Newest Arrival

A little over two weeks ago I had given up all hope and accepted that I was just going to be pregnant forever. College spring break passed, then the kids’ spring break began. My due date came and went. No amount of pineapple, spicy food, or bouncing on an exercise ball seemed to be doing any good. The old wives’ tales are just that, and babies arrive when they’re good and ready.

Relief came just three days after my due date. At four o’clock in the morning, I felt a little twinge. It just felt a little crampy, so I wasn’t sure it was a contraction. Twenty minutes later, another one came along, and again twenty minutes after that. I browsed through my iPod’s pregnancy apps to see which contraction timer was most aesthetically pleasing. (You know you’re only in early labor when you can choose a contraction timer based on its aesthetic value.)

Boyfriend was still sleeping and the midwives had said that anyone can have practice labor and it’s best to save waking up your partner for when you know the contractions aren’t going away. (I’ve never experienced practice labor, but since my water didn’t break on the first contraction like it did with the boys, I thought I’d wait and see.) He got up to use the bathroom around 6:00 and I was still contracting. He asked how I was doing and I said, “Fine. Just having a few contractions.” He got all excited and started timing them. Once the sun came up, he filled up the AquaDoula tub in the living room and left a message with the midwife to say that contractions had begun.

From seven to nine, I began to feel it wasn’t going anywhere. I walked around the apartment, leaning on furniture when a contraction hit. Then I went back to my room and sat on the exercise ball for a bit. I lay in bed and watched Gabriel Iglesias: Hot and Fluffy on Netflix to have something funny to take my mind off of labor. I tried to watch another show but lost interest and went back to focusing on contractions. It was then that, in retrospect, we probably should have called the midwives back.

I had it in mind that we shouldn’t call them until contractions were four minutes apart for an hour. By then it was really too late. I was breathing through them, but not able to talk during one. The kids were hungry so I asked the boyfriend to get them something from the local fast food joint. Once he got back, I told him we should call again. The contractions had progressed from 20 minutes apart, to 15, to 10, to five, to four, and they were getting more intense.

It was just after ten o’clock. Boyfriend called the midwife and said it was time to drive down. Then things took a rapid turn. The contractions got much closer together. I kept asking if the midwife was close. I wanted to get in the water, which was waiting for me in the living room, but the midwives had said not to get in until they were there. It was getting difficult to relax through the contractions. Then, all of a sudden, my water broke. I told the lovely boyfriend to call the midwife again, that the baby was coming. She suggested lying on my left side. I rolled over. It didn’t help.

My uterus went into overdrive. Whether I wanted it to or not, whether I was participating or resisting (I was trying with all my might to resist), my body was pushing that kid out! Boyfriend told the midwife, “She says the baby’s coming.” The midwife replied, “Well, get a towel.”

I truly felt like I was splitting in half. I reached down and felt the head crowning. I told the boyfriend, “You’re going to have to guide the baby out.” And he did. My germaphobe, easily icked out, gets nauseous at seeing blood drawn boyfriend delivered our daughter. He placed her on my chest, wailing, just as the midwives walked in the door. They quickly took over and took care of all the rest. They stayed for a few hours, helped clean up, looked after the boys while boyfriend and I bonded with the baby, and then they quietly left. My dad came and got the boys after they had a chance to hold the baby, and then it was just the three of us, quiet and peaceful and in awe of this precious little being who had joined us so suddenly.

Rape: Violence Not Required

Over the weekend, two Ohio teens were found guilty of raping a 16 year old intoxicated, incapacitated girl. There were many witnesses to the incident, who did not make an effort to help the girl or stop the teens who were violating her. The most telling part of the story was the testimony of one of the witnesses. From the Yahoo article:

“It wasn’t violent,” explained teammate Evan Westlake when asked why he didn’t stop the two defendants as they abused a non-moving girl that Westlake knew to be highly intoxicated. “I always pictured it as forcing yourself on someone.”

There is a grave misunderstanding of rape in our society. We watch shows like Law & Order: SVU and think that rape = a violent attack. If the victim walks away without any physical damage, it must not have been rape.

Rape does not require violence. I would wager that most rapes are actually non-violent. Rather, rape often involves a much more subtle coercion of the victim. The perpetrator then denies that any rape occurred because they didn’t brutalize the victim into submission. I know that this was the case in the three rapes that I have experienced in my lifetime.

The first time I was raped was when I was thirteen. An older neighborhood boy, age 17, had a reputation for being the local “virginity thief.” I hadn’t had much experience with boys until I met this group of boys that he belonged to. I enjoyed the feeling of inclusion, the attention. My parents were gone a lot at work and so I spent most of my summer just before high school with these boys.

The 17 year old walked me home late one night, after I had snuck out of the house with my little sisters and their friends in tow. He climbed in my bedroom window. As the kids fell asleep on my floor, he began kissing me. The kissing wasn’t a problem until things began to move very quickly. I said no. I was a virgin. I wanted to wait until I was married. He said, “Come on…” and continued to coerce me, meanwhile going ahead with his business against my wishes.

The second time was not long after. I went with some friends to visit a boy I liked. He was only two years older than me. He didn’t know we were stopping by; it was unplanned. He saw me, knew I was no longer a virgin, and backed me into the spare bedroom. I told him I didn’t want to have sex. He had a large group of friends in the next room. He did what he wanted anyway.

The third time was many years later. I had an argument with the man I was with. We were visiting a friend out of town, who had given up his bedroom to host us. I had said something mildly foolish to our friend and confessed it to the man I was with. He became angry. I went to bed. He came into the bedroom not long after and proceeded to initiate intercourse. I said I wasn’t interested; I said no. He said, “You owe me,” and did what he wanted anyway.

In each act listed above, I simply gave up my protest (hint: giving up protesting is not the same as giving consent; it is simply admitting defeat). I wasn’t drugged, intoxicated, unconscious, beaten, or held at gunpoint. None of the perpetrators in these cases viewed themselves as rapists or as having committed an act of rape; they all went unreported. All of these men have gone on to lead normal lives, marrying and having children. With each of these incidents, it didn’t occur to me at the time it was happening that it was rape. I was under the same false impression as the witnesses in the Ohio case–that rape is a violent act.

Rape does not have to be a violent act. Rape can be a subtle violation of the victim’s will as much as it is of their body. Clearly, if several people can walk past a woman being raped and not recognize it as rape–if even a victim of rape cannot recognize it in the moment–we are failing as a society when it comes to understanding and educating others about rape.

The End is Nigh!

The early days of this pregnancy zipped by! In less than a month, our baby girl is due. The whole pregnancy experience has been very different this time around.

With my very first pregnancy, right around my 18th birthday, I was sick by seven weeks. The same was true in my pregnancies with the boys. I never got terribly sick with them, but I was constantly nauseous throughout the first trimester. With the two miscarriages, I never got sick at all. I felt very slightly nauseous for a little while and then even that little bit went away. This baby followed the same pattern, so I was very surprised to see an active munchkin on the ultrasound at 12 weeks.

The boyfriend and I waited as long as possible to go in for an ultrasound, with the assumption that, like the other two before her, this one wasn’t going to work out. Once we got the happy news from the technician, we cautiously started to share the news with the rest of the world. Now the word is out, the baby shower has come and gone, and our tiny two-bedroom apartment is overflowing with pink accessories. We’re planning a home birth, so we have the supplies all lined up for the midwives. The tub arrives this week!

Another finish line that is slowly approaching is the final word on my petition for an annulment. I received the initial response at the end of last July, which was just to let me know that I might have a case. Last week the Tribunal wrote saying that they have finished gathering evidence and witness testimony and can move on to examining the evidence and making a judgment once the ex and I have been offered the opportunity to review the witness testimony. The case isn’t likely to be closed before the end of summer, but maybe I’ll have a final judgment by the end of the year.

I’ve relinquished any resentment I felt over having to get an annulment. The ex and I may have been civilly married for ten years, but it certainly was not sacramental. Looking back at all the reasons I left, why would I want to cling to the idea that that was in any sense a true marriage? That mirror of Christ and His Bride, the Church, was not reflected in my marriage to the ex at any point.

The next thing everyone is wondering is when the boyfriend and I will be getting married. Sorry to disappoint, but not any time soon! We don’t want a shot-gun wedding done on the cheap and quick just because there’s a baby on the way. We don’t want anyone to be sitting at our wedding thinking that we’re only getting married to justify a pregnancy, or that I somehow trapped him or tricked him into it. I want the relationship to sink or stand on its own. I also want to get married in the Church, and I need to wait for an annulment to do that. The parishes around here require six to twelve months notice in planning a wedding, so late next year is the earliest you’ll be hearing wedding bells chiming for us.

Yesterday, the priest at Mass gave a homily about how to view where we are in our individual spiritual journey. He said that we need to accept where we are, and that where we are is exactly where we are supposed to be. The Gospel reading was about the Prodigal Son. The priest pointed out that the father in the reading ran out to meet the son–God meets us where we are at.

I know that some have been concerned about my level of practicing the Faith. I consider myself to be a mostly practicing Catholic who is obviously not in a state of grace. I periodically go to confession, but it is clear from my life circumstances that I am not in a state of grace, so I refrain from receiving communion. I don’t attend Mass as often as I should, but I take the boys on my weekends with them. I still actively teach them the Faith, and I teach them that even grownups make mistakes. I still believe Church teaching in its entirety and acknowledge the authority of the Church.

It is my goal to one day be a fully participating Catholic and to raise all of my children in the Catholic faith. I’m not there yet, but God can still meet me where I am right now. I am slowly taking steps to get back to where I should be, just not at the pace everyone else would hope. I know that, regardless of the pace or the detours along the way, I am headed in the right direction.

Indifference?

I think this is where I’m at now.

The last year has been completely hellish in the parenting-after-divorce department. What once was an amicable, open, co-parenting relationship became a closed off, non-communicative, passive aggressive, combatant, parallel parenting, avoidant situation as soon as someone new entered the ex’s life exactly one year ago. He claims that he was just “implementing boundaries” (boundaries that he didn’t feel were necessary while I was in a relationship) and that the only reason we got along so well before was because he “was extremely patient with me” and “held out hope that we would get back together” (though he continually insisted to me that we were done).

From my perspective, we got along because we have a long history together and were friends long before we became romantic partners. I wasn’t trying to get along in the hope that we might one day end up back together; I was trying to get along to honor the long friendship we had and because it’s what’s best for the kids–that their parents get along well and communicate well even if they aren’t married to each other. I wanted the kids to know that we were still their family, even though we were a separated family. His “boundaries” are not really boundaries at all, but rather passive-aggressive measures to be punitive toward me for leaving him, for the way I left him, and for not coming groveling back to him. His attempts to get along were insincere; it was a matter of playing nice so that I’d come back. Once someone else came along, the niceness abruptly ended and active hostility entered.

The numerous, lightning fast changes from the other side have been hard to deal with, but it’s gotten a lot easier as time passes. At first, any news was taken rather hard. But lately, I’ll hear something, allow my internal dialogue to run for a bit, bitch to someone a little, and let it go. Something that once would have prompted tears is now reduced to privately shaking my head, rolling my eyes, and saying, “whatever.”

I can’t pinpoint exactly why, when, or where this shift occurred. Maybe it’s because I’ve met the new girl and there’s not some big unknown factor anymore. Maybe I’ve learned to accept that this is where I’m at and this is the direction our lives are headed and there’s nothing that can be done about the past. Maybe I’m just tired of the drama. Maybe I’m more focused on what’s happening for myself than on what’s going on with the other side of the fence. I’m sure it’s a combination of all of these things.

That isn’t to say that all the heartache has just vanished overnight; it’s still there and it pops up at very inopportune times. The pain that remains for me is that it feels like what transpired between us is something that could and should have been saved or fixed if it weren’t for stubbornness, weakness, pride, and hurt on all sides. But at this point, all one can say is, “oh well.” It is what it is. It’s tragic and our children will carry that pain throughout their lives, but nothing is to be done about it now. The time for that has passed. There is such a thing as “too late.”

For me, the most difficult part is that this man, who supposedly valued me so deeply, and was allegedly so anguished by my abrupt end of our life together (according to his claims), made no effort to truly examine his part and fully own his wrongdoing, or to authentically better himself and change his behavior toward me. It was already too late by the time he started to scratch the surface of personal responsibility. He has apologized, but his apologies are empty words. Never once has he tried making amends for the actual actions. He just says he’s sorry for the things he’s willing to admit to. Everything else, the events that impacted me the most, he minimizes and downplays. That’s not repentance. That’s not genuine sorrow for having wronged someone. You can’t receive forgiveness for something you’re not willing to fully own up to.

So there is pain that remains, that I will live with and carry alone. But in the day-to-day and in looking into the future, I just don’t care anymore what he’s doing, who he’s become, or where his life is headed–beyond how it impacts the kids. The only choice right now that actively bothers me is that he no longer takes the boys to Mass. Beyond the children, I have no interest in him as a person. He is a stranger with whom I happen to have two kids.

What happens now? The same thing that happens every day. Wake up in the morning and just live my life. There’s no mystery to it. Acceptance, letting go, and moving forward.

So, Why Is This So Hard?

Birthday party round two today. It went well, though I forgot the candles for the cupcakes, so my mom improvised with two lighters to stand in for the number 11. The kids and guests all had a good time. Soon-to-be-step-mom and I had very minimal interaction. Some of the ex’s family were there, so the room was kind of divided into me, my family, the kids, and then ex, soon-to-be-step-mom, and the ex’s family. It wasn’t easy to watch my former family-in-law joyfully welcome the soon-to-be-step-mom and hear them all talk of the upcoming wedding and relocation plans (which I felt was in very poor taste, given the mix of party-goers).

Believe me, I don’t enjoy being upset. I actually really hate it. The fact that my emotions sit right under the surface has always bugged me. I would love for the Polly Anna friendly exterior to match the interior, but for some reason it doesn’t. I would love to be able to be sincerely happy for the ex in moving on, but I’m not there.

It’s not because I want him back. If we were the last two people on earth, the population would end with us, seriously. Not interested. It’s not because I’m jealous of the new girl. She seems nice enough and I really don’t care about their life together. I love my partner and our relationship has grown slowly in a much better direction over the last year. I have a good thing with him, the kids love him, and we have good things ahead.

I think the trouble stems from how this year has gone. If he had just continued to maintain a good co-parenting relationship, not turned weirdly secretive, dismissing my views on our kids, upheld agreements, and not jumped into a custody battle in the middle of all of this, I think I could have been sincerely happy for him in moving on. But because his moving on happened simultaneously with (or caused) all of these other extremely negative things, it’s been associated with too much negativity for me to be cheerful inside and out. He didn’t move on in a positive way and I didn’t react to his negative handling of moving on in a positive way.

I don’t sit around wallowing in woe-is-me, either. But each of these little interactions stirs up a reminder of just how badly things have gone, and fear of future changes creeps in. Yes, I know it’s a waste of time to be upset over things I have no control over, which is why I try (believe me, I try very hard) to focus on my own life and moving forward myself. It doesn’t change the fact that these things cause very real pain.

An Exercise in Empathy

From Merriam Webster…

Empathy: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for this.

(I should be writing an article but my brain is clogged with other thoughts, so I thought I’d purge the creative block before moving on to the article.)

My initial post on my youngest son’s birthday party focused on my gut reaction to the things I observed on my first interaction with the boys’ soon-to-be step-mother. Those are my genuine feelings and we are each allowed our own perspective. However, I know that the capacity for empathy is part of emotional growth (or the result of it). Emotional growth is an area where there is always room for improvement for every one of us.

There is dark and light in each of us. I like the story of “the wolves within,” where a young boy asks his grandfather about the battle within himself between light and dark, good and evil. The boy says it is like two wolves fighting inside of him. He asks his grandfather which one will win and the grandfather says, “The one you feed.” So today I will feed the good wolf with an exercise in empathy.

Looking back at the birthday party and taking on the perspective of the soon-to-be-step-mom, I can see that I would not want to be her in that situation. Here is a young, never-married mom who believes she has found a great single dad who wants to share a life with her. The proposal has been made, the wedding date is set, a new baby is on the way, and all the kids have been welcomed into the relationship. Unfortunately, there’s an unknown that looms on the outskirts of their new life–the ex-wife.

An invitation is extended to the youngest’s birthday. Knowing that the only guests familiar to her will be her fiancé and his sons, she chooses to join in anyway. The rest of the guests are the ex-wife’s family and mutual friends of the divorced parents.

I’m sure she’s had an earful of “enlightenment” from my ex on the antics of my family. As much as I love my family, I wouldn’t want to be the new person in that situation. I know my family can seem very intimidating to outsiders. Our gatherings are always loud and boisterous, with half a dozen kids running around at least eight equally loud adults. Brain-to-mouth filters aren’t always functioning how they should. In spite of whatever she’s heard, she chose to participate anyway.

No one wants to walk into a situation where they believe they’re being judged, sized up, scrutinized. Soon-to-be-step-mom was a good sport (though, to our credit, I and my family were all being cordial as well). She was able to greet me with a friendly hug and thanked me for inviting her. So, looking from this perspective, I can give kudos to the soon-to-be-step-mom for handling an awkward situation with a decent amount of grace. Hopefully, initial cordiality will produce a sincere working relationship down the line.

Floating On

The stress of the holiday season is nearly over. My oldest is turning 11 this weekend. I was reminiscing over his baby pictures the other day. He’s nearly as tall as me now, so it’s hard to remember when he was so small. His new thing is Minecraft. There are far too many parody songs about Minecraft on the Internet…

The youngest turned seven just before Christmas. He is ecstatic to be having a baby sister soon. He likes to talk to my belly and tell me what the baby says. He says to her, “Hi baby! You’re awesome!” This little girl will be a very lucky and very loved little sister.

My school stuff has been sorted out after a break last semester. I’m enrolled for spring semester and on track once again for graduation, which will be at the end of this year. It has taken me far too long to get to this point and I’ve gotten very frustrated with myself, but I guess it just takes as long as it takes.

The ex and I had our first session of co-parenting counseling yesterday. It was fairly unproductive, being mostly background information and “what do you hope to get out of this?” kind of stuff. He’s accusing me of things I am not doing and expects a level of respect from me that he has never shown to me and continues not to show. (Just because you don’t verbalize negativity directly to the children, doesn’t mean it’s not there. Ignoring emails, dismissing the other parent’s viewpoint, not honoring agreements, and generally shutting the other parent out are all forms of disrespect.)

He’s moving on faster than our oldest is comfortable with. His wedding is next month and his fiancée is due with their first, her second, this summer. Our oldest keeps asking me why his dad is getting married so quickly. I don’t have an answer for him. If I did, my words would just be twisted by the other party to reflect his view of me.

Our second mediation appointment is coming soon and I fear that it, too, will be fruitless. I’m trying to find a balance and learn to let go of worrying about things I have little control over.

Aside from that, things seem brighter. The boys had a good Christmas. The baby in utero is doing really well and this pregnancy seems to be going smoothly. The end will be here before long! I bought a little pack of newborn diapers because I have no baby supplies, with my youngest being seven. I felt I needed some sort of tangible thing for the baby aside from the little stash of clothes we’ve received. Have newborns shrunk in the last seven years? I don’t recall newborn diapers being so small, but it has been a while.

I feel like a small hippopotamus and the baby runs her own disco club in my uterus around the clock, with peak hours being between 11 at night and 1 in the morning. I feel much better than I did with my pregnancies with the boys, because I started out at a healthier weight. I plan to head back to Weight Watchers once this little one is born so I can continue on that path of having a healthy body and healthy body image. The in-person meetings really keep me on track.

This year will bring a lot of changes for myself and the boys. Some will be rough and undesirable. Others will be positive. I’m hoping for a year that tips the scales toward the brighter side of things.