Introducing…Leo!

Back in May, I interviewed and photographed the lovely Nina, as she anticipated the birth of her first baby.

I’m happy to announce, she gave birth to a beautiful baby boy on July 10th, weighing in at 9 lbs. 5 oz. — a big boy!

His name is Leo and he’s precious — a wonderfully calm, peaceful baby who is perfectly chill listening to his mommy’s voice and observing his surroundings with his big, soulful eyes.

I visited Nina and Leo today and I don’t think I’ve ever met a more easy going baby. Nina is adjusting to motherhood like a pro, only two weeks in.

Welcome to the world baby Leo! It’s already a better place with you in it.

A Week in Photos

I vowed we’d spend more time at the beach this summer, but so far, we’ve only spent a single day. And of course it was a day that brought a mild storm, with gray clouds, rain and a chill in the air in the middle of July, despite the weather report swearing it would be 80 degrees and sunny.

Luckily, the boys didn’t mind, they frolicked as usual, ignoring the raindrops turning powdery sand wet and sludgy. By the time we started collecting our belongings to sprint back to our car under the pressure of an expiring meter (no easy feat with a double stroller, three rambunctious children and endless bags of wet food, umbrellas and beach toys), we were caught in the middle of a bona fide downpour.

So much for planning a perfect day at the beach. I doubt we’ll be going back for awhile. And to top it off, we were greeted with a big, fat parking ticket for an expired meter.

Earlier in the week, I spent a wonderful evening one-one-one with my oldest, something we’ve done only a handful of times since his younger brothers were born. We went to dinner and a movie, where the focus was solely on him and it was much-needed and lovely. Between the chaos of a toddler bulldozing his belongings and the cries of his baby brother whose needs are often more immediate, he’s learned to be patient. But I realize it’s unfair for him to always be the one to wait in line while his smaller brothers’ demands are louder, making their presence and need for attention more known.

It’s something I find difficult to navigate at times.

I wanted to take a night to make him feel extra special and attended to, like he was when he was an only child, where I could savor his words and stories with fully open ears. Without multi-tasking and asking him to re-tell them because I only heard snippets of what he was saying as I’m calming the baby down and making sure the toddler doesn’t run into the middle of traffic.

I’m going to make an attempt to do these “date nights” with him more often. It was a really sweet time for both of us.

Yesterday, we visited a place I’ve been wanting to visit since it was re-modeled and re-opened to the public a few years ago. It did not disappoint. Billionaires live pretty well, I’d say. The boys had fun exploring the hallways that seemed to run on forever and the toddler loved roaming the gorgeous fountains. If I didn’t know better, with the balmy ocean breeze whispering through our hair, we could have easily been along the Mediterranean, admiring ancient greek artifacts. It was a fantastic day.

Peppered in between mini-excursions, are those days at home that would otherwise seem mundane, ordinary, uneventful. But these are the days I want to capture most: a sleeping baby who finally gave in after fighting sleep for hours, a chubby thigh glimpsed from the corner of my eye — a thigh that will surely melt away soon into a long, sinewy limb.

These are the moments I cherish. Juxtaposed against the staggering beauty of the majestic Pacific Ocean, or the stunning architecture of a billionaire’s villa, these images trump everything.

They are everyday images and they are fleeting — a wisp of baby hair curling up like a vine around the edge of a tiny earlobe, my oldest son’s animated expressions through my rearview mirror as he tells me a story from the backseat after camp.

They are the moments I cling to.

Meet Audrey: 34 Weeks

Audrey is the second mama-to-be in the pregnancy series I’ll periodically feature in this space. She’s a 33-year-old teacher living in Los Angeles with her husband of five years, Scott, and their adorable dog, Arizona. Soon, they’ll meet the newest member of their family – a baby girl or boy – who is set to arrive around the end of August!

Tattooed on the inside of Audrey’s left wrist, in bold blue letters with serifs, is the single word, “Surrender.” It serves as a fitting reminder that in life there are some things you just can’t plan and having children is one of them. An admitted Type-A personality, Audrey is the kind of woman who plans and is accustomed to working hard to achieve the goals she sets for herself. But her four-year struggle to conceive a baby with her husband sent her on an unexpected journey that tested her will and taught her lessons along the way –  most importantly, to surrender — to learn to give in when life has other plans for you. That sometimes in life, you can’t always plan.

Audrey and her husband, a musician, decided not to know the sex of their baby and neither has a preference — they’re both simply elated that they’ve come this far and whether they’ll welcome their Copeland Michael if a boy or Bernice Lee if a girl next month, makes no difference at all. Because they’re finally having the baby they’ve dreamed of for years.

I sat down with Audrey recently in her sunny hillside home, where an airy, gender-neutral nursery with cheery green walls adorned with alphabet cards strung along on clothespins, awaits her precious baby. She discussed her difficulties in getting pregnant, suffering two miscarriages along the way and how ultimately turning to IVF helped her conceive the life she’s happily carrying now.

Tell me about your journey with fertility struggles and IVF.

My husband and I had been married for a year and I went off the pill right before we got engaged. We knew we wanted to start a family right away. Both of us were ready. At least in our minds we were ready, but physically and financially we definitely weren’t ready. We tried to conceive for a year and we weren’t having any success. My husband also traveled a ton — he was always on the road — and so it never really worked out for us.

So we tried IUI, which is intrauterine insemination. We tried two rounds of that. One round on our own and then one round with Clomid, which is a drug that helps you drop multiple eggs to increase your chances of the sperm fertilizing an egg.

That was unsuccessful and very stressful also, just very hard. Because when you want something so badly and you see everyone else around you that has it and you hear stories about how easy it was for them to get pregnant, it’s just hard.

So we decided after that, because it’s really expensive and insurance doesn’t cover any of it — this is all out of pocket — let’s just stop. You know, what’s the point? We just quit trying and I let go of it. I finally just said I’m done and I gave up. I’m done trying.

So we went on with our lives and six months later I took a pregnancy test and — sure enough — I was pregnant.

When I let it go, it happened naturally.

So you knew you could get pregnant.

Yes, and of course, my husband and I were elated. We called both of our parents. I was dreadfully sick. All day sickness. Scott was on the road, so I was pretty much alone for the first trimester. Then they discovered my fetus had no heartbeat. I was shocked. I carried until 11 ½ weeks. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life, I was totally by myself. When you try for something and then you get what you want and all of a sudden it’s taken away from you, it’s just devastating.

A few months later we started trying again. The first couple of months, it didn’t happen, we weren’t getting pregnant and I was going to just let it go again. I had that physical feeling of just letting go.

Six months later, I got pregnant again, naturally.

And then, I’m visiting my mom for the weekend and I’m driving on the 101 and I get rear-ended driving 75 miles an hour on the freeway. Of course I was traumatized. I’m eight weeks along at this point. I didn’t go to the hospital the first night, because I wasn’t injured, but everyone said to go to the hospital. I went to the hospital and we saw the heartbeat but it was low. I went home and had an appointment the next day with my doctor and there was no heartbeat.

How did that second miscarriage affect you emotionally?

It was horrible. I was upset, I felt defeated, I felt “Why me?” Regardless of how little your fetus is, the second you find out you’re pregnant, it’s a baby, regardless if it’s at the blueberry stage or the grapefruit stage — whatever that baby bump is — it’s yours.

I went through a couple months where I hated every pregnant woman I saw. I had to go to therapy because I found I was angry at people I didn’t even know, resentful of women.

So in December of 2011, after continuing for almost another year trying to get pregnant, you and Scott decided to start IVF. What was that process like?

It was actually the most amazing and non-stressful experience ever. You do the research and it’s so structured. You immediately start injecting yourself with drugs so basically what you’re doing is getting follicles to produce in your ovaries to where the eggs are then going to mature within those follicles.

So you’re developing these eggs for about two weeks and [the doctor] does an ultrasound and you count how many follicles you’re producing. After about two weeks you start talking about the day you’ll go in for egg retrieval. She’s checking your estrogen, your progesterone. And then you take drugs to help mature the eggs as well.

I’m an anomaly because I wasn’t getting pregnant, got pregnant naturally twice, miscarried twice and then didn’t get pregnant.

Describe the egg-retrieval process.

It’s a half-hour procedure and the doctor removes all the eggs from the follicles. I produced 27 eggs. I mean, I could have donated my eggs! What they do is put the eggs and the sperm in these Petri dishes and they hope they find each other. So then you wait five days. 23 of the 27 eggs fertilized! We had five that they picked out. We chose to implant two, because if we did three, there was a chance of having triplets — if we had done all five –there’s a chance of having five babies!

I was on bed rest for five days.  And basically I just had to take it easy. My hormone levels dropped drastically. I wasn’t producing estrogen or progesterone. So now I’m taking estrogen orally, progesterone orally and doing intramuscular shots too.

And then one day, after leaving my doctor, I’m walking to my car and she calls me and she says, “I just wanted to tell you you’re pregnant!” I started bawling. “You’re kidding?” I’m pregnant?” First round, first everything. Scott was at work and I called him right away and told him. It was the best feeling ever. I called my mom, my dad and my brother. We technically conceived December 9^th, 2011.

Now that you’re this far along in your pregnancy, is your mind more at ease?

It was probably at about six months that I felt like I could really let myself get excited about it. I still wake up in the middle of the night and I’m 34 weeks now and if I haven’t felt the baby move I’m like “Come on baby, move!” And then the baby does.

What has been the best aspect of your pregnancy so far?

Watching my husband so excited about the baby. He talks to my belly and he tries to wake the baby up all the time. I actually enjoy being pregnant. I’m sharing my body with another human being and it’s so beautiful. That’s why I don’t care what sex it is, just that I’m pregnant and I’ve come this far and I get to be a mom and that I’m actually getting something that I know I was supposed to do. It’s just an amazing feeling!

Counting by Tens

Ten fingers.

Ten toes.

A Perfect 10 wiggling about at the end of his folded limbs.

We started out counting by “tens” from the day we first spotted those digits in an ultrasound, the unmistakable black and white shadows gracefully beckoning us with their fluid motions, seeming to wave “hello,” then tightly clenched fists drawn inward, nestled into his chest, in that liquid space he resided for ten months, as we waited impatiently and then patiently for him.

And now, ten months after the day he quietly made his grand entrance — all ten pounds of him — I can hardly believe he’s been on the outside as long as he was once on the inside.

He arrived in the early morning hours of a hot, dry September day, beneath the biggest, brightest full moon of the year, a moon that became his middle namesake, the day that came the day after the ten year anniversary of an unfathomable tragedy still fresh in our collective hearts, a date I specifically remember because I lived in that exact city on that exact day, ten years earlier.

As much as I wanted him to arrive, I also wanted him to wait.

When my Labor Day due date quickly came and passed and I hadn’t started laboring, I secretly hoped he’d be born on any date other than that date, the date that will forever be associated with terror and suffering. I didn’t want him to share his birthday — a joyous occasion — with the date that was all too fresh in my mind, even ten years later. So when the tenth came, followed by the eleventh, I held my breath.

He arrived the next day.

He’s so quiet that at times, we lose track of him, only to find him in a corner happily entertaining himself with blocks or any object he’s turned into a toy for the moment. He’s also a quiet eater, feeding himself with his hands like a white-gloved lady who lunches, dainty, with manners.

In the past two weeks he’s officially become a walker, gingerly making his way across the living room floor, stiff and zombie-like, arms outstretched to keep his balance. When he’s in a hurry, he still resorts to crawling — a little Komodo Dragon chasing after his much-faster brothers.

Of all my babies, at 9 months, he holds the record for being the earliest walker. His dexterity continues to amaze me as he masters his fine motor skills. He holds a cup with ease, is attempting to use a spoon to eat and is discovering a few of the toys his brothers are tinkering with, Lincoln Logs and LEGOS scattered across our living room like shrapnel.

At ten months, my love for him has grown tenfold since that hot September day we welcomed him into our arms and into our hearts.

Happy Ten Months, my little mooncake. You were well worth the wait.

Sharing

One night a week and every other weekend, he goes to his father’s house.

It’s a place with different rules – or more likely, a lack of them – with lax bedtimes and lots of video games, with no enforcement of vegetable-eating, where fast food is a staple, where toaster waffles are consumed for breakfast, where teeth do not get brushed, where showers need not involve soap, where hours and hours are spent in front of the television or tapping apps on an iPad screen. It’s a place where nails grow like talons from never being clipped and socks get worn over and over without being washed, where you fall asleep at night on the couch in your school clothes.

Reconciling all of the contradictory messages and rules between the houses has been one of my hardest battles in co-parenting. Undoing these messages and habits on a daily basis is a lot of work in our household, where he spends eighty percent of his time. When he returns from his father’s, he’s cranky and exhausted and we spend at least twenty-four hours getting him back on track, on the schedule we’re accustomed to in our home, the nighttime rituals that are the most predictable aspect of our day: bath, a home-cooked dinner, teeth brushed, maybe a little television if his behavior warrants it, reading, snuggling in bed. That’s been the order of things for many years and we rarely deviate from it.

If there’s one constant in our sometimes chaotic, messy life, it’s that predictable nighttime routine we all slip on like our favorite pair of pajamas. It’s an anchor amidst a choppy current pulling us in a dozen different directions throughout the day.

On those days he returns from his home-away-from-home and falls back into the fold of our family of five, where his little brothers mess up his toys, where broccoli is served at dinner instead of Subway and he’s required to eat it, where there are no iPads to entertain him for hours on end, where video games are not allowed, where bedtime is enforced, where he’s told he needs to bathe using soap, wash his hair with shampoo and not just rinse it off with water, that he actually needs to use toothpaste while brushing his teeth,  I’m usually met with resistance. The type of resistance that makes you want to give in or give up, but you know you can’t.

This is the toughest aspect of co-parenting for me. More challenging than the stress and expense of a custody case in court, tougher than the exasperation from angry text messages often exchanged between his father and me, usually over some aspect of our son’s care or wellbeing that I feel is being neglected by him, tougher than seeing him off on those weekends he leaves our home.

Choose your battles is the mantra that plays as an endless loop in my head. Choose your battles.

I can imagine how confusing the mixed messages can be for him to process. It’s hard to explain to a six-year-old why broccoli is good for you even though it doesn’t taste nearly as delicious as the cheeseburgers he devours on his father’s watch, why reading is more important than playing video games on a device all night. Rules aren’t fun to follow and neither is brushing your teeth. And although, it’s so much easier to give up sometimes when the resistance gets so strong from him that I want to run into the bathroom and lock myself away under the hot water of a shower that drowns out all the questions marks, I don’t.

I can’t.

I will never give up on him even when it’s the easiest way out, when it takes less time, when it takes less patience, when the defiance is so loud, I can’t hear the joy over both of our no’s.

It’s not fun being the disciplinarian, the one who doles out all the rules. It’s not fun being the one who says “no.”

No, no, no, no, no.

No. I will never give up on this boy.