Category Archives: Parenting & Motherhood

Career, Depression, Mental Illness, Parenting & Motherhood

Can’t Sleep When Things Are Going Well and Caving In

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$2.5M. I guess that is our current net worth, give or take, if you don’t count taxes or fees on sale of our house. I usually do but tonight I felt like giving myself a little fiscal pep talk so I threw together another spreadsheet (when I should be sleeping) which has us over the $2.5M mark. Even though that’s not real because if we sold our home and sold all our stock holdings taxes would make that a lot less. 

Still, the fact that in some not completely bullshit calculation we are at $2.5M is a significant milestone.

My husband and I picked one of those impossible net worth numbers we have/had to hit in order to consider a third child. $2.5M! That’s not going to happen, right?

Well… depends who is counting. But tonight, I’m counting it.

I’m not going to have a baby tomorrow. But given the savings goals been hit for each child ($500k, $1M, and $2.5M… if baby 3 is a possibility we’re at least at goal.) So that’s nice. None of the money feels real. And I know because I’m still rather heavy in tech stocks I’m going to regret that and it will come crashing down. I’m probably 30% in higher-risk stuff but I’m bored and antsy and FOMOing my life away so here I am holding way too. much FAANG and laughing about it until I’m crying about it. Oh well. When the game is squarely rigged against us — go big or go home? Or, stop taking risks because I’m almost old now? Probably that.

Money is a funny thing. $2.5M is a lot of money. No argument there. Yet I’m perusing the tuition rates for these fancy private schools for gifted kids and my jaw is dropping to the floor smack bang and flipping right back up into a cartoon spiral in reading that school for one kid for ONE year costs $35k or even $50k+. I mean. I don’t care how gifted your kid is. If your kids is that gifted give your kid $35k and have them build a business. Or a spaceship. Or a TikTok empire. I mean, if you are making $1M a year consistently forever then maybe $35k is a drop in the bucket but my bucket, rich as it may be, is snapping its lid on any thought of sending my son(s) to any sort of fancy private school.

I do wonder with my son… I have no idea if he’s gifted or just advanced or even how being also autistic and behind in some areas will make him who he is over the long run. I’m worried for him. Mostly in what happens when he starts to realize he doesn’t fit into the world around him. Right now he doesn’t care. At all. But I think as he matures he’ll realize that he’s different. I certainly know that feeling. My husband blossomed as the alien he is with a small group of smart-as-fuck weirdo friends. Well, maybe blossomed is the wrong word… but he survived and seemed to have fun along the way. I didn’t fare quite as well in my childhood and especially adolescent and early adult years.

And I wonder how much of what we’re capable of is based on the environment we’re put in and what we’re told we’re capable of and how we’re treated when we fail. It’s fucking strange to me to think some kids are shipped off to “gifted” programs where they walk around thinking they’re better than everyone else just because they can recognize patterns and a holographic memory (not a thing I made it up but I’ve decided it’s a thing.) I had some equally fucked up concept of my own intellect as a child based on my father’s commentary of both my smarts and my failure to live up to potential because I was clearly lazy and not trying hard enough when no no no I just couldn’t think straight and the anxiety took over very young when from an early age I felt like I was a misfit and was sad about bothering everyone while also longing so desperately to fit in and connect… but who was there to connect with? It’s not exactly all that different now.

So my son is clearly different and I want to support him while also letting him figure things out on his own. I always thought I’d be the mom who cheers my son on when he takes risks and fails but already I feel like I’m failing him on the failure support despite trying. He is already so anxious, so aware, so thoughtful in a mind that doesn’t yet understand the world or what is really going on. But he’s starting to. And I can tell as the world starts to make sense it becomes more and more scary. After a solid block of sleeping alone in his room in his bed he has been venturing out to sleep in our bed. And it’s sweet to cuddle and all but I can tell that his mind is spinning and processing all of it.

I haven’t told him my father is dead and he doesn’t know what death is yet but he certainly understands that my dad is missing out there somewhere. I don’t know what he thinks of him in his head. I worry for when my husband and my living parent’s pass away. I didn’t have to deal with grandparent death as a child except my mom’s father died when I was 8 and I guess he was always old and distant and it didn’t phase me much though I was a little sad at the thought of not knowing him well. And my great grandmother who was so old in her wheelchair through my young years – I don’t remember her dying but I remember her at some point being gone…

But because we are older parents and the ages are getting further and further apart between birth and the next birth there’s more death early on and it’s just something that is but it’s so terrible to have to experience it and to have to experience it with young kids. How on earth will I ever explain to my son when his best friend, who happens to be 78, no longer will be available to play with him ever again? My husband will be distraught and likely forever disabled emotionally by the loss of either of his parents. There are plenty of books on the subject but that doesn’t make it any easier.

And then there’s my own mortality. How did I get here? Well, covid. And my fear of getting a booster shot after the first 2 Pfizer shots seriously messed me up. I don’t know what was worse — how bad the shots messed with my body or how little doctors believed me (or how the doctors who did believe me said there was nothing they could do!) You start wondering if you’re crazy and just stuck in a placebo effect anti-panacea. Maybe your eye didn’t go blind and come back with dark floaters. Maybe you didn’t have the most intense headache like a monster clenching on your scalp and squeezing you to a pulp then stabbing you with ice picks for weeks. Maybe your hear didn’t shake like a motor and turn on and off when you were lying still at night. Maybe you haven’t had a series of experiences where your left arm and lip goes numb and you feel as if you’re possibly dying or stroking out or something.

But then you know all of that is real and you’re terrified of getting a booster shot when your body seems to be finally almost back to normal. The floaters have almost faded. You can go outside in sunlight and not cry because of your vision.

At the same time you know if you don’t get a shot you very well might die. You’re not being a hypochondriac or overdramatic. It’s just fact. You’re overweight now and that’s super high risk plus your depression is also a risk factor and you’re the blood type that seems to get hid hardest and now you’re over six months out from your last shot. Covid is an assassin out there looking for you and you can run by you can’t hide. So. I should get the shot. But then…  I don’t know. Months of feeling horrible again. Will I recover faster this time, or slower? What if I lose my vision entirely? Unlikely, but after my experience I don’t know what to think is possible anymore. And I’m so not an anti-vaxxer. I got my flu shot and I get it every year. I’ve had every shot in the book. But this really took me out. I’m scared. Of getting the shot and not getting the shot.

Meanwhile… life is being life. There’s been sickness in my house recently, a whole lot of it, but not covid. While my 3 year old seems invincible and has never had a fever (he was coughing a bit this week) my almost 1 year old was taken out by a fever up to 103.7. Poor kiddo. He’s still getting better. Slowly. And I’m trying to do my job that I’m so behind on. I managed to fight a billion fires today (a number of my own ADHD making) and I think there’s a chance I’ve caught up if I really put my head down and push through the next 3 months with tight project management kung fu fighting pow pow pow exhibitions.

But then…

My house is a mess.

My 3 year old son who is reading and memorizing the periodic table and yelling bloody murder at me if I count out of order ever and grabbing his ears should any unpleasant sound roll in or by needs support and therapies and doctors appointments and playdates and experiences and for me to be there and I’m not, I’m not there enough because even when I’m not working I’m so fucking tired or I am working because I can’t focus during the day and well it’s 2:30 now and hey I’m awake writing writing all the thoughts in my head then maybe I can sleep I guess possibly I don’ know. I want to be there for him. I want to sign him up for a thing or two but everything is expensive and yea I “have the money” but do I? I don’t know. If only I could be one of those people who just knew I’d always have a job — outside of mass layoffs — who had skills that were just employable like being a programmer or something but no I’m not that my skillset is pretty much straight up bullshit and while it’s not my first rodeo I’m still being thrown into a pit of mud and spiked in front of a crowd feigning concern. So.

And my younger son. What a personality. What a personality who needs attention and care and love and support. He is so focused and driven and will NOT GIVE UP if he puts his mind to something. I admire that in him though it makes it hard to hide anything from him because he remembers where you put it and he keeps trying to get it. We’re going to be in big trouble when he learns how to climb… he’s already starting to figure it out. I can’t believe he’s already almost 18 months (well , in 7 months) which is the beginning of when covid started with my first son and when I had the time to retreat from the world and go for walks with him that were first him sleeping while I pushed and later on more social walks for us as he counted all the numbers on the houses and shouted out letters as we walked by at 2.5.

Life goes really fucking fast. I mean they tell you it does. But you don’t know what that means until you’re in the thick of it. Here I am. Wading in quicksand and staring dewy-eyed at the sun, blinking to bat off the razor-blades of time.

And my mother needs to sell her house, hoarder house, but that’s another story. Or is it. Well it’s all my story. But who cares. I went out there and tried to help and apparently made more of a mess so she can’t handle it and she’s spending a fortune getting it cleaned up even though I got rid of so much she’s probably still saving money in the end. I can’t believe my mother is 68. Even though we have a bit of a jagged relationship I still don’t know how I can be in this world without her. Many of my friends wonder why I still talk to her. But I see her somewhat as my child as well. Not that I’m the best mother to her either. Mother to my mother. But I love her like a child, not like a mother, if that makes any sense. And if/when she dies it will likely feel like losing a child, and I’m worried about that pain, I’m worried I can’t handle more loss despite knowing loss is a gift of life because it means I’ve managed to keep on living. I’m scared of it all. I wish I could go back to the days when I knew nothing about the inevitable. I look at my sons and envy them and pity them. They can’t be kept in the dark forever. Especially with how fucked up the world is. Speaking of dark, things can get dark even faster. So much horrible things out there. I want to hide them from all of it. But they also need to know. I feel guilty for having kids sometimes. Even though grateful. Like what did I bring these innocent creatures into? Maybe they can do great things but — that’s if they survive it all. And then they still die in the end so that makes me feel pretty sick to be honest. Even if in the best case I’ll be long gone when that happens and they’ll have lived long lives and maybe had children of their own I still feel nauseous thinking about it. So I ought to stop because going down that rabbit hole is never a pretty one.

Anyway. It’s 2:39 and I need to sleep. I was probably going to write more things like about my new virtual therapist who is 83 who told me he can tell I’m highly intelligent and that I ought to be a professor and a columnist he named some columnist I reminded him of and I was supposed to know the reference but I didn’t because I don’t know much of anything but I’ll take the compliment with me to my grave or at least my mattress for now.

Adulting, Parenting & Motherhood

My Son Was Diagnosed with Autism – What’s Next?

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My husband and I, both with our inability to make eye contact or socialize in a “normal” way, always thought that our children could be autistic. Our families may not be diagnosed (beyond my ADD), but between us and our parents it’s clear there’s something genetic going on in our family on both sides.

When my first son was born, he was always a bit different. I didn’t really know how different until I had my second son who at 10 months seems “neurotypical.” While it’s too early to tell with son 2, he does all the things naturally that they say a baby should do at certain ages, whereas I always had to look at my first son for a while and ask “does he do that?”

For example, my first kid was never interested in others in the room. He would always be a bit in his own world. If there was a loud noise he might turn to look in that direction for a moment, but usually he just kept staring at whatever he was staring at. He never gave much eye contact and certainly didn’t cry when his caregivers left the room. My youngest will turn to look you in the eye when you call his name and is always looking for mom. It’s just night and day between their behaviors.

Of course all kids are different so I didn’t think much of it. But between my oldest son’s heightened sensitivity to sound, his unique obsession with numbers and letters, his ridiculously good memory for a 3 year old (he has memorized all 50 capitals and is on to the country capitals, and is reading many words by sounding them out), his lack of eye contact, his outbursts, seemingly “behind” communication skills with pronoun reversal and other challenges to communicate, I thought it was worth asking my doctor if she thought we should get him screened for autism.

If COVID wasn’t a thing maybe this would have happened sooner, but his 2 year checkup was a quick in and out where the doctor didn’t really want to spend much time with any one patient. We got a new doctor and at the three year checkup she agreed he should be screened. She was kind enough to let us skip the form we were supposed to mail in and wait months to get a call to schedule the assessment and give us the immediate referral.

A month later we. had the assessment. It was all done remote but I think I trust it as the behavioral analyst who conducted the assessment (under a psychologist who joined for the observation part of the evaluation) seemed to know what she was talking about. She asked us a zillion questions and we answered them as honestly as possible. Then she observed my son play for 30 minutes by giving me instructions over headphones so he didn’t know he was being tested. She had me do things like call his name (to see if he looked at me when I did and made eye contact – he did not), point at things on the wall to see if he would turn to look at where I was pointing (he did not, he sometimes looked at my hand by never the direction I was pointing), and a bunch of other tasks like that to confirm that he was not doing the “normal” things a kid would do a this age.

After the observation, 40 minutes later, she got back on the call and told us that he has “Autism I.” There are now 3 levels of Autism and I is the most mild. Nonetheless, it opens up a world of special services and IEPs and decisions and more decisions on what to do to help him.

While I was clearly not surprised by the diagnosis, I do feel a bit overwhelmed by what’s next. I didn’t realize that autistic children can get 20+ hours a week of therapy in their homes! The type of therapy is called ABA and from what I’ve read about it, the therapy sounds pretty awful. A lot of autistic adults say it has traumatized them and I don’t think we want to pursue that route, especially given his case is mild, though I’m learning as much about it as to make the most informed decision. There is an option for 3 hours a week of parent-led ABA in home which would be done via telehealth so we’re considering that. But I think at the end of the day the question is do we think being autistic is something bad that needs to be changed or do we want to help him embrace this personality and not try to change him (but still give him support for specific areas where he can use therapy like speech and OT/PT.)

I’m leaning towards the later. Speech therapy and OT/PT could be helpful for him. I don’t know yet if I’ll be shamed by the doctor for not doing ABA or if they’re open to parent choice. The referral hasn’t even made it back to the doctor yet, so at this point we’re waiting. I’ve read too much in 48 hours online about what to do now, and it sounds like I should contact the school district for a separate evaluation to see if he qualifies for services in the district. He’s quite happy at his co-op, play-based preschool right now, so I really don’t want to to take him out of it.

Everyone says to me “oh but he’s so smart” and I have to remind them that there are a lot of kids who are smart but also have disabilities and without the right support those disabilities can prevent them from achieving what they’re capable of. At this point in my life I’m not even sure that matters so much as just making sure my son can live a happy life and support himself one day. I know what it’s like to struggle with being neurodiverse without the tools to properly handle this as an adult and it’s not fun. So I want to support him but also not make him feel like anything about him is wrong or broken or needs to be changed. I think it’s very important for him to learn and know he is fine the way he is. And everyone can work to improve themselves no matter how their mind works.

It all sounds good in theory, but how the hell do I I manage this working full time and also raising another kid? My mom was a stay at home mother and managed my sister’s challenging journey with the school system (eventually putting her in private school because in third grade she still couldn’t read) and she spent hours upon countless hours figuring out what to do, getting a lawyer to write letters to the school, doing all sorts of things that didn’t work all that well anyway. Who has time for that these days? My friend is currently navigating her school system with an advocate and she has a much more flexible job as a small business owner so she is able to invest time into that. I’m already overwhelmed thinking about how I will schedule and coordinate a small amount of therapy for my son even if we just do weekly speech and OT and PT — plus ensuring my father-in-law, his primary caregiver during the week, does all the things therapy tells us to do.

Can’t my husband do all that? Maybe. He seems somewhat onboard. He knows our son’s behavior is getting challenging. It was good for him to hear the diagnosis I think so we can be on the same page. We can work together to help him and agree that our ASD kid does have some challenges but we can get through them as we are now part of this massive community of parents with ASD kids.

I do wonder, like all parents wonder, if I did anything to cause this. They say kids born with fertility drugs are 2x more likely to have autism. No one knows why. Well, my first son was conceived with drugs to help me ovulate and my second son was conceived without any drugs. My first son also had a longer birth and had breathing issues at birth while my second son had minor breathing issues at birth but never had a lower oxygen level. Did any of these things cause my first born to have autism? How about the fact that I was so tired trying to keep my job and be pregnant that I had a bit too much Coke Zero during the pregnancy? Will they figure out that Coke Zero is causing autism? With my second son I stuck to iced tea. Did my behavior cause his autism?

And even if it did — I know so many successful and smart autistic people, I’m not sure if this is a “bad thing” at all. It just means he is different. And what child of mine would grow up not being different? Different is ok. Different is good. Being normal is boring.

But I do want him to be happy. I worry that he will be picked on in school. So far in pre-school the kids are nice (or just ignore him.) I know there are challenges ahead. Do I have the time to be the mom I want to be to support my children?

 

 

ADHD, Adulting, Aging, Career, FIRE, Life as I Know It, Mental Illness, Parenting & Motherhood

Two Roads To Nowhere and Everywhere: Stay at Home Mom vs Working Mom

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I’m sure people reading my blog think I’m crazy with now over $2M in net worth not feeling comfortable leaving work for a while… a few months… a year or two… to spend with my young children. Maybe I am crazy. I’ll tell you what I feel. I feel no different than I did five years ago when my net worth was $500k or 10 years ago when it was $150k.

I am struggling with the concept of time and the time of time. 10 years passes in a blink and yet was it all that fast? I don’t know. 10 years ago with $150k net worth I was just starting my first job in this series of jobs after another series of jobs. I was making $100k. At the time that was such a huge salary I thought I would never earn more. Who would pay me more than $100k for anything?

10 years ago I was 27 going on 28. Approaching my 30s. A far different mindset than approaching one’s 40s. Pre children. Pre marriage. Living with roommates and dating my now husband and struggling with enough depression and self-hatred to push myself to keep going to prove that I could survive. Don’t believe me? It’s all here in this blog. All the years that have sprinted by. The failures. The successes. Three firings later. Day after day of waking up feeling not good enough. Not knowing what I’m doing. Trying to make it work. Trying to fit in. Having good moments. And many bad ones. Ten years later.

What will my life be 10 years from now? I’ll be 47 going on 48. What then? Will this decade feel over in a blink as well? How can I slow it down and make sure it lasts as long as possible – savor every second of it? I don’t know if one can at this age. Time just speeds up. And so there’s time and there’s money. It’s the race of both. You can spend less money. You can’t actually stop time. But to afford to leave the workforce you need a lot of money– and even then the system is rigged against you. That money in the stock market. Sure it will likely keep going up over time. That’s what they tell you. It has in the past. But the past is no indication of what will happen in the future. Though the only way to actually afford the future is to take what you’ve earned and bet on something that likely will go up but really who knows.

I’m too heavy in equities. Too heavy in individual stocks, although mostly in index funds. If the whole market crashes, how much does it matter? Does this mystical, mythical $2M disappear overnight? It doesn’t feel real if it’s not spent and if it’s spent then it isn’t real anymore at all. So it sits there, notated in an overly complex google spreadsheet that I look at each morning to see what it all looks like on that day. I open my computer and start trying to do work for my job that is fulfilling only in when I can help other people do their jobs that I’m uncertain if they find fulfilling or just acceptable in order to earn their own mystical, mythical money. I don’t know. I sit in meetings with senior executives who go off on some rant about something that at best doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of the betterment of the world and at worst are stained with sociopathy and that sly smile in passive aggressive attack that only someone with way more money in the bank can slide across their face so damn effortlessly. Everyone is trying to prove to everyone else that they are needed for those ahead of them to win and so even with the best of intentions it becomes this sick game that I’m not cut out to play.

10 years. My father was still alive. Still diagnosed with cancer. Still dying. But alive. Still yelling at my mother. An artist of arrogance. We were all so much younger then. I try to tell myself. 10 years is a long time. 10 years from now my oldest will be 13. Thirteen. My youngest, either 11 or 9 depending if I have another. I’ll hopefully be alive, but 10 years is also a long time for one’s body to attack itself, for health to slowly… or rapidly fail. For my husband to be here or to be ill or not here at all. For my mother to make it to 78 or pass away in her 70s, at an age that no longer inspires those who hear of passing to gasp noting “she was so young” in their condolences. It seems at 70 or maybe 75 it becomes acceptable to die. In ones 80s no one would feel pity over an early death. And 90 is when one feels pity that the person is still living. How fast the years go. Especially if you don’t make the greatest effort to slow them down.

And how can you slow them down? How can I? Well, I feel like there is a choice here. A fork in the road. Like in Squid Game — everyone chooses to play, even after they see what is at stake. Here I am and I see ahead of me 10 years of my children aging from babies to teens and I wonder how much of those 10 years is worth trading for days of panic attacks and feeling horrible at my job and to tired to be much of a mother.

Quit now and move somewhere affordable seems both like an impossible movie plot and an actual life story that could be mine. If only I wanted it enough. And then my husband agreed to it as well. Which would be quite difficult, but if I really knew in my heart it was the right decision — I don’t know — maybe I could convince him we need to leave this place. In a year sell our house. Get away from the rat race. The rat jungle. The rat infestation and bro culture and imposter syndrome and open office spaces and egos and people do don’t have time to connect or build community or they want you to pay a lot to buy in to a community you’ll never be a part of anyway.

If I quit here and stayed here I’d surely eat into my savings quickly. I’d want to do things during the day and going for walks to local parks would get boring after a while, wouldn’t it? There is much to sign up for if you’re a stay at home mom but then you need the money to fund it. Writing is free, at least. But what about my kid’s activities? How do I make sure I have enough to support their lives? I feel that I owe them the upper middle class life I was raised into. I didn’t know how to provide that but somehow through luck and determination here I am. Upper middle class. I guess. It doesn’t feel it. Not like my parent’s generation. One working parent and a nice house with decently nice everything. I’m certainly well off now in most of the world. I certainly don’t feel it.

But I do feel I owe my kids a life at least as good as the one I had growing up. My sister, who makes $14 an hour, refuses to have children because she says she can’t afford them. Yet many people have kids with low incomes — it’s just we were raised into a certain style of childhood and life and we feel our kids deserve at least that. I don’t want my kids to be spoiled. I don’t think I was either. Not horribly so. A little. But not enough to sit on my ass and do nothing. My sister has an incredible work ethic but no belief in herself or her ability to do better. I have random spurts of energy and a character flaw that is my need above all else to prove that I can survive and fit in and thrive in a world that may not be worth surviving.

What if — one year from now — I’m sitting somewhere, some nondescript down maybe — watching waves of a lake-ocean-river-sea crash to shore. Maybe it’s thundering. Or drizzling. Or pouring.  And I’m soaked and running in puddles with my children who are still children. And they don’t remember mom everyday at her laptop working or avoiding working and looking at social media only to be working later when she shouldn’t be because she can’t focus or get anything done. They wouldn’t remember the mess of a house or limited meals but instead clean floors and nutritious fresh food. We’d go on playdates and maybe get to know some people. Really get to know them as friends and build a community, though that’s wishful thinking as being a stay-at-home mom doesn’t suddenly turn me into Miss Popular. But still. What kind of life would that be? One where I am watching my account balances shrink each month instead of grow. I’d be terrified.

That fear is what drives me. But I don’t want to get to 2031 and look back on the last 10 years and say I traded moments for money. I let myself fall into the trap of worrying every single fucking day and waking up each morning feeling sick to my stomach because I know I’ll never do a consistently good enough job at work. Because I’m always on the verge of losing my job and having to admit failure yet again. To pick myself up again. And spend months trying to prove myself. A few victories here and there but nothing enough to stick. And so on. 10 years of that. I don’t know if I can take 10 more years of that.

See, 10 years ago seems like a long time ago. But 4 years ago seems like practically no time at all. Sure, in that time I’ve had two kids and both have grown quite a bit, but that time is all a blur and it doesn’t feel like 4 years it feels like 3 months. Though there is so much of it that I don’t remember. That skips time. And I’m afraid the next 10 years will be that but even faster. So I desperately want to slow the time down. To be present with my family. To take time to be a mom, not a mom who is thinking about the 10 meetings she has the next week while assisting her sons onto an amusement park ride.

I should be grateful that I have the money I do have. It does provide some options. It’s enough to tease me with those options but not enough for the options to be all that real. It’s enough, earned fast enough, to throw in my face that if I leave the workforce I’m not only going to be digging into my savings, but I’m also giving up the opportunity to really get to a place of financial independence for a lifestyle I want to have for my family. Why not a few more months? A few more years? Why not just keep holding my breath until my bank account ticks up to the next hundred thousand? I’m thinking $2.5M before leaving this job, but why not stick around until $3? Why not find another job to take me to $4 or $5M? $5M is the ultimate goal, $200k a year of income from the growth. Maybe then. Maybe then I’ll feel like I can slow down. But when will then be? Will my mind be complete mush by then? It’s hard to say. I just know I’m tired. I’m so tired. I’m tired mentally and physically and I need to sleep. So I’ll sleep now and wonder more about how people make decisions and how I can make decisions and if I’m even allowed to since now I’m a mom and a breadwinner and a home owner and I don’t get to just pick up and change things if they get too hard. This is real adulting. And it better be because I’m fucking old now.

ADHD, Adulting, Career, FIRE, Mental Illness, Parenting & Motherhood

When is There Time for Enjoying Life?

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Another Saturday. Another October. Another fall. Wasn’t it just two years ago when I was going absolutely batshit in the middle of an undiagnosed mania, which was enjoyable only during a week in London when I wandered around and manically documented fall leaves against cobblestone on Insta? And mostly un-enjoyable when I was thrust into this alter-ego self who isn’t particularly acceptable by any standards of normal socialization. And now, back into fall, two years later, a world later, a pandemic still pandemic-ing later, an infant to toddler to pre-k’er and a new baby who is about to be a toddler later, $1.5M in net worth later, a house purchase and a health scare and a clean MRI later, here I am,  new place, same place, trying to be grateful for everything because I know nothing lasts forever, and failing miserably at embracing gratitude over guilt and grievances. So, same old, or same new.

Fall is a monster of melancholy. Autumn air exhausts exhaustion. I could easily lie in my bed for the following months and not notice how long I’ve been in hibernation despite how mild west coast’s seasonal changes are.

The truth is I’m incredibly overwhelmed, behind, and unable to figure out how to get any of my Iife in order. Having ADHD with a heaping of perfectionism makes it extra hard. My house is chaos. I’m trying, despite not sleeping much last night, to muster up the energy to clean it. Organize it. Ok, so it won’t be a home as in a home that I want to live in, without a private bedroom and instead a living situation I should have never agreed to but let my frugal house-hacking hat take charge in a decision I can’t go back on. It’s not the worst case. It’s a house. We own it. I don’t like being a home owner. I knew I’d be bad at it given I wasn’t the best at maintaining a one bedroom apartment. But there’s still something good about owning. Not financially good. It just feels like a real accomplishment. I haven’t had any accomplishments. None that felt worthy of being called an accomplishment, anyway. I guess graduating college is an accomplishment. Getting a job is an accomplishment. But they never really felt like much of anything to be proud of. Everything was barely completed. A failure in the making. Maybe home ownership is too. But I feel really good about buying a home for my kid’s to live in. I don’t think it makes any sense but it feels good to own a house. I know plenty of parents don’t own and it’s fine to raise kids in apartments but for me that would be rough to accept. I blame growing up with a mother who frequently mentioned the kids in “the apartments” as being poor and thus bad somehow. Not that I believe that now. But still part of me felt like buying a house made it ok for me to have kids. Saving enough to afford them, whatever that means.

But now I have a house. And savings. Nonetheless, I feel incredibly behind. And every moment I feel like I might be getting ahead life plays a joke on me. Like just now. I put my wash up and was just admiring how nice my laundry room floor looks like without the huge pile of clothes on it. And then a big “bang” shakes the ground and my eyes question what they just saw as a giant container of Woolite my husband placed on top of the washer apparently leapt to its death, with the lid flailing off of it and spilling soap all over the remaining pile of clothes and the chord to the Swiffer. Nothing unmanageable as one thing, but life feels like a big pile up of a cluster where you take 2 steps ahead and 3 steps back.

I wanted to be a full time mom on the weekends, with the in-laws NOT taking care of my children, and yet here I am again, 11am, in-laws watching the kids as I attempt to clean up. I’m always cleaning up but never getting anything clean. I also am so tired. I stayed up late catching up on work because the only time I can focus on work is when my son is asleep on me from 9-1am. Which is when I should also be sleeping. I’m still far behind on work. Luckily my actual work requires about 20 hours a week to manage at this point, it’s just the issue of finding uninterrupted time.  I’d give anything for 6 hours straight with no distractions. But that’s impossible since I either have to feed my son or pump. And yes, I can stop breastfeeding at any time but I’m not willing to sacrifice that for work. There are some things I won’t sacrifice and that’s one of them.

(loud thud on cue. Another bottle leaps from the top of my washing machine. This one seems to at least have its cover on tight and no spillage is observed.)

I keep thinking if only I can just get my life together. Just get my house in order. Get caught up at work. Make lists of everything I have to do. Go through the list. At some point. At some point I’ll be able to breathe this breath of fresh air and spend time with my kids in a way that feels relaxing. I will be able to make the case that my in-laws (especially my FIL who lives with us) should stay in his apartment/room on the weekends so I can be a g-d darn mom. That doesn’t mean spending every second with my kids, they should have some boring down time too. I had plenty of that as a kid. I really don’t like that grandpa is with my son from 9-4:30 straight every day.. I’m glad my son started preschool but that’s only 2.5 hours 2 days a week. And I feel like a failure not being a mom right now. Yes I’m writing this blog post. As a break from cleaning. And now a break from cleaning up the spill of soap on the laundry room floor. Before I need to feed my baby around noon, probably, then breastfeed at 1 and put him down for his nap (he’ll only sleep on me or dad and dad is working today so that means I’m stuck in bed from 1-3 or grandma takes him and he doesn’t sleep.)

There is this overwhelming feeling/acceptance at this point that I’ll never actually be able to live the life I want so why the fuck try anymore. That is what led to this idea to quit work in August. I know I’d be ok for a few months without an income but I’m really scared I won’t be able to find something else or if I do that the job will require even more work and less time with my kids. For all the things I don’t like about my current job it really is super flexible while I can work from home (not sure when I have to go back but eventually) and I shouldn’t given this up, even if my income goes down year after year because I’ve been demoted without a pay decrease but I won’t actually get any stock refreshes so there is no way my income will keep up unless I go to a new company. I don’t have the energy to go to a new company. I can barely keep my eyes open.

I wonder if there’s a way to get my life anywhere near where I want it to be. I ponder hiring a cleaning service for the house, then find out cleaning services will cost $350 to come for a one time cleaning and $200+ a month and it seems like I should just learn how to clean my home.

(Another bottle flails off the top of the washer with a loud clunk. Not joking.)

I just want a kitchen table. A non plastic-folding kitchen table. A bedroom with a door. Grout in the kitchen that isn’t brown when it’s supposed to be beige. A refrigerator that holds more food. Sheets that aren’t navy with an olive green comforter my husband bought years ago for camping. A backyard that doesn’t have an accidental tree growing against the wall of my home and breaking the foundation. And trees that aren’t in various stages of dying that need to get looked at for another few thousand dollars.

It’s funny because the more money I have the more I get anxious about it. In investments it doesn’t feel real. But I just know that I need it there as a safety net. I mean, if I were to have $10M I could never work again because it’s impossible for me to spend more than $400k per year if I knew that was something I’d have forever. Not that I need $10M before FIRE, but just saying where I’m at now is not FIRE for me.

A friend I met on a social site for moms in the technology world told me she got hired at a company and will be making 500k a year, and her husband is promoted to a job making 400k a year. They will be making 900k+ a year for the rest of their careers and probably much more as they continue to get promoted. How do I compete with that? I don’t have to compete with THAT but that’s what people are earning here in the Bay Area. Or one-worker families with engineers making like $600k or more. In my current company had I not fucked up I could have been on the high-earner trajectory. I even magically experienced it for a few years (I’ll be making about $600k this year with my stock earnings.) But that’s not forever. That’s not even next year. So just quitting doesn’t seem to be the right answer either. Do I try to convince a FAANG to hire me (they won’t) or do I go back to school or do I give up and convince my husband to move to anywhere else we can buy a house and not have a mortgage so high and where I can actually be awake to see my children on occasion. I don’t know.

I feel really sad is all I know. I should keep cleaning and I probably will. I need to get that soap off the floor. My husband is busy with a project he took on to earn $5k extra a year. That’s good for him. I always complain that he doesn’t take on any extra clients so I should be incredibly supportive. But then I wonder in the extra $5k worth it… $2.5k after tax. For all the work he puts into this project. Especially three days when he needs to be available full time and works into the night. I don’t know. Money is so weird. I know we have more than most people in the country but I’m in this weird bubble of Silicon Valley where money doesn’t make sense.

And I’m just. So. Tired.

 

Career, Mental Illness, Parenting & Motherhood, Pregnancy, Working Moms

From Now Till 40: Closing This Chapter of My Life and How

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I haven’t written much about how much I want a third child or how in my heart I long for a baby girl more than anything in the world. I’m so grateful to have my two healthy and beautiful boys, and I know they can grow up to be girls as well, and a person born a girl can become a boy — but I still have this desire to have a girl that I can’t shake. I can’t shake it and I’m willing to use interventions to try to make it happen in the last years I might be fertile.

I’ve accepted it’s unlikely to work. That I’ll probably waste $50,000 on stabbing myself with various medications to make myself ovulate and then fertilize eggs that don’t make it to hatching, or those that do don’t actually stick and get me pregnant. It would be far easier to try again naturally at 38, when my second child is 18 months, as maybe I’ll get pregnant again without needing intervention and not have to wait so long (to do IVF I need to stop breastfeeding and I try to go 2 years before weaning.) My husband may also have some medical issues that may cause us to need IVF anyway this time around.

Girl or boy, there’s a place in my family for one more. I feel it in my bones. When I was younger, I always wanted three and couldn’t imagine myself a mother of any. Now that I’m a mom I want a relatively big family. Three seems like an acceptable amount of big. I know it will be hard — it’s already hard. I know it will be financially challenging. I know there are a thousand reasons not to try for a third kid. And yet, here I am, practically obsessed with the idea of it. Because life is short and I’m going to be 40 soon (!!!!!) and it’s (soon to be) now or never.

So I’ve made a calendar I hope to stick to. Who knows if I will. My second child somehow decided to stick to my calendar for him, so why not continue the streak of good luck? Baby one took a while and some medical intervention, but then this kid stuck on one of two tries within two days. Maybe I’m more fertile now than I was before. I’m trying to accept that I may be “done.” I’m terrified of being pregnant again. I’m equally terrified of what IVF drugs will do to my body given I’m so hyper sensitive to everything. What they’ll do to my already unstable mental health. Yea, it’s probably a  bad idea. But I’m full of bad ideas that turn out ok in the end. Usually. And when I get my mind stuck on something it’s hard to change it.

It seems to really make sense to leave this job in April. At that point my 12 month income will be about $275k, so if I can find a job that earns that much with a higher base I think I need to take it. I’m giving myself until Feb 2023 to find the right job. At that point my 12 month income will be $258k buy by Jul 2023 it drops to $238k. And all of these numbers are assuming full bonus payout which is unlikely. So April – Feb feels like appropriate timing.

I want to start IVF in or around June 2023. I would like to be pregnant (if I’m going to be pregnant) by Aug 2023 or as early as June 2023. This means I need to start new job 4 months before that. But I also want a job that pays for IVF if possible which means I need to start the new job ideally 3 months before starting IVF, which also aligns with the Feb 2023 “last call” timeline. I think giving myself April – February  to find a new job is a pretty good and realistic plan.

During this time I also need to loose 40lbs and hit $2.5M in net worth, which is the minimum net worth I committed to my husband so we can have a third child. Markets may crash but as of today we are at $2.2M and on track to clear $2.35M by April 2022. I was hoping we would be at $3M before IVF but I think we are close enough at this point. If I do have another kid I feel good about being able to afford them even if I go through a few bad years career wise.

Right now I’m trying to focus on getting the most (resume juice) out of my current job. I’ve got a lot of plans and am focused on having some solid quantifiable results from the projects I’m working on. I’m curious what my performance review and pay bump will look like this year. Part of me wants them to realize how valuable I am to the company and throw money at me but they won’t. I have no path to that. I’ll be lucky if I get a 3/5 and a COL raise. I accept nothing I do will be good enough. I accept the have staked the cards against me and want to nudge me out the door. I guess I’m ok with that as long as I can land somewhere better. That won’t be easy. I may be able to get a job at a small startup but if I want to go big company it will take a lot of work and luck.

I can’t believe it is almost Oct. I’m now really in my 6 month countdown to breaking free of the golden handcuffs. It seems achievable. My next job will be 38-41 or so, and I want it to see me through my third (and likely last) child, as well as get us over $3.5M by 41. Then my kids will be 7(!), 4 and 1. Maybe then I’ll do consulting and focus on some more freedom in my 40s. This next job really needs to count. I’m scared shitless but also ready to build the life I want, not the life that I’m handed.

Anxiety, Mental Illness, Parenting & Motherhood

To the next 23 years.

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It’s nice to think I’ll live to 100, but it’s doubtful. I still plan financially for a long life “just in case” but the reality is my health is already headed downward. I can improve my health by exercising and eating healthy (which I am trying to do now slowly as I get back into thing after having a baby) but right now with my newly-diagnosed blood clotting disorder and potentially unrelated headache symptoms that have now gone on for days since getting the second covid shot, I just feel like my body at 37 is already starting to fail. So I’m giving myself 23 years. That’s how long I have until I’m 60. Anything after that, unfortunately, is gravy. I mean, my morbidly-obese cancer-stricken father made it to 67, but 60 seems like a good goal for now.

Twenty three years isn’t long at all. And I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what matters to me in this life. I try to avoid thinking about death as I’m terrified of it, even though it’s inevitable, but instead I try to focus on, ok, I’ve got 23 years, or six “four year vesting periods” before I am at high risk for a variety of illnesses, should I even make it that long.

One thing I know for sure — I love being a mom. I do want a third child, but I’m not sure my body can handle it. My plan was/is to do IVF and try to have a girl (*I have a lot of conflicting feelings about this as I think gender is a social construct but it’s also a “real” social construct and a mother and her daughter tend to have a different kind of relationship compared to a mother and her sons), but as of yesterday I’m wondering if I should just let nature do her thing and if I get pregnant again I get pregnant again and if it’s a boy I should be happy with that outcome as three brothers can be nice as well. Going the natural route, as long as I can lose weight quickly, would enable me to get pregnant sooner (if I can) versus waiting to wean and start IVF. With my clotting disorder it seems like IVF may be too risky overall. I need to talk to a doctor about it. If I can’t get pregnant naturally (at 38) then we could always do IVF then, but I don’t have to make that my first option. It’s always possibly baby 3 could end up being a girl by chance, although it just as likely could end up being another boy.

And who knows if my health will allow me to safely get pregnant again anyway.  I need to lose weight, but I’m struggling a lot this time. I don’t feel like I’ve been eating a ton lately yet the scale is stuck at 188-192 and it keeps bouncing back up. I’m avoiding most sugars and have really improved my diet yet here I am. I need under 180 fast to relieve what my weight is doing to my body and then continue to work to get it down much further. If I do get pregnant again, I want to start the pregnancy at or as close to a healthy BMI as possible (which means losing 50lbs!) which given I’m struggling to lose .5lb a week will take, uh, forever. I do remember last baby I didn’t lose a lot of weight until a year in when baby started eating food and breastfeeding less. Then the weight started to come off. And I dropped 10lbs in March last year but that’s because I either had COVID or pandemic-induced anxiety and didn’t eat much in a month and was walking miles a day. I need to start walking that much again and I’d like to be able to lose weight while still eating (healthfully.)

This headache situation is no fun right now though. It’s honestly scaring me. I’m hoping it’s just long-term side effects from the vaccine and will go away soon. It’s been this on and off stabbing pain throughout the left side of my head. I took Excedrin this morning and it transformed into a huge amount of pressure, then my left arm and face felt heavy. I’ve been lying down and feel a little better, but afraid to get up. I’m slightly nauseous. I just want to feel myself again.

The stress of going back to work isn’t helping. I’m trying to refrain from getting stressed as it seems to be a trigger for my recent uptick in medical issues but I just have more and more anxiety by the day. It’s not like my old-time anxiety that I hand somewhat a handle on. I just feel like the weight of the world and so many things is crippling. I’m behind on EVERYTHING. So, gosh, why do I want another kid? Well, the only thing in my life that feels right at the moment is being a mom. And I think I’m a pretty good mom thus far. I can be a pretty good mom to two children but to me family is really everything and there isn’t much of one out here on the west coast so I need to rebuild that. Hopefully I’ll live longer than those 23 years and I can enjoy many years with my children and maybe even their children too. It’s crazy to think how old I’ll be (if I’m still around) when they might have kids. Makes me wish I had my children younger, I just wasn’t thinking about “the other side of it” when putting off having my kids until my mid 30s. I’m glad I had my 20s but it wouldn’t have hurt much to start having kids in my earlier 30s. My dad would have even gotten to meet my firstborn and to this day it kills me that he wasn’t able to meet his grandchild, when I know that would have really made him so happy. And he’ll never know about his second grandson or whoever else might come next. I remain heartbroken.

I want a family. A big-ish one. I want to turn this house into a home somehow. It doesn’t feel like one yet. Or maybe sell this house and buy another place that feels more like a home one day. This place is just a bunch of boxes. Rooms that are all the wrong size and put in an odd layout. I can fix it up but probably never will. The bathroom remodel took a toll with all the decisions. Probably better to sell and move. To the city where I wanted to buy. Though houses go for $1000+ a square foot there, more in the areas we’d want to be. It’s insane. And I don’t see myself moving into a well-paid role… ever again. I can’t handle the pressure. I need something that is more stable and lower stress. For my health. It was fine when it just impacted my mental health but now that it’s putting me at risk for an early death or other issues that could disable me I just want to part in that game. I’m hanging on for dear life for the next eight months to get the last of my stock but after that I’m reevaluating everything. I just want time. The most precious resource of all.

I’m scared, too, that a manic episode will return. I’m so far removed now from the one I had in 2019. My therapist won’t believe me about it, she thinks I’m just depressed. It’s terrifying when you lose control over what you say and do. For the most part the whole time period was quite benign, but I definitely regret some things I said. I don’t know who I was then. I was someone else. It’s sad that I felt GOOD then, like I was entertaining and charismatic and all the things I want to be in my vat of awkwardness. Clearly I wasn’t any of that at the time, but I felt that way. Now I’m on the other end of it, I guess. I don’t even know if I’m depressed. I’m just tired. Tired of chasing after — proving that I can “do this” whatever this is. “Not failing.” Making money. Growing that money. Buying a house. Keeping the house. Being an adult. Supporting a family. I’m grateful for it all and know I don’t deserve any of it. Yet it’s still hard to hold on. I power through the days. I count down the weeks. I watch the clock pass by until it’s night again and I can close my eyes to sleep for 6 hours straight if lucky. And yet I know one day I’ll look back at these moments and miss them too. Isn’t that funny. These are the best days. I want to start feeling like they are.

Parenting & Motherhood

26 Hours and a Baby Later

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He’s oddly blonde, for now, with grey-green-blue-who-knows eyes that, despite being forced out at his 37th-something week of gestation, look deep into you like they’re thinking more than a newborn ever could think, disecting whatever blur and lines in front of his face into something meaningful and not terrifying. He could somehow still be cooking in the womb for another 1-3 weeks, but instead he’s out in the world with all of the energy I’ll never have again. I’m icing all my bits that helped him slide out into the world. I’m a mom again.

My maternity care and childbirth was free, thanks to an HMO and decent insurance from my empower. I splurged $750 on a virtual doula who turned out to be invaluable support in this particular experience, and may be splurging on a social-distanced family photoshoot which I count as part of my childbirth costs, since I didn’t have to pay anything else to safely deliver this nugget. Even then, I’ve paid far less than most people who have kids in this country.

My childbirth was not the healing one I sought after the one I had two years ago, though it had its positives. Two years ago, after 2 days of labor, one scary deceleration that almost led to an emergency C section (and a horrible moment of being forced to wear an oxygen mask which made it impossible to breathe due to my claustrophobia-induced hyperventilation), and then my son ending up in the NICU with low oxygen saturation for 36 hours, and then my dad dying a week later after a long battle with cancer and a number of other health issues (unrelated), and flying out to the east coast days later to attend his funeral that my mother said wasn’t going to be a funeral and then ended up being a funeral (so I’m glad I went) but dealing with my own blood pressure issues and concerns after the induction for gestational hypertension, well, that whole experience was just bad and I wanted this birth to be different. I knew it would hurt, because that’s what childbirth does, but I wanted it to be more of a “normal” birth. One free of major complications. One closer to what I expected the first time around.

For my first son, my blood pressure approached dangerous territory at 39 weeks, and my doctor said I should induce. When I go to the hospital and they asked if I had a birth plan I said “it was to not induce” so that was out the window. While I had vaguely studied pain relief for a natural birth, I had no idea what was involved in an induction. In my head, I wanted to go into labor naturally. I didn’t understand the risks with my borderline blood pressure, or that making it to 40 weeks was basically already a huge success and induction at that point wasn’t that big of a deal. I pushed back a bit on the induction timeline and spent a night in triage with my blood pressure being read every 15 minutes. While the doctor did not want to let me go home, by morning she was convinced it was safe to let me go as my blood pressure levels were down significantly. But then an amniotic fluid check and finding of low fliud confirmed that I should stay. And the induction began.

All while I was having my blood pressure checked overnight, I was reading about the horror stories of every induction drugs and tactic on the market. One of the worst offenders, it seemed, was a drug called misopropital (cytotec), which is an ulcer drug not approved for use in labor, yet used all the time in labor (I don’t really understand how off label use is allowed when the manufacture is very opposed to it and has warnings saying to not use in pregnancy.) I opted to turn down the cytotec and instead have a foley balloon placed to “ripen” my cervix, which is the first step in an induction. The goal of the cytotec and/or balloon is to get you to about 3cm so they can start you on Pitocin, which is the better-known induction drug. Pitocin makes you have ridiculously hard and frequent contractions which move the baby down the birth canal and help you push the baby out…

While I felt good about refusing cytotec for baby one–and first births are known for being long so it’s impossible to know had I taken it if It would have changed things at all, or for the better–I did end up with a very long induction. I did manage to get an epidural after hours of painful pitocin contractions which had me screaming and moaning. While the epidural needle was not an issue for me, I got the epidural shakes after (which are apparently very common) and they were horrible. After that, it was all a bit of a blur until my son came out after 2.5 hours of pushing and despite crying was blue and taken swiftly to the NICU. All I could think of was the video they showed in our breastfeeding class about how the baby is placed on the mom’s stomach and crawls to the breast to begin to breastfeed, and how I was robbed of that moment they made such a big deal out of (and later I learned that also meant I would have a long and challenging journey to make breastfeeding work, requiring round-the-clock pumping and attempting to feed from the breast for 8 weeks straight.) And then, being paralyzed by the epidural and told I couldn’t go to the NICU to see my baby for hours, left me alone in the delivery room thinking my son was going to die and I couldn’t even be with him.

My son didn’t die. While it was scary to see him hooked up on all sorts of tubes and having low oxygen levels, he was released two days later and we never found out what happened. Apparently he just needed time to adjust to the world. And I spent the next 2.5 years reading all about birth trauma, and found my story wasn’t nearly as bad as most trauma stories. I read about women who were put to sleep for an emergency C-section and woke up to no baby in their arms, or those who were cut into while the numbing drugs weren’t working correctly. I read about some who were not induced when they should have been and were left to birth babies too large or in the wrong positions. Women who had every last symptom of preeclampsia yet who were ignored until it was too late and they had seizures and died on the delivery table, only to be ressuctated and  brought back to life to live another day. I realized my story was barely traumatic–and yet, for me, it was something I didn’t want to relive.

So when I got pregnant with my second, I both feared a worse childbirth, but also felt optimistic about my odds of having a good birth, whatever that means. I even started looking forward to my delivery–what laboring at home would be like. What I would be doing the moment I felt my first contraction. When would baby decide to come on his own? Could I handle natural labor pain better than one induced with pitocoin? Could I get through labor without an epidural (no way!) or, how far could I progress before asking for the epidural (I made it to ~5cm last time, which is pretty good. I made a goal in my head to make it to 6 this time. Maybe that would prevent a NICU stay. Maybe getting the epidural too early slowed down the labor last time? Who knows.)

But a totally natural labor was not to be for this little one either. My blood pressure started creeping up and because I had gestational hypertension with my first, suddenly borderline readings that my doctor ignored with baby one were indicators to induce me super early. My OB looked at two BP readings, including one I took a home during a virtual visit, and said I should be induced at 37 weeks.

37 weeks???

In the back of my mind I figured I might end up induced again at 40, but hoped that I would go into labor naturally before that. With an induction at 37 weeks it was practically a guarantee I wouldn’t go into labor naturally. My hopes and plans for a natural labor were again out the window. With such an early induction, I worried, would this be even worse than my first one? After all, with baby one, at a day before my due date my body hadn’t even dilated 1cm. Would this be a worse experience? Would I end up with one of those horrific emergency C sections I read about? Would I need the oxygen mask on my face for an extended period of time? Would my baby make it out alive? Would I?

In researching 37 week inductions I found that they were quite common for medical indications. However, while 37 weeks used to be considered full term, it now is concerned early term. Elective inductions are now required to wait until 39 weeks–because baby is still forming in those 37-38 weeks. Kid’s IQ is a bit lower for each week they are unable to bake. While 37 weekers tend to survive well outside the womb, I felt delivering at 37 weeks was taking something away from my kiddo. I felt like a failure to have high blood pressure so early. And while some of it may be my fault due to gaining too much weight again this pregnancy, many thin women also end up with blood pressure issues. If the precursor to preeclampsia, which it could be, then it is related entirely to placenta failure. Every comment from well-meaning friends and family to just reduce my stress in order to bring my blood pressure down reminded me how little is understood about these fairly common diseases of pregnancy–the same ones that make America one of the top developed countries for maternal mortality, often from conditions related to blood pressure.

While I was grateful my OB took my symptoms seriously (I’ve seen many women on my Facebook groups note that with similar blood pressure readings and other issues like headaches, abdominal pain, etc, which signify something more serious happening, they are ignored) I still felt like the actual date I needed to induce was not clear. The 37 week recommendation was based on one study from 2009 of 600 women and it didn’t sort out people who had mild high blood pressure vs those who had very high blood pressure, and it also had diagnostic criteria that were changed since the study and brought down. Some reviews of the study noted the recommendation was for induction at the END of the 37th week, and others noted they were for the beginning. I started to hope that maybe I could make it to week 39, go into labor on my own, ignore my liable blood pressure that was slowly spiking higher and higher at random, and the issue would just go away.

I switched OBs. My new OB agreed with me that my levels at the time were not high enough to merit induction. But then I also started reading about what happens during childbirth if you let your blood pressure get out of control. Things could get bad fast. I joined a preeclampsia group on Facebook and read stories of women who had no blood pressure issues at all one day and were seeing 180/110 levels the next. I read about the infamous magnesium drip that makes you feel warm and like you have the flu during your childbirth and recovery, but minimizes your risk of seizures. I read stories of women who died because their blood pressure readings weren’t taken seriously. I started to chicken out from my plan to put myself on bedrest and stay the course. I made a silent agreement that if my numbers went over 140 or 90 and didn’t immediately come down, I’d go for the induction. My new OB supported my taking readings at appointments after I came in to the doctor’s room and sat for a while. We discussed my anxiety and white coat syndrome, and she agreed that the first reading when I get to the office without time to relax may not be accurate enough for a diagnosis.

I made it past 37 weeks. A huge win. But I also started seeing some high readings at home. Some that probably should have sent me to L&D.  But I’d go into bed, breathe deeply, wait a while, and retake the reading and it would come down. The final weekend before I ended up inducing I was having two friends over for a social-distanced dinner in my backyard when my felt my heart pounding a bit. I went to take my blood pressure just to check I was ok and it came back at 150 over something. I started to panic and throw things in my hospital bag and awkwardly asked my friends to leave. My husband had me get in the bed and calmed me down and my BP came back to normal levels. We decided not to rush to L&D, but to get some sleep and reevaluate in the morning.

Every day I didn’t go to L&D felt like a win in my mind. Another day for my son to grow and get closer to full term. Another chance of hitting 39 weeks and/or going into labor on my own.

Unfortunately, my new OB was scheduled to be on vacation the first week of January, so I had an appointment scheduled with a new doctor at 37+5 (37 weeks, five days.) I knew it was a make-or-break appointment. I expected my blood pressure to be high, but did not expect the readings I got. Or that it didn’t come down on a second read, or when I took it on my home machine that I brought in to the office (which was lower but still too high.) The OB, who was quite nice about things, said I should go to get induced today and put in a call to the hospital to schedule my arrival in two hours. She quickly did a cervical check and membrane sweep, which hurt a bitch, and told me I was 1cm dilated (of 10cm) , 50% effaced (of 100%) and -3 station (you want to be +”3″ to deliver a baby.) In other words, while I was ever-so slightly more ready to pop out a baby compared to my first induction, it wasn’t significant enough of an improvement that I had any faith this forced labor would go smoothly. I felt sad and spent the next two hours mourning the “natural labor” I wanted and wouldn’t get, at least not this time around.

When I checked into the hospital I also synced with my virtual doula–a woman who used to be an RN who also had a lot of experience with evidence backed birth. We discussed options and she encouraged me to take the misoprobital this time. I agreed because at least it was something different. I was a little worried about the reports of it overstimulating the uterus and causing too many contractions which could put the baby in distress and harm the mother (possibly causing her to lose her uterus.) But, it sounded like the worst side effects were still pretty rare, and my nurses at the hospital ensured me it was a common and cautious course — they start you on 50mg, a ‘half dose’, and watch your reaction for 4 hours. If that goes well, they give you 100mg and wait another 4 hours. They do the 100mg up to 5 times. The whole process could take an entire day. I liked that — at that point all I could think about was how to delay my son’s birth so he could cook a little longer in utero. This would buy me an entire day. I was game.

The first dose made me feel a bit flushed, but didn’t seem to do anything else. The following doses similarly did little. I felt a few contractions here and there, but nothing that a doctor would consider active labor. This is normal with the cytotec, apparently, as its job is to ripen the cervix, not to cause contractions. Its side effect is that it can cause contractions. But that’s not its main objective. It always is used as a precursor to pitocin, my archenemies chemical concoction of childbirth. There were stories of, rarely, a woman going into active labor after taking cytotec. I thought–wouldn’t that be great, if I could avoid the pitocin altogether! What if cytotec puts me into a normal active labor? Maybe this could be a good birth after all!

When I finished the 5 doses of cytotec, including 4 hours after the last dose, the midwife on duty at the time met with me and suggested we immediately start pitocin. My cervical check showed I was 3cm–which was actually really good for the cytotec. I wanted to get to 5cm before starting pitocin, and I also decided to get an epidural before starting pitocin this time, so I wouldn’t have to feel those horrible forced contractions. She agreed to give me 2 hours and then we would start the pitocin. The plan was always to just see if I could dilate a little more on my own, get an epidural, start pitocin, have baby when baby was ready to come out.

At that point I started to feel a few fairly strong but short contractions. My husband and I asked if we could walk the hall and we were given the ok as long as we wore our masks. Over about an hour and a half my contractions went from non-existent to very hard and very consistent. I realize now they weren’t being picked up on the monitors, but because they were so frequent I had my husband track them on my iPhone app. Looking back I see they were coming every 1-2 minutes and were intense for 30-45 seconds. I’m not sure what happened during that 1.5 hours, but my body went from not ready to have a baby at all to…

3:30pm. I get back to the room and I’m telling the nurse things are getting really painful. I suddenly am thinking 4pm, my check in with the midwife, is too far away. I am ready to throw in the towel and get the epidural now. Start the pitcoin. I’m a wimp. This hurts. I’m told that these contractions are my own, that the cytotec is mostly out of my system. The nurse doesn’t seem to believe me I’m having such frequent contractions. We discuss taking a shower to help me make it to 4pm. She knows my goal of dilating to 5cm before the epidural and pitocin. She is trying to help me get there. She sets me up for the shower, wrapping my hep lock in plastic, starting the water…

A minute or so later, I fold over in crippling pain. I almost find the pain funny, as I might have laughed in horror at that moment. I knew something suddenly changed. I felt a slight trickle of water down my legs and I thought (wouldn’t it be funny if that was my water brea…

Then, bam, out came a Hollywood-style pouring of water onto the floor in two giant bursts. I could tell my nurse knew that meant the show was really starting. Meanwhile, I felt my body immediately change. I can’t explain it. I just felt super scared. I didn’t know that I was about to have a baby so soon. I just thought I was going to have to ensure this level of crippling pain for a long time before I could get an epidural. I screamed out. I need fentynl (which I planned to get one dose of before the epidural like last time, to take the edge off), I NEED AN EPIDURAL, I NEED IT NOWWW….

Just as I was beginning to panic, I started to be hit with wave after wave of really fucking painful contractions. I screamed in agony. The nurse scrambled to get the anesthesiologist and drugs. I somehow made it to the bed. It was about 3:45pm at that point. Suddenly a bunch of people were in the room. My eyes were mostly closed. The OB was there, sitting next to me, saying she needs to check me. I didn’t know what was up or down. All I was thinking was how am I going to survive this until I get this epidural?!?! Just as the OB reported out loud that I was 5cm, I informed the room that I needed to both go to the bathroom immediately and vomit and I would be doing both in due time whether they liked it or not. The fentanyl dose was administered about then as well, as everyone said I cannot go to the bathroom on the drug. I was like, well fuck that, I’m going here and no one can stop me. No one seemed to be telling me not to poop the bed, everyone seemed focused on not letting me vomit on myself… they gave my husband a vomit bag and asked him to hold it to my mouth. I pushed it away as it made me feel claustrophobic and I was like fuck this I don’t want a vomit bag on my mouth why can’t I vomit all over myself I’m dying anyway just let me vomit on myself…

At the same time, I started to “poop.” Well, I wasn’t pooping. The midwife said “you’re pushing past your cervix.” I had no idea what that meant but it sounded maybe not good? The next thing I hear is “you’re crowning.” I think at that point I let out an audible “what??” The next phrase out of my midwives mouth was “that’s the head.” Both my husband and I said “huh?” at this point, as she continued “one more push and your baby is out” and at that point I couldn’t not push, so out came baby.

He was put on my stomach and looked ok and seemed to cry a bit but moments later they said he was having trouble breathing and he was taken away to the NICU. Even though I didn’t have an epidural this time, I had flashbacks to my first son’s birth of him being taken away, and I was again told I couldn’t go to be with him. Instead of that happy after-birth moment with my husband and new baby, I was left on the delivery table with the nurse pressing my stomach to get all the blood out and ensure I wouldn’t hemorrhage, and my husband was off to the NICU to be with our son. No breast crawl like the video. No skin to skin (after the initial minute.) No feeling that good feeling you get after you go through something horrible but end up with a healthy baby.

This time, at least, in an hour they brought my son back to me. He actually latched well and breastfed for a long time. We all went to the recovery room together. We had a little time to enjoy together before my son began having respiratory distress again and ended up back in the NICU the next day. He seemed to have a lot of amniotic fluid that wasn’t pushed out of his lungs due to the precipitous labor, but no one really knows what happened. The doctors all said it wasn’t because he was 37 weeks, but I’m not sure I believe any of that. No one seems to really know. I wonder, most of all, if the cytotec caused the precipitous labor, or if that was really all me after it was out of my system. Why weren’t my frequent contractions picked up on the monitor? Was I having overstimulation at that point? Should someone have been administering a drug to slow down my contractions? Was there any damage caused to my son in that labor that wasn’t just due to my own body having a baby really fucking fast?

Well, baby is here now and after a few days of adjusting and sounding like he was drowning due to being filled with fluids, he is doing quite well. Everyone who sees video or picture of him notes that he’s “so alert,” which I guess is a good thing for babies. My pediatrician also said this, and then noted that he’s strong and active, and that he will probably be an athlete. My husband and I frequently note that he doesn’t seem like an early-term baby, especially compared to our 40 weeker first child who came out acting much more like a premie than this guy. He seems healthy now.

After all of that, you might think I’m bat shit crazy (I am) but I want another child. We’re still looking into IVF for gender selection, which I’m partial towards due to also being able to do genetic screening of the embryo, which helps as I’ll be around 39 and my husband will be 40/41 when we try for our third and final child. Even though that’s a bit of a ways off, and maybe will never happen, I’ve got a wish for that delivery… no high blood pressure. No induction. No NICU stay.

It could always go far the other way. But in my heart, I still want that moment. Closure. That “golden hour.” I want to end the trauma that is labor–even in its best form–with the reward that its meant to bring–a sweet, healthy poop machine lying on your chest, ready for the world. Can I at least have that?

Parenting & Motherhood

44 Days Left Until Baby 2; 14 Days Until Maternity Leave; -2 Days Since I Changed OBs and Fought My Diagnosis

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Time this year is all sorts of wonk. I don’t know what’s up or down anymore, but I do know some medical events of the last week have been a bit of a wake up call for me that money isn’t everything and I need to take my health — physical AND mental – seriously.

When I got pregnant, I was aiming for a Feb baby. It’s silly but when you go on maternity leave (at least in my state) you get paid less than full salary (and lose out on some benefits) so it is extra frustrating to go out during a time period with a lot of paid holidays. The worst is going out over Christmas as my company gives a full week of paid time off then. The best time to be out, assuming 3-4 months out, is Feb-May. You still miss a few paid holidays, but it’s not that bad. And you also come back to work right before summer which is usually a bit slower and even if not people tend to be in better spirits and it’s not like returning at the start of the year when things are extra stressful.

But, alas, I got pregnant somehow on my first try, and I studied the calendar to determine that my 4 weeks of optional disability leave before my due date ran over the Christmas break week . But then I figured out the timing actually worked out where I could go out at Christmas and take the paid week off and then immediately go on disability.

For the record (and new readers) with my first kid I was stubborn and worked up until my due date. This may have contributed to having high blood pressure at the end, which led to an induction, which led to a bunch of other interventions which maybe is what led to my son having to spend 36 hours in the NICU. We aren’t certain what caused what, but it was a quite traumatic labor and when I set out to get pregnant again I told myself I won’t be stupid and I’ll go out on leave as early as I can even if it means losing some pay and other benefits.

Then came COVID. And work from home. And analyzing the losses of going out on leave early (a few thousand dollars.) And planning to work until my due date again. It felt odd to go out on disability early when I was literally working from my bed anyway. What would people think? I care too much about that, but mostly I care about losing my ESPP contributions when on disability leave, which are worth about $1000 pre tax a week after you remove the cost I put in to buy them. And the first week of disability is entirely unpaid, but that will happen no matter when I take it.

The thing is next year will either be so incredibly lucrative for me that losing a few thou won’t be noticed… or I will come back from having kid 2 and be such a mental case I can’t hold down my job for the year ahead and I’m fired by summer. Luckily I do still vest RSU when I am out, which is a godsend, so even with a summer axing I’ll be fine. It will be devastating given if I can just hold on one more year I will significantly shift my FIRE date sooner and I’m basically holding a lotto ticket for dear life as a train going a zillion miles is passing before my face… so… it’s hard to plan anything. I just need to plan the stay healthy.  That is the best I can do.

Speaking of do, I’m due in 44 days. Which is not a lot of days. Especially if you consider this week my (now former) doctor wanted to induce me in 20. Why? Well, let me tell you, maternal care is a mess because there just isn’t enough research and data to support serious recommendations. Some doctors are too conservative. Others, many, ignore women who have symptoms of serious complications until it’s too late. I have to say I’m glad my doctor errs towards conservative, but I was extremely frustrated by her too conservative recommendations based on data that in itself was faulty. Let me explain.

High blood pressure in pregnancy is no joke. Women die everyday from complications related to blood pressure rising out of no where. Babies die. Seeing high blood pressure readings should be taken seriously by doctors and patients alike.

But. One has to then consider how these readings are gathered and the accuracy of these readings before making a very serious diagnosis that impacts the course of your care — and your due date.

BP readings are notoriously inaccurate. That is why doctors often take 2-3, to determine if one read was influenced by how you were breathing or sitting or anything else. The diagnosis criteria for gestational hypertension is two reads of 140/90 at least 4 hours apart. In my case, at an in office appointment in Oct, my first read was 148/75. Scary. They took it again and it came down substantially. No one said anything to me like — oh, if you get one more high read like this we will induce you early. The only thing they said is that my second read was good, and not to worry about it. Ok.

Now, to get an accurate BP reading, I’ve since leaned (thanks internet) one is supposed to sit still in a chair for 5 minutes before the reading is taken. No where could I find how wearing a mask in an enclosed windowless space might impact the BP read of someone with a history of anxiety and claustrophobia, but I digress. I question the accuracy of that first read. If it was real, it’s quite scary. If it isn’t, well, it’s meaningless.

Fast forward 4 weeks. Due to covid my 32 week checkup is virtual. The nurse calls me and while on the phone with me has me take my BP at home. I’m not thinking while I do this… I walk quickly to the chair by the home machine after taking my weight, sit down with my back not supported, barely breathing, clenching my phone in my fist, muttering some comments as I begin to take the read. I wasn’t concerned as I had just taking it 3 times a few hours earlier and it was fine. So as I read the numbers… 142/90… out loud… I said to myself, that’s kind of high…

I asked if I could take it again. It came down. (Then later my husband, who purchased the machine, determined he could change his own BP read by 15 points based on the tightness of the cuff!)

But none of that mattered. The moment my OB got on the phone, she tells me she is diagnosing me with gestational hypertension and I will be induced at 37 weeks. What? I ask, shocked. I feel fine. I am pretty sure my home machine gave me an inaccurate read. As she explains he logic to me, the more frustrated I grow in her not requesting for me to come in to at least check the second read in office before scheduling an induction 3 weeks before my due date!!!

I requested an in office check and labs. She scheduled me for an NST and fluid scan that I agreed to and surprise surprise, every test I took came back clear. At the office, my BP was 127/70. While I may end up with high BP in this pregnancy and am higher risk for it due to being overweight and geriatric (pregnancy wise), there is no reason to induce at 37 weeks without two accurate high readings.

So I switched doctors. She agreed with me 100%. Said why take a second reading if you aren’t going to use it!

My first doc wanted to put me out on disability immediately. I politely declined. That would be 2 weeks of lower pay and a week I’d be out anyway with full pay lost entirely. And without time to properly transition, I would still be answering work emails and doing work-without getting paid for it. Instead, I decided to compromise. I’d go out on leave Jan 4 as initially planned. With work being super stressful and just sad lately, I have no desire to work a day longer at this point.

Regarding work, I understand why I was kicked out of my role, but the way it was and continues to be handled is one kick to the ego after another. My work friend, who will be promoted into the position I had (officially, once I go on mat leave) is good at what he does — but like most men is overconfident. That works for him at this company, because confidence and clarity are by far the most valuable leadership traits, whereas output matters little. It is good for him to have this opportunity — and as I told him if anyone else was stepping into this role I’d be pissed but I’m genuinely happy for him (I am) so it all works out. Sort of. I have a new role which is still stressful and ill defined, but it’s a bit less visible. I went from a position where I was seen as a strategic leader to one where i am more or less a project manager. Does it hurt? You bet. But I have an end date in mind and stock to collect and a baby to push out. I know my new boss won’t keep me forever. I’m hopeful I have a few months after I come back from maternity leave to find my footing before anyone considers asking me to pack my virtual boxes and get out. It seems this might be achievable.

And I may still have this baby early. In 2 weeks? In 2 days? Baby could decide to come early on its own. We officially move Dec 21 (as in hired movers are moving our stuff to our house then) so I’m hoping not before that. Or before Chanukah and Christmas. I would like to make it through the month with baby still cooking. That would be wonderful. Then come Jan any day can be a maybe baby day.

And then? Well, then I’ll be mom of 2 at 37. A homeowner. Not yet a minivan owner but that’s happening soon as well. I’ll be well on my way to 40 and maybe no more kids or maybe one more kid. I’ll be fully engaged in this next phase of my life – mid life, I guess – and trying to make sense of it. After my scary self-diagnosed bipolar manic episode in late 2019, I am hoping I’m now stable. I look at who I was those few months and feel so detached from that person. So embarrassed and ashamed of her. But maybe that was my last hurrah. Maybe that was my inner crazy child dying but not giving in to her mortality without putting up one last fight. I don’t know what it was. But I feel different now. Depressed, maybe. In a mellow way. I guess that’s what having nearly $2M in networth does to a person. I am spending too much these days but I feel a little bit more stable. If I am an just get through next year, just get to $2.5M by 1/1/2022 (or close to that), I can calm down a bit more. I want to be able to not worry about every dollar earned or not. To be able to take a job I’m good at — one where my work is valued as appreciated, vs considered acceptable largely due to pity. I need to find that job – that career. And it may not pay well. But I want to have enough saved where that doesn’t matter. Maybe I can make it happen. The next year will answer if I can. Or at least if I can try.

Depression, Parenting & Motherhood

So I’m Having Another Baby in, Like, 6 to 9 Weeks.

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Every once in a while I get a jolting alien kick from within, or a glance in the mirror at my humungous belly, that reminds me I’m quite pregnant at the moment. It’s easy to forget (well not that easy given how sore my butt is from the weight of carrying an adorable little parasite again.) In less than 10 weeks, my world is going to change. I’m going to have a baby, again. A baby! Only 2.5 years ago (not even) I had one of those. Now he’s curious, rambunctious, alphabet-addicted toddler who likes to draw on the walls when no one is looking.

How am I going to handle two of these? And why do I want another one? Haha.

I love being a mom. Truly. I didn’t know if I would. I know I’m not the perfect mom. But being a mom has changed me. Maybe I get sad a lot still, but when I see my son and his adorable little innocence and excitement around learning new things (“I wrote a W! Good job!” he exclaimed to himself the other day) how can I really be depressed? As long as my son (and future kid) have their health and safety, then I feel all the warmth in my heart to carry me through the dark times when my mind’s chemicals tell me I ought to exit stage left a bit early.

Nonetheless, I’m scared shitless of having another one. Every new baby is different. Last time I was a mess, with my long induction, son’s brief NICU stay, father dying a week after my son was born, inability to get my son to latch immediately and round-the-clock pumping, etc. And with all that, I actually got more sleep in that first two week period than I might get this time around. The NICU stay was terrifying, but it also meant that for the first 36 hours of my son’s life the nurses took care of him round the clock, and I got to dose off in the NICU chair as much as I needed. Then, when I went to my father’s funeral on the east coast a week later, for a few days I had a bed to myself and no baby crying (though I did pump on and off all night each day and managed to keep my supply up), and my husband had a series of wonderful friends and family come in to help him overnight so he could get some sleep too.

This time, we at least know what to expect (sort of ) but we’re on our own (sort of) and with another kid we have to keep alive. I know people do it (and do it with many more kids) but I’m still scared.

The worst of it is that because of COVID we’re in a bit of a pickle. My father-in-law will be living with us in his own space with his own entrance, but at 76 we cannot be near him for two weeks when coming home from the hospital as we’ll have to quarantine. My husband has told me that we can’t hire help either, because if we do that we’ll just have to continue to quarantine plus we’re risking more exposure to our newborn. So we’re on our own for two weeks for the. most part (it’s possible his father can occasionally watch our son from a distance in the backyard if we need a momentary break, but he can’t actually go near him.)

We’ll survive it, but it’s going to be really hard. And that’s IF everything goes well.

What if my new baby ends up in NICU again? For longer? What if something happens to me in delivery and I get stuck in the hospital and my family can’t visit? It’s quite scary right now. I knew going into this that COVID was not going away but this January and, knowing I’d be 37 when I deliver and wanting possibly a third kid, I made the choice to move forward to start trying to get pregnant anyway (it worked on the first try you guys… I did not expect that after basic fertility treatments for my first!) I thought maybe I’d be pregnant in a few months and I’d deliver in March, or April, or sometime in late spring/summer. I knew it was possible as with the beginning of the pandemic I began a daily walking route, started eating healthy, and dropped 8lbs in a month. My body was just ready, clearly. And on Mother’s Day I took at test and got my answer. Pregnant.

So here I am. Pregnant in a pandemic. Woohoo. Oh, I’m terrified. I’m also remodeling my bathroom. And going to showrooms during the weekdays wearing a mask and trying to social distance and hoping we don’t catch this thing. Cases are going up everywhere. My good friend who just had a baby got COVID a few weeks ago (in another state) and she ended up fine. I don’t know if I would. I’ve gained too much weight this pregnancy. I’m still about 25lbs down from my delivery weight from kid 1, but I wanted to gain max of 20lbs this time around and I’m double that now. I think it’s just a mix of my body craving carbs and the depression that kicks in around second trimester that makes me move towards a donut-only diet. Ok, I’m not that bad. But I have had a few too many donuts, despite telling myself that would not happen.

Anyway. Here’s to hoping that I–and no one in my family–will end up with COVID. That I’ll have a completely boring and uneventful labor, unlike last time, and have an opportunity to have my baby brought to me and put on my chest and left there to latch vs taken away in an instant because he’s not breathing. Here’s to hoping my mother, who lives in Florida, doesn’t catch a horrible case of COVID right when I’m due, as I seem to have this curse where family members die immediately after important events in my life (wedding — mom’s mother died three days later. Son’s birth — dad, a week later. Please, G_d, no death this time. Let’s make this one about life!)

Mental Illness, Parenting & Motherhood

We Got the Keys! And 10 Other Happy Things.

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It’s time for a positivity roundup.

  1. A Home of Our Own: Yesterday, we got the keys to our house. We met our realtor after a month-long seller rent back, and she handed they keys over, and we finally were able to say goodbye to her and stay in the ouse on our own for a while without masks. It didn’t really feel likes ours yet, but it was / is ours. And even though it’s not perfect, it IS a perfect *cough*1.6M*cough* starter home. I really like the neighborhood and standing outside and watching families in houses a few blocks down and thinking about how one day my kids will have friends in the neighborhood made my heart all warm and fuzzy.
  2. Family Connections: My father-in-law, who is in his late 70s, loves spending time with my son and is helping us out a lot with him now through a very busy work period for my husband and myself. While not having to spend on childcare is very much an added bonus, it also is so great that my kid gets to bond with one set of grandparents. I hope my next kid also gets to bond with grandpa as well–and next kid should because grandpa will be living with us!
  3. Presidential Hope: While this election is a train wreck fueled by a president who thinks democracy = not counting all legally cast votes, it looks like Biden might win by winning GA and PA, even if AZ falls back to Trump. The loss of the senate is a shame, as it will give Biden little power to do much of anything, but at the very least we’ll have an adult in office again–which is really fucking important through a global pandemic. I don’t care what side of the donkey-elephant fence you’re on, having a commander-in-chief who throws temper tantrums daily on twitter and who hob nobs with dictators and makes enemies out of our top global allies will be pretty great. Knock on wood, he takes GA and PA and after realizing you can’t actually throw out legally-cast votes, he concedes and GTFO of the WH.
  4. So Far: A Healthy Baby. My pregnancy has gone relatively smoothly (knock on wood.) Sure, it’s 2am and I’m always awake these days at 2am with some sort of allergic reaction to my apartment, wide awake. But I’m healthy, I’ve made it to nearly 29 weeks now, and even if I have my baby right now its chances of survival are above 90 percent.
  5. Stocking it Up. I hit the RSU lotto at work. After years of working for startups and getting “stock options” which ultimately resulted in no value (or loss of value since one has to actually buy them when leaving the company in order to keep them), I finally was able to get hired at a fast-growth public company at just the right time for my initial stock grant to grow about 10x. While I vested a bunch before it hit this milestone (and sold along the way), I still have made a good chunk of change. If I can bite my tongue and hold out for 13 more months, I should make another 350k after tax at a minimum, not counting any saving from income/bonus/etc. This is pretty amazing in terms of a bump in my journey to FatFIRE. And it could be closer to 600k, depending on how the markets do.
  6. Career Path Fun: While my new role at work (that I had no say in) is a little scary from the long-term perspective (it will be hard to get a similar job that pays anywhere near as well at another company, which means I will need to pick up some new skills over the next year then quickly move on to maintain any sort of reasonable salary growth (and non shrinkage), I have to say my current position is kind of, well, fun. It’s not easy by any means, and I have a lot to learn, but I get to focus on one area and might actually be able to do a good job for a while. It also feels like a position I can do when I return from maternity leave without constantly feeling like I’m about to fail and be fired, so that’s good.
  7. Husband is Still Husband: I married the sweetest guy in the world and he hasn’t changed. Sure, our marriage isn’t perfect, but at the end of the day I get butterflies around hubby because he is just such a good, kind, and gentle person. He reminds me of the type of person I aspire to be. I know it’s easy to take one’s spouse for granted, and I need to put more work into my marriage esp when I have the energy to. do that again, but I’m so lucky to have found a really really good partner.
  8. Not Dead from Corona Yet: As far as I know, I haven’t had COVID yet, and no one in my family or friends circle has had it. I’m terrified and sad about the loss of certain freedoms and socialization, but the COVID world has also done some wonderful things for me. I’ve realized just how much my social anxiety negatively impacted my life by seeing what life is like when I don’t have to interact with people outside of my immediate family. I do miss friends, but I don’t miss the horrible anxiety that goes into every moment I spend time with other people, especially at work.
  9. Net Worth Growth Overall: my after tax, don’t have to touch it until I retire family net worth is about 1M. Although that isn’t enough to retire on today or for a while, it is more than most people have at my age–or any age. At my current savings rates, the next few years should be very interesting in terms of setting my middle-aged years for a lower-stress life (no more constantly worrying about what happens if I lose my job!)
  10. This Blog, and My Readers: I still get giddy when people leave me comments on here–while there’s the occasional troll, for the most part people leave incredibly helpful and thoughtful comments which help me advance and grow in many areas. I’ve been writing on this blog now for (gasp) over 15 years and it has really helped guide me towards my north start of being financially responsible and at a very good financial place going into my (gasp) late 30s. Because of that, I don’t feel that scared about bringing a second kid into the world, and a third child (something I’ve always wanted despite coming from a family of 2 and being married to an only child) is definitely still a potential reality if my body will cooperate at 39. It also may not happen, and I’m also very happy with a family of 2 kids, and I just can’t wait for my toddler can meet his little sibling and to watch them grow together, especially after this past year of my son not being able to socialize with other kids at all. It is the absolute cutest thing when he points to my belly and goes “baby growing!” I’m not sure exactly what he thinks about it, but I tell him baby is going to come live with us soon, and he seems to get it at least somewhat. So many precious memories ahead if I can just get through childbirth safely without any additional trauma (atheist g-d willing.) I am feeling really good about this upcoming birth, despite the state of everything.

So there you go, 10 things I’m super grateful for and happy about. I rarely talk about them here because I come here to complain or talk about my frustrations and concerns around all things money related, but there is a lot to celebrate here heading into 2021. By the end of 2021, my net worth should have a significant increase, I should have a healthy baby that is approaching 1 years old (and preparing my body in the healthiest way possible to conceive my third and final kiddo), and maybe even feeling at home in the house we bought. Maybe life is going better than I ever imagined it could be and I just don’t know how to handle being so damn #blessed. Yes, I said it. I hash tagged it. But it’s true. I am grateful. I have some guilt for my privilege that led me here, but it certainly wasn’t easy. I have to fight the good fight every day to not let my mental health challenges get the best of me. And, despite a few breakdowns here and there, and a few manic periods I’d really like to forget, I seem to be doing it–surviving… and thriving even. I should try to celebrate all this good while it lasts. I know nothing good lasts forever. But right now, all signs point to–hey life isn’t that bad. It’s ok. It’s good. As good as life can be after losing a parent and never being able to go back to before all that. It’s just good for what it is. For where I am. And I hope next year continues on this trend line. Maybe soon I’ll remember what it feels like to be happy again.