Welcome to Shameless Mama: Keeping Motherhood Real! I’m so excited to finally be launching something that I have been working on for almost 2 years. I guess it’s better late than never. It’s been an interesting journey getting to motherhood, and I wanted to share a little bit of that as I like to keep things “real.” Perhaps maybe you can relate or know someone that has had a similar journey. Certainly my story is not unique, but non the less, it has brought me here to this wonderful and exhausting world of motherhood.
Like many women, we find ourselves in relationships or marriages that we think will last forever, but unfortunately or fortunately do not work out. This was my experience. And to be perfectly frank, getting a divorce was the best thing that ever happened to me. I look back with no regrets on that life I had before and grateful of the new chapter in my life that presented itself soon after.
I had always wanted kids and worried that because I was no spring chicken and recently divorced, that that may not be an option for me. I knew there were 2 hurdles ahead of me. One, I needed to find a partner and two, I needed to get pregnant. Despite my fear that step one would be almost impossible to attain at this stage, it appeared in an emotionally evolved, generous, care-taking, loving, and kind man who too wanted kids. Whew, well that worked out.
Next was the journey of getting pregnant which had a couple of snafus. Since, again, I was no spring chicken, neither were my eggs. While I had maintained a relatively healthy lifestyle by eating non-processed food and exercising through dance classes, etc., and felt great, that didn’t mean pregnancy would come easy. After a miscarriage and frustrating FSH numbers, we figured our best bet was IVF.
I’m a research fanatic. And when I decide I want to do something, I do as much “googling” on the topic as possible, and IVF was no exception. Shockingly people assume IVF success is a high percentage. Actually, it is not. And because I had friends who had gone through multiple rounds of IVF, I got a crash course on just how disappointing IVF can be. But I also got information on ways to help make it more successful. Since I’ve always been a Type A, over-achieving perfectionist, I wanted to do everything in my power to try and get this right the first time. Plus, I didn’t really have any more resources if it didn’t work out. This led me to reading and highlighting almost everything in The Better Baby Book by Lana Asprey and seeing a fertility acupuncturist. Both these resources required a huge commitment on my part. The book had a strict eating regime and supplements to take and acupuncture required weekly poking visits and tea made twice daily by boiling herbs that smelled like rotten garbage. I mean this is commitment. But boy did the commitment pay off. My FSH numbers lowered and I was ready for IVF.
While I only produced 6 eggs at retrieval, all 6 fertilized. Before implantation, it seemed only 5 of those 6 looked good and because of my age, the doctor advised implating all 5 with a 2% chance of having twins. I already knew the odds. Like I said, I had many girlfriends who had done multiple rounds of IVF. I had a friend who was pregnant with twins, lost one and then lost the second one later in pregnancy. Good news, she has a healthy little boy now. But the point is, I knew to not get too excited. The doctor said to rest for 2-3 days after the implantation, but I rested on my back with my feet in the air for close to 5 days.
I’m not sure which of the things I did paid off or if it was luck, but we were pregnant with twins and I would soon find out, healthy twin girls. I knew I was high risk and while I made sure to continue on my Better Baby Book eating regime, as soon as I made it past the first trimester, I started taking pre-natal water yoga twice a week and pre-natal Pilates at home with videos I found on YouTube. I live on the 3rd floor of a walkup, so that was daily exercise too. If truth be told, I don’t handle sitting around very well. Those that know me know that I can’t keep still for long and often watch a favorite TV show while multitasking doing something else. So it is no surprise that from the beginning of my pregnancy, I was shooting DIY videos and planning Shameless Mama long before my little monkeys were born. However, the one thing that didn’t occur to me was how long it would take me to get videos edited, blogs written, site designed all while working and taking care of my little ones once they were born. I mean, breast feeding alone consumed the first 6 months of my life after Remy and Charly were born. I didn’t have time to shower or get dressed most days as I was literally a milk machine. Exhaustion can make anyone unproductive although I hesitate to say unproductive since caring for an infant (or two in my case) is one of the hardest, productive jobs a person can have. But non the less, time passed as it does but much faster than I had ever imagined. I continue to struggle with how quickly time flys. Remy Scout and Charly Genevieve are already 16 months and when I see how big they’ve gotten it’s hard to believe two babies sat inside my petite frame.
While I barely touch on how difficult it is to manage babies, career, and personal relationships in this first blog, I plan to talk about all these things in my upcoming blogs. I’m very honest in my own perspective of these things. And while you may not agree with every point of view I have, I hope you see the sense of humor that most of my perspective comes from. After all, if you don’t have a sense of humor about motherhood, you may loose your mind. And that’s a fact!
Welcome again to Shameless Mama and look forward to your thoughts. Hopefully you feel compelled to share some of my stories or fun DIY’s with your friends.
Best,
Shea