The day Parker was born was remarkable. Of course, all births are pretty spectacular, but his was notable for a variety of reasons.

His mom, Kate Rowe, 36, has survived ovarian cancer—twice. In between her two oophorectomies—the surgical removal of her ovaries—she went through IVF to retrieve her eggs, in the hope that she would be able to get pregnant when her body was healed.  A first pregnancy ended in a heartbreaking miscarriage, but luckily her second resulted in Parker, a red-headed, blue-eyed ball of brightness and joy.

Two weeks before her due date, Rowe was diagnosed with preeclampsia and her husband Tom, tested positive for COVID. She tested positive a few days later too. That meant a quarantine stay at Johns Hopkins Hospital as the “COVID mom,” says Rowe. They checked in on March 23, 2022, Parker was born via C-section on March 27, and they were finally discharged home on April 1.

Five weeks later, on Mother’s Day, Rowe was back at the hospital, after passing out from blood loss connected to the delivery. A few days later she’d be recovering from another surgery.

“I told Tom all I want for 2023 is just boring contentment,” says Rowe. Last year was filled with extreme highs and lows, and she could use a little normalcy. “Joyful, intense life-giving moments are amazing—you don’t not want them—but just having this good day
is a win,” she says. It’s been a struggle to trust her body again. “I’ve just had all these situations that feel like my body is attacking me.”

But she’s trying. Right now, that means avocado toast from Atwater’s and a happy, babbling, toothy-grinned Parker inside their cramped Canton apartment—soon to be traded in for a new house in Baltimore County’s Phoenix.

As Rowe can attest, being a mom is a wild ride. There’s bliss and exhaustion, laughter and failure, and that’s just in a 15-minute span.

Allison Banks became a first-time mom at age 42. “She has black curly hair and came out screaming,” says Banks of Ava, now three and a half months old. “She’s a real baby now,” laughs Banks. “She’s plumped up and we’ve started seeing a personality. But I’m frightened every day. Am I doing this right?”

One thing that Banks has realized is “nobody knows what they’re doing”—no matter what age someone becomes a mom. “We are all just figuring this out.”

Lane Harlan, one of Baltimore’s most successful restaurateurs with Clavel, Fadensonnen, WC Harlan, and the upcoming Coral Wig bar, met her match this year. Brune Charo was born “fast and furious” on the last Sunday in August. “It’s been amazing, it’s been hard, it’s been nebulous,” says Harlan, now eight months into this motherhood voyage, drinking her coffee black on a Tuesday afternoon at Artifact. “I think nebulous is a really good way to describe it. As soon as you sort of get a rhythm everything changes the next week.”

The first year is slippery, she says. “I can’t get a grip on it. And I don’t think you are supposed to get a grip because the second you get it down it changes.” It’s been hard, she admits, for someone who likes—okay, needs—organization and systems. “It’s really challenging to release some of that control, and I understand she’s teaching me as much as I’m teaching her,” Harlan says.

She’s also learned to rely on her intuition. Those first few weeks you’re just dropping in and out of hysteria, says Harlan, 36, who went back to work when Brune was just three weeks old. You have all this doubt creeping in “to totally freak you out,” especially in the newborn phase. But “most babies make it to the adult phase,” says Harlan. “I just kept telling myself that. Most babies grow up to be adults. Why am I sweating over all these little details so much?”

Banks, from her Patterson Park rowhome, had similar feelings. “I’m responsible for this whole person,” she kept telling herself through the fog of hormones, exhaustion, self-doubt, and days that never seem to end but also manage to go by too quickly. “The first four to six weeks are still kind of a blur. It honestly felt like three long days.”

And now that Banks has started back at work, she’s learning how much capacity she has to “do everything.” She’s been putting off finding childcare, she admits. “I’m not ready for anyone else to take care of my baby. Three months is not a lot of time.”

 

“AS SOON AS YOU SORT OF GET A RHYTHM EVERYTHING CHANGES THE NEXT WEEK.”

 

For Rowe, a ceramic artist and teacher at ClayGround Studio & Gallery, having a nanny for Parker a few hours a week, “lets me breathe air that he isn’t breathing.” Pottery was essential to her healing after her second oophorectomy —“it saved me in a time when I needed saving.” And it was there for her again when she was happily pregnant with Parker but still needing to mourn and process the miscarriage.

“I really enjoyed being pregnant. It was beautiful, it was hard. It was all the things I wanted it to be,” says Rowe. “But I definitely held myself back from feeling some of the joy I know I felt but didn’t want to let myself have.”

Since having Parker there’s been a lot of pure delight. And a lot of other feelings, too. Something happens when you become a mom. You have all these competing thoughts. You want to teach them to walk, but don’t want to ever let go. You dream they’ll be the best of you, but somehow completely their own person, too. You want them to experience the world, but from the safety of your arms.

“It’s changed my perspective,” says Harlan. “I think in the past I had been more nostalgic and looked backwards and now I look forward. It makes me think about the future.It makes me think about what the world is going to be like for her. I think my perspective
on the world has changed because I am now caring for the future.”

Recently while flying to Spain with her husband, Matthew Pierce, Harlan found herself emailing all her passwords to her parents, who were watching Brune—“in case we’re lost at sea.” She suddenly finds herself thinking about life insurance, because “for better or for worse it puts me face to face with mortality.”

Harlan has started a Dear Brune letter, in the Notes app on her phone, typing usually in the wee hours when she takes the overnight shift for a baby who does not like to sleep. “There is so much I want to tell her now.” Sometimes it’s profound thoughts, other times it’s, “We went on a walk today, this is what you looked at, this is what you loved, this is what I saw.” It’s for both of them. “The practice helps me cope with the anxiety of not knowing what tomorrow will bring,” she says.

Rowe is also at a crossroads. “Something is shifting. Maybe it’s because he’s not a baby baby anymore,” she says. She feels an emotional change within herself. “I wanted a baby so much and now he’s becoming a kid and it’s really shifting my brain. It’s beautiful and it’s brutal every day. It’s so amazing to see him grow and it’s so hurtful to know that every day he’s bigger. He’s taking steps. Like cool, you’re taking steps to walk away from me,” her voice cracks. “It’s a lot.”

But for now, there’s still walks in the stroller to Bark Social with their pup, Murphy, sticky hands full of puffed snacks, and naps that allow Rowe to prep a few dozen mugs for the kiln.

For Harlan, it’s no surprise that introducing food to Brune has brought a lot of bliss. There was an abundance of food in her childhood, mostly due to her Filipino-born mother, who would always “cook way more food than you could eat.” Harlan says she remembers eating “rice and bananas with soy sauce” and Spam. And though Brune’s first foods have been slightly different, Harlan did start her eating very young.

“The process is really fun and funny and messy. I have this long list of every single thing I want her to taste, and I want to see her experience.” That includes things like lemons and tinned fish. Anything with “really intense flavors.” And yes, she knows at some point even her child will only want chicken fingers and cheese quesadillas.

“Basically, as soon as she crawled out of me, I was like, ‘You’re your own. I need to get to know you. What do you need?’” So far, they have logged countless miles walking from their Tuscany-Canterbury home to Sherwood Gardens, Linkwood Park, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. While Brune takes in the world, Harlan can revel in not having to be the constant source of entertainment. Often, she has one hand on the baby in the carrier, and the other wrapped around a cup of coffee.

Banks, who now expertly maneuvers her stroller up and down her steps and the narrow entranceway to her home, also loves walking to ice cream shops, grocery stores, and to pick up dinner with the baby. She’s constantly thinking about her own mom, whom she lost when she was 11, so she makes sure to take plenty of photos of herself with Ava. She never wants her to wish there were more pictures of them together—like she does with her own mother.

Another friend, who also had her first after 40, told Banks she was putting her baby in every ensemble she wanted—even multiple changes a day. “I waited this long; he is going to wear every one of these outfits,” her friend joked. Banks realized she could also allow herself that freedom. “I waited this long and I’m dressing her up in everything I always wanted to—including bows. I don’t care. I’m just enjoying all of it.”

She pauses. “I was waiting for her. Out of all the babies, this was my baby. This one’s mine. I know she was meant for me. I’m just grateful. I am feeling all the feelings.” Banks laughs—motherhood will do that to you, turn you into a sappy person who didn’t exist before. Into someone who says, “feeling all the feelings.” And she admits that when Ava is in her room napping, when there is finally a fleeting moment of quiet, “I miss my baby.”

 

“I WAS WAITING FOR HER. OUT OF ALL THE BABIES, THIS WAS MY BABY.”

 

After what can be years of thinking about a baby, getting pregnant, being pregnant, and then being the baby’s entire world for the first year, it can be hard to let go. Harlan knows she must work extra hard to be in the moment and not control the moment.

“I hope that Brune feels supported in her interests,” she says. “And I hope that I can approach motherhood less like a manager, as I do with a lot of my businesses, and more like a supportive witness.”

She pauses, knowing how hard it is to unteach yourself something you’ve been doing for over a decade. “I have had a career and managed a lot of people, but I don’t want to fall into the pattern of doing that with her. I hope she can teach me how to sit back and be more of a spectator versus a manager.” Harlan is learning how to get out of the way a bit: “I want her to be free to find her own voice.”

As she approaches her second Mother’s Day, and with a newly minted one-year-old, Rowe is realizing just how fast it goes. She’s emotional. Her baby is getting older, and they are starting to pack up the only home he’s ever known. “Everyone has very sweet input,” she says. “They say, ‘This age is so good. The next thing is going to be so great.’” Her voice breaks. “But it’s so hard to let go of the part that you like so much. I loved when he was a little loaf of bread and fell asleep on your chest. That was a really hard time in the hospital, but it was just us and it was a beautiful time we had.”

Parker is busy in his little fenced-in play area, banging on his walker with one chubby hand and holding onto “his” remote with the other. Naptime is approaching. You can’t stop time. “Change is so good and so hard,” says Rowe. “It seems like it’ll either be so hard or so great, but it is all of those things at the same time.”

Last week, I took my daughter shopping for a dress for her upcoming bridal shower. While I waited for her to come out of the dressing room and model top contenders, I flashed back to my own shower, over 40 years ago. I wore a denim jumpsuit, chunky-heeled shoes, and an attitude.

To me, a shower was sexist—it made me feel like the “little woman” eager to share recipes and stain removal tips. I resented the expectation that household duties were mine. I craved respect for my business acumen, not my brisket. I envied the men, probably at a bar slamming shots and betting on football—no vacuum cleaners nor dish towels for them.

Nevertheless, I did not want to hurt anyone’s feelings. The shower organizers spent time, energy, and money to plan this for me. So, I pasted a smile on my face, swept aside resentment, and entered a living room brimming with chattering women and aromas of yellow roses and white tulips.

After a proper period of schmoozing and indulging—mini tuna fish and egg salad sandwiches, blintz souffles, and champagne punch—I was ushered into a blue velvet arm chair. A ruffled, white umbrella dangled above my head. The guests arranged folding wooden chairs into a half circle around me.

An aunt handed me a present from the mountain of gifts adorned in silver and white wrapping papers and ribbons. “Here, open this one and hand me the bow.” She affixed the bow to a white paper plate, as I finessed a round object out of its square box.

“Oh, a crock pot! How great!” I said.

The aunt lit up, “You can put your brisket and potatoes in here before you go to work. When you get home, voila, dinner is ready.”

I thought, “lucky me.”

A cousin on my fiancée’s side, pen in hand, was writing something on a legal pad. I asked, “What are you doing?” Snickers from the crowd. Then, a “you’ll see.”

I opened a set of knives, a paper towel holder, and a can opener. When I got to a matzah ball soup pot, I said, “Oh, this is great—it’s so big.” The guests erupted into laughter. More giggles and scribbles when I opened a set of sheets, “I love these, they’re so soft, I’m tired of stiff ones.”

It took me almost two hours to unwrap and fuss over each present. I could have finished in 20 minutes, but I was admonished, “Please try and open the gifts gently, so you don’t tear the beautiful paper.” I guess someone wanted to reuse it.

By now, the paper plate was covered with bows and ribbons, two ribbons dangling, ties for the homemade hat. A gaggle of guests shouted, “Put it on. Put it on.” I should have been a good sport and gone along with their request—but I wasn’t.

The ladies refilled their punch glasses, it was time for the big reveal. The recording secretary, legal pad in hand, announced, “Now let’s hear what Laura will say on her wedding night.” Then, starting with, “It’s so big,” she read aloud my comments about the gifts. I laughed along with the group, keeping my thoughts to myself. “When will this be over? Don’t they know that my fiancée and I already live together?”

Now, four decades later, I want to slap my younger self. I had assumed that success in business required that I distance myself from stereotypical female activities. I was so driven to climb that corporate ladder, that I stepped over traditions that would later bring love, safety, comfort, and belonging.

I didn’t yet know that sitting around the family dinner table and asking “how was your day?” would serve to ground me. And throwing a brisket and potatoes into that crock pot would facilitate those dinners. Briskets and business are not mutually exclusive. I didn’t understand how a clean and organized home would give me a sense of control in a world where I had so little. I also didn’t realize that household chores are not the innate purview of either partner. Like everything else in marriage, they are negotiable.

But my biggest miscalculation was the role that women would play in my life. I tried so hard to fit in what was then considered a “man’s world” that I overlooked the power of women. It turned out that the women in my life nurtured, supported, and loved me. They let me process, not just problem solve. They were not afraid to get dirty with emotions, share vulnerabilities, nor shed pretenses of perfection.

Some of the women who loved and supported me the most are hosting my daughter’s bridal shower. The room will not be overflowing with guests, just a small group of Jackie’s closet friends and relatives. I’m hoping that they skip the ribbon hat and refrain from predicting her wedding night articulations. I know they will embrace and help Jackie prepare for this next stage of life.

My daughter’s generation knows not to diminish the camaraderie of women nor overvalue the approval of men. They also recognize that as women, whatever path we chose, we are more alike than different. And regardless of our differences, we stand strong for one another.

Ana Rodney wears many hats. As a doula, poet, activist, and mom, Rodney is also the founder of MOMCares, a program that provides postpartum support to black mothers in the NICU. Her work, in general, delves into a topic that rarely gets acknowledged: the maternal health and mortality of black women. We talked to Rodney about how her personal experiences were as the catalyst for starting the organization and why it has become her mission to save the lives of black mothers and children.

How did MOMCares come to be?
I’ve been a doula birth worker for 11 years now and, since 2014 when my son, Aiden, was born, I’ve been doing the Neonatal Intensive Care (NICU) work. First, I had to live it and now I’m standing in and holding space for moms in the NICU. Aiden spent four months in the NICU, two months in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) and we only moved to the PICU because we encountered some discrimination and bias during, and right after, the Uprising.

After he came home, I decided that I needed to process what happened when I was in the NICU. During my pregnancy I was fat, black, single, and while in the NICU I decided to stay with my son. Then all of a sudden, I became unemployed and all of that gave rise to its own bias in the care and I ended up feeling unsupported and appearing unsupported while in the NICU.

I started a healing circle, talking to moms about birth, trauma, and self-care and then I was awarded seed money, through Baltimore Corps’ Elevation Awards, and MOMCares expanded. We built out a suite of services to support moms based on my experience and what I have seen in the NICU. For example, providing transportation to and from the hospital. We provide services like that, and we also provide advocacy in the hospital.

Does being an artist inform your work in the medical community?
I hope this doesn’t sound morbid, but there’s artistry in our pain in that everything is connected. As a writer I have always felt like, if you could see the vision of what I was saying, then I then I have done my job. When I go into a board meeting, or when I go into a hospital, or when I talk to a group of people, I am still very much using words to paint that picture.

But now that that picture is around the black maternal health crisis, and mothers dying, and babies being underserved in the black community, I definitely use that to my advantage. By using my way with words, I am able to drive it home to people who don’t have to think about that every day. They don’t have to think about that when they go into a doctor’s appointment or when they’re driving down the street. They don’t have to think about what role their identity plays in their survival.

NICU advocacy is not new but the work you are doing to address the narrative for women of color is what has been missing. What challenges do you face while doing this work?
There are a couple of things that have been difficult, I think on the one hand being so connected to the work and committed to the work, but also having a 4-year-old that doesn’t care about the work can be hard at times. Mom guilt is a bitch and it’s hard to be out here doing the battle cry for moms of black families and then come home and Aiden’s like, “I’m hungry” or “You didn’t play with me enough today.” So that’s difficult.

As far as actual deliverables, it has been two years this month since my sister died. We were pregnant that at the same time, and she had a health issue that was very small, an issue with a gallbladder that started right after she gave birth. It was neglected because she didn’t feel like she had support and she died suddenly. At the same time that she passed away, I was also holding space for a mom that I just helped deliver a little girl and her baby passed away. So, I’m helping a mom go through something that I can’t fathom while dealing with the guilt of not being able to help my sister the way she needed. My sister was a part of my work and it’s difficult to be like, “Of all the people that I wanted to save, that I wanted to help, that I wanted to impact, I did not.”

This work touches everybody in such an acute way, but I signed up for it. I signed up to do that. And it’s one of the reasons why I went through the grief training with Roberta’s House—because I know that the work I am going to be doing will involve some level of grief, and I need to be equipped to handle that.

What advice would you give for future social entrepreneurs and activists?
Get organized. Organize because your passion is important, but you can ignite someone else to want to support you and if you don’t have the capacity to respond to them, it’s like you didn’t say anything. Make sure you are ready to jump when it’s time to jump and trust yourself. There’s a reason why you have approached whatever work it is that you’re doing. There’s a reason why people are listening to you and engaging with you. So you need to trust yourself before you can ask anybody else to have confidence in you.

What’s in the immediate pipeline for Ana Rodney and MOMCares?
I will be releasing Energetic Motherhood in March, a book that tells Aiden’s birth story. The book reveals the process I created to foster a bond with my son after his premature birth and my being deprived of common mother’s rites of passage. We also have a giving campaign to collect donations to continue to bring services to more mothers well into the New Year. I am also currently accepting speaking requests for speaking engagements and cultural competency presentations.

Where do you see yourself in the next 10 years?
I would like to be recognized as a national advocate for black mothers around birth and maternal health. I’d like for MOMCares to be a national and international name in the fight to correct the crisis of maternal health in this country.

My son Lou is standing next to me with no pants on and a finger in each nostril. “I can watch Magic School Bus?” he asks, as the snot drips down his finger onto his wrist.

“I don’t know, baby. We watched Magic School Bus a lot yesterday and—”

“Mama.” He steps closer to me and I silently applaud myself for not recoiling from the snot, which is now twisting around his forearm. “I can watch Magic School Bus.”

I realize he has already put the remote within my reach (When? How?) and I obey my orders. Lin-Manuel Miranda starts singing the theme song and Lou walks away and plays with his blocks, the television blinking and making noise at just me. As I marvel at his twisted mind, my daughter Edie begins to squawk from her rocker, indicating that the weird, 20-minute nap she takes every weekday morning has ended. She stares me down, wordlessly telling me to stop typing my work email and get the hell up and make her a bottle.

I make her second breakfast and realize I forgot to make Lou’s school lunch the night before. He notices me pull his lunchbox down and begins telling me that he is not going to school today and he needs a cookie. Edie cries and Lou runs to her telling me, “EDIE NEEDS MILK MAMA,” as if I wasn’t holding her prepared bottle while he argued with me about the lunch he requires for school, to which he won’t be going.

Lunch packed and baby fed, I wriggle Lou into his uniform and carefully stuff Edie into her Tauntaun suit and fold her into the carrier strapped to my chest. Lou loads his bookbag with toys and I quietly remove each one as we make our way to the door.

The half block walk to school takes seven minutes. As I leave Lou on his school’s playground, he stands at the wooden fence and kisses me through each rail.

Our nanny arrives and I leave the house. I debate listening to How Did This Get Made or WYPR on my run/walk to work. I opt for the former, despite the latter’s morning show being kind of important for my job. I reason that, because it was one of my favorite movies as a kid, I can’t not listen to the HDTGM crew dive deep into the inappropriateness of Rodney Dangerfield’s Ladybugs.

I get to work.

At work, I do my work.

My husband calls on his ride home and offers to pick me up. It’s raining and I’m tired, so I say yes. We walk inside and Edie beams at us and Lou comes running, talking over himself to tell us about his day. He mentions one girl in particular over and over and we try to be cool because it sounds like he has his first little crush.

The house is in such disrepair that I cant even think of a clever simile. We divide and conquer: Rob feeds Edith and fields questions from Lou, I pour wine for us both and start reassembling what was once our living room. I notice something brown next to Edie’s foot and brace myself for poop. It is, mercifully, leftover “breakfast cookie” (our term for waffle) and Lou pops it in his mouth. Someone gets dinner on the table; I think it’s me. And maybe “on the table” is misleading because that makes it sound like the coffee table and kitchen sink we’re eating over are actually our dining room table, which is currently covered in some laundry and a tool kit and a few cats.

I take Lou up to bed because he can play my husband like a fiddle. Mama bedtime consists of teeth brushing, two books, kisses, and lights out. Dada bedtime includes all of that plus a forty five minute bubble bath, four extra books, 30 minutes of rocking chair time, multiple glasses of water, songs, and promises of puppies and ice cream. Dada bedtime often includes caving and bringing Lou into our bed.

While Rob puts Edie to bed (she is six months and has not yet learned the art of manipulation), I fire off some more emails and finish cleaning up. It is 8:45 p.m. and Rob and I spend five minutes deciding if we should watch last week’s SNL or just go to bed. We turn on SNL and I wake up at 1:35 on the sofa. I turn off the TV (I think I made it to “Weekend Update”) and crawl into bed. I think about how busy and lucky we are. In my 20’s, I would have hated that my days are sort of monotonous and not at all my own. In my 30’s, it amazes me how much I love the routine, even when it means that there isn’t a lot of time left to be grownups.

We’ve had two kids for six months. I’ve never been happier or more drained or busier or more excited to go home.

To my beautiful boy:

Your world is about to be rocked. In less than two months, your sister will arrive and your only child status will vanish, and I won’t pretend it will be easy. You will have spent 22 months as the absolute center of our universe, and starting sometime in mid-September you will spend the rest of your life sharing that space. 

I don’t know how much you comprehend what is about to happen. Thanks to the Spanish your incredible nanny has taught you, one of your first words was “hermana.” Most mornings you pull my shirt up and offer hermana a kiss. Some mornings you offer her a spoonful of your yogurt and the ease with which you are willing to share makes heart feel like it has wings. Occasionally (and always in public), you’ll walk over to me and pull my dress up so everyone else can see your sister. Because my bump is enormous and I don’t always see you coming, I’d say about a quarter of the city has seen my underwear now, so thank you for that.

Your attention to my bump makes me think you have some idea of what’s to come, but you’re so little that we can’t really explain it. And even if you were older, I wouldn’t know how to tell you the million small ways things are about to change. Because a lot of our friends don’t have kids yet, you’re used to having the undivided attention of almost every adult you meet. I don’t think you’ve ever been denied a story when you grab book and back into the lap of whoever is sitting closest to you. 

We spent so many hours pouring over your 100 First Trucks picture book that while you can’t say your own name, you correctly identify and pronounce police cars, bulldozers, and tractors. Every week (and entirely unsolicited), you present your nails to be clipped like a well-trained poodle, and once the task is complete to your satisfaction you choose a temporary tattoo as a reward for your manicure. (Don’t worry—they’re made from vegetable-based dye and rarely feature naked ladies.) At night your dada gives you long, bubbly baths and then all three of us read books together, and, while you fall asleep in your crib, I rub your cheeks and hair and tell you all about the day we just had.

This fairytale, my friend, is about to change.

It took nearly two years to conceive you—and another 41 weeks after that to meet you—so, when you finally arrived, we were ready. You had been our shared, constant thought for so long that your arrival felt like we’d picked up a dear friend from the airport. (The world’s most painful, horrifying airport, but you can appreciate the metaphor.) Your sister, however, was standing impatiently in the wings, tapping her tiny toe, waiting for us to be ready for her. It still took some help from science, but her conception took exactly one month and my pregnancy has flown by. Because we were expecting another battle with fertility, I’m not sure your dad or I fully believe our luck yet, but here we are just a few weeks from meeting our baby girl.

I want to tell you that I’m so sorry that we’re shaking things up. We’ve got a good thing going, us three, and now some chick who is in the process of ruining my belly button is about to burst onto the scene. I’m sorry for the growing pains we’re all going to feel adjusting to being a family of four, and I’m sorry that you didn’t get a say in this decision. 

But, my love, I also want to tell you you’re welcome. I think once the shock wears off and we’re in a groove, you’re going to be so happy. You will have someone to talk to in the back seat of the car; someone to read your Spot books to; someone to roll your eyes with when you figure out how embarrassing your dad and mom are. You and your sister will challenge each other, fight each other, make each other laugh, and love each other and you’ll both be better people for it. I’m so excited and proud to watch you become a big brother, and I hope very much that you treat your sister with at least as much dignity and respect as you treat our cats.

I love you more than I’ll ever know how to show, Mama

(And Dada. I’m assuming he feels similarly.)

Greetings from me and the tiny human I’m currently growing in my uterus! Rob, Lou, and I are very excited to welcome a lady baby to our family in September. We don’t know a lot about her yet except that she’s healthy, looks exactly like her brother in her sonogram, and might be part hummingbird because I can’t stop eating sugar. 

I expected this pregnancy to be easier since I’ve done this before, and have been very surprised to learn that being two years older and having a toddler aren’t two factors that lead to a calm, enjoyable pregnancy. If you live in my house or work in close proximity to me, you’re well aware of my near-constant whining. If you don’t number among these unfortunate people, here’s a look at how different my experiences have been, for better or worse. 

I am tired all the time.
When I am pregnant, I don’t sleep. I spend my days in a yawn-filled fog, trudge through my evenings, get an ice cream-related second wind right after Lou’s bedtime, sleep for a few hours, and then find myself awake from 1-5 a.m. Rinse, repeat.

This was frustrating during my first pregnancy, but I wasn’t working a full 9-5 then, nor did I have a toddler, so I was able to rest or nap some mornings. This round, I am accountable as an employee all day and a mama all of the time—and I’m pretty damn tired. I’ve taken to sleeping on the couch a lot because the stress of waking up Rob and Lou compounded with my eventual desire to stare at something on Netflix has led me there.

In the mornings, I wake up to Rob and Lou making breakfast, which is lovely, but I secretly resent their cheerfulness from my nest on the couch. The only saving grace of this new sleep situation is that I am in repose at exactly at Lou-height, so each morning I’m greeting with a new offering. Last week I received an open mouth kiss, a dinosaur toy, and “MAMA!” screamed an inch from my face. This week he stepped things up and brought an open bag of coffee beans and held it near my nose to smell, which was so dear that I had tears in my eyes and felt momentarily grateful that months of insomnia had led to this moment. I might have Stockholm Syndrome.

Deflated interest from strangers.
During both pregnancies, the question most asked was, “Awwww, is this your first?” When it was my first pregnancy, I would blush in the glow of impending motherhood and unknowingly give the people what they wanted: a brand new mama. Now when people ask (after I get over being flattered that they think I could possibly look rested enough to not currently have a toddler at home), I tell them it’s my second and the conversation ends and I feel like I’ve let them down. Are subsequent babies less exciting? I mean I’m pretty excited about it. 

There is less stuff to buy.
We sat down to make a list of what we need for this kid, and it turns out we already have most of it. We’re buying a bassinet because not having one during my C-Section recovery was brutal; we’re looking into whether or not a double stroller is a sound investment for our city kids; we need to fill in a few gaps in her wardrobe of Lou hand-me-downs—and that’s kind of it. A far cry from the frenzied shopping spree we went on after months of research during my first pregnancy.  

I’m a little worried about having so little to do or buy in the final weeks of my pregnancy when nesting kicks in, but once this kid is out and snuggled up in her brother’s arsenal of long-ago paid for infant-ware, I think I’ll be okay.

I have more anxiety about the birth.
Lou’s birth was not pleasant. I was induced a week after my due date, labored for well over 30 hours, and ended up with a C-Section. His heart rate was decelerating after contractions, which meant I needed an oxygen mask the entire time leading up to the surgery. And, after breaking my water some time in the middle of the night, we discovered Lou had been floating in meconium (Google it if you’re unaware), which added a lot more stress to the situation. 

This time, unless I go into labor on my own, my doctors are planning for a scheduled C-Section, which is terrifying me. I agree that it’s probably the best course of action given what went down the first time, but it’s giving me anxiety to kind of know already that I’ll be having major surgery—while awake—some time in September. I very much liked the not-knowing of Lou’s birth. We made each decision as the situation unfolded and I didn’t have time to panic—we just made a call with the doctors and then did that thing.

Having long-lead information about the impending birth is not very suitable for my personality. A very badass friend of mine is finishing the nurse anesthetist program at Georgetown and every time I see her I ruin her precious free time with questions about work. I ask for specific, step-by-step details on epidurals and spinals. With absolutely no medical knowledge backing me up whatsoever, I throw out doomsday scenarios and she patiently explains why what I just asked is impossible. I have even suggested she swing by while I’m getting my spinal just to talk me through it (and keep an eye on the doctor), which is beyond crazy.

Despite my unrelenting whining, I constantly forget I’m pregnant.

Multiple times a day, I’ll be in a meeting or in my sofa nest and think, “Oh no, one of my organs is twitching.” And it doesn’t always occur to me right away that the “twitch” is the miracle of life forming just behind my belly button. Or I’ll find myself totally winded after storming up a hill on my walk home from work and wonder why I’m gasping for air. Or I’ll wake up flat on my back and not be sure why I feel panicked and nauseous until I remember a human is crushing an artery in my body and I need to roll over immediately. Or I’ll get dressed in the morning and genuinely wonder when I put on so much weight.  

I’m going to assume this unbelievable aloofness is related to my lack of sleep. But if you see me perusing crop tops at Forever 21 at the Gallery some time this summer, please gently lead me out of the store while explaining the physics of baby bumps.

The other night I was lying with my head in my son’s Ikea circus tent, (he used to invite me in to read to him, but only the part of me that makes sounds and words is allowed in now) reciting the names of trucks in his favorite truck book, when he suddenly cocked his hand back and open-palm slapped my left eye.

My husband (also not invited in the tent) jumped up from the rocking chair and picked Lou up, admonishing his behavior while our once-sweet baby stared down at me. He humored Rob’s stern talk about being kind and never hitting anyone especially not mommy, and then crawled back in the tent to resume his mechanical studies.

Hello, toddlerhood.

It shocked me how long it took to not be mad at him. I understood, rationally, that my 16-month-old is inherently irrational and that his outburst had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the fact that toddlers are little raw nerves running around on chubby legs. We responded the way we’re supposed to—by explaining his bad behavior and removing him from the situation.

But what I actually wanted to do was create him a PowerPoint outlining the two years it took to conceive him and the second trimester insomnia and migraines I dealt with and the 31-hour labor followed by C-section followed by the recovery and sleepless nights of reverse cycling and cluster feeding and the low grade anxiety about something terrible happening to him that I will carry in my heart for the rest of my life. A proportional response, no?

What I did instead was get over it. Because he hit me again a few days later when we were snuggled together watching Sesame Street, and again when we were standing in the window pointing out all the cars driving by (a new favorite pastime). And, before you pass judgement and think my son is some kind of woman-hater, I know for a fact he isn’t because he’s hit my husband, too.

I’ve looked into this extensively and basically what I’ve learned is that toddlers belong in prison. They hit and yell and are sometimes belligerent—or even poop—in public. They show little remorse for their transgressions, and exhibit almost no signs that they are willing to conform to societal norms. It’s no wonder that nature made sure humans are at their cutest and funniest from the ages of one to four.

I should take the time to point out, lest Lou come across this article 20 years from now, that he is a dream 93 percent of the time. He’s curious and hilarious and loving and he deeply dislikes being upset. His tantrums usually last under a minute because he’s already a more realized person than either of his parents and actually works to breathe through his anger. He amazes me every single day, and fills our lives with joy.

But the hitting has got to stop.

The research I’ve done leads me to believe that Lou’s occasional outbursts have to do with one of three things: curiosity, communication, or crankiness. Toddlers do things repeatedly to see what kind of reaction they’ll get. When they drop food on the floor it’s not to give you a prematurely bad back from cleaning, it’s to, simply put, learn what happens when they drop food on the floor. Will it always fall? Will dad always pick it up? Will any more food replace that food? It’s the same principle with hitting. Lou will watch us carefully to see how we respond, and then he moves on to the next activity. By that logic, if we consistently tell him to stop, we can expect a hit-free home some time by the end of 2018.

Communication—or lack of the ability to verbally communicate yet—could also be the culprit. Lou’s got a few signs down, which really helps us figure out what he wants. But while we wait for his verbal skills to fully catch on, it’s got to be pretty frustrating. Kids his age will often communicate the only way they know how at that point, which is physically. And lastly, he could just be tired or cranky and not want to deal with his annoying parents.

The lesson we’re all learning here is patience. Because we were inexplicably blessed with an easy baby, we’re used to being a little gang who gets along most of the time. But now that Lou is working on becoming a person and we’re working on being the best parents we can, things are shifting into a higher gear. Our relationship will continue to evolve for the rest of our lives, and it’s been humbling to realize that during his first big developmental shift.

The real work of helping turn him into a productive, kind, curious person has begun, and I can only hope that my creativity in aiding this process develops beyond guilt-ridden PowerPoint presentations.

Being a parent in 2016 is incredible in many ways, but perhaps outshining them all is the access to smartphones. If my kid is sick, I can book a doctor’s appointment, add it to my calendar, text my husband to update him, and have medicine delivered to my door in an hour all while playing soothing music (which in Lou’s case is still, impossibly, “Hotline Bling”). The ability for one device to do all those things is amazing, but it is simply an embarrassment of riches that that same device can also take unlimited, professional-grade photos of my son.

I am in no way a trained photographer. I am simply a lady with a baby, an iPhone, and just enough free time to really dig deep into the vanity of documenting a child made partially in my likeness. Below are a few of my thoughts on the matter of photographing your kid. With the holidays approaching and cards to print and mail to family, frenemies, and coworkers, I thought it might be worth sharing some unsolicited advice.

Perspective

At a happy hour with a buddy of mine, we discovered our sons might not share the friendship we’ve enjoyed for over 20 years. Through tears of laughter, I got a shot of both their reactions to really seeing each other for the first time, and they’re among my favorite from Lou’s first year. Until these shots, I hadn’t considered capturing what Lou was reacting to, but now I make it a practice to include multiple vantage points—especially since most of the time it just means turning around.

Opportunity

The outtakes can be the best stuff. Each morning that Lou turned a month older, I’d photograph him in the same spot—a common practice, I know, but an effective one. This was taken at six months, when his life was dominated by learning to sit up and pointing his index finger. This picture tells you which skill he still needed to work on. As long as they’re safe and happy, snap a few more pictures once your intended shot is a bust. This image feels so incredibly Lou, and it made me step back from my Dina Lohan brand of crazy-mom photography and instead focus on capturing his silliness.

Reflection

Babies love their reflections. Mirrors are intoxicating to a young mind, but kind of terrible for picture taking, especially since there is a 100-percent chance I’ll be captured in the reflection looking crazy and covered in cat hair. Instead, keep an eye out for all the other remarkable places in which they find their reflection. Lou had recently learned to pull himself to standing when he was seduced by the glow of the dessert case at Marie Louise Bistro one night. We let him gaze in, and because it was way past his bedtime, I was able to get a shot flooded with light against a nice pool of darkness. The best shots I’ve taken of this kid are when he’s naturally drawn to something, even (or especially) when it’s his own face.

Pets

Since he came home from the hospital, Lou has loved and been loved by our cat Richard. They snuggle together, they chase each other around, and they often drink out of the same water bowl because I’m learning to pick my battles. I’ve probably taken 300 pictures of these buddies and this the only one that’s any good because they share a sixth sense that alerts them that I’m reaching for my phone. But, I’m not a quitter and I purchased more space in my Cloud, so after a few months of unusable flashes of white fur and baby rolls, I finally got this shot.

Simplicity

The best spot for Lou’s high chair happened to be against a dark wall in our living room, and it’s turned out to be a fantastic backdrop for pictures. If there’s a spot in your living or dining room that you particularly like—or even just a solid-colored wall—try moving your baby’s eating situation there. Babies are like drunk college students when they eat: the goal is to shovel it in quickly and without the irksome realities of polite society. And as parents, it’s our job to photograph the hell out of their messes and then pretend to be strict about better manners. Taking these pictures against a solid backdrop highlights your kid and has the added bonus of leaving out the clutter in the space behind you.

Negative Space

For the purposes of this post, let’s assume “negative space” means “any space without babies in it.” My initial instinct when photographing Lou was to get in close and document every curve of his sweet little face, but as he’s gotten older, I’ve pulled back the frame. Creating a sense of place gives you more reference points down the line because it’s hard to tell where the picture was taken if it’s entirely filled with baby face, cute as it might be.

Hey Mama!

Hello! You’re a lovely person who Russian-dolled herself for nine months and lived to tell the tale of human extraction, so get in the damn pictures with that baby. It’s really easy to forget to jump in the shot (and being sleep deprived and discovering pureed pear in your hair isn’t the most glamorous you’ve ever been), but your kid will one day look for your face in his arsenal of baby pictures and you should be in them. Sneaking a glass of wine during an unforeseen nap or conducting a feed on the ground of a parking lot won’t be the biggest moments in your lives, but there’s a sweetness in capturing the little stuff.

Nancy Murray was 16 when she became pregnant and made the gut-wrenching decision that she wanted to give up her baby for adoption. She eventually reunited with her son Dylan and his adoptive parents, and she chronicled her experiences with adoption, abuse, and teenage motherhood in her memoir One Child for Another. Murray joined us to discuss how she decided to write the book, the pain of memory, and the role of writing in her life.

How did you come to the idea that you wanted to write about this part of your life? It is so personal, and I’m sure that made it so difficult to write about.
Dylan and his other mother and I have done the circuit of talking to adoption agencies, so we’ve told the story. And of course, among friends and family we’d told it again and again and again. But the story we told was always the Hallmark version, with the big happy ending. We didn’t really talk about what it was like to be the birth mother, we talked about the celebration of coming together. It was always sort of in my mind that I wanted to say, ‘You know, it wasn’t easy.’ It was scary and it was hard, and I wanted people to get that. There’s a lot of birth mothers out there that don’t have the big happy ending with their child that we had.

What was the process like of beginning to write the book?
I wrote it as part of my graduate thesis. Dylan and I have always talked writing about it or making a movie out of it because it’s so grand, there’s so many elements to it. But it was always very lighthearted. I went to [Dylan and his adoptive parents] after, when I actually had a body of work to say, ‘Hey, what do you think about this and what do you think about this being out in the world?’ We talked from there.

What was your family’s response to you writing about this time in your life?
I talked to them about it beforehand, but they didn’t read it until it was published. I was really worried about that, to be perfectly honest, because all my siblings are good people, but they all have chosen to frame their lives how they’ve chosen to frame their lives. It’s different for each one of us. For me to be going public with some of the things I had in there, I was concerned. [One of my brothers] had a very strong bond and connection with my mother. I was very worried that he would be hurt by the fact that I was exposing some of her weaknesses. But he wasn’t. He read it and the word he used was, ‘perfect’ because it captured the darkness that she was surrounded by and also showed her with some strengths and as a loving mother. I was happy about that. My sister who did not have a close relationship with my mother, she reacted differently, but she was still supportive. She said, ‘That is your story and you tell it.’

How long did it take you to write?
When I actually put pen to paper, I wrote it in about three months.

That’s fast.
I had to cram it in, I was on a timeline. But I had been chewing on it and mulling it over for my whole life, to understand what it meant to me and to understand the idea that something terrible happened in my life and it turned into something so positive . . . I grew from that experience. I’d been thinking about it for a long time, so it wasn’t like I had to untangle it and understand its meaning before I started to write. I had already been doing that.

One thing that impressed me in the book was its level of detail. Was that still very present for you?
No. I actually had to go back to [St. Ann’s Infant and Maternity Home]. Once I walked around the grounds and the building, some memories flooded back . . . I did keep a diary, but unfortunately, the diary vanished. I’d been carrying this thing around for my entire adult life that I’d written while I was there and I’d read it once or twice, so I had some memories of what I said. But, when I actually sat down to put the pen to paper, I couldn’t find the diary anywhere. It was maddening. So I did have to pull from my remembering reading the diary. I asked some of my siblings what they remembered about that experience. It was a lot of piecing things together.

Was there anything particularly surprising to you about writing the book?
I hadn’t realized that I had blocked the day that I gave birth. I wrote that at the very, very last minute. I had to push through a wall of fire to get there because I didn’t want to face it, I didn’t want to go back and remember that. So I locked myself in my room and forced myself to do it, because I knew it had to be a part of the story. I learned as I was actually writing it and crying—it really brought up a lot of feelings—that that day was when my bravado of being a tough kid and a really savvy person all broke down. Because I was frightened, I was weak, I was out of control, I was a kid. And that was the moment that I had to accept it . . . I did remember going into shock, I did remember punching the nurse—those are things you don’t forget. [laughs] But I didn’t really remember what I felt. One of the fears about memoir is that it’s therapy for the writer and not interesting for the reader. For most of the book I knew I was writing something was interesting for the reader because I had already worked out all my therapy stuff, but this was the one moment where I was thinking, ‘Oh wow, this is some stuff I need to work on.’ I was really surprised at the level of emotions that came out of that. It was very hard for me.

Are you considering writing more memoirs or do you think you’ll venture into other types of writing?
I have so many projects floating around in this brain of mine right now. I’m working on another memoir about my relationship with money, which also has a lot of highs and lows and dramatic, relevant experiences. I also have a goal to do a historical fiction work based on the ancestry of my family. There’s an incredible thread of a story there, which I won’t tell you now, that I can’t wait to write.

Was writing always a part of your life?
Yes. There was a bit of a dual existence for me, as I had a lot of secrets, and the way that I sort of kept track of myself was through writing. I always had diaries, I always wrote poetry, I wasn’t always good. There’s a poem in the book that I wrote about Dylan a couple of days after I gave him away. But it’s not been something I’ve shared, because of the secrets in my family. I was sort of trained not to share what was inside of me—write it down, keep it for myself. There was a lot of work for me to get to the point where I could actually get the stories out.

When did that point occur?
I’ve been trying all my life to do it. I’d been starting and stopping, starting and stopping. That’s why I went to the writing and publishing program at the University of Baltimore—I wanted to force my hand, to force myself to get it out there. That was my motivation for going to school.

And it worked.
It worked in a lot of ways. It changed my thinking, it built my confidence and now I’ve got all these other projects that I feel much more comfortable putting out there. It’s been a great experience . . . [The book] was about more than having a baby. At least I attempted to make it be about the powerless in a difficult situation, letting the difficulties actually be what spurs them on to finding their power. I find my voice in the book and I find my motivation to change my situation. And it was this kind of terrible event that happened that gave me that. There’s gifts in all things.