I got notified at the beginning of the week that my 15-month old daughter’s picture was selected as a Weekly Reader’s Choice Finalist to be on the cover of Parent’s Magazine. I was really excited because it’s an adorable picture. I read in the rules that one of the criteria they are looking for is to see your child’s personality. Well, “the Diva” definitely has that! I submitted a picture of her in a sassy outfit with a hot pink, ruffled, bedazzled skirt and a ruffled black t-shirt that says “My mom rocks” in rhinestones. She’s sticking her tongue out and has a pink bow. Very cute. Well, it turns out that there are lots of weekly finalists, and to see who moves on to the Semi-Finals you have to get everyone you know to vote for your picture daily, for a week. I don’t know 100’s of people, and many of the people I know who WOULD vote are computer illiterate, so they wouldn’t know to enter in the security word that confirms your vote is entered. Therefore, she’s dropped from #37 at the beginning of the week to #222 today. I hate entering contests that become more of a popularity contest than quality (or that allow cheaters who use computer scripts that will vote repeatedly by deleting your computer cookies). Seriously, some of these kids currently in the top 20 have terrible pictures–and I’m not just being mean or jealous. I mean the actual pictures themselves are horrible quality, like they were taken with a grainy cell phone, or the child’s face is blurry, etc. I’ve decided I’m not entering any more contests if I know there is a public vote in the early stages. What a scam. Well, in case I suddenly get crazy amounts of readers, you can vote for my daughter here, and be sure to enter in the security phrase afterwards or the vote doesn’t count. Thank you!   http://photos.parents.com/category/vote/photo/282007

It was time to get the anatomical ultrasound where they check to see if everything looks ok so far, and to see if they can tell the sex of the baby. I definitely wanted to find out what I was having. When I was in college I used to think that IF I were to have kids, I’d want a boy. But now I wanted a girl more. I’m not sure why; I think I could just envision a little girl running around my house more than a little boy. Like most men, my husband seemed to want a boy more. He’s the total “anti-jock,” so it wasn’t about sports or anything. He pictured teaching his little boy how to play guitar, computer stuff, and other random things. But I just FELT like I was carrying a girl and I told him this to prepare him, just in case I was right.

The appointment day came. I was actually pretty nervous about the test because I wanted to make sure everything was ok, so I wasn’t really thinking about the baby’s sex that much.  Plus, I didn’t have too much faith in the results being correct anyway. I have a friend who had multiple ultrasounds and they all told her she was having a girl. So EVERYTHING was pink at her baby shower- bassinet, clothes, quilts, etc. Delivery day came and out came a boy! She was doing returns for months after that. So I went into the ultrasound thinking that if they say “boy,” then I’m having a boy. If they say “girl,” then I’m having a girl or boy. During my ultrasound everything looked good and the baby was in a head-down position, so I was very relieved. After you have a miscarriage and after trying for so long to get pregnant you tend to get a little paranoid about everything. I was like this my whole pregnancy. In fact, I didn’t tell any of my family I was pregnant until I was almost 4 months along, just in case something went wrong. I didn’t tell my job until I was 5 months pregnant (I was barely showing so I got away with it).

Now that the anatomy stuff was out of the way, it was time to find out the baby’s sex. The technician said my baby was in a curled position so she couldn’t get a good view. She kept jiggling my belly around, had me turn to my side, etc. Finally she said, “Girl!”  I looked at my husband and laughed. Could this be my first case of “mother’s intuition?”  Maybe! I asked the tech how sure she was that it was a girl. She explained that there were 3 dots, and that means it’s a girl. I still was hesitant though, so when I told my friends/family that I was having a girl, I told them that I would prefer gender-neutral items because the baby’s position wasn’t ideal. (Did I get neutral items at my shower a few months later? Nope. No one listened and gave me dresses, pinks, etc). When I went to my next doctor’s appointment, they went over the ultrasound results with me in more detail. The doctor said that the ultrasound place recommends a follow up scan in a month because they couldn’t get good pictures of the baby’s heart, due to the baby’s position. I immediately got really nervous, but the doctor told me it’s only because of the position so they just want to double check. Since my insurance was going to cover it, I made the appointment for a month later and tried to relax and focus on the fact that at least I’ll get a 2nd opinion on the baby’s sex!

Live concert Ed Kowalczyk

From that experience, it was around this time that I became aware of the connection that the music I listen to can have on the baby. I was psyched! You always hear about how babies love classical music, instrumental music, soft music, etc., but what about modern rock music? Why does it always have to be Bach over Radiohead? Mozart over Muse? Beethoven over Nine Inch Nails? I do like the classics, but I wanted my baby to hear some drums also! From that point on, I decided I would start exposing the baby to “my” music right away, in utero, instead of waiting until it was born. So at 5 months my husband started to play acoustic guitar and sing to my belly all the time. I would also play acoustic guitar and piano as loudly as I could. I’m no where near as good on guitar as my husband, but I don’t think the baby knows chords yet, so it didn’t matter. Haha. Whenever I was in my car I would turn the radio up very loud so the baby could hear it. And I was still going to concerts. I hardly even looked pregnant and I felt great (none of those horrible pregnancy symptoms yet that women can get), so why not? The only change at shows was I became more aware of my surroundings so that I wasn’t in a place where I could get shoved or squished, and I always carried a bottle of water. Who says you can’t do much while pregnant? Ha!

So how did I go from being Ms. Independent to becoming a mom? Well, at 28 I got married to my long-term boyfriend, who is a musician of course, and people in our circle of friends were beginning to have kids. Also, I’m an only child, and now that my parents are aging, I think I’d be very lonely if my husband died before me. Even though I enjoyed being selfish by doing what I wanted when I wanted, somehow my opinion changed and I started to think that maybe I did want a child or 2, although I guess you can say that my reasons for wanting a kid were selfish also, now that I think about it. I’ll also blame that on being an only child.

As things tend to go in this crazy place we call life, nature had a different plan for me. I did get pregnant soon after “trying,” but had a miscarriage almost immediately after finding out I was pregnant. I was devestated and learned a lot about myself. Specifically, I was shocked about how destraught I was over it for someone who “didn’t really care if she had kids or not.” That experience made me realize that I DID want children, even if it meant I may have to curb my concert road trips a little bit once I had a child. (I was averaging about 30-40 concerts a year.) During that time I went to quite a few shows to help me get some enjoyment back mentally. It’s crazy how songs you’ve known for years suddenly take on new meanings when something powerful happens in your life. Songs that you used to think were about love & loss of some guy/girl you dated, now were about death. The lyric, “how come we hurt the ones we need” got transformed into some kind of song about the body’s natural way of screwing you over by taking what you wanted and putting you into a depression.

I totally respect artists who don’t like to share their own personal meaning of what their songs are about because they don’t want it to take away from someone else’s interpretation of what it means to them. Besides, half the fun of listening to a musician’s mysteriously dark lyrics is trying to figure out what happened to him and what influenced those lines.