Are you pregnant? This post is for you.

I get asked a lot of questions about parenting and birth. 5 pregnancies, 3 kids, 2 home births, 1 hospital birth, 1 miscarriage, and 1 pregnancy loss doesn't make me a doctor, but it does leave me with a special kind of expertise.

The kind of expertise that comes from having been there yourself!

So, if you're looking for answers or stories or someone to say, "Yep, that's normal!" Look no further! I've got over 22,000 hours of pregnancy experience. (Seriously, I did the math.)

To get you started, I've rounded up all my posts on my #1 favorite topic.

Pregnancy:

• Top 5 Pregnancy Must Haves
• My absolute favorite pregnancy book
• How to speak to a pregnant woman
• Second (or Third) Time Mommy Anxiety
• When are you done having kids?

Birth:

• I give birth at home.
• Griffin's Birth Story
• Amos's Birth Story
• Felix's Birth Story
• The Cost of a Home Birth
• Ashley Martin and "Picture Perfect Births"
• My Postpartum Paradise (or why you should always accept help after giving birth)

Struggling with gender disappointment?

• I am an urban legend.
• What having 3 boys means... and what it doesn't

Experiencing pregnancy after loss?

• Due Date
• I have an announcement.
• How I'm coping
• Litany of Remembrance
• Grief and the choices we make
• April 10-15, 2014

If you're overwhelmed or have already read yourself cross-eyed and just want to talk to an actual human being who's been there, then I'm offering up a new service. 

I'm all your's for a one-hour phone call or online chat. Ask me the questions you're too embarrassed to ask your girlfriends or mom or a parenting chat board! I've spent 1000 of hours researching the problems. I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm going to help you find the solution!

Do you want to know more about my experience with home birth? (No, I didn't poop.) Do you want to know what baby products really belong on your registry? Do you want to know what I did to prepare for breastfeeding?

I'm not a doctor and (obviously) I won't be offering medical advice, but I do consider myself particularly good at practical help and emotional support.

And if I can't help you, I'll find someone or some resource that can!

For $100 investment (you cant barely get a stroller for that much!), I'm all your's. 

So, give me a call!

How to help a friend face the unfaceable

It happens every time I fill out a new medical form for one of my boys. Can your child do this? Can your child do that? I go down the list of questions checking one “yes” box after another. I leave the lines to describe any developmental delays or physical issues blank.

As I looked over the form, my eyes welled up with tears and I start to cry. I feel incredible gratitude, but I also feel such sadness. Sadness because I know it was a moment Annie has never gotten to have.

You know Annie and you know her story. Annie is amazing. Annie is brilliant. And for reasons I don’t always understand, Annie is one of my dearest friends. We first met in college. Another friend had brought me to Annie’s door. I was in the throes of a painful breakup and had convinced myself I had meningitis. Annie gave me some vitamins, a cup of tea, and talked me down from the ledge.

I wish I could say that was the last time her wisdom and wit and unending compassion prevented me from doing something crazy. However, I think that would be less than accurate...to say the least.

Over that past twelve years, we have supported each other through marriages, relocations, career changes, and many a wardrobe crisis. When we got pregnant within months of each other, I was ecstatic. I had my best friend with me every step of the way. We g-chatted constantly about labor strategies, nutritional requirements, maternity clothes. You name it we tackled it. As the months flew by, I couldn’t believe how incredibly lucky I was to face the journey of motherhood with this wonderful woman by my side.

Then, Collin was born.

When I go back and look through our emails to each other at this time, I can only see my blind optimism. Everything was going to work out. Everything was going to be fine. In one email, I told her we’d blink and be watching Collin run around and say, "And to think you were once a tiny thing that gave us such a scare."

I think about that email all the time and I hate myself for it.

In college, Annie had written an untitled poem about me.

she waltzed dramatically away, waving
her arms loosely, wildly, half-singing
half-shouting her love; and I saw us
old, eccentric, eating chocolate in our
slippers, giggling over children and husbands

I knew in the deepest part of my soul that that was how things would end for us. We would sail through this sea of change and come out the other side stronger. Sure, there would be rocky waves and the occasional storm but the destination would be the one about which we had always dreamed.

Eventually, it became very clear that was not the case and that one of the people I loved most in the world was in a huge amount of pain.

I wanted to help her. I wanted to say the perfect thing. I wanted to fix things. Then, I realized that doing anything was really not an option. At one point, a doctor had mentioned the possibility of a very scary degenerative disease that could possibly end Collin’s life at a young age. As my friend faced the unthinkable, I made a pledge. I stopped offering empty promises and offered up the only thing I knew I could. I swore to Annie that I would not forsake her. I swore to her that no matter how bad things got or how hard or painful or sad her situation became I would not turn away from her.

I know that happens. Friendships - for the most part - are based on shared experiences. Our lives change and shift and so do our alliances. You find out who your true friends are, as the saying goes.

I did not know what was going to happen to Collin or what was going to happen to Annie but I knew one thing. I was Annie’s friend and that was not going to change. Ever.

I’m not looking for praise or sympathy. Our journey together was not the one I expected. We got shipwrecked and found a new adventure. However, at the end of every day, I’m still friends with Annie - the specialness of this is something I have difficulty conveying in words.

Annie has shared her story and I only thought I would share my side of it for any of you out there trying to stand with a friend through a difficult time. Learn from my mistakes. Don’t try to fix things or say you understand when you don’t. Stand beside your friend. Hold her hand. Let her know that no matter what - you aren’t going anywhere.

Stop trolling my tragedy

Last year, my family experienced a tragedy. At 20 weeks pregnant, I found out the baby I was carrying was no longer alive. It was an incredibly difficult time made easier by family and friends - and even strangers - who reached out and said they understood or they couldn’t understand but that they loved us and were there for us just for the same.

This post is not about those people.

This post is about the people who wanted to seem thoughtful or sympathetic or supportive but who were actually there for themselves - not me or my family.

I call those people tragedy trolls.

They troll your tragedy. 

These people approach you at any time and in any place and ask you how you are doing. However, they don’t really want to hear your answer. They don’t want to hear that you cry all day and that fear keeps you up at night. They don’t want to hear that you actually aren’t doing that great and you’re afraid you never well. If they wanted to hear those things, they wouldn’t approach you in the grocery checkout line or at a party.

They want you to answer that you’re doing fine and repeat some cliche so that they can go about their day but report that they saw you to anyone who asks. 

These people ask about the intimate details of your tragedy because information is like currency in sad circumstances. Maybe they just want to know what makes you different, what you did wrong, or what they would never do so they can go along on their merry way - self-assured that your tragedy is your’s alone and that they are safe and sound. 

Or they have their own tragedy they haven’t quite dealt with so they use you as a sounding board. They want to relate how they know exactly what you’re going through because they went through the same thing - except it’s often not the same thing at all.

I’ll never forget a dear friend of mine who lost both parents at a young age. She told me people would find out she was an orphan and respond, “Oh, I understand my parents are divorced.”

These people want to witness your sadness without carrying the burden of your grief. 

Brené Brown has a fantastic talk on the difference between empathy and sympathy. She says that empathy involves perspective taking, staying out of judgment, recognizing another’s emotions, and communicating that you understand those emotions. 

Tragedy trolls are sympathetic without being empathetic. They may want to help you but at a safe distance and without getting their hands dirty.

I understand that empathy is not easy. I understand that standing with someone in their grief is an incredibly vulnerable place to be. It is painful. It is intense. It reminds us of painful things in our past or the real threat of pain in our future.

And I’m not saying we all need to reach that level of empathy with every tragedy we come across. If all you can manage is a genuine “I’m so sorry,” that’s fine.  

However, I am begging you to think before you speak to someone experiencing a loss. 

If you feel obligated to say something, don’t. If you feel like you are approaching the encounter to make yourself feel better instead of the other person, don’t. 

Tragedy is hard enough. Don’t make it harder by trolling. 

One year later

Although memories may bring pain, they also bring comfort, for as long as you remember, this child is still part of you. 

I don’t know the exact moment our baby died. It’s a strange thing the not knowing. It seems like something I should know. I should know the precise moment everything changed. It seems like that is the moment I should take to remember the passing of a year.

I know the day I found out the baby was gone. 

April 10, 2014. 

I know the day I had surgery. 

April 15, 2014.

I know the day we had a memorial service. 

April 24, 2014.

I’ve decided that April 15 will be the day I mark the passing of a year because that is the day the baby and I were separated. As long as that little body was still a part of my body, our journey together hadn’t ended. 

Our short journey together still brings so much sadness - even a year later. 

Some things have changed. I don’t sit in my car and cry. I don’t constantly process a long list of what if’s and if I’d only’s. I don’t feel a sharp jagged pain when I see pregnant women or babies. 

I don’t blame myself. That one took a lot of time and a lot of hard work. 

I still wonder though. I wonder whether the baby was a boy or girl. I wonder what he or she would have looked like. I wonder what it would have been like to have a seven-month-old.

But these are like little daydreams that leave as quickly as they come. 

****

My midwife told me at the time that nothing would heal my pain but the birth of another child. I really didn’t want her to be right. I didn’t want to feel like I was replacing one baby with another. 

The tragedy of pregnancy loss has a way of multiplying into the future. You not only lose a baby. It feels like you lose hope. Getting pregnant again. Being pregnant for nine long months. Safely delivering a baby. These all seem like impossibilities as your stomach slowly deflates and you bleed and bleed and bleed. 

But my midwife was right. Having another baby did heal me in a way but not in the way I expected. 

A year ago I was terrified I would never feel the weight of a baby in my arms but here he is. He’s nursing. He’s asleep on my chest. He’s in my arms.

I didn’t replace one baby with another. I said goodbye to all those fears and opened up space in my heart to finally say goodbye to the baby we lost. 

****

We chose to have the baby cremated and scatter the ashes. For months, I hid the empty urn away and it would bring a rush of pain when I would stumble across it in a drawer. 

It felt wrong to throw it away but morbid to keep it out in the open. I didn’t know what to do.

Finally, I asked a family friend who owns the local funeral home what I should do with it. She said I could throw it away or maybe discard the lid and turn it into a vase.

A month before Felix was born that’s what I decided to do. I bought some giant flowers made out of burlap and mixed in some scrap metal flowers I’d bought at an arts fair but for which I’d never found the right spot. Now, the vase sits on my desk. I like the sharp edges of the metal flowers. I like that I took one of the few momentos of my baby’s short life and turned it into something that brings a bittersweet smile to my face. 

They remind me that sometimes beauty can be found in hard spots. They remind me that a year after being physically separated the baby is still a part of my life and always will be no matter how many years pass. 

"The Perfect Mother" and Self-Compassion

I would never have described myself as a perfectionist. My house is frequently cluttered. My desk is covered with projects and reminders and stray papers. My kitchen floor is filthy.

For the longest time, my desktop was giant colorful graphic proclaiming "DONE IS BETTER PERFECT." That creed is not empty words to me. I believe it. I don't let perfection slow down my desire to complete a project. Perfectionism is paralyzing, as I would often lecture other people.

No, I was not a perfectionist.

Except...

I've recently realized that perfectionism is a deep, deep river that flows far beneath my attitude towards my house's cleanliness or craft projects. Just because I'll publish a blog post with typos or slap together class treats that are far from Pinterest-worthy doesn't mean that perfectionism doesn't affect me. 

The perfectionism that haunts me is far more insidious and harmful.

I want to be the perfect mother. 

When I look back, I can see the seeds of this perfectionism take root when I decided I wanted to move back Paducah to raise a family. I was asking Nicholas to give up so much. I was pushing us to change our entire lives. I had to make my case that the stakes were high enough to justify the level of risk we were taking on.

For months, I made the same argument. We were bringing a human being in to the world. We had to do it RIGHT. This little baby wasn't being asked to be born. So, it was our duty to him to give him the best life we possibly could. 

He had to have grandparents in his life. He had to have a community. He had to have good schools. Most importantly, he had to have parents that could BE THERE for him. Parents who didn't work all the time. Parents who could come to school programs. Parents who had real weekends to read stories and play games and go to the park.

And I still believe that. 

I know moving to Paducah was the right decision for our family. However, I see now that pushing so hard for this vision of "perfect parenting" created a voice in my head that speaks loudly and clearly to this day. 

Every. Single. Day. 

I'm constantly striving to please that voice. Are the boys watching too much television? Are we reading enough books? Are they eating enough fruits and vegetables. Are they sleeping enough? Are we disciplining enough? Are we being too hard on them?

Am I doing it RIGHT?

I don't want to silence this voice completely. I firmly subscribe to the Jacqueline Onassis school of parenting. She once famously said, "If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very much." I couldn't agree more.

Raising your children should be taken seriously because it is a serious thing. I will never stop reading and researching child development and parenting techniques. I will never stop trying to improve. I want to be the best possible mother I can be. My children deserve that.

However, striving for the best and striving for perfection are too different things. My perfectionism comes from a deep desire to control things. If I can control my environment, then I don't have to acknowledge the deep vulnerability at the heart of raising another human being. 

Erma Bombeck once described parenting as the decision to let your heart walk around outside your body. That is a truly scary prospect, but I can't change it or control it. I can perfectly portion my children's television consumption. I can feed them the most perfectly balanced meals ever created. I can read developmentally appropriate books while supervising mentally stimulating crafts ALL DAY LONG and it wouldn't matter. 

The journey I've chosen to take as a mother is fundamentally chaotic and beyond my control. That lesson came crashing down hard over my head earlier this year when I lost our baby. The voice in my head was loud and unapologetic.

I had ONE JOB - to carry that baby - and I had failed. I had failed as a mother. 

On a certain level, I knew how illogical I was being but the voice was crystal clear and truthfully it was only a matter of time before that voice got out of control. Since perfectionism is unattainable, I set up an unachievable standard for myself. And let me tell you, I was mean about it. I didn't realize how little self-compassion I had until I was describing these thoughts to my therapist.

"You're pretty hard on yourself, aren't you?" she replied.

I started crying, which is basically a big old fat "YEAH KIND OF."

I've also realized the harder I am on myself the harder I can be on those I love the most. After all, I'm beating the crap out of myself over here trying to be perfect so why can't you STEP IT UP!?!

But you know what? My perfectionism is NOT my husband's or my mother's or my best friend's problem. Plus, insider tip, being a judgmental nag isn't exactly the best way to motivate people... at least not in my experience. 

Beyond the adults in my life, what am I teaching my children? If the whole point is to create the best lives for my children possible, do I think they will do as I say or do as I do? It is heartbreaking to me to imagine the harsh voice in my head ever inhabiting my children's lives.

So, I'm trying to let go of the perfectionism and be kinder to myself. I recently discovered the work of Dr. Kristin Neff, who has made self-compassion her life's work. If you have a few minutes, I highly recommend her TedX Talk.

She also has a great website where you can take a self-compassion quiz. My score was NOT great but that's ok. Gotta be compassionate about it! Plus, I'm working on it. She also offers lots of great tips and advice on how to be more self-compassionate. 

One of her suggestions is to talk to yourself as you would a dear friend. I've thought a lot about that. Some of my dearest friends have suffered miscarriages or lost pregnancies. I would NEVER say to them the things I say to myself. Heck, I never even thought these things in relation to them. So, why the heck am I being so hard on myself?

For me, it all comes back to a toxic mix of perfectionism and a desire for control. I'm trying to let go of that. I've recently been reading about the Buddhist principle of detachment. It doesn't mean that you detach from action or desire. It means you detach from the results - from the things you truly can't control. 

That seems particularly relevant to parenting. 

In the end, all we can do is all we can do, then we have to let those little beings walk away ... even if they have our hearts in their hands. 

Do you struggle with perfectionism?

P.S. Grief and the choices we make it.

Due Date

It's odd carrying around two due dates in your head. One filled with sadness. One filled with hope.

The baby we lost in April was due today, September 2nd.

Due to particularly bad planning on my part, I'm also almost 16 weeks in this pregnancy, which is when the baby passed away.

In other words, I'm an emotional wreck.

Two due dates. Two pregnancies. Two babies. As hard as I try to keep them separate in my mind, I'm constantly comparing the two. Trying to find differences big and small between the two pregnancies to assure myself that this pregnancy will be different. I'm forever tallying symptoms and side effects in my mind trying to reach the conclusion that this baby will arrive safely in February.

But no symptom is going to erase one simple reality.

My baby died and I am still very very sad about that and I am terrified that something will happen to the baby I am currently carrying.

I know each pregnancy is as different as each child. I know that the chances of something going wrong again are slim. I know all these in my head.

But my heart is another story. In my heart I loved the baby I lost and I am still mourning. I still want to know why my baby died. I still relive that awful moment when the nurse told me my baby didn't have a heartbeat.

And in my heart I am falling deeper and deeper in love with the little one currently inside of me. My heart still so raw from before is being asked to expand again, to be vulnerable again, to love again.

It's. So. Hard.

I knew it would be hard but I had no idea how hard.  

I have an announcement.

I have a little announcement.

This little announcement is 12 weeks old and is about the size of a lime.

This little announcement is due at the end of February.

I’m pregnant and our entire family is so excited. If you subscribe to my weekly emails, you already knew this exciting news (I told y’all there was exclusive content!) but it felt like time to make it real and truly OFFICIAL.

I got pregnant two months after the end of my last pregnancy, which means I’ll have basically been pregnant from 2013 to 2015. GOOD TIMES! The good news is that this pregnancy feels completely different.

I remember sitting at the end of my bed and figuring up my due date. February. It sounded like the most gorgeous word in the English language. I wasn’t filled with dread or anxiety. I just felt overwhelming joy.

Now, that doesn’t mean the first trimester has been a walk in the park. I’ve been tired. I’ve been nauseous. However, I always assumed being newly pregnant during the middle of summer would be terrible, but not so much!

You see I suffer from a peculiar combination of conditions during my first trimester of pregnancy. Despite the fact that my temperature is high, I get cold INSANELY easy. I don’t know if it’s like having a constant fever or what but my air conditioning is set on 75 degrees and I can still get chilly. Weirdly, even though I’m cold, I don’t want ANYTHING warm to eat. No hot coffee or my afternoon tea. No soups or casseroles. I like my food and drinks nice and cold. Go figure.

As you can imagine, this combination made me completely and totally miserable during the last pregnancy. I was stuck in the middle of the Polar Vortex and could do nothing at all to warm myself up. Plus, I was sick all the damn time.

SO, being cold and nauseous during the season of steamy hot days and frozen drink has been dang near pleasant.

Of course, my physical condition is only part of the equation.

I was feeling so good when I got pregnant. Two months of intense emotional work had left me feeling like the loss of our baby was something that happened TO me – not something that was currently happening. I mistakenly assumed I would continue to feel like that.

The first couple of weeks were fine. I really wasn’t worried about miscarriage. I felt healthy and strong. I felt good about this baby. However, the closer I’ve gotten to 16 weeks, the point in the pregnancy when our last baby passed away, the harder it has gotten.

I still feel so good about this baby. I truly don’t worry endlessly about something terrible happening. It’s just I feel like I’m being forced to relive last time. Every growth milestone or every doctor’s visit where I hear a strong heartbeat is just a sad reminder of last time.

At my last visit, the nurse had trouble picking up the baby’s heartbeat with the Doppler. I didn’t panic. I knew the baby was fine. The doctor came in with a portable ultrasound and showed me my beautiful baby and its little heartbeat. Of course, my beautiful baby was also asleep and very, very still.

I could see the heartbeat. I knew the baby was ok. And yet I was back in another room, watching another screen, with another baby who was very, very still and not ok.

I wish my little one had been doing backflips but I supposed it was a good reminder that this little one doesn’t know and doesn’t care about last time. It is decidedly not his or her problem or burden to bear.

And yet I don’t know how to detach my sadness over my last experience from this one.

I can’t forget. I can’t wrap up my grief in nice little package and pack it away.

I keep thinking of the Charles Valiant quote, “Joy is grief inside out.”

I feel inside out right now. There is so much sadness made stronger by joy and joy made stronger by sadness going on within me.

It’s hard. It’s intense. It’s beautiful.

How I'm Coping

I once heard a man interviewed on NPR. This man’s entire family had been killed in a raid on his village. He was telling the reporter that for many years he drank heavily in an attempt to cope with the trauma. Then he said, “I thought I could drown all my sorrows. But then I figure out that my sorrows could swim.”

That quote has never left me. The image of ever-present sorrow was a powerful one to me. Sorrow and grief are something I became familiar with at a young age and the impact of that experience is something I’m still trying to understand.

If I’m being honest, the biggest impact is that I spend a lot of time being afraid. I’m afraid someone I love will die in a sudden and tragic way. I’m afraid I will die and leave my children alone.

When I became pregnant this last time, my fears found a fertile ground in which to grow. I feared I was being greedy. I had two beautiful children, who was I to roll the dice one more time? I feared I would miscarry early on. I feared something would go wrong during the birth. I feared the baby would have major (or even fatal) health problem.

I let those fears consume my every thought until the pregnancy became a source of stress, instead of joy.

Then, my irrational fears became reality.

Suddenly, sorrow was not a future to fear. Suddenly, I was in the water with my sorrows.

At first, I did what you do. You breathe. You go on. You let your brain remind you in a hundred little ways that you live in a different world now – a world where pregnancies go on, just not yours.

Then, I started doing the things I know to do. I do the things I know work for me. I wake up every morning and run. I meditate. I get in bed every night and write in my gratitude journal and say this prayer.

Sometimes these things work. Sometimes they don’t. I have to constantly remind myself that while my emotions are relevant, they are not reality. It helps that when I feel shame or sadness, I also hear all of your voices reminding me that my sadness is not permanent, that the baby’s death wasn’t my fault, that the future holds more hope than fear.

I think for so long I feared sorrow because I feared drowning.

But, here’s what I’ve learned.

Sorrow can swim.

But so can I.