love before sight

This Mother's Day seems different. In three months, I'll be a mother. Or to this little boy, I already am. I am sure next year at this time I'll have a whole new appreciation for what my mom did for me 28 years ago.

But the last six months have shown me what she did before I breathed my first.

She worried about me constantly for nine months, especially in the beginning. She worried that I would be healthy and strong. That all my parts would be in the right places. That her body would sustain a life growing inside her.

She gave up caffeine. Wine and beer. She tried to eat as many fruits and veggies as she could. She says she felt the healthiest of her life when she was pregnant with me. Later when she was diagnosed with gestational diabetes, she gave up sugar. All sugar. She worried that if she didn't do everything right, it would somehow affect my health.

She read pregnancy books. She did special exercises. She sewed her own maternity clothes. She endured backaches, swollen ankles and heartburn like you wouldn't believe. She watched her body transform from something she used to know to something built to grow a life - still beautiful but very, very different. She looked at her closet every morning realizing she probably was wearing the same thing she wore two days ago because that's what fits. She worried her body would never look the same again.

She was scared. Excited. Anxious. Overjoyed. Nervous. All at once.

As the due date approached, she worried more. Worried that my lungs were developed enough to breathe on their own. That I would be alert, and she'd hear that cry immediately. That as the months went on that I would continue to develop as I should.

She took childbirth classes. She toured the maternity ward and listened to the women scream. She then promptly decided that she would NOT be a screamer. Thousands of women do this everyday, there is no reason for screaming. And she didn't.

She washed all my clothes and blankets with special soap. She saved pennies to be able to buy a rug for the nursery. She worked til the day she went in labor and then shopped for glasses with my dad on her way to the hospital. She did it all while helping to put my dad through the final year of his PhD program.

She wondered if she'd know what to do when she got home. If she could figure out breastfeeding. If she knew how to give me a bath. What she would do if I cried all night long. If she could do it all on two hours of sleep and not go crazy.

She did it all without ultrasounds. Without pregnancy websites that address every worry. Without knowing if I'd be a boy or girl or what my 4D profile looked like.

Now I get it. How much joy, how much work and how much worry went into my life before she even saw my face.

Thank you, Mom. For loving me so much before you even knew me.

Read more: 100 things my mom taught me.

on the news

I love big  news days because I love newspapers. It might be a dying medium but everybody wants a copy of the New York Times to put in their scrapbook when days like this happen. These are not front pages that you will end up using for packing material, bird cage liner or silly hats. You'll fold it nicely. Maybe frame it. And you'll be glad you had the real thing - not a printed web page.

So today I am celebrating newspapers. (You can see all those front pages from today here or here or here. And how journalists got the news, here.)

Because the flash mobs outside the White House and Times Square make me feel funny. It feels too much like the mobs we watch on TV in disgust at the celebration of death. Don't get me wrong. He's a bad man. A bad, bad man that represents evil in human form. But celebrating death, in any instance, makes me just feel funny.

In fairness, the "Rot in Hell" headline from the New York Daily News and the "We Got the Bastard" from the Philadelphia Daily News make me feel funny, too.

Instead, it kind of all just feels sad to me. Mostly for the victims that probably feel like they got closure but most likely, it won't be enough. That there is so much hate in such a broken world and that the death of one man will not end it. (Read more: USA! USA! is the wrong response)

So today I'm putting on my journalism hat. Reading about reporters. Reading the poignant editorials. And just loving the art of the newspaper.

a scary monday

Until I reached 12 weeks of pregnancy, I was scared at every little twinge or ache. It's the magic week when the risk of losing the baby goes way down. So we didn't post our news on Facebook or write about it here. We talked guardedly, even with each other.

And then we sighed with relief, and the little baby started bumping around to let me know he was OK. But as I was driving home from work, just two weeks shy of halfway done, my usual hip and back pain seemed more than the usual stretching. Quite intense pain, actually. Instead of panicking all night, I called the doctor's office before they closed. It seems if you want to avoid the staff and nurses all you have to say is "cramping" and suddenly my midwife's comforting voice is there.

After a long list of questions, she told me to drink four glasses of water, get off my feet and take Tylenol. And if it wasn't better in 90 minutes, call and they would meet me at the hospital. I hung up, got myself water and broke down. Because now that we're so far along I only think about life with the little guy, not without him. I cried, rubbed my belly saying his name and willing him to be OK.

It's been three hours (and five glasses of water later), and my body hurts but back to the normal stretching feelings. I was so busy at work today that I didn't get even drink close to my 10 glasses of water, which can apparently cause bad cramping and mild contractions. Plus the normal round ligament pain I've been having can go through periods of intensity.

As scary as it was, I realized how much I love him. How much I need him. How much his future is in someone else's hands.

And how I will drink my 10 glasses of water every single day until I meet him face to face.

getting back on track

As noted by my series of sad, complaining blogs followed by a series of complete absence of blogging, I have been in a funk. Today I feel out of my funk. I can't make any promises for tomorrow, but here's my funk-ridding recipe, at least for a day.

Add five miles of running. I ran a mile outside before my throat burst into flames, and I was forced to get over my fear of showing up at the gym and having the front desk guy's make comments like "Oh, you still belong to this gym?" Two months ago I ran 13 miles with a hurt knee. Shove it. In my gym absence, it appears they've gotten the hint on adding new treadmills, eliminating the inappropriate angry girl pop videos and the addition of towels. They did not get the hint that standing two feet behind my treadmill for a 20-minute session of staring at my butt/talking on a cell phone is inappropriate for an employee. Take what you can get.

Add one bubble bath and with a side of a good book. Normally I hate baths, mostly because I never really clean my bathtub to an acceptable level. But I pushed through. And spent the evening reading The Girl Who Played with Fire. Unfortunately for me I though that I was reading the one about the hornet's nest, looked it up for the link and figured out who the bad guy Zala is. I had not figured that out yet. Damn. Must forget surprise ending.

Stir in one viewing of the Hallelujah Chorus. Even better if you watch it in flash mob, YouTube form, here. I cried. At work. Turns out that means, I am altruistic according to this study. Music chills equals more likely to give blood? Thankfully they think I'm too small to take my blood... I mean, otherwise I'd totally do it.

Add a pinch of  a clean kitchen and completion of a class. I was going to take a picture of my kitchen counter for you, but then realized no one would ever come over for dinner again. So now it's clean. And my grad school paper and presentation are done.

Top off with a heavy dose of perspective from a dear friend. A long talk with my wise friend reminded me that Christmas IS about celebration, love and eating a lot of cookies. But it's also about sacrifice and obedience. Everybody needs that kind of friend, who understands, hurts as much if not more than you and never ever would tell you you're crazy and blowing it out of proportion. I'm lucky!

the eyeball sweater

Today I went to see my fourth grade buddy at the school where we both mentor. My friend, J, is super sweet despite her need to always establish I am a Crip and not a Blood. Usually she greets me with a hug and huge grin. Today she was curled up in a ball with her jacket hiding her face. I asked the teacher what was wrong and he said "oh not a big deal."

J didn't want to show me the tears streaming down her face so I just started making a paper chain for her Christmas tree. She even let me use red but still refused to speak. Pretty soon she wrote me a note.

"Sarah, I'm sorry i'm not playin with you. the kids made fun of me about my hands. i'm never eating again. sorry."

Turns out, a marker exploded onto her hands during indoor recess and her hands were now a shade of green - all over. The kids in her class thought that was pretty funny. She did not. I wrote a note back and asked her if she wanted me to help her wash them, and the first words she spoke to me: "Leave it alone, Sarah."

But 50 links of paper chain later, eating a lunch (I carried her tray so the kids wouldn't see the green hands),  and my time off work up, she shyly asked if I could help her wash her hands. We scrubbed those hands raw for 20 minutes and sent her back to class looking less like the Grinch. And I got my huge hug goodbye.

It reminded me of a sweater I wore that my great-grandma made me - white with balls of purple and blue. While sitting in a circle in kindergarten, a boy who shall remain nameless (though don't think I don't remember his name) called it the eyeball sweater.

I cried. And never, ever wore the handmade sweater again.

So maybe it wasn't a big deal to the teacher. But J's green hands and my eyeball sweater - very big deals to a tender little heart.