Robin | Farewell Stranger

Time Will Tell

September 24, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

Image credit: tamburix on Flickr

My head is not quiet.

Two days ago it was quiet, or relatively so. With three weeks to go before my due date I was living in a surreal space. I know what’s to come (more or less) but I was having a hard time believing it’s coming so soon.

Having a second baby is a weird experience. Before my first was born I was anxious, though just how anxious I didn’t actually realize at the time. I was still lost in that first-time-mom fog of dreaming about sweet babies and sighs and soft blankets. Because you don’t know, do you? You can never really know what it’s like to have a new baby until you get there yourself.

This time I know what it’s like, and yet not really. What will it be like with two? How will I be? Is it going to be okay?For the past several weeks I’ve been more focused on meeting this new little being than I have been about how he’s going to get here and what will happen in the days and weeks and months after. I feel like I know this child already – the one who likes to stick his feet in my ribs, the one who gets hiccups a lot, the one who dances when I eat something sweet, which are all things Connor never really did. I’m trying to picture him – his hair, his cheeks, his fingers. Will he look like his brother? Will he have my eyes?

And then on Saturday night I woke up around midnight having contractions. They were the mild Braxton Hicks type, slow but rhythmic, and unlike anything this mama who’s never laboured before has experienced. I thought, Hi! Are you getting ready to come? and Good. We can do this together.

Then on Sunday morning I got cranky. At first I blamed my efforts to play around with design (never a good thing) and then I retreated upstairs for a bit.

And then I couldn’t breathe.

I’m not ready, I thought. We don’t have the hospital bag packed and the car seat isn’t installed and we haven’t figured out where we’re going to store the receiving blankets. We need to get the windshield replaced. The dog needs to go to the groomer. We need more freezer meals!

The list I had made the night before suddenly seemed overwhelming and despite being organized I felt ill-prepared. I let that feeling of the list, the list drown out the little voice in my head that was telling me that’s not what this is about.

But I don’t want to think about that.

Like a big girl, I did think about it and realized I was having an anxiety attack. Yes, we have more stuff to do. No, none of it is critical – the hospital bag is half ready and we can chuck the rest in if we need to, and the car seat can be installed quickly. But I’m not ready.

I need to think more about this whole birth process (more on that in another post) and I need to sit with my thoughts for a while. This baby might be as challenging as Connor was. I might not cope this time either. It might be better or worse, happier or harder, but I need to internalize the knowing that ultimately it will be okay.

It will be okay.

So I took a deep breath, let the anxiety in and acknowledged its presence, then watched it leave. I don’t know what the next day will bring, or the next three weeks, or the next three months. Whatever happens will happen, and it will happen on its own schedule.

I’m not ready, but I don’t have to be.

It will be okay.

Loosely based on the current prompt at Just.Be.Enough: “Now what?” We’ve got a giveaway happening with this one – come join us!

And linked up with:

UPDATE: This post is featured on BlogHer Moms today – I’m honoured!

Filed Under: Be enough me, Pregnancy · Tagged With: admissions, anxiety, meltdown

A Mom for Mental Illness

September 23, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

In June I wrote a post about the type of mom I think deserves a Mom of the Year award. There were lots of other people who thought a mom they knew was worthy of the award – 16,909 moms, in fact. That’s how many nominations were received for Walmart’s Mom of the Year award.

16,909 nominations – that’s a lot of love for a lot of moms, some of whom likely don’t often get much recognition. How do you narrow it down from that number? I don’t know, but Walmart did and now eight finalists have been selected. Each of those women receives $10,000 for the charity of her choice AND $10,000 for herself, which I think is pretty bloody amazing.

I was browsing through the list of the finalists and reading their stories. And I stopped at one in particular. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Better world, Hello, Inspiration, Motherhood, Stuff I like · Tagged With: I was paid for this but it doesn't mean I'm not genuinely interested, we're not alone

Let’s Just Name Him Hector

September 20, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

Naming boys is hard. We had this struggle with Connor too – we each had a list (you might remember some of the spectacular names on my husband’s list, which is how we came to refer to this fetus as Hector) but the number of real contenders was few. When he was born, it took us three days and literally going through every name in the baby name book to settle on Connor (which was our first choice all along, but one needs to be sure about these things, you know…).

I again have a list, this time on my iPad. Some of the names have carried over from the last list, but mostly not. My list is fairly long — 23 names as of today — yet none of them feels like the right one. My husband has a list too and every once in a while we sit down and compare.

Our conversations tend to go like this:

Me: “How about this name?”

Him: “That name sounds like someone from the days of yore.”

Me: “What? What kind of a criticism is that? Oh, fine…”

Him: “How about Cicero?”

Me: [Sigh.]

Or like this:

Him: “What about this ‘E’ name?”

Me: “If we used that name his initials would spell ERF.”

Him: “Yarif? Why would you want to name a baby Yarif?!”

Me: “Not Yarif! ERF. You know – E.R.F.”

Him: “Oh good! I thought you were suggesting a name that sounds like barf.”

You can see why we don’t have these conversations very often.

Aside from the obvious communication problems, part of our trouble is that we have so many criteria when choosing a boy name:

It can’t be one syllable. (Rich, despite having chosen to go by that name, hates having a short first name and a short last name.)
It can’t start with F. (A first name and last name that both start with F just sounds too…cute.)
It can’t start with R. (This one is possibly flexible, but with a Rich and a Robin already it seems like another R name would be overdoing it.)
It can’t be a name in any way linked to any pop culture reference ever in the history of time. (This is my husband’s rule – “That’s too X-Men.” “That makes me think of Logan’s Run.” If I’d known it would be this much of an issue I’d have prohibited him from watching movies when we first got together 14 years ago.)

Those criteria limit the possibilities quite significantly, but then we run into issues with our last name. With a name like Farr, any name that relates to distance or travelling or similar becomes quite twee.

Walker Farr. Parker Farr. Miles Farr. Hunter Farr.

Sigh. Nope.

(The only good thing about this is that my husband jokes about wanting to name a child Hijk (pronounced Hike) but Hike Farr doesn’t work either, thank goodness.)

Then there’s anything that rhymes with fart. Carter would inevitably become Carter Farter.

Names that echo the sound of our last name don’t really work for a similar reason.

Archer… Farrcher. Hardy…Farrdy.

You just know it’s going to happen.

We’re now three weeks (give or take) from having to figure this out, but no pressure, right?

Maybe Connor is right and we are going to name him Hector after all.

Filed Under: Pregnancy · Tagged With: family

Dishes

September 19, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

Mundane is normal. Normal is good.

It’s the normal things I stop doing when things aren’t going well. The dishes languish, rinsed but not clean. The clutter in the house adds to the clutter in my mind.

I like puttering. It gives me a chance to think and to reflect and to feel in control. But none of those things is appealing when things aren’t going well. I don’t want to think and so I leave the dishes, my sullied thoughts glomming onto the detritus of dinner.

Lately my dishes are clean.

Clean dishes are normal. And normal is good.

As you may have noticed from my recent silence here, my writing isn’t coming together much lately. Or maybe it’s that I’m choosing to play and to sleep instead of choosing to write. In any case, I got a bit stuck. So when Velvet Verbosity suggested I try the 100 word challenge, I scoffed. “I don’t have time to write 100 words,” I told her (with a nod to Mark Twain). And then I decided it was worth a shot. And this is what came out in response to the current prompt – Doing the dishes.

I’ve also got a (previously written) post up on Just.Be.Enough today. Do you feel bad about feeding your kids McDonald’s? Join me in my McShame.

Filed Under: Happy things · Tagged With: depression, gratitude, hope, perspective