Easy as Humble Pie

Every now and then I have to eat a meal that I absolutely loathe. And no, I'm not talking about stroganoff (although God knows I despise it with every fiber of my being), and I'm not talking about donuts, which I also despise.

Oh, calm down. Not everyone can like donuts.

The meal I'm talking about is harder to swallow than all of my least favorite dishes combined into a giant, gross, festering stew.

It's Humble Pie. It's so painful to eat and today I had to do it.

Let me back up.

Nearly 13 years ago, I became a stepmom to two amazing little girls, ages 3 and 6. I had a picture in my mind of how it would feel to settle into my new role. I pictured transitioning into the family easily, where everything just fell into place and everyone loved each other.

Unfortunately, as many people discover, the relationship between myself and the girls' mother was...well, difficult right from the start. There were reasons for that difficulty beyond my control, but I still desperately wanted to make an effort to be the perfect stepmom and please everyone: my husband, the girls, and their mom.

(Spoiler alert: This is impossible and altogether hilarious.)



As much as I tried, I struggled to find a balance between being treated as a glorified babysitter (a label that still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up) and a worthy, loved, parent-figure in the girls' lives.

Unfortunately, despite my best and occasionally misguided efforts to be the best stepmom I could, I often felt under-appreciated, devalued, and most disappointingly, attacked. It made me angry. It made me judgmental toward her. Because all I wanted was to be treated like a quasi-equal. A teammate in raising these children. I was loving these kids the best I knew how. Obviously I wasn't perfect, but I certainly wasn't locking them in a tower or forcing them to mop the floors while cartoon forest creatures fluffed the beds each morning.



Let's be real though, there were lots of crimes being continuously committed on both sides of the parenting/step-parenting fence. I was no angel and neither was she. It's how these things go. Angry words were said or texted. She did this thing because I did that thing. I did that thing because she did this thing. Anger stewed and festered. Side eyes were thrown around like pies in a pizza shop. Emails were sent. Emails were replied to. There were curse words. There were threats. Everyone acted immaturely.



But then one day it happened. I got vindication. My husband and I discovered that the girls had never been to the dentist. At the time they were nearly 6 and 8 years old. AHA! She wasn't mother of the year!! After all, what kind of horrible mother doesn't send her kids to the dentist?!?!!?

I got out my biggest blanket and snuggled on the couch, cozy in my pettiness, looking for a pediatric dentist for my stepdaughters. It was time for us (my husband and myself) to do the parenting on this. We would handle it.

And we did handle it. We got both girls an appointment and were sad to discover that the youngest daughter (age six) had several teeth that needed to be pulled. I remember that day so clearly. I remember her walking back to the chair with a smile, not sure what would happen. And then I remember when she came back out, so helpless, a mouth full of stuffing in her mouth and huge gaping holes where the rotted teeth had been. There were small blood splatters on her lace white shirt. She had been brave, but terrified.

I turned to look at at my stepdaughter's mother and the expression of absolute horror on her face. Today, now a mother to my own child, I can actually feel her emotions. The guilt. The pain. The regret. I imagine it consumed her for weeks and years to come. She must have felt two inches tall.

Back then, though, I was busy being a petty bitch.

"Good!" I thought, swimming in self-importance. "She thinks she's such a perfect mom and I'm soooo terrible. Well look how the tables have turned now! She didn't even take her own children to the dentist and now look where we are. I would never let that happen."

Time went on. 10 years, in fact. In those 10 years, I admit I've looked back on that dentist episode with some pleasure, especially when I feel particularly demeaned by their mother.

"No matter how bad she makes me feel," I've thought many times. "I'll always have the dentist."

Until now.

Now I realize what an absolute asshole I was. Because something happened.

Earlier this week, I was filling out selections for our 2020 medical coverage and stopped dead when I came across the dental section. My stomach dropped into my toes. My heart raced. I racked my brain forward and backward trying to think of when I'd made an appointment. But no, it was true.

We'd never taken our son to the dentist.

He is 4.

HOW DID I LET THIS HAPPEN? When I was pregnant, I read every book about when to take my kid to which doctor and how often, and the dentist was always at the top of the list. I wasn't about to let my son be the kid who never went to the dentist.

Oh, how the mighty fall.

I barked at Siri to call the exact same pediatric dentist that my stepdaughters went and made the appointment. And today, there we sat. In the same waiting room. The same chairs. The same wallpaper. The same kids movies playing on the TV. 10 years later with our son. Our son who is only a mere two years from being the same age as my youngest stepdaughter when she had those teeth removed.

In his case, we were lucky. We brush our son's teeth often and carefully and he only had one cavity. Nothing traumatic befell him. He would be fine.

But me? I could smell the Humble Pie cooking.

While we hadn't waited quite as long as the girls' mom, we still waited too long. The American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry recommends a dental visit by age ONE. I missed that by three years.

In the end, here's my takeaway. I don't know what's going on in the lives of my stepdaughters' mother. I didn't know back then, and I don't know now. I don't know what she's dealing with, even when I hear bits of (likely incorrect) information from one of our teenagers.  Regardless, it's none of my business. Maybe back then she didn't have insurance for dental visits. Maybe she didn't know when it was recommended to take her kids for an appointment. Maybe she couldn't take the cut in pay that would be required to take an hour or two off work.

It. Doesn't. Matter.

In my intense desire to be on the parenting team, I should have given my teammate some grace. I shouldn't have reveled in her pain when she saw her daughter come out of that dentist appointment. I shouldn't have been gleeful at someone's misery. That wasn't kind of me. How could I expect kindness from her if I wasn't willing to give it out myself?

Today's lesson wasn't one I wanted to learn, but I can tell you what it was. Absolutely necessary. I needed to climb down out of my ivory tower.

Never judge, never assume, and never wish pain or suffering on another person, no matter what they might have done to you first. We're all doing our best, especially as parents. There's enough judgment from friends, family, co-workers, social media, and every random person we meet in our daily lives. The last thing our children should have to worry about is their parents and step parents trying to make each others lives miserable.

The ones who suffer from that are the kids. And that's never okay.

I'm off to heat up another helping of that Humble Pie. I won't lie; I'm having it with wine.

Parenting over popularity

Today I'm veering off the topic of infertility and instead I'm going to whine for a moment about the other thing in my life that is just as important...

Step parenting.

Right off the bat, let's get something out of the way. I love being a stepmom. For real. It is something that was not in my life plan, but it came to me anyway and I'm forever grateful.

My step kids are everything to me. I love them with the same heart, soul, and mind that I love my own biological son. But full disclosure, it is a different kind of love.

(And by the way, that's how it should be.)

My stepdaughters have two parents who love them with their entire being, their every breath, their every thought. They are loved by their parents in the same way that I love my son. I will never love my stepdaughters that way because they are not mine. The position of Mom and Dad have been filled...I just work here.

So that being said - I still need to bitch, because step parenting (and spoiler alert, even regular parenting) isn't always glitter and hugs and marshmallows.

Here's the deal. My husband and I parent very, very differently than my stepdaughters' mother does (we'll call her Mama Ex). I'll spare you all the gory details, but for over 10 years we have tried the whole "co-parenting" thing, where we offer to get together with Mama Ex and sing kumbaya and come up with a plan for how to be on the same page or at least in the same chapter.

It's a lost cause. We aren't even reading the same parenting book.

In our house, my husband and I believe in rules, chores*, and responsibilities so we can raise his daughters to be productive members of society.

(*Chores equals clean the bathroom, unload the dishwasher, and occasionally help wipe the table after dinner. We're not talking slave labor, here.)

Mama Ex doesn't necessarily believe in those things, which is totally her right. My stepdaughters don't clean their room at her house, or mop a floor, or wash a dish. And that's fine. She can and should raise her children however she sees fit, and it's really none of my business...

Until it is.

I see my husband's relationship with his daughters taking a turn to negative-town before my very eyes because of this glaring difference in parenting styles. Earlier this month, my oldest step daughter texted her dad that she wanted to stay with her mom for the week and not come to our house. Her reasons? We treat her like a child and she should be able to make her own decisions about what she does at home. (Cue an eye roll so hard I literally saw the front of my brain.) Obviously we declined her request to skip a week at our home, but when she turns 18 next August, she will technically be able to stop coming over if she chooses. 

It breaks our hearts to know that might actually happen.

The way I see it, it is because we want to treat her like an adult that we give her and her sister chores and responsibilities in this home. If we wanted to treat them like a child, they wouldn't be expected to do anything and we'd also be wiping their tushies after they go poo poo.

Look, I get it. I was 16 once. I hated my parents for imposing chores on me (especially in the summer. Ugh FML). I wanted all the benefits of being an adult (do whatever, wherever, whenever) but none of the responsibilities (like paying for whatever, wherever, whenever) and I'm sure that's how my stepdaughter feels as well. 

The difference is, I grew up in a home where both of my parents understood the necessity of preparing me for adulthood. They knew that being a teen is supposed to suck. Otherwise I'd have ended up 32 years old, living in their basement, with a stimulating career at "Things Remembered" engraving wedding goblets for all of my friends who got the hell out of their parents' house. The job description for a parent is to make life just uncomfortable enough that one day your kids wake up and think, "Huh, maybe I should get my own place. Then I can leave pizza in my room for 5 weeks and not get in trouble!"

(And then they have to pay for an ant exterminator and you laugh at them and say I told you so.)

My parents didn't enjoy giving me chores per se. Of course they wanted to give me a carefree life, but they knew that doing so would cripple me from becoming the adult I was meant to be.

Unfortunately in our current situation, one parent wants to truly treat his child like an adult, and the other wants to keep her seemingly in a state of toddlerhood. Both styles of parenting are valid and both have their merits and downfalls. But, for this child, choosing between those two "parenting styles"? Girl, please. Obviously one of them totally rocks and the other seems awful and abusive.

THAT ISN'T RIGHT.

Why should the person who loves his kids so much that he's willing to be the parent and not the friend be punished for doing so? 

Many people that I have vented to say something along the lines of, "Don't worry, when she gets older, your stepdaughter will understand." While that's a nice thought, there's no guarantee. Because over there across town, Mama Ex is thinking the exact same thing. She's also thinking that someday her daughter will grow up and understand how mom has been right all along and her dad was indeed a cotton headed ninny muggins.

Someone is going to be the loser in this scenario. And seemingly it will be the household who is a lot less fun...i.e. us.

Part of me wants to say, "Screw it, Mama Ex. You win. We will no longer give the kids any chores or make them accountable for any damn thing they do." I mean, that would be the easiest. The girls would be happiest in the short run. 

(Although that means I would have to start cleaning their bathroom and I mean, hell to the no.)

The biggest problem I have with giving up and giving in is, parenting isn't about the short game. If it was, I would let my son play with knives because in the short run OMG IT MAKES HIM SO HAPPY. But in the long run, he really does need his fingers...so I take away the cutlery. I feel that I owe my husband's child the best part of my parenting self. To do any less would be a disservice to her. 

And in case you're wondering, I will raise my son exactly the same way. Homeboy will be doing chores as soon as I can trust him to not drink the toilet bowl cleaner.

Parenting is all about the long haul. You can't (in my humble, often unasked for opinion) raise smart, savvy, strong kids by doing everything for them and also letting them do whatever they dream up. They have to learn the most basic of the basics so that someday when they're shacking up with their hot new boyfriend, they don't have to ask him to wash their underwear.

My husband and I believe that learning to be accountable, learning to save and manage your money, learning to load a dishwasher...these are important enough lessons that they must be taught by someone.

And so we will do it.

Even if that means we have to be the bad guy.

Even if that means we lose the popular vote.

I'm baaaack

Hi, my little infertile, fertile and pregnant bloggie pals! I hope you're all doing wonderfully and life is good.

I have to apologize for my major absence lately. It's the oldest line in the book, but it just happens to be true...I am a busy bee. Work is insane, the stepkids are in the throes of spring break and boyfriends and make ups and breakups - and of course, I'm 16 weeks preggers.

Speaking of...

I have held back on new blog posts because of pregnancy. I started this blog as a desperate infertile beginning her journey into the IVF world. Once it worked (after the first try!) I started to feel guilty about waving my pregnancy in front of my readers because so many of you are still trying and feeling sad or defeated. I don't want to be that person that gets pregnant and suddenly forgets how hard it was to get here. By that same token, I don't want to whine about my pregnancy but....

Holy crap it's hard. 

Like, way hard. And I'm not even one of those pregnant ladies that gets sick!

Basically I'm a huge wimp. This is not news.

So, you can imagine how awesome it would be for my infertile friends to read a blog about how uncomfortable I am, etc. etc. I mean, talk about rubbing salt in the womb.

All that being said, I am considering moving this blog over to my personal blog that I've had for years and haven't written on in awhile. That way, people who come to see it will go with the knowledge that I'm likely writing about pregnancy and the ups and downs that go with it, and not necessarily about infertility. If I decide to go that route, I'll still keep my Twitter handle, but it will link to my personal blog rather than this one, if that makes sense. I haven't made any decisions yet, but I just feel that writing blogs about pregnancy under a blog that's about infertility seems...weird. And kind of braggy.

What do you all think?

XOXO,

Coming Up Positive: The Story of My (finally) Positive Pregnancy Test

You know that age old saying, that when you wait for something for so long and it finally arrives, you'll have a total brain meltdown and won't be able to function for a bit?

No? No one's heard that one? Probably because it only exists for weirdos like me.

I've waited four years to write this post. Four agonizing, emotional, stressful, infuriating years. I imagined in my head how the whole thing would go. I imagined that the road ending in a positive pregnancy test would be all rainbows and unicorns. Hubs and I would find out together, side by side, hands tightly clasped together. The words "you're pregnant" would come through the phone, sending us into a celebration that could only be described as a mix between joyous and beautiful, psychotic and sort of scary. And then I would hop onto my beloved blog and share my story in an endless stream of thought provoking and poignant poetry that would make even the most doubtful of infertile's alive with hope.

It totally didn't happen that way.

Here's what happened:

We had our 5 day transfer on January 6, 2015. It went by the book. All was well, and I totally made it through like a champ. Okay, that's not true. I actually cried a lot because I was completely freaking out that it wouldn't work. But then the doctor gave me this amazing thing called Valium and I got all sorts of okay. 

Anyhoos, it all went great. We took pictures of the embryo hatching (which I will save for just us because...I don't know, it feels weird to post it). We left shortly after and went straight back to our hotel, proceeding to live out the next two ordered days of bed rest by watching two straight seasons of Game of Thrones.

(If this baby comes out with a weirdo English accent and a sword, we know who to blame.)

During the bed rest, I didn't feel any different. I thought I might feel some tugging or something but no...not a thing. Subsequently, after we returned home, I also felt nothing (remember this post?) and started to worry that it didn't work.

And I mean, I really worried. I just knew it didn't take.

I couldn't concentrate at work. I couldn't sleep. One reason I was so sure was because I KNOW MY BODY, DAMMIT. And I felt no different than any other time before. In fact, I was so sure of our imminent IVF failure that I brazenly told Hubs that if the result turned out to be positive, I would declare that from that day forth, I would leave all decisions concerning my own health to be decided by him and him alone because I was a cotton headed ninny-muggins.

He accepted the terms really quickly.

So, despite all my lovely Twitter friends and blog buddies assuring me that all would be well, I continued to be a Debbie Downer. The Thursday morning of the blood test arrived and I headed to the doc. As the nurse took my blood she said, "Today's the big day, eh? I hope I see you here in a few more days to test your HCG levels again!" I wanted to take the blood draw needle and shove it in her eye.

I left the doc's office still feeling dejected and pissed off. The nurse would send my results to my doc in Colorado, and then Colorado would be calling me sometime between 1:00 and 5:00 with my surely negative results. Whatevs.

Then something happened. At around 1:15, I got a weird twinge in my gut that I'd never felt before. Also, I had a spell of tiredness that had me considering pulling into a Wal-Mart parking lot to take a quick nap. What was this??? I'd heard that these could be early signs of pregnancy. But couldn't they also be PMS? Surely they were PMS, because I wasn't pregnant. I knew deep down in the catacombs of my vagina that no baby was being made in my womb. 

But a teeny, tiny ray of hope began to break through my gloomy outlook. Maybe the blood results had a small change of being positive after all.

The rest of the day passed and soon it was 4:45. Hubs and I were at my stepdaughter's basketball game when I heard the special ring of Colorado on my phone. This was it. We were about to find out. Hubs and I ran out to the lobby of the middle school gym to take the call.

Bad reception.

The nurse said something I couldn't understand. I ran out into the parking lot and, out of breath, asked her to repeat herself.

"...so sorry....so we'll need to...as soon as possible."

Feckety feck feck feck. I knew it. Negative. I asked her to please repeat the last part so I could know what to do next.

"I'm so sorry, Kim, but we still don't have the results from your local doctor yet. So we'll need to get the results faxed over from them as soon as possible. It's almost 5:00 your time, so if you can get them sent in the next 15 minutes, that'd be great."

A-ha! I was down, but not out. I speed dialed my local doc and got no answer. They tend not to check their voicemail after 4:30, so I knew I was in for a long night of waiting. Awesome.

That night crawled by. Hubs said no news was good news at this point, while I proceeded to make up a load of insane-crazy scenarios as to why the results hadn't arrived in Colorado. I'll spare you the crazy for another day.

It was a sleepless night.

The following morning, Hubs kissed me goodbye as he left for work. He reminded me to a) think positive and b) remember to conference him into the phone call when Colorado called with the results so we could hear together. That way, if the test was negative, we had each other to get through it.

I won't lie, I really thought about going to my bathroom vanity and pulling out the last pregnancy test I had and pee on it before anyone called. But I restrained myself.

At around 8:15, I figured it was safe to take a shower. It was still 7:15 in Colorado, and the clinic wasn't open yet for them to call. I hopped into the shower and got all shampooey, trying to wash the negative vibes away. And then the phone rang. 

I didn't even rinse the shampoo out of my hair. I just turned off the water, got out of the shower and grabbed my phone, water and suds dripping off of my completely nekkid body. I looked at the caller ID. It was my local clinic, where I had the blood draw. WTF? Why were they calling? I decided it must be to tell me they had just faxed the results over to Colorado.

"Hello?" I said, a stream of shampoo sliding into my mouth. Mmmm. Soapy.

"Hi, Kim, this is Mel over at the clinic and I'm just calling to tell you that your positive test has been sent over to your Colorado clinic. Your HCG levels were 225 and look great and..."

I have no real recollection of idea what she was even saying. I couldn't think. I couldn't process. Did she say positive?

"Wait, I...uh," I stammered, gripping the phone with a Kung Fu grip so I wouldn't dare drop it.  "I just, uh,...it sounded like you said my test was positive. Is that...I mean, did I hear you right?"

"Yes!" Mel said joyously, completely unaware she'd just changed my life with one word. "Congratulations! Your Colorado doctor will likely want to order you another blood test on Monday to make sure the levels are doubling, so we'll wait to hear from them. So we'll talk soon! Congrats again. Bye bye!"

I remember as I heard the line go dead, I raised my eyes to see myself standing there in my bathroom, soaking wet and naked as the day I was born. I took a deep breath and said aloud the words that were streaming across my brain like a sports ticker. "I'm pregnant." At that moment, all the energy left my body and I shriveled into a ball on the floor. Huge, gulping sobs of relief and emotion and disbelief came pouring out of me in a way I can't quite describe, even now. I have to think I went quite insane for a moment because I was so happy and yet sad and yet scared and confused. My body wasn't really sure what to do with itself. 

I had done it. I had endured painful tests, inquisitive friends, needle after needle, medication after medication, negative pregnancy tests, low bank accounts, low estrogen counts, high estrogen counts, high follicle counts, potential OHHS, delays, more delays, airplane flights, bad hotel food, arguments, make-ups, deaths in the family, births in the family...and it all led to here. For me and Hubs, our time was no longer "someday", out there in nowhere land. It was finally here.

Moments later, my hands trembling, I called Hubs at work. When I heard his voice, I could barely even speak. Later he would tell me he thought the news was bad because I was crying so hard. Ultimately he heard through my incoherent blubber that we were pregnant and just said softly, "I knew it, babe."  Yes, we were both disappointed that we weren't able to hear the call together as we'd planned, but infertility has done a great job of reminding us what happens when you attempt to plan any part of life.

After I finished my shower, the jaded part of me was still in a state of disbelief, and I decided a home pregnancy test was the only way to be sure I hadn't just dreamed this whole phone/shower scenario. I drank about a gallon of water and waited until I was sure I had to pee. I went to my bathroom vanity and dug through the maze of tampons and panty liners, looking for the one pregnancy test I knew I had left. Where the hell was it? I had it RIGHT HERE. And then I remembered. I actually didn't have any left. I used the last one on purpose last month so I wouldn't be tempted to test after the transfer.

Mother eff.

I hopped in my car with water dripping down my back and drove to the grocery store. I bought two pregnancy tests and some dog food (I can't neglect my current babies, right?) and headed home as fast as I could. The test took less than 30 seconds to display the result.

                                                     

   Clear Blue don't lie, honey.

So there it is, bloggies. In living color. I am pregnant. After four years of stopping and starting, giving up and and then gearing up, crying hard and then crying harder, it has all come to this. On or around September 24th, I will (God/Buddah/Allah/Tom Cruise willing) become a mother.

I realize how lucky I am. There are so many infertile's in this world that are on their 3rd, 4th, maybe even 5th IVF cycle. There are women who have had multiple miscarriages or invasive and painful surgeries to even have the hope that they can carry a child. There are those who won't ever have the financial ability to even attempt infertility treatments. I am a very fortunate gal and I am thankful all the way to my friends and family for their support in getting me to this point.

For now, I am happier than I have ever been, and I think I have to let that soak in. Relish it. As I tell my friends, I am happy with a small helping of cautiousness on the side. I know this is just the beginning of a very long journey. It could all end tomorrow. After all, I've never been pregnant before, and statistically, miscarriage is always a possibility. But if the two week wait taught me anything, it taught me that when it comes to this pregnancy stuff...I really don't know jack.

And yes, Hubs was quick to remind me that he gets to make all medical decisions for me going forward and I am, indeed, the most cottonest of the cotton headed ninny-muggins. 

And he'll never let me forget it, either.

XOXO,