mean mama

The last time I was in a bath house was in Hungary during my college years. Women beat our backs with branches.

This one was in Manhattan, and though there were no beatings, it was verrrrrry Russian nonetheless. Lots of big hairy men speaking Russian, and lots of beautiful young women with showy cleavage also speaking Russian. The place was a little broken down, but all in all it was a great place for a bachelorette party.

A college friend of mine is getting married soon, so a lot of the ladies at the party were old college friends. Out of 10, I was one of only two women who had any kids, and about half were single. It was nice to be among women and not just mothers. Admittedly, I was asked and talked a lot about my crazy experiences so far as a mother, but my experiences have been kind of extreme and therefore interesting to others. For me, it was refreshing to hear about these women’s careers, relationships, talk politics and religion, and just be. We swam, jacuzzied, saunaed, steamed, were insulted by a really mean waitress (“no ice for you!”), were offered a menu of smoked fish at the juice bar (where vodka is not on the menu but seems to be readily available in big bottles nonetheless), and chatted.

The bride-to-be asked advice from those of us who were married. The first thing that came to my mind was, “Pick the right person,” which is not very useful advice. But I also noted that things will really suck sometimes, and it will probably cycle out and be okay; also, try to maintain as much balance as you can in your individual life -sometimes that will be almost impossible, but hold onto the desire to do things that interest you/meet your own needs and you’ll be okay. Some other people said similar things to the “it will suck sometimes” statement. Others said talking a lot is important, while still others said that sex is the key. It’s all true, I think.

The night ended with me realizing that I had left my bag of underwear on the kitchen table at home. You know things are a little acey deucey in your life when your main concern is that the bag may have fallen out of your backpack onto the street, causing you to lose your best nursing bra, as opposed to being upset that you’ll have to wear your wet bathing suit under your clothes all the way home. But they had hair dryers so I just dried the butt part so that water would not soak through my skirt. It was fine. All my friends were so concerned, and me? Not. I guess once you’ve been through the shit I have in the past couple of years, these snafus are nothing more than laughable. Truly.

The thing that makes the chaos that is my three-child family sort of doable is that MBB does not mind being ignored… as long as his brothers are around, that is.

Even before MBB was born, he would kick when I sat by the boys as they chattered.  And shortly after he came home, he would clearly focus on them as they ran back and forth past him.  Sometimes I put him in their room with them if they are doing something calm, like blocks or trains (they are always under my watch, of course).  He would normally begin to cry after about 10 minutes in his chair, but he stays in much longer if he has them to observe. In fact, I’ve begun to put him in his Bum.bo when they are around, because he doesn’t really like being in it (but needs to because he needs more neck strength), and he tolerates it much better when hanging out with his brothers.

I have to admit that before MBB was born I was not focused on or particularly excited about the new sibling relationship(s) that his birth would create.  Having twins, you have to negotiate and get to appreciate such a relationship from the very beginning. And now that he is here, the impact is not as dramatic as I’d imagine it would be in a 1 kid + 1 newborn situation.  The unexpected perk has been that the baby has built-in entertainment, and that entertainment is not me. The fact that he actually enjoys sitting there like a lump while I insanely chase the boys around in the morning getting them ready for school serves both parties very nicely.  Also it kind of makes up for the miserable moments, when MBB is crying and the boys are whining and I… if you’re lucky, I’m not yelling.

It is sweet that he already adores his big brothers. -Not that they pay him much attention.  I don’t push it, though, because they have already been asked to share, get along, and be aware of each other for all of their freaking lives.  I would rather see their interest unfold naturally as MBB grows and develops.

Until then, MBB is a tag-along little brother and likes it just fine.

Taken about 2 months ago.

I am very tired of hearing about “teacher accountability” in this election.

If you are a teacher, you are probably nodding your head. If you are not a teacher, you are probably saying, “What’s wrong with teacher accountability?”

Well let me ask you this. If you are a doctor, should you be held personally responsible for every single one of your patients’ outcomes? If you are a lawyer, should you be fired if you don’t win every case?  If you are a social worker, should you feel personally responsible for the psychological state of each of your clients?  Most would say no, because each case/relationship depends on many things: family support, living environment, the patient/client’s abilities and dispositions, cultural backgrounds and financial situations, and countless other influences.

Like in any other profession, if you are clearly bad at your job you should be fired. But the main determination of whether a teacher is successful these days seems to be based on test scores of students. That is an absurd measure. My father-in-law once said to me, “Well, how else can you hold teachers accountable?” Well, you should probably determine whether their students are making any real progress, in the context of their personal situations. If a third grader comes into the classroom in September not knowing how to read, is it not absurd to expect that he will score well on a standardized test at the end of the year? And should the teacher not have the opportunity to work with that student and help him begin to read rather than being forced to prepare the entire class for test-taking for the entire year? Look, I’m not completely against holding kids back if they are not performing at grade level, but they will probably never perform at grade level if teachers can’t teach them to.

I believe to really teach struggling kids (and probably the majority of NYC students could be considered as “struggling”), you would need small classes. How small? I’m talking 12 kids per one head teacher and one assistant teacher. Start first with the “failing schools” and make the classes small (the schools that get 200K/year with which to do what they want are just fine for now). Teachers will know their students well, students will know their teachers well. Accountability from both parties will be naturally important, because what goes on within a small classroom is pretty transparent. Take away the tests, or at least have less frequent tests, giving teachers more time/energy to teach to individuals’ needs. Then and only then will we begin to see more clearly who the more and less successful teachers are. And the teachers who really don’t like teaching would be more likely to opt out of such a system, because they would have to work harder if they really had to figure out what each of their students needed.

There may be dinosaurs out there in the public system, and there may be some truly caustic teachers, but most are simply jaded and stressed out about the testing. Most are decent people who, given the chance to actually be successful, would probably work a little harder. As the saying goes, “Let teachers teach.”

Both candidates have their solutions: Obama has preschool programs, college tax breaks, less testing, support for failing schools, and incentives for teachers. McCain has school choice, doing something about our kids’ sucky test scores (more tests, anyone?), and other conservative hogwash. But neither has suggested reducing class size.  It may be an unrealistic solution, but we seem to throw money at plenty of “realistic” solutions that do not work (I wonder how much all that testing and test-scoring costs…). Keep your increased teacher compensation for now and make teaching something that people can be successful at and therefore get excited about. Then more people will want ot be teachers. Make public eductation something that works, something that tax payers can once again believe in. Then more people will participate in their children’s educational processes.  Make it so that successful schools get an incentive for helping failing schools, rather than successful schools getting hundreds of thousands of extra dollars while failing schools are penalized for bad test scores. I have worked at an officially failing school, and I promise you that asking the teachers to just. work. harder. is not going to increase test scores. (By the way, the kids scoring well at the “successful schools” often have supportive families, home environments that are conducive to study, and – let’s all say it together – TUTORS!  So rewarding schools for test scores is somewhat artificial.)

Much of what I am saying is based on a special education model. Special ed classes are hardly ever large. There is a lot of communication between schools and families, even in the lowliest of schools. Perhaps this is because special ed students have individual education plans that, by law, must be followed. In the failing school where I taught, many of the kids displayed such incredible problems that, though they were cognitively and physically fine, I would almost consider a need for a special kind of education. I have dealt with special ed kids who probably needed services less than some of these kids needed help. Not that we should compare, but it is kind of remarkable. I do see the field of special education unfolding in more innovative and thoughtful ways that general ed, and I daresay that special ed should be our guide in dealing with the country’s educational crisis.

I can’t seem to wrap this up in any eloquent way, but those are my ideas. Obie, give me a call and we’ll have lunch.

warning: shiny happy post ahead

I would not have predicted that I’d define having twins and a newborn as “tranquility,” back when I was trying to determine whether to have a third child, and even when I was pregnant with MBB. But there is a shift happening here that feels right. The boys are in school, we found a great babysitter, and I will start back at my job, which is more than just a job to me, in a few weeks. Sure I am panicked at times when I look at my adorable, smiling baby: how can I leave him? He was so hard-won, and he is a miracle for sure. But those panicky times are not frequent enough for me to assume they are speaking to me any louder than the excitement that leads me each day to work on newer, better ways to teach my students, to lead them to do things they didn’t know they could do.

There is true bliss in having this third baby here with us. He makes everything different, new, amazing and yet just calmly goes with the flow much of the time in true third child form. He is a chubby ball of smile that seems to just roll around our apartment amidst the constant chaos. What was I ever thinking, being scared to have another baby? This new family is just right. It is hard sometimes for sure, but not too much harder than it was having twins in the first place. The biggest issue is that sometimes the boys want a little more attention than they are getting.  But mostly, it’s just… just bliss.

P and I went on a very cool date the other night. The coolest thing about it was that we felt like not a day had passed since before we had kids and used to just hang out together whenever and wherever we wanted. We didn’t really worry about or even think much of the kids – not that it would have been wrong if we did – but it just didn’t happen that way. I think our relationship is doing well. It does get neglected frequently, but we seem to be able to pick it back up on a regular basis and both see each other as husband and wife and in love and lust rather than just co-parents and best friends.

I have also chilled out about renting a smallish apartment (as opposed to owning) and not having a lot of things at this point in my life. I think this really surfaced when we had to do nanny interviews, and I was nervous about whether anyone would want to work in this environment. I saw that it was okay and that I should be happy to have a warm, cozy place to live in a neighborhood I like instead of mourning what I don’t have.  And I also see that I am living per my values, and that’s not only okay but is great. For example, I am making good decisions for all three of my kids right now in terms of their education and childcare. I can afford to buy local and sometimes organic food. I can afford to hire a babysitter and go on a date once in a while, which is definitely an investment in our relationship day-to-day and long-term. Maybe we can’t save money for a couple of years, but we will pick that back up when we can and be okay.

I have to say that putting pregnancy and childbearing behind me is a huge relief too. I’m sure this would be harder for me to accept if I didn’t have such problematic pregnancies. I could never, in good conscience, be pregnant again however, because pPROM recurs. Next time I might not be so lucky. I have been considering some things that happened in my first pregnancy with J and M, and looking back I think it’s possible that I may have experienced a slow leak without knowing it, meaning that my latest pregnancy may have already been a recurrence of pPROM. I’m not ready to write about that, but it’s a strange and creepy possibility.

Despite being done, I have been having dreams lately of a girl.  There are many interpretations of this. Women dream of baby girls all the time, and many times I think they are dreaming of some part of themselves. I have been dreaming of a baby girl for years and years; now she’s a 4-year-old, and I’m just not sure what it means. The other day, I said to P, “If we are out of NYC someday and living in a bigger space and doing well, maybe we’ll adopt a girl- not a baby but a child.”  He said with a strange confidence, “Yes.”  It was just one of those weird moments. But the thing that makes it not so crazy and okay, to think about the future and to dream, is that we are okay with where we’re at right now. So regardless of what we do or don’t do in our future, we are rid of the aches of when will it happen and what if it doesn’t work. I think that’s tranquility.

1. Palin. Who cares. The thing that most bothers me about her candidacy is how much we are all talking about her. Where can you go that someone is not talking about Palin?  And why? Because she’s a woman? If she were some krizazy Right-wing man, I think most of us Liberals would just be like, “Par for the course – another crazy, scary, extreme conservative. Fuckin’ A, man.” Such a man would not be an overnight celebrity. But no, she’s a woman who is crazy, scary, and extreme, and proud of it!  As such, she has become a celebrity, both to the Right and to the Left: Conservatives love her and we Liberals love to hate her, feeding her fire daily. I don’t see why we waste our time with this nonsense. So what if she’s a woman; the bottom line is that she is a typical, garden-variety unqualified jerkface. (In a lady suit.)

2. Obama. A lot of people have been saying, “What the f, man?” They have been expecting him to put on the gloves and get in the ring in the name of winning this election. We all know he has great ideas and is a fine, upstanding citizen and is well-educated and well-spoken and we even would say that he is the first real hope for Something Better that we’ve had in a long time. But Christ on a cracker, the man has never come off as tough or abrasive, not compared to his Conservative counterparts, so why is his behavior a surprise? Hell, I clearly saw his wimpitude in his bumbling demeanor as early as his first debates with Clinton. All of his “ums” and “ers” and looking down every 3 seconds… they do not come across as tough, or even direct. He has a tendency to explain things by talking around them, creating a spiral of logic and then zeroing in on the point. He is more of a fencer, I would say, than a boxer.

So, people are now upset with him and want him to change. I don’t know if we have a right to be upset with him, given the fact that he never promised machismo in the first place, but wanting him to change is certainly understandable. I mean, we just want to get a Liberal into office already. And I don’t know about you, but I’m all for compromising our approach. That brings me to #3.

3. The Art of the Sound Byte. I work with Liberals, I am friends with Liberals, I am married to a Liberal, hell I went to a college chock-full of peace-lovin’, over-the-top-Liberals (um, our football mascot was the Lit.tle Qua.ker. no joke.). But I grew up in a community of middle class and lower-middle class Irish/Italian Catholics. Everyone there used to vote Democrat, and now they are voting Republican. These people are by no means dumb, but they do want to grasp what each candidate stands for without having to get on the candidates’ web sites and read through each explanation of policy to know what’s up. Judge that however you want, but for most of us uber-Liberals the choice is quite obvious. The choice for these people, however, is less so. Many of them are anti-choice and pro-gun, yet are for more government services and may be anti-war. And we can’t just say, “Screw you!” to these people, because we need their votes, damnit.

“So what do you suggest, Mean Mama,” asks Obama. And Mean Mama says, “Geez, Obie,” cuz that’s what I call him, see. I say, “Geez, Obie, it’s a sound byte world. What is there to know? Give them short, powerful answers. Don’t pander to both sides of an issue. Say what you will do and leave it at that, because most working people will respect you for being direct rather than what they see as talking around an issue -this makes you seem less trustworthy. Your point must be made within 5 seconds of answering a question, and then you support the answer, not the other way around. AND, keep their gaze, Obie. You look down too much when you are thinking. People don’t trust that. Practice by looking in the mirror at home – have Michelle ask you a question and then keep your own gaze while answering it, without fleeting. Remember, whenever you are at an interview or a debate, Americans are trying to imagine you as their Commander-in-Chief, and if you are breaking eye contact and saying, ‘um,’ ‘er,’ ‘look, what I’m saying here is,’ they will fear you will come off as a wimp against, say, Kim Jon.g-il in a Presidential meeting. Further, you need to speak with a bolder tone at all times. You seem to be a person who stays inside of himself, projects himself only within a small space as if all of his gestures and statements are not intended to reach beyond a 6 ft surrounding bubble. In other words, you need to man up. Really you do.”

Please don’t be annoyed at me, dear readers. Lots of liberals talk about the war on intellectualism and running dignified campaigns. We like to say that Americans are dumb, as if we aren’t Americans, and we like to say that people in this country have a 5-second attention span. Regardless of whether those things are true and what they mean, we need to win this election.  We need to do what we need to do to win this election right now. And Obama owes it to us, because we voted for him, to do what is needed even if it is uncomfortable for him to do so.  Hear that, Obie?

Almost everything.

I am going crazy over here, getting the boys ready for school and trying to find a nanny for the baby. (And excuse me, but a nanny? How is it that I am trying to hire a nanny? I am so not fancy enough for this.)

Monday will be the boys’ first day in their school. J will be in his special ed class, and M will be 2 doors down the hall in his inclusion class (he is general ed).  This is the first time they will be separated all day, every day (it’s a 6-hour/day program). Up to now, I’ve been cool as a cucumber about it, but I’m beginning to wonder how they’ll do. They are night and day opposites and not exactly the best of friends, but at the same time they like to be within proximity of each other when they aren’t home. I am nervous. Nervous from a parent’s point of view. Putting on my teacher hat, I think they will be just fine, eventually. The mommy hat swallows up the teacher hat, though.

It’s also hard because they are just… well, growing up. They still act babyish sometimes, of course, but the fact that they are even old enough to go to school that much blows my mind.  And did I mention that M has entered the “why” stage? How is it that my two-year-old can conceive of “why” in the first place? That’s a whole new brain function right there. And J is becoming more sophisticated too. He now pees on the potty frequently, puts on his own clothes (to the degree he can), and tells me he’s “drawing  a banana” and then draws three shapes that look just like bananas. I know none of this qualifies either of them for Baby Mensa, but it is mind-boggling to me, the former mother of baby twins.

Yesterday we went to pick out backpacks for school, and there were only about 7 varieties to choose from. All of them were butt-ugly, of course (that’s what happens when your parents are procrastinators- slim pickins.) Anyway, here’s what they chose:

Now, the Hell.o Kitt.y one may be kind of cute, despite the fact that M has no idea who that character is, but the hot pink camo is a killer. I don’t know whether to be more offended by the camo or the color. Holy hell.  I tried to steer J, who chose it, to another pack, but he’d already tried it on and that was that. At least it was on sale (shocker, I know). The girly packs should match the rubber fireman rain boots that they picked out quite nicely. (The packs are currently loaded with trucks and trains, by the way.)

The other big thing right now is trying to find a nanny for the baby, and for taking the boys back and forth to school (thank god it’s only a couple of blocks from here, because walking 2 kids and a baby to and from anywhere isn’t easy). It is very nerve-wrecking for me to go through this process of finding someone who seems trust-worthy enough to care for my very hard-won infant. I am looking forward to going back to work but not to leaving the baby. No one should ever assume that this is an either/or decision. I think many of us would choose to put our babies in a papoose on our backs and just go about our careers. But no dice on that one. Anyway, it is an uneasy time for me. Until I meet that “right person,” I will be a ball of nerves I think.

Speaking of work, I still have tons and tons of work to do to get ready for my return. I am not going to be able to stay after school to plan, and I won’t have much time at home to do so, either. This is only my second year at this school. Last year I worked 3 days/week and taught half of the student body. This year I will teach full time and teach the whole student body, which of course has changed since last year because some kids graduated and some kids are new. That means that I will not go in knowing many of the kids, and that is especially hard when you work at a school for kids with learning disabilities, whose behavioral nuances and learning styles matter a lot, even in their arts classes. (I might say especially in, actually.) I love that part of the work- figuring out what makes these kids tick and helping them to learn and do in my particular subject. I do believe that’s partly what makes me good at my job. That, and my ability to find creative ways to teach otherwise boring stuff.  It’s a lot of work, though. I go back in mid-October.

I was just going to write about the baby and how good he is at night sleeping and how bad he is at naps and how I am just realizing that he has no nap schedule and I have not helped him with that, so why would he be a good napper, but he just woke up from his first real nap. So bye.

If the core of attachment parenting is on-demand feeding, co-sleeping, responding to baby’s cry, and baby-wearing, I could almost qualify for the job this time around. If fact, the only other tools of AP, according to Dr. Fears Sears, are being wary of strict parenting advice, birth bonding (not possible in a preemie’s case), and “balance” (ha ha. ha ha ha. HEE ha, HEE hee, HO HO HO!).

This time around, i.e., with a singleton, it is much more possible to follow AP principles. Not that I’m trying. But co-sleeping, for example, is just convenient right now. He sleeps in a little bed next to mine, and though he rarely wakes up (I know, I’m totally stoked!), I am right there for him if he needs me. I respond to his cry and usually hold him/”wear” him when he wants to be held. I feed him whenever he wants, though I did this with the twins too, so nothing new. The point is, it’s just a lot easier with one.

There remains, however, an obstacle to me meeting the AP qualifications, and that is that I simply do not want him on me ALL OF THE TIME!  Maybe there is something wrong with me, maybe I just got burned out from feeding and caring for twins for so long, but I just. do. not. want. a baby on my person that much of the time. It is hard to manipulate things even in the most comfortable of slings or wraps or carriers. It is tiring. It puts him in danger when I’m trying to lift/discipline the boys at a moment’s notice. And it just leaves me feeling overwhelmed and smothered (not to mention hot!). That is not to say that I’m not either feeding, holding, or carrying him much of the time, but the rest of the time I think if he is content and so am I, what is wrong with having him in a seat where he can see me or, hell, stare at a wall fixture and laugh his baby ass off (yes, he does)?

Don’t answer that.

Anyway II am happy to do the things I’m doing while they work, but you can bet that if we need to change things around, I won’t be too worried putting the 7 tools of AP back into the dark of the toolbox.

I don’t know how it is that tomorrow will be my boys’ last day at their daycare. In a little over a week they will start at a preschool, and in two short years they will be in kindergarten (despite their young age, but that’s a whole other can of NYC Board of Ed worms).

I can’t tell you how much having them in daycare has impacted our lives, 100% for the better. When they started attending last August, they were the babies in the group, still drinking from bottles and toddling around wide-eyed. They sat in high chairs to eat and slept in pack-n-plays for nap. Watching their transition has been nothing short of amazing. In one short year, they have become the big kids in a new group of little ones.  They sit at the tables with the other big kids, finding a chair and returning it to the pile once they are done. They drink from big kid cups and eat with utensils. They have favorite foods and joke with the other kids. They nap on mats. They know all the routines and sit against the wall obediently for story time.  They use the potty with the others, not always perfectly, mind you, but wow. They have friends. They are part of a gang of kids, and the day revolves around them. They have the key to their own city.

I can’t express to you how wonderful their caregivers are. This is not a fancy daycare that people are applying to for months in advance, as is often the case in NYC. I don’t know that these young women get paid very much – they are not teachers per se – and yet the work and love that they pour into their jobs is huge. The boys transitioned pretty well when they started. There were tears the first week or two, both theirs and mine, but I never doubted that the boys would be loved and comforted.  They quickly grew to look forward to daycare and asked to go, sometimes even on weekends!

Over time, my boys have asked for one caretaker in particular when they are at home. Some moms might be insecure about this, but I think it’s adorable and it makes me happy. There is no better feeling when you are a working mother than to know that your kids are happy where they are and that there is someone looking out for them. That knowledge made it okay for me to gradually enjoy my new job and see a future in which I could be a mom and also pursue a career that I love and feel is important to other parents’ kids too.

When I was in the hospital for the five weeks leading up to having MBB, daycare was the most stable thing in the boys’ lives. They were needier and clingier and more sensitive during that time, and their care-takers were soft places to fall. They really helped them through. They even helped pick them up and walk them to the center when my mom was here alone, and never asked for a dime. While I was crying my eyes out from missing the boys, knowing that they were going to daycare every day was a giant source of calm for me.

The  caretakers give the kids hugs and kisses and “I love you”s all the time, and the kids giggle and beam from ear to ear. They talk to us about the boys’ development and let us know when they’ve acted out and what they did about it. They have asked us if we’ve seen certain behaviors at home and how we’ve responded.  They really helped us figure out some of J’s behaviors and were in communication with his various therapists and supported us in getting him into a special ed program even when it hurt them to think that he might be different.

Over the past year, we have given them little gifts here and there (I’d sometimes surprise them with a chocolate bar), money for special occasions, and cards, but there is not much we can do or say to convey to them the impact they have had on our and our boys’ lives. And when I get all mushy they get a little embarassed anyway.  They are in their early twenties and don’t have kids, and they cannot yet know what their work means, after all.

They once told me I was the nicest mom they’ve had, which really shocked me because frankly no one has ever called me the nicest anything. I don’t think people are as outwardly appreciative to caretakers as they could be. I make a point of it probably because my mom was a caretaker in a daycare situation, I was a nanny for a year, and now I’m a teacher. I wish people realized that little things, like chocolate bars, can mean a lot. I know they do to me. Don’t save it all for Christmas, friends.

Any way, we are bringing in cupcakes tomorrow, and the boys are excited. As much as I have told them, I don’t think they understand that they will not return to daycare. They are too excited about summer, and days with me and the baby, and the notion of getting a backpack for their new school to slow down enough to listen to what I’m really saying. But I just might tear up. This feels like a big deal… like a big year that changed our lives, one that we got through largely because of these women. And I will be forever grateful for that.

And damn it, my babies are growing up.

We should probably have a standing appointment at our pediatrician’s office.

Today the special de jour was croup. As I mentioned, MBB has croup, and it’s not bad but is there. I wouldn’t normally take a kid in for croup (though M was once hospitalized for it…), but MBB was premature so I thought it best.  The ped, who was not our regular ped, asked me doubtfully if I “had any experience with croup.”

Hee hee. Ho ho ho. BWAH HAH HAH HAH HAH! Um, yes I have, sir.

It’s not a typical season or age for croup, but unless my child has barking seal disease, I do believe croup is the name or the game.  Anyhoo, we are waiting and watching, and hopefully we’ll have a good, hospital-less night.  Pff.

Even though MBB has developed croup and I am paranoid that he’ll end up in the hospital, and even though we missed not one but two birthday parties this weekend because we couldn’t have MBB out for too long, and even though both boys are regressing in the potty training department, and even though I think I saw a tiny flour beetle in my pantry, and even though I am in the middle of complete apartment disarray due to rearranging things so that MBB actually have a bedroom…

I am in a good mood. I am content because for the first time since I had MBB, it’s been considerably more than 2 weeks since I have gotten a “period.” I think I am cycling normally now, and that means that I won’t have to go for testing.  And it also means that all things pregnancy-related just might be officially over. I hope so. It’s time to move on.