Tag Archives: motherhood

WHERE IS MY GLITTER?: The Things We Block Out

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It started with conception. Jake and I found out that IVF was our only realistic hope for a family one month before the Covid-19 lockdowns. What followed was a period of time that I largely blocked out. Only with deliberate effort can I recall what it felt like to wake up each morning, every day exactly the same, and picture a life without a family. My hobbies felt meaningless. My favorite shows brought me to tears with even a tertiary motherhood plot. I could take solace in no one but Jake, for the sake of social distancing. I went days at a time without sleeping or eating. It was one of the hardest times in my life… and pursuing IVF under the threat of a canceled cycle wasn’t any easier. I previously wrote about how it felt revisiting the fertility clinic for my frozen embryo transfer. I sat in the lobby, looking at photos of my babies as I fought off wartime-style flashbacks of an election day where Jake waited in the car while I underwent another solo egg retrieval, woke up alone and in pain, and finally broke down over the idea that I might never be a mom. So it goes that I became familiar with The Things We Block Out before I was even a mother. While the moments have certainly become less dramatic since my girls’ conception, I’ve realized that this selective amnesia is a staple of sorts among parents, even a survival tactic, because if we remembered everything, there would be far fewer siblings. For example…

The Fourth Trimester and The Newborn Phase

My best recollection of the newborn phase is of sitting on the couch or in the chair, while snuggling a tiny baby on my chest. Tiny they were, with Violet weighing 4 lbs 15 oz and Scarlett weighing 5 lbs 3 oz. Even Thomas, born at a scheduled 37 weeks only weighed 6 lbs 3 oz. When the girls were newborns, I’d lay on the sofa with both of them on my chest or trade back and forth with Jake. When it was just Thomas, I’d wear a robe and let him lay on my chest to skin to skin while Jake entertained the girls, with Christmas music playing in the background. It’s as undeniably sweet a memory as it is an edited one.

If I dig a little deeper into my recollection of the fourth trimester, I was an absolute wreck with the girls; terrified I wouldn’t live to see them grow up after their utterly horrifying delivery by emergency C-section at 35 weeks. Jake and I’d planned on maintaining a two-income household, not yet realizing how very much it sucked to do so. I cried every day, feeling like I didn’t see my babies at all, despite all I’d gone through to get them. When Thomas was born, I’d stay up and stare at him, consumed with anxiety, desperate to make sure he was breathing. Everything Jake said was wrong, though only half his fault. A week in, I burst into tears when he joked that our family Instagram seemed to be all photos of Thomas, after I’d spent months worrying that the girls would feel replaced. Idiot. Still, I loathed being so oversensitive and feeding a newborn every three hours did not make it any easier. I worried about everything from whether or not the girls were getting enough attention to Thomas’s weight. The surface memory might be sweet, but the actuality was indeed less so.

Illnesses

For the two months the girls attended daycare, it seemed they spent the majority of their time at home with various illnesses. Since then, however, I’ve been blessed to be able to report that all of my children have been relatively healthy. Regardless, illnesses come with the territory, more so for a mother who has never known life with just one baby. There was that first Christmas, when Jake and I were pretty sure we all had Covid-19, but tests were unavailable. We rode it out watching New Year’s episodes of our favorite shows, as our six-month-old twins fussed and cried. There were the twin teething days full of tears, fevers, and infant Tylenol. It seemed every time one baby finally cut a tooth, the other found she was getting a new one, too. There was the epic diaper rash that saw me, six months pregnant and unable to hold a one-year-old for too long, laying on the hardwood floor while singing and holding a naked and screeching baby. That one prepared me for the doctor’s visit two months later, when I lay on the table holding a sick Violet, my back sore from pregnancy and my desperately clingy daughter.

Folks, since the early days, I’ve championed the glory of twins. I love 99% of being a twin mom. My girls have always had someone to entertain them, to play with them, to comfort them, to keep them company and it hasn’t always had to be me. These days, I can do laundry while Violet and Scarlet play in the living room. If they don’t want to sleep during naptime, they can babble and put on performances for each other. Reports from moms of singletons have me feeling as though I’m not spread nearly as thin with twins. It’s not just for my benefit, though. My girls (and now by extension, Thomas) are never bored. They adore each other and have so much fun. It’s a beautiful thing to see their relationship grow… until they’re sick. Even if I’m lucky enough to have only one child sick at a time, the other is still going to start fussing just as the first is feeling better. If it hits them simultaneously, I cannot peel them off of me. Reminding them that I have to take care of Brother too, does not seem to help… though it’s still the case. While my children are blessedly healthy, just last week, Thomas showed signs of his first real cold, followed by the twins, who were both diagnosed with strep. Ironically, Thomas was spared simply for the fact that he doesn’t share their sippy cups or food, but I still had three sick babies in my house all week… and I’ve already blocked it out.

The Injuries

When I was pregnant with twin girls, all anyone could talk about was how much glitter would be in my life. Our house was going to look like the set of The Labyrinth just from the play dresses alone. I thought ‘Awesome! I love glitter!’ Then, I gave birth to two little bear cubs.

For about 10 days there, following an incorrect guess from my OB, I was certain I was having two boys. Though I felt horribly ungrateful for my disappointment, I just kept thinking of all the stories Jake told about growing up with his brother… the childhood wrestling matches, the revenge pranks, the wrecked pickups, the binge drinking… just the idea of all that comprising the entirety of my parenting experience was exhausting. I wanted a girl to raise and mentor the way my mom wanted to do with me but couldn’t manage… someone to strut around the house in plastic heels, sit on the bathtub to watch me do my makeup, let me paint her toenails… and so far, I’ve gotten all that doubled… along with so much rough housing doubled.

Despite the claims I hear from Boy Moms, I cannot imagine my life would involve any more injuries if I had had two boys. Why is everything they come up with so dangerous? Every week, my girls create a new game bound to end in bandages and tears. Violet will hardly go down the slide on her bottom, opting to for standing, sideways, or backward and upside down. When Scarlett joins in, she stands at the bottom of the slide so Violet can try to knock her over with her feet. When they’re bored of that, one of them lays on the couch while the other yanks her off by her feet as hard as she can. Even bath time is fraught with danger, because it is apparently the bees knees to purposely slip from a standing position in the tub and go flying into your sister like a rogue bobsled. This week, I told Scarlett not to rough house on the sofa, just 30 seconds before I heard screaming from the living room. The next hour consisted of singing, wiping away blood, calling Jake to tell me if X-rays were needed, and Googling how to tell if a toddler has a broken nose. As the bruise is fading, I’m glad I took photos, because it’s just one more blood-filled day I’ve already begun to forget as I repeatedly wonder where is my glitter, y’all?!?!

Potty Training

I fed newborn twins every three hours while recovering from a heart condition, pneumonia, and sepsis. I had multiple echocardiograms in my fourth trimester as a first time mom. I was 13 weeks pregnant on my twins’ first birthday, barely able to get out of bed before 9:00 a.m. as they were becoming more and more active. I was sick every single morning of my pregnancy with Thomas until delivery, yet still wrangled twin toddlers in the doctor’s office while massively pregnant. I recovered from a C-section with clingy 17-month-olds and their newborn brother, only to turn around a few months later and take on a frozen embryo transfer (FET) while managing all three… and none of that pushed me to the brink like potty training twins.

I don’t know what it is about potty training, but each time I tried to sit the girls down in the beginning, they would protest or get bored; I would hear Thomas crying from the other room, feel pulled in two directions, and just break down. Perhaps I’m just used to quick success, over-achiever that I am. Maybe I’m not accustomed to having goals that depend on the willingness of stubborn and not especially communicative toddlers. Surely, the hormones I began taking in June for the FET frayed my nerves and made me more emotional. Whatever the reason, just the idea of potty training two children completely overwhelmed me from the very beginning. This was something in which I had zero experience. I didn’t have a mom to consult. I couldn’t research my way to potty trained children… and it broke me.

Folks, I love my husband. He’s a good man. He is not, however, a perfect one. He can be bossy, patronizing, and dismissive. His assertiveness can cross the line into bullying. He says the wrong thing most of the time… but my stars has he come through on the feat that is potty training twins. Starting at 22 months, Jake has spent four or five intermittent weekends encouraging the girls to sit on their potties with stickers and M&M Minis. The first weekend, Violet was all for it. Scarlet was utterly traumatized by the idea. I was simply too post-partum to take on the task, emotionally. The next few weekends took place over the following months and saw Violet just as eager, but Scarlet just not ready. Though each time, it fell to me to intervene and declare that we’d need to try another time, Jake did all the heavy lifting until that point. Now, here we are, Violet and Scarlet not quite two and a half. We’re finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and I have to record somewhere that it has all been due to Jake… because I am already beginning to block it out.

Another Birthday and Another Blogiversary

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You know that feeling, when you meet someone who shares the same birthday as you? It feels like the sweetest little coincidence, assuming it’s someone you like. Well, a friend just sent me a graphic listing the most common birthdays in the U.S. and mine is number one. I fact-checked her, of course, so feel free to fact check me, but I’m torn between thinking this is a special little detail and thinking it’s the very opposite. The defining feature of something being “special” is, naturally, scarcity and we September 9thers apparently have the least of that in the U.S. So is the burden of the over-thinker.

Eleven years ago, on my 25th birthday, I started this blog. Last year marked 10 years of writing, fairly consistently, about grad school, my dating life, my career, married life, being a homeowner, undergoing infertility, and finally being a stay-at-home mom. Only during 2020 did I take an extended break, while I dealt with the heartache of pandemic infertility. Even then, I told my tale on a linked page at Belle of Infertility. I wanted to record my story and feelings, for myself and anyone else suffering, but I didn’t want to turn my beloved blog into a depressing ode to infertility.

It’s been more than ten years. That’s longer than I spent in college, longer than I worked in my library system, longer than I’ve known Jake. I’ve gone from working two jobs and wondering when my life would start, to the #girlboss and teen librarian, to Just Wife and Mama. Blogging may not be as in fashion as it once was, but this is the closest I’ll ever have to time travel, as I revisit different versions of myself and my world. It’s been a wonderful adventure, growing up and keeping track of the funny, sad, frustrating, infuriating moments. I look back over the last 11 years and I see that it was all worth it: the grad school drama, the financial struggles, the missed job opportunities, the bad dates, the toxic friendships, the stress of moving to a new city, of buying a home, the devastation that is infertility, the heartbreak of losing my mother, the fear of nearly dying in childbirth, and the confliction of leaving my career. Every tearful prayer, every moment of wondering what would be, every scream of rage brought me here… and here is really good.

As I start a new year, at 36, I look forward to a thousand more adventures with my husband and our hard-won babies. I’m certain the next year will bring even greater chaos, but I’m optimistic it will also see the completion of our family. This year, we hope to add one more, our fourth and final, rounding off the stage of life that is growing our family and moving into the stage that is raising it. We aim to put infertility behind us once and for all, pull ourselves out of the debt it’s inevitably led to, and enjoy our young family with a little less stress. We won’t be traveling the world or enjoying expensive luxuries, but all the same, on my 36th birthday, I’d say I am very much living my dream.

“You’ll see when you have kids” – a Message to the Patronized Future Parents

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“You’ll see when you have kids.” Is there any more hated sentence for those without children who want them? What a way to strip any positivity or hope from the vocation of parenthood. You’re not allowed to have ideas or goals, without presenting some form of threat or judgement toward those who’ve failed or simply have other priorities. Out of pure arrogance and defensiveness, parents paint you as idealistic and naïve, regardless of your reasoning when you try to make literally any plan or prediction about your own eventual parenting. I guess, in a way, that never really changes. You’ll see when you have kids.

I won’t say I was right about everything I planned as a future parent. We didn’t really use two bassinets. None of my kids took pacifiers. We certainly haven’t managed early potty training. Most notably, I’ve done a complete 180 in regards to being a stay-at-home mom. Once the determined career woman, I spend my days chasing toddlers, changing diapers, incessantly sweeping, and cleverly convincing my twin two-year-olds that an “adventure” consists of a Panera run and a trip to Sam’s Club. It’s right for us, but it’s certainly a far cry from the image I had of daycare pickups in my #bosslady attire. So, despite my hesitancy to vocalize any strong declarations of my future parenting goals, I’m still here, eating a little bit of crow… but it’s a lot less than everyone claimed. In fact, in a lot of ways, I was right. Such as…

Schedules

One of the number one ways I surprised myself as a new mom was by not obsessively researching parenting strategies in preparation. I perused some lists of what to buy/what not to buy, watched some instructional swaddling videos on YouTube, and read some articles on sleep training and other parenting tips, but I didn’t actually read any books on the subject. As with childbirth, I felt there was little I could anticipate until the moment actually arrived. However, the one tidbit I did take to heart was the importance of keeping a schedule.

While I came across a fair amount of advice discouraging new moms from stressing about schedules, every single article or video I found that was specifically directed at multiples moms clarified this to be a vital component of twin parenting. The gist seemed to be, if you’re having a singleton, go with the flow, sleep when the baby sleeps, let the chores pile up, and it’ll be fine. If you’re having twins or more, though, you need to figure out how to schedule your bathroom breaks. No matter how I stressed this qualifier, anyone who heard my plans to stick to a schedule laughed. “You’ll see when you’re a parent.” Well, I’m typing this during naptime on a fairly typical day that goes a little something like this:

6:30 – solo walk before everyone gets up
7:30 – get the kids up and feed everyone breakfast
8:00 – put the girls in their play yard for independent play time, while I do chores
9:00 – family walk when it’s not too hot/play time when it’s over 80 degrees
10:15 – pick up toys and have a snack
10:30 – naptime
12:00 – lunch time followed by any necessary errands or play time
2:45 – pick up toys and have a snack
3:00 – naptime
5:00 – Jake gets home and naptime ends
6:30 – dinner time
6:45 – bath time every other night
7:30 – bed time

So yes, if a schedule is important to you… if you feel it will make your life easier, not harder… go for it. It’s entirely doable and everyone who says otherwise can go kick rocks.

Cleaning and Organization

My mother was a borderline hoarder. On any given day, my childhood home was covered in clutter and trash. It was unsanitary, stressful, and embarrassing. As an adult, I find peace in having a clean and organized home, to the extent that I can’t relax among mess. Not only was I convinced that I would be a better mom with a clean and organized home, I refused to raise my children any other way. When I was pregnant with the girls, I was intent on creating a sustainable system of organization. I had a place in the kitchen for the bottles, the pacifiers, the bibs, and the baby dishes. I put drawer dividers in the dresser and rolled their tiny clothes in pairs, instead of folding them, so it was easy to find the matching outfits for each baby. I used my Cricut to create cute labels for storage baskets I put in alphabetical order to store diapers, socks, and swaddles. When I showed pictures to my aunts, they openly laughed. “Yeah, that’ll last!” Well, it’s been more than two years and not only are my systems going strong, I’ve created entirely new ones in addition. They make my life easier, Jake’s life easier, and even my girls’ lives easier, when they know where everything is and where everything goes.

Screentime

Every parent has their thing, that one thing that’s really important to them. Perhaps they didn’t bring it up before they had kids, because they wanted to avoid the condescending remarks, but it’s always been at the back of their minds. This is the thing they think of in absolutes like never, always, only. For me, it was screentime.

When I was a kid, I watched TV constantly. I could tell you what would be on my TV every half hour of the day when I was home. If I was doing homework, reading, working on some craft, the TV was my constant companion. Turning it off was unfathomable. It was deeply unhealthy. Not until age 22 did I finally realize how much time and energy I was wasting on television that I didn’t even enjoy. That was the year I turned off the TV, only powering it back up when I had something specific to watch. I read, did homework, worked out. It was life changing. I vowed that my children would never be that addicted to screentime. They wouldn’t watch any television before age two and even then, it would be in small doses. They would play outside, do puzzles, pretend, anything but stare at a screen… and I was right.

My girls are two now and occasionally enjoy an episode of Bluey or Rugrats, but only a few times a week. I’ve played music on Pandora since they were born, but no shows. After they hit 18 months, every so often, I would play a few Disney sing-alongs on YouTube, but both girls mostly ignored the screen. In general, I’ve stuck to my guns on this issue. My kids don’t watch much TV. When I do put something on, they quickly lose interest in favor of other forms of play. Because I have twins who can entertain each other, I have literally never given either of them my phone for even a moment. In fact, they know better than to even touch it, because phones now cost a thousand dollars. They don’t have tablets and when they do, I’ll limit their usage to learning apps on rare occasion. They’ll never have a TV in their room. Some people don’t worry much about screentime. That’s fair. You can’t care about all the things. I care about this one, though, and I have not wavered.

Food

Today’s parents have some intense opinions about what their kids eat, how much, when, where, and any and all feelings involved. I’m sure this is because Millennials grew up in a diet heavy culture, but damn they seem to take it just as far in the opposite direction. Personally, I’ve never felt that strongly about when my children have their first taste of sugar, whether or not they eat processed foods, or if they have McDonald’s bought by someone else. On the contrary, Jake and I have decided that our approach to avoiding food issues will be to refuse to let mealtimes become a huge source of drama. We had a few ideas of how to accomplish that.

Growing up, my parents talked incessantly about their weight and dieting… usually on the way to get fast food. I was three the first time I worried I was fat. I will not let that happen to my children, so long before Jake and I started planning for a family, we agreed that we wouldn’t eat out often with kids. When we shared this with family, we were informed that it was just too hard to cook and eat at home nightly. Picking up fast food just saved time. We would see when we had kids. Well, we’re three kids deep and the only time we eat out is when I find a coupon during naptime. This is, in part, because getting fast food is not only expensive, but it is decidedly not easier to sit in a drive-through for twenty minutes during the dinner rush, only to go home and eat cold, overpriced, fried food. So we don’t… and life is simpler. Our kids don’t think beef is soaked in French fry grease. They won’t grow accustomed to choosing every item in every meal. They won’t think it’s normal to spend $25 on dinner every night.

In addition to our insistence that we wouldn’t eat out on a regular basis, there was one more mealtime trend we abhorred that seemed quite popular among parents. We simply would not beg our children to eat. This isn’t just painfully tedious to witness when our family members do it. We’re also very fortunate to live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, to have good, relatively healthy food to eat during every meal and snack time. Forget “starving kids in China.” We surely have starving kids living within a few miles of us. There’s not a lot I can do about that at present, but I can attempt to raise children who are grateful for their own many blessings. It was with this sentiment that Jake and I vowed we wouldn’t cajole “just one more bite” out of our kids. We would give them food that tastes good and nourishes their bodies and they could eat it or not. I don’t actually think we shared this aspiration with anyone else, simply because we didn’t want to hear about how wrong we would ultimately be as we bribed our children to eat broccoli. Maybe one day our children will become so very picky that we have no choice, but right now our meal motto is indeed “eat it or don’t.” Bonus: Our kids also only eat at the table and don’t necessarily expect bites of everything they ever see us eat.

Privacy

Once upon a time, I confidently declared that I would bathe alone, dress alone, and poop alone. I am a bodily private person. I don’t particularly like to discuss bodily issues with anyone, be they Jake or my doctor. In fact, this was one of the worst parts of my traumatizing hospital stay when the girls were born. It was utterly dehumanizing to have someone give me sponge baths, mess with my catheter, and repeatedly ask about my bowel movements. I even hated that Jake had to help me shower, when I finally got to labor and delivery.

Privacy is just all-important to me. Before children, when I saw funny little Instagram videos and memes about how mothers lose all bodily autonomy, I was adamant that that would not be the case for me. Not only did I find this vital to my own mental health and well-being, I found it confusing to tell children that they deserve privacy, but Mom doesn’t. Why do we constantly insist that no one gets to see or touch a child’s bathing suit parts, but they can play trucks on Mama’s knees while she poops? It just seems contradictory to give children a message about respecting their space and body, while allowing them to disrespect our own. Sure, some women don’t care. Excellent. They can enjoy a nice Group Poop. I’m not one of them, though. We have doors. We have baby gates. We use them. I am a mom who bathes alone, dresses alone, and poops alone. Jake does the same.

Bedtime and Sleeping Arrangements

I think one of my most accepted inevitabilities of parenting, the one thing I just knew Jake and I wouldn’t be able to avoid, was bedtime and sleeping drama. When we found out we were pregnant with twins, a part of me just gave up any hope of sleeping for the next five years. Still, I did try. This was the one subject I thoroughly researched. I studied different sleep training philosophies, read articles on how they impacted children, and even bought a book specifically dedicated to getting twins to sleep. I didn’t read beyond the first few chapters, but I bought it… secondhand. The trouble was, regardless of how much research I did, the methods and advice all seemed quite similar. I knew I couldn’t intervene every time a baby cried or I’d never get any sleep myself, but I also knew I couldn’t just let my babies cry for hours.

Honestly, sleep arrangements were where the twin schedule came in so handy. My girls were always on such a strict schedule, that sleep happened somewhat organically. If a baby cried, we gave it a few minutes, soothed her for a bit, put her back down and left. Rinse and repeat. Setting a naptime routine when I quit my job was actually more difficult than creating a nighttime one. By three months, our girls slept through the night, occasionally waking briefly in the early morning hours… and they have always done so in their own beds. That’s right. One of the biggest No Nevers for Jake was children sleeping in our bed. I had something of a wait-and-see attitude on this one, but where I was resolved to remain organized, Jake was determined to maintain a childfree bed. So far, we have and while I’m willing to say we’ll see how that holds, I think this might be another area where we benefit from having twins. Our girls are never actually alone. When they’re old enough to crawl out of their own beds, it’s more than likely they’ll simply crawl into each other’s. I have no problem with that. So, for now at least, we get plenty of chance to sleep… among other things.

So there you have it, new and eventual parents. Feel empowered. Go forth and make your plans. If they’re important enough to you, you can see them through. You’ll see when you have kids.

Crying in My Car

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I’ve never done a frozen embryo transfer, or FET. It’s been almost exactly three years since we started the journey to our family on July 18th, 2020, with what would be our first IVF cycle. An utter failure, we had no embryos to freeze and immediately put down a $1,000 deposit to start the next cycle, as soon as possible. That one resulted in our twin girls, Violet and Scarlett, along with six frozen embryos. We’d planned to do an FET the summer of 2022, despite my fears and hesitancy. Thomas surprised us just in time, though, as the baby we were told we couldn’t conceive. So, I am blessedly the mother of three and have never undergone an FET.

I keep telling myself this is easier than pandemic IVF. There’s no need for theatrics and melodrama. Even if this doesn’t work, if it never works and just isn’t meant to be, we have three children. Two girls and a boy is an infertile couple’s literal dream. Anything less than relentless gratitude is selfish and overdramatic. That’s what I tell myself. It hasn’t really set in, though.

I suppose this is easier, but my stars did I fail to prepare myself for how far that would still land me from easy. The grating sound of every person on HGTV ever as I sit in the waiting room, the ultrasounds, the blood draws, the small crowd looking at my vagina, all have me near my breaking point. The expense as I put our family’s financial well-being on the line, knowing I might disappoint everyone and destroy our embryo, our baby… well, that has me crying in my car over a fresh bag of prescriptions, thinking how it isn’t supposed to be this way. I’m not supposed to be building my family through procedures and medications. I’m supposed to enjoy being with my husband for a few unprotected months and receive wonderful news in my own bathroom for the cost of a one dollar pregnancy test. I’m not supposed to be going through this alone again.

I have to remind myself why I’m alone. It’s not election day 2020, mid-pandemic, and I am not having another egg retrieval while Jake waits in the car, unable to join his wife in surgery because of Covid-19. I’m alone because he’s at home with our three children, who I refuse to bring into a fertility clinic. They were created out of a different kind of love, as a different kind of miracle, but that’s just how our family was meant to be built. It’s not fair that this is how we have to do it, but we’re so lucky it’s an option available to us. We’re so lucky to have gotten Thomas without the cost and drama. They are all so very worth it.

Still, I’m going to allow myself a few more minutes to finish crying in my car.

Just One More: I Really Don’t Want to Do This

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When I was little, my parents lived in a trailer on five acres, next to the five acres owned by my Gramma and Grandpa, who had built a nice brick home. With few neighbor kids and first responder parents, my brother Beau and I were often left to our own devices, unless we were lucky enough to spend the day with Gramma. Though I remember playing well with my brother when we were little, we fought more and more as time passed. The only boy among his three sisters, my dad seemed to accept the dynamic as antagonistic. An adopted only child, my mother had no basis for sibling relationships at all and followed his lead. Without intervention, by the time our parents bought my grandparents’ house, my brother and I had a much more caustic relationship than was normal. With Gramma across town and our mom and dad always fighting in the garage, life became very lonely for eight-year-old Belle and eleven-year-old Beau.

My mother ultimately bought a modest house in a subdivision and my dad moved into a rental on the other side of town when I was 11. My mother took me. My father took Beau. There was no custody agreement. Sometimes my brother and I saw each other, but we were essentially only children from that point forward. Beau briefly lived with us a couple of times, my mother doting on him in the hopes that he’d stay, but he never did for long. My teenage resentment toward him grew, as it became clear that both of my parents wanted custody of Beau, while neither seemed to want custody of me. I was an angry, dramatic teenager, but I made good grades and mostly stayed out of trouble. Beau smoked pot, drank, even totaled my mother’s Saturn and nearly paralyzed himself at 16. He certainly wasn’t the easier child, so it hurt all the more that he still seemed to be the favored one. At 19, Beau married his high school girlfriend in a desperate attempt to create his own happy family, just as I did three years later. His results were different, though I don’t know that I’d call them successful.

Today, Beau and I see each other at Christmas. It’s tense. It’s awkward. It makes my Gramma happy, so it’s worth it. He did not call when the girls were born, despite my being in the ICU and nearly dying. He didn’t even meet my babies until that Christmas, when they were six months old. Today, Beau has seen Violet and Scarlett less than ten times in their lives and Thomas only once. He recently moved to Texas and neither told me nor visited before he left. When my Gramma dies, I will likely never see my brother again, despite my effort to keep that door open with the occasional text or photo of my children, to which he almost never responds. In many ways, Beau has the worst attributes of both of our parents. He’s idealistic, easily manipulated, selfish, self-absorbed, overdramatic, bitter, paranoid, disloyal, and not particularly intelligent. I have no ill-will toward him, but he is who he is and hoping he’ll be something different hasn’t served me well. Still, were he to call right now, I’d happily talk to him for hours… because he’s my brother.

When I was growing up, my mother and I watched 7th Heaven all the time. A divorced, single mother, my mom imagined a life married to a doting minister, wrangling her seven adoring children. I dreamt of being one of the popular Camden kids, constantly trying and failing to get something by my overly involved parents. In reality, my mother and father couldn’t be in the same room and no one had asked to see my report cards since the 7th grade. My sophomore year, my mother began working evening shifts, which provided me with a reprieve from her intermittent physical abuse… but also meant we shared fewer nights when we’d eat junk food, watch terrible horror movies, and talk about boys. She’d assured I had no relationship with my father years earlier. My brother was gone, his allegiance decidedly with his teenaged fiancé’s family. So, most nights, it was just me; and I longed for a big, loud, inescapable family… so much so that I saw Cheaper By the Dozen in theaters three times, twice in secret. What I wouldn’t have given to be a Camden or a Baker, constantly fighting with someone over the bathroom, the phone, or a general lack of privacy, as long as it meant having someone.

The following years were also somewhat lonely for me… even the good ones, after my divorce and the resulting struggle. I’d reconnected with my family and made friends, but the balm that was coming home to my single girl apartment faded with time. Though I wasn’t sure what exactly I wanted from life anymore, I still fantasized about the delightful chaos of a house full of children. TLC family titles like Jon and Kate Plus 8 and 19 Kids and Counting were the only reality shows I ever followed. Even when I wasn’t entirely sure I still wanted children, I frequently watched Yours, Mine, and Ours while counting the years to see how many I could realistically have before I hit 40.

So, when I asked Jake how many kids he wanted, I countered his three with my four. Twenty-seven at the time, I’d decided at some point in the last ten years that while double digits weren’t a logistical possibility, I still wanted a big family. If I couldn’t be one of a bunch of siblings, I could be the matriarch celebrating holidays with a full house. Four children seemed like just enough to qualify, without breaching the limit of how many I could keep up with emotionally, financially, and physically. So, Jake and I agreed to three or four kids, tentatively, as we acknowledged everyone’s insistence that we’d change our minds when we realized the work of one or two. Now, here we are, three deep… and everyone was wrong.

I admit it, y’all. I bought the lie that I’d have two children and change my mind about wanting a third. When I was pregnant with the girls, I accepted that twins might be enough of a challenge. When I was told I wouldn’t be able to have more babies, I tried to console myself with the idea that I might eventually not even want them. Still, I grieved for the possibility that I would never meet any more of my embryos, that my girls might only have each other, that I could never have a son. In the following months, I waited. I waited to find out if my heart had fully recovered. I waited to feel that the girls were enough, that our family was whole regardless. Yet, when I received the affirmative on the former, I accepted that the latter wasn’t going to happen. I wanted another child, despite the risk that I could have similar issues with another pregnancy. Even if I couldn’t have four, I wanted the chance to carry and raise one more baby, before donating my embryos to a couple who couldn’t conceive. I worried, of course. I worried that I’d do irreparable damage to my health, leaving my girls with a sick mother. I worried that I wasn’t up for the process of a frozen embryo transfer. I worried that we couldn’t afford it or another child. Then came Thomas.

If you follow my blog, you know that Thomas was the miracle baby we were told, quite definitively, that we couldn’t conceive. He’s the anecdote infertile women hear about from their well-meaning aunt, whose best friend’s daughter thought she couldn’t get pregnant and “just relaxed” and “quit trying.” Jake had one sperm and it’s adorably bouncing up and down in my living room at this very moment. We now have twin girls and their seventeen-months younger little brother. By the average American’s measure, we have The Perfect Little Family. I know, because people tell me so at Sam’s Club, all the time. Yet, as blessed as we were with our Thomas, I still want one more.

When Jake and I planned our family, long before we knew we’d struggle, we always agreed that four was our max, but that we’d probably stop at three. Not only did society have us convinced we likely wouldn’t want a fourth, time suggested we wouldn’t be able to have so many before Jake hit 40. If we’d started at 32 and 35, as planned, spacing them out by two years, we’d be 36 and 39 when we had our third. Neither of us wanted to have babies past that point, yet we allowed for the possibility, primarily based on gender. Had we three boys, we’d have wanted to try for a girl. Had we three girls, we’d have wanted to try for a boy. Living in a far better economy at the time, we also refused to compromise the family we wanted solely for economic reasons. If we wanted four, we’d figure it out financially. Regardless and excepting any surprises, we’d be done after that.

Now, here we are with three beautiful children and six frozen embryos and I still want another baby. I’m potty training twins, introducing their brother to solids, have just gotten everyone on the same nap schedule, and I still want the big family, the additional chaos. I also can’t forget that even if we didn’t want to do it again, we’d have been willing to have just one more, had Thomas been a girl. Not only would I have been willing to risk the potential complications; I’d have been willing to pay the $4500 for the transfer, take the hormones, the progesterone injections, all on the possibility that I’d get pregnant and we’d get to raise another of our babies.

On the exceedingly rare occasion that I do consider being done, I remember that it’s not as simple as just not having another child. That fourth child already exists. If I don’t carry and raise him or her, someone else will. As much as I’d love to be that huge Instagram family after personally giving all of our embryos a chance at life, I realize that’s not in the cards for many reasons. For starters, we truly cannot afford nine potential children, nor can we house them in our three bedroom home. While neither of us want to have kids in our forties anyway, I’m also not convinced we can successfully raise such a large family. Money isn’t the only resource in short supply for a family of that size. In fact, while you can always make more money, time and energy are far more difficult to come by and I don’t think we’re up to the challenge. I’ve also already had two C-sections and know VBACs to be a mixed bag, so my ability to carry and birth that many babies is also in question, especially considering my age and prior complications. So, I’ve accepted that raising all of our embryos is simply not possible… but having one more is an opportunity I can’t bring myself to turn down, knowing I’d have been willing solely for gender.

So… we began the frozen embryo transfer process. The appointments are set, the birth control prescribed, and the transfer scheduled. Last week I went in for a repeat of the practice transfer and uterine mapping procedures I did in 2020. Due to my refusal to take babies into an infertility clinic, Jake stayed home with the kids and I confidently drove to my appointment solo… at least until I got on the highway.

Folks, I was not prepared for how awful it would feel just driving to the fertility clinic… let alone sitting in that office, remembering a time when I might never be a mom. I am not one for new age shenanigans. Still, I found myself deep breathing to avoid a legitimate panic attack. While the seats weren’t taped off and I didn’t have to wear a mask, HGTV playing in the background still sent me right back to a time when every day was exactly the same, the world shut down, the possibility of no babies. Property Brothers alone seems to give me PTSD, a phenomenon I didn’t even know was possible until I realized I hadn’t registered a single word the nurse spoke to me… and it did not get better.

I cannot believe how much of the infertility process I’ve blocked out, y’all. It’s so invasive, having three people in a room touching and looking at your vagina. I don’t think a softer bedside manner would make me feel like less of a specimen, either. On the contrary, any more sympathy from my doctors or nurses would likely make me feel more uncomfortable, considering they already know my grooming habits. There’s just no way around how utterly dehumanizing infertility is, as a typically miraculous occurrence is led by science. As I lay there, staring at my empty uterus on the screen, I reminded myself that this is worth it. Being a mother is the greatest feeling in the world, closely followed by that of watching my children play together and love on each other. Despite infertility, I can actually have the four children I always wanted. I can give my children a large, loving family. I can do this. I can take the birth control, despite the affect the hormones are already having on my nerves. I can take the estrogen supplements. I can take the progesterone shots… all on the chance that I get to have just one more, because I want to do this… but I really don’t want to do this.

My Baby Girls are Two

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Two years ago, today, I thought I was sick. I suppose I was, if that’s how one would describe a woman who’s 35 weeks pregnant with twins and has undiagnosed pneumonia, sepsis, and cardiomyopathy, but it feels a bit simplistic. What followed was the scariest week of my life, as I simultaneously tried to care for my newborn twins and waited to see whether or not they would grow up with their mother. The next few months weren’t much easier, physically or emotionally. It was October before I received the news that my heart would completely recover. It was December before I could lift the double stroller without becoming out of breath. Ultimately, the trials of pandemic IVF, the death of my mother, and my own near death in childbirth led me to leave my career as a librarian. I loved the work, my coworkers, my customers, the money, but I wanted to be with my babies. I wanted to change all the diapers, soothe all the tantrums, kiss all the owies… and so I have for two years now.

Everyone says the years pass in a blur, that you blink and the time is gone. I can see that, but for the most part, it has felt like two glorious years since I became a mother, if not more. Last year, on my girls’ first birthday, I wrote about how it seemed a lifetime had passed since their birth. In many ways, that’s truer today. My existence before children feels like another lifetime, in much the same way as my single years or my high school days. For the last two years, my girls have been my constant. They’re my shopping buddies, my post office pals, my doctors’ office plus twos… and now three with their little brother. I am rarely without them and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love seeing the bond they share, with each other, but also with the baby brother who would be in another room at daycare. I adore witnessing their creativity, imagination, orneriness, stubbornness, and determination. Every new word is a delight, every trip an adventure.

For years, I was alone and knew no different. In a way, that was a balm to my senses after being with people who mistreated me for so long. Only when Jake came along did I realize how lonely I’d been for much of my life. Now that I have twin girls and their little brother, I am never lonely. My days are full of kisses, giggles, tantrums, screams, and tickles. My heart might have been weaker at one time, but these gals have really put it to work these last two years. It has never been stronger. They were absolutely worth the struggle to bring them into the world. They’re bigger, messier, sassier, and still an absolute joy and privilege, whether they’re snuggling with me or throwing my shoes in the trashcan. It might be their birthday, but I’m the one who received one of the greatest gifts in being their mother. Cheers two wonderful years, baby girls.

I just want to watch Twilight and be sad.

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My mother has been dead for two years, today. I woke up at 4:30 remembering all the awful things I ever did or said to her. I prayed for forgiveness for not being a better daughter. I thought about the trendiness of going no contact. I considered how if I could change it, I’d have put up with her drama, her antics, and her awful husband for a few more years if I’d only known she’d be gone so soon. I could have just made her happy. I also admitted that I didn’t have much of a choice without that knowledge.

I’ve been scanning the photos my mother left behind, so I can make an album for each decade. She always wanted to do that, but never had the organization skills. Every picture I see of her young, beautiful, happy, and hopeful breaks my heart. I hate that her life went the way it did. I hate myself for the part I had in it, no matter my lack of options. I frequently imagine how different things could have been, had she been well. I fantasize about what we should have had together. I think about how much she’d have loved her grandkids. I picture her going to the zoo with us, taking them shopping, having sleepovers… making all the wonderful memories I have with my Gramma.

I found a photo of my mother with my brother, when he was almost exactly Thomas’s age. I imagined where she’d have seen herself 38 years later, where I’ll be 38 years from now. I’m not sure I’ve gone a week since her death without envisioning myself alone in my final days, my children not having spoken to me for years. I can’t fathom the pain I would feel if Violet, Scarlett, or Thomas one day wanted nothing to do with me. I quit my career to do things differently. I’m there for every hug, every tantrum, every giggle. I clean obsessively, so my children will grow up in a tidy, healthy home, while simultaneously trying to balance my need for order with their need for fun and freedom. I take them to every doctor’s appointment, soothe every fever, kiss every owie. Sometimes, I cry when I lose my patience or snap at my babies, thinking that this will be the moment they stop loving me. I spend every day of my life with something to prove, praying it’s enough, that I have children who will adore their mother the way they’re supposed to, who will be by her side when she goes. I workout and eat right, with it in the back of my mind how much I desperately hope to live long enough to see my grandkids, while praying my children allow me to do so.

I’m not stupid. I know my mother wasn’t innocent in how her life unfolded. I know that she was abusive, manipulative, and deeply mentally ill. I know I couldn’t heal her. I also know she wanted something so very different. So, for one day, two years from the moment I forever ran out of time to fix things, I just want to hate myself. I want to wallow and weep as the good memories flow through my mind alongside the bad. I’m just so fucking sorry. I don’t want calls from the family who never treated her properly. I certainly don’t want to hear their historical rewrites. I just want to keep scanning my photos while I cry. I just want to watch Twilight and be sad.

Year Six: The Year Jake Got Competition From Another Man

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One year ago, on May 5th, I was worried that my five year anniversary with Jake and my first real Mother’s Day would be ruined. I’d been feeling sick for several days. Jake and I were planning an embryo transfer for the next month and I was supposed to call with cycle day one. With 10 month old twins, though, my period hadn’t regulated yet and I was a week late. When the nurse at the fertility clinic had asked if I could be pregnant, I assured her that Jake could not get me pregnant. We’d accepted it. It was fine, but I wasn’t taking a test. She understood, but said I’d need to come in to check for cysts if I didn’t get my period in the next couple of weeks.

Two more weeks had gone by at this point and, concerned that I might have some severe feminine problems, I decided to make an appointment for the next week. Whatever scary news I received would come after our special weekend. I knew, however, that they’d insist on a pregnancy test. I figured I’d cope with any difficult emotional response at home and take one myself. Off to Dollar General I went, grabbing a can of chicken noodle soup along with my one dollar test, just to feel like the trip wasn’t a total waste.

As I sat on the toilet lid, waiting for my negative test result, I Googled reasons for a late period. I hypothesized everything from PCOS to ovarian cancer, anything other than the obvious. I glanced at the test, assuming I’d immediately be throwing it away. Much to my surprise, however, I saw not one line, but two.

I took two more tests, both of which also came up positive and called my OBGYN.

Me: “False positives, though… that’s not really a thing, right? That’s just a plot device from romance novels and teen movies?”
Nurse: “I mean, yeah, basically. If you have three positive tests, you’re pregnant.”

Pregnant. After Jake had been told by his urologist that “miracles happen” in regards to our chances of natural conception… after spending $30,000 on back-to-back rounds of pandemic IVF… after having been cautioned against more children while fighting pneumonia, heart complications, and sepsis following the girls’ birth… I was pregnant.

So it was, that our sixth year of marriage passed in a whirlwind of minivan shopping, home improvements, and continued toddler joy. We celebrated a first birthday, first steps, and first words, all while preparing for the arrival of our baby boy. With no complications and zero drama, on December 6th our Thomas came into the world. The romcoms were half right, y’all. I’ve never believed in love at first sight, but I just hadn’t met the right man.

I adore my daughters. I love being home with them, hearing every giggle, witnessing every new milestone, soothing every tantrum, kissing every owie. I look forward to a future where I have two precious little girls to guide. We’ll do crafts, dance to bad pop music, watch princess movies, go shopping, do our nails. I love that I get the chance to be the mother mine wanted so very much to be to her daughter but couldn’t. Our relationship is truly everything I’d hoped. The bond I have with Thomas is not stronger, but it is… more unexpected. Whenever I envisioned having children one day, I was so focused on the idea of giving girls what I never had, that I never really imagined how I’d feel about a son. I even worried that I couldn’t be as close to a boy, no matter how I loved him.

Our sixth year was an utter surprise. It was the year Jake got his future hunting buddy and Lord of the Rings fan. It was the year his parents met their first grandson. It was the year my Gramma finally got her redheaded great grandbaby. Though I love my girls just as much, perhaps I relate to them more, understand their ornery motivations too clearly, because it’s my sweet Thomas who will rarely do anything wrong in his mother’s eyes. With his Daddy’s laidback charm, at just five months, this little guy could sell me ocean front property in Arizona.

After battling infertility and the drama of the girls’ birth, year six was the one where we welcomed a naturally conceived baby into the world without fear or heartache. While I jest that my children are in any way competing with their father, this was the year when I gave a piece of my heart to another man… one who looks just like him. Often having accused Jake of being a literal robot in his extreme stoicism, I’ve found it particularly swoon-worthy watching him fulfill the tough cowboy stereotype as his girls have carefully wrapped him around their little fingers over the last two years. Perhaps one day, I’ll feel he’s too hard on Thomas, just as I’m sure he’ll consider me to be too easy. In the meantime, however, seeing Jake snuggle and kiss the mirror image that is his baby boy…

If I still had my whole heart to give, it would be all his once again. Alas, I don’t think he minds sharing it.

I still don’t like kids.

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Two weeks ago, we brought home our baby boy…

… and he is perfect.

After conceiving twin girls through back-to-back pandemic rounds of IVF and nearly dying in childbirth, I wasn’t exactly ready to get pregnant again this past spring. Although Jake and I had already begun the early stages of transferring a frozen embryo over the summer, I was still on the fence, myself. I’ve always wanted four children and still found that to be the case, even with twins under a year. I wanted my girls to have more siblings. I wanted Jake to have a son. I wanted a son. I wanted more noise, more chaos, more fun, bigger holidays, crazier family vacations… what I’ve never had with the brother I see once a year on Christmas. I also wanted to be alive to enjoy all of these things, so I was still erratically swinging between the insistence that the girls were enough and the idea that I was potentially up for two more pregnancies, assuming the next went smoothly.

It was on May 5th, the day before Jake and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary, that I was officially no longer able to file another pregnancy under Future Belle’s Problem. I had been waiting for day one of my cycle to begin the FET process and assumed that it hadn’t come, because I wasn’t even a year post-partum. Begrudgingly, I took a pregnancy test, annoyed at having to waste the dollar, but knowing the clinic would insist. Following a few minutes of Googling early menopause and uterine cancer symptoms as possibilities for my missing period, I glanced at the test before tossing it, only to see that it was, indeed, positive. After Jake was told, verbatim, that “miracles happen” when he asked the urologist if he could get me pregnant, after spending 2020 imagining a future without children, after thirty thousand dollars worth of baby girls, I was… pregnant.

In so many ways, I am that annoying anecdote your coworker shares about her friend, whose niece got pregnant despite all odds… the woman who had severe complications the first time around, only for it all to go smoothly the second… the mother of three under two who’d contemplated a forced childfree existence just two years earlier. With all of it behind me, I can honestly say that, despite a few tearful outbursts about how I didn’t want to die, I had an easy pregnancy and a complication-free birth by scheduled C-section at 37 weeks to the day.

I now have three babies under 18 months and I love it. I love watching the girls forget they’re mid-tantrum when they start giggling as they spin in circles of protestation. I love watching them wrestle like little bear cubs until someone cries. I love seeing Scarlet run to the front door arms extended, at the sound of Jake’s keys turning. I love Violet’s contradictory stubbornness and clingy Mama’s girl status. Now, my Thomas is here and he is a dream. After months of insisting the newborn phase is boring, I adore the snuggles. Having started with twins, I’m taking full advantage of the opportunity to dote on just one, cherishing everything from feedings to sponge baths. I rarely sleep more than four hours at a time, am weeks from being able to have sex and months from even discussing an embryo transfer, still have visible bruising around my incision, and I’m already trying to talk Jake into our fourth and final.

Just the other day, Jake announced that raising kids with me was the best thing that’s ever happened to him and the feeling is utterly mutual. Watching my husband go from the rough and tumble toddler girl dad he’s become to the sweet and gentle (for him) father of a newborn boy is absolutely precious. After years of declaring mid-spat that he’s an unfeeling robot, there’s nothing quite so dear as watching my cowboy husband hold his tiny son in his callused hands and talk sweetly to him.

I spent a lifetime anticipating being the career woman and the working mom, went to college for seven years including graduate school, threw myself into my career as a librarian for another ten. I never planned to stay home with my children, scoffed at the very idea, and it’s the best decision I’ve ever made. While I fully intend to reenter the professional world one day, simply put, I just love being a mom… and I still don’t like kids.

Growing up in the South, I was raised to understand that women like children. Little girls love dolls. Teenaged girls eagerly jump at the chance to babysit. Baby fever becomes rampant in a woman’s early twenties. Any gal who doesn’t want to die alone had better start having kids by 25. Those are some Southern facts, right there, so imagine my confusion when I realized none of them applied to me.

Having lived on ten acres until age 11, I didn’t really grow up around other kids at all, let alone little ones. I had a couple of younger cousins, who I babysat once or twice, but I largely considered them nuisances who got us older kids in trouble. I never spent time with young children with any regularity. My first job was at a car lot, not a daycare. In fact, when I did get a job at a daycare in college, I made it two days before quitting. An education major in my undergrad, I still considered specializing in early childhood/elementary and even arranged to shadow my second grade teacher. That was the day, y’all. Despite my religious Southern upbringing, a childhood surrounded by suburban girls who wanted to be teachers and stay-at-home moms, a degree program that pedestalized anyone who worked with kids… the day I spent time in a well-managed second grade classroom was the day I realized that I just don’t like children.

Over the following years, I honed my affinity for teenagers, having initially assumed I only favored them due to their closer proximity in age. During grad school, I substitute taught nearly every day of the week, preferring high school, but happy to take middle school jobs when they were all that was available. More often than not, however, if elementary openings were all I could find, I’d take the opportunity for a rare day off, unless I desperately needed the money. As time passed and I moved further from my own teenage years, I loved working with teens just as much… and dreaded spending any time with children at all.

It wasn’t that I hated kids… at least not well-behaved ones. I just didn’t find them especially interesting. They couldn’t share compelling opinions or stories. Their senses of humor were undeveloped and generally revolved around the obnoxious and immature, but rarely clever. They were often oversensitive and whiney. Regardless, their parents considered them absolutely brilliant and wholly infallible. I frequently worked with children as a librarian and nearly every single reader’s advisory question posed by a parent, came with the insistence that their child’s reading level was two to three higher than their grade. I can count on one hand how many times that was actually true. When they misbehaved, in ways that were entirely developmentally appropriate, their parents wouldn’t hear it, whether they were screaming and running in the library or bullying others in programs. Teenagers, however, warranted scorn and contempt if any attention at all. When the societal blind spot for an age group I didn’t particularly enjoy was coupled with the overall disdain for the one I did, I struggled to even imagine myself as a mother in the distant future. Clearly, I didn’t feel the way everyone else felt about children. Maybe they weren’t for me after all.

A few months before Jake proposed, I became increasingly concerned. I knew Jake wanted kids and, in theory, so did I. I just… really didn’t like ’em.

With genuine distress, I shared as much with a coworker in her 50s, who had two young adult children and two still in Catholic school. If anyone could shed some light on my situation, it was a woman living exactly the life I thought I wanted.

Me: “I don’t think I like children.”
Coworker: “Of course you don’t. It’s the end of Summer Reading.”
Me: “What if I don’t at all? Jake wants kids. I thought I wanted them. I’m not sure I like them, though.”
Coworker: “I don’t especially like other people’s children, either. I like mine, but I never really cared much for their friends. You’ll be fine.”

I didn’t know that was allowed!

In the nearly five years that followed this moment of enlightenment, I met a few others who shared this thought process. A friend at the Northside Library had little to no patience for… well, most humans, but she loved being a mother. At the same branch, a friend living with her parents had more of a sisterly relationship with her young son, yet doted on him all the same. A coworker at the Cherokee library had a surprise baby just before 40, after having accepted a childfree existence. A veteran who named Sarah Connor her hero, she’d never really considered herself maternal… until her son arrived. She still had little feeling toward children in a random sample, but adored being a mother. I’ll admit, it still isn’t a common sentiment among suburban and rural Southern women, but evidently it happens… such as in my case.

Apparently my robot husband and I are quite the pair, because I find myself in the company of Other People’s Children far more frequently these days and I feel little on a personal level… neither disdain nor joy. As with other random folks, I passively wish them health and wellness and go about my day. I do my best not to judge other parents, while still generally finding most small children grating. Yet, somehow, I seem to have endless patience for my own. Objectively speaking, I’ve no illusions about my offspring somehow being superior to others’… except that they’re mine, so they’re naturally cuter, smarter, funnier, and less disgusting by my incredibly biased assessment.

I, of course, still smile encouragingly and affectionately at little ones during storytime, just as I’d expect others to do with mine. I’d never intentionally hurt a child’s feelings and that’s all I really ask of others. I love my nieces and nephews out of necessity, whether I feel much connection to them at this age or not. I do try, but it still doesn’t come naturally to me to snuggle someone else’s baby, tickle their toddler, or get down in the floor and play with their kids. As utterly smitten as I am with my own babies, as I attempt to cajole Jake into our #fourthandfinal while still being on lift restrictions, Other People’s Children… they still don’t really do it for me. I still don’t like kids.

I want this. I’m thankful for this.

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Twelve years ago, the day after Thanksgiving, I kicked my abusive ex out once and for all, starting my life over. Seven years ago, Jake proposed to me, four days before Thanksgiving. Two years ago, after spending $30,000 funded primarily through a lucky Bitcoin investment, we found out our second IVF cycle was successful. Just before Christmas, we found out we were having twins. Now, our miracle baby boy is arriving in just 12 days… if things go as planned with our scheduled C-section.

I love the holidays, y’all. There’s just something about this time of year that makes life feel cozier and more comfortable. The colder weather gives me an entirely acceptable excuse to play the hermit. When I do go out, the world is one of cute winter wardrobes, costumes, colorful leaves, twinkling lights, cheerful music, delicious food, and massive amounts of glitter that even my southern husband finds begrudgingly acceptable. This is my time of year… yet somehow, I’m just now realizing how many great things have happened to me during the holidays, the latest of which will be my baby boy.

I feel so many simultaneous emotions about this baby. Foremost is gratitude that Jake and I get to have a son, in addition to our two beautiful daughters. We’re not a #girldad or #boymom. We get to be both. This baby will be the first grandson of six kids and only the third great grandson of fifteen on Jake’s side. Where I cried when I thought the twins were boys, after our struggles to get pregnant, Jake was thrilled with any healthy children. Now he’s the most amazing dad to our girls, especially considering his cliché cowboy status. I am so happy to give him a boy, not just because he deserves a son, but because the world needs more men like Jake. I’m grateful we got pregnant like normal people, as opposed to in a clinic with thousands of dollars worth of injections. I’m relieved that I won’t have to count down the days until I return to work. I’m thankful that Jake has been able to arrange to stay home through the entirety of my six to eight week C-section recovery.

Beyond gratitude, I admittedly feel fear that things will go as or even more poorly than they did when the girls were born. Never one for birth plans, I had zero expectations for the arrival of my twins and it still went so much worse than I could’ve imagined while still taking home healthy babies.

No one looks that pretty after four days in the ICU, by the way.

I won’t rehash my birth story in detail, but suddenly diagnosed with severe pneumonia and heart complications at 35 weeks, I underwent an emergency C-section and began the most terrifying week of my life. Almost immediately after the death of my estranged mother at 60, I dealt with the very real possibility that I might not see my own girls grow up, or that I might be chronically ill their entire lives. Rushed to the ICU, I first saw my twins at three days old and that was only because I woke up in a drug-induced hysteria screaming that they’d taken my babies. When I was finally released to labor and delivery, I was still receiving intravenous antibiotics and too sick to stand. It wasn’t until day seven that I was able to leave, though the girls had been discharged two days earlier. Say what you will about American healthcare and the $9,000 bill we received, but those doctors did save my life. As grateful as I am for my miracle baby, I admit that I’m petrified everything will go wrong again, perhaps with a far worse ending.

I have more standard concerns as well… that my existing babies will feel replaced and have trouble coping, that I’m having this baby during an unprecedented RSV season, that another child will be another expense during difficult economic times, and as always, that I won’t be the mother I so desperately desire. I’m also hopeful and excited. I’m hopeful that I’ll have a standard delivery with no drama, having scheduled my C-section for 37 weeks to the day. I’m hopeful that I’ll get an uneventful post-partum season, holed up for the winter with Jake by my side to help transition the girls into their new roles as big sisters. I’m hopeful that things will be better this time. I’m excited to meet my son and introduce him to the girls. I’m excited to not be pregnant, at this point. I’m excited to start dieting and exercising. I’m excited for a quiet baby’s first Christmas. You know what I’m not?

I’m not dreading any part of the coming months.

I’m not sorry that my children are going to be so close in age.

I’m not worried about having three under two or three in diapers.

I’m not in need of snarky well-wishes from people in the grocery store.

I’m not looking for sympathy or pity.

I’m not interested in hateful predictions about how I’ll feel when my children are teenagers.

Quite frankly, after my dysfunctional upbringing, my… trying early twenties, my struggle with infertility, I’m not interested in any negativity toward my family planning. I’m also not clear on why anyone thinks it’s okay to chime in on the subject, with assumptions that this child will be my last, simply for having a penis.

What exactly is the greater tragedy, that I might intentionally have more children or that I don’t care to share those plans with a nosey stranger at the grocery store? Why exactly does someone think they can apologize to me for the existence of my precious daughters, who are doing nothing more than playing peek-a-boo in the shopping cart? How exactly does someone come to the conclusion that this is an appropriate thing to say to a very pregnant mother with her hands full?

I know, I know. People are just looking for something to say. Well, they can say something a lot less presumptive and a lot less ugly, because I’m not interested in keeping the peace with strangers who think saying negative things about my children (who can hear perfectly well, I might add) constitutes proper small talk. I grew up in a volatile home with parents who loved me, but weren’t that great at it. I desperately wanted this life that I have, shopping cart peek-a-boo and all. I hoped my hands would one day be full and my bank account empty. I prayed for this stress. I wept for these blessings, because I want this. I’m thankful for this.

So perhaps, this Thanksgiving, people can pull their heads out of their asses and be thankful for the families and lives they have, as well.