A portrait of my daughter every day in 2014

I love her when she first wakes up.

My husband and I stayed up way too late last night having a conversation about this girl. We talked about the day she was born, how the next four days felt like months, how my brain has somehow cocooned those memories in this blanket of fuzzy haze and I barely remember it. The fact that I can’t remember makes me angry, as I feel robbed of her newborn experience even more so. We talked about our families, the connections and the disconnects. We talked about the great debate of a second child, and how the hell we would handle it if we had another NICU baby. I said I wouldn’t. I said I simply wasn’t capable of handling it again. He said I was, that I had no idea how much I was capable of. I’ve been struggling with this idea of a second child for a while now. I want my girl to know the love and friendship of growing up with a sibling. But there are so many buts, not the least of which is money. Do I let the decision of another child be a financial one? That seems so cold, so calculated, so not who I am. But is it irresponsible to have another child when we can’t seem to get ahead? If money were no object we would have a big family, as much as I despised being pregnant.

Sometimes it bothers me, reading baby blogs(don’t get me wrong I love these blogs, they’re today’s equivalent of my grandmothers Good Housekeeping). These seemingly perfect lives. These hipster moms who manage to stay home, they home school, yet money is NEVER mentioned. Somewhere there’s a husband, there’s a beautiful home with nice things. There are expensive hipster sponsors, sending them tokens to endorse on their blogs. Well I say fuck that.

Let’s be honest. We are working class. We are the working poor. I decided to be broke to be with my child. I made a conscious decision to screw our finances for the love of my daughter. We took out all of our savings and retirement so I could be with this fragile girl in her first few months. It’s a decision I am at peace with and wouldn’t change for anything, but at times it weighs on me. Never being able to buy the things we don’t absolutely have to have, but still need, never feeling like there isn’t a weight hanging over our heads, never going out to dinner, never getting ahead. Never feeling like a real grown up, somehow stuck. For someone who once worked in finance, it’s stressful sometimes. Always lingering. But I hated that world. I loathed it. I got sucked into it and got this tattoo to keep me grounded. To remind me there is so much more. It made me want to run for the hills, drop off the radar and live off of the land somewhere. But here we are, with too many bills to pay, and never quite enough to be comfortable.

It took having this girl to push me out of that place. She came, and I no longer cared about money, buying a house, having things. She made me finally realize what was really important.

And yet we have soooo much more then so many others. We are beyond lucky to have each other, our health, something I took for granted most of my life, and the family that surrounds us. We are more than the glossy perfect hipsters that fill the world of mommy bloggers. We struggle. Daily. I refuse to let it seep in. I refuse to make money more important than love. And we are beyond loaded with that around here.

So there’s that, a little dose of honesty for you on a Thursday night.