Happy Human Being Day, Mothers!

When I was in middle school, we had an assignment in English class to write about a hero. I wrote about my mother and how she was an inspiration to me in her strength and success and how she even managed to look good doing it all. And she WAS my hero (and she DID look good doing it). So when the inevitable shit-storm of puberty and adolescence and hormones hit I remember being really floored by the epiphany that although she certainly was a super hero for being able to deal with ME as a teenager, she also was (gasp) HUMAN. Looking back, I suppose that is the true start of developing empathy- when you realize your own mother is an actual human being. 

Years later of course I became pregnant and became myself, a mother. And even now, there are so many moments in my everyday life where I feel like I am still a little kid just playing at being a grown up. So often I know I am guilty of "faking it until I make it:" as an adult, as a professional, as a wife, but ESPECIALLY as a mother.  I am eternally grateful they don't require licensing to become a parent, because I likely would have failed the test. I am selfish, shortsighted, and I often react to stress by assuming the fetal position wrapped around a Burger King value meal and a family sized bottle of wine, so I still am understandably awestruck that God and the universe has entrusted me with the care of these little vulnerable lives. I have heard that in rehab programs they advise people to start out with a plant, and only if they don't kill it move onto an animal, and then if the animal thrives, they are cleared for a relationship with another ADULT. I have killed every plant I have ever come into contact with, so in all likelihood I never should have moved on past the first step, yet here I am, the proud mother of not one, not two, but (almost) FOUR small humans. 

It's hard to not look back and remember my own mother, dressed to the nines and successful and working and cooking and cleaning and (always) vacuuming, and not wonder- did she feel like she was faking it too sometimes? Do we all? I know when I peed on the stick with my very first child, I felt that now-familiar underlying worry and self-doubt start to bubble up somewhere mixed in there with the gas and the baby kicks and the vomit, but I consoled myself with the assertion that as soon as I saw that baby, my maternal instincts would inevitably take over. And when I did see that baby for the first time, I DID feel such an intense rush of emotions: relief, love, awe, but also FEAR. SO. MUCH. FEAR. My maternal instincts, however, were nowhere to be found in those first few weeks. I struggled with breast-feeding and diaper changing and burping and sleeping and basically every aspect of co-existing with this new and totally foreign life. Our first night home from the hospital with the baby my husband took one long look at me, poured me a large glass of red wine, sat me in front of the television, and slept with his own head in the bassinet.

As the years and the babies have come and gone and grown, I have always been surprised and generally ashamed that I have never become completely selfless in my mothering. I still want to feed myself good food and good drink and take showers and wear make-up and lose the weight and be generally human, which I often assume is a parenting shortfall. I had always thought that as soon as I crossed the threshold into motherhood I would cease to be Liz and instead become Mommy, but instead I have always  felt the need to find a way to be both. In countless wine-sodden conversations with the mothers of my life: my own mother, my mother in law, my dear friends (or "sister mothers"), and all of the maternal women in my life that I seek consolation and witness and absolution from, my common theme is often this goddam failure to achieve perfection.  I am reminded of my teenage self and the epiphany that my own mother was a human being, and of course the irony that I am now here (decades later) struggling to accept the same thing about myself.

I have people in my life who have lost their mothers, some literally, some figuratively, and I have no doubt that on this day of days not a single one of them is consumed or even concerned with thoughts of their own mother's shortcomings or imperfections. In the end, we parent the best we can with the tools and the knowledge we have at the time, and yes, we make mistakes. Being a mother is our life's greatest joy and our life's hardest work, and we are ALL human. What's been amazing is that as I have grown and stumbled and fumbled my way through finding those maternal instincts, I have also started to come to this Earth shattering realization: its not being incredible DESPITE being human that is mothering. It's being incredible BECAUSE we are human. 

I also know now that as I think about the impending birth of the baby I now carry in my belly, I still will want my mommy. And I think, maybe, that birthing this baby while leaning on my own mother IS exactly that delicate and beautiful balance between being Mommy and just being Liz.

There IS (better) life after High School

I found myself not too long ago having a heartfelt conversation with a 17 year old girl whom I happen to like very much. She was complaining about her life, as is the way of 17 year old girls, and I was dispensing advice, as is the way of wise (kidding!) 33 year old women. And then all of the sudden I was struck by this out of body realization where I saw myself as her. I was suddenly reminded of ME at 17. Except at 17, I was an exceptionally miserable human being. I was an especially attractive pile of insecurity, meanness (caused by said insecurity), self pity, hunger, and angst. I know a lot of people look back on their high school years fondly and even wish they could go back there- but I will tell you this: you could not pay me to spend even one day back in my teens. It was SUCH a hard time, and that was what came rushing back at me in this conversation. I don't mean to imply that this girl was anything like me, because I'm not sure she is. She seems to have much more of her shit together than I ever did back then. But as I heard myself saying the things I would have paid to hear from someone when I was 17, I thought, what would I, now, as a married mother of 3.5 children in my mid early 30s, say to myself at 17, if I ever was given that opportunity? I think it would look something like this:

• Um, for God's sake, please eat something. Eat LOTS of somethings. I know you are (deathly, irrationally) afraid of being fat, but the irony that is lost on you is that your metabolism will never again be what it is RIGHT NOW.
• I know you are vegetarian, and I respect that, but I feel it might be my civic duty to let you know that bacon cheeseburgers, cooked medium rare, are simply orgasmic.
• Please stop looking in the mirror so much.
• Wear less makeup and more sunscreen. 
• Be nicer to your Mom.
• Be nicer to EVERYONE. Karma is a bitch, but so are you a lot of the time, and while I promise you you will forget the people who were nasty to you, you won't forget being nasty to other people. Many years from now you will hear yourself repeating ad naseum to your children the importance of being kind, even to people who may not deserve it (shit, ESPECIALLY to people who don't deserve it,) and you will remember how you treated some people in high school and cringe in your hypocrisy. I don't regret many of my choices in life, but I regret every moment I didn't choose kindness.
• Spend time with your friends. Spend some of that time doing ridiculous, sense-less things, because in a few short years you are not going to have the time or the luxury to lay on a bed, listening to emo music and debating the various plot twists of Melrose Place.  Before your life is consumed with the daily minutiae of laundry, groceries, and baby poop: eat with your friends. Drink with them (not so much that you puke, and PLEASE don't drive.) Laugh hard and often while you still have the bladder control. Because here's the thing- these people will not always be your circle. I know it's hard to believe right now, and I still think it's kind of sad. But it is also natural, and just the way of life. People make life choices that take them far away, either literally or figuratively, and when you don't have the connection of seeing each other day in and day out in high school, it becomes very hard to maintain those relationships with the same degree of closeness. A few very special people will remain close to you, and the fact that you grew up together through what may arguably be the most awkward years of your lives will bond you in a way that is hard to ever replicate. A few others will make choices that take them far away, but you will occasionally reunite, and when you do, it will be like seamlessly picking up the last line of a conversation you last had years ago. These friendships are gifts, and should be treated as such. But others will need to be let go, and this is okay. It's okay, and here is why: as you get older, and become more comfortable in your own skin, you will meet new people. And a blessed, beautiful few of them will just fit perfectly into a them-shaped hole you didn't even know you had, and you will wonder how you ever lived your life before without them there in your cheering squad.
•  Along the same lines, please learn to let go of the old romances. Spoiler alert- you are not going to marry any of the exes you are pining over right now. And while this may be hard to see right now, it is a very, very good thing. You are going to marry a man you actually know right now, who one day you are going to bump into and unexpectedly see in a whole new light while choirs of angels sing. And then you are going to make a life, and then you are going to make babies (lots of them) and it will all be (mostly) okay. In fact, it will all be (mostly) fabulous.
• While we are on the topic of poor relationships, I should alert you that no matter how mature you become, as long as you choose to remain in your hometown, you are going to run into people from high school at the grocery store (and EVERYWHERE ELSE.) who may not have been president of your fan club. And you, in your constant need to mend fences, will inevitably smile awkwardly at them in a way that you hope doesn't look pathetic while still clearly conveying the message: "um, sorry about those four years, but that was like two decades ago, and our kids just ran off towards the bulk foods together, so lets be friends?" And they will almost always either stare right through you as if you don't exist or, worse, look at you as if you are covered in feces (which, while possible, doesn't mean you're necessarily a bad person.)  The silver lining here is that you really won't be able to afford too much mental energy caring either way because you will be too busy staring blankly into your overflowing grocery cart trying to remember what the ONE thing you actually came into the grocery store in the first place for even was.  Like the cart, your life has a way of growing and filling up so much that all the caring about who said what or feels what or wore what or smell like what just doesn't really fit comfortably in it anymore.
• And here's the reason it doesn't matter that much, and this is the big one: ALL THE THINGS THAT SEEM SO IMPORTANT NOW ARE NOT. They really are not. I know I will say this, and you will seem to hear it, but it won't matter because you think I don't understand. My Mom said it to me, and I hear myself saying it to my own kids as they start the long painful journey of figuring out where they fit in what is often an ugly social whirlwind. The people who made you cry become inconsequential so, so quickly. Like, the very second you walk out of that building for the last time. There are so many other things that matter more, things that will shape you as a human being and a woman and a mother and make you turn kind and empathetic and trustful. They will happen and they will MATTER and then you will know that I was right.

Would any of it change how I felt a lot of the time back then? Probably not. Some of it probably was just the nature of adolescence and hormones and some of it probably was actual undiagnosed depression. What I come back to and think of often these days is how I went from being that smart little girl on the swingset who actually BELIEVED people when they told me I could be anything I wanted to be into a teenager who felt too large and a little lost and always so frigging terrified. And I think of this often for the very simple and monumentally important reason that I want my own kids to actually BECOME whatever they want to be. So I tell them to be kind. I tell them to play and eat and have fun and I also tell them that while some people will always be unkind, it just doesn't matter as much as it feels like it should.

And then I tell them the truth: that growing up can actually end up being kind of amazing.  

Can you tell I thought I was gonna be the first female president?

On women, eating disorders, pregnancy, and true beauty.

As anyone who has seen me from a five mile radius in the last couple weeks probably knows, I'm pregnant. And as such, I have spent a lot of time recently studying my body, thinking about my body, worrying about my body, even hiding my body. In the first few weeks of pregnancy, I spent a lot of time in front of my mirror, looking at my side profile, scrutinizing for a "bump," trying with excitement and anticipation to gauge whether or not I could see my baby growing inside of me. Yet even as my middle started to grow undeniably, the anticipation predictably began to take a turn towards worry- things were getting bigger and puffier and my clothes were no longer fitting- yet we were not yet ready to "go public" with the pregnancy. What would people think? I was a yoga instructor, for God's sake, I live a considerable amount of my life in lycra. How would I walk around with people thinking I was just letting it all go?

So now, as the first trimester (finally) comes to a close and my body starts to look more and more like it might be growing a human and less and less like it might be retaining potato chips and beer, I find myself ruminating on how mother f-ing HARD this is.  Now, please, please, do not for one second misunderstand me. I wholeheartedly believe that growing a baby, another HUMAN BEING, is no doubt the miracle of miracles. I have often taken a silent moment of gratitude to thank Mother Earth and God and the heavens in their infinite wisdom for gracing me with a uterus instead of silly man parts, so that I could experience the absolute GIFT of creating life inside my body. Yet as a woman, no less a woman with an eating disordered past and a seeming fated lifetime destiny of body image issues, this is HARD. It was hard the first time, and it has gotten no easier the fourth time.

What if we all were this comfortable in our skin?

My own eating disorder was many, many moons ago, and yet my recovery is ongoing: I have struggles with food and weight and control and my own body (and countless other things) that I have come to accept are part of the fabric of my general being. This was true as a sprightly teenager, it has been even more true as an aging woman who is not immune to gravity, and it is NEVER more true than when I am faced with gaining 30-40 pounds in nine months. I have often said and I truly believe that recovery from an eating disorder is very much like recovery from alcoholism. Once you have had issues with eating, you will always have issues with eating- and recovery becomes about learning to live with and around those issues. The glaring difference between recovery from alcoholism and recovery from disordered eating of course is that you can't (and shouldn't) just walk away from food- nor would I ever (shudder) want to. So instead the work lies in learning how to live this life where so much of who we are and how we interact and how we nurture and celebrate and mourn and cope and nourish and soothe and gather lies completely wrapped around food. It's probably a twisted blessing that somewhere in the silver lining of my own anorexia and bingeing struggles lies the fact that I never lost my passion (admittedly formerly my obsession) for reading cookbooks and spending time in the kitchen.  So much so that it has become wrapped up tightly into my identity as a mother and a wife: I have an incredibly hard time apologizing in heartfelt actual words when I am wrong, but I am quite fluent in the language of reconciliatory casseroles. And nothing in my daily life makes me feel more maternal and more feminine than my own family enjoying food that I have planned, cooked, prepared and brought to the table. And being pregnant gives me the absolutely incredible opportunity to nourish myself and my baby from the same mouthfuls of food. This, I know, is a gift.  

The media admittedly has done us no service in terms of holding the pregnant body up on the pedestal it deserves. All an unassuming mama-to-be in her dirty sweatpants and last night's mascara (ahem) has to do while grocery shopping on a weekend morning is glance towards the gossip rags to get the message loud and clear that pregnant women should be mocked for their (very necessary) weight gain, while post-partum mamas should be lauded for their (very dangerous) rapid weight loss. The message of failure and self doubt is loudly and clearly received by countless ordinary women, who are the ones WITHOUT personal trainers and chefs and assistants paid to get us caffeine and cigarettes and ephedrine and cocaine to help us in our weight loss quest. We are the ones who are not paid absurd sums to walk down the Victoria's Secret runway sporting nothing more than a few strategically placed gemstones and some furry angel wings two months after giving birth. We are the ones who ascribe to the "nine months on, nine months off" mantra, becuase it actually MAKES SENSE.

Take, for example, the ever-present Kim Karadashian, once supposedly a role model for "curvy" women (read: women who have any other figure than that of a 13 year old pre-pubescent boy), who has reached ever changing new heights of absurdity in her desperate fashion quest to pretend like she doesn't have a big belly full of baby. And again, what is the message? I don't get it. I wanted the world to know (from the second I peed on the stick) that there was a friggin LIFE FORM in there causing my embarrassing bloating and pimpling and dimpling and growing. Why on earth we would want to pretend otherwise is beyond me, and if a goddam Kardashian of all people sets maternity fashion back a few generations to the sailor dresses and mumus that hid the obscene belly at all costs, I am gonna be PISSED. 

Someone please tell her about YOGA PANTS. 

I think about all of this of course now through the lenses of someone who is already raising two girls- two girls who are, in my biased opinion, the epitome of perfection- but two girls who may, nonetheless, struggle with body issues of their own. What do I want them to see through this pregnancy? Me, as a beautiful, radiant, confident pregnant woman with a big belly full of their future brother or sister? Or me in a puddle of self pity on the kitchen floor wondering if the cottage cheese I am making them as a snack looks as much like my legs as I think it does? We both know the answer to that. It's my job to show my children what confidence looks like. I hear myself explaining with absolute sincere awe the miracle of their future sibling and his or her fingers and toes and eyes and ears and placenta and I know that THIS is what this is really about- the blessing and the gift of being able to watch my own body (and mind, and heart, and life) expand to take in this new life. And the fact that the meals we sit down to around the table together is the fuel that nourishes this process is more than enough reason to freely (and without crippling guilt) have seconds. 

Like I said. Perfection. 

In my pursuit of peace and self acceptance, I had my first yoga therapy session this past weekend. Unsure of what to expect, I placed myself into the caring hands of my capable yoga therapist, fellow yoga teacher, and friend. She helped me stretch my physical body for a luxurious 90 minute session, but she also helped me explore my heart and my mind. I had scheduled the session with her hoping to come more into a place of trusting my own body through this pregnancy, and I was advised (warned?) by her that my deep state of relaxation during the session might lead to visions. Always the skeptic, I was content just to float in the blissful state of relaxation her studio and her supported poses and her witness provided, but then I DID start to see something. I saw fleeting images of the women of my life, the mothers and the maternal figures and the friends and the family. I knew this was important, but only later did I realize this was my circle- my community of support and strength to draw from in this pregnancy (and beyond). What I was struck by at the time, what I remember clearly noticing, was how truly radiant and beautiful each woman was. While I am sure each and every woman in my community and my circle has things about their own physical bodies they struggle with (things which I have probably never even noticed, to be fair), and would likely not be comfortable strutting down the Victoria's Secret runway with jewels wedged in uncomfortable crevices; in my eyes and in my vision they were absolutely PERFECT.  

I leave you with this gift, if you have not yet seen it- the new Dove campaign which has caused a bit of a shit storm in the advertising world, and for good reason. I watched it today, shed more than a few tears, and immediately thought of the stunning women I saw as I lay on the mat in yoga therapy this weekend. Watch it, it's three minutes of your life, it's striking, and it's worth it. To each of them, to myself, to my gorgeous daughters, and to you: I swear to you this, you are so much more beautiful than you know. 

Blackberry Lemon Yogurt Muffins: How NOT to go Grain-Free

Yesterday marked my 14th week of pregnancy and so we've officially reached the point in the pregnancy where the elusive second trimester becomes all I can obsessively focus on: with its promises of bountiful energy, an end to the seemingly constant sickness, a belly that obviously contains a baby instead of possibly one too many IPAs, and that whole "glow" thing I hear so much about.  And in true "Mother Nature hasn't lost her sense of humor" fashion, my second trimester has been ebbing and flowing in and out of my life, one day allowing me to feel so great I go for a RUN (if we're being honest, more of a fast walk with heavy, dramatic breathing) and the next leaving me racked with nausea and incapacitated on the couch (oddly enough, this too is usually accompanied with heavy, dramatic breathing.)

What this means is that I have basically now spent two full months trying to calm my ceaseless nausea with large quantities of various foods of the deep fried varietal. While a diet made mostly of simple carbs and fat is precisely what I am hoping they serve alongside the bottomless goblets of wine in heaven, two months of it here on Earth has left me feeling sluggish, fat, and generally disgusting. In light of this I decided to do a little grain-free experiment this weekend. So I came home from my 800th grocery store trip of the week with steak, vegetables, and every fruit I could find, determined to end my white carb bingeing once and for all and kick start a healthy, happy second trimester.  

And I made it almost 24 hours before I threw in the towel, so traumatized that I needed to immediately rush to the store and buy flour in bulk and a jumbo muffin tin. What follows is how you recover from failing at being grain free: with jumbo muffins that use up some of that produce in your fridge.

You know what would make these better? Encasing them in gluten. 

Blackberry Lemon Yogurt Muffins
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
juice and zest of one lemon
1 8 oz container of lemon yogurt
1 1/2 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup blackberries

Grease a 6 cup jumbo muffin tin or a 12 cup muffin tin (if you are a wimp) and set aside.
Preheat oven to 375.
In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, and 1/2 cup of sugar.  Add the vegetable oil, lemon juice, zest and yogurt.
Place the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a separate bowl and whisk together. Combine wet and dry ingredients and stir just until mixed. Add in the blackberries.
Scoop the batter evenly into the muffin cups, tasting it with your fingers and then remembering there are raw eggs in it and you are pregnant. Feel guilty and like a gestational failure. Taste again. 
Bake at 375 degrees for about 15-17 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the muffin comes out clean. Hype muffins, which smell delicious, to your small children. 
Remove from oven (the muffins, not the children) and attempt to serve to said children.
Take all six jumbo muffins into the bathroom and eat them, crying, after the children tell you they hate them and opt for Cheerios instead. 
Lie on the bathroom floor in a satisfied, simple-carb coma, wondering where the term "muffin top" got its negative connotation. 

Serving size: one plate

Finding Faith

I have had my fair share of pregnancies: there was the easy one, and the more difficult one, and the one in between. But when it was all said and done, I have delivered three absolutely beautiful and healthy babies, and I had none of the scary complications or emergencies that I know can and do happen. So when it comes to counting my blessings, this also isn't my first rodeo. I know I am blessed, and I am humbled and awed by those blessings almost every time this family gathers in the same room and happens to have a moment where no one is punching each other (like twice a year). All that said, you would think this would be easy by now. You would this would be old hat. You would think I would fall into a routine and it would be as simple as slipping into that old, comfortable pair of sweatpants. 

When we started to entertain the idea of having a fourth baby, I quickly became pregnant. And then I lost the pregnancy. There was only five days in between my finding out I was pregnant, and my finding out I wasn't anymore. Five days and a still flat belly is NOTHING compared to people who suffer later miscarriages and still births and truly devastating pregnancy losses, and in NO way whatsoever do I intend to insinuate that it is the same thing. What I can tell you, however, is that five days is long enough to make plans. To call your OB, to talk about baby names, to calculate a due date. It's long enough to take your first steps past the initial panic that a second pink line causes and move into excitement. It's even long enough to tell a few important little people in your life that they might be having a new brother or sister. And it's long enough to really find yourself truly rocked by the loss. 

Pregnancy loss is a very lonely, isolating thing. There is, of course, an element of discretion- we didn't tell a lot of people what happened at first, I think because we needed to process the loss ourselves. And yes, I realize the irony of talking about discretion while writing a blog post, but after much internal debate, I decided it was story I wanted needed to tell, because it has shaped where we are now. It is the backdrop to the baby in my belly as I sit here today, and it is the reason I am not finding this all as easy as slipping into that old pair of sweatpants. Telling my stories is how I heal, and how I have found the very same community that has lifted me up through this sadness. 

I have never struggled with fertility, and I have never struggled with an unplanned pregnancy, though my heart goes out to those who have. When I wanted to be pregnant, I got pregnant, and usually fairly quickly. I had complete faith in my uterus and never looked back after each initial positive pregnancy test, nor did I have to. Even throughout my three pregnancies, I simply trusted my body. And somehow, despite the junk food I often crammed into it, and the abysmal lack of kegals, it produced three beautiful, healthy children, without much ado or vaginal fanfare. This is what a loss can take from you- this implicit trust. You wonder, is this loss something I caused, something I had control over somehow? And is that worse, or is it worse to have no control?

So when this pregnancy surprised us the very next cycle, I found myself struggling to find that faith. I saw the two pink lines, but I could only talk in "ifs." We lived in blanket of self-induced stress and fear for those first few weeks- punctuated with doctors visits and spotting and a seemingly constant need for validation. I saw a heartbeat, and I exhaled for the first true time in weeks. We saw a stronger heartbeat a few weeks later, and I breathed in and dropped the "ifs" from my sentences. And now, when the time is right and I sit very still, I can feel the smallest of movements from the smallest of babies, bubbling up inside my belly right into my heart. And so now, maybe, I can finally talk about it.

Even as my belly swells, I do know now how very true it is that there are no guarantees in this journey. I know that each day I spend with this baby is a gift, and I know that things can change in a heartbeat. I know I have been blessed, and I am grateful. I also know that these next few months my work will be to find the path to trusting my body again. In this vein I have made the difficult decision to walk away from my OB and into the care of a home birth midwife- a woman who made me feel more cared for in the few hours (hours!) of our initial visit than the 5 obstetricians in my OB/GYN practice did throughout an entire pregnancy and birth. I hope to deliver in my own home, in the company of those I love the most, held up by the support system I have leaned heavily on in the last few months. I have returned to my yoga practice and look forward to practicing with other pregnant mamas in my first ever prenatal yoga classes. I forced myself to type these words tonight, even though they may do nothing for the average reader, just so that they might help to find me closure. 

And so, in that beautiful and tragic way that is has, life continues to swirl on around me; even as I take my moments to dive inside myself and introspect. This spring finds us all deeply in need of rebirth and growth and green and new life, and my belly echos the sentiment, one tiny kick at a time. 

And I breathe.

We're gestating!

I am fat, bloated, exhausted, queasy, starving, and spend most of my free time lying moaning on the floor. This can really only mean two things: either I am hung over, or I am pregnant. While smart people who know me well might put their money on the former,  I am terrified happy to say this time, it is the latter.

Four kids. FOUR KIDS. I'm still officially scared to take the three I have out in public alone, and now I am adding to the brood. I once saw the comedian Jim Gaffigan describe having his fourth kid as “Just imagine you’re drowning, and someone hands you a baby.”  And in an aptly timed gesture, the three current kids have celebrated this latest gestational decision by truly stepping up the crazy- I think this is either God's way of preparing us for just how insane life will be once the baby comes, or his idea of a sick joke. Either way a typical evening in my house right now involves a swirling tornado of chaos and take-out containers.

That tadpole sure likes himself some lo mein.

You know that feeling you have right after you eat a shit-ton of Chinese food? You're bloated, thirsty, a little queasy, and kind of disgusted with yourself; but you know you're going to be hungry again in a few minutes? THAT, my friends, is the first trimester. Add to that my typical pregnancy charms (if whining and barfing and gluttony turn you on, I'm your girl), and yes, I can totally understand why some people (ourselves occasionally included) might question the wisom of our choice. In that vein, maybe we should revisit the list of having-a-baby-pros-and-cons that I made during our planning stages:

Cons:

• stretch marks
• heartburn
• swollen everything
• maternity clothes
• Tums
• sobriety
• goodbye waistline
• contractions
• ring of fire
• our finances
• our free time
• our social lives
• our sanity
• my hoo-haw

Pros:

• A baby

As you can see, the choice was clear. You don't make the decision to bring a life into your (crazy) world with a pen and paper. You don't make it with your brain, even. You make it with your heart (and maybe your uterus). I would be a liar if I didn't admit I was scared, but I already know we made the right call.

And these days it's LEGIT, bitches!

And just so we're clear, by "right call" I mean the decision to have the baby, not the telephone call to the Chinese restaurant for dinner, although that was a solid call as well (buries head in take out carton).

That one time I was a famous TV star

Part of the reason I have come to adore having this blog is that I have been able to use to completely humiliate myself. At least I thought I was humiliating myself, but instead, a funny thing happened. I told the truth, about my less than stellar parenting, or my uterine obsessions, or even my abnormal obsession with loungewear, and people I know still, somehow, look me in the eye. A few people even shared their own human-ness with me in return. It's been liberating, to say the least.

So, in that vein, I have something to share with y'all tonight.

I am a famous television star. HERE is the link to my nationwide debut.

You're welcome.