Better in Concept

I wasn't planning on posting today just because, honestly, what can I say about Mother's Day that hasn't been said on every other blog and Facebook today? Yes, it's awesome that this is my first Mother's Day. It's great that a year ago I was having an awful time and this year was totally different. Yes, it sucks that there are women still out there in the trenches of infertility who are suffering today. Perhaps mindful of this I don't feel ok about writing yet another "doesn't having a baby make everything better" Mother's Day post. So here is what today was like, for real, the good and the bad.

Woke up to a torrent of texts, calls, and Facebook posts wishing me a happy Mother's Day. It was lovely, but quite unexpected. Still surprised anyone gives a crap, honestly. Spent much of the morning trying to figure out how to afford to join my sister and her side of the family in Antigua next month - a trip that, for financial reasons for these people will probably never be repeated - until it dawned on me Bumpus will need a passport and I don't even have his birth certificate yet. So that was that! And just as well because of course I can't afford that, or anything else, now that I owe $2000 more to Kaiser unexpectedly.

We finally got off to Will Rogers state park for a nice little picnic, but it was a bit of a mixed bag. For one, although the sun was beating down, it was bitter cold - a stiff cold wind blew the whole time (a bizarre LA springtime phenomenon I'll never get used to). We brought the dog, and she barked her head off the whole time at everyone who walked by. The baby fussed so my sister and I had to alternate eating and holding him as he squirmed and cried, and I had to try to feed him while the ice cold wind blew my hair into my mouth and blew my Hooter Hiders off and he chomped my aching nipples and knocked the nipple guard into the grass. Then people insisted on kicking soccer balls at our heads and snotty teenaged girls walked by saying my dog looked like a rat and was gross. After an hour or so my sister and I were both freezing and over it. Was it a bad Mother's Day? No, not really. Let's just say it was Better in Concept. That'll learn me to attempt to do anything outdoorsy on the west side in the spring time without a snow suit handy.

Once home we hustled to do all those projects we meant to do during my shower visit - took down my broken Venetian blind, assembled my vanity, finished the nursery stenciling, and hung the pictures. So the nursery is officially DONE. Now I just have to get rid of about half the crap in there and I'll be happy.

Tonight I put the fussy baby in his sling and for once gave my aching nipples a break. I may start keeping him in there evenings so I don't have to endure these excruciating five hour feeding sessions anymore, and I can actually cook and eat dinner! The sling may save me.

My mother sent me the second of two very odd photos, this one a very graphic full frontal nude shot of a woman and her baby - to me it kind of bordered on pornography. It just wasn't something you'd send your daughter, you know? I showed it to my sister and she agreed it was really weird. It made us wonder what she's up to down there (Brazil). This is the second risqué naked photo she's sent me of a woman and her baby. And I don't mind nudity and am no prude, but these caught me off guard. What the heck?

So anyway. I don't want to sound all shitty about this first Mother's Day when I'm so blessed to have a healthy baby, sister visiting, etc. But I feel like, much like any holiday, just about anything we chose to do today would have been a huge pain in the ass. We could have waited in line with a screaming baby for a table at a mediocre restaurant and that would have sucked, too. Maybe we all should have piled into bed and watched a Jackass marathon. That kind of would have been more my speed, honestly.