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.