The job no one prepared you for...

Usually when I write a blog post, I do so over a matter of days or even weeks. (Truthfully, I have at least five posts that I started last summer and intend to finish someday.) I write a beginning or a basic outline, then fill in details and complete sentences over time. Or I write the first half, get distracted, and don't write the second half for a month. After I've finished a rough draft, I wait a few days, then proofread, change a few things, and then post. That's probably why I post so infrequently.

But occasionally, usually after a night of very little sleep, the whole post just comes out at once. This is one of those times. If you find typos or if this post makes no sense... I'm not surprised. Also, maybe don't read this if you're not a mom yet but hope to be someday. You've been warned.

My two children and I have a particularly nasty cold. (My husband Dan is still healthy, and I'm more than a little jealous.) Lucas (almost three years old) has been sick for over two weeks. He's definitely improving, but he has a lingering cough that still wakes him up at night. I got sick a few days ago, and then four-month-old Calista really came down with it yesterday. By last night, she was miserable. I tried for over four hours to get her to sleep. She would doze off in my arms, but as soon as I would put her down, she would wake up coughing and then cry. I tried her crib, her rock and play (which props her up at an angle,) running a humidifier... nothing helped. The only place she could sleep was in my arms. So I finally gave up and let her sleep in my arms. All night long. I'd love to be able to tell you some pretty lie like, "and I cherished every second" or "These fleeting moments of holding my little darling will be gone all too soon, and I know I will miss them with all my soul, so I just gazed at her sweet face, overwhelmed with love and emotion, while a single tear rolled down my cheek." But the truth is that in the middle of the night, I sent Dan (who was working overnight) a text that said:

Dan and I had dinner at a restaurant with some friends the other day. They have two young children under two years old, so combined we had a total of four kids under age three. The other mom and I were talking, and she confessed that she was finding motherhood to be much harder than she'd expected. "You have a nephew who's older, right?" she asked, "So did you kind of know what to expect?"

It's an interesting question, because before I had Lucas, I totally thought that being an aunt to my sister's son gave me the inside scoop on what it was like to have a baby. My nephew was born when I was 15 years old, and I babysat him a fair amount. I have vivid memories of my tiny nephew crying. I would cradle him gently in my arms, nestle his little head under my chin, and pace the floor while crooning in a sing-song voice, "I'm never going to have kids. No, I'm not. No, I'm not. I love you, I love you, but I'm never going to have kids."

Clearly I needed to work on my lullaby skills.

I waited a full 14 years after his birth to start having children of my own, and when I was pregnant with Lucas, I honestly thought I was Prepared with a capital P. Of course it would be hard. Sure, I'd be tired, But I had experience. I wasn't going in blind like some moms. I knew what to expect.

Poor, naive Bethany.

Not the same thing. At all.

It turns out that there's really no way to be truly, fully prepared for what it's like to have little lives literally dependent on you for survival while you're sleep-deprived and overwhelmed and sure you're screwing everything up. I'm sure there are levels of preparedness. Someone who's worked as a nanny for ten years is likely more prepared for motherhood than someone who has never held a real baby, for example, but it's still hard. And I think it's important to know is that it's hard for everyone. That all the other moms aren't just sailing along, doing the easiest job they've ever done, while you're hiding under your covers crying and eating chocolate.

I tell you this because I know moms who genuinely fear that they are the only one with these struggles. The only mom who has no idea what she's doing. The only mom whose toddler throws twenty-minute-long tantrums. The only mom who is really, really cranky after she's been up all night. The only mom who periodically sends her husband or best friend text messages that say "I'm going to run away and join the circus." So I want to be sure that you know that it's a tough job. For all of us.

Don't get me wrong - there are moments that are so wonderful that I cry. (Although, to be fair, I cry a lot in general.) Lately, Lucas has taken to telling me, "you're the sweetest girl in the whole world," and "you're the best mommy in the whole world," and, "I pick you, Bethany." (I'm not entirely sure what that last one means, but it sounds sweet when he says it.) But it's tough. And when you see other moms (me, for example) post pictures like this on Facebook:

you might be tempted to think, "She has it all together. This is a totally accurate portrayal of her life: two smiling, cooperative children posing sweetly on a floor that is not covered in Cheerios in front of toys that are actually put away." But the only reason you would think that is because I didn't take the time to caption the photo as follows: "This picture was taken on day two of the plague. It was sandwiched in between Lucas screaming for a tissue and spilling cough medicine all over the floor. The Cheerios are on the living room carpet."

So if you're having a rough day or week or... decade, please know that you're not alone and that it definitely doesn't mean that you're failing as a mom. You can do this. But if you find yourself Googling "circus job openings" at 2am, I promise I won't judge you.

Six ways I've found caring for my second baby to be easier than caring for my first

A while back, a post I wrote about seven things you should do before you have your first child was published on Scary Mommy. The first time it was shared on the Scary Mommy Facebook page, I got a lot of positive comments and also some negative comments that were like, "why would you scare expectant moms like this? It's not helpful! It just scares them! You're a jerk! A pox upon your house!!" (Ok, maybe nobody actually said that last part. Whatever.) The Scary Mommy Facebook page recently promoted that post again, so I've got some new readers from there, and just to show that I do have positive things to say about having a new baby, here's an encouraging post about why you might find having a second child to be easier than having your first. Now STOP POXING MY HOUSE!

1. I knew what to expect.
I'm not sure anything can really prepare you for what it will be like to have a newborn for the first time. It's emotional and exhausting and nerve wracking. Before Lucas, I knew I'd be tired when he was a baby, but I had no idea how tired. I knew I'd be stressed, but I didn't realize how poorly I'd cope with even small stressors on such little sleep and while all ramped up on hormones. This time around, Dan and I pretty much just said to each other, "So... the first few months are going to be pretty rough. We've done this before. We will survive. Go team!"

Team More Naps!

2. I was already used to not getting much sleep.
Before I got pregnant with Lucas and through most of my pregnancy, I worked as a substitute teacher. I always had weekends off and could sleep in until noon if I wanted to (and I often wanted to.) I didn't work every day, and even when I was called in, I could say no to a job if I wasn't feeling well. After work, I could nap on the couch. Nobody was waking me up early or keeping me up late or needing to be nursed every three hours all night. So I was pretty used to being well rested when Lucas arrived. And, um, that was a rude awakening. Literally and figuratively. But this time around, I'm already used to waking up early and functioning like a normal human being on not much sleep. This may not sound like a good thing, but trust me, it is. There's less culture shock.

They don't really sleep like this.
Hopefully you had guessed that already, though.

3. My second has had no choice but to get used to noise and to sharing me with another child.
When Lucas was a baby, Dan and I would literally tiptoe around the house while he was napping. We lived in a house with wood floors, and I genuinely considered marking the "safe" spots (aka, the floor boards that didn't creak) on the floor with masking tape so we knew where we could step while Lucas was sleeping. True story. The only reason I didn't do it was because we ended up moving when Lucas was four months old, and our current house has carpet and fewer creaky boards.

Then Calista was born when Lucas was two and a half. And apparently you can't convince a toddler to be completely silent while his newborn sister is sleeping. So Calista has slept through all kinds of noise from day one. A few weeks ago, I took my kids to a friend's house for a play date. Calista fell asleep on the car ride over and was sound asleep when we got to their house. The child slept in the same room where the kids were playing for the entire two-hour play date. No joke, at one point, the other kids decided to play musical instruments, and there were two toddlers and a preschooler banging on drums, xylophones and bells less than a foot away from her head. She didn't even move. I felt like I should enter her in a talent show as "the baby who can sleep through anything." She could just sleep on stage while the audience applauded and cheered. It would be an extremely boring act.

Calista sleeping at the zoo.
Later, Lucas fell in a toilet.

4. I trust myself more.
With Lucas, I spent a lot of time worrying that I wasn't doing things exactly right. Was he too hot, too cold, too tired, too overstimulated, too understimulated, overfed, underfed, getting enough tummy time, meeting every milestone at the EXACT second the books said he should??? It was a lot to worry about. Every month, I would pick up the book "What to Expect: The First Year" and dutifully read the whole chapter on what he should be doing that month. But I ended up figuring out my child and what worked (and didn't work) for him in large part by instinct. And I realized that I could totally do this mommy thing.

With Calista, I forgot I even owned the "What to Expect" book until she was over three months old. Then I kind of skimmed the three month chapter, got bored, and put it back on the shelf. If she needs something, I can tell, and I trust that my instincts with her are right. It's a very comfortable feeling.

This picture is just cute. Carry on.

5. I've got the right stuff, and I know how to use it.
The first time you try to put on a Moby wrap, it's really hard. Same for the second time. And the third time. But the 14th time? You feel like maybe you're getting the hang of it. And by the time you put it on with your second child, you could practically do it in your sleep. Except not really, because you have to do it standing up, and you probably can't sleep standing up, so never mind. The point I'm making is that you figure out what products you like and how to use them with baby number one, and then when baby number two comes along, you already own them and have used them enough to make them easy.

The same goes for breastfeeding. With Lucas, I spent a lot of time worrying about if I was doing it right and whether he was getting enough. But after nursing Lucas for over 16 months, I can just latch Calista on and carry on about my day. I'm even a pro at nursing her while walking around. It's a gift.

I'm so good at putting on the Moby that I got Lucas his own, kid-sized Moby.

6. I know from experience that things will get better.
I am almost positive that with Lucas I uttered the words "I am never going to be able to sleep again as long as I live" on more than one occasion. He was a horrendous sleeper until he was about nine months old, and I was sure I would be sleep-deprived for my whole life. Now that Calista is here, I get even less sleep than I did with Lucas (since she goes to bed late and wakes up to eat throughout the night and he wakes up early,) but I'm much less stressed about it. She'll sleep when she sleeps. I've survived cluster feeding, teething and potty training before, and I'll survive them again. Once you've handled the common baby "problems" and then left them in the dust, it's easier to recognize that they're temporary when you experience them the second time around.

The first time I took both kids to church by myself. A full two thirds of us did not cry!

So there you go, six ways my second baby has been easier than my first. If you have more than one child, have you found these to be true for you?


If you don't currently follow me on Facebook or Instagram, you totally should. I say lots of stuff. Some of it's funny.

Introducing the newest love of my life

It's been a while since I've posted, but I have a good excuse. We have a little girl!! Meet my new little darling, Calista.

I had great intentions of announcing this sooner, but between staring at my little girl, and recovering from a c-section,

and my blood pressure randomly skyrocketing after she was born to the point that I was diagnosed with postpartum preeclampsia and almost had to be readmitted to the hospital, and trying to figure out how to balance caring for my newborn with giving my precious two-year-old son enough attention,

and nursing, and my OB suspecting that I might have a blood clot and sending me in for a CT scan (no blood clot - whew!), and staring at my little girl some more, and sleep deprivation, well... she's a month old now.

Can we please talk about how much I love these chubby cheeks and thighs? SO much!!
(I guess that was a pretty short conversation.)

Anyway, I have like five half-started posts that I might post someday, but here are some pictures that our friend Rebekah took of our new baby, our first baby, and my love and me.

(In case you want an adorable tutu like this, I bought it here.)

Ta da! My new and improved family!!

So... what's been going on in your life since I've been gone?

Here's what I look like pregnant

Alternate title: I feel like I'm the size of a house.

So, I've been MIA for a myriad of reasons. Vacation, broken laptop, cleaning up more vomit, moving every bed in our house to a different floor, doing very important research into the most delicious brand of mint chocolate chip ice cream (Kroger store brand, for the record)... you know, important things. I actually do have some real live posts in the works, but while you wait for those, I thought I'd share some maternity photos that my good friend Rebekah took a few weeks ago. (These pictures were taken about four weeks ago... when I was feeling slightly less house-ish.)

This is my family. In case you couldn't guess.

I've carried both Lucas and this baby like I'm smuggling a watermelon under my shirt, which of course elicits a lot of ridiculous comments from complete strangers. Because everyone knows that women like nothing better than people she doesn't know making weird remarks about her body.

I have leggings on. I'm not randomly posting bottomless pictures of myself online. This isn't that kind of blog, people.

So far, I've been asked twice to please not give birth in a store, which is a little disappointing, because I had really hoped to bring my child into the world in the plumbing section of Lowe's.

This is my "no, I'm not going to give birth in a store" face.

When I was pregnant with Lucas, Rebekah took this picture of me:

I put Psalm 139:13-16 over it and gave a framed copy to my OB after Lucas was born, and she has it hanging in her office. I knew I wanted to do a similar picture with this pregnancy, but I hadn't given it much more thought than that. But then at one of my OB visits, the nurse pointed at the picture and said "So what are you going to do this time to top that picture?" I told her I wanted to do the same one facing the opposite direction, and she said "Well, I think you need to do it facing the opposite direction, but with Lucas kissing your belly." So, voila! Below is the product of my OB nurse Kara's genius idea, my friend Rebekah's awesome skills, and a toddler who was feeling cooperative.

Also, this:

Anyway, stay tuned for some more posts, but in the meantime, how cute is this child??

If you wanna click below, I won't say no. :)

The one in which I traveled alone with a toddler, Part 2

Ok, so if you haven't read part one of this story yet, stop right now and go read it. I mean it! Why are you still reading this??

To recap, I had flown alone with a toddler who hadn't napped on a flight that was delayed three hours, and then I took a very bumpy bus ride that almost made me barf. Now that we're all caught up... 

We made it to my granddaddy's place around 3:00pm ish (two hours after nap time, which made me decide to just skip it altogether,) and fortunately Lucas was very entertained by my family so that he wasn't too much of a disaster. All things considered, the evening was fun and even (almost) relaxing. I'm going to kind of gloss over that part, though, because "and then we all had a pleasant time" doesn't make for a very interesting story. Instead I'll just show you this picture of my granddaddy holding Lucas.

I got my granddaddy the Christmas tree hat.
Because I give awesomely random gifts.

After dinner and some more family time, my brother Jeremy drove Lucas and me to the hotel, where we had booked a suite so that Jeremy and I could sit up talking after Lucas's 8pm bedtime. Lucas's lack of nap finally caught up with him during the drive, and he fell asleep in about thirty seconds. And then woke up and screamed when I took him out of the car, through the check-in process, and until I finally got him into bed.

When he was finally asleep again, Jeremy and I sat in the kitchen area of the hotel suite talking and eating all of the Christmas cookies I'd brought with me. It was great to spend time with my brother, and it was very relaxing... until Lucas woke up crying around 10pm. I went in to the room just in time to see him throw up all over his pillow and new Christmas pajamas. I took him out of the pack and play, and he threw up all over me. And the floor. And into the sink. And the bathtub. After about ten minutes, he finally stopped vomiting, and I perched on the edge of the bathtub, covered in puke and rocking a naked, crying toddler wrapped in a bath towel, while my wonderful brother tried to clean up all of the vomit. (Naturally, the next day was Christmas, which was the one day that the hotel would not have housekeeping service so the hotel staff could spend Christmas with their families. It's a great policy, but Lucas's timing was really unfortunate.)

I was obviously concerned that Lucas was sick, but once he was done throwing up, he was happy and wanted to play. So we chalked it up to eating unfamiliar food and being off of his schedule, and we hoped that the next morning would prove us right (and would go a little more smoothly.)

The cherry on top of the evening was that even though my period wasn't due for a few more days, I'd been having cramps for a three days, so when I finally managed to fall asleep that night, I did so with the knowledge that I'd probably wake up feeling pretty miserable the next morning. (You'd think I'd feel awkward about sharing that, but it's much less uncomfortable than the things I told you about recovering from a c-section. I'm like a treasure trove of overshares.)

Christmas morning, Lucas was wide awake (and fortunately not at all sick) by 5:45am. My period still hadn't arrived (see? So many overshares.) so I decided to take the pregnancy test I'd thrown into my suitcase at the last minute.

It was positive.

And as I stood there at 6am on Christmas morning, with a wide-awake toddler, in a room that still smelled like vomit, staring at a positive pregnancy test, I happened to glance at the test's wrapper and notice the expiration date... which had passed ten months earlier.

I spent the rest of the day half awake, trying to focus on celebrating Christmas with my family while surreptitiously Googling variations of the phrase "accuracy of expired pregnancy tests" on my phone when no one was looking. I didn't want to call Dan and say "Merry Christmas! I'm pregnant!" if it turned out that I wasn't, but I was also pretty sure that I shouldn't take my aunt up on her offer of a glass of wine at Christmas dinner that night. I briefly considered confiding in my brother or my parents, but I figured that my husband should know before they did... and that I should know for sure first, too.

It wasn't until the next day (after a three-hour car ride with my brother to his house, during which I almost blurted out "I'm pregnant... maybe" 8,347 times) that I managed to sneak away from my family long enough to pick up a box of (non-expired) pregnancy tests.

I was planning to wait and test the next morning, but when I went upstairs to put Lucas to bed in my brother and sister-in-law's guest room, I realized I couldn't wait. So I took a test. And it was positive! For about two minutes, I argued with myself about waiting to tell Dan in person in two days or telling him by phone right now. Then because I'm awful at making decisions, I decided to force him to deciding for me (without him knowing it.) So I sent him a text that said "I got one more Christmas present for you, and I can't decide if I should wait until you're here to surprise you with it or send you a picture of it now." He responded with "Picture!" So I sent him a picture of the pregnancy test next to this onesie (which I had also shoved in my suitcase):

I bought it here, and it says "Dad's Co-pilot,"
which only makes sense if you know that Dan has his private pilot's license.

He immediately called me, of course, and after we had a mini celebration by phone (and a brief moment of "what are we getting ourselves into?") and I told him the whole expired pregnancy test story, he gave me the go ahead to tell my family.

As soon as I got off the phone and put Lucas to bed, I went downstairs and showed my family the onesie, and we all squealed together (well, minus my brother and dad, who aren't really squealers. Actually, my mom and sister aren't really, either. Maybe I'm the only one who squealed. It's hard to say.)

So... that's how I found out I was pregnant with baby number two. "In a hotel room that smelled like puke using an expired pregnancy test" isn't exactly the most sophisticated "and that's how I found out I was going to be your mommy" story to share with my child someday, but it's the only one I've got. And just in case anyone found this post by doing a search for the phrase "how accurate is an expired pregnancy test," apparently an expired test is more likely to give a false negative than a false positive. Just so you know.


The rest of the trip (and the flight home, which was delayed to the point that we were going to miss our connecting flight, so they had to move us to a much later flight, but then we were able to get on an early flight on standby because we were super nice to a Delta employee who thought Lucas was adorable, of course) was an adventure, too, but I may or may not get around to writing about it (especially because I just summed it up right now.) Lucas also got a cold, which was pretty miserable, and I wrote more about that part of the trip here.


Could you click this? Pretty please?

Texts I Sent While Pregnant

As I mentioned the other day, I'm pregnant with our second child! Yay! I'm genuinely excited and happy... but I've also felt pretty lousy. I wrote a whole long post about how bad my morning sickness has been. And then after I spent a ridiculously long time on it, I suddenly remembered that no one wants to read a whole blog post about throwing up. So this is maybe every-so-slightly less gross. You're welcome.

Wanna click this? Well, ok!

So here's what's new with us...

I've abandoned a blog or two for no good reason. But this time, I actually have a legitimate reason for not posting much in the past couple of months. And since a picture is worth a thousand words (even though I'll still probably type a few thousand words on the subject anyway)...

Sometime around September 6, my little man is going to be a big brother! It's not so much that fact (or the adorable shirt, which I bought here, in case you were wondering) that has kept me from blogging. It's the morning (read: all day) sickness and exhaustion. But more on that another day. For today, I would just like to say: Danny and I are very excited (and maybe slightly nervous) to be welcoming a new member to our little family!

At two, Lucas isn't quite old enough to totally understand what's about to happen in his world, but he has decided that the baby in mommy's belly is a girl named "Baby Chippeh." We don't know yet if he's right about it being a girl, but I promise not to name my child Baby Chippeh. You're welcome, baby.

So... that's our news! What's going on in your world?

And since I couldn't pick just one picture...