Dear Paxton and Michael (Balance),

Dear Paxton and Michael,

Growing up, I avoided teeter-totters. They were intriguing, yes, but they were also terrifying. The teeter-totter is all about balance. There is a beautiful moment when you find the person who weighs the exact same as you and you escape into an endless cycle of up/down up/down. Then there is that moment when you weigh slightly more or less than the person on the other side of that long wooden board and you spend countless moments shifting your weight back and forth, in front of the handles, behind the handles, on top of the handles… just to find the balance. The teeter-totter exposes all, it holds no lies. I think I don’t like teeter-totters because I struggle with balance, or maybe it’s because one too many times I’ve been on one when my trusty partner abandoned ship and I came crashing to the ground, feeling my insides lodge somewhere inside my brain and vowing to never get back on that evil ride.

Balance.

Life is like that teeter-totter. It’s constantly adjusting, repositioning, and sometimes it’s abandoning ship to find a new comfort. Our life has been far from balanced for quite some time, but I like to think at one point I had it together a little. We were in a routine, our little family of 3. Our days looked much the same, our nights were somewhat relaxed, our jobs were somewhat predictable (as much so as you can ask when we both are teachers). Up/down up/down. When we found out we were pregnant again, the teeter-totter went haywire. I knew I was going to be sick. I knew it was going to be hard. I knew it was what we wanted, just not anywhere near the time we planned. Neither your daddy or I abandoned ship at anytime, because that’s not like us. We scooted forward, we shifted backwards, we held you both between our teeter-totter praying we could figure it out.

Balance.

I sit here with time ticking away on this maternity leave and I’m bitter. Let me tell you how women envision life right after having a baby. We see laying around in our pajamas with our hair freshly washed, make-up meticulously painted over our dark circles. We see endless snuggles, changing diapers, catching up on all the TV we’ve missed. We see friends and family stopping by to snuggle your baby while we nap, shower, fix dinner. We see a house that is clean because we are home to clean it. Laundry that is done because we are home to do it. A husband that will come home and praise us for all the hard work we’ve been doing, and then take that sweet new bundle out of our hands so we can have some “me” time.

Maternity leave- the truth: The nights are short. Pregnancy prepares you for this because there is no sleeping at the end, but now there is this little life you’ve created that you are also responsible for. This little thing doesn’t sleep through the night right away- or sometimes for a very long time. For someone like me, who takes a long time to fall asleep (my mind never stops) it can be exhausting to feel yourself finally relax enough to sleep and just at that beautiful moment where your eyes become heavy, baby is awake and ready to eat. The diaper changes are often, and they are messy. I still haven’t figured out this whole thing. You know when you go to cross the street and it gives you a flashing hand or the little guy walking to tell you it’s safe to go? I need that for diaper changes. I need to know just how many seconds I have before I’m going to get peed on or projectile pooped on. It’s sleeping on top of towels because you don’t want to wash your comforter for the 4th time in 4 days because it just got pee on it again. It’s laundry that doesn’t end- sleepers that have been peed and pooped on, burp rags, towels, etc. Nothing about it is easy. It’s endless hours of cluster feeding. Your body, according to the doctors, requires a minimum of 6 weeks to recover from a natural childbirth. Nothing about your body feels like it’s yours during those 6 weeks. The simple act of going to the bathroom requires all kinds of products from doing the “I gotta go” dance while the water warms up for the peri-bottle, all the way to leaning this way and that trying to find a position where it doesn’t feel like you are giving birth all over again just to pee. Showers are another dog and pony show. You need every precious second of those 6 weeks to feel halfway human again, and then boom, you’re finally feeling better and it’s time to go back to work. Work gets the best of you, and your baby gets the worst. It’s a real screwed up system we have here. Every single day of my 6 weeks was unpaid leave. Every single day of it, I haven’t felt great. Balance. There is none. Your life as you knew it is simple a memory and you spend your hours trying to figure out how to make this new rodeo work.

As you read before, we spent Monday- Friday in the hospital with Michael. The next Monday we had his check-up and that Thursday we moved into our new house. Things at the house started magically falling apart (as they do when the balance is off). The stove quit working, the carbon monoxide detector went off on the furnace and we found out we had to buy a new one. The water boiler system started short circuiting. The garage door stopped going down all the way. The comcast guys came out to install cable and found out it couldn’t be done upstairs without drilling several holes in the outside of the house. The icemaker/water wouldn’t work on the refrigerator and the toilet was leaking. It seemed as if every day I was letting someone new into this house to fix something… someone who wasn’t supposed to be a part of my 6 week stay with my new little man. That weekend, I started having a little cough. No big deal, I assumed it was just a cold, but was still mad that I couldn’t seem to catch a break. I researched what cough meds I could take while nursing and began drowning myself in delsym cough syrup and luden’s cough drops (which technically, I believe, are just wild cherry hard candy). That Monday we took Michael for his second newborn checkup, which is a Colorado thing in order to catch some big diseases/disorders that don’t typically show up in the initial screening done at the hospital. The guy pricking my sweet boy’s foot kept leaving the room to cough, saying that his throat was just dry and it must be something in the air vents. Uh huh.

My cough got worse and worse to the point that I was not sleeping at all and I was spending much of my night gasping for breath, scaring your daddy. I tried to sleep downstairs, but felt like I was shaking the whole house. I was waking up daddy and Michael, and sometimes you would even stir, Pax. I let it go for way too long until one day I thought I was going to die. I know I exaggerate a lot, but I really didn’t feel too far off. I made a trip to urgent care, where I found out after a couple breathing treatments and chest x-rays that I had double pneumonia. I had a fever and my oxygen levels kept setting off the alarms- they were between 87-88%. My headache was terrible- a result of not enough oxygen to my brain. The doctor said that they don’t usually like to treat pneumonia at home, especially if the patient has asthma. I begged to be treated at home and agreed to come back the following day for a check up. He finally said I could, and sent me home on zithromax and breathing treatments every 4 hours. He said I could continue to nurse on both those meds…although he didn’t think I would be able to with the pneumonia and in his words exactly, he told me, “If you want to try to power through it, be my guest.” Done.

The following day I went back to see him again and things were already looking better. My fever was down, my oxygen was up. My lungs still were filled with crap, but sounded better. My body was responding to the treatment, which was a miracle in itself since I was allergic to the other forms of antibiotics they use to treat pneumonia. I was told to finish my 5 day course of antibiotics and continue breathing treatments for 10 days. It became an even crazier task to try to balance. A newborn eating every few hours, breathing treatments every 4, trying to “rest” because the doctors kept telling me how important that was.

I continued to get better and better, and that Saturday, I even felt like going down to Manitou Springs for a little family adventure to walk around the shops and eat lunch. I was still coughing, but no longer felt like my family would be writing my obituary soon. We had a great time, and Pax, you got to see Smokey the Bear, which was a huge deal because you love bears.

Then Sunday hit. I woke up and everything went downhill really fast. My head started pounding, I couldn’t breathe again. I was freezing but no one else was. My cough returned with a vengeance and my back ached terribly from that cough. Our plan for the day was to go over to Ammy and Pop-Pop’s house because Uncle Logan was there and Aunt Kelsey and her mom were coming down. I couldn’t see straight and I sure couldn’t think straight. I had Daddy take you over to play while I fed Michael and tried to get my act together enough to go visit. Cathie, Kelsey’s mom, came over to see the house when Daddy came back to pick up Michael and I. On the way back to Ammy and Pop-Pop’s, we realized that we didn’t have enough seats in the car due to carseats, so Daddy had me drive while he climbed in the way back. That drive is still kind of a blur to me. I remember seeing 3 roads and trying to pick which one was the real one. I remember Cathie talking to me about that nasty enterovirus going around. I remember thinking that I shouldn’t be driving.

The day went much the same. I was no fun to be around. I sat with a blanket on, freezing, and let everyone else hold Michael and play with you, Pax. Daddy left to get me some gatorade, because I knew I was getting dehydrated. I couldn’t eat, yet I will still trying to nurse Michael. By the time Daddy got back, Ammy had convinced me to head back to urgent care and see if I could get another round of antibiotics. I feared they would send me to the hospital, but like always, Ammy told me to not jump to conclusions and just to get better. Michael, you slept the afternoon away on Aunt Kelsey’s shoulder, then Cathie’s shoulder, then Ammy’s shoulder. I finally had to wake you up to feed you after 4 hours because we needed to make it to urgent care before they closed. I got teary eyed when we left, because I didn’t have a good feeling.

As soon as we got to urgent care, I knew it wasn’t good. My fever had spiked back up, my oxygen was low and I had quit responding to the antibiotic I was on, which should have stayed in my system for 5 more days. I didn’t have a choice, they were sending me to the ER to be treated in the hospital and possibly admitted. This hospital was in Woodland Park, just 10 minutes from home, but still felt like a million miles from you both. I tried to keep my cool, but knew it was a matter of time before I lost it. I had just gotten out of the hospital from having you, Michael, and I was not ready to even see those cold hard beds, the terrible food, or the mean nurses. We rolled into the ER and they immediately put me on oxygen. I felt better almost instantly. They put an IV in my arm, which was incredibly painful because they put it in the bend of my right arm and I seriously couldn’t move my entire arm. If my arm bent at all, it set off the pump alarm, and they would come poke around to make sure the IV was still in. Ouch. They drew my blood 4 different times. They took me down the hall for more chest x-rays where they found that my lungs were still filled with fluid and the strand of pneumonia I had was resistant to the meds I was on. On top of the pneumonia, I also had enterovirus, a nasty virus going around mostly effecting kids and people with asthma. Since I was allergic to penicillin and cephalosporin, I only had one option left for antibiotics- it was a really strong drug and it meant 2 things- 1) I couldn’t breastfeed on it and 2) I would need to be in the hospital for 3 days to get it by IV and to be monitored. I lost it.

Michael, you were only 3 weeks old. We were just getting things figured out- our relationship still fragile, delicate, needing consistency. Our teeter-totter was slowly regaining balance at home and now this. I was so mad when you had jaundice and I couldn’t hold you very often and now they are telling me that not only can I not hold you, but I can’t even see you. This is the part where your partner jumps off the teeter-totter and you come crashing to the ground, and then, you stand back up just as someone comes along and steps on the other end of the teeter-totter and it comes back up and smacks you in the chin. Only it felt even worse. I felt like a complete failure as a mother and a daughter. Ammy and Pop-Pop were going to watch both of you while Daddy stayed with me in the hospital. Ammy and Pop-pop, who were supposed to be enjoying retirement, were going to be up every few hours with a newborn while they were juggling a 20 month old and having work done on their house. I had one job as your mother, to provide for you, and I felt like I couldn’t even do that. I had about 60 ounces of milk in the freezer, but knew that wasn’t going to be enough. Michael, I knew you were going to have to have some formula, but I didn’t even know if you would take a bottle yet. You were still so new. I needed to get out of there as soon as I could. I needed to be with my babies.

I spent that first night in the hospital and did not sleep at all. The bed was uncomfortable, I had a terrible headache (which they kept giving me only tylenol for) and that IV in my arm was killing me. In another life, I would’ve been thankful for the opportunity to rest with no responsibilities, but you two are my favorite responsibilities and I knew I wouldn’t rest- my heart is divided in two pieces and both of those pieces were sleeping at Ammy and Pop-pop’s house without me.

In the morning, with a shift change, they finally changed my IV to my left hand. I could now bend my arm and I was so thankful for that. However, both arms started itching and I soon realized I had a rash. I feared the worst- that I was having a reaction to the only medicine that was left, but it cleared up within a couple hours. Your daddy went home to shower and to spend some time with the two of you. I sat in the hospital room for 8 hours by myself and it was a lonely place. I listened to the guy across the hallway scream for someone to take him to the hospital because he didn’t feel good. I knew I was doing better than him. I watched videos of the two of you on my phone. I called out to friends back home for prayers. I’m not one to ask for help, but I needed help in the biggest way. I ate food I couldn’t recognize delivered by the dietary staff who was clearly playing tricks on me…who needs 4 spoons and 3 straws to eat their breakfast?

Your daddy came back around 6:30 that night to stay with me. I can’t begin to tell you how amazing he was in the hospital. He didn’t try to teeter-totter, he straight up picked that teeter-totter up on his back and carried me on it. The minute I would stir, he would hop out of that puke colored recliner (why can’t it just be black or blue, why does everything including the puke bucket have to be puke colored in the hospital?) and get my pump ready for me, then unplug my legs from those huge blow-up things to help with circulation (who can sleep through that anyway?), help me take off my oxygen, unplug my IV machine and help me walk to the bathroom. He would hold me as I cried when I dumped all that milk down the sink. He rubbed my back when I cried that I hurt so bad, but didn’t want the nurses to know because I didn’t want to stay any longer. He held me together. That’s a crazy thing about balance in a marriage, sometimes it falls all on one person, and your daddy handled it amazingly. We’ve had a tough 6 months, your daddy and I. From moving from our home to staying with each of our parents, to me staying with my parents while he stayed with his, somewhere along the way, we fell out of whack slightly. We lost our balance, and who could blame us? We forgot how to function as husband and wife because we were constantly living under someone else’s roof, someone else’s rules, someone else’s watch. Our lives under a constant magnifying glass. We slipped on communication and it was easy to do. We could read, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? forward and backwards, but we couldn’t tell you how the other person was feeling. Since May, we’ve slept in a room with a child in there with us, forcing us to creep in quietly and not talk to each other. There is no end in sight to this trend in our little 2 bedroom house. I can’t tell you how many days went by where I never even asked your daddy how his day went. We slipped into this routine of just making sure you were ok, but not checking in with each other. All of our attention, all of our energy, everything we had was directed towards both of you- but balance requires a mix of energy to your children and energy saved for your spouse. Those 2 nights in the hospital, when I was at my weakest, I fell in love with your daddy all over again. I know he’d do anything in the world for me, for both of you. The petty things I’d picked apart about him these past several months were so unimportant compared to the love I knew he had for us. Did it really matter if the dishes were done in at night or in the morning? Did it really matter if he left a shirt on the floor of our bedroom? It mattered a little, but nothing compared to the way it mattered when he sings you a song before bed, when he bounces Michael up and down the hallway, when he spends 5 extra minutes combing your hair and saying night night prayers with you. Will I remember that he left a granola bar wrapper out? No. Will you remember that he danced with you in the living room while playing music on his phone? I’ll make sure of it. Balance.

I got the best news on Wednesday… I was going HOME! They told me to call someone to pick me up since Daddy had to go to work that day. I called Pop-pop and told him to come in an hour. They were giving me one more round of IV antibiotics and then I’d be out of there. Funny thing (not really so funny) was, after Pop-pop got there, they looked at my IV and it had never started. I had another hour to wait. I sent Pop-pop to get my prescriptions, which were another stab in the back. I had been told they would probably send me home on another z-pack antibiotic so I could start breastfeeding again. Turns out, they were going to send me home on 5 days of the meds I was on in the hospital- 5 more days of pumping and throwing it out. 5 more days of giving you bottles. 5 more days seemed like forever when I only had a couple weeks left to figure out this balance. They came back to check on me a half hour later, and again, the IV had never turned on. The very same IV pump I had been using my entire hospital stay, decided to break within an hour of me leaving. They brought in another IV pump, and finally, started my antibiotic. 2 1/2 hours after I was supposed to leave, the nurse took out my IV. While she did, she said “You have a beautiful ring.” All I heard was, “You have a beautiful vein.” I thought that was so funny and I just laughed and told her that I’d never heard that before. She said she really liked the baguettes, and it was then that I realized what she was talking about. The hospital has a way of sucking out your brains, and after this past month, I’m running a little low. On our way out of the hospital, that very sweet nurse carried my flowers and pillows for me. I started having a coughing fit in the hallway and I was terrified they were going to stick me right back in room 141, so I did the only thing I could think of, I grabbed the flowers and my pillow and I basically ran out of that hospital without looking back.

A week ago I was holding an IV machine, and now I’m holding both of you. I don’t feel like I’m close to 100%, but it will come. I do feel like I have my heart is back in one piece, even if I feel physically exhausted, torn, stretched to the max. Michael, today is the first day I’ve been able to feed you the entire day since getting sick. After dumping out between 150-200 ounces of milk in the past week, I finally am no longer toxic to you. I can squeeze you when I want, even when you’re sleeping. I can smell that sweet spot behind your ear that is my favorite smell. I can touch the skin under your cheeks, the softest skin in the world. I’m even ok with getting peed and pooped on right now, because it means I’m around you to get peed and pooped on. I can hold you when you cry every night even if I can’t make you feel better. I can question everything I’m doing, but then I can see you drift off in my arms, crack a half smile exposing your dimple, and I push on for another day. Pax, I can watch you light up a room. I can sit on the couch, juggling my breathing treatments, my pump and your brother, and I can watch you walk to the bathroom, pull out your step stool, set it up in the living room, and sing and dance for anyone who will listen. When your show is over, you turn it over, sit in it and pretend it’s a boat. Your imagination is a wonderful distraction. I watch you attempt to play with all the things you had when you were a baby that are now for Michael- from sitting in the bumbo seat to trying to turn the activity mat into a tent, to lounging in the nap nanny while you watch TV. I can watch you throw your head back and fake laugh, or slap your knees when you think something is really funny. I can watch you walk over to Michael when I’m changing his diaper and smell him and say, “Yucky!” I can hear you sing, “All aboard the choo choo train” as you bounce up and down awkwardly in the only way you know how to ‘dance’. I can feel you pull my face in for a kiss. I can hear you say, “luh you momma.” I can feel my heart- and it’s full.

There are lots of things to balance in life, and I pretty much suck at most of them right now. We have a lot to figure out, the four of us. Right now, I’m not super proud of the mother I am. There’s a balance of being inside and outside. Right now, Pax, you spend way too much time watching Paw Patrol and Bubble Guppies rather than playing outside. There’s a balance of rushing and waiting. I feel like there are moments where I wish this period of life away, and then I realize how brief it really is. I realize how lucky we are to have two healthy children. I don’t know why you cry Michael, but I know it won’t last forever and I know there’s nothing seriously wrong. There’s a balance of giving and taking. I feel like I’ve been doing all the taking and I haven’t been able to give much of myself to you, to your brother, to your daddy or to Ammy and Pop-pop. I could write an entire post on how much we’ve leaned on Ammy and Pop-pop in the past few months. I texted Ammy nonstop when I was in the hospital, asking her to send me pictures. I was so worried that she wouldn’t get any sleep and when I was out, she told me she knew she wasn’t going to sleep, not because of Michael, but because she was worried about me. That hit me kind of hard. I never even took a second to think about being worried about myself because I was so worried about both of you, your daddy, and Ammy and Pop-pop. I guess that’s part of the balance of becoming a mother. No matter how old you both get, no matter how many times you will tell me that you hate me, no matter if our teeter-totter ever balances back out, I will spend my life making sure you are both ok- just like Ammy does for me. There’s a balance of taking care of yourself and taking care of others, only when you become a parent, the whole taking care of yourself doesn’t seem to matter.

I go back to work next week. We haven’t made it through one week of leave without being at the dr/hospital for something. Today we had your one month check up, Michael. In the pediatrician’s words, you are “perfect.” You weigh 11 pounds 1 ounce and are a little over 22 inches long. Next week, I have my 6 week check-up. I feel like it’s a flash, this 6 weeks, and yet I feel like it’s the longest 6 weeks of my life. In the past 6 weeks, we’ve survived moving into a new house, double pneumonia and the enterovirus, a 2 night sleepover at Ammy and Pop-pop’s house while I was in the hospital, a new furnace, a new stove, a new refrigerator, a tune-up on the water boiler, a broken garage door, trying to take a wall out, new water lines in the house, new driver’s licenses, bank accounts, insurance, a new baby, and the list goes on. It has without a doubt, been the most difficult season of my life. I just chuckled as I sat down to write this and flipped through the channels. There it was, channel 49, the show “19 kids and counting” and all I could do was laugh. I can’t get it together with 2 kids and we’re certainly not counting! Balance. I had my first morning having both of you by myself about a week ago while Daddy went to take a test. I had just fed Michael and I was holding him while doing a breathing treatment. Pax, you were in your high chair screaming, “All done” at me and waving your hands frantically to tell me you were ready now. Michael spit up every single bit he had just eaten and it was all over him, all over me, and all over the couch. Jersey was sitting there staring at me with a ball in her mouth ready to play fetch. I took a deep breath, told myself I could do this, and then I heard you yell, “Momma, poop!” Balance.

2 nights ago, Michael, you screamed for several hours. I tried everything I knew to make you comfortable. Our “routine” (which is sketchy) has been that I give you a bath (in Pax’s old pink tub) and then I take you into her room to get dressed while Daddy gives Pax a bath. Then, Pax runs in butt naked and hops on my lap. She fights putting her diaper and pajamas on, because she’d rather dance around her room naked or ride her rocking horse with her bare butt. We spend these precious moments as a family and it briefly feels like it’s right, like it’s normal, like we might make it after all. We read stories, say prayers and then Pax goes to bed. We carry you downstairs with us and Daddy usually spends the next hour bouncing you trying to get you to calm down before I feed you again and we go to bed, where you sleep right between us on the nap nanny. On that particular night, 2 nights ago, nothing was working. I cried silently while you cried loudly. Instead of waiting for your sister, I took you downstairs to do the only thing I can do when you are that upset- feed you. The moment came that I dreaded, Pax came flying out of that bathroom, I could hear her little flipper feet hitting the hard wood floor. In my mind I could see her butt jiggling as she turned the corner, but when she got there, I wasn’t there. She yelled, “Mama,” and I let the tears fall. I couldn’t be where I needed to be, because I don’t know how to be two places at once.

Balance.

Maybe there’s no such thing. Maybe that’s why the teeter-totter is such a mystery to me. Maybe we spend our lives trying to figure this out, but truly never leave “survival mode”.

This whole gig isn’t easy, and it wouldn’t be easy even if I was healthy right now. Being a parent is hard work. It’s putting everything about yourself to the side in order to make sure your kids are ok. It means scooting forward and then backwards, but never abandoning ship. It means juggling spit up, breathing treatments, fetch and poopy diapers. It’s so demanding yet so rewarding. Balance. Yesterday, we went to the pumpkin patch. This is one of my favorite things to do in the fall. Pax, you went down the slide, your rode a pony, bounced on a big pillow, fed the goats, rode a mini tractor with daddy and picked out pumpkins for you and your brother. Michael, you pooped and it went down to your socks and up to your chest. Balance.