The _______ Life of Brent and Erika

It is 6:02 AM, and by a cruel trick of the universe I cannot get back to sleep. Sometimes, in those times when I should be sleeping but my brain can’t turn off, I think of all the things I don’t want to forget. I don’t want to forget web team meeting at 12:00 today. I don’t want to forget to buy better picture-hanging nails. But most pressing this morning was this: I don’t want to forget the details of Felix’s birth. And so here’s the story that I wasn’t wrong in thinking it would take me four months to write. Here’s Felix’s birth story. As I wrote in my last post, this pregnancy was hard for me. Physically, it was so challenging, but towards the end it was really mentally tough. Because I was due at the end of December, I wasn’t even sure what year this baby would be born, and for some reason that was really hard. I didn’t know what to plan for. Some time in November, our families kept asking us when we thought would be a good time for family Christm...

Surprise! It's been forever since I've blogged. Oh, well. This blog serves as the place where, when I'm having a moment of insomnia, I can come to and frantically type out a bunch of things I want to remember. So, since I've hardly documented it at all, here are some things about my second (or, rather, fourth) pregnancy. I had a miscarriage over a year ago. It was so early in the pregnancy, I almost feel guilty even calling it a miscarriage, because I feel like there is so much pain and heartbreak and medical drama wrapped up in that word. I'll call it what it actually was: a chemical pregnancy. It was more mentally hard than physically (because when you miscarry at 5 weeks, it's basically just a really heavy period), and felt like yet another punch to the gut in my reproductive life (you thought it might be easier the second time around? Think again!). But at that point, we hadn't even been trying to get pregnant for a year; we've kind of accepted t...

Growing up, my mom was diligent in creating baby books for all of her children, a documentation of those early moments and years with narration and pictures in order to help us see where we came from. I loved (and still love) to look at those baby books, even the books for my siblings, because they were fun and adorable and also represented some of the most important stories in our family. Inside one of my brother's baby books (Alex, perhaps?), there is a picture of my mom that I love. She's dressed in a hospital gown, laying on her back in a slightly reclined bed. She's smiling, and she's tired, and running down her face are large, dark mascara trails. She looks so happy, but so spent. It's the picture that always comes to mind when I think about birth, a single image that proclaims it for what it is: labor. Real, true, exhausting work, but so rewarding you just can't believe it. For so long I've wanted that picture of myself, that picture that shows ho...

It's been a while since I've posted, and a lot can change in 6 months. It seems like it's time! Sometimes, you give up hope on something. You make peace with it. You save your money, plan for a future when you'll be able to achieve your goals with medicine or adoption, and you accept your life as it is. You hear stories of miracles, and you still believe in them, but you acknowledge that miracles come in lots of different shapes, sizes, and timings, and you can wait for your own miracle. Sometimes that happens. You throw yourself into work, which is easy to do since you're opening a new gallery, hanging your first show and working way more hours than you ought to. And then you get called to be the primary president. And then you take a pregnancy test because you had a dream. And you discover it's good news on all fronts. And you still can't believe your life. Okay, clearly we're not talking about you; we're talking about me. I am 14 weeks pre...