Velveteen Mind

Baby Lumps

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Modesty becomes you, little baby.

We went for our 20-week ultrasound yesterday, all set to find out if we were having a baby boy or girl.  Q, 4, and Goose, 2, went with us and were more than happy to grant all interview requests by fellow patients in the waiting room regarding whether they would like a baby brother or baby sister.

The verdict on their end?  A baby sister.  Well now, when put on the spot, their true colors show.  Yes, they had previously informed me that they would like a princess to play with, but you know how fickle toddler boys can be.

Though Q had told me in the parking lot on the way in that “If we have a girl, I’m going to freak out!” and then did a little dance of excitement.

The family that went in ahead of us brought six of their relatives to view the ultrasound.  Six!  I was self-conscious bringing my husband and two little boys.  It was like a party in there.

Our turn rolled around and I began the “healthy baby, healthy baby” chant in my head.  I didn’t realize how nervous I was until I found myself white-knuckle gripping the sides of the table as I positioned myself on my back.  I think all of my ambivalence had come crashing down on me and I was afraid God would make me pay for not embracing this pregnancy from moment one.

I was unwillingly envisioning things like hearts outside of rib cages and missing appendages.  God doing the “shame shame, I know your name” finger waggle.  I know God doesn’t roll like that, but have I mentioned that I’m pregnant?

As it turns out, punishment does not come crashing down on the heads of mothers who don’t immediately get their heads on straight.  The most beautiful image filled the screen and settled into my heart:

All organs accounted for and in their rightful place.  Our baby is growing just as it should be, due date remaining right on target.

Now then, what color blankets should I buy?  Am I still the resident damsel-in-distress or will I be relegated to evil queen?

Tech with more than a decade of experience:  Hmmmm, looks like you have a girl.

Jordans:  utter and complete silence

Tech:  Er, okay, let me look another way.  The baby is on her side, so it’s hard…  Yep, you have a girl.

Jordans:  blank, uncomprehending stares

Tech:  See here?  These two white lines?  Those are the labia.

Megan:  Well, see, I’m used to seeing a very, um, prominent package.  You know, like “PATOW!  It’s a boy!  Obviously.”  I just want to be sure.

Tech:  I really think it’s a girl.  I do.

After the party of ultrasound-watchers before us, she was probably wondering what was wrong with our little family of disbelievers.

Q was standing next to my head, so I turned to him and asked, “Are we freaking out?!”  To which he answered with a smile so big I’m surprised he could talk, “I’m freaking out!”

And then I heard it.

Maguire:  Wait, that looks like a boy to me.

The tech had moved her magic wand and revealed, well, a lump.  That sure did look like balls, people.

Sigh.  My heart is going to explode.

Tech:  You know, I thought it was just swollen labia, but maybe that is scrotum.

Thus began twenty minutes of pushing and prodding and sighing and my brain leaking out of my ears.

The tech finally called the doctor in.

Doctor:  Yep, you have a boy.

Jordans:  utter and complete silence

Doctor:  See, that is a small scrotum.

Jordans:  blank, uncomprehending stares…  mostly because we tend to make, um, fairly large scrotums. 

Doctor:  It’s a boy.  I know the tech said she thinks it’s a girl because of those white lines, but it’s too blurry to tell.

Maguire:  So would you put money on that it’s a boy?

Doctor:  Well, no.  I want you to come back.

Megan:  In two hours?  (all hope and power focused on my jedi mind tricks)

Doctor:  No, in four weeks.

At which point, he began wiping off the jelly from my belly.

Megan:  You getting ready to put on fresh jelly?

Doctor:  gently grabbing my wrist and pulling me from the table, as they had already closed for lunch 20 minutes earlier…  No, you are leaving and I’ll see you in four weeks.

Le sigh.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the evidence:

Baby lumps. 

We have a healthy, strong, very sneaky trouble-making baby.  That was a girl for all of five minutes and now stands as a boy.  Or not.

As Q explains it, “The scientist said it is a girl.  The doctor said it is a boy.  But I’m telling you, there is no winky.”  (that thing in the middle is the umbilical cord, as no, there were no winky-sightings yesterday)

I could tell you all of the emotions I felt at each determination, but honestly, I think I’m hiding them from myself.  I so believe in the power of a mother’s mind while she is carrying her baby, that I could not let any one gender take root for fear of it being wrong.

So four weeks.  Can we deal?

I have no idea.

Now then, for those of you that have had girl ultrasounds: 

What in heaven do you see when it’s a girl?

 

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About This Baby

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Seven days from now, we will know whether we are welcoming a baby boy or baby girl to our family.  I’m 19 weeks pregnant and due the end of October.  Probably.

You see, this baby was a surprise and I’m not entirely sure when he was conceived.  Unlike my first two sons, who I could track to the minute.  This fact has thrown me more than I can explain and is one of the main reasons I haven’t yet written about this pregnancy.

We all have so many friends who struggle with pregnancy, whether it be difficulty becoming pregnant or difficulty staying pregnant.  Likewise, we know far too many people who have lost their children and would love nothing more than one more moment with them.  For all of these friends, I have been hesitant to talk about this new baby until I could end every sentence with a huge exclamation point.  As in, “I’m pregnant!” rather than “I’m pregnant.  Oy."

Out of respect, absolutely, but also out of fear of reproach.  I have seen far too many snarky comments lashed out against pregnant friends who are struggling, delivered cold from our non-pregnant friends who are struggling.  This baffles me. 

We should all know better than to try to put a friend in their place or deliver some form of perspective that, honestly, is not our place to define.  It is rarely in callousness that a pregnant mother would share her struggles.  In fact, she needs to be able to work through her problems with her friends, not have them lorded over her head as though she is not grateful enough.  Come on.  We all know this.

Yet, regardless of knowing that I should be able to talk about my mixed feelings about this pregnancy, I still hesitate.

I always promised myself that I would never doubt a new child coming into our lives for a single moment.  I never wanted a child of mine to feel a moment of doubt from me for even the length of a heartbeat.  But that’s a tall order when the mother had finally fully embraced being the mother of two and that’s it, that’s all, shop closed and gladly so.

Q is four.  Goose is two.  I am finally able to breathe again.  I am finally able to shower, mostly undisturbed.  To sit in a room and think while the boys play together in another room or outside.  They no longer need my constant presence and watchful eye.  Two days a week, they are both at Montessori school, albeit for only part of the day.  But that means that two days a week, I am my own person again.

I rented a writing studio because my life was opening up to possibilities that could revolve less around them and more around me, if even only briefly.  I was planning.  Working toward something that needed room of its own to stretch its legs and preferably not trip over toys in the path.

I adore my boys.  I rarely write about them because who wants to hear about how fabulous I think my kids are.  Snore.  But I think they are fabulous.  One of the reasons I decided I was definitely done having babies was because I simply didn’t want to push my luck.  Who wants two amazing little boys and one little snot dud? 

I’m sort of kidding.  Don’t get your panties in a wad.

My love for my sons is no different than the way you love your children.  But they are mine.  They are my life.  Q and Goose are turning out so much stronger and hilarious and compassionate than I ever imagined.  Where my parenting fits into these results, so far, is a mystery to me and I just don’t want to push the envelope.

An interview I did with Amy Hatch appeared on aol’s ParentDish this week wherein I admitted that I’m not the best on-the-floor playing parent.  I told Amy that I function better at chair-based parenting, meaning that I can do puzzles and color and paint and read for far longer periods than I can put a voice to Wolverine or Spiderman.  But those periods still max out around twenty minutes.

I am not the parent that I thought I would be.  I don’t plan elaborate playdates or orchestrate spectacular craft projects.  I am with my boys all day, every day, but I’m not always tuned into them.  As I write this, they are playing in the living room together, running to me in the family room every so many minutes to give me a kiss and talk about how my ‘pooter work is going.

They are happy.  They are social.  They are active.  They are smart.  Above all, they have good hearts.

And they are beyond excited about this new baby.

This new baby that awakens butterflies in my tummy when I think of his arrival because I wonder what I have left in me as a mom to a newborn. 

I am a good mother.  I mean “good” in the truest sense of the word, not in a ranking sense.  I am confident and proud and stern and fun.  I listen.  I think about them.

I am not their friend.  I am their mother.  I am what they need.

I’m good for their hearts, their minds, their souls.  I’m good for them.

I love them.

But damn if I’m not tired.  And a little scared.

I want to tell you about this baby, but I don’t know this baby, yet.  As with both Goose and Q, it wasn’t until I knew that they were boys that I began to connect with them.  Knowing that it was a boy kicking me made all the difference.  I could assign so much more to the personality that was developing inside of me, to the point that I absolutely felt like I knew him when he was born.

Seven days from today, I will know more about this baby.  I will know if he is a boy or a girl.  I will begin to know about this baby and think of him less as a pregnancy and more as a child.

A child that I will love as though my heart is breaking.  I know this to be true. 

But until then, I need to be able to let my guard down and tell you that I’m scared.  I am excited and nervous and joyful and terrified.  I am all these things at once, just as we are all so much more than a fertility status.

Stand beside me and know me as a good mother.  Yet let me be a tentative one, as well.

Let me talk to you about this baby.

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Will You Hit Your Saturation Point Before Your Tipping Point?

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No one likes to be left out.  Just look at what I wrote on twitter the other day:

Fantastic, indeed.  That is my personal recipe for getting nowhere fast in the business side of blogging.  Largely because I don’t do the things that produce the numbers or metrics that “they” seem to value.

For the concentration of this post, I’ll focus on mom bloggers, though this applies to all bloggers. 

In the sprint to be noticed, to be included, to be asked to participate in the discussion, many bloggers lose sight of why they began blogging in the first place.  For fear of missing out on the one great opportunity that will finally get them noticed, bloggers begin moving away from their personal writing and begin spreading themselves thin across a seemingly endless sea of “write for us!” sites that can offer nothing more than “exposure.” 

There is nothing wrong with gaining exposure, as marketing is all part of building your audience, but when it begins to come at the cost of your personal platform?  That is when I begin to take umbrage.  It is at this point that we see so many mom bloggers throw in the towel altogether, rather than step back and refocus.

Blogging becomes a chore, a job (an unpaid one at that), something you do for other people.  You find yourself making imperceptible course corrections along the way in order to accommodate certain policies and guidelines, eventually coming to the startling discovery that you are nowhere near where you want to be and no longer have the energy to find your way back. 

In other words, in the race to find your personal tipping point, you find yourself hitting your saturation point first.

This is my plea to you:  Being “included” is not all that it’s cracked up to be.  Or so I gather.  Being “you,” however, is more than most people are ever able to manage.

Bloggers are learning to game the system.  The numbers lie.  Your voice does not.

Trust yourself again. 

Yes, the mom blogging landscape has changed in the last few years.  Strong content is no longer enough for people to find you in the sea of voices.  If you want more than your mama and her sister to read what you write, you will have to do a bit of marketing, whether that be through personal branding (custom banners, logos, taglines) that stops the casual blog-hopper in their tracks or through a bit of social media networking like twitter or facebook.

What you have in your favor, though, is that strong content is no longer enough.  Those big dogs that came into the fight early and never had to lower their heads to see what was scuttling around them?  That approach doesn’t work so well anymore.

The rules of engagement have changed and they have changed in your favor.  The mere fact that you know how to engage with your audience gives you a leg up…  though now would be a good time to drop the “dog” analogy.  Ahem.

What I ask of you is that you don’t “engage” yourself right out of your self, though. 

We all want to be included.  We all want to be invited to the sparkly party or sent on a fancy trip.  But if we aren’t careful, all we’ll have left to dress up for that party is an empty corporatized shell.  We’ll look great in our party dress, sure, but we won’t remember why we wanted to be invited to the party in the first place.

In your dash to find your tipping point, don’t let yourself reach your saturation point.

Every now and then, step back, reassess, and shed a few pieces of the jewelry you have layered onto yourself.  With all of that bling glaring in our faces, it sometimes gets hard for us to see your face.

Remember, your personality is the best adornment you own.

Wear it well.  

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