The Mom Club

So when I was dealing with infertility (and really, to some extent you never stop dealing with infertility), I always felt like there was an exclusive Mom Club just for women with kids, most of whom did the whole pregnancy thing as well. These people went through the whole L&D process, got their stretchmarks, did the whole no-sleep newborn thing, and are somewhere in the middle of raising their little ones.

I hated not being a part of the club.

You know how in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" the main chick as a kid feels all bad about not sitting with the cute blonde girls at lunch? That was me. Relief Society meetings, social gatherings, work gatherings—all of these things were a nightmare at some point because I was not welcome in the Mom Club, and therefore knew nothing about the whole momming process, and could not complain about fat'n'happies at all. And while realizing that "feeling left out" is the stupidest part of infertility, it stung.

But now I have officially inducted myself into the Mom Club, and by authority of doubling my pants size and finding angry stripes all over my expanded and somewhat jellyish body, I'm going to say the following:

Sure, we all look at old pictures of ourselves and think life might be better if we were still that skinny. If we still fit into our jeans from high school. If sexy in our bedrooms meant the same thing it means on TV. Heck, I've done it since my metabolism started slowing down (which is how I describe the year I learned how to bake).

But I was right about making the trade. It was a great trade. I say we give ourselves a collective break, and call stretch marks and baby weight a thing of beauty because they are proof we did something awesome, and made the necessary sacrifices. We can realistically say that the physical sacrifices are the easy ones. We can love our bodies because they gave life and bodies to our children. The price was cheap, and we no longer need to complain about paying it.

Here's to C-section scars, jelly bellies, stretch marks in various states of lumpiness, and letting go of things that aren't coming back. And to allowing husbands to redefine what is "hot" to equal what is "you." And when people excluded from the Mom Club tell us to shut it about how sad it is to have a mom bod because we look awesome anyway, let's finally start listening.

Things to Say Again

I'm starting to have things to say again. Things besides all of the day-to-day of being a NICU mom, which I put on Finley's blog at finley.crazycutekids.com. In fact, that's not about me at all. It's all about him. Pictures, video, weight updates, and gushing about kangaroo time. Which is awesome.

I've decided to keep this blog about me. That sounds super selfish, doesn't it? I just figured I need to occasionally think about other things (yes, all things not my children are now "other") for the sake of my long term mental health. And the other day, while looking at a bread bag, I had a thought I wanted to blog about that wasn't about my time in the NICU with the munchkin.

I have no idea what it was, but I do know that for a moment, my brain had exited the hospital and gone somewhere entertaining. Somewhere that wasn't Desperate Housewives' Wisteria Lane. And lately I've even stopped having dreams that take place in real or imagined lands within the World of Warcraft (yeah, I dream in low-quality graphics about killing dragonkin every now and then). Suddenly this entry has turned into a rehashing of my most shameful recreational activities. Where was I?

I'm not saying this blog won't mention Finley or Oliver. But it'll probably be more about how I feel about life with and without them than about them specifically. And Finley's journaling will stay on his blog, and Oliver's will stay in my heart.

For instance, where I talked about how much like Tim Finley looks on Finley's blog, here I might mention how happy I am that we avoided one of my irrational IVF nightmares—that the clinic would take an "any sperm will do" (sing that along with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat) attitude toward gamete combining and I'd end up having a kid with, like, George Costanza or something.

Anyway, for a moment I had something to say that escaped even the realm of "gosh I miss my B-cups," and "when will these lumps around my C-section scar go away?" but it left as fast as it came. Oh well, it can't be much to feel sorry about. How interesting could a blog inspired by a bread bag be?