Mommy Issues

For days now I've been going back and forth about whether or not I should blog about all of the family stuff that's been going on around here, and I've decided that I will, at least to a certain extent. There was some drama over us missing my nephew's birthday party a few weeks ago that was stirred up by my SIL thinking that I yelled at her and hung up on her over the phone, neither of which I did. I could go into the whole mess, but I don't think that I will because that's not the point of this blog today.

To make it short, SIL has the whole family mad at me. My mom, who wasn't there for the conversation, has believed SIL's version of events and not mine. I've been trying to be the grown-up in this situation and just let it drop, but that's been interpreted by my mother as confirmation that SIL is the one telling the truth. I've tried directly telling my mother what happened, but she still believes SIL over me. She believes that I lashed out at SIL because of grief over Kenneth, since Kenneth's birthday was the 14th. While this time of year is hard on me, the drama with SIL had absolutely nothing to do with any of that. I've told mom that, but it goes in one ear and out the other.

It bothers me quite a bit that rather than believe me, my mom insists on believing that I'm telling her a warped version of events because I'm grief-stricken over my son. It's been 3 years, and while I still miss Kenneth greatly, it hasn't clouded my judgement in a very long time. It seems like she believes I'm so psychologically damaged that I can't possibly be telling her the truth, and that really bothers me. She said that I'm over-protective of Grant to the point of being pathological (except I do things like let him go down slides at the playground head-first.....), and that also bothers me immensely. How do I not get bothered by my mother thinking that I'm borderline mentally ill?

My mom and I don't think alike, and really we never have. We're both very strong women, and both of us have a stubborn streak. I was pretty much raised by my mom and only my mom, so it cuts me pretty deeply when it's so very obvious that she thinks poorly of me. She disagrees with a lot of the choices that I've made over the years, and will usually let me know in plain words when she thinks I'm doing something I shouldn't be doing. Disagreement I can handle, but with her it's never just disagreement: it's usually a defect in me, not "we don't see eye to eye on this". It's hard to know how to handle that.

I want to stick up for myself and my choices, and I want her to understand why I make decisions the way that I do even if she doesn't agree with them. It never happens that way though. When I had to go back to work before I wanted to after Grant was born (when he was 8 weeks old instead of 12 weeks old-- I'd been out on maternity leave for longer than the FMLA-allowed 12 weeks because of bedrest, and 8 weeks after delivery was the longest leave I could take and still keep my job), I was pretty upset because I wanted to be home longer. Rather than support me, her response was that I should quit my teaching job mid-semester and just be a stay-at-home mom. When I told her that I would love to, but finances wouldn't permit it and I couldn't quit a teaching job mid year like that if I ever wanted to get another teaching job, she didn't understand it at all. I was being selfish and putting our material comfort above the needs of my son. Nevermind that I'd put years of work and thousands of dollars into earning the teaching degree that she wanted me to throw away, nevermind that staying home would mean we couldn't pay our bills or have health insurance-- working was the selfish choice.

I think this situation is a lot like that one. I make a decision that seems perfectly rational to me, and it gets twisted around in her mind to mean that there is some deep defect in my psyche. It's very hurtful and I don't know how I can change that. Most likely, I can't change it. So, I'm faced with the choice of continuing to be closely involved with my family and knowing that inevitably I'll be hurt like this again somewhere down the line, or backing off and getting them all even more upset with me. I'm not sure what the right answer is, or even if there is a right answer.

Mother-daughter relationships can get interesting sometimes, can't they?


Prayers for a friend

Please say a prayer for my friend Amanda and her husband. They found out this week that the baby they are expecting in July has Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia, which is a pretty serious birth defect. They're in pretty much the same position we were in when we found out about Kenneth's heart. They could really use a lot of prayer as they navigate all of the ups and downs of this situation.

Springtime

It got up to 78 degrees here today. Spring is officially on its way, which makes me very happy. I love spring in the Texas Hill Country. The weather is usually just about perfect, with highs hovering between 70-80 and a lot of sunshine. My absolute favorite thing about spring around here is the wildflowers, bluebonnets in particular. Usually they all come up almost overnight. You'll go from seeing your typical green field to fields just full of bluebonnets. The picture I have here is the rule, not the exception.

Spring around here means I need to go shopping for warm-weather clothes. If you're ever contemplating a move to the Lone Star State, plan on having a wardrobe that's about 75% short-sleeved and lightweight. Those big wool sweaters will only get use about once every three years, so you don't need too many. Short-sleeved things can be worn nearly year-round. Another must-have are sandals. I wear mine almost every day, even to work because my campus is casual that way. My current wardrobe is looking a little sad, though. I had to get rid of a lot of my shirts because pregnancy changed my, ahem, shape. Shirts that used to fit perfectly suddenly became too short, so I bought a few things last year to get me through. Those shirts have seen so much wear that they're all pilling. Time to hit the stores.

Spring also means I've got the gardening bug. Usually at this time of year, I start picking out my flowers. This year, I can't really spend money on landscaping because there's a good chance it'll all get torn up whenever the builder finally gets around to fixing our house's foundation. So, I've been looking into alternative ways to scratch my gardening itch. Container gardening seems to be the leading contender, but it's pricey. Summers around here have temperatures in the 100's and usually not much rain, and I don't have much shade in my back yard. So, in order to keep my plants alive in pots, I'd have to water at least once a day, if not twice a day. Knowing me, I'd forget to do that and my plants would all die. A girl can dream, right?

Finally, Spring means Kenneth's birthday and angel day are coming around the corner. We've been doing our best around here to think about all of the other positive things that spring brings, and remember Kenneth without letting it overshadow everything else. Some days it's easier than others. He's been on my mind a lot over the past week or so since his birthday is this weekend. Jacob has to work on his birthday, so I'm not sure if I'll go out to the cemetary without him or just wait until Monday so that we can go as a family. We'll replace the silk flowers that are out there, clean his stone, and talk to him for a little while. Then we'll go back to our lives and try to enjoy the beauty in the world. I would have liked to show Kenneth a Texas spring.

Bad blogger

I don't know what my problem has been, but I haven't updated this thing in ages. I feel like I have a lot to say and nothing to say all at the same time. Maybe I just have a lot of nothing to say? Ha ha. Anyway, the highlights...

We got a new puppy about a month ago to keep our other dog, Moose, company. As I was just sitting down to describe her, the brat looked straight at me and peed on my living room floor. Agh! She's learned to sit and stay, but she just doesn't seem to be getting the concept of potty training. I've never had a dog take this long to housebreak. Grr. Anyway, she's a black mouth cur mixed with who knows what, and her basic disposition is very good. Really, her only major character flaw is the housebreaking issue. I'm hoping we can get this straightened out soon. I spanked her nose and put her outside by herself when she peed on the floor, and now she's at the back door howling like her little puppy heart is breaking. Sigh.

The house stuff is moving along, just very, very slowly. I'm going to guess that we'll be heading to arbitration at some point, but when that will be is anyone's guess. I love this house, so I really hope that it gets fixed correctly so that we can stay and I can do all of the landscaping and painting that I've been wanting to do but can't. I really want to put in a vegetable garden, plant some roses, and add some flowering trees to the front yard. We were thinking we'd put in a flowering plum, a magnolia, and possibly some crape myrtles, but I don't want to spend the money on new trees if a foundation repair crew is going to come in and rip them up to get the work done, so all projects are on hold.

Jacob is back on the day shift at work. That has been wonderful beyond words. I get to see him every day, even if it's just for a few minutes in the morning and a half-hour or so before bed. He's not nearly as cranky, because he actually gets enough sleep at night and he doesn't have to flip-flop his body clock every few days in order to be able to see Grant. It was really hard on us to keep our marriage in good shape when he was working nights-- how do you run a household when you go days on end without seeing one another? I know that plenty of couples manage it, but it was getting rough for us. Having him back on days has been a huge improvement.

We're planning a vacation for June to celebrate 5 years of being married. Our anniversary is in July, but July is inventory at Jacob's store, so no vacation time for anyone in July. We decided we'd just go celebrate in June instead. Our flight and hotel are already booked, and now we just have to figure out what we want to do once we get there. We're going to go without Grant, which will be good and difficult all at the same time. My mom has agreed to watch him for me, so he'll be fine, but I still have that bit of mommy guilt for planning to leave him.

Those are the major happenings for now. I have my spring break next week, so I'm just trying to make it through one more week of work. I'll try to think of a good blog topic between now and then so that I update more frequently!

Heading home

I did something that I've said that I'd never do this weekend: I flew into Flint, Michigan.

To understand why I said I'd never go back, you have to understand that my father (aka my sperm donor) is in the psychotic homicidal end of the crazy spectrum. The last time I was here, I was 8 years old and we drove out in the middle of the night so my father wouldn't know we were leaving. I don't exactly have good memories of this town, and I swore up and down that I'd never be back.

I had every intention of sticking to that idea, but my Grandpa and my Uncle still live here and my Grandpa wound up in the ICU this weekend, so I got on a plane Friday and I'm sitting in the airport to go home right now. Yay for free WiFi. Grandpa was admitted last Sunday night with a GI bleed. The GI doctor removed a colon polyp on Wednesday and we all thought that was that, but on Thursday Grandpa started hemmorhaging again so they took him back for emergency surgery. It turned out that he had diverticulosis that had turned most of his colon necrotic, so the surgeron took out most of his colon. Grandpa scared all of us half to death on Friday. He was still on the ventilator when we got to the hospital and looked like death warmed over. He was able to come off the vent on Saturday and has been making steady progress since then. He'll have a colostomy for a while, but the surgeon thinks he can reattach things in a few months. Grandpa should be moved into a regular room today, so I felt like it was safe to get on a plane home.

You really don't know the definition of "depression" until you visit Flint. The town is economically very depressed, since its economy was largely based on General Motors plants that have shut down one by one over the years. When you drive through the town, at least every third house is boarded up and vacant. In some areas, there will be one occupied house on an entire block. People don't smile in the stores, and you don't see kids playing outside. Aside from the economic depression, it feels like a cloud of bad feelings come over you when you touch down in the Flint airport. Some of it is just me and my negative associations with this town, but some of it is just this place.

I just might kiss the dirt when my plane lands in San Antonio later this afternoon.

We had a staff meeting at work this week like we do most Wednesdays. Staff meetings usually make me wish I was anywhere but there, and this week was no exception to the rule. The topic this week was "Wellness". There's a big push in corporate America right now to encourage physical fitness amongst employees in order to create healthier and therefore less costly workers. School districts are no exception.

My assistant principal announced that they'd be offering a circuit training class for faculty twice a week for those that were interested in participating. I'm all in favor of something like that when it's on a voluntary level, but my AP crossed the line. She announced that once a month would be "Wellness Wednesday" and that everyone would go out to the gym to work out.

I have no intention of working out with my co-workers. While I tend to project confidence, in reality I'm anything but, especially when it comes to my body. I'm uncomfortable working out in front of my husband, and he's the father of my children, so why on earth would I want to subject myself to sweating and jiggling in front of the people I try my best to maintain a level of professionalism with?


That got me thinking about women and body issues in general. Why is it that men get to have a big gut and that's perfectly acceptable, but women are expected to be be stick thin and perfectly put together at all times? I'm not heavy, but I'm no size 0 either. I weigh in at 150 pounds right now, which is a healthy weight for a person of my height. I look in the mirror, though, and all I can see is the cellulite on my butt and the flab on my belly. Logically, I know that there's nothing wrong with my current weight. I know that the flab is loose skin that came from carrying two babies, but I just can't silence that little voice in my head telling me that I should be thinner, more toned, less flabby.

We drill this into the subconscious of our girls from a very early age. I can remember being in middle school and being at an after school practice for the middle school dance team that I was on. The dance teacher sat all of us down and passed out a packet on ways to lose weight. I was 12 and hadn't hit puberty yet. I was a little chunky because I was getting ready to grow, and like a lot of kids I tended to pack on a few extra pounds and then shoot up. Why on Earth was that acceptable to do to young girls?

On one hand, women are expected to be thin and in shape, but on the other hand, we're expected to work a full time job and also be perfect moms and wives. We're expected to give 100% to everyone all the time, and we're expected to do it all in heels and perfect attire. Most working moms spend so much time taking care of everyone else that they have very little time to take care of themselves, and then we wonder why nutrition and exercise take a backseat to being able to just sit still for a few moments. Which responsibility gets sacrificed so that meals that are healthy and homecooked make it on to the table? Work? Children? Husband? Do you sacrifice sleep to get a workout in? Do you just leave your child in the care of someone else so you can do it all?


It would be nice to open a magazine and not see something like "The Return of Curves"  applied to a size 4 model. It'd be nice to not feel like you're under constant scrutiny because of your figure. If I feel this way at a healthy weight, I can only imagine what it's like for people that struggle with weight.

Decade in Review

I saw this on another blog I read, so I'm going to shamelessly steal her idea.

On NYE of 1999, I was 18 and spent it with Anthony of Kentucky fame (if you don't know that story, I'll recap it later. It involved stupidity on my part and a lot of douchiness on his part). That relationship ended a few months after that and man, thank God it did. I was a freshman in college that year and had just moved out of my parent's house and into the dorms. I remember calling my mom after midnight to laugh at her, because the world as we knew it did not end (she'd fallen hook, line, and sinker for the Y2K hysteria and had done things like stockpile wheat and canned goods).

2000-2001 was a drama year. Dated a guy off and on, and in the "off" periods dated around a bit. Dating and being 19 means drama. I got my first apartment, a little 400 square foot efficiency with a sink so small you couldn't put a dinner plate flat in it. My refrigerator was in my living room, and my bed was seperated from the living room by a half wall. I loved it at the time, because it was MY place that I paid for on my own.

NYE of 2001 was notable night because that was the night that Jacob and I got together. I'd met him a few times before that when I'd drive from San Marcos to the Westlake IHOP to "study" (read: hang out and take over the smoking section while occasionally doing homework) with Jacq and Megan. Jacob worked with Megan at the same Wal-Mart, so he was part of the "study" group. He was shy, and I was dating someone else at the time, so it never went beyond a "hi" until NYE of 2001. I'd broken up with the guy I'd been dating, and Megan invited me to come to Slick Willie's to play pool. I got there before Jacob did, and happened to look up as he walked in the door. I still don't know why I thought this, but as he walked in the door, I thought "If I were to date him, it'd be really serious". I then immediately thought I was being ridiculous. Later that night, the whole group went back to Megan's house to watch the ball drop on TV. I took off my shoes and socks since I was planning to spend the night. Jacob was standing by himself in a corner looking uncomfortable, so I threw my socks at him. That broke the ice, and he and I have been together pretty much ever since.


2002 was pretty uneventful. I graduated from college in 2003, and got my first teaching job in January of 2004. Jacob proposed in the spring of 2004 and we moved in together that May. The rest of that year was spent as a first-year teacher and wedding planning. We got married in 2005 and bought our first house together a few months later, and I transferred to the school I teach at now to get away from my lunatic boss.


In June of 2006 we decided to try to have a baby, and I got pregnant right away with Kenneth. Other than gaining way too much weight, that pregnancy was very uneventful until we went in for my 16 week ultrasound. We found out he was a boy, and then the next day my OB/GYN called me personally at 9am and told me that it looked like the left side of the baby's heart was too small. He told me I shouldn't worry, that it was probably nothing, but that I should go see a pediatric cardiologist in 5 weeks to make sure. I spent the rest of the day freaked out about it, and then refused to think about it at all until the night before my appointment with the pedi card. I let myself google "small left ventricle" that night and found out that the doctor thought my baby might have Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, a defect that had the words "uniformly fatal in the first days or weeks of life if untreated" in its descriptions. Needless to say, I freaked. The next day brought the fetal echocardiogram at the pediatric cardiologist's office, where a diagnosis of Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome was confirmed and the options were given. The rest of 2006 was spent going to more doctor's appointments than I can count, and making plans and decisions to try to prepare for the birth of our very sick baby.



2007 was Kenneth's year. He was born on March 14, had his first surgery at 5 days old, and was put on ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation; it's a huge machine that does the work of the heart and lungs for the body) after surgery because his heart wasn't coping. That month was a hellish rollercoaster of hopes raised and dashed, until finally we had to make the decision to try one last-ditch effort to fix his heart enough to function without ECMO, and then remove ECMO support for good or bad. He had been in secondary organ failure (kidney failure) since his first surgery, so he wasn't a candidate for a heart transplant. On April 17, he went in for a surgery to replace his defective aortic valve with a donor valve, and ECMO support was removed. He passed away in the OR and my world was shattered.

The funeral was April 21, and most of the days for the next few months after that are a blur of grieving. Grief has a life of its own and it irrevocably changes you, especially if you're grieving your lost child. I went back to work in the fall of 2007 and we did our best to live normally. When NYE of 2007 rolled around, both of us were just relieved that the year was over.



2008 was Grant's year. After months of trying, I got my OB/GYN to give me Clomid. 2 months in of Clomid treatment and I was pregnant again. The pregnancy was eventful, since I ended up with preterm labor and bedrest from the middle of September until I had Grant at 37 weeks on November 25, but it resulted in my wonderful Grant. Grant has been the picture of health since day 1, and once I got through post-partum depression (thank you, SSRIs) and got the hang of breastfeeding, it's been wonderful. He brought the light back into my life.


In 2009 we got to watch Grant grow, we sold our first home and we bought our second. We're dealing with foundation issues with the new house, but I think it will eventually get resolved in a positive way.

Overall, the past decade has been a whirlwind of major life events. I've had wonderful highs and terrible lows, but overall I have to say I've been blessed. This decade saw me marry the love of my life, get a good job in a career I enjoy, and give birth to two amazing sons. I have a comfortable home and I don't lack for anything that I need. Life has been hard, but it has also been wonderful. I can't hope for anything more. Happy New Year.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)