Charles and Christy’s Weblog

It seems like I write a lot about what I don’t know, and this is yet another example. I have been struggling a lot lately - feeling overwhelmed and like my current life pace is not very sustainable. Before having Clark, I thought that work life balance was about being able to fit in both work and home. I seem to have missed completely that “self” also needs to be factored in. For 19 months or so, I am either a professor or a mom all the time. I have given up on hobbies, have lost track of friends, and don’t even know how to relax on my own anymore. I know that this sounds pretty bad. I’m hoping that having made this realization, that there’s a third party to be “balanced” here, means I’m on my way toward figuring it out. I’ve brought this on myself. It’s me that chooses to spend every moment I’m not working playing with my little boy, and it’s because I love doing this. I think I’m starting to feel the cost of that now, and I’m sure I will feel it more and more as Clark gets older. I have no sense of how I’m going to resolve this, only that I need to try a few things and find something that I enjoy that’s outside of work and home that doesn’t take too much time. Honestly, before having a baby, I thought people were blowing the work/life balance issue out of proportion… boy was I wrong.

While I was sitting in the dimly lit nursery this evening rocking Clark to sleep, I realized that spending time with him is closest I’ve ever been to meditation. I’ve tried meditating many times but I’m not very good at quieting my brain. When I’m with Clark, however, I’m committed to being present in a way that I’m not for anything else. It’s not just at bedtime when I have this sweet little guy curled up against me… I experience this even when we’re outside. I watch him as he picks up pine cones or sifts through the dirt. I look around the neighborhood and just enjoy being outside watching him interact with the world. While it’s clearly not calm and meditative all the time, it is a very nice gift to have these moments in my day.

Had lasik yesterday. Eyes are really bloodshot today. Had 1-day checkup this morning and am 20/25 in R eye, 20/30 in L. Will post more as I learn more.

On Saturday we deemed him officially mobile.  What no one ever tells you is that these milestones (sitting up, crawling, walking I expect) are never singular events. They are gradual changes.  It is a fallacy to write “the date” that these happened in a baby book.  Instead you should write the two-week window in which it happened.

Come to think of it, that’s also true for “the due date.”  Instead it should be “the due month.”

It’s been a long time since I wrote a blog post.  But it’s been an incredibly busy year so that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.  However that busy-ness is all the more reason I should be writing posts.  So here goes.

This morning I had an evaluation for Lasik treatment.  It turns out I’m a candidate for the procedure.  And it turns out it would cost $4400.  I expected the kinda-schlocky “marketing” of the procedure.  I expected the cost.  I expected the explanations of how the eye works and what tests they go through to ensure I’m a candidate.

I didn’t expect to find myself crying in the parking lot afterwards.

I can only focus about 2+ inches in front of my face without eyewear.  I’ve had corrective eyewear for as long as I can remember.  I got glasses in 1st grade.  When I went to school the next day, one of my classmates thought I was a new student because she didn’t recognize me with glasses.  My prescription degraded at an alarming rate and in 6th grade I got rigid gas permeable contact lenses. I wore those every day until the last few years when I went back to glasses.

I think what triggered my crying in the parking lot was the realization that poor vision has been part of my identity for all of my growing up years.  All my school pictures in elementary school show me with very nerdy four-eyes.  When I got contacts I felt cooler and less nerdy during my junior high and teen years.  I was one of the first kids to get glasses in elementary school and I was definitely the first kid to get contacts.

I don’t know if I’ll have it done anytime soon or if at all.  It’s kinda scary to have someone messing around with your cornea.  And there are lots of spending priorities already at our house.  But it may be even a bigger fear to let go of that piece of my identity and leave it behind forever.

It may also be incredibly liberating.

So, Charles and I are expecting a baby in mid-March. When we found this out back in July, our goal was to be as relaxed and casual about this pregnancy thing as possible. My philosophy was that if I was relaxed (and I’m not always so relaxed) that we would be more likely to have a Zen-like child rather than a Tasmanian devil-like child. I think it also took us a long time to start accepting how much our life is going to change… not that we didn’t want this… but we have a pretty nice life as DINKs. We knew we needed to see a doctor, confirm the pregnancy, and do all the other tests that doctors do… so Charles asked one of his colleagues for a OB/GYN reference (I wasn’t quite ready to tell anyone at work yet). We didn’t even check around. We made an appointment with the suggested doctor at the suggested clinic who only delivers at one hospital without even considering the longer term implications of this. I just assumed I’d want a doctor (instead of a midwife) for a first baby… I’m not sure why. So, we started going to the doctor regularly… she was nice enough but a little cold. We toured the hospital… it was nice enough but a little cold (with a disproportionate number of birth interventions!). Even when I started to think that maybe the doctor and the hospital weren’t the best match for us, I still didn’t really consider switching because I knew it would be a pain and I HATE dealing with insurance issues.

Fast forward to me being 32 weeks along… and it did go fast… our doula (yes, we’re “granola-y” enough to have a doula yet didn’t consider a midwife, go figure) asked me why we were using a traditional doctor at a hospital where our chances for a natural birth experience were greatly compromised when it was clear we were hoping for a natural birth. She suggested I consider changing. So, this week I’ve been trying to convince a midwife clinic to take me on as a client even though I’m at nearly 33 weeks. Thankfully, I’ve had such an uneventful pregnancy that this is a possibility. I have to switch my insurance in order to do this… and today is the last day I can do this. Hopefully, it will all work out and we’ll end up with the birth experience we’re hoping for.

I wish that we’d had enough insight (and guts) to think about this last July. That’s really tough though because you don’t really know enough about what you want or what your options are until this huge event is quickly approaching. Also, if you’re in denial about the amount of work you need to do and the number of decisions you have to make (like we were), you can’t even identify your ideal situation and work towards it. I knew I had the potential to be that “over achiever” expectant mom who read everything and couldn’t think about anything else… and I didn’t want to do that too early because then I knew I’d just be sitting around waiting for the kid to arrive. I guess I should have found a gray area between the extremes. In the end, it might all work out just like we want it to… now we just have to start working on daycare, pediatrician, etc… and we’ve learned our lesson about making these decisions too lightly.