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.