Just as Sane as I Am

I would estimate more than half the population of the world finds babies adorable and infinitely interesting. They don't mind when a doting parent gleefully whips out their phone (remember when it was their wallet?) and scrolls through endless pictures of their baby and prattles on about what they’re doing these days. I've never been one of those people. I've always been the person who was like, "Oh, yeah, cute," when someone shows me a picture of their baby. I put on a forced smile and usually change the subject. But let me tell you. That is so not the case with my own baby. Remember when I said I wanted to maintain my identity and my interests and still be me even after I had my baby? I didn't want to be one of those people who only talks about the child in question? I still want that, but it's getting harder to maintain. Because so much of what I do anymore is watch Lily, study her movements, observe her amazing development. And I love ever...

So. It's officially the apocalypse. School's closed, which means we're stuck at home. And how is this affecting us? Honestly? It's great . Remember how I ranted about not having enough time with Lily? How awful it was to have to leave her every morning and be hooked up to a pump all the time so she could eat and not really even know if she was getting enough food? With one swift kick of a pandemic, none of this is a concern anymore! We're "stuck" at home with all the Lily time we could want! Seriously. Though I'm usually quite sarcastic, there's none of that here. We get to wake up and take her out of her crib every morning, and she's always smiling and happy. I can nurse her and play with her to make sure she gets plenty of tummy time, back time, time in her Bumbo seat and her jumper to practice sitting and walking. We can play with all of her toys to help her pick things up and show interest in different items. We can read to her. Make ...

Saturday night. Driving home. Jon and Lily in the back seat. Coming around the traffic circle two minutes from our house. Blinker on to get off at our exit. "Watch out!" from the backseat. Bam! They hit us. I hadn't even seen the car come up on my left side. They hit near the wheel well of the passenger's side at the front of the car. I was exiting the circle, they were entering; at least neither of us was going particularly fast. I'm 34, and I'd never been in a car accident before. I started shaking and blinking and just saying, "Oh my god. Oh my god," over and over again. I knew I had to pull over. Started driving slowly - well, I couldn't drive anything but slowly. The front of my car was apparently hanging off and dragging along the road, scratching against the gravel in protest. Thank god  Lily didn't flinch. Thank god  our cars were moving slowly. Thank god  no one was really injured. I guess my left hand flew off the steeri...

I'm about a month in to being back at work, and so far it's... well. It's not my favorite thing. My first day back, I have to be honest, I was surprised at how well I handled it. I didn't even cry. I got a little choked up when I left the house, but that was it. No tears. Did that make me heartless? Of course I worried about not worrying. My mom sent us pictures of Lily throughout the day, and I live (still) for those texts. When I got home that first day, Mom told me Lily had had a tough time, which I probably could have done without hearing. She apparently cried more than usual and didn't eat that much - maybe 4 oz the entire time I was out. Something else to worry about. Would she resist eating if she got upset everyday? How would that affect her healthy weight gain? Work itself has been pretty decent. On the walk down to my classroom on day 1, it felt like I had never left. That was part of why it was so easy. There was some minor resistance from the stu...

(Warning - I’m about to get political, but it only lasts a paragraph, so if you don’t agree with my angry liberal spewing, it doesn’t go on for too long. Don’t worry.) The older I get, unlike most people, the more liberally angry I seem to be becoming. (Health insurance is a big focus of this – I hate that I had a procedure that may be billed to my insurance company at $35,000, but my insurance only pays $10,000 of it and I am not asked for any more money. Meanwhile, because of whatever circumstances that may be out of people’s control, and we’re not gonna argue about what those are right now, some people don’t have health insurance and they’re asked to pay the full amount. Um, if they can’t afford health insurance, how are they going to afford procedures that are ridiculously expensive and clearly not even worth a third of what people are being charged? People in America degrade social healthcare, when most first world countries have it, and it really does work pretty well. Mo...

Or the One about family restrooms. While I was still pregnant, we stopped into a “family restroom” in one of the many local malls to see exactly what it entailed. It was gorgeous – you had to walk around a wall, but on the other side were two leather gliders where you could nurse your baby. Off to either side of that were two bathrooms. What a relief to know such a wonderland existed! We were pretty impressed and figured this is what most places would be like. Not true. When you have a baby, you start to find all kinds of inclusive and non-inclusive parenting places. Not every place of business even has one of those pull down changing table wall units for you to use. When we took Lily to the oral surgeon, Jon had to use one of our portable changing mats to change her on the floor. And that was relatively new, clean building. How much can those wall units possibly cost? For a place that does pediatrics, you would think investing in one of those would be thoughtful. I think my favo...