The Office Spouse

“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying good-bye so hard.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               I first heard the phrase “office spouse” when it was used in relation to me.  Up until that point, I did not know that such a thing even existed, let alone that I was/had one.  The circumstances in which this information was revealed to me were less than ideal – at a work function, to a senior lawyer within my ministry, who I was attempting to impress with my vast legal knowledge in the hopes that he would hire me to work in his office.  This apparently caused concern to my (as of then unknown to me) office spouse who felt the need to announce to everyone within earshot that *I* was *his* office spouse.

The all-knowing Wikipedia defines “office spouse” as follows:  ″Work spouse″ is a phrase referring to a co-worker, usually of the opposite sex,  with whom one shares a special relationship, having bonds similar to those of a marriage.  A ″work spouse″ is also referred to as ″workplace spouse″ or ″office wife″.  This would be an accurate description of our relationship at that time.

I first met this office spouse in the summer of 2007 when I was eight months pregnant with Baby Chicken.  Not the ideal circumstance in which to meet someone you are attracted to, particularly when you are already involved in another significant, complicated romantic attachment with the father of your unborn child.  Boy Toy, as he came to be known amongst my friends, was smart,  cute, funny, keen, and - hey! - what was up with that tongue piercing?!?!?  Aside from the pierced tongue, in my mind he represented all the potential I had seen in my ex-husband in our younger years together.  But Boy Toy was the real deal. 

I remember he added me on Facebook while I was away on mat leave with Baby Chicken but, as with all of my best relationships, I am unable to recall how exactly our friendship evolved from there.  Lunches, emails and, with the advent of the Apple iPhone, incessant iMessage conversations…..  My attraction to him blossomed and our interactions developed a flirtatious tenor.  *BUT* he was eight years younger than me (cougar much?!?) and I was in a position of authority towards him during his articling year.  I was walking a fine line in some of my communications with him, often joking that some of our interactions were ample grounds for a future harassment claim on his part.  But I trusted him implicitly, often confiding in him things that I told no other person.    

When I was on mat leave with BoBo, Boy Toy began to date the woman who I sensed he would marry.  At a Xmas party I attended for the sole purpose of seeing him, I asked him about this, suggesting to him that he had met the woman he was going to marry.  He acknowledged that this could be true.  A year and a half later I was hit out of the blue with a text message announcing their engagement.   

And so our office marriage ended as his real life nuptials began.  I cut off all contact with him.  I removed his phone number from my cell phone so that I could never be tempted to text him, deleted him from Facebook so I couldn't see what was going on in his life, and ceased all social and office contact with him.  It was very immature of me but my emotional attachment to him was strong.  I don’t know what I expected was realistically going to come out of our flirtation – I was at this point rather happily married to the Dragon, now with two babies – but I could not handle the fact of his impending marriage.  Looking back, I don’t know how I managed to exorcise him from my life or to continue the disconnection for so long.  But I did.  Our office decree nisi was granted and remained intact.     

The lines of communication reopened only very recently when I was assigned my first homicide file.  Faced with the choice of which lawyer I would chose as my junior, I cornered him in the hallway of the courthouse and asked him to work with me, telling him that he was the only person in the office who would not annoy the living daylights out of me.  It was an offer he could not refuse.

A few weeks ago, Boy Toy came into my office, closed the door and sat down.  I hope that my face did not belie the extent of my shock and my sadness when he announced that he would not be able to work with me on the homicide as he would be leaving the office in the fall, transferring to another office in a city far away, closer to his wife’s family, so they can find more affordable housing and start a family.  While the timing of the announcement came as a surprise, I can’t say that it was unexpected as he had long since stated that it was not in his plans to stay at this office forever.

His impending move ends an eight year chapter of my life, one which has run almost as long as some of my “real” marriages.  Yes it was premised in fantasy, yes it was fraught with drama and tension and frustration (the majority of which was my own creation) but he has been my close friend and my confidante.  His presence in my life offered me stability when I could otherwise not find it.  He helped fill the void which resulted from the end of my first marriage,  and represented what I missed most about my former spouse in the early days of my divorce while I struggled to navigate my relationship with the Dragon.  Oddly, I do not regret the years that I did not speak to him.  While I had no problem skirting the bounds of propriety in relation to my own marriage, I never, ever wanted to do anything to compromise his.  And the only way for me to ensure that was to cut off all contact with him.  I am well aware that it is no coincidence that my relationship with the Dragon has solidified considerably in the time that I did not have contact with Boy Toy.  Our marriage thrived without the distraction.    

I have just come from what is going to be one of my last lunch dates with the Boy Toy.  During lunch he told me a long story the moral of which was as follows – sometimes there are people in life who we like (or even love) but the timing is not right to be with them.  (Did he see or understand the parallel to our relationship?)  His story made me want to cry for I have often thought that had I met him at a different time and under different circumstances, our friendship might well have blossomed into all that I once wished it could have been.

  

On yoga.....

I come from a background of trauma.  Violence, addiction and dysfunction dominated my life throughout my childhood and adolescence.  Although I eventually gained physical independence from my family of origin, the events of my childhood haunted me for years.

Growing up, I always knew that the environment in which I was raised was not normal.  And I also knew that higher education would be my only way out.  I put my nose to the proverbial grindstone and worked for years to put myself through two university degrees, eventually attaining my goal of becoming a criminal lawyer.  It was a lot of work and a lot of stress with my familial dysfunction continuing in the background.   

They say that the law is a jealous mistress.  That most certainly is true.  I am convinced that my passion for criminal law is born of my dysfunctional upbringing.  Hell, my paternal grandfather was a bookie in the 1940s!  I am well aware that but for the grace of g-d there go I.  I could easily have found myself occupying a different role in the criminal justice system than I do today, be it as a victim or even as an accused person.

My work is stressful, demanding, challenging, engaging and, at times, rewarding.  It exacts a personal and an emotional toll. 

In the spring of 2014 my personal trauma and professional stresses collided with near disastrous results.  I was prosecuting a very serious domestic violence case, one in which the victim (herself a victim of years and years of trauma and abuse at the hands of various partners) was brutally assaulted.  While I lead her through her evidence, she described events which hit too close to home,  Her evidence mirrored something I witnessed as a child.  As she described having her nose viscously broken, the blood flowing down her face as though a bag of milk had broken, I experienced a flashback followed by a complete meltdown.  I asked the judge for a break and fled to the bathroom, locked myself into a stall and sobbed uncontrollably.  

This breakdown was the culmination of a myriad events which had unfolded over many years, perhaps over the course of my entire life.  It turned out to me the wake-up call I desperately needed - to address the events of my past, to fine tune the balance of my personal and professional lives and to set a strong, healthy foundation for my future.  In one of my all-time favourite quotes, Ernest Hemmingway once said, "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places".  It was time to restore and rebuild.

I truly believe that life sends us the people we need when we need them.  I was at a continuing education event last summer where one of the speakers was renowned trauma specialist Deborah Sinclair.  This woman literally wrote the book on domestic violence and, over time, has developed a counseling practice which addresses personal trauma as well as "vicarious trauma" in the professional realm.  Deborah was there that day to speak to us - a group of Crow Attorneys - about vicarious trauma, the impact that constantly having to deal with other people's trauma has on our own lives.  It was as though she was describing my life in her lecture - stress, depression, apathy, disconnection.  Affecting all areas of my life.

I approached Deborah at the break and told her that she was describing my life to a "T".  I knew that she had her counseling practice in Toronto and I asked her to meet with me.  Our respective summer vacations intervened and we did not end up meeting until well into September.  Working with Deborah saved my life.  Not only did she help me put the traumatic events of my childhood into perspective, she taught me to LET IT GO.  She helped me face the shame about my family which I had carried with me all my life.  She supported me when I cut the toxic ties that perpetually held me captive in my family's clutches.  And she introduced me to powerful, life changing concepts such as breath and meditation and the parasympathetic nervous system.  Deborah's library of books is outstanding and she introduced me to Meghan Telpner and the importance of diet and nutrition in managing health and stress.  The transformation had begun.....

At the sane time that I was working with Deborah, a girlfriend who lived in Keswick told me about a yoga studio near her home called Simplicity.  She had completed her 30 day trial, had really enjoyed it and wanted to do more.  I had practiced yoga on and off for about 14 years, all different types - Kundalini, Hatha, Ashtanga, yoga for runners - but had always eschewed yoga in favour of more intense, high impact aerobic activity and heavy weights.  That was the way to lose weight and be thin, right?

I started attended classes at Simplicity in October, 2014.  The more I attended, the more I wanted to attend.  At first, the pull was the Guru, Jenn Pike, with her wealth of knowledge and her killer, super challenging, "am I going to make it off the mat?" yoga classes.  Then I branched out and met the beautiful souls known as Sonia and Sandie whose bodies I could easily relate to and whose classes brought me to such a place of safety and comfort.  

In February of this year I suddenly and unexpectedly lost a treasured soulmate.  I spiraled once again into the depths of depression.  Sonia's restorative yoga classes provided me with such a safe, comfortable, nurturing environment to complete fall apart and experience my grief.  In so doing in the safety of her class, coping with the grief off the mat in the outside world became much more manageable.

In the past nine months I have amassed such a wealth of knowledge regarding my physical, mental and spiritual health and well-being.  I am in awe of how much I have grown and at the relative balance I have achieved.  (I am after all still a lawyer and a mother to two young children!)  My diet, while still a work in progress, has been revolutionized.  I delight in the physical poses my body can now attain, in the evolving changes to my body and in the differences between what I could do days or weeks or months ago and what I can do now.  I am more closely attuned to my mind, body and spirit and what they NEED.  I am more compassionate and understanding and less judgmental, particularly in relation to myself.  I am healthier and more balance in every way.

You ask what yoga means to me...  It means life.  It means joy.  It means health.  It means balance.  It means transformation.

Namaste.

Requiem for a Friendship

Your friend is your needs answered.

He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.

And he is your board and your fireside.

For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

I knew the moment we tried to check in at the baggage desk that the the trip was going to be a disaster.

It was supposed to be the ultimate girls' weekend away - me and my best friend in Paris for four days. It was a trip we had contemplated for years and booked just a few weeks prior. With two very young children at home, the trip took on an increased importance for me as free social time was at a premium and no friendship had suffered from the neglect of new motherhood as much as this one.

As soon as we got to the airport, things took a turn for the worse. We were advised that our flight was overbooked and, having not confirmed our seats online, there was a strong possibility that we were not going to get seats on the plane. Maybe we would, maybe we wouldn't, perhaps alternative arrangements would be made, perhaps they would not... Who knew if or when we might make our way to Paris. In all my years of travel, I had never had this happen before. She had and the story was a disaster. It was an omen of things to come.

To say that the trip did not live up to my expectations would be a gross understatement. I could not have in my wildest nightmares predicted how bad the trip would be. Even all these weeks later, after many long, hard, emotional hours of contemplation, it is difficult to put into words what went wrong. I could say that for the first time ever, we did not travel well together but that would not accurately depict what occurred. From my perspective (and indeed that is all I can offer), I found my dear friend to be an incredibly negative force. It was not the first time I had observed this in her. To the contrary, it had been a long time building, something which her other very close friend had commented to her about some months before. She repeated her friend's comments to me, dismissing them as drunken ramblings. But I had my nagging doubts. I was able to see how a series of poor personal choices had started to impact her adversely. She was not happy. I could see it in her physically and hear it in her emotionally. I tried to encourage her to address the situation, to reverse the damage. It wasn't too late. She was still young and had not been sentenced to live her life unhappily ever after.

Nowhere was her unhappiness more palpable than when we were in Paris. Being in my favourite city, a vibrant city so full of history and *life*, I had a very difficult time coping with her flat affect and continually negative comments. For me, it was unfathomable to be in Paris and to feel anything but exuberant excitement. I had spent hours and hours planning this trip and simply could not bear what I felt was a negative albatross around my neck. So I called her on it. On a bridge over the River Seine with the Eiffel Tower in the background, I asked her whether she was enjoying the trip. Without a glimmer of excitement, emotion or affect, she claimed that she was. It's hard to put into words the emotional void, the emotional impotence I felt emanating from her. It was unfamiliar territory and, along with the constant negativity, it was hard for me to bear.

I said nothing further on this subject for the rest of the trip. I knew her well enough to know that she did not deal well with conflict. For the first time in my life, I kept my big mouth shut. My resentment built and I could not wait to be away from her. I could not wait to go home.

And even when we got home, I did not confront her about what had, or had not, happened in Paris. Having not heard a peep from her in over a week following our return, I sent her what I thought was an innocuous "how are you" email. And then --- KABOOM!!! The claws came out, along with the insults and irrational accusations, and everything was on the table. It was ugly, it was raw, and, it turns out, it was un-retractable. While I had seen inklings of it years earlier, she hit me with her full Scorpion force. Once again, contrary to my nature, I held my tongue knowing that there was no reasoning with her irrationality and nothing good could or would come of sinking to that level.

When, like me, you come from a dysfunctional family, your friends become your family, your friends become your world. Like most of my close friendships, it was impossible to delineate how and when our friendship started. It was as if I had known her forever. I truly believed that she was my soulmate. After a familial background of instability and inconsistency, she was always there for me, completely, totally and (I thought) unconditionally. She literally and figuratively supported me through the many turbulent months of my divorce. She was by my side in the delivery room when I gave birth to my first child. She encouraged me not to thrown in the towel, to keep working on my relationship with the Dragon. She was a once in a lifetime friend and this was a once in a lifetime friendship.

Having now had the rose-coloured glasses ripped off of my face, I can in retrospect see things which perhaps I did not want to admit before about our friendship. I can see now how perhaps, like many of my previous relationships, I was attracted to her because she let me lead the way, let me do what I wanted to do. I set the agenda and she followed along. I also most definately now recognize her pattern of never taking responsibility for conflict with other people. Nothing was ever her fault. It was always the other person - her crazy sister, her asshole father, her nasty husband, her alcoholic friend... And now it's me. The overbearing, bossy bitch.

Initially, I thought that things would work out. I waited and I hoped. As I told her in my last email to her, I viewed our relationship as a long term marriage with this crappy trip being but a bump in the road. I suggested we go and see my couples counsellor. Days turned into weeks which have now turned into months and I have heard nothing from her. I learned of her eldest daughter's pregnancy via facebook. It was like a knife to the heart. While her absence has left a void in my life, I fear there is no turning back. This simply is not how I deal with people. This is not how I deal with conflict. The thing that hurts the most is the fact that after nine years of close friendship she didn't care about me enough to, at minimum, make the effort to either talk things out or, more importantly, take any steps to salvage the friendship. One argument, one disagreement, one bad trip was all it took for her to exorcise me from her life. A lot has happened in my life since that trip. I often ruminate on the fact that she does not know about any or all of these things.

I miss her deeply.

August 29th

On the night you were born

the moon smiled with such wonder

that the stars peeked in to see you

and the night wind whispered

'Life will never be the same.'

August 29th, 2005

On the night of August 29, 2005, I sat on my couch and watched in disbelief the horror that was Hurricane Katrina. It was hard to imagine that such widespread devastation could have been wreaked on North American soil let alone in relation to an iconic, historic American city such as New Orleans. The images that were being broadcast were of a type that we were used to seeing in faraway places on the other side of the world. Never in my lifetime had such devastation hit so close to home. I was numb.

I had spent that entire summer in a state of numbness. *We* had spent that summer in a state of numbness. It was truly the summer of our discontent.

At that time, I was still married to my first husband. We had been involved a serious relationship for almost seven years and had been married for two. We met at a criminal law conference when we were law students. As couples do in most "starter marriages", we advanced through the stereotypical stages of life, careers and marriage. We survived the tremendous strains and stresses of of finishing law school, articling, being called to the Bar and establishing our demanding practices as criminal lawyers. We bought our first house. We eloped to an exotic Carribean island and got married. We bought our second house. We got a dog. After my very dysfunctional, tumultuous child and young adulthood, I thought I had succeeded in building for myself a normal life with a wonderful man with whom I believed I shared a healthy, loving relationship. Like any other couple, our years together held their challenges, their ups and downs but with him I felt a sense of security and a feeling of home that I had never felt before. I believed that we were strong enough to weather anything life would throw our way.

It was the desire to start a family that would break us.

It was on a girls' shopping trip to Buffalo that my biological clock started tick, tick, ticking. Literally. All it took was a visit to the Pottery Barns kids store and one glance at the Moses baby basket and the desire to have a baby was overwhelming. We discussed it when I got home and decided that yes, this was something we both wanted to do, this was something we were ready to do, it was time to start trying to have a baby.

So we tried. We tried. And we tried. And we tried. Nothing happened. I began charting my basal body temperature, noting my cervical mucous, contorting my body into awkward post coital poses. Nothing happened. Notwithstanding the lack of success, in anticipation of our eventual success, we sold small house number one and bought bigger house number two. After several months of trying still without success, my then boss urged us to seek medical attention to see if there was some sort of physical issue at play. Our family doctor referred us to a fertility clinic where we were each sent for physiological testing. Being female, I of course assumed that *I* was the problem. I recalled a pelvic infection I'd suffered when I first became sexually active with my first boyfriend. I had sought medical attention but the drug that had been prescribed was so strong, so nauseating, that I ceased taking the medicine. As I endured the agony of having water flushed through my fallopian tubes to check for blockages, I convinced myself that my teenage stupidity had rendered me sterile.

You cannot imagine my surprise when I received the call from my husband advising me that it was not my fertility but rather *his* that was the obstacle to me getting pregnant. Apparently the doctor had called him on his cell phone while he was driving to court. Just like that. Our lives would never be the same.

As we would learn, when the fertility issue rests with the woman, the situation is much more easily rectified. When the obstacle rests with the man, it is much more difficult. There is no easy cure. We were referred to the pre-eminent Canadian male fertility specialist. If the experience of attending at that office was demoralizing to me, I can only imagine the humiliating impact on my husband and his psyche. But we went through the soul destroying process hoping that at the end our wish to become parents would be fulfilled. Our lives that summer came to a depressing standstill as we fretted over what we termed "the Subject". Despite the beautiful house with the gorgeous yard, the dog who needed exercise and attention, the gorgeous summer weather, our post-work lives consisted of sitting stunned on the couch like lumps on a bump. We were numb. Little did I know that the days left in that marriage were numbered, that our union was not and would not be strong enough to withstand the challenges that infertility had thrown at us. Little did I know that the demise of that relationship would lead to the best thing ever to happen in my life.

August 29th, 2007

I had been in labour for sixteen hours when she was finally born at 7:29 p.m. While the actual labour itself was, thanks to the wonders of drugs, surprisingly easy, the process of pushing her into the world was sheer agony. When I was a child, I had once seen a hamster giving birth. I watched amazed as the hamster ran around in circles in its cage, eventually expelling its babies one by one. As I struggled to push my daughter out, I understood for the first time how that hamster felt. Had I not been tethered by the IV and the epidural, I would have pulled a hamster, jumped off the bed and ran around the room until the baby fell out of me. As my mother admonished my poor manners, I screamed at the doctor to "get this f*@#ing baby *OUT* of me!!!!!" Exhibiting the penultimate grace under pressure, the doctor calmly asked me if I had taken prenatal classes. I replied that I had. He explained that he wanted to use the assistance of a vacuum to pull the baby out. He told me that it would be just one more push and the baby would be here. All I heard were the words "one more push". I asked him if it would really be just one more push, as if I had the option of ceasing pushing and just calling the whole thing off.

I pushed. And then, in a moment that was analogous to something out of the TLC show "A Baby Story", a baby, my baby, my daughter, emerged and landed on my chest. I could hear my mom excitedly exclaiming, "She's here! She's here! She's here!" I looked down at her, I held her, and I sobbed uncontrollably in a way that I had never sobbed before. I cried from the deepest recesses of my being because for the first time ever Life, my Life and my loss of that marriage, made complete and perfect sense.

* * * * *

Every parent fetes their child on the anniversary of their birth. As each year passes, my heart aches at the passage of time and swells with the pride of all that she has accomplished. Mothering her is an experience unlike any other. But the day carries with it other significant connotations. The Dragon and I never set out on our journey together intending to be parents. For the longest while, especially in light of what had happened with my first marriage and the way in which it had met such an unexpectedly disastrous end, I felt uncertain as to whether the voyage of parenthood was one I would be taking solo or with a partner by my side. The Dragon has more than risen to the occasion of fatherhood. Although parenthood was not an adventure I ever have expected to take with him, I could not ask for a better father for our children. And so every year, August 29th is not just a memorialization of our daughter's miraculous birth, it is a celebration of all that we have achieved as a couple, as parents and as a family.

Happy 3rd Birthday Baby Chicken.

And then we were four....

"I haven't had a full night's sleep in over three and a half months!!!" I screamed as the Dragon whined about our lack of quality time alone together.

One might think that the transition from being to a childless couple to becoming parents the first time around would be the biggest adjustment you would ever experience as a couple. Before BoBo arrived, one of my girlfriends warned me repeatedly about the ways in which both our family dynamic and our relationship as a couple were going to change when our second child arrived. Having weathered the arrival of our first child rather smoothly, especially in light of the fact that we hardly knew each other before I got knocked up, I dismissed my friend's warnings figuring that if we could handle the transition of having one kid, aside from the sleepless nights, having a second baby would be a breeze.

I. Was. Wrong.

Capital "W" Wrong.

Prior to the arrival of B2, it made me cry to think that it would no longer be just the three of us. Our time as a little family of three was, without a doubt, the best time of my life. A strong believer in the value of siblings, we both felt that we were doing Baby Chicken a favour by having another child. I was very cognizant of the fact that I would miss my time alone with her once the baby arrived. (Indeed, such thoughts still bring tears to my eyes.) I almost lost it when my girlfriend suggested that, prior to the baby's arrival, we should take Chicken out for a memorable dinner to mark the occasion of our last days as a trio. I cried for weeks every time we sat down for a meal after hearing that!

Chicken is an incredibly intelligent, intuitive, insightful little girl and we devoted a lot of time and effort to explaining what was about to happen to her, what was about to happen to us all. From the time we knew that BoBo was a boy, we knew what his name would be and we constantly referred to him by his name while he was in utero. We read books to Chicken about the arrival of babies and about being a big sister. We talked about what it would be like when he arrived and the things that we would do to take care of him and the things that we would do together as a family. We attempted to assuage our guilt about having another child by buying Chicken her first tricycle, telling her that she could ride the tricycle with Daddy pushing her while Mommy pushed BoBo in his stroller. She seemed to understand what was going on, right up until the day that I went to the hospital to deliver. The video footage of her meeting her brother for the first time is beyond priceless as she walked into the house asking, "Is my brother home?"

I'm almost ashamed to admit this but it wasn't Baby Chicken who experienced difficulty adapting to the arrival of her brother. That transition was seamless. The problems have been with the Dragon and with our relationship as a couple.

When Chicken was born, the Dragon took to fatherhood like a fish to water. You would never have known that up until a year or so before to her birth, he had been a lifelong confirmed bachelor who had no interest in procreating. The immediate and intense bond he shared with his daughter is evident in the first picture I ever took of the two of them together shortly after she was born. In that photo, he is looking at her with such wonder and amazement. She was less than an hour old and already had him wrapped around her little finger! So you can imagine my surprise when, upon BoBo's arrival, he did not appear to bond with his son. At all. As in, he rarely picked the baby up, he did little to nothing to assist in his care, he did not once get up with him in the middle of the night - all things which he had readily, happily and eagerly done when our daughter was born! While part of this was accounted for by the fact that we had his mom with us to help, I had spent nine long months growing this baby and could not help but take this completely unforeseen lack of involvement more than a little bit personally! "I would not have had a second child had I known it was going to be like this!" I screamed.

As uninvolved as he was with the baby, he over-compensated with his obsession with Chicken - ensuring that she was not somehow neglected, lavishing her with attention and praise. Each positive comment I made about the new baby was met with a completely unresponsive remark about what an amazing, wonderful, perfect being Chicken was. It was as if his male brain he could not simultaneously love and appreciate both children.

The lack of bonding with the baby was met with what in my view were increased demands on me as his partner. I don't know about you, but after weeks of sleepless nights and having a baby affixed semi-permanently to my sore breasts, sex just was not on my list of priorities. Mentally, I had prepared myself for the fact that, as parents of two young children, we were not going to have a lot of "couple" time, especially not during the chaotic first few weeks and months following a baby's arrival. Someone recently told me that upon having children many men feel like they "lose" their wives to motherhood. I can certainly understand that sentiment. Especially with two little beings to take care of, it often feels like after their wants and needs and demands are met, there just is not anything left of *me* to go around and I'm certainly not going to foresake my children and their needs for their father.

I know I am not the only one to experience such a seismic change in my relationship with my partner upon the birth of our second child. One friend found her husband not to be anywhere near as helpful with their second child as he was with their first. (Hey, at least he still helped!) Another friend, who gave birth to her second child a couple of weeks after I gave birth to BoBo tells me that her husband has literally and figuratively disappeared from their home since the child's birth. One very wise friend described the dynamic as follows: "Our bottom line is, I take you for granted, you resent me". That pretty much sums it up.

The arrival of a second child represents the growth of your family and that can't be but a beautiful thing. Even if it's rocky in the beginning, the dividends will pay off a million fold in the future. There are often times when you feel stretched to your limits and as if you are not paying enough quality attention to either of your children. But my relationship with Chicken is stronger for having had BoBo. I cherish and appreciate her more as a result of having had him. I marvel in my children's similarities and, moreover, their differences. How could two entirely different people come from the same parents? There are almost no words for the sheer, unadulterated joy and happiness I feel as I observe my children interacting with each other. From the moment he arrived, BoBo has done nothing but want for his sister to cast just the slightest bit of attention upon him. As my younger sister has said, I know now how she has felt about me my entire life.

I thrive on the chaos which accompanies two children. The day we brought BoBo home from the hospital, I relished the moment when I would have both of my children in my arms. As I held BoBo in my left arm and with Chicken perched on my lap, the baby started to cry. This startled Chicken who had never heard an infant cry before, certainly not a baby who was only a day old. Chicken started to cry too. As perverse as it sounds, I had never felt as alive or as fulfilled as I did in that moment as I sat there with both of my children wailing away in my arms.

I see Dragon's bond with BoBo is developing with time. As the baby gets older, more expressive and more interactive, I am witnessing the same type of love and wonderment in the Dragon's eyes as he interacts with his son. His compliments towards the baby are free-flowing now. He clearly loves and is loved by both of his children. As for my relationship with the Dragon, I still feel like I just don't have it in me to give at times. I've been told that the more I give to him, the more he will give to our children so I'm trying. As trying as it is at times, I'm trying...

Unfit

“The miracle isn’t that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start.”

--John “the Penguin” Bingham

At the time I got pregnant with Bo Bo, I was in decent physical shape. Granted, I had never lost all of the weight I gained when pregnant with Baby Chicken but at the time she was conceived I was unusually thin, having just successfully completed the divorce diet whereby one automatically sheds twenty pounds when their spouse suddenly walks out on them. When I got pregnant last year, I was in the midst of several sessions of fitness Bootcamps and was also working out periodically at the gym. Indeed, the day before I figured out I was pregnant, I had done two back-to-back fitness classes at the gym. Upon learning that I was once again with child, I vowed that this time I would remain physically active and physically fit throughout my pregnancy. Mother nature, however, had different plans for me.....

The signs of pregnancy hit almost immediately. Within two weeks of what I assume was the date of conception, I was out of town at an annual employment education event. With no spouse, no childcare responsibilities and having drunk myself into oblivion the previous two evenings (recall that I did not at this point know that I was pregnant!!!), I decided to treat myself to a spa day. (The prime rib dinner that I devoured following the spa day should have been a clue.....) During my 90 minute massage, I noticed that my breasts were sore, really, really sore, as I lay on my stomach. That night as I lay in bed, having not consumed any alcohol, I noticed that I was really, really nauseous and really, really dizzy, so much so that I cancelled a road trip with a girlfriend the following weekend. Little did I know that this was just the beginning.....

The following week I discovered I was pregnant, following which the nausea kicked into full gear for the next thirteen or so weeks. Looking back, I don't know how I managed to function, especially at work as I remained in court on my feet litigating throughout the entire pregnancy. There were times when I was on my feet sipping from a can of gingerale in order to prevent me from vomiting in court. The act of brushing my teeth every morning inevitably ended up with me retching into the sink. By the time I got home from work at night, I was so completely exhausted (and unable to fathom the thought of eating dinner), that I often curled up and passed out on the couch. Thank G-d for the Dragon and his Mom who cared for Baby Chicken during these weeks. By the time of my first pre-natal appointment at the end of the first trimester of the pregnancy, I had not done a stitch of exercise but had actually LOST weight. And sadly, between the nausea, the exhaustion, the just-turned-two-year old, the demands of a career in the law and trying to maintain some semblance of a healthy relationship with my partner, that did not change throughout the pregnancy. I had neither the time, the energy nor the inclination to exercise.

Overall, I gained less total weight the second time around. My body managed to keep everything in check until the final week weeks when the pounds started to pack on. Sadly, the baby, who weighed in at a healthy 8 pounds, 4 ounces, did not himself account for the total weight gain of thirty six pounds and, three months later, I am left with about 14 pounds to lose before I am the weight I was when I got pregnant with him, 34 pounds to lose if I want to be the weight I was when Chicken was conceived. Regardless of the number on the scale, the damage to my "mummy tummy" this time around is so much more extensive. Unclothed, it looks like my mid-section has been run over by a truck, a truck who then backed back over me!!!!! It really is a depressing state of affairs as I continually obsess over getting myself back into shape.

This appearance obsession is not something which is new to me or something stems from the changes to my body which come from having kids. It is something which has haunted me, seemingly, my entire life. Stemming first from the rivalrous relationship which was cultivated by my parents between my sister and I (I was the "smart" one, she was the "pretty" one - there was never any room for us each to be both), I have for years tortured myself over my looks and my weight, first obsessively comparing myself with my much thinner, tanner sister, then moving on to compare myself, seemingly, with every other woman on the planet.

My foray into physical fitness started when I was 19 years old. Having been dumped by my first love a few months earlier, I channelled my angst and my energy into an "I'll show him" obsession with working out at Hart House where I was a student at U of T. I recall spending endless hours on the Stairmaster, ruminating over my lost love, convincing myself that he would rue the day he dumped me once I got myself into stellar physical shape. The exercise obsession took on a life of its own from there. The exercise was addictive and a great way to deal with the stresses of academia. I was fortunate to have surrounded myself with like-minded friends who also enjoyed spending spare time with me at the gym. We did classes, we did cardio, we ran (I was running 10km at a time several times a week), we lifted weights. I look back at pictures of me taken at that time and I would KILL, KILL, KILL to have that body now!!!! I look at those pictures and ask myself, "What were you thinking you silly little girl??? You were so thin!!! So fit!!! So beautiful!!!" I can only conclude that youth is most definately wasted on the young.

Despite our frequent pig-outs at the Chinese Laundry Cafe, I maintained a gym membership and managed to stay in fairly decent shape throughout law school. When I became involved in what was to be my next serious relationship with the man who is now my ex-husband, I became too comfortable, too complacent and let it all go to pot. All of my years of fitness and exercise were all for naught as we combined overindulgence in good food and wine with zero physical activity. Most ironically, at the end of that marriage, I was the same weight I ended up being when nine months pregnant with Baby Chicken.

As I struggle with the current state of my body, I realize that I am at a very crucial physical juncture at this point in my life. Not only am I post-partum, but I am also within the next few years facing the daunting prospect of menopause. (How fucking depressing is *that*?!?!?) I recall an older friend of mine once telling me that the desire to get her body in the best shape possible to deal with menopause was what motivated her to begin running when she was in her late thirties. I want and need to be fit and healthy for my kids and for myself as I face the next major stage of my life as a woman.

In an attempt to shed the additional pounds, I have returned to the gym. In an effort to stay motivated, I am doing various group exercise classes. This morning's class was, for me, a retro workout - the step class. While it presented a challenging workout, it was also a very maudlin experience. In the 90s, I was addicted to step. I used to literally fly over the bench, risers stacked high to the sky. That most certainly was not my experience today as I struggled to attain momentum, to avoid hyperventilating and to avoid breaking any bones. (Even when I was fit, I once broke my foot as a result of a misplaced foot during a step class.) It was, for me, a sad state of affair as I mentally compared my current exercise ineptitude with my physically fit days of yore and berated myself for ever letting myself go in the first place.

I know that I am far from the only woman to ever grapple with these issues. Hell, countless mortals have made their fortunes on the insecurities of women such as myself. Books, therapists, talk show hosts, the entire diet industry...to name but a few. As I mentally run through the list of my female friends, I don't think there is anyone I know of who doesn't have their own schtick when it comes to their weight and/or their appearance. My bff, who is older than I am, and I recently lamented, as we have many times, the fact that it's so easy to gain weight but so difficult to lose. We each spoke of our lifetime battles with our respective weights and body images and our desire, just for a day, just for a moment, to not have to battle these demons. Another good friend and I have also spoken in depth about her battle not to be so hard on herself. Take it from me - this woman is stunning, a vision of physical fitness and female perfection. She is beyond physically fit (she runs marathons for g-d's sakes!!!!!) and is always perfectly coiffed. I would kill to have both her body and her closet! Yet I almost fell off my seat when she told me about some of her weighty issues. Hell, even one of my gay friends recently confessed to me his own appearance obsession issues, as he explained to me the "ranking" system that pervades the gay community. No one is immune!

I try to be gentle on myself. I remind myself that this time the weight gain is not because of over eating and/or physical neglect. I tell myself that the extra weight and distorted physique are the result of a recent pregnancy which produced my beautiful baby boy. I try to encourage myself as, mentally, I recoil from the image in the mirror beside me while I work out. Most of all, I try to think that this is the last time in my life that I will have to ride the roller coaster of weight gain and weight loss though internally I fear that it's an affliction which will plague me for the rest of my life.

Bo Bo

He came into the world obviously unsure of his place in it. Contrary to my expectations, I fell in love with him instantly.

Towards the middle of last year, the Dragon and I decided to take the next leap and expand our family, to give Baby Chicken a sibling. While I have always wanted more than one child (my ideal was three), the Dragon at his advanced age was motivated by the desire to ensure that Chicken would have someone to accompany her on the journey of life were something to happen to her parents. I just wanted more kids. So, last June we abandoned all birth control and threw caution to the wind. As I had the first time, I got pregnant immediately. And I do mean immediately. The signs and symptoms were seemingly instantaneous - sore breasts and constant nausea. Suspecting that something was awry, the night before Dragon, Chicken and Dragon's mother were to leave for Vancouver for the weekend to visit his sister, I woke up in the middle of the night and did a pee test, the result of which was disappointingly negative. Given my age, I began to mentally prepare myself to ride the monthly roller coaster of trying to conceive.

I will never know what possessed me, two days later, to reach into the garbage can to look once more at that first pregnancy test. I was in the bathroom minding my business when a voice suddenly told me to reach in and pick it up. Much to my shock, when I looked at the test the second time, it indicated a positive result, albeit faintly. Figuring that the passage of time, perhaps the sunlight in the bathroom, some unknown chemical reaction because I swear the first time I looked at it that test was negative!!!!!, had skewed the result, I did not allow myself to get too excited. Rather, I waited for two more days, re-tested and, sure enough, received an instantaneous positive result. I was pregnant again.

This pregnancy was the antithesis of the first. I suffered from every pregnancy side effect in the book, most notably nausea and exhaustion. Fourteen weeks of it to be exact. I threw up every morning like clockwork as I tried to brush my teeth. My taste in food changed and I developed aversions to nearly everything I had enjoyed eating pre-pregnancy. No meat, no Chinese food. I survived on pasta and vegetables. "Perhaps this baby is a 'different flavour' than your first?" suggested my local Starbucks Barista.

Being somewhat of a hypochondriac, and having surpassed the magical age of 35, I opted this time to undergo amniocentesis to ensure that all was genetically in order. The test also had the added advantage of certainty insofar as the baby's gender was concerned. Being one of two girls myself, I hoped for a second daughter. As has been my mandate in life, I wanted to prove, to myself and to others, that I could raise two daughters in a healthy, happy environment, without them being pitted against one another. The Dragon wanted another girl because he simply likes girls. Imagine our shock and surprise when I was advised that the baby I was carrying was a BOY. A BOY. A BOY? A BOY?!?!? A healthy baby BOY.

We reeled at the news. My family history was not going to repeat itself. Baby Chicken was not going to have a baby sister. There wasn't going to be another baby girl to wear the mountains and mountains of adorable pink clothing that Baby Chicken had amassed. And while I am always up to the challenge of shopping, I just could not come to terms with the fact that *this* baby was a boy. As many second time moms-to-be do, I feared I would not love this baby as much as I loved Baby Chicken. I feared that I would not love him at all. Because he was a boy. Because he was not what I thought I wanted. Right up until I gave birth to him, I both harboured and expressed concerns that I was not going to love this child. Friends and family and the Dragon all told me I would love him, that I would love him just as much as I love her. One friend told me that there was nothing like the mother-son relationship. My sister suggested that that this was perhaps an opportunity for me to cultivate a healthy relationship with a member of the opposite sex. I remained skeptical and unconvinced right up until the very end. Or should I say the very beginning?

Giving birth to him was for me a very different experience in so many regards. Unlike when I gave birth to Baby Chicken, my relationship with the Dragon was far more established, far more serious, far more committed this time around. The Dragon and I barely knew each other when I gave birth to Baby Chicken. We had been dating a matter of months when I accidentally got pregnant with her. The months which followed were a scramble to figure out where to go from there. At the time of her birth, it was far from a given that we would be or stay together. You could have plucked a stranger off the street and thrown him into the delivery room, that was about how well I felt we knew each other at that time.

But this time was different. This time we knew, and loved, each other. Though we've had our trials and tribulations, the relationship had evolved and was one which we both chose to be in. This pregnancy was planned, we were a family and were choosing to grow our family and move it forward.

Physically and mentally, labour was different the second time around. Unlike the first time, I knew what to expect, something which both relieved and terrified me. When push came to shove (literally!) I knew to just bare down (literally!) and push through it, that the more focused I was, the sooner it would be over and he would be here. After fifteen hours of labour, the last three fraught with frustration and complications, my body and my baby kicked into action and, like the scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark where the giant boulder comes crashing down with people scrambling to get out of its way, my body and my baby kicked into action and he came barreling down the birth canal. I knew when it was time to push before the doctors told me and push I did - he was out of there in six pushes, arriving at 12:04 a.m. on April 7, 2010.

Unlike when I was pregnant with Chicken, I had not this time had a 3D ultrasound to see what he looked like. When all was said and done, I wanted something to remain a surprise. I think everyone, myself included, assumed that with the generally dominant Asian features, he would look just like his sister. We were all wrong. He looked just like me. Rather, my side of the family - my estranged father and my deceased grandfather to be exact. Oh, the power of genetics!

B2 came into the world obviously unsure of his place in it. My doubts and second guessing had clearly imprinted themselves on him. Contrary to my expectations, I fell in love with him instantly. Completely and totally, head-over-heels in love. He was slow to reciprocate, and understandably so, having literally grown in such an environment of uncertainty. He was sad and sullen, he woke up crying. Never had I seen a grumpier little man. He looked like a grumpy old man whose little shoulders bore the weight of the world on them. We started to call him "Grumpy". My sister put an end to that, chastising me not to stigmatize him with such a negative label. We stopped, I stopped and the difference was instantly palpable. I described it as follows in an email to my sister the following day:

Most important about our conversation last night, and what I took most from it, were your wise words about O. and not stigmatizing him. Your words obviously took affect (sic) and impacted my approach to him because this morning - for the very first time - he woke up and..... just woke up!!!!! No crying, no screaming, no pouting. He just opened his little eyes and looked around. I know in my heart that it was because of my internal shift. So I thank you for that.

The Little Man is now just over ten weeks old. He is starting to sleep through the night and I am starting to emerge from the "newborn fog". There are no remnants of his former unsure, grumpy self. He is a happy, beautiful baby boy who is welcomed, accepted and loved by all, even his older sister who has given him the moniker of "Monkey Bo Bo" or "Bo Bo" (which in Chinese means treasure) for short. My Bo Bo he is as I could not imagine our lives without him.