Publica Breastaefeedaphobia

It has been 2 weeks and 1 day since glitter spilled from my vagina in the form of baby Ozzy. (Which is kind of a lie since he was born via c section, but the mere mention of the word vagina lends the idea a bit more gravitas, no? Vagina, vagina, vagina, BAM! Just add glitter and what you get is pure magic. Ask anyone.)
The most part of these 2 weeks and 1 day I have spent crammed like so many worn tissues into the folds of my couch, one pillow propped under the right arm, another beneath the left, boobs out, back aching, wondering how they make it look so easy, though I have no idea who "they" really are. Despite the presence of nipples, here there is no glitter. Just me and my nipples, Luck be a Lady de la Leche, and at night when I use the breast pump the wheezing in and out of the machine sounds as if it's talking to me. Make more, make more, make more... (Or what a bore, what a bore, what a bore, milky whore, milky whore, milky whore...)

Me thinks that when your breast pump starts talking to you it's time to get out of the house, no?

So this weekend I decided to take this show on the road. Armed with two of my oldest and bestest, I went to the park with Ozzy, my boobs and an artfully draped cloth festooned with little cars for diversion. And at first it was easy. We were the only people there, and for a second I felt a little like Bill Murray in "What About Bob" tied to the mast, I'm Sailing! I'm Sailing! That is, until a toddler and his overly-Spandexed, Vibram-footed father spotted us. It was almost like I had cotton candy stuffed in my bra, or dollar bills--the kid would not leave me alone. He pulled and yanked at my artfully draped cloth, pushing his face beneath, even with me saying no, no honey! The baby's eating! And his father was no help, either. Guess my son's a boob man! he said, talking a little too close to my friend. It was weird. He was weird. The kid was weird. They. Would. Not. Leave. And so it would seem that my first pass at public breastfeeding was a bust, no pun intended.

And lest you think I'm being hyperbolic, yesterday I decided to get right back on the hooter horse and set up camp on my front porch. (Baby steps, people. Who knew "What About Bob" would be so apropos?) So there I was breastfeeding Ozzy while Zoey played in the garden, the sun shining the hazy yellow of a memory of a movie, when suddenly my neighbor's Chihuahua came bounding over to excitedly press his nose into my nipple. Which of course made his owner, a 50 year old man I've met maybe once, come over to see what his dog had found. Again with the the possibility of cotton candy hidden inside my bra, or maybe it was a piece of rawhide, more dollar bills, something, because the dog Would. Not. Leave. And eventually his owner had to reach down into my artfully draped cloth to retrieve him, my cover blown for the second time.

Oh, how I wish I were one of those women who whipped out her boob all so what and yeah, so? Daring you to look or not caring at all, without two fucks to rub together because she really doesn't give a flying one. But I'm not. Instead I'm a WASPY girl of a woman who thrills at the mention of vagina and glitter together, a fumbling mom with Publica Breastaefeedaphobia, a condition that does not even exist in the world of WikiGoogleWebMD so I had to make it up myself, all faux Latin-ate and official. Because the truth is I don't even sail. I get sea sick.

But How Do You Really Feel?

I have to warn you guys: my skin is like vellum right now, tissue thin and see-through. I cry at Dr. Phil which means of course that I watch Dr. Phil, an event that in and of itself signifies that something is not quite right. Of course nothing is quite wrong, either. Simply hormones stabilizing, so I stand at least once a day buck naked in front of the mirror to see if my uterus has shrunk down any farther because that is something that I can actually see, measure, wait for. (Oh, how you would have loved me as a teenager, all sighs and sads and nobody understands. I am just thankful there were no blogs back then.)

So you can imagine what the discovery of this website did to me, written by a woman who spent years taking care of patients who had gone home to die. When she talked to these people about any regrets they had, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the top 5:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I didn't work so hard.

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Now that's something to cry about, n'est ce pas? And a reminder for those of us that have some time. So here's what's on my To Do list today: wash the dishes, take a shower, express my breast milk along with some feelings, let myself be happy.

What's on yours?

xo,
S

I Must, I Must, I Must Increase My...

Are you there WWW? It's me, Margaret. Behold a real life Before and After. Now, I was not able to breastfeed Zoey for a few different reasons that are now 5 years old. But this time? My milk came in and shit got real. Real to the tune of an E sized bra that is all kinds of ugly. Please tell me that this, too, shall pass. The hormones, yes, the sleepless nights, the fact that I am now chained to the couch with my nipples hanging out of humongously horrible E-sized boobs.

And if it isn't going to pass? Then lie to me.
with love from the living room,
S

Woosh

Guess who turns one week old today? This guy, that's who:
Introducing Ozzy Allston M. (I wish I could tell you our whole last name 'cause it sounds super kick ass all together.) Born May 30th, 7lbs. 13oz. This is what I know of him so far: his head smells like warm cotton, his eyes are the prettiest slate blue, particularly when he wears his blue onesie, he squeaks instead of cries and when he poops he scrunches his face up just like Renee Zellweger. Although I have never seen Renee Zellweger poop.

Here's a pic of Zoey meeting her brother for the first time. If I had told her that there was no Santa and that Unicorns simply do not exist, she still would've been smiling like this, so stoked was she to hold her brother.

Here she is being a bossy big sister, telling my mom how to properly diaper Ozzy.

As you can imagine, we are all a wee bit sleep deprived and some of us (me) have had their abdominal muscles sliced open and then stapled shut, but still--I'm going to try to post more often now. Although I should also mention that we bought a house and move in 3 weeks, so there is that. Too.

Told you. Woosh.

love,

S

My Pregnancy As Told By Prince's Face

You wanna’ know the real reason I haven’t been blogging? Aside from hemorrhoids and varicose veins.

Exactly. I mean, that’s it. That face. Lately that is how I feel about everything. Nutella on toast, clean sheets, successfully finding videos of that gay-for-pay kid on the latest Real World.

Bitch, please. The new Calypso collection at Target?

Totally. Then there’s the fact that our lease is up next month but we don’t want to sign another year lease because we are looking to buy a house again but our landlord won’t let us go month-to-month because I have no idea why. FYI? I have a c-section scheduled for June 2. We have to be out by end of June.

Plus one of these brought to you by the good people at The Hormones Responsible for the Nesting Instinct-ute.

Yesterday was the first ultra sunny happy summer day so we went to the beach just like the family behind us and on either side of us sitting too close, families everywhere with coolers and sand, sandy kids that were not at all cool. Then the family right in front of us pitched a tent, an actual real live tent with sticks and everything and I was all,

And Bryan was all,

And Zoey was all,

I mean, why go to the beach if you’re just going to sit inside of a nylon tent all day eating potato chips?

Of course about 20 minutes later I was hot, too hot, the 8 inches of dank skin hidden now beneath my humongous boobs all sweaty and sandy and I told Bryan I was going to buy a beach tent online as soon as we got home. And I did.

What?

I would die 4 U (but I would nevah evah B anyone’s surrogate, just so we're clear),

The Artist Formerly Known as Petunia Face

Light the Corners of My Mind

Remember when I used to blog? Like everyday, and I had something to say? And even when I didn't I pretended and you believed and read, commented, my inbox full of emails that weren't about sales and deals, viagra, Nigerian money scams or free sandwiches?

Me, too. I miss those days, you. Us.

Somebody once said that the way to become somebody's god is to disappear. And while that notion has stuck with me for its sheer dude that's so poetically beautiful it has to be true-ness, I'm afraid it's not. Because I am a master disappear-er, never saying goodbye at parties but choosing instead to slip out the door, driving away. And here, these last few weeks or months, I have slipped away and into dimensional life wearing 2-D glasses. Quietly, no kiss-kiss. Just this. Not that I want to be anybody’s god anyway, somebody somewhere always calling your name in vain and otherwise, like in bed, in the moment--how uncomfortable would that be? I just want to be me again.

Remember when I used to think thoughts other than I can’t breathe, my nose is so stuffed up, 31 weeks and ohmygodmyvaginabonehurts?

I don’t know what this photo has to do with anything here but it reminds me of something, you know?

Me, too.

Truer Words Were Never Sung. Sang. Suck It.

Way better than that ear-worm "Friday" song, this is my new anthem for, well--Friday or any day of the week really.

Outstanding questions: I tried to do a little recon on this little ditty to answer my own resounding WTF, but only came up with this info on The Kelly Family. So what gives? Is the lead singer here a boy or a girl? And is there something wrong with him/her, or only something so so right?

Happy Friday.

xo,

S

A Beach on the Other Side of Mykonos (My Special Place)

I am on a beach on an island in a world with a strange woman whose nipples are white. We’re talking white white, the kind of white that made me think, at first, that maybe she had slathered them with zinc oxide or that they had been badly burned and then peeled, whiter than real. That white. Of course this is not the point of my special place, but it is worth noting: the rest of her skin was tan and she lay down with all the nonchalance of a not-American at a topless beach, bending, skin folding, as if she were not her body, white nipples and all. Close by Bryan and I sat on our towels eating figs, playing gin rummy and staring. To this day we still talk about those nipples. Remember? How white they were? That white.

But that is not where I go when I get my blood pressure taken. No, I close my eyes and go somewhere maybe 5 minutes later. Take a deep breath in and walk to the water, Bryan and the girl and the playing cards behind me. Exhale and dive into the gentle waves, bright turquoise like the sound of a plane high in the sky. I smile, my eyes open and I can see everything; it’s hard but entirely possible to laugh underwater. Did you know? At night now I cannot breathe. My nose stuffed, the baby sits somewhere full inside my torso and my throat is warm with the pasta I ate days ago. I cannot breathe and so my chest tightens, grasps, 140/90 and rising. When I blow my nose my nipples leak, the way they are supposed to but still I feel somehow broken.

Which reminds me—of Avent bottles and watery eyes—that one time in grad school I wrote a paper about Philoctetes, the Greek warrior who is bitten on the foot by a snake during the Trojan War. Although he is an expert bowman, the wound festers, suppurates, emitting a smell so horrible that he is left alone on the island of Lemnos to die. The story is ok, I suppose, if you like Greek tales, but what I remember is that my professor wrote in red pen large on my paper: SUPPURATES IS NOT A WORD and I felt defeated. But it is. Was then and still is. Suppurates: to fester, draw, to ooze. Once again back on an island in Greece where I close my eyes and dive in as if I, too, am not my body oozing from nipples not white but there. Just go to my special place, go to my special place, two more months and then some I hold my breath that I cannot breathe and smile.

Hello.

I wrote an ode to my ankle bone. That’s where I’ve been. And then I decorated the page with drawings of tears and eyes, tears coming out of eyes and lots of Egyptian Ankhs. Here is a snippet, just for you:

No, no! Go not to Lethe, ankle bone delicate and proud

Like a bobbi pin for fine hair, *sigh*

Wolf’s bane, droop-headed edema shroud

Bidding adieu, Truth in Beauty, Beauty that must die.

And then I decorated my room with posters of my boobs lined in heavy black eyeliner.

Which means, of course, that in reality I went to Anthropologie and fell in love with this dress.

Knowing that it would be for after the baby. Like a few weeks after, right? I took it to the dressing room just to see how the shoulders would fit, ignored the confusion of the girl as I handed her a size 6 and squeezed past her into the doorway. If you need anything, my name is um, Arden. Um—mkay? And then she shut the door and I could not get the dress on. Like even half of it. My large breast that has become one mottled brown areola like some well-intentioned Doctors Without Borders, only it’s Nipples Without Borders—it would not even fit through the head opening with the side zip opened. So I sat there on the little reclaimed wooden stool in the dressing room with one boob caught in the vise grip neckhole of a seaworthy box-twill horizons dress said to represent pale sand, verdant ground and cool water, and felt very, very sorry for myself, Robert Smith and all.

When I said that I am not a very good pregnant person I did not mean that I am not very good at being a person who is pregnant. Apparently I am very good at that. My body knows just what to do, pops and blows, poofs, poots, bam and pow! Pregnant. I guess what I mean is that I’m not very good at being pregnant and a person. I think how back in the day pregnant women were not really seen out in public. How before Lucille Ball there had been no pregnant women on television. And I think maybe I should have been pregnant back then. Just shuttled away to a room somewhere with soothing wallpaper, left with water and chocolate and a stack of magazines to gestate. Percolate. Emerge months later with faint circles beneath my eyes that only made me look more tragically romantic, my ankle bones once again sharp.

So that’s where I’ve been. And while I cannot promise I won’t disappear again—the wallpaper! It is so pretty!—I can say that I will be back. Someone once told me to never cut your hair while you are pregnant, and I’m guessing the same goes for your blog. I won’t make any rash decisions while this hormonal and not-me, and although I may write secret bad poetry about the lost love of delicate bones and comb my hair forward, I will not cut my hair, myself, or my blog. 28 weeks and counting…

Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio? (Plus Ponch and One Blasphemous Rumour)

Coo, coo, ca-choo, my friends, though no nation turns it’s lonely eyes to me. This is where I’ve been: taking a glucose tolerance test (which I think I failed), talking to my doc about birthing options, i.e. cut me open and git it out, and reading on Babycenter that Little Lorem Ipsum is now the size of an English hothouse cucumber which would make total sense to me if I were baking a Shephard’s Pie but seeing as how I’m not I have no idea how big my baby might be. Is an English hothouse cucumber bigger than a bread box?

With Zoey I crafted a Birth Plan, typed it up and printed out multiple copies to hand out at the hospital. Included in my Birth Plan: preferred ambiance, push positions, people allowed in the room, pain relief options and props. Yes—props. I had a ball, you know? One of those yoga balls I planned on bouncing on? And Tootsie Pops in case I got dry mouth. I think I thought birth would like going to the circus. But when we left for the hospital at 4am I forgot to bring the ball and when Bryan handed me a Tootsie Pop I threw it down which was around the same time the doctor announced the need for an emergency c-section. You ever heard the one about how to make God laugh? Tell him your plan. Last year when we went to Mexico I unzipped the side pocket of my luggage and found four copies of that 2006 birth plan which never even made it out of the bag.

In 1978 I was 6 and didn’t quite understand why I felt not exactly funny ha ha or funny strange but more of a funny oh watching Erik Estrada in that tight highway patrol uniform. And then came the episode in which Ponch and Jon deliver a baby at the disco and it clicked—this was the mysterious doing it, so I decided then and there that I would do it with Erick Estrada on a disco floor lit with colored lights while everyone politely turned their backs and clapped their hands.

Granted I was a little confused with the logistics of it all, but I still am, so? I think this is my new birth plan. And please tell me you saw this episode because I searched for days trying to find the clip to no avail. All I could find is this riveting number of Ponch grooving it up not moments before he delivers the baby. Totally worth watching if for nothing else than the look of longing on Jon’s face 1:22 seconds in, plus the guy in the back with the white pants is packing it at 2:07. There is a brief moment when you see the pregnant lady dancing at the 0:30sec mark. Do you remember? How she goes into labor and everyone forms one of those solid gold circles around her with their backs turned? How they still kinda’ swing side to side clapping? At 6 I was not quite sure what went on inside of that circle, but at 38 I’m thinking this is my new birth plan. (I might as well make God laugh with something that is actually almost funny.)

And that, my friends, is what you’ve been waiting for. I probably should’ve opened up with Depeche Mode.

xo,

S

Kitten Bouquet for the Littlest Bee!

Also? Today I'm over at The Lil Bee wishing her and the newest bundle the randomest of congratulations. Stop by and give her a Happy New Mama Smooch--her newest Blake is freaking adorable.

xo,

S

Technicolor Sunrise on Saturday Morning

Red sky at night, sailor's delight; red sky in morning, sailor's take warning.Must have been a low pressure system this weekend because Bryan went sailing all day, came home, said he would play with Zoey to give me a break and then fell fast asleep on the living room floor.

This is what happens when you fall fast asleep on the floor after promising your wife (who just so happens to work at a cosmetics company) some time to herself.

Foxy tummy, if a little hirsute.

Happy Monday.

xo,

S

(dolorem = pain, grief, misery, suffering; ipsum = itself)

Sometimes I imagine you sitting at your computer there, right leg crossed over your left like mine. Hi. How are you doing? Fine, you say, okay, good, because you’re polite like that, and then you ask me back and I tell you that lately? (Because I am not polite like that.) Lately? I’ve had the pain of a dull knife inserted under my ribs on the right side, and you crinkle your eyes in concern. Oh no, I say too fast, don’t worry. Apparently it’s just my muscle separating from my rib to make room for my shifting organs because of Lorem Ipsum, which is what I call the baby even though I think we have a name. Maybe you shift in your chair not knowing quite what to say. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. I let the sentence sit there as a placeholder for something that has not yet happened, and you smile, I smile, and we watch this video because it’s Friday.

Hearts and Kittens! XOXO

Honestly what I like most about Valentine's Day is that it marks the official start of Cadbury Cream Egg season. Although watching Zoey sign 32 class Valentine's cards with a backwards Z is kinda' rad, too.

Kittens and Hearts on a Monday, no less.
Love,
S

To Spite My Face

Nose watch 2011 has begun. That is: I’m sick. And last time I was sick and pregnant my nose never quite unstuffed; I became addicted to Afrin,* snorting it covertly in bathrooms both public and private, watching as my nose grew red with spider veins and spread slowly across my face. So last night I did what any self-respecting and highly hormonal woman would do and fashioned MacGyver style nose calipers out of a rusty wrench and a ruler to measure the width of my nose: 3.4cm. I made Bryan take a photo of me doing this but later realized that it’s honest enough I’m telling you of such a thing and really, I don’t need to lose all sense of privacy or pride. Which is also why I’m not going to tell you what is happening to my nether-region, i.e. that it’s made up of the same type of tissue as the nasal passage.

Yeah.

Instead! Let’s look at pictures of models falling. Because I think I’m getting a varicose vein in my right calf and the straps on my bra are now thicker than, well—my nose. So let’s look at pictures of models falling because I said so.

*Yes, I now know not to use Afrin while pregnant. Or ever, really. That stuff is nose crack for anybody whose heart races with the gripping claustrophobia of a stuffed up nose, i.e. me.

**I wish I had taken a base measurement when I first found out I was pg, but will have to make do with this one at 23 weeks. 3.4cm. I swear I can feel it growing.

Candy & Iron

Six years ago today was also super sunny, the air thin, the first cherry blossoms on branches. We took a cab down to city hall where beneath the 5^th largest Beaux-Arts dome in the world a judge told us that nothing he said would marry us, that it was what we said to each other that truly sealed the deal.

Then there was the other night as I leaned forward to eat my dinner you reached your hand out to talk to the baby and there was an awkward moment, wasn’t there? As you rubbed my ginormous boob thinking it was my tummy. Six years later and I want to keep on talking to you, laughing with you, saying the right things and doing the wrong things, the other way around and then some until the day you rub my breast thinking that you are patting me on the knee.

Happy anniversary love.

February 1

I have this memory of February. I am 12 and at a friend’s house. She has a pool and we are in one-piece bathing suits standing with our toes over the edge of the deep end. Remember this, I told myself, remember this forever because this is when Spring starts, and we laughed, screamed, jumped in.

I thought of that this morning on the bus to work and I wanted to hug my 12 year old self, I love her so. (12 and long straight up and down, my body growing into a vertical axis these days.) It was foggy this morning, and on the bridge you could barely make out the blinking yellow lights of a bridge patrol car stopped mid-span. As the bus drove slowly past it I noticed that all of our heads turned heavy and knew that we were all thinking the same thing though no one said a word simply because the morning bus is supposed to be silent. And then the heads turned back to their laps and their phones, necks wrapped in wool, the market watch section of the paper lengthwise in the proper commuter fold.

I love February, I tell people, because February is when Spring starts, and people laugh at me. Are you kidding? They say, but I’m not and I know. I wanted to tell those people on the bus this morning that it’s true, it’s possible—sometimes you can jump into a pool in February. I remember. Do you?
Apropos of not much but a 7th grade memory of those impossibly scratchy Mexican hoodies that I loved so much back then, I want this ridiculously overpriced Tory Burch hoodie to wear with cutoffs and flip flops. This is when it starts.

Happy Spring,
S