Quincy, 1 month

Quincy, Quinca-roo, Quincer, Stretchy, Milkyface, Junior -- Happy one month birthday and welcome to the blog!

I fear that I will not be able to do as much writing about you as I did about your older brother -- you can blame him for replacing my writing time with LEGO time, puzzle time and arguing about eating lunch time.

But back to you. You arrived one month ago via the traditional exit a mere 12 minutes before your scheduled eviction. Everyone was shocked having resigned ourselves to a second c-section. 7lbs 12oz, 21 inches long, perfect.

You came out of the womb looking like your daddy -- so says almost everyone. I imagine it must be true even though I can’t really see it. I was similarly unable to see people’s claims that your brother looks like me. But you have blond hair and eyebrows and a round head so it is likely that a fair bit of daddy genes are shining through.

I’m happy to report that even though you were a real wild man in the womb now that you’re out you are a relatively chill baby. You don’t mind being left by yourself in your crib or bouncer and when you cry it’s almost always because you need something obvious. Mostly you need milk. But it also seems much of your crying is directly related to a need to burp, fart or poop. The cries are often preceded by long annoyed grunts which can go on for hours especially at night. I feel almost as bad for you as I do for my sleepy self.

You are already the king of spitting up. I know this usually peaks around 4 months which is horrifying considering the volume of spit up that you already produce.

Your brother loves to ‘nuggle us both -- sliding in under my arm on one side of me and reaching his own arm over your back as you sleep on my chest. He likes to trace your ears and tell me how small they are. On the day you were born he announced that your name would be Dinosaur Robot and he continues to bring this up a month later, thinking it a much better name than Quincy. He tell me how much he loves you on a daily basis. He also did your immune system the favor of bringing home your first cold before you were even a month old so you have a sad hacking cough that bothers mom much more than it seems to bother you or the doctor. So far so good on that big brother thing.

I am afraid of doing too much comparing of you and your brother but it’s difficult because he is my only other baby data point. So. You are calmer (we have almost never had to take you into the bathroom to chill out to the soothing sounds of the vent). You are fairer. You are less worried over. You are less photographed.  You at bigger (94th percentile for height!).

I am calmer. I almost never get up to check your breathing. I'm less sure that there is a method to baby madness and less inclined to google every whimper grunt or cry. I've learned that most of the time the answer to "Why is my baby _________?!?!?!?" is "Babies: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

I am also less overwhelmed and surprised by my love for you. Before you were born I had the usual second time mom concerns that I could not possibly love you as much as I loved Casper or that I would somehow love Casper less. But none of those fears have come to pass. You are both loved equally and more than I could have ever imagined.

Thoughts On The Infant Invasion

2011 is the year I buy onesies in bulk. The year of diaper cakes. The year I finally get to feel up all of my friends bellies. The year I try not to freak out over the baby invasion upon my shores.

This is not the first time that the infant army has crawled towards me but the procreation waves that crested when I was a young adult never felt threatening. Many of my acquaintances did me the favor of having kids really early so that I in no way had to question my life choices. I was perfectly comfortable with my decision not to have children in my early 20s so that I could focus on the really important things like watching The Gilmore Girls and developing a finely honed appreciation for cheeses. I knew that there was plenty of time for babies. But this new onslaught of birthing hangs like that picture of Uncle Sam pointing menacingly at me promising that I too must now go to war.

Last month I turned 33 cementing the fact that if I ever become a mother it will be at a later age than when my own mother birthed her first child (me). “Mom was 32 when she had me.” was always my internal mantra -- translation: “No need to worry! You’re not old yet! The eggs are fine!!!!” I’m officially past due on my #1 excuse for being fancy free and childless..... now what?

The problem is that when you’re 23 and thinking about having a baby you have no idea what you’re doing. You think babies are cute and obviously you’ll love it and everything will be awesome. At 33 you’re almost too well informed to ever consider actually having a child. Occasionally it will not be cute. You will not always love it. Everything will not be awesome. When you’re a knocked up 16 year old and MTV is at your door with a herd of video cameras everyone knows that this baby is going to ruin you life. When you’re 33 and staring at the cute designer jeans that you’ll never fit into ever again you have to absorb the knowledge that this baby is going to ruin your life all by yourself

The project manager in me is obviously freaking out. After all, I’m late! Worse than that If I don’t have a baby in the next say.... 3 years? NO BABIES FOR ME. What biology doesn’t understand is that I need more time. More time to sleep until 10am. More time to enjoy my (by no means perfect but still totally nice and mostly flat) stomach. And someone else I know? Someone with half the ingredients needed for baby making tucked away somewhere in his corpus? That dude needs a lot more time.

I can’t blame G for putting things off. I know exactly how trying to get pregnant is going to go. That is going to be an awesome time for my baby daddy. “Better get it up and do your job or I will take you off this project!” (ROMANCE!!!!!) Secondly, God is for sure going to fuck with me. He’ll be all “Oh-ho-ho! Look who wants a baby inside her NOW. Why it’s Lil Miss ‘Please God do not let me get pregnant!’ Oh how the tides have turned!” And so then it’ll be at least 3 exhausting months of freaking out and reversing all of those prayers and spiritually eating my words.

It does not help that everyone makes babies sound like demon spawn. In addition to obvious crap that sucks like never sleeping and touching someone else’s poop apparently moms can also look forward to boobs that hurt so much that you cry for hours, weeks of depression caused by hormones up and leaving you without warning and never ever looking hot ever again because your whole body is stretched out and ugly. It’s hard to look at that list and think “sign me up!”

I’ve always taken warnings at face value. “Drugs are bad.” So I didn’t do drugs. “Sex will ruin your life.” So I was a virgin until 24. “Babies are hard.” So here I am. I’m sure all of the parents out there and the entire Christian Right is thrilled to see me lumping children in with drugs and sex but you have to admit that I have a point -- all three seem to offer unconditional love but often they just make you their slave.

So do I want a baby? Too many people never really ask themselves that question. Thanks to biology or society or poetry we just assume that love->marriage->baby in a baby carriage. When love can just as easily point to trips around the world or a shared appreciation for bourbon or leisurely weekend mornings sans a soundtrack of Dora the Explorer. I suppose after these paragraphs of whining it seems like I must want (or at least deserve) to be childless, but truthfully I have always loved children. I don’t get bored talking about the milestones of month 4. I sometimes watch Sesame Street all by myself. I’ve always clicked with kids, always wanted at least one of my own someday. But the idea that “someday” is almost here has me suddenly indecisive. So I weigh the options, consider the risks, hem, haw, but it never feels like I come any closer to confidence. Even the most well researched act of procreation will still require a leap of faith. Can someone give me a push?

My Biological Clock has Cold Feet

Despite my acute fear of getting knocked up I have always loved kids and though I was never one of those girls who listed "Mom" as my life's ambition (in fact I spent a good year mocking my brother because his pat 5 year old answer to "what do you want to be when you grow up?" was "A dad!" which, while cute was also ripe for 8 year old sister ridicule.) I did always think that I eventually wanted to reproduce if only because taking myself out of the gene pool could be considered an unfair attack on the future of the human race. You gotta respect the need of Darwinian evolution but as the expiration date on my ovaries looms I find myself more and more interested in selfishly spending all of what might have been diaper money on lavish vacations and booze (Ok, fine, we're not expiring over here. I'm 30, I know I have time but at most I have what? 7 years? 8? Honestly I think I need at least 10 just to mentally prepare for routinely having to get up before 8am on a Saturday).

Throughout high school and college I had reoccurring paranoid dreams about finding out I was 6 months pregnant the dreams appropriately ended with some serious freaking out and/or crying an/or getting grounded. My faith in birth control must have increased over the past few years because my dreams have ceased to resemble a surreal after school special despite a welcome upturn in activity likely to invite babies to my womb. But Monday night, deep in REM, my subconscious dreamed up a new version on the surprise bundle of horror craziness. In the dream I was happily going about my life when I suddenly remembered "Oh shit! I told Kajal I'd have twin babies for her and now I'm 4 months preggers!" Dream Brianna was deservedly annoyed with her expanding belly but in a striking bout of optimism decided that "at least I can go off birth control, it's probably bad for the babies anyway." Sadly, in the world of nightmares it turns out the you can get EXTRA PREGNANT and I quickly found out that in addition to Kajal's 6 month old twin fetuses my body was also home to a 3 month old fetus of my very own meaning I would be pregnant for an extra 3 months AND have to be a mom. Total bummer.

I never went through the all too common liberal college student "maybe I won't procreate at all!" stage. When friends would cringe at the possibility of crying and diapering and overpopulation I would counter with adorable baby shoes and reminders that babies grow up to be kids who will totally do chores for much less than minimum wage. I have always been the first person to volunteer for babysitting gigs or hanging out at the kids table and even today I can't help but dote on my niece to the point where my boyfriend occasionally feels a certain amount of present neglect come birthday season (things might improve if he'd just warm up to the concept of frilly dresses...). My deep desire to (someday) have kids has often made me super stressed out about my proverbially single status. I once even had a long phone conversation with my mother about how I would probably have to adopt a baby on my own since my poor sad pathetic whiny ass would never ever ever find a boy to lover her. I was 24 so you can understand my concern (I believe this was the same year that my EIGHTEEN YEAR OLD cousin commented that she thought it was sad that I would never have kids. You know, because I was a dried up old hag).

These days I know a lot of new mommies all of whom, unlike the mommies I knew in high school, are having bundles of joy under socially acceptable circumstances and their babies are cute and not on food stamps and very rarely annoying. My baby love has not waned and I love spending an hour or so eating their bellies and making monster faces until they giggle, but, unlike all of the babies I've thought about in my years of paranoia and day dreaming... these babies are REAL. Watching close friends of mine go through pregnancy and birth and motherhood has made the idea of babies suddenly very daunting. There came a point 7 months or so into one friend's pregnancy when I suddenly realized "Oh! She's going to have a baby! And it's going to be around all of the time. FUCK." This is when the new and improved freaking out started.

It's not that I no longer peer into my future and smile at the idea of a little blond haired terror of my own, it's that the future is coming at me at warp speed. The irony of waiting for babies until you're financially and emotionally ready is that when one really starts to think seriously about the reality of babies it becomes clear that no one in their right mind is EVER ready for this insanity. I'm convinced that almost all babies are born out of ignorance or denial. As far as I can tell the "Where to babies come from?" monologue should be edited so that it reflects reality:

When two people love each other very much and they pray really hard they slowly lose their minds and then they decide to go off of birth control and bring a child into the world. This child will make them stay home every night and spend all of their money on tiny spit up rags and environmentally conscious diapers and breast pumps and these two people will never again have a good excuse to spend $150 on one sushi dinner.