You're not going to believe it

Funny, reading that last post.

Two weeks after uploading that inspired little essay, I was put on modified bed rest. Fourteen weeks later my darling daughter Eggberta (don't worry, not her real name) was born via another emergency/scary c-section. How scary? They nicked my bladder during the surgery. I had to wear a catheter for a week while it healed.

The bed rest?  Sucked as much as you might imagine.

And here we find ourselves at the end of January. Little Eggberta will be 6 months old next week. Man. My mother was right: time speeds up as you age.

So yeah I lept. Lept and fell. Flat on my face.

Of course, there are a million stories lurking behind all that.  So many thing to tell, in fact, that I've been hesitant to even start. Plus, there's the full on catastrophe of trying to raise two kids so close in age in New York. Which also sucks as much as you might imagine. Especially in Winter. (For the record: snow + strollers do not mix.)

But I'm ready now. Ready to get back to blogging and writing and art-viewing whatever else it was I did before I stopped being just MinervaJane and became MinervaMommyJane.

So stay tuned. I have a lot to say.

And So I Leapt

I’ve spent a lot of my life being afraid. Afraid of what you may ask? Well, everything. Anything. How I appeared to others. Whether or not the various projects I was working on would fail or not. My writing career. My love life. My sometimes troubled sometimes close relationship with my parents. My depressions. My anxieties. My regrets.

Yada. Yada. Yada.

All of this amorphous fear had one clear result: I was a ruminator, a hesitator. I spent hours and days and years contemplating a move before I made it. It was almost as if I had to run down every possible What if… scenario in my mind before I acted just so I’d know beforehand what I’d do in any given set of circumstances.

Example? I met Ebronis when I was 24, moved in with him when I was 25. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that 50 or 60 years later we’d be relaxing by some lakeside cabin, anticipating the arrival of beloved grandkids. And yet we didn’t marry for another 6 years. Had our first child 11 years out. And even then, I worried: was I doing the right thing? Was I rushing things?

Yeah. I was that kind of person.

But on Thanksgiving 2008 everything changed. MAS entered my life in a lightning bolt of fear and pain and taught me that no matter how intricate your plans, no matter how careful your preparations, life will take you on paths you never even thought to anticipate. Those paths may indeed be frightening, just as I had always thought. But what I didn’t know was that those frightening paths, those unexpected detours into tragedy, could also change you in startling and beautiful ways. That hardship could actually make you a better person, not just sadder and more scarred.

So here I am today. Not anything like the Minerva Jane of before. I look like her. Sometimes I even act like her. But inside? She’s gone. Someone else—someone stronger, someone fearless--lives here now.

All of this is to say that when MAS hit the 12-month mark Ebronis and I talked about trying for a second baby. We both wanted a large family and felt a sibling was the greatest gift we could give to our son. (Our own families are sparse and disappointing in so many ways.) 

Besides, I was about to turn 37. It had taken us a year to conceive the first time.

Time, after all, waits for no woman.

So, despite the depression MAS’s birthday had brought on with its memories of the NICU and emergency C-sections and NEC, we stopped using birth control. 

Maybe a year, we said to each other. At least 6 months. And if it doesn’t happen, that’s fine too. We have MAS. And despite his rocky beginning, that baby is wonderfully, miraculously—normal.

But pregnancy after a preemie? A 28-week preemie? Weren’t we being irresponsible? Weren’t we taking a grave risk you may ask? (I asked myself that, after all, so why shouldn’t you?)

My answer was no. There wasn’t anything wrong with me—like an incompetent cervix or a clotting disorder—that would increase the risk the second time around. I’d had a urinary tract infection and had been dehydrated. A fluke. A random brush with potential tragedy. Besides, if it happened again I’d know what to do. I’d be able to handle it—even better than I had the first time. A second baby, a sibling for MAS, would be worth doing it all again. Despite everything.

Still. This time I’d drink water nonstop and take cranberry extract and see a high risk doc. I’d get weekly p17 shots. I’d take it easy.

But I wasn’t afraid. I mean at all.

Of course, if you know me in real time, or have any sense of how stories like this always end, you know this: four weeks later we were pregnant. Not a couple of months or a year. 28 fucking days.

You’d think I’d be nervous. Especially now, as we close in on week 20. Fast approaching the dreaded 28 weeks when last time everything went awry.

But no. Nothing. No fear. No anxiety. Nothing. If anything, I’m more relaxed than I was the first time around. More confident.

Strange how life works. How beautifully strange.

Leap

 

Yummy tricycle.

True. I’ve been quiet.

But not still.

MAS turned 1 the day after Thanksgiving. Only now, looking back on the last month and a half, can I see that that event sent me into a sort of tailspin. All those memories! Most of them unsettling. Just a patchwork of images, really, all laden with guilt, anger, fear, anxiety. And then I’d look up from whatever reverie I’d sunk into to see my amazing son, giggling and laughing and playing. Against all odds so normal I couldn’t help but feel stunned by it.

He’d moved past his premature beginning. But me? I was still stuck. Stuck in a loop of self-blame and regret.

So. That was my holiday season. Very merry indeed.

I finally came to about a week ago, after New Year’s. The day I turned 37.

Again, I started making my daily rounds in the blogosphere. All the old lives I used to inhale. And came across this concept on Shmoopy’s space.

No resolution, but a word.

I too abandoned Resolutions years ago. I just got tired of making promises to myself that I could never follow through with.

But a word? A guiding principle to guide me through the year?

That I can get on board with.

So. My word this year is Leap. I even bought one of Stacie D’s pendants to wear around my neck so I can remind myself of it daily.

Wanna know more about choosing a Word of The Year for yourself, visit Christine Kane's site.
 

At some point  I’ll talk about why I chose that word, what intentions it conjures for me, the ways in which I hope to embody Leap in the coming months, and how it relates to a new blogging project I'm embarking on sometime in late Spring.

Another Thing Mamahood Taught Me

After 36 years, 9 months, 20 days and 34 minutes on this planet, being a mother finally taught me the secret to peaceful living: proper planning & organization!

My friend Mark would be proud, I think.

Carroll Gardens In Fall

This morning, on the walk back to my apartment after working for some hours at the local cafe I caught myself thinking: my god I love my life... After so much angst--a moody adolescence; lost & confused early 20s and the difficult road to mamahood--everything in my life just seems to be falling into place.

If this is how my 30s feel, I can't wait to see what my 40s bring.

    My walk home... 

    And the munchkin who awaited me...

What Do All Of These Have in Common?

Calypso
Kiewit Stinks
lovedoves
Nacho
Sharmaville Network
bxk

Usernames of all the wifi connections in my building!

I have to admit I'm intrigued by Kiewit Stinks. Who is this kiewit--the twentysomething hipster who lives on the first floor or the newborn daughter of the nice editor husband and wife team across the hall? And why does he/she smell so bad?

How we roll (to music class)

Right now I'm loving:

the bibbity;

anything by gapbaby;

happy baby's grrreat greens;

and the beautiful photos over at Progressive Pioneer.

MAS on Smith Street. En route to Music For Aardvarks.