A woman sitting on her couch with a boppy, a Kindle, and a laptop, nursing a newborn.

All.

Day.

Long.

Nothing happens except nursing, diaper changes, the eating of numerous unhealthy snacks, and jags of hysterical crying or laughing in which the woman either wishes she were a man or begs someone to kill her so she can get some sleep already.

Occasionally her 3-year-old asks for juice, a new DVD, or help putting cashews up his nose.

Of course, if this were really a TV show, there could be celebrity cameos. Like Gwyneth Paltrow stopping by with a macrobiotic lasagne or Angelina Jolie giving breastfeeding tips while texting Brad and showing off pictures of Maddox and the twins. Oprah might even drop by via Skype and offer to have Nate redo the woman’s living room. The sarcastic but witty hosts of What Not to Wear would just shake their heads and cluck at the woman’s spit-up stained sweat pants and stretched-out maternity top, but in the end they would hand over that $5,000 credit card and maybe throw in a little extra for a babysitter.

Unfortunately, the 24/7 reality of having a nursing newborn doesn’t include celebrity cameos.

Mothering is hard work. We are all mom enough.

Don’t get me wrong, both of my c-sections were joyous occasions in their own special way. I am deeply and profoundly grateful for the amazing doctors and nurses who helped us bring our children into the world, and for Darin, who was able to take a more active role in his children’s first hours in a way that he wouldn’t have if I had home births.

Oscar and Aria’s birth stories are worth telling. They are just not the stories I expected to tell when we first set about building a family.

I discovered the idea of home birth when one of my best friends, Colleen, told me that she had two of her children at home, with the help of local midwives here in Flagstaff. Her stories of her births were so amazing, I was immediately hooked, and promised myself I would have a home birth with a midwife whenever I got pregnant. In the years after Colleen shared her story, I had other good friends who had home births. My friend Maya had her daughter at home, and when we had dinner one night at our friends’ Mark and Julie’s house, we got to hear the story of their two home births. I was mesmerized by Mark’s description of catching their daughter, and how she opened her eyes and looked at him before she was completely delivered. I was seduced by the idea of Darin being the first one to see and touch our babies, rather than a doctor, and having them be born in our home, instead of in a bright, cheerless, cold, impersonal hospital.

When I was pregnant with Oscar we did all of our prenatal care with Woman Care Midwifery here in Flagstaff. It was a wonderful experience, very intimate, and nothing at all like seeing a doctor. Their office was cozy and decorated like a house, and they spent a great deal of time with us, discussing all kinds of things like pregnancy, birth, nutrition, breastfeeding, etc. Despite the outcome of Oscar’s birth, I am grateful that we had that experience.

Oscar ended up being breech, which we discovered at my 38 week appointment. After two harrowing days of trying to turn him (yoga postures, acupuncture, moxabustion, homeopathic remedies, and an external cephalic version at the hospital) I went into labor and ended up with a c-section. I was thrilled to meet my son Oscar, but devastated at losing my home birth, and spent much of my recovery crying and dealing with that disappointment.

Seeing Oscar for the first time:

When I got pregnant with Aria I knew that I faced three equally unappealing choices for birth. A scheduled c-section at FMC, a VBAC in Phoenix, or a UC (unattended childbirth is something I would never have considered attempting). After some research I made the decision to have a scheduled repeat c-section. Not something I feel like I “elected” to do, although it says that in my medical records.

Yet Aria’s birth day was lovely. As we drove to the hospital at 5:00 in the morning the sun was just starting to come up, and Flagstaff was quiet and still, bathed in blue light. I felt a sense of peace about the upcoming birth. Not only because I knew what to expect this time around, but also because I felt like I had finally reached a place where I could let go of the idea of natural childbirth. Somehow, as I thought of my son and daughter and what they meant to me, I realized it didn’t matter anymore. My desire for a home birth suddenly felt like a distant memory, the way we feel about a friendship we had as a child. There might be some nostalgia, some bittersweet memories, but mostly there is the sense of distance, that we have grown up and moved on and we are not the same person we were back then. In the years since Oscar’s birth I’ve met women who will never get to experience pregnancy, who have lost their babies, and who have babies struggling to survive in the NICU. I realized that birth is no longer a defining moment for me. I just wanted Aria in my arms.

Seeing Aria for the first time:

The c-section went well. The staff were warm and friendly and funny this time around, whereas with Oscar’s birth things had been a little more rushed and grim. We had medical students and student nurses present this time, which was surprisingly rewarding, and I thought about how much I love being a teacher. Now I was getting to use my body and my birth as a teaching experience. Most of the students had never seen a c-section, and in a strange way I felt like I was giving them a gift.

These are the things that are burned into my memory: joking with the nurses about “C-Section, the Musical,” the kindness of the surgical team, seeing Aria’s face for the first time, watching Darin hold Aria in the OR while they sewed me up, and nursing her in the recovery room, skin-to-skin and covered with warm blankets, the lights dimmed, and my sweet daughter in my arms.

My children were not born naturally or at home, but their birth stories belong to them, and just like Oscar and Aria, they are perfect and unique. I may not having “given birth” to my children, but I gave them life.

As this pregnancy progresses I am becoming less and less capable of combing my hair…

Well, I’m in the home stretch! I’m 37 weeks, which is considered full-term, and I have a repeat c-section scheduled in a little over two weeks. One of my students pointed out in class yesterday that I have developed a distinct waddle. She said, kindly and gently, “Maybe you should go home and get some rest.”

I’m on twice-weekly doctor’s appointments, for NSTs and AFI’s because I’m AMA and this baby is a PITA. LOL. Being high risk means they speak in acronyms and hushed tones around you, when they’re not squeezing goo on your belly or calling for back-up nurses to help haul you on and off the examining table. The nurses are very nice. They bring me juice boxes and cluck admiringly over my lack of stretch marks.

When I was pregnant with Oscar I never missed a weekly belly photo or weekly blog update, but this time around I simply can’t be bothered. For one thing, the first half of this pregnancy was a steaming bowl of puke coupled with crippling anxiety that something could go horribly wrong at any moment. The worst thing of all? I couldn’t stand the smell of the building I worked in. Makes going to work a ton of fun. I would sit in my car and cry, then run to my office and start eating peppermint candies until it was time to teach. For some reason, teaching has always been the easiest part of my day to get through. I didn’t get many papers graded, though. The second half of this pregnancy has consisted of back pain and acid reflux coupled with crippling anxiety that something could go horribly wrong at any moment. Kind of robs you of the wonder of life growing in your belly.

Oh? And I forgot to mention? I have a three-year-old.

When I was pregnant with said three-year-old I spent a lot of time resting on the couch and rubbing scented lotions into my belly. Took lots of pictures, read every pregnancy book website I could get my hands on, went to childbirth classes and bathed in the joyous anticipation of a brand new baby.

Now I take care of a toddler.

“MOM!!! CHANGE ME!!! Milk? I WANT TOAST! Candy? Show? THIS SHOW THIS SHOW THIS SHOW!!! PUSH PLAY!!! Play trains with me! Mom! Talk to me!”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Oscar!”

So, yeah, I am months behind on this blog. It makes me sad, because I love reading other people’s blogs, and always think about how I should be sharing something in this space. I hope, as always, to get better about writing here.

Meanwhile, I have to go pee… (and get Oscar some juice, and grade papers, and…)

Crazy semester. Two classes in-person plus one online. A graduate class that I’ve never taught before. Traveling to see student teachers. Trying to write my damn book (the same book on teaching with technology I’ve been trying to write forever). Editing a journal. Advising almost eighty students. Raising a toddler. Growing a baby.

Frankly, I’m exhausted.

But. I get to drop everything and come April, spend four months with my babies.

I never stop worrying about this pregnancy. I’m a worrier. Past struggles and losses haven’t helped. Problems early in this pregnancy haven’t helped. So far everything is OK. She has a small problem with fluid on one kidney but the level is still normal and they are monitoring it. I had to see a perinatologist yesterdy, and he and the ultrasound tech were warm and funny.

“She has beautiful anatomy. She’s just gorgeous…”

“You have a perfect cervix. Has anyone told you what a perfect cervix you have?”

Then, this little gem:

“We’ll do another ultrasound at 34 or 35 weeks and decide if we need to deliver you early.”

Whaaaaaa???

“There’s a small possibility that the fluid on her kidney will go up, also, for some reason with AMAs, babies can develop problems around then, and it’s better to get them out.” (AMA means “advanced maternal age.” Yep, that’s me.)

So, really, I’m very happy that it was a good scan and everything looks great. I’m hoping this little pumpkin stays put until the end of April and is born perfect and healthy. I’ll be really happy when she is in my arms nursing.

Meanwhile, I forge ahead into a crazy busy semester. Trying to keep my head above water.

It was a little lighter outside this morning than it was yesterday, and that’s a good thing.

Frankly, I don’t really like much of the competition. I find that the harshest critics of mothers are…other mothers.

Before Oscar was born, and for the first six months of his life or so, I started reading parenting forums, which are largely populated by upper middle-class, white, stay-at-home moms. Yes, there are exceptions to this rule, but that was the majority of who I was interacting with on these forums. These holier-than-thou sanctimonious women have nothing better to do than troll the internet looking for hapless moms asking honest questions about breastfeeding difficulties, formula, babyfood, diapers, cribs and carseats. God forbid a woman asks about the best formula for supplementing breastmilk, the safest crib, vaccines, or whether or not she should have an epidural. These women might as well be asking for permission to smoke crack during pregnancy. Because, you know, formula = crack, cribs are prisons, and pureed baby food will turn us all into a bunch of obese mutants plugged into the Matrix. Don’t even think about vaccines; you might as well hand your child a box of rat poison.

When I was a student in public school there was always a roving band of queen bees on campus who took enormous pleasure in smacking down the lesser girls. The ugly girls, the plain girls, the overweight girls, the girls who couldn’t afford Guess t-shirts and Nike shoes, the girls who didn’t wear their bangs just right. I got cornered by the queen bees a few times, and luckily escaped with few scars. But when I graduated from high school I breathed a sigh of relief that I would never have to deal with the queen bees again. And that was true…until I became pregnant. Then I found out that the queen bees are alive and well, on parenting forums and mommy blogs.

I got smacked around recently on a parenting forum I frequent, because I mentioned that I turned my son from rear-facing to forward-facing in his car seat at fifteen months, when he reached the weight requirement for his rear-facing seat. The current AAP recommendation is to keep babies rear-facing until age two, and most new car seats accommodate this recommendation. I do plan to follow this the second time around. However, there are many women who angrily insist that every child should be kept rear-facing until at least age four, and quite of few who go beyond even that. I made the mistake of saying that while I respect that personal choice, all children, parents, and family situations are different. I was told, repeatedly, that this is not a parenting issue. It’s about safety. OK, maybe, but you could make the same argument about buying a $500 Britax car seat, an expensive new car with top-of-the-line safety features, keeping your kids inside at all times, or not letting your child lick the shopping cart. If there is one important thing I’ve learned as a parent, it’s that you cannot, under any circumstances, keep your child safe from harm all the time. To do so is to prevent life from happening, and it doesn’t work anyway, no matter how hard you try. You can be safe, you can use common sense of course, but you can’t cheat death.

Rather than simply saying, “I think you’re wrong,” or “I disagree,” multiple women told me I was an idiot, an asshat, dangerous, and ridiculous. That’s right, these words from fellow mothers, women who don’t know me, don’t know my son, don’t know my family, and don’t know anything about how I live my life. From women who don’t know that I’m struggling with a complicated pregnancy, that I work full-time at a stressful job, that I have problems and fears and struggles. I will never, ever begin to fathom why people treat each other the way they do.

This was, of course, not the first time I’ve been smacked around on parenting forums. I’ve also made the mistake of mentioning that I’ve used a Snugli, that I pumped milk and bottle-fed my son at three weeks, that I selectively vaccinate, that I chose to get a flu shot while pregnant, that I will be having a repeat c-section.

So now I’m done. I was starting to get bored with parenting advice anyway. You begin to realize, after being a parent for awhile, that there is a tremendous amount of conflicting advice out there, and sometimes you just have to go with your gut and do what works best for your child and your family. They won’t miss me and I won’t miss them. While I know that some women enjoy parenting forums and take pleasure in visiting them, I think we would all be better off without the judgment, the snark, the one-upmanship, and the self-congratulatory “advice.” I much prefer spending my time online reading blogs about writers and writing, whose authors and community are the most supportive and interesting people I’ve encountered on the web. I also enjoy a small community of infertility bloggers, women who are so desperate to have children, and so grateful to be pregnant, that they would never dream of questioning anyone’s parenting decisions.

“Fear less, hope more; Eat less, chew more; Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more; Love more, and all good things will be yours.”   ~A Swedish Proverb