Author: catherinemryan

I woke up with pain gripping my lower back. It snaked its way around my side and dug into my lower abdomen. I clenched a pillow in my fist until the wave subsided, then I drifted back to sleep. Minutes later, though, the same discomfort jolted me conscious.

This was yesterday morning. The pattern continued for about 45 minutes before I woke up Eric and asked him to rub my back. It helped, but I decided to get up and see if a change in position would relieve the pain and what I realized were contractions.

I’ve been feeling Braxton-Hicks—the “practice” contractions that tense my whole belly but don’t really hurt—for months, but this was different. The contractions felt stronger and came more frequently. About an hour after I first woke up, I started to time how often they came and how long they lasted. 3:58, 60 seconds. 4:01, 50 seconds. 4:03, 50 seconds.

In response to the pattern, I didn’t gather the things for my still-unpacked hospital bag or bring the still-uninstalled car seat to the car. I didn’t call our midwife or my mom.

I cleaned the kitchen.

I paused from washing dishes and wiping the counter whenever my belly clenched. I dutifully recorded times while Eric alternated between pacing (“I don’t know what to do with myself,” he said) and trying to rest on the couch with Finn.

After another 45 minutes, the waves slowed down. By 5am, I crawled into bed. Soon I was asleep.

When I spoke with our midwife later that day, she assured me the experience was normal. “It’s just your body’s way of getting ready,” she explained. Peeper’s been as active as usual, which stopped any leftover worry.

Still, I felt unsettled. During those few hours, I wasn’t particularly scared about labor itself. I was anxious because I didn’t know if I was actually in labor. Is this it? I asked myself. Are we on?

I was afraid of overreacting. Was that really a contraction, or am I imagining things? I didn’t want to jump to the wrong conclusion. It’s probably nothing; go back to sleep. My inner voice was full of doubt.

The false alarm was good, though, for being a wake-up call. It reminded us that Peeper is now 37 weeks and could safely arrive at any time. It demonstrated what a painful contraction might feel like—and proved that a whole bunch of not-painful contractions in a row doesn’t equal active labor.

I’m hoping that with this experience, the next time won’t make me so anxious. This practice round helped take the novelty and utter unknown out of early labor, so maybe bout two—and three and four and beyond, if that’s the case—will inspire less uncertainty.

Then, when we arrive at go, I hope we’ll be ready.

I recently had tea and cookies with my friend Mira, who’s getting married in Beirut in a few weeks. We traded updates on wedding planning and baby anticipation while protecting our coveted table from browsers at Powells. As we talked, I couldn’t help but notice parallels between our two momentous life events.

“People come together like this only three times in your life—for weddings, births and funerals,” Mira said. “Except you can’t enjoy the last one because you’re dead.”

Regardless of your stance on the afterlife, she has a point. We’re both in the midst of witnessing friends and family come together to pull off something big.

I thought back to our own wedding, in October 2008. We had been living in a little apartment in West Harlem then moved cross-country for Eric’s graduate program and so didn’t have a bottomless savings account to pay for anything extravagant. With the help of loved ones, our nuptials were very DIY: We cooked and prepped all the food; made our own music mixes for dancing; and set up everything in a rural site outside Junction City, Oregon.

Before I walked down the aisle, friends mopped up rainwater that had fallen on the assembled chairs earlier that day. They folded napkins and strategically placed potted ferns over stains on the less-than-pristine rented tablecloths. And when dusk approached, everyone pitched in to clean up the dirty cups, plates and utensils.

Sure, the efforts of our guests saved us loads of money we simply didn’t have to spend. But the communal work felt like much more than a way to cut costs.

Getting married was, for me and Eric, a public way to share our commitment to each other. We also recognized that we wouldn’t be there without the support of loved ones. Our wedding celebration ended up being a representation of that idea. We couldn’t have pulled it off without everyone arranging centerpieces, cutting up fruit salad and stacking folding chairs. Everyone who lent a hand became an integral part of that day and, by extension, our union.

Peeper hasn’t arrived yet, but I’m already sensing similarities. My friend Ember, mother of a sassy five-year-old, advised me to accept help from whatever quarters it comes. So far I’ve followed her recommendation. Friends have lent us a stroller, car seat, co-sleeper, maternity clothes and a closet-ful of other baby goods we have no budget for. And I’m pretty sure we’re not far off from offers of dinner deliveries, babysitting and hand-me-downs.

And really, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Even if we could afford all-new baby gear and an on-call nanny, I love feeling like part of a tight-knit community coming together for something important (even if that something is small, say 7 or 8 pounds!). As on that drizzly October day almost five years ago, I’m grateful for our closest and dearest for lifting us up and making it work.

This is getting real.

It’s as if this week is coming together with the sole purpose of reminding me that Peeper is coming. Soon. And that his or her first few months won’t be a tearless shampoo-scented cloud of joy—at least not exclusively.

First, I had a day at work when my belly made me so uncomfortable that I ended up lying on the floor for a half-hour. There I was, fingers pecking at my laptop as I sprawled as modestly as I could on the industrial light-pile carpet next to my cube. Very mom-glam.

And today I got a blister on my pinkie toe. But when I bent over to put on a band-aid, I couldn’t reach around my belly. It took several tries to maneuver enough to perform the once-thoughtless task of administering first-aid to my foot.

The internet has been hinting at the difficult days ahead, too. I read Jody Pelatson’s essay “Before I Forget” on The Atlantic, which was a refreshingly honest perspective that caring for a newborn isn’t a one-way ticket to “cloud nine.”

“We thought it would be sitcom-style hard—not necessarily with a feel-good resolution at the end of every episode, but at least punctuated by those frequent moments of uplift indicating that, in spite of everything, life really is beautiful, isn’t it?” writes Pelatson about the challenges of becoming a new mom. “I’m pretty sure it’s like that for some people, but for many of us, it’s not. For many of us, it’s not good hard, as in a ‘good hard workout’; it’s bad hard, as in, it sometimes feels like something bad is happening to you.”

Lest anyone think Pelatson is trying to dissuade anyone from procreating, she goes on to say that she now loves parenting, and that those trying first months have blended into a soft-focus “New Motherhood Montage” in her memory.

When I told Eric about the article, he was somewhat aghast. He doesn’t think it’ll be quite that traumatic, and it might not be. But the essay was reassuring to me, not terrifying. It felt good to read an account of early parenthood that recognized and validated the fact that it can be lonely, confusing and extremely difficult at times.

This week the internet also provided a counternote to the Atlantic article, and to what I’m beginning to suspect is the cult of perfection around motherhood.

“No matter how many doubts you might have, you never need doubt this one thing: You are not perfect,” writes Lea Grover on her blog Becoming Supermommy (and on the Huffington Post).

“And that’s good. Because really, neither is your child. And that means nobody can care for them the way you can, with the wealth of your understanding and your experience. Nobody knows what your child’s squall means, or what their jokes mean, or why they are crying better than you do.

“And since no mother is perfect, chances are you are caught in a two billion way tie for Best Mom in the World.”

Granted, the premise of this blog is that I’ll become competent, or even expert, at being  a mom after devoting 10,000 hours of practice to caring for Peeper (a la Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers). I’m not striving for perfection by any means, though. And the recognition that the very lack of perfection is what your child needs is a beautiful, even liberating, idea.

So although this week has thrown some ridiculous reality checks at me (barely being able to reach my toes—come on!), I welcome them. Because with them arrive the understanding that those challenging moments are precisely what I need.

On Sunday my Portland girlfriends gathered for my baby shower. My somehow-do-it-all friend Erin, who had a beautiful baby girl only five months ago, planned and threw it for me—and I’m still in awe of what an amazing job she did. The whole party was worthy of a million Pinterest pins.

Plus, Erin somehow read my mind and served my favorite pregnancy food, tomatoes with balsamic vinegar, and lemonade, something I’d been craving since going to the Saturday Market the day before.

I had a wonderful time catching up with friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen in months.

As I sat surrounded by these incredible women, I was struck by how fortunate Peeper and I are to have a community of such strong, compassionate, loving women. I feel so lucky to bring a child into the world knowing he or she will have these women to look up to. They will show Peeper what it means to be a woman. I couldn’t think of better examples. I thought the same thing at my previous shower in Eugene. How lucky am I?

Baby showers are so often a punch line. They’re what women supposedly drag themselves to in order to ooh and ahh over diaper pyramids. They’re meant to be venues for ridiculous games (like figuring out what kind of candy is melted in a diaper—yuck) and froo froo baby outfits. But from the showers I’ve been to, and the two that were thrown from me, this isn’t what showers are about.

To me, a baby shower is a chance to soak up wisdom from your women friends. From conversations at showers, I’ve learned about the best (and cheap) nursing tank tops from Target and how to soothe babies with the 5 s’s.

Perhaps more important that practical knowledge, I’ve gained a sense of complete support. I can call new mom friends for camaraderie and the assurance that whatever I’m feeling is completely normal. I can ask women of my mom’s generation for the knowledge that my child will grow out of the phase making me want to cry, scream or collapse at a given moment. And I can rely on my non-mom friends to remind me that there is a world beyond diapers, pacifiers and sleep schedules.

So thank you to all of you ladies who came to my showers. Thank you for so much more than the adorable onesies and receiving blankets you gave us. Thank you for being there for me, for celebrating with me, for making me feel like I have the support to withstand anything.

Last weekend I spent a wonderful few days visiting friends (including the intrepid toddler Tai, who led me to relive childhood memories at OMSI) in Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.

When I arrived Friday shortly after 9, I took Finn for a walk in the dark.

As he sniffed at scents left by critters and other dogs, I listened to the chorus of frogs croaking in the creek leading to Lake Cushman. Reminded of Peeper’s namesakes, I touched my belly.

About six months ago, Eric and I heard a similar cacophony of frogs while on a walk at the Sandy River Delta, a 1,400-acre park where dogs can run off leash, sprint in the sand and roll in mud pits. I had recently taken a third pregnancy test—better safe than sorry, especially when you’re peeing on sticks from the Dollar Store—and we were giddy but grappling with the knowledge we’d soon become parents.

One of the first orders of business, of course, was what to call the bun in the oven. “Blastocyst” and “embryo” just don’t have a nice ring to them. “Baby” is serviceable but somewhat impersonal. For a while we used “Appleseed,” the size of the wee one at five weeks.

As we were talking at Sandy River, a tiny frog hopped across the path in front of us. And it made sense: We’d call the baby Peeper.

In my family, we call little frogs peepers, after the sound they make. Ryan lore recounts the time my older sister and brother, then barely older than toddlers, crossed the highway where we lived in South Dakota in search of the bulgy-eyed creatures. My parents were terrified when they learned, of course, but it makes me smile to think of children’s obliviousness. “What? We were just catching some peepers.”

I love that our little one’s nickname carries family history, even if no one else outside the Ryan clan knows what a peeper is. Better yet, it is a history that entails innocence, mischief and adventure.

I feel even closer to our Peeper whenever I hear frogs singing to each other. Out in the dark in the Olympic Peninsula, with my belly growing bigger and Peeper’s arrival growing closer, I couldn’t wait to meet our little frog.

There’s something about a pregnant belly that acts as an advice magnet. Women seem to want to share their thoughts on best practices on everything from prenatal nutrition (the dangers of soy; the benefits of powdered gelatin) to how to pick a preschool.

It must be testament to the incredible women who surround me that so far, all the advice I’ve received has been helpful or, at the least, mostly free from judgment. (What advice, good or offensive or ridiculous, have you heard?)

The other day my boss recommended I bring a bottle of my favorite beer to the hospital when I go into labor. There’s nothing like cracking open a cold one after the arduous work of delivery, she said,  especially after nine months of teetotaling. And supposedly the barley used to make beer stimulates milk production. Although I have to double-check this with our midwife, I’ve been having fun fantasizing about which of Oregon’s renowned microbrews I’d bring. (I’m thinking an amber… anyone have suggestions?)

At the baby shower my mom threw me, my mother-in-law advised me to let Peeper get dirty and eat worms. As I skew toward the hippie side of the scale, this won’t be a problem for me, but her wishes that her grandchild be a bug-eating, dirt-smeared kid made me love her all the more.

The best advice I’ve received so far, though, came from another writer whom I interviewed for a story in Glamour. Gabrielle Glaser’s forthcoming book Her Best-Kept Secret made her the perfect source for my article, and she regaled me with researched anecdotes about Prohibition and her time as a reporter for The Oregonian. She wrote me an email the other day asking how my pregnancy was coming along and shared this story:

“When I was nine months pregnant I lived in London and was waddling to the pool every day. Women felt compelled to tell me their horror stories. A lovely Jamaican woman listened quietly as they carried on, then came up to me and said, ‘Don’t you worry, darlin’, you’re going to have an easy time.’ I was so happy I hugged her in my wet suit. And it dawned on me: Everyone in this musty locker room was born. Everyone everywhere has been born!”

Everyone everywhere has been born.

EVERYONE EVERYWHERE HAS BEEN BORN!

I’m thinking of making this motto into a poster and packing it, along with clothes and camera chargers and a coming home outfit for the Peeper, in my hospital bag. I can hang it in the room where I’ll be delivering. When labor is toughest, when I’m most scared, when my mind can’t get around the insane physics of birth, I’ll remember Gabrielle’s revelation.

Somehow, Peeper will get born. Precisely how doesn’t matter. And that is immensely comforting.

Last week, my coworker Stephanie and I were at David Douglas High School recruiting sophomores to apply for the college access program where we work. Even when it’s not being thrown at us (seriously, this has happened to both me and Stef), the lunches tend to horrify me. Students eat corn chips with a mountain of orange cheese-goo or nothing but chicken nuggets and call it a square meal.

As time wore on, and it got farther and farther from the last time I ate, the smells wafting from the industrial kitchen became sublime.

I smelled tater tots.

They looked tasty, too, all crunchy and golden in their tiny paper boats. I wanted to nab one from the students or ask the super-nice lunch ladies for my own serving.

I didn’t join the lunch queue that day, but my craving didn’t subside. So when some friends came over Friday night, I decided to whip up some homemade tots.

The internet let me down in terms of recipes, so I made one up. (Well, as much as you can call my laziness in terms of measuring a “recipe.” I tend to just dump in a bit of this and that.) The quantities below would make about one sheet of tots – enough for 2-3 people, probably. I doubled it and the four of us ate almost all the tots. (Well, two of us were pregnant, but still.) I served it with these amazing black bean burgers.

So. Go, make these. I dare you not to nom them like a pregnant lady.

Catherine’s Not-Cafeteria Tater Tots

Ingredients:

2 large potatoes
A few dashes of milk or milk substitute
Cheddar cheese – about ½ cup grated
Salt and pepper to taste
1 egg
Panko bread crumbs (about 1 ½ cups should be enough, but have more on hand in case you need additional)
Nutritional yeast (approx. 1/8 cup)
Seasonings – I used a Mexican spice blend, but you could just as well go with chana masala and cumin, or an Italian blend. You could also mix up the basic potatoes by adding diced jalapeno, for example.

1. Cut the potatoes into 1-inch chunks and boil until fork-tender. Drain. Mash them with a splash of milk but leave them a bit dry – don’t let them get soupy or overly smooth or else you’ll have a hard time forming them into balls. Let the potatoes cool.
2. Grate the cheese coarsely. Mix in the potatoes. Salt and pepper to taste.
3. Break the egg into a bowl and whisk it until the yolk and white are blended. In a different bowl, mix the panko, nutritional yeast and seasoning. Spray a cookie sheet with oil and set aside. Preheat the oven to 350.
4. Scoop about a tablespoon of potatoes (I use a melon baller for this and it’s perfect!) and roll it between your palms, making a ball. Dip the ball into the egg to coat. Roll the ball in the panko mix to coat. Place the ball onto the cookie sheet.
5. Continue until you’ve used all the potato mixture. You might need to mix up more panko crust.
6. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes, flipping the tots halfway through. Then eat up!

With some of the requirements for medical visits during pregnancy, I want to remind the practitioners who they’re dealing with: namely, pregnant women. (Case in point: When I went in for each of our two ultrasounds, the nurse told me to drink 32 ounces of water an hour before the exam—and. not. pee. Trust me, the fear of accidentally wetting yourself puts a slight damper on the excitement of seeing your baby for the first time.)

Another example: the glucose tolerance test, which screens for gestational diabetes. When I went in a few weeks ago for this test, I was asked to fast so they could draw my blood at the beginning of my three-hour appointment to check my fasting glucose levels. It’s dangerous to get between a hormonal, hungry pregnant lady and her meals, so I’m surprised I don’t hear of more confrontations over this.

After skipping breakfast and my usual mid-morning snack, I chugged a small bottle of artificial juice that had enough sugar in it to give Michelle Obama conniptions. It tasted like the fruit punch we used to drink at elementary school birthday parties—the kind that comes in clear gallon jugs and stains your upper lip a color found nowhere in nature.

So it’s little wonder that I nearly fainted during my second blood draw. I get light-headed and weak-kneed just thinking about that first prick (or really anything taking my blood—mosquito bites swell up huge on me and take weeks to heal, and I battled dozens of land leeches sucking at my ankles when I went camping in Thailand). But after eating no food, then drinking more sugar than I’d have in a week, that second vial nearly did me in.

As I sat with my head between my knees, I began to cry. It seemed absurd that tears would be my reaction. I was embarrassed. When I finally wobbled back to my seat, I hoped no one noticed my watery eyes and the Kleenex crumpled in my palm.

Later, after a lunch at the Whole Foods next door, I still felt out of sorts. I felt depleted, like blood wasn’t the only thing I’d lost.

I realized that the screening test wasn’t the only overwhelming part of my marathon midwife visit. During the appointment, a midwife, social worker and facilitator encouraged me and about ten other pregnant women to discuss different concerns that come up late in the second trimester.

How will breastfeeding fit into your lifestyle? Hopefully not painfully.

Have you selected a pediatrician? Baby isn’t born yet. He needs a doctor already?

Who will join you in the delivery room? Oh man, I have to make sure my mom and mother-in-law don’t take their lack of an invite personally.

What sort of contraception will you use after the baby arrives? I have trouble imagining what life will be like in another few weeks, let alone months from now. You’re asking me to think about condoms and IUDs?

I half-expected them to ask which preschool we’d be sending Peeper to.

I felt swamped by enormity of the steps we needed to tackle yet had hardly considered. I was unprepared to confront such important topics that seemed a lifetime away, much less on a brain buzzed with artificial sugar.

My friends, with and without little ones, have kindly reassured me that trepidations of having an actual baby (as opposed to a cute bump) are normal. Thank goodness for their support and understanding.

Yet I wonder why it should be so hard to imagine life with Peeper. Eric and I thought and talked for years before making the decision to start a family. We both want this so much that words fail. But making the transition from pregnant lady to mother short-circuits my imagination.

Since that sugar-hazy day at the midwife’s, the questions they posed make me less panicky. I haven’t felt like fainting since then, either, thank goodness. But completely reasonable inquiries from friends and family, like if we’ve set up a crib yet, have a similar effect: I start to sweat and the periphery of my vision goes a little dark. We haven’t figured these things out already, a fast-talking whisper staccatos in my brain, so what if we completely forget something important? What if we don’t do all the must-dos the books and web sites list? What if we don’t even realize we’re supposed to do something?

What if?