I had been trying to get pregnant for nearly a year. With my son, it happened fast, the second or third month we tried, and so when it took longer, I started to worry. I bought a pack of ovulation strips that I peed on every morning. I had sex with my husband during every fertile window, even if I wasn’t in the mood (and who is, when they have a toddler?). I saw my OB, who prescribed progesterone. And when this pregnancy test came back positive, I told my husband, “Hey. I’m pregnant.” He first sighed, then joked. “Do you really think we should keep it?”
It wasn’t the jubilant response I had received with my first pregnancy, but I understood. With another child, we would be signing ourselves up for hell all over again.
My son is almost three now, and as he’s gotten older, life has gotten easier. During the first six months of his life, he wouldn’t breastfeed, so I pumped every three hours. Every three hours, my tits encased in plastic, a bottle under each nipple, tubes shackling me to the pump machine, itself shackled to the outlet next to our kitchen table. At 3am, I would sit there, my robe around my waist, getting milked, watching Golden Girls, falling asleep, wondering why anyone decided to have children.
And after six months, he did start breastfeeding, and I wasn’t shackled to the pump anymore, and I was grateful to not have to wash the various parts - the breast shields and the membranes and the valves. But I was still at his mercy.
Using words like “shackled” probably makes me sound like I hated this, and I did. I didn’t hate it in every moment. But I didn’t become a mom so that I could breastfeed. I cared for my son, read to him, woke up and fed him in the night. I loved him, and I still love him, but when he was very young, I didn’t love being a mom. I don’t even know if I love being a mom now. Being a mom still, in so many ways, means handing your life over to someone else. You are not your own anymore.
The older he gets, the more fun I have with him. He’s talking a lot, and he wants to read with me for hours each day. Sometimes he’ll call me “Rachie” to be funny, and he’s been doing this thing where he makes noises like he’s pooping, and then he’ll pretend to grab the poop from his butt, examine it a moment, and then eat it. I asked my husband, is he a comedic genius? (Hopefully not.) These days, it’s not a huge deal to bring my son with me to the grocery store. These days, he sleeps through the night. Sometimes, he helps me cook, and occasionally he’ll play by himself while I do dishes. He’s becoming a real person, and so slowly, parts of my life are returning to me.
“There’s no way that having a second baby is easier,” a friend told me the other night. We were out to dinner, a double-date. She has a baby younger than a year old, and she’s already decided that they’re not having anymore. “Because each baby, you’re resetting. You’re starting back at zero.”
“You’re starting back at zero,” I repeated. My eyes glazed over. They all had cocktails; I gripped a fucking soda water.
Some women say that you block out childbirth. It’s so terrible, your brain forces you to forget it. But you must also block out that first year or so of parenthood, of sleeplessness, of worry, of boredom. I didn’t know what I was getting into with my son, but this time around, I do. I had forgotten, I had learned to push it out of my memory, but back it came.
We have been in Wisconsin for two years now, and the second year has been worlds better for myriad reasons, but one is that my identity is no longer just Mother/Provider of Milk. I am doing more shows, I am getting a grasp on comedy in the Midwest. But the progress I am making will inevitably be halted. It already is. My son came two months early, and so, as the due date for this new child approaches, I’m not scheduling many shows out of state. I do not want my water to break while I’m in Des Moines. At the same time, I want to do as much as I can now because, I know, soon I’ll be able to do so little. I’ve accepted it.
There’s this thing they do in my hometown of Sheboygan, maybe elsewhere too, called the polar bear plunge. On January 1st, people run into the frigid waters of Lake Michigan. They dodge the snow and immerse themselves in water that is usually too cold for my comfort even in July. They’re not in the lake long, maybe just a minute, but I often think about them running in. They know it’s insane, and that it’s going to hurt, but they also know it’s not going to last forever. And maybe this is the best metaphor I can find for having a baby. It’s 30 degrees out, I’m wearing a swimsuit. I know, very soon, it’ll feel like I’m dying. But I won’t be.
I think you’re wonderful. All that you said, I relate to. I know everyone is different, and your experience may of course be different. But for what it’s worth: the first one was the hardest for me (I now have 3). Total identity crisis, world turned upside down, shaken around, dumped out. Every relationship adjusted, every part of life changed. The second one…yes it’s the same polar plunge, but you’ve been there before. It’s familiar territory, even if you do forget some until you’re back again. You recognize it, you’ve navigated it before, and you know you’ll survive…those things made a huge difference for me the second and third times around. I wish you all good things, and I’ll be thinking of you and sending love as you add another adventure to your family ❤️
Thank you for the joy you give me reading your posts! So ... how's the book coming?