Moments

It’s quiet in the house. I’m sitting in the living room, by the tree with the lights. I can see the lights on the deck outside. I just nursed e.e. to bed. He laid for a long time on my chest, his little body twisted to one side, his head lolled to one shoulder exposing his soft neck folds, his face breathing right into my pajama sleeve. Then when he fed he stayed latched forever, his little face burrowed in like he never wanted to leave, wearing his green Christmas onesie with his hair sticking up from his head. I had to pry him off to lie him down in the crib for the night.

When I put E to bed tonight I sang her Jill Phillip’s “I Am” and she stopped me after every phrase to ask what it meant- what is “lay your head”? a “chest”? “the future”? and I explained. Then I sang “Holy Holy” over and over and told her we all loved her a lot, and that God loved her more than all the possessions in the world.

D did a really nice thing for me today; he watched the kids so I could go to a hair salon for three hours. I permed my hair into waves. Felt totally out of place sitting in a salon, not sure if the perm will stay anyway, but it was fun to do something different for myself.

Christmas holiday with the family so far is different. I sort of miss the days we would hang out into the evenings having the sort of long conversations by candlelight where a few people usually cry. We played as many versions of salad bowl as we wanted, baked and ate at our leisure. Now we are leaving after dinner to put kids to bed, spending our time making sure no one gets injured and not too much food gets spilled on the floor, saying “no, we share” and “shoot, where’s e.e.?” (who is usually sitting quietly peering around or put down to nap on a random flat surface) and “can you watch them/hold her/cook this while I change the diaper/grab the sippy cup/nurse?”

It’s sort of chaotic. It’s constantly loud. And it’s probably not going to end anytime soon. We’re going strong at a rate of one new baby every year, sometimes two if you count in utero. Honestly, it’s weird how my parents raised all these highly-educated girls who then just want to not work and have tons of kids.

Every Christmas I try to have a moment. A personal worship moment. I remember them through the years: walking across the lit-up Lawn at night, looking out the airplane window while flying home for Christmas break, attending a Christmas Eve service in California while suspecting I was pregnant for the first time, listening to a song about Mary in the corner of my parents’ living room. In case I don’t get another moment in the craziness this year, I’m taking this one. I’m thinking back on the year, which feels lifetimes long with three moves, job changes, and a new baby. I’m thinking ahead to the coming year, with hopefully one last big adjustment before a time of more stability. I’m thinking of how our marriage, our family have changed. And then I’m just thinking about nothing. Just God. Thank you, God, for never changing, for always being there when I look. And, let's face it, then I’m thinking, better sleep since he’ll want to nurse again in a few hours.

Grandpa

e.e.

It's inevitable; I've taken one photo of him for about every fifty I took of her at the same stage. It's not that I don't love you the same, I tell him, I'm just too exhausted running around after your sister. This one is a few weeks into life. I love the way his hands flutter around like they have a life of their own.

Journal Excerpt

“What is- soul?”

Try answering that one, in Chinese. A language in which, as I am rapidly realizing, my vocabulary extends only as far as barnyard and African animals.

What is this, anyway? She’s two years old. She’s supposed to be asking me where her Cheerios are. I am so unprepared for this.

Journal Excerpt

The Holy Grail of multiple motherhood has happened: both kids are asleep at the same time. This was something I took for granted until e.e. came down with some minor congestion and decided to feed every two hours and not sleep more than thirty minutes at a stretch. Perhaps sensing that I’ve been leaning towards a condensed version of our bedtime routine due to my need to get back to him, E has taken to not falling asleep without crying a bit every time.

After getting over the shock of the quiet and solitude, as usual I entertain fantasies of all the things I could do now (1. write about the five odd topics I’ve been wanting to reflect more on, 2. look up a pattern for a throw quilt, 3. try a new recipe, 4. respond to emails, 5. scrub the shower), before turning to the things I should do now (1. shower, 2. pee, 3. sleep), and finally deciding on the only responsible thing I ought to be doing (1. sleep). And I wonder why I feel like I never do anything with my life.

Thoughts from the Outside

I’ve never been away from the medical, scientific world for this long. It started in tenth grade with gross anatomy and lab research and didn’t stop until last July: a steady stream of problem sets, write-ups, standardized tests, patient presentations, clinic notes, journal clubs, and one match after another. We lived in urban places among people who were also all in medicine, or at least equally engrossed in their careers.

It feels sort of like I’m waking up. I’m discovering all sorts of things about myself I didn’t know. For one thing, my personality type may be different than what I’d thought my whole life. In Meyers-Briggs terms, medicine is a very STJ world, and my family, and I think Asian culture, is also pretty TJ, but I’m discovering I may actually be more of an FP. When given freedom to make major life decisions, like where to live or how much to work, I’m more driven by gut feeling and values than logic or rules. And when given the freedom to arrange my stay-at-home life and environment the way I prefer, I’m much more unplanned and aesthetic than I’d have thought.

I’m appreciating people from different worlds in new ways. For the first time, our small group doesn’t have a single other physician, or engineer, and no one talks about their job. Work is work; it’s not the only prayer request they have every single week. Odd, but refreshing. We talk about babies and fantasy football. No one has asked me once where I went to school, or what kind of operations I do, but they seem interested in the fact that I can knit, throw clay, and want to learn to sew throw pillows.

It makes me wonder how much of my life has been insulated because of medicine and my approach to it, because of living the majority of my younger years in a world that valued certain things, limited my ability to have a wider variety of relationships and life experiences, and narrowed the decisions I needed to make. I don’t regret any of it, but I see now that it was not the only way, and that was not the only person I could have been. If I could talk with my younger, driven self, I might suggest doing a few things different. Majoring in English or art instead of the sciences. Giving one of those guys asking me out a chance. Traveling instead of spending every summer in a lab.

It’s hard, perhaps impossible, to say whether any of it ought to have changed. I doubt I would have the freedom of choices in my career now if I hadn’t been so focused then, and I don’t take that for granted. But I’m also glad to be at a point and place in life where I can see things differently and learn in different ways. Ironically, I’m back in my hometown, in what truly must be a stroke of divine humor, though perhaps that is what makes all these changes so striking. I look around at familiar roads and places, and I am the same, but very different, and it makes me think.

A Particularly Savory Post

He tries so hard to fart sometimes that it cracks me up. His face gets three shades of red and purple, his mouth purses, his eyes get big and round, he tucks his double chin down, and it’s hard not to become his own personal poop cheerleader—come on! You can do it!

I’m sure there are all kinds of invisible things going on right now, like brain growth and such, but it pretty much seems like his main life activity is pooping. I’m becoming more convinced that sometimes he wakes up at night crying for no other reason than wanting to poop. And for a quiet baby who rarely even cries, he sure spends a lot of time grunting.

E is quite intrigued by all this. As a toddler starting to read potty books and sit on a practice potty, this is an activity she gets. She likes to go around reporting “dee-dee [little brother] number two!” and takes it personally if I don’t involve her in the diaper-changing process. She fetches the new diaper and wipes Desitin on his bum. She used to lather up his scrotum but has gotten more accurate since I informed her that’s not where the rashes usually happen. She liked to wipe the poo off too, but I put a stop to that due to her disturbing habit of wanting to keep the dirty wipe afterwards.

It’s ironic how much of my life revolves around poop. I remember the days it was my goal to avoid having to ever digitally disimpact a patient (made it, barely on a few occasions), and when it was my job to do an emergency rectal exam on trauma cases in the MGH E.D. The patient would come in, their clothes would get cut off, and three people would do the log roll while one person palpated the spine and I whipped out the lacrilube I always carried and did a rectal check for prostate and tone, shouting out the findings to some person frantically scribbling to the side. Ah, how far I’ve come.

Journal Excerpt

It is the one-month mark, and I have suddenly begun to feel more myself. I don’t remember emerging from the post-partum black hole until at least six weeks last time, so I’m grateful. For some reason I suddenly feel this urge to clean the whole house and furnish and decorate it properly, but D tells me that’s not important and just to take it slow. It’s like I suddenly woke up from a very long slumber and realized the bathroom counters haven’t been cleaned in a month.

I also feel my body becoming more familiar, like a rubber band returning to form after being stretched out for a while. I was feeling pretty good about myself, like I’d be pretty happy staying this size, until I tried on my old jeans for the first time. Major mistake. Was I really that skinny before? What was I, a stick? Did I have no hips? Was I human?

My wardrobe is a mess, full of maternity clothes that are now too big, some maternity clothes that sort of fit, and about three sizes of regular clothes. It doesn’t help that the clothes I feel like wearing are all regular clothes in the smallest size. Or that the ones I end up wearing are all sweat pants. So to celebrate feeling well enough to go out, I went and bought a pair of boots. At least my shoe size has never changed.

Journal Excerpt

There must be a variant of Murphy’s law that says: as soon as you settle into the sheets and get the pillows just right and calm your mind and feel you may be able to drift off into sleep, the baby cries.

Little Trifler

She insisted on taking this can of Diet Dr. Pepper to bed apparently, clutching onto it with both hands under the blankets, which explains why I found a can of soda among the sheets when making her bed later. This is sort of how things are around the house: I'll find two dried apricots stacked neatly on a random corner of the floor, one shoe on her foot but its matching pair on a side table in the corner of the living room, a stuffed rabbit tucked neatly into the baby's swing. You'd think all this was random capriciousness, but it's apparently quite calculated, as we find if we try to move anything--no, she specifically wanted the plastic spoon to stay THERE on the sofa. She usually follows instructions but with her own twist if I forget to be specific enough: if I ask her to put her brother's clothes back on the table, she will, but in the wrong pile; if I tell her to put my chapstick back on my dresser, she'll recap it but stick it carefully in the dresser drawer instead of on top where she found it. It's like a little fairy has come in and trifled with everything just the slightest bit when I wasn't looking.

Insular Life

I feel like I live a drugged existence. Nothing is real; nothing exists except this room, the bed I’m constantly going back to but never staying in for long, the rhythm of milk, his grunting and crying and the weight of him in my arm. Sometimes I stare for minutes lost in some small detail—the way his fingers splay while feeding or his legs curl up like an amphibian’s; the way he inadvertently pillows his cheek on his fist while sleeping. Sometimes I stare at nothing and just feel trapped, jealous of people who fit into their usual clothes and sleep through a night. Sometimes I feel up to a shower or brief outing; other times I’m too savagely exhausted to talk. Most of the time I live in a state of baseline fatigue that leaves me barely functional but not really myself.

Time has no meaning, and I never realized before how much I needed time to have meaning. He has existed now for three weeks, and that is all I can say for myself for the same period of time, that I existed. I helped grow his little double chin; I kept him from wallowing in excrement. My body healed itself from a good amount of its soreness and adjusted to making milk. That is something, D keeps reminding me; that is a lot.

I am most reminded of how much he’s changed things when I look at E. I look at her hands and they seem gargantuan; she seems much too heavy to hold; I changed her diaper once and it felt grotesquely huge. She seems more boisterous, willful, and demanding than I remember, but D says it’s only because I am more tired now. I am amazed at phrases coming out of her mouth I don’t recall her knowing; she blithely counted from one to ten yesterday so fast and accurately I couldn’t believe it. I sort of miss the days she left out the four and six.

I feel sad and a little guilty about this, but I don’t miss her as much as I thought I would. She takes so much energy to be around, to love, that I can only take it in small doses and then feel relieved for a reprieve.

But most of all this insular existence is lonely. I feel the people who love me reaching out through the haze, to run the world for me—my mom and husband have been amazing in this regard. Just yesterday D took a night shift so I could sleep between feeds, and I came back to our room to find the bed made with fresh sheets and glasses of juice waiting. But in the end it comes down to the baby and me at some quiet, ungodly hour of the night, my body exhausted and my mind wandering. This is how I escape the solitude; I think and imagine and wander through stories. I read through about ten books a week, make up new stories, revisit old ones.

But in the end I come back and it’s still me in this room with this baby. I lie in bed and pray for peace for my mind, rest for my body. I look outside and realize time has passed and the leaves are changing, and this is life, this is a life growing and my body healing and I try to be okay with it all.

Brother

People keep asking for footage of E interacting with her brother. For some reason my good camera is never within reach during these moments, but let me tell you, the cuteness wattage is out the window. Watching the two of them would make a calendar of baby puppies look repulsive.

E likes to pet his head. She rocks his chair, piles blankets on top of him. She kisses his face repeatedly. She pats his back to help burp him, nuzzles her cheek up against his hair, rests her head on his chest and just gazes at him for minutes. She sometimes asks to hold him, which she does with assistance. She keeps trying to share her food with him even though we tell her he has no teeth and can’t eat it. She even insists he hold her prized gummy bear vitamins for her (I stuff them into his little fist). She wants to see him before going to bed and asks about him first thing in the morning.

She is always gentle and enthusiastic with him, despite the fact that it must be obvious that the reason I can’t be with her is because I’m always with him. She has actually adjusted amazingly well, maybe because D and my parents marinate her with lots of love when I can’t.

Until I pull my photography-self together, here's a picture taken with my camera phone:

Journal Excerpt

He has a nasty habit of peeing over everything during diaper changes. My sister, who already has a boy, warned me about this, but I guess I thought somehow I could work around it. Like we could have a civilized conversation in which I told him, look, just keep that thing pointed down into the diaper if you feel the urge. But no such luck. Between that and the feeds, it’s a minor miracle if any piece of cloth within a foot of his body does not become soaked with pee, leaking milk, or spit within a few hours. We’re just swimming in the fluids over here. Boys are so uncouth.

Reimmersion

“We continually remember.. your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. .. In spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit.” -1 Thessalonians chapter one

I’ve reentered that existence again, the one without night or day, marked by feeding cycles and trying to use the one or two hours in between to sleep with varying success. Last time, my husband and mom were around to help with the newborn in between feeds; now they are taking care of our two year-old when not going to work, so it’s just me with the baby.

This time reminds me of surgery and medicine clerkships third year of medical school. There is the same sense of deranged isolation. I remember riding the shuttle back from the hospital after sometimes having been there for three days straight. The shuttle would cut through the Commons and I’d look at all the people strolling down Newbury Street in chic outfits, eating at roadside cafes, and feel strangely detached. There are normal people out there, I’d think, who aren’t attached to ten tubes. Who aren’t in scrubs or gowns; who have washed their hair. Now I look out the window of our bedroom and think the same thing about the people strolling by in their normal, rested bodies.

But the difference now is that I’m with someone, one little person. The world has stopped, and I don’t have anything to do but be with him all the time. When else in my life can I say that? It’s an enforced honeymoon, a period of dwelling, in which there is a sort of quiet, unrelenting suffering, but also the same timbre of joy.

The other night I was looking at him nursing. His gums are like the jaws of life, clamping down with great resolution. I once heard someone describe it like having your nipple stapled, and I’m sorry to say that’s not far from the truth at times. But suddenly I thought, this is all for you, the sleeplessness and soreness, so you can feed and grow and I can show you I love you. I was able to connect the suffering with the joy and it helped.

I think about dwelling with God, about loving Christ, about having the Holy Spirit. If we do it right, there is suffering, and there is given joy, and the two are together. That’s what I want for this time: given joy in suffering, labor prompted by love, endurance inspired by hope. Something to ask for at least.

e.e. cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

I've been stymied for a bit regarding what to call this baby here, given his first name also starts with E. As does his middle. Guess we can go with e.e. I should read more poetry; I forget how much I like it. One thing is I can see a lot of green trees and blue sky from the sunny space where he and I hang out all day.

In Which I Speak Freely Of Breasts

“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you.” -Isaiah 49:15

People don’t like to talk about this, but when your milk first comes in, your breasts become engorged. Which is a completely inadequate term for describing how they become the size of melons and the consistency of rocks, and ache so badly it’s hard to sleep, which is saying a lot in the setting of sleep deprivation. Typically the engorgement gets worse the closer it gets to his every-three-hour feeding time.

Today D brought the baby to the doctor’s for a follow-up visit; we figured it would be easier if I in my pajama-zombie state just stayed in to watch E rather than all go together. My breasts were starting to ache already when they left, but he wasn’t due to feed for another hour and we figured he’d be back by then. Then D texted to say the baby had to get a blood test before coming home.

By then it was around his feed time, and I was in serious discomfort. Luckily my mom had arrived for lunchtime. I think she may have fed E and I may have tried to eat a few bites, but in the end all I could do was sit and stare stupidly out the window at the driveway. My breasts ached and pounded and became inhumanly hard and I couldn’t think of anything else except where he was, waiting in line for some blood draw, crying and hungry and for the first time not within arm’s reach.

Finally D said they were on their way back, and I sat upstairs in the rocker where we nurse, having taken off my bra because it hurt too much to wear, holding a towel to my breasts, which had started to leak whenever I thought about him. I was never more glad to hear the garage door open. They were just thirty minutes late for the feed.

I didn’t cry when labor was finished and they laid him on my chest for the first time. But I cried when he finally came back to nurse.

I will never, ever look at that verse the same way again.

Arrival

It must be said that he was a very punctual baby. Stroke of midnight on his due date, and the contractions started. The whole labor lasted about four hours; he crowned on the first push and came out on the second. This makes it sound like no big deal, or as my mom puts it, like I went and laid an egg. D, bolstered by the speed of it all and the ease of the baby’s temperament, has dared to say the word “third.”

Though faster, labor felt grittier this time around. I think there was a part of myself the first time that I reserved for wonder; a part of my mind was always on the side thinking, “oh my, how curious,” and it allowed me to embrace the worst times with a sort of hopeful generosity.

Labor this time felt more like digging my toes in the dirt and wishing the whole thing would be over. I had definitely forgotten how painful it was, or maybe my body didn’t have time to acclimate to the continuous wave of contractions at the end before it was all over. At one point the nurse had to remind me to open my legs to let the baby out and I all I could think was, but it hurts more that way; I had no idea he was at the time just a few pushes away.

They laid him right on me afterwards this time, still slick and slimy and blue. It was marvelous and surreal, though the entire time I was distracted by the sensation that I could feel every stitch they were putting in down below. That’s how these first few days have been: marveling at him, griping about the recovery. Everything is marginally better than it was the first time around, but that isn’t to say it’s any more pleasant having engorged breasts or soreness that makes you wonder if you’ll ever sit normally again. There’s nothing worse than desperately wanting your old body back only to realize you’ve become a relative invalid with a floppy belly to boot.

But he is something else. Our first was not exactly an easy newborn, and now we are all amazement. He actually likes car seats! He can go out in public without crying constantly! He can fall asleep on his own in the crib! He actually sleeps! Best of all, he doesn’t require total silence to nurse or stay asleep as she did, which is convenient since E has been obsessed with never being parted from his side, which involves playing and singing loudly next to his crib while he naps.

So here we are, the four of us. That has a nice ring to it.

Labor, Take Two

“There are three things that are givens about labor: it’s hard work, it hurts a lot, and you can do it. That’s the bottom line. All the rest you learn about is icing on the cake.” –Suzanne Stalls, midwife

"[I]t does no good to imagine the evils that await us! And for the unimagined ones the Lord is sufficient. So let us be at peace." –In The Arena, autobiography of Isobel Kuhn, missionary to China in early-mid 1900s

I think the point of the last month of pregnancy is to make you so tired of being pregnant that you’re actually willing to consider the thought of going through labor. I reached that point about a week ago.

But contemplating labor is a scary thing. At some point you go from thinking how charming it is that the wee thing is growing into the size of a pea or mango, to realizing that whatever keeps getting bigger in there is going to have to make it out of your body at some point. Which is really quite barbaric if you think about it.

You would think it’s less scary having been through it once, but if anything it’s worse. There was more mystery the first time, certainly more unknowns, but thus more reliance on taking it moment by moment in a way of deep faith. I thought about what it meant to bear this sign of the fall; to identify with Christ in bringing new life through suffering. I thought about what it added to my view of what my body could do, to how precious her existence meant because it had really cost me something. I gathered practical ideas on how to ease the pain, did most of the labor at home with D before arriving at the hospital to push, and stayed in a relatively good mental state the whole time.

For some reason, this time around, all I can think about is the reality of how the pain felt. I keep getting flashbacks of the worst contractions and the pushing. And how sore and just abnormal everything was down there afterwards.

My fears this time are more concrete. Less concerned with theoreticals like a thirty-hour labor or possible surgery, and more with the remembered reality of a pain and body-battering I’d rather not go through, however temporary it was. And somehow these fears are worse, because they are more real. The labor could be better; it could be worse—but either way I know the basics of the inevitable and looking it in the face is harder.

I didn’t realize I was carrying all this around until a few days ago, when I went into a bit of false labor and realized I wasn’t ready to go through with it. We prayed and I dumped all these fears on God and said, look, you take care of it. I believe you can. I’m just going to try to take it one moment at a time. And that has helped. And I have thought more about meeting this little boy inside, how it might feel to love him in the flesh, and that has helped. It also probably helps that I feel practically too pregnant to walk sometimes.

At least I feel like whenever this happens, I will be okay, in the inner part of my mind and spirit that really matters. I might even be a little happy that it’s finally happening.

Journal Excerpt

Here’s what I’m going to remember about the day I turned thirty-one. I’m going to remember sitting in a rocking chair with a swollen belly, singing “doe a deer” at the top of my lungs while she dances around the room hugging her doll. I’m going to remember miming a puppet along to the lyrics, causing her to stand in front of me and giggle so hysterically she nearly turns blue in the face and chokes on her mango.

I’m going to remember D taking her outside to get the mail and the two of them sitting companionably on the porch steps, opening letters and looking out at the lawn.

I’m going to remember him running out to get a slice of lemon cake for me, a slice of strawberry cake for himself, and two candles, which we light at the kitchen table after I put her to bed.

I’m going to remember being close enough that my dad could come visit in the afternoon and help me run an errand.

I’m going to remember wondering if today could be the day the second one comes. I’ll remember feeling the weight of him moving around, making me pee in my pants so many times I had to do the laundry.

But I’m sort of glad he’s not here yet. It’s nice to have the day just for the three of us, for now.

Journal Excerpt

He’s dancing in there again. That feels like the only way to describe the continual movement going on within my innards. Sometimes I am forced to clutch my belly and hold my breath until it passes. I can look down and see his head shifting from one side to another, see his hand poking up on one side while his feet stretch out the other. Someone told me the uterus is thinner the second time around so you feel things more. It’s started to wake me up at night, every few hours. This is what people don’t tell you, that you start to lose sleep even before the baby’s out.

The due date is less than a month away. Home stretch. Nine months is definitely worse the second time around. I feel weighed down, like someone trying to swim with weights around my waist; I have to screw up mental energy before hoisting myself up or bending down to reach something. The list of imperatives that need to get done runs like a news ticker through my mind—organize office, unpack decorations, buy lamps—and none of it gets done. By the time I put her down for a nap, I don’t feel up to doing much more than lying down.

Sometimes I feel if I have to read Cinderella in Chinese or sing The Wheels on the Bus one more time I’m going to lose it. Lose it in that desperate way I used to feel when I walked into the E.R. and saw five more charts in the bin. Back then, that usually meant the same thing it does now: that I need to take a break, shower, and sleep.

So part of what I’m learning is to adjust my expectations, to give myself grace. I have a hard time letting other people take care of E without feeling guilty, which I think stems from my assumption that since I’m not working I should be able to handle it all the time. But this is work. Carrying around a cavorting full-term fetus while entertaining a two year-old is work. So I guess I’ll be okay taking naps. And if someone wants to help watch her so I can actually get out of the house once by myself, I might say yes.

Journal Excerpt

One really great thing about E is that she’s always in a great mood when she wakes up. She likes to sit in her crib and talk or sing to herself, for an indefinite period of time. We stopped using a baby monitor a long time ago, mostly because I’d rather live in ignorance and assume she’s asleep unless I hear anything obvious, but occasionally I’ll sneak up to her room and sit outside her door in the mornings or after her nap. She’ll be talking to the animals in her crib, or her blanket. The other day I heard her counting, “One! two! Three! Four! Nine! Ten!” She’ll recount phrases of the stories she likes to hear, or sing songs really loud and off-tune. Once I heard her say, “mommy loves me.”

I have to admit I freely abuse her good humor in the mornings and take my time going to get her. It’s not unusual for me to hear her wake up at 6:30 A.M. and not go pick her up until 8:00. I think D is slightly horrified by this, but she’s always cheerful enough when I finally make it in her room. Her first words to me will be something completely random, as if we were in the middle of a conversation, like “bunny has eyes” or “mommy’s hair is wet.”

She’s also adopted a charming bedtime routine. Right around 8:30 P.M. I’ll tell her to lie on me a little, and pick her up and she’ll turn very still and lay her head on my shoulder. She asks for a goodnight kiss from daddy and whomever else is in the house, then still with her head on my shoulder we head to her room. I give her the security blanket and pacifier, turn on her sleep music, turn off the lights, and hold her and sing. Lately it’s been “baby mine” from Dumbo, or “I Am” by Jill Phillips, or “You’ll Be In My Heart” from Tarzan. These are my favorite moments, because it’s dark, it’s just me and her, I can feel her head in the crook of my neck and her fingers holding on to me or rubbing my shirt, and I can be still with her. Then I pray, and as soon as I say “amen” she lifts up her head, I lay her down in her crib on her back, pull up her blanket, stroke her hair a few times, and leave the room.

She lies very still and looks at me as I shut the door. Though I peaked back once and verified the fact that as soon as she thinks I’m gone, she scrambles up from the carefully-arranged blanket and lies down on top of it with her head towards the foot of the crib and her butt sticking up in the air.

She turned two this week. It hasn’t been so terrible.

Second

I’m trying to find moments to think about this second baby. Usually it’s at night when he’s kicking so hard I can’t fall asleep. Ironically, I wanted this baby perhaps even more than the first, yet just over a month away from his arrival am not really feeling much. For one thing, it’s hard for him to compete with the immediacy and tangibility of a two-year old. Not that she’s always a peach—her latest irritating habit is treating my belly like a jungle gym—but she is so present in her affection, joy, and exuberance, it’s hard to imagine myself loving another child the same. The other day we hid under a sheet together and she kept laughing and laughing. She likes to lie swaddled up naked in her towel after a bath and lie like an egg roll next to me on the bed while I read to her, or lie with her head on my shoulder while I tell her the story of David and Goliath for the fiftieth time. She’ll look over at me out of the blue and say, “E happy.”

So I think I feel a little sad knowing that I won’t be the same towards her after the second one comes. I wish I could.

For another thing, I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about having a boy. Let’s face it; the thought of taking care of something with a penis weirds me out. I grew up around girls, and I’m not sure what to do with a boy. I’ve seen fewer healthy mom-son relationships modeled. I think overdone baby boy clothes are naturally tackier than girls’. I don’t really like trucks, dinosaurs, bugs, sports, or farts, which may be a problem. There don’t seem to be any boy names I really like, which is an even bigger problem. We are nowhere near coming up with one that sticks. I’m in the stage where everything turns into a name search. Hm, read a verse from Habbakuk—could that be a boy name? Oh, I just met you, but mind if I ask what your boys’ names are?

One thing I am getting sold on is that the world needs more solid Christian guys. I have to know ten amazing single Christian women for every one guy, which remains a mystery. I’m also starting to think that men can change the world in a way women can’t, just because women are more likely to have to make a larger sacrifice for the sake of having kids.

But all that is a long time away. Right now I feel like the idea of having a second baby is just that; an idea. The world isn’t turning rosy, the light isn’t coming on in my eyes. I’m starting to recall memories of labor pains and zombie days and engorged breasts. I’m waiting for that point where I’ll want him to come out, but really right now I’d rather he stay in there so we can settle into the house more, and I can do stuff like take showers and sleep. Plus it would be sort of nice if we had some name in mind first.

Journal Excerpt

The director of my surgical clerkship once told me, “repetition is the key to success.” For a living model, look no further than the two year-old in our house. There must be something about the way her brain wires itself to acquire information that stipulates that everything must be repeated at least twenty times in a straight row. Preferably thirty.

If she wants someone to hear what she’s saying, she keeps saying it. Over. And over. And over. Most of the time it’s not even a question, just a statement she wants me to verbally affirm. “We are eating grapes. We are eating grapes.” “Yes, we are eating grapes.” “Daddy’s eyes are moving! Daddy’s eyes are moving!” “Yes. Daddy’s eyes are indeed moving.” And so on. It’s worse with songs. There is this great Chinese song about fishes, and my poor mom sang it about thirty times in a row when she took her to the aquarium. I spend my entire day singing “The Wheels on the Bus” in all its glorious verses in endless repetition. My mom chimed in once with “the E on the bus says more! more! more!..”

It’s gotten so I just sing songs mindlessly, wherever we are. Today we were standing in line at Costco, waiting among the crowds out to stock up on hurricane supplies, and she was sitting in the cart which she thinks is a boat, which meant she wanted me to sing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” and I didn’t even realize I was singing it over and over until I noticed other people in line looking over.

I walked by her room after a nap yesterday and heard her singing to herself, rather loudly, in the crib. She could sing all these verses of all these songs, which was incredible since she rarely sings in front of me. So it all goes somewhere I guess.

Journal Excerpt

I am trying very hard not to feel like all I want to do is lie around and nurse my pregnant self. There was a point last week when I suddenly felt very third-trimester, like a switch had been turned on, though I’d been there for about a month. I don’t remember feeling this heavy last time, though I’m starting to wonder if my memory has gone totally haywire. I keep picturing that figure in Netter’s anatomy text of the pelvic floor muscles viewed from above, and imagine them getting looser and looser, like a hammock weighed down by too much. Lovely. I know I should have done those Kegels. I feel very much like a beached whale, dragging myself around the house while slightly out of breath.

It’s hard to describe how it feels when he moves. Once D saw a body part bumping up and said it looked like a hernia. That’s exactly what it feels like, or at least like what I imagine a hernia would feel like. Or a protruding ostomy. I remember the first time I saw an intestine protruding inside-out into an ostomy bag; it looked like an alien limb though of course I acted like it was completely normal.

I think D is getting tired of me asking him if he wants to feel the baby move. Last night he felt for the head, and in response got a series of punches followed by a major flip or roll that made me feel like someone was twisting my innards while occasionally stepping on my bladder.

Storms and Lullabyes

God hears the lullabye
In a mother’s tears in the dead of night
Better than a hallelujah sometime
-Amy Grant

She has developed a sudden fear of storms. This includes not only lightening and thunder, but rain against the window; she wakes up screaming and crying, wanting to be held until it’s over. Let’s just say the weather forecast has taken on a whole new significance.

I was holding her last night and thinking about how odd it was that she’ll never remember any of this. How much do you remember before grade school? I have a vague memory of my dad holding me at night and walking through the house. Of riding a motorcycle in Taiwan. Of taking my first step: really just a hazy picture of my parents next to me clapping while I walked to a plastic purple chair. That’s really about it. I don’t remember sleeping in a crib. Or wearing diapers. Or crying at night.

It’s strange, doing something for someone who will never even remember that you did it. I’ve rarely ever done that in my life. It brings out a sort of discipline in love. Hoisting my tired self out of bed when she cries, cleaning up after spills, nursing through mastitis (which ranks right up there with labor). This exists of course in marriage, but a husband gives you lots more breaks, and listens to you complain, more than a toddler does.

But I think this is why motherhood is, as a friend put it, such a sanctifying experience. It forces you to have to rely on God or lose it. It makes the attitude and spirit behind your actions very obvious. It’s hard to pretend for very long. But the more you do loving things, the more you love, and it carries a deeper, fuller meaning because of all the acts of thankless service or sacrifice behind it, which of course is the type of way that God loves us.

And it makes motherhood more of something in the moment as well. Because even if she doesn’t remember, I will. I’ll remember the heavy weight of her in my arms, her legs splayed to accommodate my belly, one arm tucked into her side and the other curled around my shoulder, while the rain patters outside. If I look hard enough, the entire day is a series of these moments, that no one else can know and no words or pictures can capture. She isn’t really mine, but these moments are, like little gifts wrapped in the tedium of the day.

An Ode to Closing

We closed on a house today. I felt like we should have been breaking out the champagne and sharing teary hugs like they do on HGTV, but instead we walked into an office, signed a hundred documents and handed in a check. We are actually coming in below our budget, though it still feels like a big chunk of money. Pretty much anything above one thousand dollars is theoretical to me anyway. I can feel logical about buying a sandwich for five bucks or a book for fifteen, but dealing in the tens of thousands feels more like a virtual sport.

I’d have to say buying a house ranks somewhere below shopping for a dress and above shopping for groceries. It’s more exhausting than interesting, probably because interior design and atmosphere appeal to me more than structure. I get that layout is important, though I don’t quite get the obsession with granite countertops, stainless-steel appliances, and Jacuzzi tubs. Those are advertised in capital letters and then as an add-on, oh yes, and it has four bedrooms and two baths.

I’m just grateful we found a house that suits us: open, full of natural light, relatively new, plenty of scope for decorating, and in a great community. We won’t actually be moving in yet in order to repaint and recarpet, and I’m starting to assemble those long lists of “to-dos” that homeowners complain about, like “fix the fan” and “install a garage sensor.” So right now it’s more grit than glamour. But hopefully, a few weeks from now, it will be worth it to settle into a place that’s our own.

This process has made me more acutely aware of that: this longing I have to settle down. After seven years of dorm rooms and wearing flip-flops to common showers, and six years of rented apartments, I feel ready to be in one place for a long, long time. The hardest thing about this whole process has been the knowledge that we will likely move again.

Of all the metaphors used to describe heaven, to describe this eternity of existence that seems impossible to grasp, the one of heaven as a place to come home to always struck me most, and it lingers in my mind now. Think of it as my father’s house, Jesus says, and I’m going there to prepare a place for you. After all these pilgrim years, of feeling weary or limited, of desiring more than what we can find, it will be like finally coming home. To a place where someone has longed and waited and thought about our coming. To a place we never have to leave. And the joy and rest of that must be something wonderful.

Journal Excerpt

It is a constant, and I mean truly constant, verbal barrage these days. It’s like a month or two ago she suddenly became a verbal savant, able to remember and repeat any word or sound made in any language after hearing it only once. And now she can string them into phrases. She doesn’t just talk to ask for something or make a timely comment, like a normal person would, but carries on a nonstop commentary the entire day.

At dinner (translated from Chinese): “grandpa sits in chair. Grandma sits in chair. Grandpa, grandma, daddy, mommy sits in chair. Ah-ya sits in chair. Daddy moving eyes. Grandpa moving eyes. Grandpa smiling. Grandma eating rice. Mommy noodles spicy. Ah-ya’s noodles not spicy. Mommy’s water. Ah-ya’s water..” In the car: “big truck. Small truck. Flowers. Wind in trees. White clouds. Hot. Chair hot. More snacks. Bird! Bird flying! Lights..” At home: “Mommy potty. Daddy shower. Daddy hair wet. Grandpa resting..” At the changing table: “Ah-ya diaper. Ah-ya stinky. Ah-ya lifting butt. No more stinky. Clean. Putting on clothes..”

The baby’s also moving all the time these days, so much so it’s distracting and sometimes downright uncomfortable. One’s moving all the time; one’s talking all the time. What can I say?

Body Image

Pregnancy messes on a major scale with an issue pretty much every girl I know has struggled with: body image. It’s bizarre to go from being flat-chested and thin to some burgeoning mother earth goddess. Like those old prehistoric figurines with the grotesquely large breasts and impossible hips. It’s weird to go from thinking about food occasionally to dreaming about it, waking up craving juicy steaks or fresh pancakes or flavors of ice cream you’d never even liked before.

Being pregnant the second time is like being pregnant the first time and the future times all at once. Now when I feel some way, I both think back on how it felt last time, and how it will feel again. There is a certain scope to my perspective that wasn’t there the first time around, when everything was new. Sometimes I feel I see the years stretching before me, with my chest fluctuating through the same three cup sizes and my body over the same thirty pounds, being skinny and stretched and flabby and skinny and stretched again. And while I know it is all passing, it is difficult to accept all this. To not be afraid that my body will never be the way it was again. To not be haunted by old fears from weight struggles in the past.

I really almost never think about aging, but this is probably what it feels like during that other period in your life when you realize your body is changing and it’s out of your control. What will it be like, say one day finding a clump of white hair or sagging breasts? To look down at my hands and find the skin paper-thin and wrinkled, the veins standing out? I feel funny even imagining my body that way. If I traveled forward in time and saw myself as an old person, it would probably scare the living daylights out of me.

But I see a lot of people in oculoplastics clinic at this point. People who are unmistakably aging but struggling to accept it; who want an operation to make their eyes look younger, who are unconsciously asking whether they look okay. Sometimes they ask me outright what I think. I’m supposed to say something neutral and professional, but I want to say, you look wonderful. Natural. Like you should.

I want to be able to say that to myself, ten years and who knows how many kids later. You look good. Wonderful. Just like you should. I think about the struggles I went through in my teens and early twenties and want to tell my younger self, you look beautiful. Some guy is going to really want you. Here is how to take care of your body for the right reasons and in a joyful way. Here is how not to isolate your struggles, or believe you can completely control how you appear.

I think about E, a chubby-thighed toddler who loves rubbing her round belly and running around naked, but who one day will be a girl and woman in a world where appearance means so much, and I think about what I want to say to her. I look at the natural delight she takes in the way her body moves and works and feels and wish she didn’t have to lose any of that.

So that’s what this body image thing feels like. There are days when I try to eat healthy, and others when I deliciously enjoy being the pregnant person eating a second helping of ice cream. I’m making it to a gym, for how good it feels to sweat, not really for any change it makes in how I look. And I watch my body change and swell and I know it won’t go right back to where it was. I think about my younger self, my future self, my daughter. And I think to myself, possibly, maybe, all this change is okay.

Journal Excerpt

I lifted a watermelon today and realized it didn’t seem as heavy as they usually do. I must be getting buffer, I tell myself, what with carrying around a 20-some pound thing all day. She looks small for her age, but it’s all an illusion. High density. Unfortunately all this pregnancy weight is obscuring any visible change.

One of the things I like doing nowadays is just watching her. It’s interesting and makes me think I should just stop and observe more things in my life. Even though she speaks mostly in Chinese, she can give the English words for everything she says if asked. She is scared of shadows, thunderstorms, headless Lego men, and the troll doll’s buttcrack, but doesn’t mind bugs or lizards. She likes directing general activity, documenting what everyone is doing (“grandma potty”) and telling everyone where to sit. She unfortunately likes to watch intently while I try to poop which makes it impossible for me to actually do so. She has a good sense of order but no sense of proportion, repeatedly attempting to put things where they obviously can’t fit. She can count from one to ten but always leaves out four and six. She appears genuinely distressed whenever someone else is crying. She actually likes to share with other kids, especially food, though sometimes she wants it back after they’ve already eaten it.

She treats me like a human jukebox. I suppose it’s only been two weeks since this started happening, but it feels like much longer. She’ll demand I sing different songs, sometimes one repeatedly, or a new one as soon as I’m one line into the old one. Current favorites are “The Hokey-Pokey” (“hokey song”), “You Are My Sunshine” (“baby song”), “You’ve Got The Bare Necessities” (“Mowgli song”), “Father’s Hunting In The Forest..” (“Mowgli song- the other one”), “April Shower” (“Bambi-small-deer song”), “This Is The Way We Wash Our Hands” (“bath song”), “Leaving On A Jet Plane” (“airplane song”), and this does not include all the Chinese songs and rhymes that my mom has taught her and then I’ve had to learn.

She’ll typically have one song she wants while I’m holding her before bedtime, and a steady stream when we’re in the car. And really all day long. I’ve tried airing new tunes because I get so tired of the same ones, but really, what song does anyone want to sing twenty times in a row? (a short one, but then she just asks for more repetitions)

Human Nature

She refused to take a nap today. Which is like the feeling you get when you walk into clinic, find out you’re the only doctor there, are overbooked on the hour, and the residents are gone so you have to take ER calls and consults. And half the technicians called out sick. I can’t even recall the last time this happened—long enough ago to lull me into a false sense of security.

She goes into this sleep deprivation-induced cycle of hyperactivity and fussiness, the most annoying form of which is the frantic now-I-want-it-now-I-don’t. Like she kept asking for the guitar—so I lug it out, start playing, then she starts rolling on the floor screaming “no guitar!” like I did it specifically to torture her, so I put it away, then she cries for it again like it’s the only thing she wants. Ditto for wanting to watch a movie, color, eat this or that.

Clearly she has no idea what she wants, and even less idea what she needs, which is to sleep. It’s hard to believe someone could be so obviously mixed up about this until you see it in action, and it makes me wonder if we appear this ridiculous to God. Very often I get mixed up about what I want or need. I think I want to work, then when I do I want to stay at home. I crave ice cream but feel yucky after eating it. I escape for hours into fictional worlds only to emerge more tired and less able to focus on my real life.

That’s the thing about two year-olds. If you want a completely unfiltered look at human nature, live with one. She is rarely able to think outside of her own needs, wants whatever someone else has, can’t foresee delayed consequences, is completely controlled by her moods. I have many more sophisticated filters, like an overanalytical mind, awareness of societal constraints and others’ opinions, a modicum of self-control, but in the end, my baseline nature is pretty much the same. If I go very long without hanging out with God, without asking him to help me out, all of that eventually comes through.

Of course she also lives with unadulterated joy and delight. Every time she sees this stained-glass angel sticking up out of a flower pot we have, she kisses it. She dances her own, flailing, bopping brand of moves with complete lack of inhibition, anytime she hears a beat. She asks to be tickled and then giggles hilariously at the top of her lungs when we do. She adores babies and tree bark and wants to hug the clouds. When she eats something she likes she goes MMMM YUM continuously. She makes me remember to look at things, to enjoy the simple, to linger with people, and that makes it pretty much worth it.

Journal Excerpt

My mom cooked some bitter melon the other day, and since E always wants to eat whatever is going into someone else’s mouth at that moment, we gave some to her. She spit it out and said “no spicy” and kept trying to rub the taste off her tongue until we gave her some milk to wash it out.

Now all I have to do if I don’t want her to eat something is use the magic word. When she was whining for a bottle of salad dressing on the table today I told her it was spicy. She paused for a moment and continued eating without another sound.


The other day we were watching a thunderstorm outside and she said she wanted to “hug rain. Hug rain.” She kept holding out her arms towards the window while I told her if she tried to hug it she would get very, very wet. She was quiet for a moment and then turned and said very seriously, “rain shy.”

Motherhood vs. Career

A friend of mine who recently had a second baby just wrote a post on angst about motherhood versus career, and it made me think about how the same basic conflict plays out for me.

What I dream about in my career is not so much doing basic academics, but being an excellent clinician: someone who operates a lot and well, who thinks of surgical innovations, who is there for her patients, who does a lot of teaching. To do that, really even just to operate a lot and well, you have to be available all the time, both to build up the surgical volume that hones your skills, and to handle all the peri-operative concerns and complications that are inevitable. And you really can’t ever quit entirely. You could probably come back to psychiatry or general medicine after being out of the field for ten years, but it would be hard to operate again after so long.

What I dream about for my family is having a lot of kids, as in more than three. When I see a healthy family with a lot of kids, I feel the same way, perhaps even more strongly, that I do when I hear about some famous surgeon. And I genuinely like being at home with her. I like seeing how happy E is when I’m around, knowing what she’s learning rather than wondering where she picked something up.

What works now is working about three days a week, which I’m hoping will hold true after a second baby comes, but who knows how it will be with a third or perhaps a fourth? Do any of us truly think about this when we choose our career? I don’t regret the past twelve-odd years of training, but it was hard work, with investments from teachers and foundations that paid a lot of money, so I could—have my choice of part-time private practice jobs?

I think every woman faces this at some point in her life. On a basic level, it’s inevitable. You’re raised your whole life to achieve goals, to succeed relative to your peers, to obtain outward results, and being a mom is pretty much the opposite of that. Motherhood is about doing with persistence and unflagging spirit an endless number of terribly mundane things. No one’s grading you on how well you change a diaper. Depressingly enough, not even your kid will remember any of it. It is about the process, not the product.

But I think much of Christ’s life was like that. There were the occasional large lectures and flashier miracles, but much of it was a life of quiet sacrifice, without recognition. Centered on a few relationships rather than the applause of many. Full of solitude and what must have felt to a divine being like unnecessarily mundane tasks. One could argue he gave up a lot more in assuming the humble life than I ever could.

All I know now is, I’m taking it one step at a time. I’m not beholden to the past, to institutions or what anyone else thinks, even to myself. I’m not beholden to anyone except God and what I feel is the thing he has called me to now. That helps a bit now, and I’m hoping will kick in during the doubts and trials that are sure to come in the future.

Pictures

These are possibly the best pictures I have ever taken of her in my life. Getting a good picture of a toddler is a long and arduous process. The key is time and repetition. And maybe a fast shutter speed. Most of my pictures are blurred like the one below. Boy, she loves her watermelon.

Grandparents

She’s been around her grandparents a lot lately. We visited one set last week, and are temporarily living with the other until our house is ready to move in to. Seeing her with her grandparents is like seeing her marinate in a pool of constant attention and love. She just soaks it up like a sponge: all the ooh-ing and ah-ing, eating all her favorite foods like fruit and noodles and pickles, getting to do her favorite things like dancing to music and running around outside. She got into singing karaoke with D’s mom, holding the microphone while wiggling her butt. She spent all of this morning “helping” my mom water the garden.

One of the best things about having a kid is seeing how much delight they give your parents. Growing up I’d feel this real sense of deep happiness if I got to share something good with my parents, like give them a free eye exam or take them to see the Boston Ballet do the Nutcracker, or bring them some food I knew they’d like. This is like that times a hundred. And it only gets better as she gets old enough to know them, to say their names and ask them to hold her hand or read to her, to copy whatever they say or do. If I suggest it, she’ll run over to give them a hug or kiss.

I never had this growing up, but it’s a wonderful and natural thing to see, the way she’s constantly so happy around people who love her, and the way she livens up their lives. And of course it’s all selfish in the end, because having extra sets of hands to watch her is like regaining a bit of our lives and sanity. We don’t feel so bad going out to eat or even taking a weekend trip.

I never would have thought we’d end up back in my hometown, but then I never would have imagined how wonderful it is to be around parents when you have kids of your own. We might not stay here forever, but I’m grateful God has led us here now.

Staying at Home

My biggest fear about not working for the next six months is falling into gradual dissipation. You’d think being a mother would automatically impart a certain level of sophisticated discipline, but that’s not true. D and I were talking about what we are like at our natural baseline. You know, the way you are when you’re alone in the house with a lot of time off. He would probably watch a lot of sports, go play Frisbee golf, eat trader joe’s frozen Chinese food, and do a few house chores. He’d relax, but the groceries would still get bought and the laundry done. I would stay in bed all day with a novel eating chips and celery sticks, immersed in some fantasy world for weeks while the place falls to ruins. My natural proclivity for complete entropy is shocking.

I’m embarrassed to say D seems naturally better staying at home with E than I am; he does house chores with her, takes her out for enriching experiences, plans her meals. My natural state would be to wake up tired getting her in the morning after staying up too late reading the night before, bumming around the house with her in my pajamas, eating whatever we have before putting her to nap so I can go back to sleep.

So I’m realizing I’ll need a game plan for the next six months. Really, for the next four months, because after the second comes in October my game plan will probably be trying to avoid mastitis while getting more than an hour of sleep at a time.

There are lots of good possibilities. I’d like to actually do house chores regularly, rather than just cleaning when the scum builds up too much. I’d like to experiment with cooking different things. I’d like to exercise regularly with D and take a class with him, maybe about missions or marriage. I’d like to find a good small group or play group. I’d like to teach E to swim. I’d love to learn how to sew curtains and pillows, to repaint and reupholster furniture. I’d like to think about how to enrich and support my parents’ lives.

And I’m reminding myself to really enjoy E. Because this time won’t come back again; it’ll be the last time she has me and I have her all to ourselves. Today I hugged her a lot and asked “who does mommy love most after daddy?” and she softly smiled and said “ay-yah” (which is how she says her name for some reason). I figure I might as well say stuff like that while I can.

The End of Training

This week was my week of work for the next six months. The last time I had a break that long was before kindergarten.

It felt strange, driving away from Hopkins for the last time. Actually, the part where I signed my last electronic note and turned in my pager felt great. But otherwise the whole thing felt anticlimactic. I feel ready to be really on my own, but there isn’t that sense of relief I felt when finishing residency last year. For the most part, I’ve been ready to leave Baltimore for a long time. And I’m ready to leave Hopkins. I’ve gone through being enamored by the prestige and history of the place as an applicant, being overworked and disillusioned in early residency, struggling with the clash of the culture with the kind of person and mother I wanted to be in later residency. I’ve appreciated the kind of mentorship and teaching you can have if you find the right person as a fellow, and learned about money and politics as an attending.

Thinking back on who I was four years ago, it was probably inevitable that I’d go through an experience like this before realizing the academic high life isn’t always worth the cost, at least at this stage of life. It’s taken more introspection to figure out what I do want than to continue down the path I’d been traveling up till then. In that sense I couldn’t have gone anywhere better; I feel well-trained, and I feel ready to move on.

I’m proud of D for making a decision in the next few years for our family, of being willing to put his career on the line, though he ended up finding essentially a dream job. He wanted to work in public health, and he’ll be doing it managing a hundred employees and a budget in the millions, which isn’t bad. I’ll get to foray into the world of private practice. I’m looking forward to the independence and efficiency, while hopefully still being able to practice the way I’d like and work with residents. We’ll see. One era of life ending and another beginning.

"Ma-ma!"

There's been a lot going on lately, all of which I'll hopefully get a chance to write about soon: finishing work and transitioning to stay-at-home mom for a while, buying our first house, more multiple moves, the second being a boy (!).. and a bunch of pictures I finally got around to taking. This one's out of focus, but my favorite, because it captured the moment she saw me walking towards her.

Journal Excerpt

Her crib is a veritable menagerie, a shelter for any lost animal toy she can find. The owners of the place we’re temporarily renting from left not only their furniture, but about twenty species of stuffed dog, all of whom I’m happy to report have found a loving home. There is one dachshund that grossed me out because one of its eyeballs was hanging out (ironic, I know), so one night I secretly chucked it out of the crib. She saw it the next day wedged in the corner and pointed “go3 go2! Go3 go2!” until I picked it up. She insisted on holding it during our prayer-and-tucking-in time. Tonight she insisted on being carried upstairs to bed with a stuffed mouse that she calls “rabbit,” a stuffed dog that she calls “small dog” (it’s one of about four pugs but it is the smallest), and a rubber ducky. I’ve stopped trying to secretly “forget” one because ten minutes later, arms stuffed full already, she’ll ask for the one I tried to hide.

Sometimes it gets hard putting her-and-five-stuffed-animals to bed at the same time, besides the fact that there is almost no room left in the crib to put her down in, but I’m not complaining as they keep her amused in the mornings, allowing us to sleep in. Usually when I come in she’s put them all lined up around the edge of her crib and is sitting there talking to them.

Cinderella

My mom took this photo of her today. When she is a teenager she can accuse us of making her do all the manual labor around the house.

Journal Excerpt

This stage of pregnancy is a bit like torture by bladder. Once again I crave watermelon constantly, while being unable to pee any less than ten times an hour, and any more than one thimble-full of pee at a time. The first thing I do now when entering a public space is scope out the location of the nearest restroom. When we were house-hunting, I considered peeing surreptitiously into model toilets. The realtor would ask, “what do you think about this house?” and I’d reply, “where are the bathrooms?” I ended up just avoiding any fluids, and I’m doing the same now on OR days. It’s a good thing none of our surgeries last longer than two hours.

I was getting up three times a night to pee, which pretty much cut off any hope of REM sleep, until I figured out shifting positions sometimes eased the baby off my bladder. So now instead of waking immediately, I turn over a few times while half-asleep, dream about peeing, and turn some more, before finally getting up. I think my main goal before October should be sleeping through the night as much as humanly possible.

Journal Excerpt

She is shockingly tidy. It’s sort of embarrassing admitting your not-yet-two year old is cleaner than you are. She’s very particular about things being proper: all the stuffed animals sitting upright, all of us staying in our chairs during a meal, wiping her mouth and hands with a napkin in between bites (I kid you not). She likes sweeping and if I let her will wipe down any surface—my laptop monitor, the kitchen floor, my cheek—with a rag. One of my favorite things to do is watch her carefully search for the corners of her blanket so she can lay it down smoothly without wrinkles. And this with her “a germ a day keeps the asthma away” mother.

All of this orderliness does get a bit exhausting. She gets upset if her stuffed bunny falls over onto its side. If she has a speck of dirt on her finger. One of second-hand dolls has a permanent marker spot on its bald head and I can’t say how many times I’ve pretended to try wiping it off with a tissue. Once she got distressed when she spotted a mole on my thigh. I didn’t know how to say nevus in Chinese so it came out something like “this is a dot mommy was born with” which I’m sure cleared it all up.

She is also quite maternal. She likes to feed people, stuffed toys, the cats. She likes to brush my hair. She stretches out her hands and whines to hug everything, including birds in the sky and animals in a book. She’s adopted so many stuffed animals she names and refuses to go to sleep without that half her crib is filled with them. I’ve actually only bought her one of them, incidentally her least favorite one. I’m not sure where she finds them.

I attribute some of this to her being a girl, and secretly I enjoy it a lot.

We find out tomorrow morning if the second is a boy or girl.

Another Hat

She is somewhat obsessed with pandas. One of D's single guy friends bought her this stuffed one from the Smithsonian which she tries to call 'panda' in Chinese which comes out sounding like "shi-shu." I can never tell if she wants the panda or a tissue (she's actually quite hygienic and insists on wiping her mouth and hands regularly). D got this hat for her from NYC during one of our rare baby-less getaways. It's a bit too big for her but fits him perfectly. When he's depressed he puts it on and it makes him feel better.

House Search

I feel lately like I’m living in an HGTV episode, and I’d like to turn the channel off for a bit. It’s been an exhausting roller coaster experience. I’m figuring out what’s important for me, then for D and I, then factoring the strong opinions of our parents, in-laws, friends, siblings, and realtor, all of whom mean well but none of whom are able to think for us completely. The last time I felt like this was while wedding planning, except a wedding is a tenth of the cost and leaves you with a few artsy photos on the wall rather than toilets to scrub every week.

I’m nearly completely fed up with the realtor industry. I mean, on one side, how annoying must a job be when your entire week is dictated by the whims of a potentially indecisive, picky couple who may not even buy anything? On the other, how annoying is it to not be able to see a house unless you go through some potentially opinionated, inefficient person who is naturally motivated not entirely for your interests?

Part of the difficulty are all the scenarios. There is our dream house, which would probably be some sprawling, airy ranch out in woodsy horse country. There is the suburban house that would most fit us for the next twenty years, which everyone seems to be saying is some huge place in an upscale neighborhood. There is the suburban house that would fit us just for the next few years to buy, and another to rent. We’re leaning more and more towards the latter, which I’m hoping will give us more time to figure it all out, without the pressure of worrying about resale value.

For the first time I’m coming up against what everyone perceives as the standard of living we should have, or will want. The buzz words “two-physician family” have been thrown around so much by pushy realtors that I’m starting to wish I’d never heard it. I’m just not there, and not sure I ever want to be. I have this strangely stubborn antipathy for anything that could be termed a mansion. I don’t want our kids growing up in some neighborhood filled with luxury cars and kids with a ton of toys. Maybe I’ll change my mind after we have a boatload of kids, but I hope it’ll be for the right reasons, and not just because we have the money to do it.

I think I’m at the point now where I’ve seen too much and am back to figuring out what’s most important. A place close enough for D’s long commute that I can see him more each day. A place close enough to my parents for our kids to readily be around people who love them. A down-to-earth, family-filled neighborhood. A place structured such that the kids can run safely around and we can be comfortable. The rest doesn’t really matter much. I think. That’s good to remember.

In Which I Vent

D and I lost it in public with a former neighbor today. Might be a first for me. I realize we shouldn’t have lost our temper, but I also don’t blame D for yelling at someone who was yelling extremely nasty things to me in front of the baby without even giving us a chance to explain. And it was all over how we left our trash in the pickup spot behind their house.

I’m tired of living in an antagonistic, selfish neighborhood. I’m tired of living in a place where if you leave your trash out in a bag instead of a can on trash day, you get called in to the police. Where people shovel snow from their sidewalk but leave the three inches connecting it to where you shoveled because technically it is on your property. Where people call in to complain there is too much noise when you’re trying to help push a postal car stranded in the snow on the street. Where people get upset when you park in a shared parking spot because it is closer to their house than yours.

I’m tired of living in a city where you can’t honk because you might get shot. Where people double park instead of making the effort of pulling into a spot by the curb two feet away. Where finding old beer cans or dog poop over your front step is a normal thing.

I tend to think the best of everyone. I tend to talk nicely to strangers. Dave is perhaps appropriately a bit less naïve, and I’m glad I’m married to someone who isn’t afraid to stand up for us, but I’m tired of being in a place that forces him to do that.

We love where we live now. In less than a week I’ve met countless friendly families, ten year-old girls who ask to hold E and moms who take walks with us. If we left our trash out wrong they would probably offer to help us move it back. There are large green spaces where kids run out playing all the time, without anyone complaining about the noise. There are scooters left out on various properties that just become community toys. The houses here cost half of the houses in our old neighborhood, the people are more modest and the place less impressive, but I would pick living here any time.

It makes me think about how important community is, how important the atmosphere of the neighborhood is. It matters more than some flashy house, and maybe I wouldn’t want E to grow up in some flashy neighborhood anyway. I think back on how content I was growing up in a modest house, how I never once envied my friends in bigger houses because we were happy at home. There are other things I’d rather do with the money we earn, and I’m glad we made this temporary move if only to drive that point home.

Journal Excerpt

I think I could write an analytical essay on the movie Up. Or I could quote it in its entirety. E has moved on from Baby Signing Times: after asking to watch it about ten times a day for months, she woke up one day and decided it was incredibly boring and NO-NO-NO how could I make her watch something like that? Now it’s thirty minutes of Up every single day on repeat. It is literally the only thing she wants to watch. She insists we watch it through to the end of the credits. She keeps a running commentary going during the movie, which means pointing out “baby” (what she calls anyone under three feet), “doggy,” “balloon,” “bird,” and “house.” It’s like they purposely made a story out of all her favorite words.

I was thinking today how both main adult characters are quite similar, both maniacally pursuing a somewhat comical goal at the cost of forming meaningful human relationships. Both are driven to some degree by hurt, Carl because he’s lost Ellie and feels he was never able to give her what she wanted, and Charles because he called a liar and publicly humiliated. Muntz never learns to let his bird go, but Carl does, first his possessions and eventually his house.

It’s actually not a bad movie to watch while house-shopping. Their house was obviously well-loved and cared for, but it wasn’t everything in the end.

I think E watches it for the little Asian boy. Whenever she wants to watch it she says “more baby.. more baby.”

Big Sister

Here she is at the place we just moved from, drinking her ovaltine milk and dutifully wearing her big sister shirt. When asked, "who is a big sister?" she points to herself, and when asked "where is mommy's baby?" she lifts up my shirt and points somewhere south of my bellybutton (she used to point at my bellybutton but I felt her anatomy should be corrected)- but really poor thing has no idea what's coming.

Journal Excerpt

I think my favorite part of the day with her is right before her bath, when I get her naked. She adores being naked. She screams and squeals with happiness, running down the halls and around her room, little legs pumping up and down in their baby way and big belly sticking out in front of her. Her legs are so supple and still chubby; her belly is so soft, her back and bum so smooth. She likes laying her blanket over the pillows on the ground and then falling on top of them, belly down and butt in the air, and pretending I can’t see her until I suddenly tickle and kiss her all over and she laughs so hard she loses her breath. As soon as she catches it she says “more?”

When I see her lying curled up naked like that on the pillow she seems so small, so unblemished and soft. She has no scars, no stiffness, no pretense. I heard someone say once that being a mother is like having your heart walk around outside of your body. It’s something like that. It’s hard to know until you are one. Most of the time I say that in the context of complaining about something, but today I’m thinking I wouldn’t give up one minute.

Will

I’m not really sure what the terrible two’s look like for everyone else, but as best as I can tell, for her it means a collision between her incredibly strong will and the ability to express or achieve it. Sometimes it’s not subtle what she wants but I decide she shouldn’t have it. But more often, I can’t tell what she wants, or she wants to do something by herself but can’t.

It’s quite amazing, this will thing. What is so amazing is not so much what she wants but how badly she wants it, and how specifically she wants it: not just a what, but a when (NOW) and a how. She wants the cucumbers, but not for me to hand her one, or put one on her plate; she wants me to bring the whole bowl of cucumbers over, set it on the table precisely where she’s pointing, and stab them with a fork. She wants to read a book with me on the chair, but not sitting on my lap—she wants to squeeze her butt next to mine on the same chair, but only after laying her blanket down, wrinkle-free, exactly where she plans to plop said butt.

And she wants all of it now. As in, mind-readingly fast. That apple juice should just appear refilled in my cup; I don’t get why it takes you five seconds to actually retrieve it from the fridge, unscrew my cup top, and pour it in. I’ve tried explaining the concept of patience to her, which I realize is completely idiotic but makes me feel better.

The worst is probably when I don’t understand what she’s saying. She keeps repeating herself over and over, growing increasingly frustrated and tearful, while I actually feel sort of mentally incompetent, like any other person would understand what “ba-duh” means but I don’t (it means pickle apparently). Today I figured out that “do-do,” in addition to meaning dog, her pacifier, and her bib, also now means crackers.

So you can imagine things get pretty exhausting. I chalk it up to her developing a will, but lacking the conceptual and contextual understanding of why what she wants, in the way and time that she wants it, isn’t necessarily good or possible. I sometimes forget how differently my mind works than hers; how she lacks the ability to think beyond the concrete, to understand time, or to think of anything other than herself and how she feels.

I think this is how God must see us often. His mind, his way, is higher than mine infinitely more than mine is higher than a two year-old’s. I think back on the things I’ve wanted so badly in life: to conceive at a certain time, to not feel this pain, to do it on my own. What I really want is for E to gladly submit her will to mine, to trust me, because I love her: how much more must God desire this of us?

But of course the beautiful thing about her will is now she can show her affection, and this is a wonderful thing: to hear her ask for my hand to hold, call me alone “ma-ma,” feel her run up to hug me from behind. She even once said she loved me (“ai4 nee3”) though it could have been an accident. Tonight I thought that’s what she was saying but it turned out she wanted to watch “er-nie” on sesame street.

And Then There Were Four

I think I am finally at liberty to say that we are expecting a second. If I wait any longer I will probably be in labor by the time I write anything; I’m about half-way through the pregnancy now. Just past the wanting-to-puke stage, which is too bad because I so badly wanted to complain in public about it.

Most of this pregnancy has been me saying, I definitely don’t remember feeling this way last time—I don’t remember feeling so nauseous I had to lie curled up in bed without any noise or movement. I don’t remember feeling like a bowling ball was pushing around my intestines every time I moved. I don’t remember feeling so incapacitated with fatigue. Working up the energy to shower was the worst. Plus there was that awful smell of the soap. I probably wouldn’t have bothered for the entire three months if I didn’t have to go out.

And of course most of it was D saying, yeah, you said this the last time. The exact same thing.

Except I probably didn’t say the part about how it felt changing a stinky diaper when you already feel like puking. People say the second time around, pregnancy is harder but labor is easier. That’s probably true; I don’t know if the symptoms were worse, or if I just felt that way because I had to take care of an eighteen-month old at the same time.

But I am trying not to lose the magic. The first time around, there was so much magic and wonder. I walked around feeling like I had a secret, the best secret in the world. We read about how she was the size of a blueberry, then a grapefruit. I talked to her sometimes, thought about her a lot. To be honest, I’ve spent most of the last few months complaining about feeling chronically ill. Wishing I could feel myself again. Missing having a normal relationship with food.

But I don’t want to lose any wonder with this second. This time it was a little harder getting pregnant; this time I felt the loss of wanting another baby but not having one. That period lasted only part of a year but it ran deep and felt long. So I know, perhaps more thoroughly than I did with E, that this one is a stroke of grace, a gift, a wonder. I’m finally stepping back and thinking on that more. It helps that I’m finally able to think about more than not puking.

Cherry Blossoms

I love the cherry tree that takes over our whole deck with its blossoms this time of year, and fills the whole view from our bedroom window. Probably one of the things I'll miss most when we leave.

Moving

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” – William Morris

We are preparing to move at least three times in the span of the next few months, and it is like torture. Moving is possibly worse than labor. Definitely. Right now it involves packing up all our stuff into storage, leaving our furniture in our current place, and moving with a few suitcases to another furnished apartment for two months (so our owners can sell our current living place). Then it will involve lugging everything out of state to our new place. Presumably a house we will have bought. Otherwise to a temporary place, which I try not to think about because my mind can’t manage that at the moment.

I fondly think of the day two months after we were married where we loaded up everything we owned on earth into a minivan and drove down the east coast. A minivan. I think the biggest item we owned at the time was an office chair.

But of course this is a good time to consider what it means to live in simplicity. I used to think about that a lot when I was younger: about this discipline of simplicity, what it means to have an inward life focused only on what mattered most, and to have this outwardly reflected in the things I did and what I owned and surrounded myself with.

Life seems to have gotten more complicated since then. We’ve expanded from one room, to a one-bedroom apartment, to this three-story condo, and now perhaps to a whole house. Our immaterial lives seem the same: more weighed by responsibility, less abandoned to the spiritual and communal.

Parenting is like this too. It can seem complicated. We’re on this email list for local parents, and it seems to be full of people looking for advice on the best toy, or activity, or swim instructor for toddlers. But I like how we’ve kept E surrounded with relatively simple things. She has a few used toys and clothes; her activities are mostly drawing or reading, exploring the house or outdoors. We talk and laugh and pray. We hang out with her, which I think is the most important thing.

So I’m trying to approach this packing in the same way. What do I really need? What brings me joy and beauty? And I’m looking forward to having a place of our own. Secretly I’m obsessing about finally getting to do some interior design, but really it will be nice to have a place to settle for a while. More on that later.

Journal Excerpt

I tell her all the time that her butt is like super-tender tofu and I want to take a big bite of it. This sounds much more charming in Chinese.

She has recovered from an ear infection and is disgustingly adorable these days. So far my favorite period of her life has been about the six to thirteen-month window, but this must be another honeymoon period. She follows commands, tells us when she poops and when she’s hungry, laughs easily, kisses and hugs on command, and sleeps effortlessly for long periods of time. If I repeated that last sentence to myself when she was a month old, I wouldn’t have believed it. I can see the Discipline and Toilet Training thing looming up ahead, but so far she hasn’t really required the former and we feel okay procrastinating the latter.

The best example of this is how she’ll throw things into the trash for me. I’ll point to a piece of trash on the ground, ask her to throw it away, and she’ll pick it up, get all excited speed-walking to the kitchen, pull out the trash can drawer, put it in, close the drawer, patter back quickly and say, “more?” She sticks out her belly and swings her arms while she’s walking like she’s real pleased with herself.

The Zoo

I took her to the zoo today. Which is like saying I took her to Disney World during spring break. We got there the moment it opened, and there were already about thirty school buses lined up, with kids in matching shirt colors streaming through the gates like the Israelites crossing the Red Sea. Apparently Fridays in April and May are prime field trip days. The only other people there were power moms, chatting on their cell phones while pushing five hundred-dollar strollers that hold three children at once along with the contents of an entire refrigerator and changing table.

E and I enjoyed zooming along in our little thirty-buck green stroller. She swung her legs and peered around at the other kids. The little girls seemed to like looking at her and one even called her “gorgeous” which put me in a great mood for the rest of the trip.

As a game D will sometimes tell her to shout out certain words (like “bus!” if she sees one while we’re driving). Apparently he taught her the Chinese word for leopard, because now every time I suggest going to the zoo she says “bau4!” over and over non-stop. So of course we were obligated to see the leopards, who happened to be mating today, which made me grateful she was too young to ask questions. Afterwards they lounged on their backs, which made her say “dap-dah” (for diaper) loudly over and over. Apparently anything on its back with its legs in the air is about to get its diaper changed. Again, grateful her words don’t make sense to anyone but me.

We lasted about ninety minutes. Or rather, I did. Unfortunately the crowds made her too shy to walk much, so I was often holding her with one arm so she could see above the railing, and pushing the stroller with the other. Holding her these days feels like carrying ten sacks of flour. It’s like the way they used to make the girls in home-ec carry around a bag of flour to simulate having a baby, except that was nothing compared to this. I told her to hold on to mommy, in an attempt to get her to help hold her own weight, after which she very gently grabbed a fistful of my shirt with one hand. Touching but not that helpful.

Apparently I say “wow” a lot, and E has picked up on this, because she says “wow!-wow!-wow!” repeatedly anytime she sees something exciting—like an elephant doing tricks, or the same two cats on the couch every morning. Other than that, she was pretty pensive and quiet as usual. It’s hard to tell how much she got out of the whole experience but I tell myself it provided great unconscious cerebral enrichment.

Since staying more at home I’ve figured out what all the other moms do with their kids all day: go to the mall and museums in bad weather, and the zoo and parks in good weather. Coming back intact today made me feel like I’d passed some initiation rite. Not quite as bad as, say, taking my first night of call, but tiring nonetheless.