Being A Mom

The picture to the left is Ryan and I in the NICU, he was 2 days old with the little IV in his hand (he had low blood sugar) on my shoulder as I rub his back. That picture still remains to be my favorite picture of Ryan and I. I remember in that picture thinking I could not believe I was sitting here with this baby, MY baby.

In the years Peter and I dated I knew that Peter was OK someday with or without children, there was no option for me. When we got engaged I told him that having a child was not something I would negotiate and if he could not agree to that then we could not be together. Clearly you can guess his choice, we agreed we would have 1 child and reevaluate from there. I was married at 35 as no spring chicken we started to try and have a baby and as I have told in the past I then experienced infertility. I was told by 4 doctors I would never conceive a child on my own, only with medical help. After many bumps in that road I miraculously became pregnant with Ryan.

14 weeks of bed rest and too many complications to count I did not care I loved being pregnant. I never understand people who hate pregnancy, I just don't get what there is to hate? The thought that I am growing another human being was insane to me and I relished every twitch from him. I remember vividly in some of my last weeks pregnancy laying in bed with him just having the greatest time in there and pushing out his foot right by my belly button. I would push back and he would pull away and then do it again and again, he was so human to me, so real, this was my baby doing this, the baby I was growing, what a miracle. I remember the night he was born laying on the operating room table for a second thinking OMG this is insane, there is a baby in there? They are cutting open my body and a whole human with a beating heart and a working brain is coming out into the world and he will live and work perfectly, how is that possible?

Not to minimize people who adopt child or chose to live a life without children but until you are handed the child you created, who grew inside you, you truly have not lived. It is the most crazy yet surreal moment, the most love you ever felt in your whole life overwhelms you and you know at that moment you would die for this person. All you can do is cry with joy and thank the lord above for giving this wonderful gift to you. In that moment every thought of infertility was gone, every second of depression over not being able to conceive has left your head and every bad second you had ever experienced does not matter. These thoughts of extreme love never seem to minimize either, I looked at Ryan today at 4 years old on this Mothers Day and I thought to myself "I wish I could express to this child what he is to me" and then I thought "how do people not feel this for their children" I thought of the horrible people in the world like that Casey Anthony that would chose to kill their own child (yeah allegedly, whatever) how do you do that? How, I will never understand.

This past Friday Ryan's school had a Mothers Day tea and while I got stuck at work at the last minute I sent my mom to stand in. They told how they surveyed each child about their mom, the first question was "What is something your mom says all the time" The most popular answer in the class was "no" or "wait" but Ryan's answer was "I love you." This not only melted my hearts but made me realize that I am doing good. My son does not think of me as the mother who reprimands him of which I clearly do or the mother who brushes him off with a "wait" but I am the mother who loves him and tells him that all the time. That is one of my major goals as a mother, not only to raise a good, polite, law abiding, decent child but to raise a child who feels love every day of his life and therefore can love others and someday be a wonderful parent to his own child

While Ryan will never know this, I always wished for another child, I wanted again to feel a child inside of me and bring another human into this world to love as much as Ryan. I realize though that through everything there is a grand plan that I do not understand and maybe someday when I meet God he will explain. There must be a reason I was given Ryan (and only Ryan) who is just hands down perfect. Me and him are so close, we really seem to just be on the same wavelength or something, we really understand each other, he is so much like me. Sometimes when I comfort him or really have a good talk with him I know he feels that too, we are very connected, I can see it in his eyes. God knew who and what I needed exactly

Ryan, The day you made me a mother was truly the best day of my life. I love you every single moment and thank you so much for being mine, there is no one better XOXO

Getting Older

So this Saturday (May 7th) I will be 43 years old. This blows my mind, I am not exactly sure when I grew up but clearly it snuck in there somewhere.

Did you ever see that Oreo commercial where the man is driving the car and there is a little boy, maybe 3 in the car seat in the back? Well he is driving and eating an Oreo as is the child. He opens it and is licking the filling while looking back in the mirror at the child doing the same, clearly it was not a busy traffic day or he is multi talented to eat , twist, look and drive all at the same time but that is not the point. He says out loud "The mear (is that how you spell that?) fact that I am responsible for another humans life is amazing to me, I am not old enough for that." That is exactly the way I feel daily, I think they should have cast me in that roll, I would have been perfect!

Things from yesterday seem so fresh, I remember high school like it was yesterday and I remember sitting with my friend Mary (OK Mariangela or Marie or whatever she is calling herself these days) in front of her house, clearly I was 17 since I was in the car, yep my 1971 Pumpkin Orange Toyota Celica, talking about New Years Eve 1999 to 2000 and how old we would be then; lets recall I was 32 in the year 2000, whew old!! We talked about where we thought we would be in our lives, how I would be married (well we know that was untrue) and how I would have 2-3 kids (whoops not true either) and probably need a babysitter to go out partying that night, (yeah that was not happening either, we were all worrying the world would crash, remember?). I remember thinking the day I graduated high school how I could not leave all my friends, who would I know, who would be my friend, I saw nothing past next week or month. Then came friends weddings and babies and who moved and went away to college and yes we lived and grew and unfortunately got older.

Through the wonderful world of Facebook I have found many of those old friends again and always cringe when I see age in there face as I still think of them as 17-18, I cringe when I hear that there children are going to college or that they are getting married or becoming grandparents. ACK!! I cannot get past the fact that I am old enough for any of that, I feel like I am not, I look in the mirror and I look no older to me, but sadly the world knows it I am not 20 anymore and when some 16 year old calls me "ma'am" I always want to punch them in the face, sorry kids!

Ultimately, I have realized that the alternative to getting old is being dead so I think I will go with the getting old option but I just wish it would slow down. I realize that simple things like being able to have a baby (OK not simple for me, but in general) are at the point in my life that I say things like "I am too old for that." Heck they had "AMA" (Advanced Maternal Age) on my chart when I had Ryan in 2007, what would they put now? WPAMA- way past advanced maternal age? or WTOSDO- Watch this one she is damn old?

The funny part of this whole thing is though I LOVE my birthday, ask Peter he will tell you because it's more like birthday week or heck even month. I tell him that the day I was born God went "Hmmm Hmmm" and raised his arms in joy, Peter CRACKS up at me!! I like surprise present of which I never get any because my husband needs "lists" all the time but heck I just love present so not sure why I am complaining. I hate that it is always near Mothers day because he tries to squish the 2 gifts together, ummm not happening buddy. But birthdays is general rock!!

All in all I think it should be a national holiday that we all celebrate together. Like Cinco de Siete, I guess that is sort of already taken or Happy Jill O Birthday Day?! We'll need to work on the name

One Year

Tomorrow, May 5th is the 1st anniversary of my grandmothers (Quatrochi) death and lately its been on my mind. She was 97 years old, OK I lied she was "really 96 year old" she had this crazy story about how when she was 14 (in 1927) she wanted to work, her dad had died (he was an alcoholic) and they were very very poor. She was one of 9 kids and they needed money but you had to be 15 to work. She went to the church to get her birth certificate (why,no clue she was only 14) and the church burned down so they told her they would make her a new one "So when is your birthday?" she said "October 4, 1912" when she was really born in 1913. Crack security back then, huh?? So now that she was 15 she could work, her mother at the time used to make Rye in the bathtub (it was during prohibition) to make money but now she could help her mother and siblings. That 1912 birthday stuck with her forever and anytime you asked her "how old are you?" the answer was "I am 82, but really 81", it always made us laugh.

Let me first say that I loved my grandmother but she was not one of my favorite people, in her final weeks I saw a different person, I think maybe the caring grandmother I always longed for. She had a VERY difficult relationship with my father, he was an only child and he felt she always treated him terrible, now clearly I was not there in his childhood years but my father struggled with this for years and I believe what he tells me. He left home at 17 years old for the navy and never looked back, he admittedly said he went just to get out of his home. Now understand, my grandfather, who passed away in 1988 (I was 20) was the most wonderful man ever, so it was fine with me that she basically did not deal with me or that I felt she could not have cared less about me sometimes. Now Glenn (my brother) that was a whole different story, she loved him and would admit that to the end. See, I am my fathers daughter we are very alike and Glenn is much different, very much like my grandfather.

In her later years, after my grandfather died, my father always took care of her, he offered for her to live with us and she wanted no part of it, but she did move into a senior apartment close to our house. Trust me she drove him nuts and continued (in my eyes) to not treat him so well but she was his mother and he took the best care of her he could, I respect my dad more than ever for that.

In the last 2 or so years before she died she became more and more demented and because of it a bit more caring and oh my she loved Ryan, although she called him everything but Ryan, I am not sure she remembered his name actually. All of a sudden April 2010 she stopped eating and drinking, it got so bad she was admitted in the hospital and to make a long story short no matter what was done she would not eat or drink. At this time, I would go to the hospital and sit with her and my father and most of the time she did not know me, and when my dad would say "This is Jill" she would say things like "Oh you grew up so big" or when I bought her Ryan's picture she was shocked that I (her young grandchild) had a baby. This went on and on for a long time, a longer time then you could imagine any 97, really 96 year old could live without water and she had an advance directive stating she wanted no feeding tube or IV for nutrition so her wishes were followed. Then it became worse and that went to really bad and we bought in hospice. Hospice explained to us the stages of death and not eating was something that many people do during the last weeks of life.

In these weeks I saw a different person, a person who no longer was uncaring but a person who now acted like she loved you and wanted to see you. A person who was funny and told things about her past that we had no idea about. This person that would never ever pick up a phone and call me no matter how sick I was or how many days I was in the hospital because she was MY elder, suddenly was wanting to chat with me. I found myself wishing for this person all along and wondered if this is who she was all those years and for some reason never expressed that.

In her final days when she basically was comatose she spoke few words but the words she did speak made you think she was talking to my grandfather. She would say things like "No Joe, I am scared" which made me wonder if her final openness to us was him getting her to do that and make a sort of closure to us and finally show her love for us. After too many days of really the most horrible ending ever, she passed away and I think all of it made me feel differently about her.

I know she loved me as she did my father, I think she was a strong personality who was not expressive with her feeling and frankly just had some personality clashes with us, as me and my father are strong personalities as well. I do now remember as a kid all the things she did do for me when I was convinced she could not care less that I was there. I sadly think I needed the way she died to understand her more and strangely I am happy that she was clarified for me.

RIP Grandma, I know you are with Grandpa, your love, again which is what you waited 22 years for.

Until we meet again XOXO