In Durham, where I live, breweries and bottle shops are very dog and family friendly. Most of the breweries have areas separate from the bar where parents can gather with their friends and kids to have a beer and play a few board games. Some of them even have nice outdoor spaces where kids can run around while parents hang out with their pals. I’m thankful for this because it allows Nick and me to go out for a drink last-minute without having to find a babysitter. And after a ridiculously long week, that’s exactly what we did. We headed to a small bottle shop near our house with Sebastian in tow. And this is the outfit I wore!

Regardless of how family friendly it was, I still felt a little like this:

via GIPHY

We weren’t out for very long, maybe an hour at most. I had one glass of wine, and Sebastian slept most of the time so I don’t feel bad about it. But I did want to feel like I was actually going out instead of having a drink at home in my pajamas so I grabbed this new pair of jeans I got from a recent Stitch Fix. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about the frayed hemline of these jeans but I slowly warmed up to them. While these may not be the first pair of jeans I reach for, I definitely wear them a bunch. And I will probably wear them even more now that the weather is starting to cool down ever so slightly.

A few weeks after Nick, Sebastian, and I went to the bottle shop together, we met up at the bottle shop with our neighbors who have a kid who is slightly older than Sebastian. It was a fun time all around. I’m sure the bottle shop won’t be the last crazy place we take our baby.

True story:

via GIPHY

Where’s the craziest place you’ve taken your baby?

Shirt: via Le Tote | Jeans: via Stitch Fix | Shoes: Banana Republic | Necklace: Old Navy | Watch: Target | Clutch: Nordstrom

Life has been pretty busy lately, hence my sporadic posting. I know that’s to be expected when you’re adjusting to life with an infant, but on top of that, coordinating work and daycare schedules has been more challenging that I thought. We moved Sebastian to a daycare closer to our house because it makes our commute much easier, but I’m still getting used to the new routine. Also, I’m missing our old daycare because they were taking such good care of him. His previous teacher helped him finger paint, made little art projects with his footprints, and she gave him plenty of one-on-one time. The new daycare is fine; they take good care of him, too, but I don’t get the sense that the new teachers are as engaged as the previous teachers. Sure, they have a certain curriculum and they teach him things, but it doesn’t feel as personal as the other location. Maybe I just need some more time to get to know them better.

Blurry Sebastian photo

Anyway, when I got dressed, I thought to myself, “Here’s another ‘mom’ outfit,” but, just like I mentioned in my recent Mom post, I would have worn this type of outfit before becoming a mom. Also, when you’re a mom, every outfit you wear is a mom outfit! But this one is my new favorite because it’s comfortable and stylish. And I love this shirt. It has become my go-to, and I’d wear it every day if I could. It’s from the “A New Day” collection at Target. The boat neck design makes the shirt feel kind of preppy, and I appreciate that they added an extra piece of fabric in the shoulder to hide your bra straps. I hate it when my bra straps are showing!

I’ve worn this outfit to work, doctors appointments, running errands, hanging out around the house, dinner, etc. etc. You name it. It’s the best. It’s really good for transitioning into Fall, too!

Sebastian doesn’t love taking pictures today as much as mommy.

What is your go-to “mom” outfit?

Shirt: A New Day via Target | Jeans: Banana Republic | Necklaces: Old Navy | Watch: Old Navy

Skip. Like what happens when you hear a loud clap of thunder that makes you jump up out of your chair, but instead I’m just sitting at my desk in my quiet office, staring at the computer screen.

Flutter. Like the butterflies you get in your stomach when you’re nervous, but instead it happens in my chest while I’m sitting quietly on the couch, watching the evening news.

Race. Like when you’re watching your favorite sports team hit the winning shot right at the buzzer, but instead I’m sitting in a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam.

These are the peculiar sensations I’ve been feeling in my chest lately. For the average person, they’re no big deal. For the anxious person, they’re pretty common. For someone who is about 3 months post-heart attack like me, they’re cause for concern. My primary care physician thought that these sensations were simply due to stress. She made me go to the cardiologist, who agreed that it was probably just stress because everything else looked fine, but hooked me up to a holter monitor just to be sure.

Holter monitor, hour 1

A holter monitor is a small, portable monitor that measures your heart’s rhythm. I wore this monitor for 48 hours last week. Every time I felt a skip, a flutter, or a racing sensation, I pressed a button on the side to record the sensation in the results and then I described in a little journal exactly what I felt and what I was doing when I felt it. At the end of the two days, someone read the monitor and compared it to the notes in my journal to figure out what was causing my heart to act up like this.

Holter monitor, 24 hours

My two biggest fears regarding the results were on opposite ends of the spectrum. On one hand, I was afraid that the results would come back totally normal and would not show anything wrong. You’d think this is the best case scenario, but for me and my anxious mind, it would mean that I’m just crazy and/or hallucinating these sensations when I absolutely KNEW I wasn’t. On the other hand, I was afraid that the results would come back showing something catastrophic, like my heart was giving out and I only had a few more days to live, all the while wondering how I even made it this long.

Holter monitor, hidden under my shirt and in my jeans pockets

I got the results back this week and, luckily, they were right where I’d want them to be, comforting every so slightly my chaotic mind. They found that my heart rhythm is normal and that the ‘fluttering’ sensations correlated with occasional premature heart beats. These are benign but can feel strange or abnormal. Ultimately, there is no clinical concern but I should try to control my stress levels, as stress exacerbates the prematurely timed beats.

So, I’m not going to die of heart failure any time soon, which is good news. I do feel the occasional skip and flutter but my mind doesn’t automatically assume the worst. I’m working on addressing the stress in my life, which is extremely difficult given that I’m a new mom with a hectic work schedule. I’m slowly getting to a point where, when I feel my heart make its weird beats, it feels a little more like this:

Skip. Like when I see Nick and Sebastian after a long day and it makes my heart skip a beat.

Flutter. Like when my closed eyelashes lightly brush against Nick’s closed eyelashes during a long kiss. 

Race. Like when Sebastian is about to roll over/crawl for the first time and I’m so nervous for him but I know he’s strong and can do it. 

This weekend, Nick and I went on a quick picnic date by the lake. It was doctor’s orders.

For the past few months, I’ve been experiencing a lot of health-related anxiety as a result of my surprise postpartum heart attack. I’ve been seeing a really great therapist for a little more than a month now, and I’m happy to report that my anxiety has subsided pretty significantly thanks to the grounding techniques she taught me. In our last session, she asked how my relationship with Nick was going. After a moment of silence, I said, “Things are good, but they could be better.” And it was true because it has been a while since Nick and I have really connected.

While I was busy focusing on keeping my anxiety-fueled freak outs at bay, Nick was focusing on keeping up with the day-to-day. We were constantly cleaning baby bottles, washing spit up off our clothes, and passing the baby back and forth; with that and work, we didn’t really have time for much else. When this became our norm, we stopped talking to each other about our life, our dreams and plans… hell, we barely even talked to each other about how our days were going. It was like we were on autopilot just trying to get through the days, and it was starting to feel like we were roommates working toward the same goal – to care for Sebastian and the house – instead of a husband and wife team running our lives together. I didn’t realize how easy it was to lose sight of important things like love and marriage when you’re spending all your time caring for a kid. Of course I’ve heard of it happening, but to other people. Right? I would never let that happen to me and my marriage. Right?

So my therapist suggested that we find a sitter for the baby and spend some quality time together, just the two of us, to reconnect a bit. And that’s what we did. We left the Sebmeister with Nana and PopPop and set out for a little picnic.

We settled down in a spot by the lake. We sat on our blanket and ate our little snacks and relaxed and talked. We chatted about the upgrades we want to do to the house, the vegetables I want to learn to pickle, and we made a little plan to get started, something we regularly did before Sebastian came along. We watched the boats drive by, pulling teenage boys on water skis. We discussed how cool it would be to live on a lake. Neither of us really care to have a boat but a jet ski would be awesome! As we watched three kids whiz past us on a jet ski, Nick said, “You probably wouldn’t let me go fast, would you? You’d be afraid of falling off.” I pointed out that falling off of a jet ski wouldn’t be too bad because I would land in the water.

Ultimately, we agreed that lakes are better than the ocean.

We had just gotten really comfortable on our blanket when big, fat rain drops started falling. They fell slowly, just enough to be slightly annoying. “This is like a metaphor for our lives,” I said. “We try to do something nice and simple for ourselves and then we get rained on.” Nick looked at me and replied, “Yeah, but what really matters is how you react to it. It’s just a few little drops, not a downpour. We’ll get through it.”

This is why Nick is my rock. He keeps me grounded and he helps me see that things aren’t always as bad as my mind makes them out to be. He calms the storm that the anxiety creates in my mind, and he loves me even when I’m at my worst.

Unfortunately our picnic was cut short by the rain as the slow, fat rain drops soon turned into a warm summer storm and we had to retreat to a covered shelter until it passed. But it served its purpose. We renewed our connection and promised that we would get better about regularly making time for each other in the future. We aren’t going to be undone by a few little rain drops. We always get through it.

The hardest thing for me about being a working mother is dropping Sebastian off at daycare every morning. If I had my way about it, I would cuddle him all day long until he was old enough to leave for college. But I can’t, so daycare it is. The next hardest thing is pumping at work. It isn’t really that difficult, but it is a pain in the rear end to have to stop what I’m doing every 2 to 3 hours to hook the ladies up to a machine to extract my baby’s liquid gold.

Surprisingly, my office does not have a specific lactation room where I can pump undisturbed. I say it’s surprising because I work for a women’s health organization that wants women to have all the choices. I supposed it’s hard to walk the walk sometimes, but I digress. For a while I was pumping three times a day in a vacant office but then they hired someone to fill it and I either had to get creative or pump in my team’s bathroom. So here’s what I do: I pump at my desk in my cubicle.

Cramped quarters, but it gets the job done

To do this, I purchased a tension rod and curtain panel to place in the doorway of my cubicle so I can have some privacy. This works for me because we have tall cube walls, and our office space used to be an apartment building. My team is located in an area that used to be a small apartment and there are only  5 people on my team who use the space, so I actually have a lot of privacy already. Add in the fact that we have very little foot traffic on our floor and I was able to create a little space for pumping.

Curtain door to provide some privacy

I placed a clip on either side of the doorway to secure the curtain in place so there aren’t any gaps between wall and curtain. I didn’t want to take any chances that the curtain would blow open or something like that when someone does walk by. It’s still a pain to have to have to stop what I’m doing to get set up, but I don’t have to leave my desk so my flow doesn’t get too interrupted.

Clipped on the sides to prevent gaps

I’m not going to lie, I would love to leave my curtain-door up all day long so that no one bothered me, but I can’t. So the rest of the time, I’ve clipped it to the side so it isn’t in the way, and to let my coworkers know it’s alright to approach me. Lately I’ve tried to fold it a little neater when I clip so it doesn’t look like a hot mess (like in the photo below) but as long as it’s out of the way, I don’t usually worry about it.

Clipped out of the way the rest of the time

Even thought we have tall cubicle walls, I’ve warned my coworker who sits in the cube right beside me to be careful when he stands up because he’s really tall and can probably see over the wall. That’s more for his comfort than for mine; it’s pretty amazing how little modesty one has when one becomes used to whipping out a breast to feed a baby. The only other con is that if my boss or other coworker isn’t paying attention, they’ll run right into the tension rod when they walk into my cube. But as long as they’re alert, it isn’t usually a problem.

So, that’s how I turned lemons into lemonade. I figure I only have to keep doing this for the next 9+ months until Sebastian starts eating PB&J sandwiches, right? 🙂

Have you ever had to get creative/resourceful for work?