The Questions Begin

I originally wanted this blog to be being a lesbian mom. But then, Sunshine was born the "Mom" part took over and there didn't seem to be much to say. It's been two years of diapers, milestones, exhaustion, cute stories. I haven't had to think too much about being part of a queer family.

So, now Sunshine is 2.8.

Tonight, lovely partner walks in and tells me that for the first time (that we know of) Sunshine said "I have Daddy?" Lovely told her"No, you don't have a Daddy...You have Momma, Mommy, Grandma, Papa...etc" and Sunshine kept naming other family members.

I felt like I was kicked in the stomach. I knew of course, these questions would come. But I didn't know it would be so soon. I didn't know I would feel so bad. I just hate the thought of her feeling any pain, at all. Or that there is something wrong with her or her family.

It used to feel more abstract and hypothetical. I read all the books about donor kids and explaining it to them, blah blah blah.

I thought I had planned for this, but I feel like I have no idea what to do with how I feel.

Papa Can You Hear Me?

Sunshine, 19 months, has learned the word "Papa." She started calling her Grandpa "Papa" and we all thought it was sweet.

However, we discovered that she thinks men in general are "Papa."

Cue to Sunshine on the train in her stroller agressively pointing to strange men yelling "PAPA!! PAPPA!"

Fellow passengers found it hillarious.

Imagine if they knew the story of her conception!

Who's First?

I finally wrote the sperm bank and asked them if any families who used Sunshine's donor were registered with their contact list. We weren't going register, just yet. Even though we plan to, really want to, especially when Sunshine is young. We just want to know if others are on the list. I've been putting it off because the year was already overwhelming. I think I will feel attached to those kids. Will I? I think about them, I know they exist. I think about the donor, with a combination of 90% gratitude and 10% curiosity.

I thought that contacting people on the family list would be nice...a few emails, pictures, etc. I had a vision of nice lesbians families who we could visit with Sunshine, drama free. In my mind, these families all live in warm weather states. Since Sunshine will have always known about these kids, she might feel less of a loss about her biological roots (maybe? right?) and she would know more AI kids, more queer families.

So, I thought, hey, I will just check out to see if anyone else is registered and then we can decide from there.

The sperm bank people (best customer service of any place I have ever encountered) wrote back a nice response right away. No one is registered yet.

I felt surprisingly (a little) sad. I wonder when/if we will meet any of these families.

Home Work

Sunday, Sunshine turned one. I work at home on Thursday. This means that right now I have my work email open and I check voicemail constantly. I try to get things done, and I try to be more efficient the days I am in the office. I let close-to-walking Sunshine destroy my house and then at 3 p.m. (naptime!) I put it back together again. Right now she is playing with tupperware and greeting cards. A moment ago she was playing with the dogs water bowl (yuck!) and cans of seltzer water. The child is obsessed with opening drawers

This post interupted because Sunshine stole the mouse. She loves the mouse with its flashing light and obvious importance to me. Only the keyboard is better in her mind.

Ok, boss, I will try to work on the report as soon as I can grab dasjildsjakdsalkj;dd

Sigh. Happy Birthday, Kid. You eruioriuoewjsadkl;aj.

Summer Summary

Thanks everybody who filled out or passed on the LambdaLegal survey! And who asked how I was doing!I'm doing good, just not doing good at finding time for blogging.

My Sunshine is doing great. She is a cheerful little one, who often delights us with her expressions of sheer joy. She is a very big 9 month old baby who crawls and stands and eats solids. How'd that happen?! She doesn't talk much or say a lot of consonants (how much should I worry about those milestone charts?) but loves to interact. She does not sleep through the night, not even close. She wakes up several times just distraught. Not like "I want milk, I want comfort" but like.....distraught. Its so upsetting. And then each morning, she smiles and plays with her toys while we stumble around looking for caffeine.

Lovely partner is on maternity leave this summer and she loves that. She is shocked at how much fun she is having and how little she cares about missing work. Yesterday she told me she might want to be a housewife after all. (Okay, so that is two of us now, please send lotto tickets) Her maternity leave also greatly simplifies our general household stress level.

We had fun at Pride with Sunshine. We have a Lesbian Moms group. I think about being a lesbian about 90% less time then I think about being a Mom, though I see the way our queerness shapes many aspects of our parenting lives. Where we live, who we want to spend time with, how we worry. We frequently get asked all those questions lesbian moms talk about "What do you call yourselves?" (Who is Mommy vs. Momma etc) We get many questions about the donor's ethnicity and especially his size. It is not too big a problem right now. I know it will be harder as Sunshine starts to learn about homophobia. That is the part I hate.

Here's some things that would have been helpful for me to know earlier:

*Having a newborn is NOT what having a baby is like. It is what having a newborn is like. Knowing this would've saved me a lot of panic!

*It would've been helpful to know Sunshine earlier-ha! Then I think I would've handled newborn stress better. It was HER! Not some screaming ball of need.

*The damage that TTC can cause on a relationship between partners is not necessarily solved once the baby arrives. I neglected my relationship because of my TTC obsession. That decision has costs. Now I've got a lot of restoration work to do.

*Babies need to be a certain age/size before using booster seats in bistros. Request highchair. (You don't want to know how I learned this, except I will say I never felt like a worse Mom)

*Summer is better then winter. Okay, I ALWAYS knew that but life is such AMAZINGLY easier when you don't have to bundle a baby before you go outside.

Best wishes for a happy summer, everyone!

Survey on Unfair Health Care for LGBT folks

If you, like me, were told you couldn't get fertility treatment because you weren't heterosexual, please take this survey and let LambdaLegal know. Towards the end of the survey they ask this specific question.

I really want this issue to be picked up by a national advocacy organization and Lambda Legal does amazing work.

http://www.lambdalegal.org/take-action/partners-for-health-care-fairness/lgbt-and-hiv-health-care-fairness-survey.html

I don't think I have readers left, but on the off chance one of you sees this and can pass it on....

:) Sarah

Other Motherness

Yesterday I told my Lovely Partner that the babysitter said Sunshine likes to go to sleep with her hand around the babysitter's finger. I told the story in a "Isn't our baby the sweetest thing ever?" way.

Lovely said "She does that to Babysitter too?"

I nodded.

Lovely looked sad and said "Sunshine thinks of you as her family, but I'm just one of the other favorite babysitters."

And then I felt sad for Lovely, even though I don't think it is true. And if it IS true now, I am sure it will change.

In a not unrelated note, Lovely tells me about once a week how pissed she is at Re.becca Walker.

http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?p=3579

Our Life In a Series of Bullet Points

I did actually want to be a blogger. I enjoy it. It helps me sort out things. It is sort of like a memory book for me. But I haven't been able to find the energy. But, I'm keeping it-- going into dreaded bullet points.

*Sunshine is doing great. She is almost 6 months old (?!?). She is a happy smiley baby. If anyone reading this has a persistently screaming infant, take heart. It really can get so much better at 3.5 months.

*My boss came to me and said I can work at home one day a week for a while to spend more time with my baby. I'm unbelievably lucky. However, it has been a lot harder to work at home then I thought. Especially during the Nap Strikes! This baby really has a great future as a Union Organizer, I think.

*Before Sunshine was born, I used to think about being a queer family all the time. Now, I don't feel like I have had time to think. However, one day at work I unexpectedly encountered homophobia and it threw me off. The most disturbing thing was how matter-of-fact about it everyone was. I went to bed, worried about the day my innocent joyful looking daughter would feel pain at being in a stigmatized group.

*I did something stupid which could've, but didn't, lead to Sunshine being injured. It was the worst feeling.: A combination of fear, empathy for her pain, and feeling like the biggest dumbass in the world. Even though I was pretty sure she was fine, I took her to the doctor. The doctor gave me a hug and said "Don't beat yourself up, this happens to 98.7% of all babies." I think he was probably making that statistic up, but I really appreciated his reassurance and his hug. Thank you Compassionate Pediatrician!

*Sunshine is an enormous baby. I am not sure how this happened. I'm not small but the donor was not huge, either. I have not personally met anyone with a larger baby (22 lbs at 5.5 months). She has outgrown all her fuzzibunz, her infant car seat, her swing, bouncing chair, and almost all her 88 outfits we received at our baby shower.

*People have asked if having a baby changed the relationship between Lovely Partner and me. Yes. We have a common purpose and (usually) great teamwork, but its hard to have time for our relationship. We went out one night and had the grandest time! Other times, our conversations are all logistical--who needs to do what for the baby to be clothed, fed, dry, happy. In the morning, we are a parody of the "rushed parents getting ready for work" scenes in movies. At night, we have a series of Would You Rather conversations that go like this: Would you rather walk the dog/play with the baby/do the laundry OR give the baby a bath/ get the bottles ready for tomorrow/clean the dishes? To paraphrase Before Sunset, it sometimes feels like we are running a daycare together. So, I miss us sometimes.

*In general, I find the hardest thing about motherhood is not having enough time (or energy) for my other loved ones. See above. This includes any social gathering that Sunshine is at, when I have trouble giving my full attention to conversation. I feel rude constantly. This is especially hard because so many of people are out of town, we don't get to see everybody as much as we would like anyway.

*Since Sunshine was born, I have trouble watching movies or tv shows where anything bad happens to any person. So that eliminates a lot of movies/shows. Am I doomed to only watching romantic comedies for the rest of my life?

*I think about 55% of the stress of parenthood could be mitigated by more money. Maybe I am wrong. But if we could afford to have one of us stay home or pay someone to do more of our household tasks that would be huge. I also feel that if we won the lotto, we would try to have a sibling for Sunshine right away.

*I did, in fact, do the new motherhood cliche of accidentally wearing my shirt inside out to work.

*Sunshine's favorite toy is the webcam. I'm not kidding. She loves to see videos of her Grandmama but even more than that she loves to watch videos starring herself. She thinks she is supercute, and I agree.

*I still read yer blogs!

If You Have Cable...

Look for my Mom and Dad as extras in Pray.ers for Bo.bby on Life..time this Saturday. It stars Sigourney Weaver as a religious homophobic mom who learns her son is gay and becomes an gay rights activist. My parents are non-speaking extras who play, apparently, members of an LGBT Friendly Church at a Pride Parade. Wonderful casting, I think. They were so excited to be in this movie along with gay activists and PFLAG types. They've come a long way since I came out over 10 years ago.

My Mom said "Sarah , I have to ask you more about what a real pride parade is like!" I told her she ought to come see Sunshine, Lovely, and I in the parade this June!

How My Lovely Partner Ended Up On the Crib Mattress

Sunshine used to be an excellent sleeper. As a newborn she slept in four hour stretches at night and we woke her to feed her. Gradually she slept more and more until she regularly slept 7-9 hour stretches by 2 months. We knew we were lucky. I didn't want to focus on comparing her to other babies, but I was a little proud when other parents were amazed. I told people "In the Baby Olympics, sleep is her best event." I took her sleep habits as validation of our co-sleeping/attachment-parenting leaning ways. Her crib stood unused in the room down the hall.

And then, all the sudden, she hit a slump. It happened pretty much went I went back to work. First she slept in two hour stretches. We thought she must have had a stomachache or something like that. But she seemed fine. She would wake up and nurse and then fall back asleep. I thought it might be "reverse cycling" to make up for the time I was away at work. But she didn't seem particularly hungry when she nursed. Then she slept in one hour stretches. Then it was forty-five minutes stretches. During the day, she was still mostly cheerful and alert, but I can't say the same for me and my Lovely Partner. One morning, Lovely expressed her outrage at People: "When People say that it gets easier after three months, they LIE!"

However, worse then being up all night was worrying something was wrong. I thought maybe she was traumatized because I went back to work. Or that she hit some developmental block.

So I got on the internet and researched, as I am wont to do. I found out there is another thing called "Four Month Sleep Regression" where a good sleeping baby just stops sleeping well at about four months. Who knew? (Maybe ya'll did) In any case, from my reading we are just supposed to stick it out. So I attempted to calm down and keep on...mothering. We tried to think of things to help her (and us) sleep.

One problem is that she, my very big baby, outgrew her co-sleeper. And when she sleeps on the bed with us, she doesn't seem to have enough room either. She flails and hits us and wakes herself (and us) up. We thought we could move her crib into our bedroom. We would drop down the bar a little and keep her close to the bed. Unfortunately, we forgot the rule guiding our life which is "If we purchase something big, it will not work for us in some way." The crib, built in the nursery, was too big to go through the door. We decided to take it apart and rebuild this weekend. In the meantime we thougt we would just put the crib mattress on the floor next to our bed and see how that works.

So the other night I walk into our bedroom and see Lovely crashed asleep in our bed and Sunshine happily laying on the mattress on the floor, looking up at me smiling. I realized this would not work either because she moves too much and would fall off the mattress.

So Lovely suggested that for the time being, the baby and I should sleep on our queen size bed, where I can nurse her when needed throughout the night. Lovely decided she could sleep on the baby's crib mattress next to our bed. I should point out that while Lovely is not tall, she is much taller then your average crib user. However, last night my baby and I slept on our bed, and my Lovely Partner slept on the crib mattress next to us on the floor. This morning, Lovely said it was the best night's sleep she's had in a while.

I Hate My Babysitter (But not really...)

Maternity leave is officially over. This is permanent. Lovely and I did the math, we can't pay our student loans and fertility debt unless we are both working. Hell, we can't even if we are both working. There is no way around daycare, right now. (I'm not against daycare at all, I just personally want to be home with my baby)

So I leave my Sunshine in the morning and pick her up at night. First I hand over my baby, then I hand over my money. It is a double blow. The absurdity of this situation never ceases to amaze me. And I know the childcare worker is underpaid, as well.

So I don't hate my babysitter, really. I'm jealous of all the time she spends with my baby.

We are lucky that my sister has agreed to be the live-in babysitter for January. Beyond lucky. She is gifted with babies and I get to see her so much more. She got laid off so I know I should be thankful that I have a job. Lots of people are losing theirs.

Little Sunshine seems okay with the adjustment. She smiles and coos and seems in a good mood most of the time. However, she has discovered the joys of reverse cycling. This is when a baby decides to nurse often during the night, typically after a Mom returns to work. (I read about it on go.ogle, so it must be true) She used to sleep in pleasant 7-8 hours stretches, now we are lucky to get three. This started exactly when I returned to work. I researched what I should do about this and my favorite advice was "Take reverse cycling as a compliment from your baby." I do my best to feel flattered at 12 a.m., 3 a.m. and 6a.m.

One good thing is that (for now) I am less stressed about every little thing Sunshine is doing. For one thing, I have less time to search the internet. But mostly its because problems seem temporary when babies change so damn fast. My internet search history already has "Baby won't nurse" "Baby nurses constantly" "Baby won't take bottle" "Baby takes too much bottle" "Baby sleeps too much" "Baby doesn't sleep enough." I honestly can't keep up. I'm just gonna hang on and assume that while I am writing about reverse cycling today, I might be writing about the opposite situation next week. Is there such thing as forward cycling?

Can We Learn Without Direct Experience?

Sometimes I have toyed with the idea that I can't learn except by actual experience. That is, advice never helps me. It is like I won't believe it until I see it. This partially explains my credit card debt and past (long ago, thank goodness) relationships with addicts. If only I had listened to what....gee everyone was telling me.

I now present my list of advice I WISHED I followed regarding pregnancy and having an infant:

1) Enjoy your pregnancy. Ha-easier said then done...but still I think I could've enjoyed it more. I know that pregnancy loss is real and the worst thing in the world. Still I wish I had savored that oddness that is feeling pregnant.

2) Write down something about your new baby every single day, no matter how short it is or how tired you are. So much of the first month is a blur. I wish I knew more about the hours she slept or how often she ate, how many diapers I changed a day. (Honestly if I could have a videotape of every moment of her first three months I would LOVE that)

3) Nursing will get better after 6 weeks. I guess I listened to this advice, but I never believed it for real because nursing was so painful and frustrating. It got so much better. It got great. I can't explain it but its one of the most empowering things I have done in my life. Highly recommended.

4) Enjoy the newborn stage. Its true that I thought I might lose my mind with my often crying newborn. When people gave me this advice I thought they were delusional. I was so scared of her vulnerability I wished she would get older quicker. But now I wish I had savored more the smell of her newborn skin, the smallness of her fist, the sheer newness of her. It really goes by so fast.

5) Stay Home with Your Newborn As Much As Possible. At the time I thought I needed to be out and about showing my baby the world around her. And maybe I felt a little cabin fever myself. We walked to coffeeshops and I took her on two visits across state lines. But she was stressed and I was stressed and now I think that sitting on the couch for three months is really not so bad. Its only three months.

Okay so lets see what advice I am getting now that I will regret not following......

Disbelief

I thought about my post about feet and how it might sound...as if biological connections were such an important thing. I can see how other Moms might feel about that and that might be insensitive. What I wanted to convey more was my sense of disbelief that I do have a daughter. I was someone who felt certain she would not arrive.

Sometimes I forget the TTC part is over. I got my first period the other day and when I saw the blood I felt alarmed, just like the old days. I have some clothes that I wore the day I had the miscarriage and I never wore them during my pregnancy. I felt like it was bad luck. I shove those clothes to the back of the drawer and then I remember that she is already here.

Happy Feet

I am still finding it hard to believe that I gave birth to the baby playing in the next room. I started this blog before I had her, and now she is real. I never could have dreamed up a more wonderful baby. I don't think she looks too much like me. She doesn't have my eyes, my nose, my mouth, my hair, or my facial shape. I feel like I have a good idea what her donor must look like. Her social security card and birth certificate haven't come yet, and occasionally I worry about not having identification for her.

I have bizarre thoughts, like someone will ask me to prove I birthed her. I imagine a stern man from the Department of Parental Security demanding evidence. "Look," I will say desperately while quickly pulling off my shoes and socks, "we have identical toes."

New Look

I have myself a new header, thanks to Calliope at creatingmotherhood.com. I "won" it from the Uterus Brigade. I've changed my subheading in homage to my Mom (not that she knows I have a blog) because she puts out a family newsletter called Mom's Musings.
Thanks Calliope!

Belated Thankgiving

Thank you to everyone who gave me advice and support on my Incompetence post. That was good stuff. Thanks to everyone who reads and comments or lurks. Your real perspectives (and the ones I just imagine) have helped me sort my thoughts.

Thanks especially to the bloggers, whose blogs give me so much freakin good information and inspiration. Before TTC, I didn't buy into the idea of "online community' and I have happily been proved wrong.

What's In a Name?

I use pseudonyms for this blog, which makes this story difficult to tell.

My name is Sarah Soda. My girlfriend is Lovely Partner. Our baby, Sunshine, has her last name. This was a decision we came to mutually. I gave our baby my DNA, she gave our baby her name. We don't have a double or hypenated last name. Our baby has two MIDDLE names, one of which is my last name. We are totally fine with this.

So, our baby is Sunshine Middle Soda Partner. (Which sounds like it is from the Sarah Palin Name Generator Game). To make it more confusing, Sunshine's real name is somewhat unusual and has a commonly used nickname, Sunny. Both my last name and my partner's name are also not pronounced as they are spelled. None of us have androgynous names. I love Sunshine's name, but I also recognize it's a name with issues.

After Sunshine was born, we received a lot of presents for her in the mail. An overwhelming, much-appreciated amount of packages. Since we live in an apartment with a broken doorbell on a busy street in an urban neighborhood, we did not receive many of the packages, but instead got a card from the post office asking us to pick them up at the Post office.

They have been addressed to: Sunshine Soda, Sunshine Partner, Sunny, Sunny c/o of Partner, Lovely and Sarah, Sunshine Soda Partner, Ms. Lovely Partner and Ms. Sarah Partner, Sunny Soda, Ms. Sunshine M.S. Partner etc. You get the idea.

So I go to the post office to pick up a bunch of packages. Anticipating a problem, I have Lovely sign the form that says I can pick up packages in her name, plus her Driver's License. I get to the post office right before it closes, and soon a long line is behind me. I hand over 4 cards all with different variations of the name, plus my I.D. and Lovely's I.D.

Postal Worker says "Well these packages appear to be for "Sunshine" and then there is one for "Ms. Lovely Partner, so what ones are you picking up"

Me: "Sunshine is a baby, she can't pick them up, so I am, and Lovely Partner signed here that I can pick her packages up"

Postal Worker "Well.....you only have a signature from Lovely Partner, when the packages are for Sunshine Partner."

Me: "Sunshine is an infant, so I am picking them up"

Postal Worker "Who is the Mom then?" (Crowd behind me gets impatient as Postal Worker scrutinizes all the I.D.s, all the cards, all the variations of Sunshine's name)

Me: "Both of Us" (Postal Worker doesn't hear me, still scrutinizing)

Postal Worker "What, who's the Mom?"

Me: "Her"

So yep, in a rush, with an impatient crowd behind me, I actually denied I was my daughter's mother. For what sociologist Goffman calls "ease of interaction." I wouldn't have done this if Sunshine was a grown child, and listening. (I don't think so anyway, although I would consider safety, her wishes, etc). But in this case, it was the quickest easiest way to get the packages. I know the same thing would happen for Lovely if Sunshine had my last name. I imagine this kind of thing will happen a lot. It still felt very weird.

Incompetence

I feel like I am not accurately portraying life with my infant. There is so much about being a Mom is great, and also much that makes me feel incompetent.

For example:

1) I'm not good at bathing her. She's so slippery and it freaks me out. I always call my partner in to help me. It seems like something I should be able to pull off on my own.

2) I often can't comfort her. She cries and is miserable. I thought that fed, dry babies stop crying when their Mom picks them up. Not the case with the Not-Always-Sunny-Sunshine.

3) Sometimes, I still feel bad about the epidural/epi. That maybe I missed out on some crucial bonding moment with her that I can't make up because I wasn't centered enough.

4) I'm not calm and collected when my baby screams in public. (See #2)

5) I feel sad for my partner that because of my age we put my dreams (having a baby) in front of her dreams (traveling, exciting career). With all our money in fertility and child care, she doesn't have freedom I did when I was younger. She loves Sunshine so much, but I know she has sacrificed more then I have.

6) I'm having trouble with my sling. I swear some of the hip mamas around are looking at me like "You suck with that messed up sling, you imposter!"

7) I worry that my mothering skills are being negatively evaluated often. (See #6). I know I should not care what people think so much.

8) I feel guilty when I get bored at home, or am wishing I could just check my email. I love her more then anything, but sometimes its taxing to take care of a baby.

9) I have trouble with getting onesies on still. Why must baby clothes be pulled over a baby's head? Every baby I have ever seen HATES this.

10) While nursing is going fine now, I still don't know when she has eaten enough, when she is hungry vs. wanting to suck, etc. I don't trust my intuition on this.

Its not that I need to be comforted about this, or be told I'm doing a good job or anything like that. I am mostly thinking about the identity shift that has happened. In some ways I am a different person, but in many ways, I feel the same. I am not someone who this stuff happens for naturally...like all those hip mamas with their calm infants in the slings!

Dancing Queen, Young and Sweet, Only Seven Weeks

Before we started trying to have a baby, I read tons of things about having kids and did a lot of mental planning. I thought about what the nursery would be like, how I would tell my parents, what we would name the baby. As each try failed, my enthusiasm for these projects shrunk. When a year had gone by and I still wasn't pregnant, I pretty much stopped thinking about my still hypothetical kid. It was painful to give it too much energy.

However, there was one project I kept working on: My Ultimate Baby CD.

I have to confess that I don't know very much about music. I don't even listen to the radio, ever. I don't even like the question "What kind of music do you like?" because I never know what to say. However, when I was TTC, I became obsessed with the idea of creating a mix CD for yet-to-be-conceived-Sunshine. I started compiling a list of songs before we even started trying the IUIs. The list was a page in the back of my planner, and it grew and grew. I tried to incorporate songs from different musical genres. I tried to think of songs that would be appropriate and life affirming for a child. I checked in with Lovely Partner, who asked me to add Led Zeppelin, Tori Amos, and oddly, "You Can Call Me Al." I know it might sound silly, but this list was one of the things that kept me feeling positive about trying to have a baby. It was abstract enough not to hurt, but concrete enough that I felt like I was going to have a baby someday. It was a pleasant distraction from thinking about cervical mucus.

My sister started helping me with the project and soon we had an excel spreadsheet to sort the songs into categories ("Songs for and Inspired by the Gay Community," "Just Plain Fun Songs,"Soothing Sounds" etc.)

On the day Lovely Partner adopted little Sunshine, my sister presented us with the CDs, which must have taken her a really really long time to burn. It is a total of 8 cds, and over 100 songs.
(It also must have cost her a lot of money to buy the songs, and she confessed she did not already own any of the songs "For and Inspired by the Gay Community." )

Most days, I play these songs and dance with my baby. Every now and then a song will make me cry. Lovely Partner thinks its hilarious that I have included Christopher Plummer singing "Edelweiss." We have also clarified with each other that the way we dance at home with a baby (swaying like dorks) is not how we would dance at a club. It is hard to say, but Sunshine seems partial to "Do You Love Me?" by the Contours. So, I'm finding that I am listening to music a lot more these days.

My night with Stella

Stella isn't the name of my daughter, its the name of a beer I just drank. My Lovely Partner has been encouraging me to get out of the house where I have been tethered to my Sunshine for 6 weeks today. Lovely tells me that I really need a break. In six weeks, I've spent roughly a total of 4 hours out of my house. Weird. I used to be such an active girl.

So I head out a local restaurant and have the above mentioned beer. Though I've always been a lightweight, this beer makes me feel ridiculously loopy. Maybe its from nursing, or not drinking beer for 9 months. I sit by myself at a booth and read the newspaper, inhaling election news, restaurant reviews, and gay gossip. I sort of....forget everything. Then, it feels oddly outrageous to be sitting there while Lovely is at home with the baby. I feel like a bad Mom. Still, I ordered dessert. I feel somewhat like my old self, reading the paper in a restaurant. For a few minutes, I am tranferred back to my old life. But yet, I don't really miss my old self, all carefree and ......leisurely. But I do I miss Lovely Partner! She should be here with me. We always said that we would go for sushi once we had the baby. However, this date is probably some time off as we nurse and care for an infant in a town far away from most of our loved ones and natural babysitters. I miss talking to her. Then I feel bad for not thinking my daughter should be here with me. Somehow, Lovely fits in with my image of a great night at the restaurant, but the baby doesn't. I wonder what they are doing right now, in this hour away from me. I've been craving some time to myself, but yet I'm sort of bored at the restaurant.

I think my identity has shifted because my old one isn't fitting somehow. I feel like an imposter, drinking beer and reading papers by myself in public. I stroll over to a public computer lab and logon to f.acebook, where I know Lovely has posted pictures of our daughter. I look throught them. I thought about the other night when Lovely and I went through the pictures from the day of the birth. We were both amazed to see that Sunshine looked like herself at birth. She seemed like a stranger 6 weeks ago, and now she is so familiar. Before we looked back at these pictures, we both assumed she must have looked different at birth for us to feel that way. But in the birth pictures, she is so familiar. So heartbreakingly sweet.

In the computer lab, I write this post. And that is how I spent the two hours away from my daughter today.