Possible Miscarriage?

The subject of this post has nothing to do with why I've been MIA for the past few days. The reason I've been so quiet on this here blog is that I volunteered to evaluate charter applications for the state. Last year, they only gave me three to score; this year, I had to do six. Each one is between 250 and 500 pages. 

So between reading applications, working, getting Magnolia Montessori For All up and running, and watching TV at the end of the day because I'm too mentally exhausted to do anything else, I haven't had much time for Feeding the Soil. 

I've missed you!

I owe you some pregnancy-related updates. First, I've started having itching in my palms and feet again, which is a sign of choleostasis. Choleostasis is a pregnancy-related disease that causes liver malfunctioning. It usually happens in the third trimester, and it's a very serious thing. It often involves induction to prevent stillbirth. 

It affects less than one percent of Americans (it's more common in Scandinavian countries), but the recurrence rate in second pregnancies is very high. I got it with Henry in the third trimester, and it caused a lot of stress as we tried to make decisions that would be best for Henry. 

So I'm 11 weeks pregnant, and the itching is already starting. I got worried very fast because there is no cure for choleostasis and the treatment usually involves medicine that may or may not be harmful to fetuses. The best way for me to assuage worry is to develop an action plan. So, at 2:30am one morning, I decided to:

1. Hurry and commit to a midwife, so I could go to my first prenatal visit and talk about this issue (we interviewed two different candidates but hadn't decided on one)
2. Schedule an acupuncture appointment to try and stimulate proper liver functioning
3. Send an e-mail to a local nutritionist to figure out the best way to ease up on my liver through diet (although I subsequently had to rule out this option because she costs $200)
4. Purchase this book about a healthy liver diet

At our midwife appointment, the midwife could not hear the baby's heartbeat. Although the uterus is sometimes tipped back and therefore obstructs one's ability to hear the heartbeat, it's not very common to not be able to hear the heartbeat at 11 weeks.  

When I thought about it a little more, I realized that some of my first trimester symptoms have been waning. At first I thought it was because I was moving out of the first trimester. Upon second thought, however, I realize that it could also be because of a miscarriage. For those of you who are new to this blog, I also had a miscarriage scare with Henry.

So I cried and then formulated my next action steps:

• Go get a blood test to measure my pregnancy hormone levels
• Get my bile acids checked to investigate the choleostasis situation a little more

I'm still going to acupuncture tomorrow. Wish me luck! I know the needles are hair-thin, but still. They're needles! In my body! 

When I start to get sad about everything that's happening right now, I remind myself that I can't control the outputs. I've done my very best with the inputs. I prepared my body for conception. I get rest and well-balanced nutrition. I take my prenatal vitamins religiously.

The most important things in life can't be controlled. We can't control when we're going to meet the person we want to commit to forever. We can't control when we get pregnant or when our loved ones pass away. 

It is what it is. The best I can do is make space for my feelings and then take healthy action steps forward. I still feel like the baby is alive, so I'm optimistic that it's going to work out. My optimism is going to make everything harder if it turns out that it's not okay.

I hope all is well with you...

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Finally Embracing Motherhood

 Right after Henry was born, my father-in-law asked Matt, "Could you ever imagine yourself loving anything more than him?" I remember feeling so thankful that he hadn't asked me the same question. I knew I was supposed to say that I could never imagine myself loving anything more than my newborn son, but, honestly, I didn't even know my newborn son. Yes, I was overwhelmed with gratitude that he arrived safely in our lives, and I was overcome by the sheer miracle of the universe replicating itself through my own body, but I didn't immediately love Henry the way I grew to love my life partner, Matt, or even our trusty bloodhound, Hoss.

I am finally--after sixteen months--coming to a place where I can begin to say, "My life is definitively better with a child in it." 

Even as I type that thought, the guilt floods in. What if Henry reads this post when he's older and gets the wrong impression? What kind of mother am I if it took me sixteen months to fully embrace motherhood? What will all of you "real" mothers think--the ones who were immediately able to elevate having children to the most precious place in your life? 

But this is the truth for me, and it needs to be said in case it falls on some mother's ears who also took a longer path to the Joy of Motherhood. Matt and I are finally at a place where the sheer work that it takes to raise a child is balanced by the sheer pleasure. Henry is a sweet, sweet boy--he always has been. But now he communicates with us. He says "mama?" when he wants something to eat or wants me to help him put on a hat (his favorite is the shower cap featured above) or wants a drink from my water bottle. He likes to do big work, like carrying around a child-sized rake or flipping over the ottoman. He can put his banana peel in the compost and carry his breakfast to the table. We like to sit side-by-side on the step in the backyard, looking for birds, picking up sticks, and waiting for our neighbor Patty to come outside. 

Although I wish it hadn't taken me 16 months to come to this place, I don't blame myself for taking so long to get here. It is what it is. I can't change the way I feel or will myself into a different state of being. Instead, I have focused my attention on the actions of joyful motherhood. I spent a full year with Henry all day long, breastfeeding him every 3-4 hours, singing him songs, taking him outside to stare at trees as mobiles, trekking to museums/playdates/swimming pools/parks, smiling at him and telling him I love him. Matt and I nearly always respond to his demands with patience and grace. We modify our schedules to meet his needs for routine and rest. We read him books constantly. 

As I prepare to give birth to a second child (in January), I imagine that my transition into expanded motherhood will be even more difficult. Matt and I are intentionally trying to space our children close together for a variety of personal reasons, none of which will actually make the act of raising two young children any easier. It feels like we're at complete capacity right now. I feel like I sprint, sprint, sprint and then pass the baton to Matt while I double over on the ground, frantically trying to catch my breath. With our second child, there will be no tag-teaming, no easy passing of the baton. We will go from "two on one" to "two on two" or even--shutter--"one on two." 

In the low moments (or low year? or years?), I will remind myself that the days are long, but the years are short. I will also come back to this quote from this article:

I think parenting young children (and old ones, I've heard) is a little like climbing Mount Everest. Brave, adventurous souls try it because they've heard there's magic in the climb. They try because they believe that finishing, or even attempting the climb are impressive accomplishments. They try because during the climb, if they allow themselves to pause and lift their eyes and minds from the pain and drudgery, the views are breathtaking. They try because even though it hurts and it's hard, there are moments that make it worth the hard. These moments are so intense and unique that many people who reach the top start planning, almost immediately, to climb again. Even though any climber will tell you that most of the climb is treacherous, exhausting, killer. That they literally cried most of the way up.

I won't get angry or disappointed about what I do or do not feel. Instead, I will focus on what I do and the kind of mother I am for my two children. That's the very best I can do.

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Dream It, Do It: Update on Our House

Things are progressing well with the design of our new house. I met with the architect again to talk through the changes we asked him to make to our house. He made some really smart changes to our changes. Based on the most recent design, we asked him to make a few more adjustments, such as stretching the second bedroom closet all the way across the wall and creating a hallway closet by commandeering a bit of the closet from the second bedroom. 

He also had a few more suggestions:

• He wants to lower the ceilings in the two bathrooms and the foyer to 8', so he can move the HVAC system up into the ceiling. This will free up an entire closet.
• He wants to eliminate the sitting bench in each of the showers to shrink the bathrooms and add the extra square footage to the master bedroom and the kitchen/dining room/living room.

One of the things I've been thinking about a lot is what kind of furniture to put in the foyer. I want our house to be the kind of place that has a spot for everything. With four of us cohabitating in a relatively small space, it's important to me that we can each put away our stuff, especially when we first walk in the door. We'll have shoes, bags, keys, phones, dog leashes, jackets, umbrellas, mail, etc. There are two versions of this house already in existence in Austin. One of them is occupied by two adults; the other one is filled with a family of four. Although they're both awesome, they feel like there's simply too much stuff for the space available.

Here's a picture of what the foyer space will look like:

At first, I thought about using funky lockers, but a) I realized that they would be difficult for our young children to access independently and b) we're trying to conserve money wherever possible, since we'll be pouring all of our money into this house and into a new couch, refrigerator, king-sized bed, and washer/dryer. I realized that our IKEA shelving unit might be the perfect spot. 

At our old house, we used the shelf primarily for books, but it also held our keys and phones. We put our shoes in a big basket to the left of the door. I liked that our keys were in a bowl up high, which meant that we weren't always looking down into a disheveled bowl (like we do now, since our key bowl is on a desk). The one thing I didn't like about our old system was that Matt and I had to share the shoe basket. I was always digging under his sweaty running shoes to find my shoes. 

Now I'm thinking that we can repurpose our IKEA shelf into our "landing strip." We can put four baskets along the bottom, each of which can hold an individual family member's shoes. (When the children are really young and have small shoes, they won't need the basket.). Then the next highest row can be for each family member's school/work bag. The top two rows can be used for our key bowl, a place to charge cell phones (inside a cute box with a hole cut out of the back for the chargers to pass through), books, ceramics, etc. Ooh, maybe we could get a desktop shredder and fit it into one of the baskets to give us easy access for shredding credit card junk mail without having to store it in plain sight. We can put small hooks on the side or on the wall to hold coats and umbrellas at kid height. We can also put up a sorting tray for mail.

Even our young children will be able to independently access their shoes, bags, and coats. 

My one worry with this system is that our bags might look to messy stuffed in the cubby holes. Unfortunately, they're too big to fit inside baskets. I'll try stuffing Matt's bag into a hole and seeing how it looks once he gets home.

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Making Changes

 I've been trying to be as healthy as possible with this pregnancy as I was with Henry. I've been taking a nap each afternoon when Henry naps (which means I have to cram my work into the evenings). I've been doing okay on the eating front (it's a little difficult to work around my first-trimester aversions to things). The one area I really need to improve is exercise. When I was pregnant with Henry, I walked for an hour approximately six times a week. It was easy to do. When I was in my first trimester, I was on summer vacation from my teaching job, so I could walk first thing in the morning (when it was slightly cooler). Then once my teaching job resumed in the fall, I walked after my afternoon nap. 

So I need a plan for exercise. If I want to make a change in my habits, I have to: 

1. Specify specifically what the action will look like
2. Plot it on the calendar

What will the specific action look like? I will walk at least five times a week, and I will go to prenatal yoga at least once a week.

When will I do these specified actions? Through the summer, I will walk with Matt, Henry, and Hoss around the trail near our house. When the weather cools down and it starts to get dark earlier, I will take Henry and Hoss to the lake before Matt gets home in the evening. I will do prenatal yoga on Saturdays during my free time.

I'm feeling better about this!

Oh, I also need to start drinking my red raspberry leaf tea with nettle. My last midwife recommended 3-4 tablespoons each of nettle and red raspberry to a quart of boiling water: 1 cup per day in the first trimester, 2 cups per day in the second trimester, and 3 cups per day in the third trimester.

Photo from my second trimester with Henry (I'm already more rotund with the second baby, and I'm only nine weeks in!).

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Natural Deodorant Fail

 

I am bummed! 

I finally found a natural deodorant that works nicely (still some wetness--but a tolerable amount--and virtually no smell--even in the Texas heat), but now I'm experiencing itchiness and red irritation. When I talked to my mother about it, she explained that she has the exact same problem with natural deodorants. Here's a complete list of the ingredients:

INGREDIENTS: Organic Simmondsia chinensis (Jojoba) Oil; Organic Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower) Oil; Organic Rosehip Seed Oil; Butyrospermun parkii (Shea) Butter; Organic Corn Starch; Sodium Bicarbonate; Kaolin Clay; Organic Vegan Kosher Glycerin; Essential oils of: Organic Lavandula Angustifolia (Lavender); Organic Melaleuca Alternifolia (Tea Tree); Organic Citrus Sinensis (Sweet Orange); Organic Mentha Piperita (Peppermint); Citrus Aurantium Bergamia (Bergaptene-free Bergamot). 

Everything seems so innocuous! Perhaps the issue has to do with when I'm shaving. Maybe if I shave in the evening and apply the deodorant in the morning I won't have such a problem. But who wants to jump in the shower unnecessarily just to shave?

My other option is to make this homemade version. It seems easy. Amy over at Progressive Pioneer swears by it. Either way, I'm definitely don't want to go back to aluminum or parabens. Ick!

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Closets!

We are seriously in the throes of working with the architect to design our house (and by "design," I really just mean that we are making a few adjustments to a house plan that already exists).

Matt, Henry, and I have lived in two different houses as a family. The first was a 1930s bungalow, 1,000 square feet, two bedrooms, 1 bathroom. We had no garage, so we stored our lawnmower in the kitchen closet with our washer and dryer, and we stored our bikes in our bedroom closet with our spare paint cans. Now we live in a 1960s ranch house with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. We have a two-car garage, closets in every bedroom, a linen closet in one of the bathrooms, and a hall closet. 

Quite the extremes! 

As we design our house, we've striving for balance. Again, we won't have a garage, but we will have a small outdoor closet (for bikes and the lawn mower). We're enlarging all of the closets in the bedrooms to stretch along the entire wall. We'll have a linen closet in one of the bathrooms. We're also trying to fit in a little hallway closet for our vacuum and broom. There's no doubt in my mind that we're going to have to be very strategic with our space and storage. When I see entire closets dedicated to art supplies, I start to experience heart palpitations. Here are some of my strategies for fitting a lot into a little space:

1. Purge, purge, purge before we move into the new house. 
2. Have a permanent box for donations in place, so we're constantly moving things out that we don't really need/use/want.
3. Be super-conscious about what we bring into the house, especially around holidays. Think quality, not quantity.
4. Set up closet systems that help us maximize every square inch of the space that we do have in closets.
5. Create a space for everything. We should hang our broom and dustpan on the wall, instead of letting it flop around in the closet. We should also consider hanging our bikes vertically to take advantage of our closet space. 

I'm even considering asking the builders not to put in any pre-set closet bars or shelves, so that we would customize the space to fit exactly what we need to store (using shelves that could adjust to fit our changing needs over time). For example, this IKEA shelving system might be great for half of every closet to store tupperware boxes of craft supplies, memorabilia, and other items.The part of the closet that needs to store clothes could look like this.

This article from Apartment Therapy details five different budget systems for custom-designing closets.

I think my next step is to do another round of purging and organizing. Then I need to make a list of everything we want to store and come up with a plan for where it's going to fit in our new house. Good times!

Photo courtesy of our closet at its very worst. We spruced it up significantly before we put our house on the market.

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Swimming Lessons!

Henry spent a lot of time in the neighborhood pool last summer, but since he was only about 4-5 months-old, I mainly held him and moved him around (and he willingly kept his hat on!). Now that he's a toddler, "swimming" is a whole different beast. He clearly wants me to let go of him and be free in the water, but I'm pretty sure that dense kid would sink straight to the bottom if I did let go. I'm reluctant to try any flotational devices because they can give children a false sense of how their bodies work in the water.

We decided to enroll Henry in one of those intense swimming classes that teaches 6-12 month-olds how to roll onto their backs and float, while 1-6 year-olds learn how to swim-float-swim. The lessons are every single day for only ten minutes (I told you it was intense!). We're on the waiting list and probably won't be able to start for a few weeks, but I'm looking forward to it!

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