The Trivial Pursuit of Happiness

We spent a good portion of today in the back yard, swinging, plotting out the garden, cutting down trees, and knocking out the cable line. (Gives Tom the evil eye, and waves at the neighbors whose wireless we are hijacking.) Since there isn’t a lot of yardwork I can do without tempting my angry uterus, I set up the camera with the timer, and took a series of photos with the working title “If I am this big at 34 week, how am I going to survive the next six?” This was an outtake, an unintentional family portrait.

This outfit is what I am reduced to wearing until I am motivated enough to go buy  maternity pants that do not feel like spanx, and maternity shirts that actually cover my belly. Until then, it is skirts, ugly boots, knee socks, and shirts that I have to tug down every 10 seconds.

Another outtake:

Tell me Alice doesn’t remind you of this squirrel. Flashing red lights equally attract toddlers and small rodents apparently.

Sisterhood.

Because even when you are having a no good, very bad day,

they know that all you really need is a hug,

and someone to hold your hand.

A rainy day, sore hips, and a long night with sniffly girls left me a little less than celebratory this morning. And while there are probably 15 projects I could have spent the day finishing, instead I started something new, in hopes that it would lift my spirits. I saw this tutorial a few weeks ago, and filed it away in my “Crafty craftsters” bookmarks folder, along with, oh, 200some other tutorials that have inspired me. A scramble through boxes to find my watercolor stuff, one naptime, and a couple scavenged frames later, I finally have something for over the mantle.

Alice

Ella

First Trimester

Second Trimester

And now, at 32 weeks, we are firmly in the third trimester.

The first six months of this pregnancy feel like a complete blur to me, punctuated only by the constant, unending, miserable nausea. I am still ill on a regular basis, but 3-4 times a week is a world away from 10-15 times a day. I’m finally able to keep weight on, and my body seems to be trying to make up for the malnourishment of the last half year. If you cook it, I will eat it. I am always, always hungry, and even though there is not a lot of room for any of my internal organs in my abdomen, I can somehow put away an entire plate of food. And then another. And if you have dessert, I’ll take some of that too please.

We’re nowhere near ‘ready’ for a baby yet, since the majority of our newborn supplies are either packed away in the back of the garage, or loaned out to friends.  With only five weeks before we are cleared for our homebirth, I have moments of panic that I need to have everything set up, but Tom is quick to remind me that A) our little village of friends would not let Polliwog go cold, B) other than boobs, blankets and diapers, everything else is extras, and C) it’s more likely that we will meet this baby in nine weeks, not five.

The girls are very aware of their little sister, singing to her, poking her little feet (knees? elbows? What is that lump?), and counting down the days until she is born. I told Ella months ago that “the baby will be born when the trees have new leaves”, counting on a typical northern winter, and the trees not coming out of hibernation until April. Instead, we’ve had one of the mildest winters on record, and the trees have started budding in February. Now we’re counting down until Easter, with the promise that baby will come after the Easter Bunny. Alice has no sense of time, and asks me to “Open! Baby out!” daily. They also have a “Hatch baby, hatch!” song, which is unsurprising considering how excited they are about the chicken plans.

(Edited to add: Today we spent time with Chelsea and her family, and Ella could not get enough of Quinn. After leaning over me holding him and declaring him “SO CUTE!”, she begged to hold him, and then sat with us on the couch for a half hour, just holding him while he slept, stroking his hair. It struck me how much different life will be this time. She has grown up so much in the last two years, which is both obvious and so surprising to me at the same time.)

Emotionally, I feel like this pregnancy is very similar to Alice’s. With Ella the reality that a baby was the end product of pregnancy was so surreal that daily (hourly?) I was caught off guard, and  I would find myself giddily rubbing my belly, making promises. With Alice, and now with Polliwog, the element of surprise is gone, but there is a clear sense that this little soul is my child, and in some way always has been. I feel like welcoming her into our family will be a homecoming, not an introduction.

Field trips to “the fire station!”

Alice rarely asks to be held in public any more, but we recently attended a fundraiser a local friend held for the orphanage they adopted their daughter from in Haiti, and between the noise, the crowds, and the fact that we had been up since 4:30 am, Alice begged to be held. And just for a minute (before my back, hips and arms started to protest) she felt so small again.

(Compare with these, of week old Alice. It’s a good think I am already pregnant again, because that little foot poking out may have given me baby rabies otherwise.)

Since I travel in a community of mothers, postpartum depression comes up with enough regularity that it is not strange to talk about, but it is also not a subject that people are completely at ease discussing. PPD is scary, in part because it isn’t something we can anticipate. It’s like a car crash or a tornado – an act of God over which we have no control. It could happen to any of us, so talking about it feels like tempting the dragon, pushing our luck. So, when PPD comes up, we talk about it in vague terms, in generalizations and anecdotes. We know someone who went through it, we heard a report on NPR, we read a great article in Mothering. If we do venture to say we survived it, we do not go into details. We wouldn’t describe a car crash in good company, after all.

Since I rarely actually talk about that first year of Alice’s life and how I struggled, sometimes it feels like I made it all up. Like I am blowing what I went through out of proportion, and that claiming to have had PPD is disrespectful to those who really had it. I did not take medication, I did not hurt my children, I “got over it”. Time dulls pain, and fear that I could fall into that abyss again kicks my denial into high gear. I don’t speak up when someone asks how people overcame PPD, because what would I know about that? I was just a little sad, a little blue, right?

But then I come across an article like this one, and I feel like someone is holding my eyes open “Clockwork Orange” style, reminding me that I wasted an entire year of my life, of Tom’s life, of my children’s lives, fighting with that bear. Each item on the list brings back a rush of memories that make me want to shield my face, to turn away. It hurts too much. And yet, I keep reading. I keep remembering. I keep reminding myself that I lived through all of this, and that I do not have to do it again. I know too much now to ignore the signs, to think that it is okay to feel so numb and angry and scared all at the same time. There is a good chance that I won’t have to face it down again – I was fine after Ella’s birth, which was one of the reasons I was so unprepared to fight it after Alice’s – but if I do have to face PPD again, I refuse to waste my time wondering and waiting. I refuse to waste another year of our lives.

I have a plan of attack, a worst case scenario tool kit of diet, supplements, yoga, acupuncture and if need be, medication. But mostly I just plan to talk about it, even when it is uncomfortable. I plan to ask for help, and take the help that is offered. I plan to let myself be supported. And the next time someone asks about PPD, I am going to be honest with them, and with myself.

We’ve been talking about having chickens in the backyard ever since we came up with the plan to move back to the little house, and now that we are here, Ella won’t let us live it down. Eventually we plan to convert both the front and back yard from lawn to garden, but since this summer we will still be renovating, and Polliwog will still be so little, we are trying not to put too much on our plates. Ella is willing to put off the garden and tree house this year, but chickens seems to be nonnegotiable. She asks nightly to read her egg book, she loves to watch the HenCam, and she looks skeptically at store bought eggs, because “You know mom, if we had our chickens, we wouldn’t have to buy these.” After talking it over, chickens do seem like a logical place to start, since once we start the garden we’ll need to learn canning and preserving right away as well, so if this isn’t the year for chickens, it won’t be for a while.

According to everything I’ve found, in Spokane we are limited to three chickens (no roosters), which sounds just about right for us anyway. Tom is excited to build a little coop, and this “Garden Coop” looks perfect. I’m doing some research on breeds , and the basics of how to keep them alive, but right now, it seems fairly simple. Hopefully by the time the back yard is green again, we’ll have a small coop back there behind the garage.

Resources we’ve found helpful:

Craig’s series on raising urban chickens, and building a coop of his own design

Urban Chickens

Backyard Chickens

My Pet Chicken

Mad City Chickens

And be careful doing research ya’ll – even searching for “Chickens” at your local library, you may fall into a “How to catch a predator” trap. Stay classy Spokane!