Kate turns seventeen today.
It’s hard to believe that my little tax deduction is seventeen years old. It seems like only yesterday that she wanted Britney Spears’s first album and a Polly Pocket.
I have so many memories of Kate as a little kid doing all those funny things most parents write in their kids’ baby books. I didn’t keep a “baby book” of sorts, but I did journal a lot. And I have to admit I do have a few really boring video tapes of Kate doing exciting things . . . like staring at her fingers or finger-painting her highchair tray with something gross or sitting in her crib smiling (just smiling, and she was so cute doing it) . . . but I feel a little guilty that I didn’t record more of her “moments” for myself.
I’m sure there will be plenty of times in the future when Kate won’t be with me, either because she has a family of her own and she’s weighed down with responsibility, or because I’m past due in paying her therapy bill and she’s not speaking to me. It’s during those times when I’ll wish I had recorded more, journaled more, taken more pictures, and snipped more of her hair to keep in little plastic bags.
I think if there was ever a defining moment in my life, it was the moment I found out I was pregnant with Kate. I was told by doctors that I wouldn’t have children, so I was just sort of okay with the fact that I would never be a part of the “Baby Brigade” that camped outside my front door every morning as I went off to work. Those pathetic mommy-types were up at the crack of dawn, and they’d gather like hens in the courtyard, their brats in pink, blue, and yellow.
Frankly, I hated them. And every time they’d yell, “When are you going to join us?” I whispered under my breath, “When I feel like being a fat, loud, obnoxious freak like you.” And then I yelled back, “Ohhhh, don’t you just wish!!” They’d all cackle like a coven of witches and I’d sneer all the way to the car. Driving away I thought, “Wouldn’t it be fun if lightning struck them all and made them infertile? Then what would they do?”
So the day I thought I had the flu and the doctor told me I was pregnant was one of the strangest days of my life. Well, that “flu” lasted all nine months. I have never been so sick for so long in my entire life. At first I was afraid I would die. Then, by the third month, I was afraid I wouldn’t die.
Before I got pregnant with Kate, I weighed 113 pounds. I was proud of my 24" waist and my abs. I had hip bones and thin thighs. I had shoulder blades, a long and graceful neck, and small perky boobs. And I had arm pits. By the time I had Kate, I was in the blue corner, weighing in at 176 pounds, with a stomach that looked like Billy Bob’s award-winning beer gut, stretch marks, pendulous breasts, arm lumps instead of pits, and I had more chins than a Chinese phone book. Oh, misery.
After a C-section I pretty much wanted to take my own life. How could I go through life like this? I’ll spare the details of the worst cut of all, but suffice it to say that what happens to your breasts after childbirth was the most painful and awful experience ever. I wrapped ace bandages around my chest every day to try and relieve the aching pain. At one point I thought about calling my doctor and asking if he could just surgically remove them.
But by the time Kate was three months old, I had bounced back pretty well. I was fitting into my old clothes (although they were quite tight), and my incision had healed nicely. My stomach wasn’t flat anymore, and I had a little more flesh than when Kate and I started our journey together, but it didn’t matter as much. That strange thing called motherhood happened, and even though I still refused to raise the dead each morning by parking my big butt in the courtyard with all the other Baby Brigade mommies, I had nonetheless joined their ranks because I was, undeniably, a mom.
