And...we're back. I think.

Hello Blogo-universe!!!

It's me, Jo. Single mom to O, now 3.3 years old. Here we are during a recent trip to California (we still live on the East Coast while mama Jo hopes that one day we'll make it back to Cali for good).

So, yes. My blog identity went to sleep for the past 2 years. I didn't even look at a *single* blog. Hmmm...Something about all my mental, physical, and emotional energy focused on well, the obvious? Blogging for me during the "thinking" and then "trying" stage was very important. I valued the community it created so much, and I often credit my blogging experience as partially responsible for my decision to go-for-it and have a baby on my own. When I started blogging I *literally* thought I might be the only one. Hilarious, right? Within a day I was assured that not only was I not the only woman out there with this "dilemma", but that I had a lot to learn from many, many others who had gone before me. When I wrote my first blog post I was completely unsure of what I would do. Nine months after my first blog post, I was pregnant.

So SMC blog world, I really do love you! 

Just recently, I started reading blogs again. Now that I am mothering, my issues and questions and problems are totally different....known donor relationships, logistics (and logistics and logistics...), career guilt, bad parenting decisions, finances (oh lordy)..SCHOOLS?....And all of a sudden, I was like: HELP! I've made it past the physical endurance of the infant stage and the mental endurance of age 2, and now, I need to TALK ABOUT ALL OF THIS! Where is my community?

I still struggle with community in my current city (the topic of many future posts, I am sure). My parenting friends are all coupled-up and while I do have one (or two) closer friends, let's face it, my  issues are DIFFERENT. In some ways, I've become so good at "hiding" my unique situation--the word would be normalizing it I guess--that many of my friends and colleagues don't even see me as "different" any more. I know I've purposely created that, and I wouldn't really want it another way, but the result is that I don't really talk about the issues unique to my situation with, well, anyone.

Well, hello SMC bloggers--- gee whiz, but aren't there a lot of you out there with the SAME issues and questions and problems! Why am I surprised yet a a second time??  Ladies, I have to say, thank you again.

Life with my little man O is totally amazing--he is loving, smart, and very funny. And crazy challenging. And yet to sum up the challenges in this first "I'm back" email would be so fruitless. The challenges are awesome, and the rewards are awesome. Life is so completely altered and I am so completely altered. And yet in many ways my struggles are still the same and my successes are still the same.

I wouldn't trade a single day.

Hope to see more of you all soon!

9 months

Hi everyone---yep, I'm not blogging much anymore. But check out my other blog for some recent pics of O.

mmmmmmm---baaa!

Hello there! Long time no post! It's been a crazy fall so far...I started back to work full time in mid August, and O started at his new daycare center. We both promptly got sick within two weeks and it lasted FOR AN ENTIRE MONTH. It was pretty hellish. Who knows what it was, but I guess we passed it back and forth at least once between us, maybe twice. We have both now had TWO rounds of antibiotics, O for an ear infection, and me for a nasty throat infection (undiagnosable). Haven't been that sick since I was a teenager. Thankfully O didn't get as sick as I did, but he was pretty uncomfortable. Yep. It's hard taking care of an infant when you have a fever and a really, I mean really bad sore throat. Somehow I survived (and somehow only took 1/2 day off work through all this---I know, not good for me to go to work but I just couldn't take time off after JUST returning!)...and the good news is, it's been one week now since we are both feeling better. Lemme tell ya, it went on long enough I almost thought it would never end. Knock on wood! People keep telling me that this is what the first year of daycare is like. Year? Year?

Through it all, O has been the best little trooper. He is totally thriving, loving daycare, doing all the things 7 month-olds are supposed to do. He's almost 20 lbs, sitting up, rolling around. Not crawling, and no teeth. I'm sure it will happen soon enough. He cracks me up all the time. He is currently trying out the "b" and "d" sounds...a wonderful, babbly "mmmmba" and "mmmmda". I wish I could listen to that sound, which is just so beautiful and pure, every time I feel even the slightest bit sad, angry, or tired. It makes me happy on a level I didn't even know was possible.

Happy Fall everyone!

The Reveal

So the big news, I guess, is that I told my family the identity of my known donor.

All of my fears, whatever they were, and however unfounded, were completely for naught! First of all, my second brother, the one who knows the donor from college, had completely guessed about a year ago. Apparently he put two and two together (my known donor has a blog--it's a picture blog, very different from this type of blog, but nevertheless apparently he posted a picture of my cat...in my condo...about around the time of conception.). Ha. My parents had also narrowed it down to one of two guys. They were pretty sure it was who it was...I guess I don't have THAT many close male friends who I talk about with family (known donor is one of them). The most surprised was my oldest brother and his wife. Probably because they just hadn't thought about it very much.

So now that the word is out it seems a much much better route than the secrecy! Everyone was extremely happy to know and it was all kind of matter of fact...no one even had any probing questions for me. Knowing my beautiful baby boy is enough, I guess. And I agree.

And it's also helping me to conceptualize the future with O and his donor daddy. I hope to reveal DD's identity fairly early on, and for him and his bio relationship to O to be known to O. This is really what I wanted all along, and why I went with a known donor in the first place. So I am hoping that will work out. For now, to the questions from other kids I will reply with the simple answer of "O's dad doesn't live with us," or something like that, and leave it at that (THANKS everyone for the comments on that---it was so helpful). Interestingly, O's 4 year old nephew didn't seem the least bit interested in whether O had a dad. I think because he's always just known me as Aunt Jo (alone Aunt Jo), it doesn't occur to him that there would be someone else involved. Ah, yes. One of the benefits of having been single since before he was born. :)

The rest of my vacation in western NY state was wonderful. O was surrounded by absolutely adoring family every day. I wish I could provide that for him all the time. I mean, I'm adoring, of course. But there's only one of me.

For pics and cuteness, see my other blog!

Cheating

I've been cheating on this blog a bit with another blog. I started a blog to update my family on the daily mundane developments of O. I didn't want my family to have access to THIS blog, because it's kinda personal. And I talk about them a lot. But in the meantime I've been spending more time posting to that blog. It's really mostly a picture blog and a daily diary.

But here I am. Things are awesome! Owen is 12 weeks old today! He is such a chub, and such a delight. We have daily conversations in his native baby tongue about all kinds of subjects. I still have another month and a half until I go back to work, but it feels like it's winding down. I just want to hang on to every day and moment with my BABY. I still can't believe sometimes that I HAVE A BABY.

The interesting news is that the donor daddy paid a visit and it went really well. He is a very sweet man and I hope he will be a gentle presence in O's life. In what capacity, exactly, still remains to be seen. We talk a lot about that, and I talk with friends and my therapist about it, but it just doesn't seem to be the kind of thing you can DECIDE in a black and white way..more of a journey. My main concern is and will always be O's well being. I don't want donor daddy to be in his life one minute and then disappear the next. My main focus is that if he DOES want to see O (which he says he does), he'll have to prove some level of commitment to that over a period of several years before I even begin to think about revealing to O that he is biologically related. Does that make sense? Maybe I should never reveal it! I don't know. But the reason I went for the known donor equation was so the my child would be able to know his bio dad some day, in some way. The question I suppose is whether I reveal it or I wait for O to want to know himself.

I am realizing that I need to have a "narrative" pretty darn quick, that is, a sentence or two that addresses the daddy question that I am comfortable with. It's not so much that O will be asking soon, but that other children in his life--for instance, his 4 year old cousin--may begin asking. Anything we tell them now will undoubtedly get back to O when he is older. The missing link is just how to describe the known donor's relationship to O (like, whether he isn't like other dads but he cares about your Mommy and you very much), etc.

Finally, I've been pondering revealing his identity to my family. My family knows him, by the way. So I think the reason I feel the yearning to share his identity is so that my family can know O even more fully by knowing more about his other "half." It's one of those things about sharing O's life with other people I love, wanting them to know him in the same way that I do. At the same time, no one in my family has expressed a need to know who the donor is, so I worry about changing the dynamic. Things are going so well!!

Ok, well, difficult topic, difficult questions.

Big Boy

O is growing so fast. He was 7 lbs, 19 inches at birth and at his 8 week appointment he was 12 lbs 10 oz and 24 inches! Oh, my! I am already having trouble carrying him in the car seat. Here's some evidence...at 7 weeks.

We are doing really well. I've had some challenges with O's eating sensitivities and as of last Thursday I am off caffeine. This is monumental for me (I even had a cup of coffee every morning throughout the pregnancy). Beware the uncaffeinated new mom. I am such an addict. .. Anyway, his tummy troubles are obviously not serious, just unpleasant at times (profuse spit-up) but, given the weight gain he's really doing well and thriving in every other way, as well. He is a wonderfully calm little boy. I am so so lucky. On many fronts.

Emotionally, I am also good. I think the hardest thing for me has been something I didn't really think about that much. It's my desire to share this amazing little baby with other people. I think the lack of the partner for me is really a lack of a person to share the beautiful day-to-day developments with. It's so special, so miraculous. I talk to my mom every day, but it's different to experience it, vs. describe it. I've been a bit sad about that...not so much the lack of one particular man, but more generally the isolation of the experience. It's definitely an experience worth sharing.

I have found myself craving my family. My brothers have still not met O, and I am getting really sad (ok, annoyed) about that. One of them will met O in a couple of weeks when I go to Chicago (yay). I have extended several invitations to my oldest brother, and he is trying to figure out when to come (it's taking him long enough). I suppose to other people 2 months isn't a long period, but in my life, and O's life, it's an eternity.

I guess there is a secret fear I harbor that O will somehow notice the lack of family even at this young age. I guess I am projecting...I can give him so much love and I know I'm all he needs right now. It's me who needs the family. I just hope I can provide him with enough love so that he doesn't feel the lack that I do.

I've seen many friends and even been out and about in the evenings and I enjoy it so much, partially because I can see O through other people's eyes as well as my own, and experience my own joy over and over again as others meet him. It's wonderful. I spend most of these encounters beaming. So things are really great. Just missing family close by. I guess I knew that would be hard. And it is. But O keeps me full of happiness every day.

6 week smiles!

Here we are at 6 weeks! Unbelievable!!

The 5th week was really hard. O had some gas issues and cried for a few days inconsolably. They seem to have passed (literally/figuratively ha ha)...or at least he has gotten better at managing them, by which I mean he still has the gas but now knows how to, er, get rid of it. Apparently around this age is when they learn that kind of thing, as in putting together the sensation with what to do with it. Yes, I'm breastfeeding so the question is what is making him gassy? Well it could be near anything. I have a very healthy diet but certainly there is dairy and wheat...all that. Can't imagine having to change everything right now. One thing I've already learned in this 6 weeks is to not jump to conclusions---kind of wait things out, since he is changing every single day and next week, or tomorrow, a problem might resolve itself or a new one might emerge. As I get to know his cries and his reactions it's easier to make the call (at first I wanted to call the pediatrician literally every day!). I'm getting more calm. Although I admit that those inconsolable days were very very hard. I need to have a mantra during those times to get me through. When we come out on the other end feeling happy and adorable (him, not me), it's all worth it and completely amazing. Sometimes I still can't believe I have a wonderful cuddly snuggly baby. I keep saying to people "isn't he the cutest?" which must be a little bit annoying. But I can't help it.

I'm trying to stay active and I'm proud to state the following milestones: breastfeeding in public (check), grocery shopping (check), attending a social event (check), keeping several appointments on time (check), finalizing the day care options (check-ish), beginning to look into babysitters (semi-check). I'm attending a new moms group (fun/helpful), and "mom and baby yoga" and taking an infant massage class (I think the massage has helped his gas). I am so glad to have almost 3 more months at home with this little guy. There is so much bonding yet to be done. Yay.

In mid-May I'm going to Chicago...yes, with the baby. I'm totally nervous about traveling (just think of all the STUFF), but my darling mother has offered to meet me there for child care (it's a work thing--the only obligation I have during my maternity leave). I'm so grateful to her. We'll see how it goes! Any tips for traveling with infants most welcome!

I'm so excited to be following everyone's stories when I can, but not the best commenter these days. xoxo