to be the first to vote in the country, so all eyes are turned on us. Candidates have been campaigning here for the last bajillion weeks. I’m not sure how it is in other states, but literally every single commercial on the radio and on TV has been a political one in the last 6 months, every street corner is filled with signs, every other yard has gigantic signs in it, etc. You can’t get away from it.

My anxiety doesn’t come from this bombardment and assault on my eyes and ears. It comes from knowing how drastically the country could change tomorrow night, and knowing that it’s the new world that my baby is going to start his life in. When you have children you realize that although you still matter, you feel like your baby matters more. You’re an adult, you can handle life’s bullshit. All you want is a good world for your child to grow up in. I rocked my Noah-boy to sleep this weekend, and as I looked at his precious sleeping face I thought about what our world may look like if Trump gets elected. I held him and cried, because I don’t want him to grow up in a Trump-world.

This isn’t about support for Hillary, this isn’t really about politics either (aside from the fact that it’s a political election). This isn’t about the fact that he’s running as a Republican. Yeah, I lean left of center, but there’s some things about the Republican platform that I agree with (though not necessarily about the tactics used to meet those objectives). I don’t not like Trump because he’s a Republican. He’s run for President under the Reform Party anyway, so the party doesn’t mean a whole lot. I don’t like him because he’s not who I would raise my son to be. Every quality I hope to instill as a value in my son, Trump displays the opposite.

I consider myself a feminist, although not a crazy hardcore one (whatever that means). I will raise my son to respect women. Trump clearly does not. I think the word “misogynistic” gets used a lot these days, but I really think it fits.

We will teach Noah to treat others with kindness and respect, and that some words are inappropriate no matter how or where you use them.

We will teach him to use manners. Trump cannot seem to use the basic ones that are hammered into your head in first grade.

We will teach him to tell the truth. I have never been so blown away by a person’s blatant disregard for what they have said.. ON RECORD! ON TV! ON THE RADIO! ON TWITTER! Like, something that anyone can pull up in .02 seconds and be like “uh… dude… actually you just said this… so….?”

We will teach him that some people aren’t like us. They don’t look like us, they don’t sound like us, they don’t act like us. That’s not a bad thing. We don’t need to fear people that are not like us, we just need to ask questions about things we don’t know about.

We will teach him that we are no better than someone because we happen to be white. It’s painfully obvious that Trump doesn’t feel or act this way, especially when he wants to a build a fucking wall in between us and our neighbors, when he refers to immigrants as “bad hombres”.

When the time comes, we will teach him about the importance of a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body and her healthcare. We will explain to him why the scare tactics are unfair and what it’s really like for people who have to make those incredibly difficult decisions.

We will teach him that the environment is important and why protecting our public lands matters. That we have an impact on our environment, large and small, and that we need to take steps to lessen our impact so that his children and grandchildren can enjoy the outdoors like we do.

We will teach him so many other things, so many things that Trump is 100% the opposite on. I’m not against Trump because he’s a Republican, I’m against him because of the type of person he’s shown me he is throughout this campaign.

I know my precious baby will not be a baby forever, and I can’t keep him sheltered his entire life. I just don’t want him to start his life in a world ruled by a bully. It’s just really fucking unfair. I was always taught to respect the leader of our amazing country, but I couldn’t ask my son to accept Trump as his leader. He displays no leadership qualities aside from business savvy (or should I say knowledge of how to use tax code and bankruptcy to your advantage) and the ability to gain a following. You can say what you want about how the country will change with Hillary as President, I know that there’s two sides to every coin. I think a civilized debate is healthy. But again, what I'm writing isn’t about Hillary, it’s about Trump. It’s about how the thought of him as the first President my son would remember literally makes me cry.

“When your children arrive, the best you can hope for is that they break open everything about you. Your mind floods with oxygen. Your heart becomes a room with wide-open windows. You laugh hard every day. You think about the future and read about global warming. You realize how nice it feels to care about someone else more than yourself. And gradually, through this heart-heavy openness and fresh eyes, you start to see the world a little more. Maybe you start to care a teeny tiny bit more about what happens to everyone in it” – My girl, Amy Poehler.

Trump: The Opposite of Everything I Value

This election is giving me anxiety. Seriously.

I know it’s a big deal everywhere, but I live in a swing state that also happens to be the first to vote in the country, so all eyes are turned on us. Candidates have been campaigning here for the last bajillion weeks. I’m not sure how it is in other states, but literally every single commercial on the radio and on TV has been a political one in the last 6 months, every street corner is filled with signs, every other yard has gigantic signs in it, etc. You can’t get away from it.

My anxiety doesn’t come from this bombardment and assault on my eyes and ears. It comes from knowing how drastically the country could change tomorrow night, and knowing that it’s the new world that my baby is going to start his life in. When you have children you realize that although you still matter, you feel like your baby matters more. You’re an adult, you can handle life’s bullshit. All you want is a good world for your child to grow up in. I rocked my Noah-boy to sleep this weekend, and as I looked at his precious sleeping face I thought about what our world may look like if Trump gets elected. I held him and cried, because I don’t want him to grow up in a Trump-world.

This isn’t about support for Hillary, this isn’t really about politics either (aside from the fact that it’s a political election). This isn’t about the fact that he’s running as a Republican. Yeah, I lean left of center, but there’s some things about the Republican platform that I agree with (though not necessarily about the tactics used to meet those objectives). I don’t not like Trump because he’s a Republican. He’s run for President under the Reform Party anyway, so the party doesn’t mean a whole lot. I don’t like him because he’s not who I would raise my son to be. Every quality I hope to instill as a value in my son, Trump displays the opposite.

I consider myself a feminist, although not a crazy hardcore one (whatever that means). I will raise my son to respect women. Trump clearly does not. I think the word “misogynistic” gets used a lot these days, but I really think it fits.

We will teach Noah to treat others with kindness and respect, and that some words are inappropriate no matter how or where you use them.

We will teach him to use manners. Trump cannot seem to use the basic ones that are hammered into your head in first grade.

We will teach him to tell the truth. I have never been so blown away by a person’s blatant disregard for what they have said.. ON RECORD! ON TV! ON THE RADIO! ON TWITTER! Like, something that anyone can pull up in .02 seconds and be like “uh… dude… actually you just said this… so….?”

We will teach him that some people aren’t like us. They don’t look like us, they don’t sound like us, they don’t act like us. That’s not a bad thing. We don’t need to fear people that are not like us, we just need to ask questions about things we don’t know about.

We will teach him that we are no better than someone because we happen to be white. It’s painfully obvious that Trump doesn’t feel or act this way, especially when he wants to a build a fucking wall in between us and our neighbors, when he refers to immigrants as “bad hombres”.

When the time comes, we will teach him about the importance of a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body and her healthcare. We will explain to him why the scare tactics are unfair and what it’s really like for people who have to make those incredibly difficult decisions.

We will teach him that the environment is important and why protecting our public lands matters. That we have an impact on our environment, large and small, and that we need to take steps to lessen our impact so that his children and grandchildren can enjoy the outdoors like we do.

We will teach him so many other things, so many things that Trump is 100% the opposite on. I’m not against Trump because he’s a Republican, I’m against him because of the type of person he’s shown me he is throughout this campaign.

I know my precious baby will not be a baby forever, and I can’t keep him sheltered his entire life. I just don’t want him to start his life in a world ruled by a bully. It’s just really fucking unfair. I was always taught to respect the leader of our amazing country, but I couldn’t ask my son to accept Trump as his leader. He displays no leadership qualities aside from business savvy (or should I say knowledge of how to use tax code and bankruptcy to your advantage) and the ability to gain a following. You can say what you want about how the country will change with Hillary as President, I know that there’s two sides to every coin. I think a civilized debate is healthy. But again, what I'm writing isn’t about Hillary, it’s about Trump. It’s about how the thought of him as the first President my son would remember literally makes me cry.

“When your children arrive, the best you can hope for is that they break open everything about you. Your mind floods with oxygen. Your heart becomes a room with wide-open windows. You laugh hard every day. You think about the future and read about global warming. You realize how nice it feels to care about someone else more than yourself. And gradually, through this heart-heavy openness and fresh eyes, you start to see the world a little more. Maybe you start to care a teeny tiny bit more about what happens to everyone in it” – My girl, Amy Poehler.

Baby Amnesia

Everyone says that you will experience amnesia, forget how hard pregnancy, labor, delivery, and those first few weeks (months) are, and want to do it all over again. To them, I say:

You serious?

1. Pregnancy

I am surrounded by a lot of pregnant women, and anytime I see them I get a twinge that says "awww, I kind of miss it". Then I'm like

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed being pregnant and I do miss some aspects of it. For example, people aren't kidding when they say that no one really cares anymore after the baby is like 3-4 months old. Trust me, lots of people DO care, but eventually people stop asking you 24/7 about the baby and tolerate you babbling about the baby less and less. At some point, people outside your most immediate circle don't really want to hear about it every time your baby pooped up and out the back of his diaper in the grocery store. You stop getting the "pass" for being sleep deprived, except you are still as sleep deprived and you still deserve a goddamn red carpet for being able to get out the house and be a functional human being almost every day. Pregnancy is just so obvious that everyone and anyone wants to talk to you about it (sometimes to a fault). 

Here is where I DON'T have pregnancy amnesia:

Being so large I couldn't fit through some doorways

Being so swollen and uncomfortable that I sat in my yard pouring cold water on my legs

The inability to tie my own shoes, or eventually even wear my own shoes

Having legitimate tree trunks for legs

2. Labor and Delivery

PEOPLE AREN'T KIDDING ABOUT THIS ONE. I have labor and delivery amnesia, however, there are certain things that stick out very clearly in my mind and I will never, ever, ever, forget. Let's start with what I do have amnesia about:

When the hell did I look this good? I'm like 10 hours into labor, and not just the first stage of it. 

When the hell did I FEEL this good? Oh wait, it was the nitrous. 

I LOOKED THIS BAD?

I saw that last photo a few weeks after Noah was born and went "holy shit....I look like I'm about to die". I didn't know at the time that I was a hair away from getting a blood transfusion, and I can see it in this photo. I look like I'm about four seconds away from being reanimated as a zombie. This was also the first time I really met Noah, because he spent about 15 seconds on my chest after he was born before being taken away to the NICU. It was just a few hours after birth and I was an emotional mess, I'm surprised I was even able to smile for that photo. I know I felt pretty wrecked but I don't remember it. I also don't really remember or know how to describe exactly how labor and delivery felt. The know the pain of it, I can remember how much it hurt and what it felt like, but there's something I can't pinpoint and can't really describe when people ask me how much it hurt. Like, it's something I wouldn't be scared to do again.

That being said, I will always remember: the feeling of his head being pressed up against my spine and pelvis (like you need to poop a 10 pound brick), screaming at the top of my lungs without medicine through contractions, realizing contractions hurt worse than getting a needle inserted in my spine, the sound of an episiotomy (google for birth control), watching my doctor hold up my placenta and say "oh, that's a nice one!" (I laughed out loud), and hearing Noah's billy goat cries. 

3. The Fourth Trimester

Oh, let me tell you, I have no fourth trimester amnesia. The fourth trimester, aka the first three months, are hard on everyone. It was exaggerated by colic. I had a tough recovery from birth and still deal with the physical repercussions. Our stay in the NICU felt like a month. I'll never forget how hard it was to have him strapped up to a bajillion wires. 

Our little space man

You would think the sleep deprivation would blur your memory so much that you would forget how hard the first three months are, but for me it just seemed to extend every minute, every hour, and it felt like there was no end in sight. 

We're all struggling, bud!

I know parenthood always looks like some version of this

"Please send a team of professionals to my house immediately"

But what you get in the end

is a lot of love from a tiny, hilarious, adorable human, who also happens to be so cute and he spreads smiles to everyone that sees him.

It's totally worth it... but that whole amnesia thing is a bunch of bull. Anyone that says they don't really remember how hard it was probably has an empty nest. 

Just A Girl and a Boob-Hoover

Me trying to decipher all of this

Entering the realm of parenthood means learning a whole new language. It starts in pregnancy with things line fundal height, anterior placenta, gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, etc. If you scroll through any sort of forum or community board about pregnancy and parenthood the language gets more obscure – LO, SO, 38w4d, 6w PP, PPD, MIL, EBF, MOTN session, FF, the list goes on. For our purposes, the two acronyms that apply are EBF and FF – exclusively breastfed and formula fed. A baby that is “EBF” only nurses, “FF” babies take formula. The curveball Noah threw us didn’t have an acronym, so I made it up – PP. Primarily pumping. Or EBFBPP, exclusively breastfed but primarily pumping. It was too many letters.

I struggled with breastfeeding early on emotionally, we didn’t have any serious issues except for when he wanted to feed literally every hour and I thought I was going off the deep end. It’s hard to feel like you still don’t have your body back after being pregnant for 40 weeks. The pro-breastfeeding movement promotes that women’s breasts are not sexual, they’re for feeding babies. Yes, that’s true, they are for feeding babies - but for many people their breasts are part of their feminine identity in more ways than just baby-feeders. Breastfeeding can sometimes screw with that identity a little because it can feel like they’re purely functional, nothing else. What used to be an intimate part of your body is suddenly on display, all the time, to lots of people. They lose their novelty REAL quick. On the same token, I think even those that struggle with breastfeeding develop a deep appreciation for their body and what it can do. Anyway, I’ve stuck with breastfeeding through stubbornness, a learned but wavering enjoyment for it, and a commitment to what I believe is bets for Noah. I digress.

Noah was EBF (remember your acronyms, people!) until I went back to work, then I pumped during the day and nursed him any time I was home, including over the weekend (very little to no pumping). It was going fine… and then it wasn’t. Bottles are easier for babies, milk flows consistently and they don’t have to work hard to get it. He started getting frustrating with nursing because he had to work at it (GET A JOB, LAZY BUM). It would take a few tries and sometimes some crying from him, me, or both of us, but we hung in there. I started wondering if we should add more bottles in for all of our sake, but I remembered how convenient breastfeeding is and reverted back to my mantra: Don’t Quit On A Bad Day. We didn’t quit.

Then we travelled. Traveling is stressful anyway, but it was out first time going on a long trip with Noah and I was FREAKING. OUT. I probably drove Adam insane with the amount of text message, prioritized to-do lists, packing lists, incessant planning, and worrying. It went as well as it can when you have to drive 10-12 hours with a 3-month old. Anyway, during our travel Noah went on a full-on nursing strike. A nursing strike is when baby abruptly starts refusing to nurse. I wouldn’t say it was abrupt, we kind of trended towards it for a few weeks, but he started straight up refusing to breastfeed directly with me. I thought it was situational (stressful situation, new and chaotic and temporary environment, etc), but it continued at home even with me trying to trick him into it again. I tried dark, quiet rooms, catching him before he was starving, skin-to-skin contact, singing, silence, different positions, etc. Suddenly we were faced with the situation I had pondered before – switching to primarily doing bottles of breastmilk – and I did not take it lightly. For all of the times I wallowed around thinking I couldn’t wait for the experience to end, when I was faced with the fact that we might not make it to my goal of a year I was crushed.

The Internet is great and terrible, and that holds true for this, too. It tells you that exclusively pumping will probably hurt your supply. There’s random statistics that pumping will only ever get you 60% of what the baby gets (may be true for some, but for me primarily pumping has actually upped my supply). You can read a multitude of stories of people that eventually had to supplement with formula and stop breastfeeding altogether. On the flipside, I learned that this is actually really common for his age. Between 3-4 months babies are way more aware of their surroundings and easily distracted. It seemed like a lot of people with babies in that age range had experience an intense nursing strike, too. And to my comfort, a lot of them had gone to still keeping baby fed with breastmilk.

If you’re wondering why I’m so against using formula, I’m not. Another term you get used to as a parent is “fed is best”, it’s kind of a middle finger to the “breast is best” saying from people that are unable to breastfeed or choose not to for personal reasons. I agree that fed is best – if your baby is fed and everyone is happy then so be it. For me, though, I feel strongly about the benefits of breastfeeding and breastmilk, and in my mind I should provide that for him because I can. Plus, formula is DAMN EXPENSIVE, especially if you want to get formula that isn’t basically a bunch of soy and corn syrup. The internet tells me formula can cost $1000-$1200 on average per year. My pump cost $300, I do buy storage bags, steam cleaning bags, I got extra parts as a baby shower gift, but I may buy another $200 or so of stuff over the year, maybe more. Either way, it’s probably half the cost of formula feeding over the first year.

Are there steps to take to get him off the bottle so much? Sure, but not all of them are practical. You can cut out bottles entirely and spoon/cup feed until he accepts the boob again. Not practical for us. I came to a point where I had to decide if it was more important to directly nurse or to just receive breastmilk in general, and I realized the latter was more important. The delivery system WAS important, but not as important as the fact that he was still getting the benefits of breastmilk.

Now here we are almost two months after Noah's first nursing strike and we're back to the point where we can add some nursing back into the mix. It’s a curveball I wasn’t anticipating (I suppose that’s why they call it a curveball in the first place…?), and just another thing I didn’t really consider may happen. Pretty much everything on this journey is new and weird and unexpected, just add this one to the list. You have one thing in your mind and reality is totally mismatched… and I’m pretty freakin’ zen about things! Seriously, I’ve worked hard to go about pregnancy, birth, and parenthood with as much fluidity and flexibility as possible, that way I wouldn’t get heartbroken if things didn’t go how I “wanted” or “expected” them to. I have hopes, sure, but I don’t want to dwell on it when it doesn’t happen – for example, I hope to sleep at night but I don’t. Some nights I do, and those nights are awesome. I hope to continue our mix of primarily pumping with a nursing sessions when we can until my goal of a year, but like all things so far I know that could suddenly change. But for now it works, and I’ve learned that’s what matters.