Breaking the Silence on Facebook

OK. So I’m going to start by saying that this topic has been rolling around in my head for a while, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to put it out there…it’s one of those taboos that most people don’t like to talk about, much like Spring Break Cancun 1998, or the time you ate a petrified french fry that you found underneath your two-year-old’s car seat. But, as more and more time settles between the past and the present, there is a little voice in my head telling me to write about it- the same voice that tells me to inhale spoonfuls of Nutella and almond butter at 2 am- which totally proves that this voice is very wise, and may even have a Ph.D. from University of Awesome.

Baby number 3 is on the way

In the early morning hours on a November day in 2010, we got the exciting news that baby #3 was on board.  Our little monkeys were four years old and almost two years old, and it seemed like a perfect time to add a third ring to our circus. We went to the doctor, confirmed that I was almost six weeks along, and got a due date in July.  Since it was our third time around this block, we waited for about a week, and made our big announcement to our families on Thanksgiving. A few days later, I pretty much stood on top of Mt. Everest and shouted “WE’RE HAVING A BAAAABY!!” to the world…aka, I put it on Facebook.

Now, for those of you who know me, you know that I’m pretty much an open book, who only stops talking long enough to eat and breathe, and isn’t really the best at locking up the vault and keeping things to myself. With my first two pregnancies, we waited until I was about eight weeks before announcing it to our families…there was no way I was ever going to make it to the twelve week mark, that is always held up as “the safe time” to let the cat outta the bag. Since we’d been down this road twice before, with two healthy, uneventful pregnancies, I saw no reason to keep this happy, happy news to ourselves.

Things take a turn

And then, along came December 19th. Cue the dark and ominous overtones.

From the moment I opened my eyes that morning, the day sucked. First of all, I woke up with the stomach bug. We had our annual Girls Night Christmas Cookie Swap the night before at my house. Unfortunately, macaroons and fudge bars weren’t the only thing being swapped that night. All seven of us girls, PLUS our husbands AND all of our kids were knocked down by Flu-palooza 2010. I called in sick to work, laid in bed all day, but powered through that afternoon to make it to a scheduled ultrasound.

I got to the doctor’s office, feeling like I was run over by a speeding bus, and about five minutes into my appointment, I could tell by the silence from the ultrasound tech that something was not quite right. When I asked her what she saw, she said that she couldn’t say, and that the doctor would want to talk to me in her office right away. Yeah. My world pretty much stopped spinning at that point. With a lump in my throat and a heart on the edge of  breaking, I gathered my things and headed upstairs.

Because I didn’t have a scheduled appointment to talk to my doctor, I had to wait. And wait. And wait. I waited for an hour. Which, if you are anxiously waiting for bad news, as well as throwing up Christmas cookies and antipasta every 25 minutes, feels like 17 hours.

Awaiting the news

To pass the time, I started texting. I sent out an SOS to my best friends, filling them in on the potentially bad situation. Knowing that my peeps were praying for me and was comforting. My poor husband was dead to the world, suffering from the stomach bug epidemic as well, and had no idea what was happening at this point. A parent of a student I had in my class many years ago, who happened to be waiting for her appointment, ended up being my guardian angel that afternoon. I ended up tearfully filling her in on why I was sitting there, and she spent a half hour, filling my head with positive thoughts and distracting me with stories about her kids. I truly believe she was sent by God to be there, to calm my nerves, and to stop me from leaping over the receptionist’s desk and demanding that the doctor TALKED. TO. ME. NOW.

Finally I was called back. In my group, there are six different doctors, and to make the whole experience go from bad to worse, I happened to see the one doctor who was relatively new, and I had never met before. She also happened to be the one doctor in my practice that has zero bedside manner. I’m pretty sure that Kim Jong-il would’ve been kinder in his delivery. Dr. Mean started by showing me the film of my ultrasound and very matter-of-factly telling me that “there is no heartbeat, and that this pregnancy is no longer viable.”

The next thing I knew, the Ice Queen handed me a box of tissues and excused herself from the room so I could compose myself. I went into the bathroom, called my mom, and lost it. I sobbed my way through the entire, terrible story, and drove home, straight into the arms of my equally-as-heartbroken husband.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it…it was awful. I was almost ten weeks, and already completely in love. I spent the next two days, laying in bed, feeling like crapola, snuggling with my babies, and watching hours and hours of The Soprano’s and Real Housewives of Everywhere and Anywhere.

Spreading the news on facebook

Somewhere between one of Tony’s therapy sessions with Dr. Melfi and an infomercial for Sham-Wow, I had a terrible realization. I had shared the big ‘bun in the oven’ news on facebook, and now I had to undo it. AND I had to undo in 420 characters or less. Not being one for brevity, writing this status took me over an hour. I hit ‘post’ with a pit in my stomach, but within minutes, I started getting responses. The amount of messages and posts I received from family and friends was overwhelming and completely and totally amazing. So many of you shared your own stories of loss, and because of these stories, I closed up shop on my pity-party, threw on my Uggs and some lipgloss, and went out to breakfast with my little family. That night, Chris and I went Christmas shopping. We were still sadder than sad, but we also knew that life must go on. We each mourned in our own way…sharing the joy and complete insanity of Christmas with our babies helped tremendously. Like any loss, the weight of it would hit me when I least expected it, and even now, over two years later, I have my moments of achy sadness.

But through all of that sadness, an important lesson emerged. In the weeks following, I would run into co-workers,neighbors, old friends from high school, and sorority sisters I hadn’t seen in years, and because they knew of what happened via my ‘retraction statement’ on Facebook, so many of them would share their own story of loss during pregnancy. I found healing power and courage in each of these conversations, cards and e-mails. And with each story, I started to realize that is not a type of loss that women generally talk about. In our country, there is such a negative stigma attached to miscarriage, almost as if you should be embarrassed or ashamed if it happens to you.  With approximately one out of every five women experiencing this type of loss, it just seems ridiculous that people feel this way. There is no other loss that occurs that we feel pressured to keep a secret or speak about in whispers.

Feeling whole again

We are programmed to keep our expanding bellies hush-hush until that magical 12 week mark, when we enter our second trimester and the threat of miscarriage significantly decreases. I get that. Well, part of me gets it. The other part of me, thinks about how if no one knew that we were expecting in the first place, we would have missed out on sharing in the experiences of others, and the hundreds of healing prayers, that ultimately gave us strength. The simple act of others acknowledging that we were suffering a loss in our family was vital to making us feel whole again.

I don’t regret sharing our news ‘too soon’ for one minute. There is power in numbers, and knowing that we weren’t alone, was significant in our mourning and mending. I know everyone grieves in their own way, and not everyone wears their heart on their sleeve like I do, but talking about it, and not keeping your grief and emotions bottled up inside, can do a world of good.

Life goes on. I don’t say that callously, forgetting what we went through, but it is the truth. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of our littlest angel.  But I do have faith that our hope of welcoming a new baby into our family will happen. This whole experience taught me that my friends and family were there for me not just in the good times, but also in the “not-so-good-mascara-running-down-my-face-blubbering-through-a-box-of-Kleenex-and-a-bowl-of-wine-times.”

I am one lucky mama.

Paying it Forward…the Mother’s Day Edition.

Contrary to popular belief (and Macy’s commercials), most moms aren’t waking up on Mother’s Day and expecting…

• diamonds (hello, have your seen the price of gas??? At $4.15 a gallon, unless that tennis bracelet is getting me to work and back, no thank you)
• plants (with a husband, two kids, two dogs, and two turtles, I have no need for another living, breathing thing that is going to demand food and water, AND not help me mop or cook),
• chocolate (and expect me to rock out a bikini in less than two months?? Heck to the NO.)

Now, I’m not speaking for all moms, but I think what most of us want is to feel appreciated. A card (Hallmark or handmade, we’re not picky), some flowers, pancakes and coffee with our family, maybe the promise of 15 uninterrupted minutes to read, nap, pee, etc. – that’s all that it takes to make most of us smile and feel loved.

That being said, the whole idea of Mother’s Day is definitely one of those “First World Problems“- much like your iPhone not uploading your latest tweet about which Jersey Housewife you are siding with (Team Manzo!!) or debating which OPI polish color you should use for your mani/pedi, Tutti Frutti Tonga or Royal Flush Blush…decisions, decisions!

These life or death decisions, are obviously not literally life or death. However, there are moms out there, in our own country, and beyond, that are faced with the very reality of death daily, even as they labor to bring new life into this world.

Every minute a women dies of complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. Ninety-nine percent of these deaths occur in developing nations. For every woman who dies in childbirth, another 30 women incur injuries and infections, which are often preventable. (Source: World Health Organization.)

• In rural Papua New Guinea, 1 in 7 women die in childbirth.
• In sub-Saharan Africa, 1 in 13 women die of causes related to pregnancy and childbirth.
• The risk of dying as a result of pregnancy if you live in the industrialized world stands at 1 in 4,100. (Big props to Rants from Mommyland genius mommies, Kate and Lydia,  for gathering this information…and thanks for letting me steal it. xoxo)

These figures are staggering and horrifying…But we can change that…YOU can change that…today.

While reading my favorite mommy blog, Rants From Mommyland, I found out that there is an amazing movement, Bloggers for Birth Kits, happening right now. I found out that there are brave mamas in very rural, poor areas of our world, who need our help right now. One amazing Australian mama, Adriel Booker, who blogs from the land of Olivia Newton John and wallabies, is on a mission to provide struggling women in rural areas with clean birth kits. What is a Clean Birth Kit, you may ask? Well…

1. Soap (for the birth attendant to wash her hands). Use a hotel-size soap or cut a regular bar of soap into 1/8-sized pieces. (Microwave the bar of soap for 30 seconds to soften it for cutting).
2. One pair of plastic gloves (for the birth attendant to wear).
3. Five squares of gauze (to wipe the mum’s perineum and baby’s eyes). Gauze pieces should be about 10×10 centimeters or 3×3 inches.
4. One blade (to cut the cord). You can buy individually wrapped sterile blades at the pharmacist or buy utility blades (much cheaper) at the hardware store. We teach the women to boil the blades for sterilization, so utility blades work just fine.
5. Three pieces of strong string (2 for tying the cord, 1 for “just in case”). String should be about 30 centimeters or 10 inches long.
6. One plastic sheet (for a clean birthing surface). Sheet should be approximately 1×1 meter or 1×1 yard and can be purchased at your hardware or paint store.
7. One sandwich-size ziplock bag (to pack the contents).

This simple kit, can be put together for less than the cost of a venti Caramel Macchiato, and will make you feel a lot less jittery, and much more powerful (because let’s face it, we all feel a tad bit inferior in front of those baristas).

We are so lucky to live in our bubble of first world medicine and comfortable birthing conditions. We take classes, read a million books, write a birth plan, have the choice of home-birth vs. hospital-birth, we create  special playlists on our iPods to keep us motivated, soothed and sane during the big event…but at no point have any of us worried about not having a qualified medical professional to help bring our babies into the world, or thought about giving birth on a dirt floor, armed with a contaminated water supply and no antibiotics in case of infection.

If you are feeling as blessed as I am, please join me in this cause. I am on a mission to make at least 100 Clean Birth Kits by June 5. Some ideas to get involved:

• host a Clean Birth Kit girl’s night! Assign each person a supply (and a delicious dish!) to bring. Make an assembly line, pour the wine, and….GO!
• Ask your Church, Girl Scout troop, neighborhood, anyone to donate supplies or entire birth kits.
• Birth Kit date night! Nothing says romance more, than a trip to Home Depot for some plastic gloves and rope (right, Mr. Grey??)

The possibilities are endless. If you would like to participate in this amazing event, please email me (youshouldneversaynever@gmail.com). I will give you a drop off location or a meet up spot to hand off the kits. One, five, twenty- as many as you can make would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thank you so much for listening,sharing and helping! Hoping your Mother’s Day is even better than a hot fudge sundae, smothered in melted cheddar and topped with smoked bacon. Served with a gallon of Pinot, in a dish that I won’t have to wash. Oh yes, a girl can dream.

Confessions of a multi-tasking mama

I have always prided myself on being a fabulous multitasker. I could read a book, talk on the phone, plan this week’s dinner menu and make a mental grocery list, all while running on the treadmill. Backwards, in heels. Of course, that was all in the BC (before children) era. These days I’m lucky if I can pour bowl of cereal, and remember to breathe at the same time.

Wishin’ for three arms

I’m sure that every mom since the beginning of time, has wished she had three more arms, two more eyes (for the back of her head, of course) and a brain that hasn’t been taken over by the theme song to “Yo Gabba Gabba.” Feeding the dog, while pouring (and spilling) chocolate milk, sweeping the kitchen floor for the third time in an hour, and trying to say more than 5 words to my husband in a row without hearing “MAAAAAAAAMMMMAAAA” is pretty much impossible. No matter what I do, no matter how many lists I make and how organized I think I am, it all goes out the window most days. Most nights, I am still loading the dishwasher and wiping the crumbs from dinner off the kitchen table at 9:30 pm.

It’s not just my Cinderella chores that keep me twitching and pacing 24/7…the wonderful world of technology has added a whole new chapter to my To Do list. Many days, my iPhone might has well be duct-taped to my hand. Many hours are spent texting sarcastic remarks and observations to my mommy partner-in-crime, updating my Facebook status with the latest hysterical quotes that came out of my little monkeys’ mouths,  and rocking the highest score in Scramble with Friends.

I had thought I was doing a pretty good job juggling everything- kids, work, chores, hubby, texting, swimsuit modeling, until last week. I was steam mopping the living room, and gabbing on the phone, while my little bambinos were sitting on the couch, enjoying everyone’s favorite oval headed super cool exploradora. My little man kept saying “Mama, come sit. Mama, come sit” to which I kept replying “In a minute, buddy!”

Wisdom from a child

There I was, multitasking my ever-expanding hiney off, when my wise little three year old, walked over to me, grabbed my mop and my arm and said, “Mama, stop and come sit with me now.” My first impulse was to shake him off and repeat my favorite phrase in Dora’s native tongue (uno momento, por favor!)and then it hit me. My little man was telling me to slow down, sit down and stop mopping/chatting/planning my days away. So I did. I have to admit, after about 30 seconds of sitting, I heard my phone go off, and I used a whole week’s worth of self-control not to check it. I remembered that I hadn’t made a list of ingredients I needed for the bake sale at my daughter’s school, but I fought the urge not to run to the kitchen for paper and a pen.

I realized that my children watching me constantly running around like the Energizer Bunny on crack isn’t good parenting. All work and no play makes ANY mama a cranky, cranky gal. Quieting my mind and body, and just vegging out with my babies on the couch doesn’t sound like a tough task, but I know you will all agree that it is way harder than it sounds. Then again, nothing worth having comes easy…and it was worth each and every snugglicious moment.

Here’s to a relaxing Spring…well, a girl can dream, right? Cheers!

Marshallows…the Other White Meat

Marshmallows: Great for hot chocolate, s’mores, and, if you are one of the baby birds living in the Colucci nest, dinner. Wish I could insert a cute little ‘lol’ here, but sadly I speaketh the truth. Before you call CPS on my malnutritional mothering skills, lemme explain.

While I was pregnant with Bells, I read every How to be the most perfect mother book that Amazon sells. I was SURE that I would be making my own baby food (from organic fruits and vegetables, of course). My precious little kumquat was going to get three well-balanced meals a day, and I was DEFINITELY not going to give her juice, chocolate milk, or anything that contained that sneaky little four-letter enemy, HFCS (high fructose corn syrup).

A little background information

Growing up, dinnertime was a war zone in our house, and looking back, I’m 100% certain that my mother should be awarded a Purple Heart. She cooked dinner every night for the six of us, only to hear, “EWWWWW!!!! I’m not eating that!!” or “Mommmmm, why don’t you ever make anything I like???” This poor woman, a SAHM (stay-at-home-Mom), made a nutritious meal each night, only to be pelted with whines and demands. Then someone would spill their drink. Then my dad would yell…and about 5 minutes later, someone else would spill their drink. Don’t get me wrong, I had the most AH-MAAAZ-ING childhood, and I probably have a slightly skewed memory of dinner, since I was the one doing most of the whining and demanding. I pretty much hated everything my mom could’ve possibly cooked, with the exception of pizza and pancakes.

Knowing what a royal pain-in-da-tush I was as a child, I was determined to raise ‘good eaters.’ Forget peanut butter and jelly, my little culinary geniuses were going to be eating roasted butternut squash ravioli with a sage brown butter sauce, made with free range, organic, hormone-free squash.

Child nutrition

I will say, I started off strong. I nursed both of my kiddies for one year (Luca, a total boobaholic, a tad bit longer). That’s pretty much where my career as a child nutrition expert hit a brick wall. When my fussy 9-month-old wouldn’t eat his peas, I sprinkled just a teeny-weeny bit of sugar on them. When my 2-year old-curly girl wouldn’t eat anything….ANYTHING…we would clap and cheer when she would finally eat a handful of M&M’s and half a slice of cheese. And so, the bad habits were born.

The whole “feed your child what you’re eating” idea went straight into the garbage, along with my sanity and my super sexy nursing bras. My personal chef/husband would grill up a delicious steak, cut it up in those tiny, safe little pieces- only to have it smushed all over the high chair tray and then thrown to the landsharks, aka our Boston Terrors. (No, there’s no typo there, our terriers are terrors!) Panicked, we started what is now known as the Mac and Cheese Era. I’m no financial genius, but I’m pretty sure that we should have invested our life’s savings in several shares of Kraft stock. What’s better than powdered cheese? According to my little monsters, apparently nothing.

Things are improving

These days, we’ve made some small strides. We’ve graduated from the orange Kraft crack to actual, real live pasta. We’ve had glimmers of hope. Over the summer, Bella ate a hot dog. You would’ve thought someone granted my husband a starting position on the Jets. She has Cocoa Pebbles most mornings for breakfast (Don’t judge; they’re made with whole grain.) Luca is our champion eater who will actually eat what we are eating most nights for which we are very, very grateful. But on those nights when the dinner table is starting to resemble the Peloponnesian War, a few deep breaths and a handful of marshmallows can work a small miracle.

The Green-Eyed MOMster

 

 

Jealousy. Envy. Dirty looks. No, I’m not talking about last week’s episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County. I’m talking about the classic battle…as epic as Sparta vs. Athens, or Yankees vs. Red Sox, even Me vs. My Hair…it’s the:

The Working Moms VS. Stay-At-Home-Moms (SAHM’s…see?? They even get a cute acronym!!)

From my snarky remark, you can most probably guess which side I am on. For the past five years, I have been a working mom. There have been good days, bad days, and days when I feel like swimming across the Nile River, or being Charlie Sheen’s agent (a treat compared to the mental/physical/emotional rut I was in.)

The Pros

Now, I should say that I kinda play both sides of this game. Yes, I am a working mom (WM? nah, just doesn’t have the same ring…), but I’m certainly not the workingest mom on the block. I teach middle school, which means although my day starts early, I am home by 3:00pm most days. Some working mamas are just grabbing their afternoon pick-me-up espressos on their way to their fifth meeting of the day at that time.

Being a teacher also means I have snow days, holiday breaks throughout the school year, and of course, that coveted 10-week summer vacation. I know I have the best of both worlds, and to top it off? I heart my job. Like, if you covered it with bacon and whipped cream and it was delivered to my front door by Matt Damon, I couldn’t love it any more! I work in a great building, with amazing colleagues, who happen to also be some of my best friends, and I truly enjoy teaching and interacting with my gaggle of sixth-graders every day.

I also have another advantage, in that my mom (who actually used to also work at my school), retired from her position when Bella was born so she could babysit for us while I worked. I know how blessed I am to have this advantage…I’ve never had to leave a crying baby at daycare, or a teething toddler at a sitter’s house.

The Enormous Mommy-Guilt

At the risk of sounding like a spoiled brat, despite all of these amazing accomodations, being a working mommy still bites. Missing the first day of school, class parties, first steps…and what’s worse than missing those sweet moments? THE GUILT. MOMMY GUILT is the worst variety of guilt available. If it was possible to bottle the insane amount of guilt that me and my fellow working mamas feel on a daily basis, I could market it to the US Government as a weapon of mass destruction. The A-bomb has nothing on us.

What’s almost as bad as ‘the guilt’ is the perpetual feeling of playing catch-up. As my mommy-partner-in-crime always puts it, it’s like we are constantly treading water, just trying not to drown in the ocean of tasks that all have to be done like, NOW. Or even worse, 5 minutes ago. Multi-tasking doesn’t even start to describe the day…grading spelling tests, while breading chicken cutlets, nursing your six-month-old and helping your Kindergartner with her homework is an EASY afternoon.

OK. Enough woe-is-me. There is a bright side. Like I said, I do love my job, for which I am so grateful. I have the benefit playing dress-up everyday, wearing heels, baubles and cute sweater dresses for an entire 8 hours without the threat of having smashed banana smeared across my boobs, or sitting in a puddle of apple juice. I get to bring home da bacon and live very comfortably in a two-salary household. Eating lunch and having a half-hour of uninterrupted adult conversation each day is also a major perk. To most SAHM’s, that probably seems as unattainable as scampering up Mount Everest in platform heels.

And I won’t claim innocence. Us working madres are pretty judgmental when it comes to the SAHM crowd too. We expect them to be Martha Stewart/Gwyneth/Donna Reed hybrids, with sparkling clean houses, organic meals and crafty projects done each day. They have allll day, don’t they?? Yes, they have all day, unless their darling two-year-old decides that he is NOT getting dressed in anything except rubber rain boots and a tiara today. They have all day, until their 18-month old decides to fingerpaint their leather couches with mac and cheese. They have all the time in the world unless their 4-year-old stomps a BJ’s size bag of Pirate’s Booty into your brand new living room area rug. SAHM’s need to multi-task as much or even more than the working mamas do…and they have to do it for longer periods of time, each day, with no breaks or relief in sight. Like I said, I get to be a SAHM every summer, and it is both wonderful and exhausting, and usually by 3:00 in the afternoon, I am counting the seconds to when my husband is going to walk through the front door.

Doing the best we can

There are no winners in this war, no right or wrong. You always want what you can’t have, and the most destructive thing we can do is to judge another mom, because 99.9% of us are doing the best we can, with what we have. The most important thing is that our babies grow up to be happy, well-adjusted little people, who won’t have to invest too much of their future salaries in psychotherapy.

My New Year’s resolution this year was to be a ‘half glass full’ kinda gal (as long as that glass is mine, and it’s half-full of Pinot Grigio) and appreciate what I have. Green isn’t my color anyway…

 

Never Say Never…

We are all guilty of it. Maybe you were out to dinner with your husband or one of your girlfriends in the PK (pre-kids) Era, and at the table next to you, there was a mom letting her two-year old smash Cheerios into the carpet underneath the table. The mom was seemingly oblivious, talking to her husband, enjoying her wine, while her little monster was dumping out her purse, eating her lip gloss and creating abstract art with those delicious little honey nut O’s. You lean over to your dining partner and inconspicuously point and whisper, “OMG, look at this mother! She is so busy talking and drinking, and totally not paying attention to her baby! That floor is so filthy, and she has no control- I would NEVER let my child do that.”

Let’s look at this from the more familiar point of view- the irresponsible mother…who we ALL know is not talking to her husband and enjoying her wine – she’s arguing with her husband about why there is only 14 dollars left in the checking account, thinking about the 9 loads of laundry she has to fold when she gets home, and wondering if she has time to chug just one more glass of Pinot before her little cereal-smashing artist enters the melt-down zone.

I think we can all agree that in the BK era, we would throw around the “N-word” quite often…I will NEVER do that when I have kids  or I would NEVER say that to my children. 

I think it’s pretty safe to say that by the time your first baby is one month old, you’ve probably broken about 99% of your I would NEVER… promises.

Motherhood is both the most amazing and the most frightening journey you will ever take. It is filled with bumps in the road, bumps on the head and the most horrid smells your nose will ever come in contact with…but one super-squeezy hug from your Kindergartener as she gets off the school bus, or a sniff of your newborn’s tiny little head as he snoozes in his car seat makes you say the ONE true I never statement…I would NEVER trade one moment with my little circus for anything!

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