#2

No, this post isn't about poop.

And no, I'm not pregnant.

But it's kind if in that genre.

When Matt and I started dating we all knew this was the Real Deal. This was our Person (sorry Allegra--you're my other Person). So people asked, "when are you getting married?" That was a little farther away than I think we all expected, but we got there. Once we got married it was "when are you having kids?" That, ironically, came a little earlier than expected. But 11 months to the day after our wedding there was Ben. The next question? "When is the next one?"

There's a part of me that inwardly replied, "let's let some physical healing happen before starting on that road again." And certainly, physically, I was not ready for, ahem, anything, for quite some time.

But then there was everything else. The parts that make me wonder how anyone on the planet does this more than once. My pregnancy was awful. Not just morning sickness for the first trimester and elephant feet the third trimester awful. I mean puking and barely being able to stand up from fatigue for eight solid months awful. I lost 10 pounds my first trimester. They put me on medication to help me keep food down (and hopefully keep my baby), but I had an allergic reaction to it. While eventually I was able to keep food down, I was nauseous for eight freaking months, and I could have gone to bed a 6:00pm every day I was so tired (but, ironically, too sick to actually sleep). Ben came three weeks early, which was a boon considering how sick I was. Then he went straight to the NICU. Then there was nursing (boys, you may want to divert your attention here). I know many women have a hard time at first, blah blah blah. But most women don't have to hook themselves up to a pump for five minutes, then try to pull their beepers out with a sucking contraption, then try to get a screaming 6 pounder to latch on with his short tongue. Every 1-2 hours. With a nurse coming every day to weigh and test your baby because he has jaundice and if you can't figure out how to get milk in him he will continue to lose weight, succumb to the jaundice, and be marked with failure to thrive. Then after a couple of weeks of that hell, colic set in. I can't explain that to you. There is something so horrifying about having your child scream for four solid hours every single day and you can't do anything about it except hold him while he screams and slowly lose your mind.

At six weeks this was my reality, and I was told I had to go back to work. I was a mess. I felt like I had to be strong and great, not just for my son but for my work. The economy was hitting hard and tens of thousands of teachers were out of jobs and I was the newest teacher at my school. I didn't want to work at all, but I had to if we wanted to eat and pay rent. I needed to not give them any reason to cut me. And yet there I was, in my principal's office two days before school was supposed to start, sobbing uncontrollably because I wanted to die, not teach middle school. Thankfully she helped me find a way to stay home for a few more weeks, without pay (this country does a great job of nurturing and encouraging moms) so I could try to pull myself together.

At 10 weeks I went back to work. Feeding was fine, colic was over, Ben was sleeping through the night. But post-partum depression doesn't just go away when your kid starts sleeping. So I fought through the first half of the school year. I locked myself in my classroom every recess and lunch and pumped breastmilk under my desk because a couple of times students and/or the janitor walked in on me. Our school doesn't have a cafeteria, so on rainy days the students eat in their classrooms with their teachers. Which meant that on rainy days I had to go to my male assistant principal and ask him to find me a place to pump my breasts, as required by law. So on rainy days I sat under the desk of an unused classroom with no coverings on the windows that surrounded the room, pumping.

At six months I gave up pumping. I nursed when I was home, but formula wouldn't kill him when I wasn't.

And then there was the way my heart broke every morning when I left him.

Now that Ben is almost two, the stream of "when's the next one?" has become constant.

And for most of the last two years my answer has been, "I'm still recovering from the year I lived in hell. I can't imagine doing it again. I want another kid, but I don't know that I could do that again."

But then my little boy runs to me and says, "Mommy cuddle!"

And I melt and I can't imagine not doing it again.