Mi Vida

“My Family Loves Me”

August 9, 2016 by Vanessa 3 Comments

We have had such a fantastic summer. Really, really great. One for the books. We’ve had some big adventures and the kids really hung in there with all the traveling and driving. They did beautifully.

It was in between all these awesome trips that I felt like a total mom failure. Prepping for each thing whether it was swim lessons or driving to South Dakota or cooking dinner took a Herculean effort. Not because it is super hard to put on sunscreen and get towels or pack some clothes, but because it takes foooooreeeeever to do anything with all the kids at home. For the love of all that is good and holy. These kids have all banded together to make me sure I don’t get to cross anything off my to-do list.

I know life isn’t about being super efficient and accomplishing all the things but I’d like to be able to wash one load of laundry and fold it within a 12 hour span. Or I’d like to cook for a solid 5 minutes before needing to step away to mediate a dispute or pick up a crying baby. I’m not asking for superhuman efficiency, I just need one or two little housekeeping victories everyday to keep myself from going crazy.

In between all the fun trips, I have felt like a dragon that is always grumpy and spitting fire when someone spills their milk. I get so angry over the smallest thing. And then I hate myself for being such a jerk.

Even with all this, I had really high hopes for this last week of summer vacation. We were going to live it up. We were going to sleep in, go swimming, have ice cream. All the summer favorites.

Tomorrow is the first day of school. Ask me how many of these things we did.

Oh, I’m glad you asked. Zero. None. Nada. I couldn’t even get us to the pool. It’s just down the street. Like one block. Actually we have 3 pools within 1 mile of our house. Didn’t happen. Between school supplies and uniforms and shoes and getting our house ready for school, I have been actively working toward getting ready for school for a solid 2 weeks and I still have a ton of things to do tonight for tomorrow.

I get so little done during the day. I know that’s the name of the game for moms, but sometimes it’s so maddening. After I freak out at the kids I tell myself to chill out. It’s just laundry or dishes or sweeping. It’s not the end of the world. And then I see all those stupid posts that say, “Don’t worry about housekeeping while you have little kids. Kids don’t keep. Dust will.” Yeah, but the mental clutter that it adds to my life drives me insane and leads me to scream at my kids because, yes, I’m ignoring the dust, but I just need the toys picked up at the end of the day. My soul needs those toys in their bins. It does feel like the whole world depends on it. Which is stupid, I know, I know.

And here we are the last day of summer and I feel like a terrible mom. Everything the kids do gets on my nerves. I yell all the time.

Then Olivia showed me her journal entry for today (summer homework, don’t get me started):

“My family loves me and we have a good time together. What could be better?”

I almost sobbed. Thank God she knows we love her. I feel like I’ve been doing an awful job at loving my kids. But I realize that motherhood is playing the long game. I know I’ve been sucky but that’s not the end of the story nor is it the whole story. Motherhood is complicated with lots of ups and downs and we have to forgive ourselves. We’re not going to be able to handle life the way we want to all the time. We’re going to suck and then we’ll realize it and do it better and then we’ll suck again at some point. But we’ll keep learning and keep adjusting. Not because we’re going to ever get it perfect but because we love our kids. And that’s really all they need to know.

Top 4 Misadventures in Traveling

December 16, 2015 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

Most people that go to Notre Dame study abroad. Something like 85% of people. I was that homebody 15%. I always tell people that going to Notre Dame was my studying abroad. Seriously. I loved it and really came into my own and met some of the most amazing friends a person could ask for, but all of it was SO foreign to me. The culture, the tradition, even the way people lived their faith. So, so different. Thank God.

And thank God that I never wanted to travel internationally because I was horrible at traveling. H-0-R-R-I-B-L-E. Here are my top 4 most memorable moments of traveling:

4. Needing a police escort.

3. Coming home my sophomore year, I knew the lay of the land a little better. Instead of the bus shuttle, I was taking the train that took me all the way to downtown Chicago where I just had to climb some stairs to catch the El that would take me all the way to O’Hare. Easy peasy. I knew I had to cut down on luggage so I opted for a backpack, small carry-on and a duffle bag. I know! At the time I considered that packing light. What I failed to realize is that the duffle bag was approximately the size of a body bag and I filled it so it was just as heavy as one. Don’t even get me started on the fact that I decided to only bring luggage that had to be carried and absolutely nothing that had wheels. Hello, McFly!

I got off the train in Chicago and faced going up stairs to get to the street level and then getting up another huge flight of stairs to get to the El. And it was rush hour so the streets and the stairwells were packed. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Thankfully people always helped and gave me a hand with my bodybag, I mean, duffle bag by grabbing the other end and we would carry it up together. I had so much luggage, I couldn’t fit through the turnstiles to get on the train. I had to get the attention of the MTA worker behind the glass and have them open the handicap entrance for me. Ugh. I was so dumb. Once I somehow got to O’Hare and checked my luggage, I plunked down on a seat at my gate and it took at least an hour for my arms to stop shaking because my muscles had never exerted themselves that much in their whole lives!

2. My junior year came around and I vowed to never overpack ever again. I packed a medium-sized rolling luggage that was small enough that I could check and a backpack. I thought I was so brilliant. I caught everything in time. I caught the train just fine; I got to O’Hare with more than enough time. I stopped and ate a magically delicious breakfast burrito. I found my gate, saw the city was Houston, and it had a flight number that matched my ticket. Perfect. I sat down and looked at my watch. My flight wasn’t leaving for another hour and a half. I thought I was sitting pretty.

“I totally have this whole travel thing figured out. You know what, I’m so early, I think I’ll take a little nap. So I positioned my luggage in front of me and put my head on it to doze off for a bit.”

But I didn’t just catch some zzzs. I went comatose. I passed out. I woke up an hour later frantic thinking I had missed my plane. I checked my watch. Oh, thank God, still half an hour until boarding. Then I started to look around. Everyone that was sitting around me was different than the people that were around me when I fell asleep. I checked my watch again. No, I should be leaving in 30 minutes. Then I looked at the gate and Houston was not on there anymore. Oh no! They must have changed the gate. No problem, I still have time to ask what the new gate is and run over to it. So I grabbed my stuff and went up the the gate attendant.

“Hi, I’m on the Houston flight, can you tell me the new gate for departure.”

“Miss, that flight left half an hour ago. You missed it.”

“No, it says right here on my ticket, the flight leaves at 4pm and it’s only 3:3o.”

“No, mam, it is 4:30pm.”

Doh. [face palm]

I had completely forgotten to take into account that South Bend, Indiana used to not observe Daylight Savings Time. South Bend. That jerk.

1. Finally we arrive at senior year. There is no way I am making any mistakes. None whatsoever. I’m packing a small rolling carry-on and a backpack. That’s it. Of course, being senior year, my procrastinating had reached its peak. During those finals before Christmas break I had managed to pump out a 15 page paper in 5 hours and it was my capstone paper for my Peace Studies Minor. I say that only so you can imagine how much sleep I had gotten. The night before my flight I had set out a few things but was so exhausted I decided to wake up early to pack. A friend was going to pick me up and drive me to the train. I slept right on through all 3 alarms I had set and all 10 of my friend’s phone calls telling me he was downstairs. I finally woke up when he was knocking on my door. Shit! (I’m pretty sure I screamed that when I woke up and saw what time it was.) I opened my door and basically threw my luggage at him and told him to throw whatever he could find in there while I did my best to look somewhat presentable to travel. We jumped in his car and raced to the train. We pulled up just in time to see it pulling out of the airport. Seriously, we missed it by 1 minute tops. He, being a kind and generous man, offered to drive me to Michigan where it would make its next stop to pick up more passengers. If we could beat it there, I could still catch it and get to O’Hare. I pretended not to notice that he was driving about 95 mph. It’s a miracle we made it. Alive. Really the funnier part was that I had just become friends with this guy a few weeks before. He was probably just trying to be nice by offering me a ride to the airport and I made him pack my bag and drive me to Michigan. So embarrassing. And I really hope when I made him help me pack he didn’t pack any of my underwear or bras. That would really make this memory a lot more unbearable.

Feeling Numb

December 10, 2015 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

December 9th, was the one year anniversary of the twins getting out of the NICU. Ever since having the twins I’ve been jotting down my thoughts here and there. They weren’t always coherent but they were me trying to figure out life and everything we were going through. The NICU was hard. Even if our kids were only “feeders/growers” it took me a really long time to wrap my head around the experience. And, honestly, I’m still not quite sure I’m there. Even months after we were out of there, that feeling I had in the NICU, that despair, that numbness, I just couldn’t shake it. But I want to start wading back into those memories and see if I can make some sense of them.

Here is something I wrote back in May:

It’s strange. I haven’t had a lot of breakdowns like I usually do after having a baby. It’s not because I am more put together or because I’ve got the hang of this. It’s that when you’re in crisis mode, you learn to stuff your feelings back down your throat and keep them there. I think I’m still in crisis mode. I’ve always been good at it. I’ve always been able to put on my brave face and get through hard things. But in actuality, I feel very small and scared and completely wrong for the job.

Since the babies have been born, I haven’t allowed myself a space to feel much of anything. Today I started watching “Call the Midwife” and I started just bawling during it. It is easier to cry about someone else’s pain or someone else’s problem than allow yourself to deal with your own. I constantly feel so overwhelmed and so much a mess that I have been on the verge of collapse or meltdown. And once or twice it would have been just fine. I was alone, the babies were asleep. I finally had time to freak out, to cry, to let it out. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t cry. La Lupe calls it desahogandose. Why? How weird. You forget how to feel.

5 Ways to Cope With Sleep Deprivation Without Caffeine

December 9, 2015 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

First off, I just want to make clear my expertise on the subject. I’ll just bullet point my sleep deprivation résumé:

In college, homework never started before 1 am
Papers never started getting written before 2 am
Movie nights with roomies always to precedent to any schoolwork
Coffee makes me sick and I’ve tried many a time to make myself get used to it (ask my roomie who used to work at Starbucks).
My first year of teaching, getting married, and getting pregnant all happened the same year.
Olivia never ever slept. Ever. Never. Ever. For a solid year I took the 1-3am shift of rocking her and Kraft 3-5am.
Then Lina came 18 months later.
Then Teresa 18 months after that.
Then the twins 25 months after that.

You get it, I never sleep. Sometimes it’s my own fault because I just want to relish the quiet and the still for every second I can, but, mostly it’s because of the crazy life we’ve made for ourselves (which we love but it still makes us crazy). And I just can’t drink coffee. I don’t really drink soda. And, while I started drinking tea about a year ago, I usually mistakenly buy decaf tea because I hate myself and am too sleep deprived to read the dumb box when I pick it up. (Also, funny fact, I just calculated that I have been breastfeeding 40% of the last 7 years and caffeine always really negatively affected my milk production.) So while I would gladly chug any liquid that helps me stay awake, my body is not having it.

I hope my sleep CV is satisfactory to you. Here are some things I’ve learned in the last 13 years of not sleeping to help me not hate life.

1. I hate to sound like, well, what I’m about to sound like but here goes: If you decide to be alert and awake then it happens. You can give in to the grumpy and exhausted (which I do often) but you can decide to not feel like that most times. Remember this is just a season. Sleep will come again one day. Even if it seems forever off. Act like you want to feel and it usually follows.

Of course, sometimes you can’t fight it like this kid in the video. We’ve all been there. But it’s probably not all the time.

2. Don’t eat a lot of sugar. I know this seems counterintuitive because sugar is supposed to help your energy but I found that it doesn’t for me. During Lent this year we gave up sugar as a family. I have never felt so rested. I do notice when I drink a soda or eat a couple of cookies or something my body feels like it is dragging. Self-control around sweets is really hard for me so I tend to just keep them out of the house. I don’t buy sweets at the store or sodas. If I want dessert, I make myself bake it.

3. Eat well. This goes along with the sugar thing. When I get behind on meal planning and we are eating a lot of fast food, my body feels sluggish and unresponsive. More so than usual. If I don’t change my sleeping habits but I eat better, I feel like I’m sleeping better.

4. Actually sleep when you can. I’m awful at this. No matter how sleepy I am, it is so hard for me to go to sleep. I always want to check one more thing off my to-do list, or watch one more episode on Netflix, or read one more chapter. Stop it. Just go to sleep. Now. Go now.

5. I think the #1 most important thing is to manage your sleep expectations. There have been too many times that I have crawled into bed, cocooned myself in a blanket, and reached out to sleep as if it were my dying wish only to hear the door creaking open because someone just wet the bed or to hear a baby whimpering through the baby monitor. Nothing on God’s green earth will make me more mad than this very moment.

I feel like it’s similar to this commercial:

“Deep couch sitting” is telling your body that you are going to get sleep right now this very second. Don’t do that. I figured out that I have to trick myself. Really. When I go to sleep, I don’t tell myself it is to sleep. I just tell myself that I’m going to lie down and rest for a little while. If I get to sleep, fan-frickin’-tastic. Truly. The stars have aligned and the angels have sung. If not, I can’t get that mad because I was only going to rest for a bit anyway. This was a game changer for me. I still get really mad from time to time when I’m hoping to catch a few zzzs during the twins’ naptime and one of them just won’t go to sleep but, for the most part, it helps.

DISCLAIMER: This is not actually medical advice. I know people that have insomnia and other sleep disorders and this will not at all help any of that. This is just my experience and what has worked for me. You could just ignore it all. That’s cool. Or even better, just go pour yourself another cup of coffee. 🙂

My Kids Make Me Brave

December 7, 2015 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

I’m really into Zumba. I love it. Give me a good beat and some synchronized dancing and I’m there. It’s like going to a club without all the parts that suck about a club – creepy guys, being out late, having to dress up.

This is mostly what I look like at Zumba:

and this is about how cool I think I look:

But I love Zumba regardless and go to classes at the Y as often as I can.

It was just any ole’ regular day and I was in class when the teacher mentioned that anyone who wanted to participate in a big group of Zumba instructors and students dancing during the half-time of a UT basketball game could sign-up with her. My immediate response (in my head) was that I’d rather Zumba across hot coals than dance in front of hundreds of people.

But then I thought about our girls. Kids need to see their mom do non-mommy things sometimes. Something that is just for herself. And if it’s athletic, even better. I thought about how it’s important for them to see me doing things that require me to be brave. That make me uncomfortable. Really the combination of these things is super rare. When else would an opportunity like this come along again?

And so, on Friday night, I, along with my wonderful instructor and about a hundred other Zumba-lovers, ran out onto the UT basketball court and performed. It wasn’t perfect but, man, was it fun. And everyone was so excited and pumped up. Of course the video cut out about halfway through but you get the gist (I’m in the third row, in the middle):

When Kraft and I lead marriage prep, one of my favorite questions to ask our speakers is how does having kids strengthen them. Well, this is my answer. My kids make me brave. In small things like this Zumba thing, but in bigger things, too. Like actually dragging myself out of the house to attend a protest with my kids so they see it is important to stand up for the things we believe in. Or talking to the guy asking for money on the corner so that they see that we should all treat each other with dignity and love. Or advocating for my kids at school or at the doctor’s office so that they see we sometimes have to have uncomfortable discussions. I would have felt like this even if I had never had kids, but I would probably not have been spurred to action as much as I am now.

Kids grow up too quick to not make every moment possible a teachable one. Being a parent means you have decision overload. Too many decisions have to be made to not be intentional about how you are letting these decisions shape you as a person and shape the culture of your family. I screw up pretty regularly. I freak out and yell and scream and get annoyed and say the wrong thing and am too hard on my kids and expect too much. But I want them to have as many memories as possible of me doing the right thing as often as I can muster (which usually isn’t much but I try). Don’t get me wrong, I think them seeing me mess up and apologize can be just as instructive as me doing the right thing. But when I am put together enough to make a good choice and show them I can be brave in totally new and unexpected ways, well, hot damn.

The best part of the whole video is Teresa yelling “MAMA!” at the beginning.

Twins’ Birth Story: Part III

December 1, 2015 by Vanessa 1 Comment

Our twins just turned one year old. I guess it’s about time that I write down and process their birth and surrounding events. This is the next part in the series. Here is the link if you want to start at Part I or Part II. This part is a little more graphic than the rest. Fair warning.

It was about halfway through my pregnancy that my doctor started talking to me about delivering twins. Apparently really crazy things can go down. One can be born vaginally and then all of a sudden the second baby could be in trouble and need to be delivered through C-section. Sometimes, even if both babies are head down, the second baby can flip after the first is born because there is so much more room. In this case, my doctor said I shouldn’t worry because he could just reach in and turn the baby to get them head down again, or he could deliver the second one breech. Now I’m all for natural birth. I had both Lina and Teresa without any pain meds and Olivia I had with one dose of IV pain meds which didn’t do a darn thing. So I know the pros of natural child birth, but there was no freakin’ way he was going to “reach in and turn the baby” without me having an epidural.

Planning on having an epidural really changed my mindset throughout the whole labor. Labor with an epidural is still hard and is still work but it’s completely different. When you go in planning on a natural childbirth you basically are walking in ready to do war. Or at least that’s how I feel. You’ve got to be prepared mentally for the pain and you really have to bring your A game when it comes to concentration. It just takes a lot of getting yourself psyched up and ready.

I found I spent most of those first hours in the hospital wondering when I should get the epidural. I’m not in that much pain, should I do it now? Should I wait until I’m further along? What if I’m in too much pain to sit still when they’re putting it in?

I waited until I was about 6cm dilated. I asked the nurse to call the anesthesiologist. He was really great and friendly and put me at ease. I am terrified of needles so I told him under no circumstance whatsoever could he show me that needle. He laughed and complied. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. It was strange feeling but it was fine. One leg pretty much went dead and I wouldn’t be able to lift it at all for the next 24 hours but the rest of me was numb enough. I could feel the contractions a little bit but no pain at all.

We probably still had about 4 more hours to go before the babies came and I found myself not knowing what to do. I may have slept a bit. I kept wondering if we should just turn on the tv to pass the time but that seemed wrong for some reason. Kraft and I started ordering all the things we needed on Amazon and he passed the time reading me things from Facebook. It almost felt like we were on a date sitting around talking after a meal or something. Except for the constant beeping of the monitors and the nurse coming in and out.

Because the twins were going to be born at 34 weeks and 5 days, this earned them a pass straight to the NICU. A NICU nurse had come down earlier to talk to us about what we should be ready for. I honestly can’t remember anything that woman said. I was still in denial that these babies were coming so early. Our nurse tried to gauge whether or not I understood what they were telling us but I didn’t want to talk about it. I just wanted to hold my babies. I didn’t want to think of them being taken away from me.

Every one of our kids has been born in 12 hours from the time my water breaks. My body is amazingly predictable in this way. Kraft says he remembers looking at the clock and thinking that 12 hours would be here in half an hour so he was sure it wasn’t going to happen with the twins. Wrong. I alerted the nurse that I was pretty sure I wanted to push. She said ok and started getting everything ready. I had to deliver in the OR so she let the surgical staff know I was coming. The doctor had been hanging around for the last couple hours knowing that when these babies came, they were going to come quick.

They wheeled my bed over to the OR. It was bright and scary. It was exactly like TV. Like in ER when they are shooting from the patient’s perspective. That is dead on. You’re blinded by the lights and everyone is moving around you fast and you don’t really know what is happening. Modesty is out the window because you have to be in a surgical gown and they have to scrub you down. At this point I couldn’t have cared less how many people were in that room, I was just getting more and more nervous. Kraft was standing by in scrubs squeezing my hand.

My doctor is one of the most gentle and kind souls I’ve ever met. Very patient and a good listener. I’d never seen the side of him I saw in that room. He was in control of that room. You could tell he took this very seriously and wanted to be ready for anything. It was really amazing to see him command the room. It made me feel safe and confident in his abilities. Not that I wasn’t before but I was scared and that made me less so.

Both babies were head down. Baby A came. One of the nurses told me when to push, or maybe it was my doctor. Someone did. And so I pushed and everyone was like, Whoa! Hey, slow down, not so fast. I guess delivering small babies doesn’t take as much pushing as an 8 lb baby. Ana was born after one push. I didn’t hear her cry. I don’t remember holding her. Both twins each had a full neonatal team in the room ready to check them out. Ana got whisked away to another room so they could check her vitals. It was only minutes between the babies being born but I remember I started to panic. Where is she? Why isn’t she crying? Why can’t I hear her? I can’t see her. I’m sure the doctor and nurses were reassuring but I was having a hard time concentrating. Then they told me to start pushing again. Baby B was still head down (thank God!). Again, I pushed too fast and when Dorothy came out she kicked the clamp off of Ana’s umbilical cord. The doctor delivered Dorothy and immediately placed her on my chest. She was covered in blood which did not seem right. I really started to panic and asked if she was ok. Why was there so much blood? For the few seconds it took them to figure out where the blood was coming from, everyone thought I was hemorrhaging. It was just the umbilical cord and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Then Dorothy’s team took her away.

I know I was on the table for a while after that. I’m pretty sure they were telling me what was happening with the babies but I can’t remember much of it. They told me they were 5lbs and 5lbs 9oz. I could hear myself asking, begging really, if they could please just let the babies stay with me. They are 5lbs. That’s big. Please let them stay. Just let us try. If there are any problems then we can take them to the NICU. I’m sure I sounded crazy. The babbling of an exhausted mother but it seemed so logical to me at the time.

The whole time I was in labor I kept praying they would be at least 5lbs. I thought that it would be our golden ticket. They would for sure let us keep them in our postpartum room if they were just that big. I remember I kept telling my L&D nurse that and she kept telling me it wouldn’t happen. These kids are going to the NICU no matter what. It’s policy. Any baby born before 35 weeks is sent there immediately. But I was convinced I could reason with the neonatologists. I was sure they would see I was right.

Nope. The babies were taken straight to the NICU. Kraft got to go with them. I was wheeled back into my L&D room where I sat for hours. Apparently when you deliver twins there is a much greater likelihood of bleeding too much. My nurse was there with me, but like I said before, she wasn’t chatty and I had long since stopped trying to get her to chitchat. I asked a question every now and again but I was in shock that my babies were now in the NICU. I knew they were early and my whole labor was full of medical professionals trying to prep me for that reality but it didn’t sink in until I sat in that room alone knowing that even when I was taken to my postpartum room, I still wouldn’t be with my babies. I felt really numb. I was back in that surreal world I was in when we left our house. But I wouldn’t be able to stay there too long. Pretty soon I would have to jump into the postpartum world of NICU babies with all the pumping and talking to doctors and nurses that comes with it.

That is how Ana and Dorothy came into this world 3:32 and 3:37pm. I’ve read this over and over and tried to make it sound more happy and upbeat. Or at least draw some meaning from the sadness and numbness that overcame me for a good long while after the babies were born. But I can’t. That just wasn’t my experience. And while we never ever lost perspective and knew we were so so lucky to have babies that really were never in any danger and were really low-needs NICU patients, it was still hard. It was hard to wrap my mind around how different this was from my previous pregnancies and births.

My parents were superstars and took care of our three older girls for weeks while we were lucky enough to stay at Seton. Our friends were so lovely and supportive and brought us food and came to visit and keep us company. We had an amazing support network that I will always be eternally grateful for. But that’s another story for another day that I’ll write soon.

For now, I am grateful for the amazing care we received from the Seton staff and my OBGYN during labor and delivery. And I’m grateful for the year we’ve spent with our fiesty twins who, although on the small side and a little behind, amaze me everyday and add more joy to our life than I thought would ever be possible during those dark days we spent in the NICU.

Thanks for reading.