The clock is the only sound I can hear

It’s my birthday this week, and this one weighs heavy on me.

About two months ago, as if on cue, my biological clock started to tick, then tock, then pound in my ears daily. I feel the pressure to have more children before I turn 40, and I know I only have five short years to do it.

It’s all I can think about lately — babies, babies and more babies.

It’s not that I don’t feel fulfilled. I see my son cuddling with his dad on the couch with a book and life feels more complete than ever. And it’s great to have a two-parents-to-one-child ratio, but my heart yearns for more.

I was an only child and one of the most important things I want for my family is that my children have siblings to share in life’s ups and downs. My mother was one of three children, and her sister became my guardian after my mother’s death.

Sometimes I think about what would have happened to me if my mother had been an only child. It more than likely would have meant that my grandmother would have taken me in when she was 67 years old.

I look to my aunt and uncle and admire them for the strong people they are. The family — my uncle’s wife and children included — still regularly has Sunday morning breakfast in Detroit. They do things all the time as a family — bowling, boating, vacations — they stay close.

That’s what I want for my children.

As I delicately negotiate the planning of our second child, my husband seems frustratingly aloof. We agree that we would like more than one, but things seem so great now, he is almost fearful that upsetting this balance would be disastrous.

“We got so lucky with him,” my husband says of our son. “There’s no way we will get as lucky with the next one.”

He’s right. Our baby started sleeping through the night at 2 months old. He rolled over at 5 months, sat up at 6 months, crawled at 7 months and walked by 10 months. He has the sunniest disposition as long as he is well fed and takes his regular naps. It’s ridiculous how easy this kid is, and there’s no way lightning will strike twice.

Alas, the clock will win out. It demands that I serve my biological purpose, and my heart want to fulfill a secret promise I made to myself a long time ago to have more than one child.

Now how do you suppose I’ll be able to sneak that third one in before the clock strikes midnight on my 40^th birthday?

— Sarah Leach is content editor at The Holland Sentinel. Contact her at (616) 546-4278.

Forever mine, whether he likes it or not

They say daughters are yours forever and sons eventually leave you.

I have been bracing myself for the day that my son goes off to college, starts dating someone seriously and gets married. Of course, I’m sure I’ll “lose him” long before then, as his teenage brain — hopped up on all those awesome boy hormones — will be nothing short of horrified at the thought of discussing such issues with his mother.

But I did not anticipate this rejection to happen when he was 13 months old. For the past few weeks, if his father is in the room, my baby has zero interest in me. Maybe I should rephrase that: He screams if I pick him up for a hug, try to comfort him when he’s crying or, worst of all, try to play with him.

I already can see the “whatever, Mom” look in his eyes as I try to show him that his dad isn’t the only Lego aficionado of the household. He hasn’t spoken his first words, and yet I already feel the unmistakable scarlet letter of uncoolness amongst his future tweener friends.

I’ve tried to blow it off as a phase he’s going through, as I watch him toddle after his dad in unapologetic worship. But the truth is it hurts. A lot. But it also is something I’m not likely to change. He will just have to learn to love me (did I seriously just write that?).

Then, a breakthrough came. My husband spent Saturday evening in Grand Rapids with his friends, doing manly things like wrestling bears or constructing barns. Anyway, it meant that the baby and I would have an evening together.

It was nothing short of magical. The entire evening, I made a point of not doing anything but focusing on him. No chores, no emails, no errands. I sat on the floor with him to be on his level. I chased him down the hallway into his room as he squealed with laughter. I made chicken nuggets, applesauce and milk for dinner — his favorite.

It made me realize that most of the time, my husband plays with the baby to keep him occupied as I’m trying to get some sort of work done, whether it be our laundry or dishes, or making sure a story is edited and uploaded to the website. I’m so busy getting pulled in six directions that my baby is attaching to his other parent, and I’m going to do something about it.

From now on, I will make 6-8 p.m. on weekdays Peanut Time, where nothing will keep me from being with my son. After all, I only have him for a few more years before his father will unfairly lure him away with the siren’s song of power tools.

— Sarah Leach is content editor at The Holland Sentinel. Contact her at (616) 546-4278 or sarah.leach@hollandsentinel.com.

A milestone for baby (but more so for mama)

I did it! I want to shout it from the rooftops! I actually successfully breastfed my baby for a year!

In my world of 50-hour work weeks, commuting twice a week for college classes and raising a baby, it is no small feat that I was able to do this.

Today marks the first week where I am no longer lugging around a pumping bag and mini-bottle cooler. I no longer have to set timers and lock myself in a room in the middle of the day to “take care of business.”

My son and I no longer have to be a public spectacle in a restaurant, be forced to sit in the car for a half hour or sit in an awkward position in a bathroom stall.

The freedom is amazing.

Even my doctor was in awe, as she had a child about two months before my son was born.
“I don’t know how you did it,” she said. “But I am impressed.”

I am almost finished weaning Benjamin to cow’s milk, and he seems to really enjoy it. Now I can make up several bottles in advance and take them on the road, which expands the activities spectrum we can do as a family.

I no longer have to pre-plan day trips and account for a lengthy checklist of gear. I no longer have to take a quick tour of a facility to identify a suitable place where I will steal away for a half hour. No longer shall I be stricken with the pain of skipping a feeding.

To be honest, I still am pumping just before bedtime and when I get up in the morning. I have an ample frozen milk supply and I am looking into donating the remainder of my reserves through the National Milk Bank (nationalmilkbank.org), which distributes food products made from the milk to help newborns who don’t have access to breast milk.

This organization’s mission statement is to “make quality human breast milk available to all premature and critically ill babies.”

I love the idea of helping other families receive quality nutrition and immunities that are so important for those tiny bodies. If it helps just one baby’s tummy get nice and full, it will bring great joy to my heart.

So, take heart, young working mothers everywhere. You CAN do this. It takes hard work and dedication, but if you think breastfeeding is the right thing for you and your baby, you can make it work and achieve these goals.

Baby Ben and I are living proof.

— Sarah Leach is content editor at The Holland Sentinel. Contact her at (616) 546-4278 or sarah.leach@hollandsentinel.com.

How do you sum up your role model's life?

Note: This is the print version for this week's column.

My grandmother, the wonderful Mary Jane Fauls, went to her heavenly home at the age of 86 last week. And I can't seem to believe she's gone.

As the family and I deal with her affairs, I find myself reflecting on what a remarkable woman she was. We are sorting through pictures and packing up her apartment, trying to write a eulogy that somehow encapsulates who she was and what she meant to us.

But how do you measure a life? I want to tell anyone who will listen about her feisty spirit, her poignant insights and her quick-witted one-liners. How do I explain what my grandmother meant to me in just a few minutes? Heck, I'm not sure a few hours would be adequate.

This was a woman who lived through the Great Depression as a child and saw how her parents struggled to put food on the table. She lived through World War II, the Kennedy assassination, the civil rights era and the end of a millennium. She married a good man and had three children, but experienced unspeakable tragedy — losing a daughter and her husband to cancer only a year and a half apart.

My grandmother provided a loving, yet disciplined upbringing for her kids and worked for several years as a secretary in downtown Detroit. She wanted to show her two daughters that they had career options when they grew up.

She was the rock for my mother when she braved the world alone as a single parent with a newborn baby, and was my daycare provider as my mother went back to work, struggling to reinvent herself. She provided end-of-life care for her mother, aunt, daughter and husband. Who among us has the emotional fortitude to do that?

As I entered my teens, my grandma never let me stray too far. She called me, wrote me letters, sent cards, and made plans. It was her personal mission to not fail my mother in making sure I was cared for in the most maternal of ways.

How do I explain what that meant to me?

When I got married, grandma started calling about once a month. When I became pregnant, she increased it to at least once a week. She was tickled that she lived to become a great-grandmother and wanted to know everything — how I was feeling, how the baby was sleeping, what types of food was he trying, was he walking or crawling. I am so grateful she was able to meet him, watch him sit up and crawl, then walk and finally, eat cake and ice cream at his first birthday party just four weeks ago.
I can still hear her voice in my head, because she always asked the same question: “So. … How's our boy?”

He's great, grandma. And I have you to thank for so much of that.

Thank you for never letting me forget that I always had people who loved me, even though I didn't always feel it. Thank you for never forgetting a birthday or holiday. Thank you for calling me just because you were thinking about me — that always touched me beyond words. Thank you for worrying about me. Thank you for never letting me get too full of myself. Thank you for every last bit of advice — whether I wanted it or not. Thank you for always thinking of everyone else before yourself. Thank you for never giving up on me, even when I was at my absolute worst. Thank you for always being the force of stability in my life. Thank you for showing me that I have a voice and that it should be heard. And thank you for all the hugs, kisses and sweet sentiments, for I will miss your warm touch the most.

As I sit here, at my computer, I realize I could write five columns on my grandmother and all the maternal lessons I could glean from her experience and wisdom. But in that reflection, I discovered an answer to my own question.

How do I measure her life? I don't have to. I have these wonderful thoughts and memories inside of me forever, and so these principles will be ingrained in my son. Now it will be my life's mission to tell him how awesome his grandmother and great-grandmother were. I will regale him with stories about their lives — their triumphs and tragedies — but most of all I will tell him that the enduring strength of my grandmother helped shape who I am.

The joy of life is the people within it. The cruelty of life is learning to live without them. Life's cruelty tore a hole in my heart 20 years ago, and it just got bigger. But I will go on. My grandmother played a key role in showing me how to cope. "We are survivors," she once told me. And she showed me how to do that through living example.

I will never fully heal from this loss. It will never be okay that I can't call her anymore for advice or ask her a question about my mother or just tell her a funny story about the baby. It will never be okay that she is gone.

But I will go on, for her. I will be the best mother I can be. I will treasure my children and the rest of my family, as she would want me to do. I will try to find a way to make her proud.

And I look forward to the day I will see her and my mother again.

— Sarah Leach is assistant managing editor at The Holland Sentinel. Contact her at (616) 546-4278 or sarah.leach@hollandsentinel.com.

Goodbye, Grandma. I will miss you always.

Today I lost one of the most influential people in my life. My grandmother, Mary Jane Fauls, succumbed to demands of a long and fruitful life after 86 — nearly 87 — full years.

I will miss our long talks, our pointed and lovingly direct banter, but most of all I will miss the woman who helped to raise me. She cared for me as a child, provided loving and firm support to my mother as she braved the world as a single mother, kept tabs on me as I drifted away from family ties as a rebellious teenager and made a point to call me several times a week once I became a mother.

She was a trusted confidant, a devoted mother and grandmother, and she will be absolutely missed every single day.

The joy of life is the people within it. The cruelty of life is losing them and learning to live without them. Life's cruelty tore a hole in my heart 20 years ago, and it just got bigger. It is painful, physically and emotionally to lose someone so close. But I will go on. Not in a dramatic sense — in a literal one. My grandmother played a key role in showing me how to survive my mother's death. "We are survivors," she said. And she showed me how to survive through a living example. And now I must do it again.

She adored her great-grandson, Benjamin, and was able to attend his first birthday party just three weeks ago. "I never thought I'd live to see it," she said, when I announced my pregnancy in April 2011. And now I am so grateful she was able to meet him, watch him sit up and crawl, then walk and finally, eat cake and ice cream for the first time. To see a child's face when you show him his first birthday candle — I am honored she was there to witness it.

I will never fully heal from this loss. It will never be okay that I can't call her anymore for advice or ask her a question about my mother or just tell her a funny story about the baby. It will never be okay that she is gone.

But I will go on, for her. I will be the best mother I can be. I will treasure my children and the rest of my family, as she would want me to do. I will try to find a way to make her proud.

And I look forward to the day I will see her and my mother again.

Husbands have a way of pitching te-roo-fic ideas

"Our next dog needs to be an Irish Wolf Hound or a kangaroo."

My husband was watching television and apparently thought it wise to brainstorm with the Ghost of Pets in the Future.

I laughed initially. After all, the Irish Wolf Hound is the largest of the domesticated canines, and is practically a small horse. And kangaroos are, well, marsupials. … And they live in Australia.

He was perfectly serious.

My husband has a lot of ideas: “Let’s start a fish tank.” “Let’s get an Irish Wolf Hound.” “Let’s get a snake.”

After a traumatic summer of losing two pets in a month, I’m not exactly itching to subscribe to the “We Bought a Zoo” mentality. We now are down to one dog and two cats — and even that’s difficult to manage with a precocious 1-year-old.

"What about a Red Kangaroo?” my husband continued. “Oh wait, they can kill you. ... Maybe we can get a wallaby. They're easier to handle.”

As he Googled the care and feeding of mammals Down Under, I tried to come up with a tact that could defuse this line of thinking.

“I’m pretty sure you can’t just drive to Petsmart and get a kangaroo or wallaby,” I said. “I think there are laws against that sort of thing here in the States.”

“I’m sure we could find someone who breeds them here,” he replied.

I was starting to feel the hives creeping up my neck as I realized he thought we were in actual negotiations. I suddenly had visions of a roo boxing my poor toddler.

“That would be pretty dangerous,” I said. “I don’t think kangaroos are considered family-friendly for children and I wouldn’t even begin to know what they eat and how the winter would affect them.”

He seemed satisfied with this answer. I was quite proud of myself for dodging another crazy idea would have ended disastrously. I relished in the feeling that our communication skills are improving and our relationship strengthening as we work together to raise our young son.

And then, a voice from the living room: “I wonder if you can get a kangaroo declawed.”

— Sarah Leach is assistant managing editor at The Holland Sentinel. Contact her at (616) 546-4278 or sarah.leach@hollandsentinel.com.

Cold and flu season hits most vulnerable the hardest

Oh, peace and quiet, you are fleeting things.

The euphoria of my baby’s first birthday party last weekend was short-lived. The Monday after the party, I found my son with a smattering of green crust glued to his nose.

Off to the doctor he went, where he was diagnosed with his fourth ear infection in five months. He was prescribed with an antibiotic and was resting comfortably for the remainder of the day in grandpa’s care.

But that solace also would be temporary. On Thursday, Peanut had his one-year checkup and, to my chagrin, I quickly learned that he needed to get five pokes at this visit — two vaccinations in each thigh and a quick poke in a big toe for a lead blood test.

Needless to say, he was less than thrilled upon leaving the doctor’s office and that night and the following day were agonizing for me as he struggled to walk from the pain in his legs.
But the worst was yet to come.

On Saturday, Peanut was whiny and temperamental. He slept more than two hours for his nap, where normally he would sleep 45 minutes. His breathing became labored and shallow and when I started to detect a wheezing noise, my mommy senses were tingling. After a call to the after-hours nurse hotline, we were directed to the emergency room.

There, we learned that our baby tested positive for RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, the most common germ that causes lung and airway infections in infants and young children. This “super cold” is very common in daycare centers and, although it usually presents in mild cold-like symptoms, it can be more serious in vulnerable population like infants and toddlers.

I thought of my husband and I as being over-precautious, but I soon realized the seriousness of this virus in a person so young: the doctor took a chest X-ray to check for pneumonia and took nasal swabs to test for RSV and pneumonia. Once the diagnosis was confirmed, he had to undergo three seven-minute breathing treatments and take an oral steroid before the doctor felt comfortable enough with his breathing that we could take him home.

Now he has an inhaler administered up to every four hours and still is on an antibiotic for the existing ear infection. Couple that with the bruises on his legs from his injections and I have a poor, little one who has been through the wringer this week.

I wish I could take the pain away for him and fight this virus, which could linger up to six weeks in his tiny body. But the mother’s curse is that she can’t take these hurts away for her child. It is a lesson I will have to learn over and over — and one I don’t think I’ll ever be able to accept.

— Sarah Leach is assistant managing editor at The Holland Sentinel. Contact her at (616) 638-5962 or sarah.leach@hollandsentinel.com.