Something has to change

Everything hurts. My lower back hurts. My middle back hurts. My neck hurts. My shoulders hurt. As I type this, my wrists ache from the 40-plus hours of typing I do each week. I feel like saying to someone, "My body feels like someone beat me up with a baseball bat." But that would be too dramatic. And I don't owe money to anybody in the mob so it would be inaccurate, too.

The reason my body hurts is that I'm working too much and traveling too much and mothering too much. I have spent the last three weekends in a row traveling to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boulder with a 1 year old. Twice by myself, which has given me new appreciation for single mothers, and this most recent weekend with Dave, who I lovingly refer to as my sherpa when we fly because he is the one tasked with lugging the car seat, baby bed and other MBC (miscellaneous baby crap) through O'Hare International Airport while I carry our 25 pounds of precious cargo.

Owen is at the worst possible age to fly. He is walking everywhere and wants nothing to do with sitting in a seat for 4 hours. He is too old to be the blob of babyhood that sleeps on my chest the entire flight and too young to plop in front of a DVD. So we spend a lot of time in the airplane bathroom, where he plays with the water in the sink and pulls paper towel after paper towel out of the dispenser.

On our flight to San Francisco two weeks ago, Owen yanked at the liquid soap dispenser until he succeeded at pulling it out of the holder. He put the pump into his mouth and sucked on it, like he does with everything, and looked surprised when he pushed down on the pump and ended up with a mouthful of soap. He started sputtering and spitting it out and looked at me like, "Why didn't you tell me, Mom?" I watched it happen, it's true. Partly because I knew it wouldn't hurt him and partly because I was trying to teach him the rule of "cause and effect" (something apparently lost on children until they leave for college). And yes, partly because I was just too tired to stop him. 

Gone are the days of doing the in-flight magazine crossword puzzle, reading a book or listening to the "Once" soundtrack on my iPod. Gone are the days of enjoying my own complimentary beverage because these days, Owen wants to drink whatever mommy is drinking, even if he's got the same thing in his sippy cup. On our flight to L.A. three weeks ago, I was stupid enough to get a Diet Coke from the nice beverage cart lady and spent the first half of drinking it dodging Owen's attempts to stick his hand into my plastic cup to fish out pieces of ice and the second half cleaning it off of both of us after he knocked the can off the tray table.

My latest exercise routine

It's after one of these four hour flights that I realize why I feel so exhausted most of the time, even after 8 hours of sleep. At work I'm slammed with emails, conference calls and reports that need to be written. At home I'm slammed with sticky hands, food-stained carpets, poop explosions and the endless search for wayward sippy cups.

I'm not saying this to complain, really. I say this because amid these two very important jobs, mothering and earning a living, I notice that a very important thing gets neglected: my health.

The truth is that I'm 41 years old and my body doesn't stay fit and limber all by itself. In fact, it gets stiffer and flabbier by the day. Some days I feel like a car whose owner doesn't take it in for routine maintenance. One of those Honda Accords that you assume will last forever or that you'll just drive and drive until it breaks down on the side of the road. You figure you'll just leave it there and go buy a new one.

Lately I've been realizing that I'm treating my health like an old friend who will always be there for me, no matter how little I write, call or visit. Lately I've been getting more and more used to the aches and pains, more acclimated to getting through the day jump started by coffee, then mellowed out with two or three glasses of wine after work. Lately I've been lamenting the fact that this 15 pounds of baby weight doesn't seem to be going anywhere unless I change something when my plate already feels too full -- a fitting cliche for this conversation. 

I say all of this in the most self loving way possible. I say this as someone who has spent way too much time hating my body, hating myself because I'm not 5, 10 and now 15 pounds thinner. I say this as someone who has tried to impose exercise routines on myself, starting with high school when I would sit in my room and map out how many minutes I would spend on the treadmill, exercise bike and rowing machine each day on a calendar and calculate how much weight I could lose by a certain vacation. Then do none of it and feel like a failure.

I say this as someone who knows that exercising and doing yoga are more about how I feel than how I look. I say this as a woman who recently watched a male server at Pret A Manger, one of my favorite sandwich shops, neglect finishing my order after a 20-something in a short skirt walked in and ordered four iced coffees. I say this as someone who watched him make those four iced coffees before remembering to wrap up my grilled ham and cheese sandwich still waiting on the counter.

Last night, as I complained to Dave for 100th time how tired I am, how none of my clothes fit, he made an offer I think I'm going to take, an offer that made me realize how lucky I am to have a spouse who charges my iPhone for me when he knows I'll forget and says things like, "It's all part of the partnership." He said that we should make my health a priority as a family, that we should start working our schedule around my need to bike to work, go to yoga and meditate.

So today I'm going to take Owen for a long walk when he wakes up from his nap. And tonight Dave is going to come home in time for me to go to candlelight yoga at 7:30 p.m. I know that reordering my priorities, or balancing them better, will be an uphill battle. But stay tuned, because at least it's a start.   

Dear Owen,

The first time I wrote to you more than a year ago, I didn't know your name. I didn't know if you were a boy or a girl (Dada and I decided to keep your sex a surprise) and I didn't know much about you besides the fact that you often got the hiccups and liked to kick the right side of my rib cage. I didn't know that we would labor together for three days to get you here. I didn't know that by the time I finally demanded to go to the hospital, I'd be 10 centimeters dilated and "ready to push," as the midwife told me with surprise on her face.

Shortly after I started pushing, I looked at the nurses and asked, "How long am I going to have to do this?" As you'll find out about me, I like to work to deadline. One of the nurses said, "Go ahead and find out." I was shocked at her suggestion that I put my fingers up in the birth canal, given all that was going on down there, but I did and quickly made contact with your moist, squishy head. Even though we had been together for more than 9 months, it was surreal to feel you there. Holy shit, there's a baby in there!

When you emerged, screaming and slimy, I looked over and saw tears streaming down Dada's face, the first time I had ever seen him cry. He was the one who caught you (spotted by Rachel, the midwife, and two nurses), and he cut your umbilical cord, separating you and me for the first time. Because I was so far along by the time we got to the hospital, there was no time for an epidural. I had 100% natural childbirth, one of the few women to do so these days. I had hoped to birth you drug-free, but I was open to that fact that I may end up demanding something for the pain. Dada sure thought I would.  

During our natural child birthing classes, Dada doubted that I could give birth without drugs because I whine and complain if I get so much as a headache. "You don't have the highest pain threshold, babe," he said. But come to find out, when shit gets real, when the rubber meets the road, I am surprisingly sturdy. "I've never been so proud of you," Dada told me after watching you be born. I think that quality will bode well for us in the future when you turn to me for strength (as I hope you will) when life hits you upside the head as it does to all of us through the years.

Once you were here, I couldn't believe how much black hair you had. Who is that? I couldn't help thinking the first time I saw you. If I hadn't been there myself, I would have thought they mixed up and gave me the baby from the Hispanic couple next door. 

The first time I saw you, I thought I would cry and feel flooded with joy like I had every time we watched a birth video during our child birthing classes. I thought I'd feel a spasm of sobs move up my chest and tears spring to my eyes with uncontrollable force and Dada would look over at me, touch my arm and we'd share a soulful, heartfelt smile. But that's not what happened. 

"I don't feel anything," I whispered to our doula, Juli, after they took you away to give you a bath. I was scared that you felt like an alien to me, that I felt as stunned as a deer you come upon in the clearing of a forest.

"That's normal," Juli assured me. "You've been though a lot, and you haven't slept in three days."

I hoped she was right. And boy, was she ever. Today you feel like mine, all mine (and Dada's too). Tears spring to my eyes when I think about how much I like you, how easy it is to hang out with you, pushing you around town in your stroller, watching you splash in the bath and look over at me and grin, lying next to you on the living room floor as you try to tear apart your play mat. (I'll always love you as your Mama, but liking your child is a whole other story).

Birthday boy

When you were born, you were 8 pounds, 15 ounces, a big boy as they say, and 21 inches long. You have always been a great eater and every time we see the pediatrician, you hold steady in the 90th percentile for weight. "Should we start feeding him less?" we asked Dr. Vijay at your six month appointment, thinking maybe you were getting a little too chubby. "No," she said. "He is healthy and doing great." So we decided not to worry.

You're a good sleeper, too. By six months, you were sleeping through the night for the most part, except when you were teething. Then you'd wake up screaming bloody murder until we gave you a syringeful of baby Tylenol, which seemed to do the trick. You typically take epic morning naps (2-3 hours) and sleep another hour or two in the afternoon.

Since you first smiled at two months old, you've been pretty relentlessly happy. That's the No. 1 thing people say about you, besides how cute you are. "He just seems so happy!" And you are. You love eating bananas and oranges, sucking on my iPhone, feeding plastic balls into your octopus toy, reading your books, unspooling rolls of toilet paper and opening your dresser drawer and throwing all of your clothes on the floor. The dishwasher is a particular fascination for you and you love playing with the clean silverware, which doesn't stay clean for long because at this stage, everything goes in your mouth. Everything.

When you were six months old, we enrolled you in Wiggleworms, a music class for parents and their kids. At first, Dada took you most of the time and then I started taking you when he had to work. The first thing I noticed was how cautious you are in a group. You would sit with me, sometimes reaching for my neck so I'd pull you in closer, as you stared at the other babies shaking maracas and banging on the big drum the teacher put in the middle of the floor. You would survey the mayhem with an expression that seemed to say, What fresh hell is this?

You didn't want to crawl into the middle like some of the other babies and all you wanted to do with your maraca was suck on it. You'd just sit and suck and stare.  And I must admit, I respect that about you. You like to check out a scene before you jump in. You like to stare at a stranger for a good two minutes before you reward him or her with a smile. I think that's a good thing. I don't ever want to be the mom pushing you into the middle like the other kids or ordering you to smile at people you don't know. Take your time, baby, take your time.

Throughout these past 12 months, you've hit every developmental milestone you're supposed to. You started rolling over at 2 or 3 months, sitting up at 4 months, rearing up on your hind legs and rocking back and forth when you were six months old, like you were warning us, "Okay, folks, any day now I'm going to crawl." Then you did, propelling yourself through the condo with your left leg out to the side to give you more leverage on our wooden floors.

I don't like reading parenting books because much like, "What to Expect When You're Expecting," they can just make you crazy with worry. God forbid if your child's not doing something they're supposed to at a certain stage. Reading those books can also make you competitive. That's one thing I've noticed about other parents and something I hope I don't do too much with you -- compare you to other children. "How much did he weigh at his last appointment?" one mom will ask me. "Is he using a sippy cup yet?" another will say. "How long has he been sitting up?" Oy vey. Take your time, baby, take your time.

One of the coolest things about you is your sense of humor. If I make a funny face at you, you'll smile and often laugh. And Owen, there's nothing better than the sound of your laugh. If I could bottle those giggles and sell them, no one in this world would need Prozac. I'll never forget the day when we were playing on the bed and I blew a raspberry on your Buddha belly and you leaned over and blew a raspberry on my leg. I think you were only about six or seven months old and I had no idea how much fun we could have together so early, before you could even walk or talk. Silly me for underestimating you.

So now, dear baby, here we are. We just celebrated your 1st birthday with a family day at the beach and I'm just so grateful that you're here. You're the one who makes us a family. I knew this parenting thing was going to be fun and joyful and touching and all that other Hallmark stuff. Yet somehow you exceeded my biggest hopes, my greatest expectations. I don't know how you did it. And really, you didn't do anything. You are just you. Take your time, baby, take your time.

Love,
Mama

When are you a grown up?

A few days ago Dave and I got the news that some friends of ours are expecting their first baby. Then I found out some other friends are under contract to buy their first condo. And that made me think, "Wow, we're all growed up!"

Many of my friends have had babies and bought homes in recent years, but these are the caboose people, that last of the bunch taking the plunge into the oh-so-adult world of parenthood and homeownership. The American dream, if you will. And that got me thinking even more. When do you know you're a grown up?

I'm not talking about when the U.S. government tells you that you're a legal adult, or when you're finally allowed to drink without a fake ID, but when do you feel like a grown up? Is it when you graduate from college? Get your first real job? Get married? Buy a house? Have a baby? Treat your parents to dinner? Buy your own plane ticket home?

There are so many milestones to choose from and I think it's wholly a personal experience. Getting married may have been your moment of "Oh my God, I will never sleep with another person again and now I'm an adult." Getting your first real job may have been caused you to think, "Geez, they're paying me more than minimum wage so I better not screw this up." My friend, Amber, says it was when she finally owned a car that didn't require her to crank down the windows by hand.

As I said, it's all relative. For me, I've had glimpses of adulthood along the way. I think it is a big deal when you go out to dinner with your parents and throw down your credit card rather than expecting them to. I remember my Dad and his father fighting over who was going to pay the bill when we went out to eat as a family, both of them trying to assert their sense of adulthood (not to mention manhood).

For years when I was living in San Diego after college waiting tables and figuring out what the heck to do with my liberal arts degree (and no, I didn't feel like a grown up yet), my mom would pay to fly me to Boulder, Colo. to visit her. It took a few more years before I bought my own plane ticket without even thinking about it.

So no, I didn't feel like a grown up when I went away to college, or graduated college, or got my first job after college, or moved across the country, or went to graduate school in New York City, or got my first reporting job in New Jersey, or moved to Miami for my second reporting job, or moved to Chicago to be an editor. I was acting like an adult, sure. But I didn't feel like one.

You know when I felt like a grown up? One word: mortgage.

For some reason, the second I decided to buy my own place, I felt like an adult. The fact that I was going to put down roots after a decade of figuring out what to do with my life, who I was, and where I was meant to be, was a big deal for me. A bigger deal than I expected, actually. The fact that I was going to owe a bank more than $200,000 made an impression. Sure, I had graduate school debt, but it was nothing compared to what I was going to owe Bank of America for a 30-year fixed loan on a one-bedroom condo in Lincoln Park. Plus, I was single. So it was all on me.

The view from my condo the day we got married

I remember a sleepless night I had shortly after submitting an offer for my condo. It wasn't the mortgage payment I was so worried about. That I knew I could cover. But in addition to the mortgage, I was going to have to pay a pretty high monthly condo fee. The unit is in a vintage building built nearly 100 years ago. And you know what that means: The walls and foundation may be solid, but everything else needs a lot of upkeep, including pricy items like plumbing and electrical wiring.

(Every time the condo association raises the assessment, they can't help themselves from reminding everyone that we, "live in an older building." Yes, me and my checkbook know that, thank you.)

So I called my friend, Heather, who lives in New York City. She was the right one to call because a "high" condo fee in Chicago sounds miniscule to someone living in Manhattan. "That's nothing!" she said. Suddenly I felt okay about paying a little more than I thought I should. I felt my feet under me again.

After I had signed my initials on 70 pages of mortgage goobledygook and closed, my friend, Nancy, came over with a bunch of sage to purify the space. She lit the sage, the earthy smell filling the apartment, and walked the perimeter of each room holding out the smoldering herb to let the smoke ward off bad spirits. Yes, it was a little hippy dippy but I was touched that a friend would go to so much trouble to help me make my home a safe, special place. My own personal sanctuary (and yes, okay, Bank of America's, too).

As I was moving in, I realized that all of the furniture I had accumulated since college — the coffee table from Target, the bookshelf and desk I had assembled from Ikea, the chest of drawers from God knows where — suddenly looked sad and juvenile in my big girl condo. So I did another grown up thing: I went to Marshall Field's and bought a bedroom set made out of real wood. A platform bed, dresser drawers and matching mirror. It even had an armoire.

I went to Room and Board and ordered a walnut plank kitchen table with solid, steel legs and began my search for the perfect kitchen chairs. I called another friend, Aixa, to make sure I wasn't crazy to buy a white leather couch I had fallen in love with. She assured me that the fact I had no pets or children meant it was, indeed, the perfect time to make such a purchase. So I did.

Since then, I have had all kinds of opportunities to feel like an adult. I've gotten married, had a baby, and purchased many more plane tickets to go home for Christmas and other family visits. None of those have felt quite as adult-like as that initial mortgage. And yet the milestones just keep coming.

In less than two weeks Owen will be 1 year old. And when I think about that fact, I don't feel so much older, more mature or adult-like. I just feel incredibly, wonderfully grateful. 

How do you know when you're ready for kids?

I had dinner last night with a friend who is wondering whether she and her husband will ever be ready for kids. She's 32 years old, a high-powered career woman who works for the University of Chicago's medical center, generating business referrals for her nerdy, highly specialized neurologists, urologists and heart surgeons. She attends fancy client dinners, cruises around in her Jetta with the sunroof open, plans vacations to remote cities in Mexico months in advance, and hunkers down to watch three episodes of "Mad Men" or "Downton Abbey" in one sitting on the couch.

In short, she is me—and pretty much most of my friends. Smart, driven, highly educated, independent, adventurous, poised, passionate, successful, stylish and fiscally responsible. As my mom would say, she has a "good head on her shoulders." 

I listen over pinot noir and chicken piccata (God, do I love capers) as she tells me how she tries to picture herself with kids. She'll come home after a long day of wooing doctors, tired and just wanting to wash her face and zone out, and thinks about having to feed a child, get him or her into the bath, read a bedtime story and hold her breath as she tiptoes out of the bedroom hoping, just hoping, her little one goes right to sleep. Would she feel soooooo tired? Would she resent the intrusion into "me time"? Would it just feel like too much work?

I nod and take another bite of linguini, twirling the long strands of pasta onto my fork as she continues. After six years with her husband, they have had enough conversations to know what each other needs. He needs her to do everything: work, plan their vacations, do the grocery shopping, clean the kitchen, pick out his dress shirts, research home buying strategies, write his cover letters, etc. She needs to be appreciated for doing everything. "Babe, you're the best!" is pretty much all she needs, she says. And really, she doesn't mind doing everything because she likes being in control. I smile at her self awareness and candor. Good girl for owning that.

Are you ready?

But what if she added kids to that equation? What would happen to the spoken and unspoken division of labor that she and her husband have carefully worked out? Would she suddenly resent that he doesn't make the bed, never notices when they're out of toothpaste and can't clean the stove top to save his life? "He takes out the trash, which I really appreciate. And he always carries heavy things for me. I hate carrying heavy things," she says.

I pour myself another glass of wine (the restaurant is BYOB) and nod. I savor the tangy flavor of CVS's best bottle of Kendall Jackson as it coats my tongue before I swallow and take another sip.

And what about work? She makes six figures with her bonus and kind of likes the freedom of having all that disposable income. She's worked hard to get to where she is. Would she want to stay home? She doesn't think so. Would her husband stay home after finishing law school? Probably not. What would they do for childcare? And isn't it really expensive? How much do you pay your nanny? she asks.

$13 an hour, I tell her, which is about $2,000 a month.

She grimaces. That's like a mortgage payment, she says.

I know, I say. It sounds like a lot.

Yet here's the thing, I say, leaning in as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg says all women should do in her new book about the lack of female leadership in corporate America. I lean in for a different reason than Sheryl, however. My message is different from hers.

Here it is: I had no idea how big my heart could feel until I had a child.

There is nothing like the smile Owen gives me when he's taught himself to stand for three seconds before falling backward onto his butt. Nothing. There is nothing like the smell of his baby head as I lay in the dark with him, stroking his hair, while he drinks his last bottle before bed. Nothing.

There is nothing like the look of anticipation he gets when I say, "One...." as I slowly remove one tab of his diaper. "Two....." as I peel back the other tab, and "threeeeeeee!" as I rip open his diaper and exclaim, "There's the pee-pee!"—a game I established to distract him from flipping over when he was four months old.

There's nothing like the feel of his little hands pawing at my shins and working his way up to my knees as he tries to climb the "Tower of Mommy" to get into my arms. There's nothing like watching him suck on his bath toys and pat the surface of the water and look over at me with pure joy as he slashes. Nothing. There's nothing like the time I blew a raspberry on his belly and he reciprocated by leaning over and blowing a raspberry on my leg. Or the grunty laugh he makes when I tickle the bottom of his feet.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

I always suspected I'd enjoy having children, that they'd bring an uncomplicated sense of joy, hope, fun, and did I say joy? to my life. And it's even better than I ever imagined. Holy shit. 

Now, here's the fine print. Yes, it will change your marriage. I have never argued more with Dave than in the last year because with kids, there are just so many more things to fight about. What time should he go to bed? Should we feed him another 2 ounces when he wakes up crying? Is it okay to let him sleep in his swing or will it forever ruin him for his crib? Should we rush home to make sure he gets a good afternoon nap or is it okay to let him sleep in the stroller? Is an orange and half of a banana too much sugar for him in one sitting? Will he really die of SIDS if he sleeps with a blanket? When should we transition him from a bottle to a sippy cup?

But the experts say this. I don't care what the experts say, I want to do it like this. We should be on the same page. Right, your page. Can we agree to disagree? Yes. No. I don't know. Blah, blah, blah.

Yes, that careful balance that you worked out when you were childless, when it felt like you were so damn compatible will be turned upside down. Yes, it will be expensive. But I would pay my nanny $20 an hour if she asked (just don't tell her that) because what better thing to spend my money on than the peace of mind of knowing that Owen is in good hands?

Yes, you will struggle to balance your work life with your home life. You will question your identity. "Have you figured out whether you're a working mom or a mom who works?" my friend, Amy, a Senior VP with a 2 year old and a second on the way, asked me the other day.

You may feel pressure to stay at home. You may feel guilty that you like leaving the baby behind to go to work. No matter what you do, you will be shamed by other mothers. And you will shame yourself. Just wait until someone asks you whether you breast feed. If you don't, you will find yourself giving a long, self deprecating explanation of why not.

Parenthood is a landmine of guilt, a mirage of "the right way to do things." Attachment parents will tell you your child should sleep in your bed and be offered your breast if they so much as whimper. Weissbluth and Ferber will tell you to let your child cry it out. Every time you are tired, frustrated and confused about why your child will not eat, sleep or <<fill in the blank>>,  you will be reminded of what the experts say. Then you will be told, "Just find what works best for you." Then when you do, you will be judged again. Both by others and yourself.

Then why is this process worth it? Here's the other thing: for some people it's not. I cannot tell you how much I respect couples who look around at other parents, look back at each other and say, "Nah, not for us." I don't think parenthood is for everybody. I like that it can be a conscious choice rather than once you get married, the next logical step. I don't think parenthood is a prerequisite for joy, fulfillment or self actualization. There are other ways to forge deep connections with others, large and small, and to find meaning in your life.

I hope I don't sound like a sanctimommy, something I've been accused of before. I'm not here to say, "There, there, oh childless one, you have no idea what you are missing in your life." I don't want to perpetuate the cycle of judgment, our society's knee-jerk compulsion to shame.  I'm here to say that for me, having a child is something that feels so, so right, even though I worried and pondered the same questions as you.

Once reality came around, once Owen was here, all the mental gymnastics I did—and continue to do until I recognize it and stop myself—to figure out what being a parent would look like for me and for Dave, fell by the wayside. So many of the worries, ideas and theories are just that—worries, ideas and theories.

So, go ahead and wait. Wait until you get that glimmer of a feeling that you're ready to be a mom. Or not. (And yes, our conversation may have a greater sense of urgency if you were 39, not 32, because of that goddamn biological clock.) More and more I'm realizing that being a true feminist—and a true friend—means supporting other women no matter what it looks like, no matter what they decide to do.

A moment to sit and think

I haven't written in forever because I've been consumed with a huge project at work and adjusting to the time crunch of being a newish mom. I've often had fleeting thoughts of things I want to write about while riding on the bus to work or rushing to do an errand but then faced the reality that I really don't have the time. Sleep, laundry, and "The Good Wife" on demand have become the priorities in my downtime.

Now that project is over and I have more time -- about 1 hour and 45 minutes to be exact because Owen just went down for his morning nap after a breakfast of cheddar cheese wedges, oatmeal with applesauce and a significant amount of whining and rubbing the cereal all over his face because he was tired.

When I get these small breaks, my mind often runs through my To Do list, trying to figure out which thing I want to do. Should I clean up the mess in the kitchen? Take the clothes that Owen has outgrown down to the storage unit? Watch that documentary on Islam that a friend sent? Read the first chapter of that book I've been trying to get into for the third time? Or just sit on the couch and listen to the rain?

It's a new feeling, having so little free time. Owen is at the stage when all he wants is mama and whenever I put him down and try to, I don't know, put on underwear or apply mascara, I feel his little hands tugging at the bottom of my pajamas, trying to climb up my leg. He's 23 1/2 pounds now and no small package to carry around. It's sweet the way he lunges for me whenever someone else is holding him. I love his baby soft skin and deep brown eyes that light up when he smiles. He loves to yank at my earrings, tug at my hair and gets a studious look on his face, brow furrowed, as he picks at the buttons or snaps on my shirt as I hold him in my arms.

My little time crunch

It's also a bit overwhelming to be needed so much. I've been warned that it's fleeting, so I try to embrace it rather than resist, because I know he is a little person with fragile emotions and natural needs and I want him to feel safe and embraced.

One of my sisters-in-law often talks about whenever she and her two sisters would beg their mom to play with them, she always said she was too busy cleaning the house. I totally know that feeling of wanting to feel some semblance of control over my life by keeping the carpets vacuumed and the bathroom mirrors clean. When I walk into the living room in the mornings, bleary eyed and stumbling toward coffee, I step over a roomful of wooden trains, assorted balls, scattered board books and plastic building blocks.

I've asked Dave, who gets up with Owen every morning at 6 a.m. so I can get a few more hours of sleep, to only dump one bin of Owen's toys onto the floor instead of two, because I just can't take the clutter. It's a joke, really. Because when you have a child, your life (and living room floor) really isn't your own in both a deep, satisfying, "this is what I'm meant to be doing," but also an impatient, tapped out, "please go to sleep now so I can watch Mad Men" kind of way.  

The other day I was telling a friend how stressed I've been feeling juggling work and Owen. I summed it up by saying, "It's the typical working mom, work-life balance struggle." She responded by saying "Just because it's typical doesn't mean it's not hard."

That helped me give myself a break because just because thousands of other women are experiencing the same sense of disorder that I do every day, doesn't mean it's any easier for me. Sure, I'm not alone. But I can still take a deep breath and work in small things for myself, like steal away from work to get my nails done, sit and eat a sandwich without doing anything else but chew and sit on the couch like I'm doing now, reflecting on how I've been feeling.

Yesterday I signed up for an 8-week mindfulness based stress reduction class. Of course it has an acronym: MBSR. Every Saturday morning for two months I will enter a room with 20 other people to do relaxation exercises, meditate, twist into yoga poses and learn to be more present to every moment. When I did my intake interview with the psychologist who has been teaching the course for 18 years, he asked me three questions:

What is most important to you?
What brings you the greatest joy?
What are you most afraid of?

He told me to answer quickly without thinking, which I did. My answers:

My family.
Owen.
Recurrence of severe bouts of anxiety that I've suffered in the past.

He also asked me what I wanted to get out of the course. I told him two things: more space internally between something that happens and my reaction and greater vitality.

Since becoming pregnant more than a year and a half ago, I feel like I just haven't gotten back to my usual energy level and sense of ease in my body. During my pregnancy, I hardly exercised because I was so nauseous. Since my pregnancy, I've hardly exercised because I'm "too busy" and tired. Thus, I'm out of shape and most of the pants in my closet still don't fit. I refuse to buy news ones.

But waist size is not what this is really about. It's about that sense of well being I have after a lively Zumba or sweaty Bikram class.  These days, every time I turn around I'm catching Owen's flu or colds. Twice in the last 10 months since he's been born I've had laryngitis.

So yeah, becoming a parent has all kinds of adjustments. And with those changes, I have less drive, less energy, to just power through whatever task is before me. That's not always a bad thing, yet it does require becoming more patient and accepting of my limitations in a culture that is urging me: "Do, do, do."

Instead, I'm going the other direction. I'm going to take a class to learn to be, be, be. A coworker I told about the class asked me why I think I needed it and I said I just didn't want to look back on my life and realize I missed Owen growing up, forgot to nurture my marriage and carried around an extra 20 pounds because my mind was somewhere else.

I'm going to do my darndest to live more fully and to be more accepting of the times when I feel tapped and empty.  It's the least I can do today.

Confessions of an older mom

Here is a guest blog post I wrote for Role Reboot, a website dedicated to gender and relationship issues. It's my take on what it means to be a ""woman of advanced maternal age": http://www.rolereboot.org/family/details/2012-12-confessions-of-an-older-mom

Work = misery?

There's an essay circulating the blogosphere written by Linds Redding, an advertising executive in New Zealand who recently died of esophageal cancer at age 52. In his essay, "A Short Lesson in Perspective," Redding comes to the conclusion that he duped himself into believing that his work was more important than sleep, holidays, birthdays, school recitals and anniversary dinners.

It's the now-that-I'm-dying-I-realize-I-spent-too-much-time-at-the-office cautionary tale that seems to surface in the collective consciousness of the rat race Western world every few months or so, much like the recent article in The Guardian about a hospice nurse who wrote a book called the "Top Five Regrets of the Dying." The biggest regret, particularly among men, was missing out on watching their children grow up and spending QT with their wives because they were too busy working.

These articles always make me think about my relationship to work and whether it's true that we define ourselves too much by what we do. More specifically, I wonder whether I'm so busy "doing" that I'm not spending enough time "being." My answer is typically yes, although I've gotten much better at it in recent years, both by force and by choice.

I've always been good about taking vacations and spending time with family and friends. I've never understood coworkers who brag about working while in Florida at their cousin's wedding or never taking a day off. I don't think they're noble. I think they're stupid. (I'm still working on my issues with judgment.) It also bothers me when people can't seem to turn off their Blackberries during lunch. Are they really that important?

One thing that's helped cure me of my addiction to work is getting fired (that's the forced remediation part). Part of the reason I was fired from a job I loved four years ago was my passion for my work, which sometimes veered into self righteousness that wasn't appreciated by upper management (but should have been, dammit. I WAS WORKING SO HARD.)

I always thought that if I was really good at what I did, I would be valued. Not true. You have to be good at what you do and get along with people, especially those you consider impossible. They are the ones who will come back to bite you. And if you have to choose one: being good at what you do or getting along with people, you're better off getting along with people — a reality that perfectionists like me hate to face. Can't my work just speak for itself?

Getting fired has helped me tread more lightly in my current job and not care so much. I still strive for excellence but I'm not as intent on being right (which gets exhausting by the way). I shut down my computer by 6 p.m. and rarely check work email at home. I mean, it's not like I'm a doctor or IT support. What kind of writing emergency is going to happen?

Late nights at the office are also fewer and farther between, along with working on weekends, particularly now that I have a child. The other day I was sitting on the couch with my laptop doing something I'm sure was super important when Dave brought Owen in from taking his nap. Owen's cheeks were red from being smooshed into the mattress and he had that stunned I-just-woke-up-and-my-brain's-not-working-yet look on his face. I always smile when he looks like this because man, can I relate.

Dave put him down on his playmat and instead of ignoring Owen and letting him entertain himself like I sometimes do, I closed my laptop and stood up. I switched my iPod to my favorite pop songs and laid on the floor next to Owen. I took his arms and bopped them back and forth to "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen and "We Found Love" by Rihanna. I put my hands under his hips and jiggled them up and down to the beat of "Payphone" by Maroon 5.

Owen giggled and smiled, even as I sang to him that "We are never, ever, ever getting back together" along with Taylor Swift. It was the most fun I'd had in weeks.

Disconnecting from work and being in the moment like this is not something I'm always willing or able to do. That's another thing I've learned about "being" vs. "doing." It's a process. Sometimes I'd rather stay immersed in some project than play with Owen. And that's okay. The more I notice and accept the fact that I'm caught up in the compulsion to do at the expense of the ability to be, the more I want to play with Owen later. The human psyche is funny that way.

Another point that I appreciated in Redding's essay is his discussion of how the Internet age has sped up the turnaround time in the advertising industry so much that he and his colleagues no longer had the luxury of sleeping on an idea. As a consequence, they became more conservative. Without the time to let inspiration marinate into innovation, they stopped taking creative risks and fell back on tried and true techniques. It perfectly illustrates the cost of "doing" at the expense of "being."

This is my favorite part:

The trick to being truly creative, I’ve always maintained, is to be completely unselfconscious. To resist the urge to self-censor. To not-give-a-shit what anybody thinks. That’s why children are so good at it. And why people with Volkswagens, and mortgages, Personal Equity Plans and matching Lois Vuitton luggage are not. It takes a certain amount of courage, thinking out loud. And is best done in a safe and nurturing environment. Creative departments and design studios used to be such places, where you could say and do just about anything creatively speaking, without fear of ridicule or judgment. It has to be this way, or you will just close up like a clam shell. It’s like trying to have sex with your mum listening outside the bedroom door.

Forget the fact that I have both a Volkswagen and a mortgage, I laughed aloud at the part about having sex with your mom outside the bedroom door. Talk about inspiring nothing but inhibition. In my quest to become better at "being," there's a safe and nurturing place I go every Wednesday night where I can speak freely without fear of ridicule or judgment (okay, sometimes we judge each other a little).

If you don't have such a place, go find one. Otherwise you'll end up having to write your own now-that-I'm-dying-I-realize-I-spent-too-much-time-at-the-office essay.