I’m your Aunt…Mommy

D and I both had nieces and nephews long before we had our own baby. In fact, my oldest niece was 21 and D’s oldest niece was 17 the day we became parents.

I was so used to being Aunt S that I found myself saying to my baby, usually in the middle of the night when he woke up screaming, “There, there, there, it’s ok, Aunt S….Mommy, Mommy is here.” Now that he’s a year old, I look back on those hormone-drenched early days and nights, and still can’t believe we all made it through in one piece.

Part of the adjustment for me was getting used to the isolation of being a new parent. D was commuting long distances last summer so that the baby and I could stay in northeastern Pennsylvania at my mother’s house. He had to get up each morning at 5 a.m. to get on the road in time to miss traffic, and then he wouldn’t usually get home much before 8 p.m. By 10, he was shattered and needed to go to sleep. I have never been able to sleep before 1 a.m., and since the baby’s sleep schedule was still very unpredictable, I would stay awake to breastfeed him sometime after midnight. This left me with a few hours every night where I’d be laying in bed in the dark, wide awake and alone with my thoughts. Thus, a blog was born.

Blogging gave me a way to pass this time and feel productive, to feel “normal” again and not just feel like a sleep-deprived portable dairy bar/diaper changer/baby rocker/lullaby singer.

Why grayhairedmom.com? I could have gone so many ways with the website name: fatassedmom, wrinklysaggyoldmom, crazyoldladymom. There were just so many appropriate choices. Grayhairedmom seemed to sum it all for me so perfectly. I thought it conveyed my fears about being a new mom at 51 along with my total joy about being a new mom, period. After I wrote for a month or two, I called my dear friend, Christine Hepner, and asked her if she could come up with some logo ideas. I love what she came up with. She is so talented!

As the summer came to an end last year, I was facing going back to NYC and back to work. I was worried about D taking over the stay-at-home parent’s duties, and he readily admits that he was nervous, too. Then there was the matter of our apartment and how we were going to cope. We live in a 500 square foot, one bedroom, 4th floor walk-up along with our two cats. I remember watching a show on one of the learning channels once about the preparations for the first mission to Mars. One of the biggest challenges is thought to be the lack of personal space for the crew, because six or more astronauts will have to share a tiny space for the 18-month, one way trip. I think this is a no-brainer. Just get a crew of New York City apartment dwellers. The space ship will seem spacious to them.

But we had big decisions to make. Who was going to be the long-term stay-at-home parent, and where would we live? Or would we both work outside the home and hire a nanny or use daycare? More next time.

Next time: Leaving NYC?

Thanks for following and reading! I’d love to hear your story of IVF. Please leave your comments below.

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