I’m almost 7 months pregnant now, and I’m feeling pretty good. My belly is bigger than it was with my 1st daughter at 7 months- I was actually just starting to really show with my first daughter at this point. Because I’m bigger sooner, I’m already getting that wonderful lower back pain you get when you stand too long. It’s not a big deal though. My bigger issue is grasping the fact that I’m going to have a newborn here in January- 2 months. I feel guilty because I haven’t given this baby any of my “mental time,” since I’m so busy chasing around my 20-mth old. With the first I used to rub my belly and talk to her every night, I would play her tons of music on my ipod with the earbuds right on my belly, and my husband would play guitar and sing to my belly. This new baby actually has to remind me that I’m pregnant by kicking me in the middle of the night; otherwise, I forget. Panic is staring to set in though since we haven’t done ANYTHING to prepare for the baby. We have to switch rooms/furniture around, I have to decide which room my older daughter is going to be in, and I wanted to have her switched BEFORE the baby gets here since that will be enough of a change for her. Plus, I have to get her in a twin bed since the new baby is getting her crib. I found a used bed rail, but the bed still looks too tall to be safe for her (she’s not a good climber), so I think I’ll just put the box spring & mattress right on the floor. I’m nervous about how she’s going to adjust to a new bed and possibly new room. I’d love to have the room painted (which is now my husband’s office), but he’s being stubborn and won’t do it. If I wasn’t pregnant I’d paint it myself, but obviously I can’t do that. I don’t mind the color too much- it’s a dark gray-blue, but the walls themselves are in bad shape since you can see spackle marks and uneven bumps in the wall from when we first painted the room 5 years ago and had no clue what we’re doing. Oh well. We want to move a few months after the baby is here anyway.

As for music, my daughter LOVES it. Whenever I bring her to those free baby/toddler classes at the library, she dances and runs around the room like crazy whenever they sing or play music. As for my kind of music, my friend is attempting to get our favorite musician ever to play at my house- 2 weeks before my due date. Haha. The date is crazy, but it’s the only one that works out for us. The musician told her that he’ll play a private show for her since she helped him out on the past few tours, so she’s going to see if he can play at my house right after Christmas. The reason she wants my house is because she now lives out of state, and around Christmas she’ll be back in Jersey, and so will our other friend who’s a big fan and who also moved out of state. Plus, I can’t go too far in case I go into labor, so this was our idea. I don’t want to say who the artist is, just in case it doesn’t work out— or just in case it DOES work out and I’ll have strangers lined up at my house to see him. Haha. I’m not getting my hopes up, but it would be a REALLY cool thing to experience. Plus, my husband is dying to jam with him. If it actually happened, can you imagine how him coming to my house, along with my Nesting instinct (cleaning) from the new baby will make me a CRAZY woman? I won’t even want to be around myself! haha.

I’m 15 weeks along in my pregnancy now. I’m feeling good: no more nausea and not too tired. I do get shortness of breath sometimes, but it’s dealable. I’m still stuck with the current house, but I think I’m close to talking my husband into moving his big office to the smallest bedroom in the house, so that I can move my daughter into that room, and the future baby will go into my daughter’s current room. We’ll still be seriously short on closet space, but oh well. It could be a lot worse.

Lately, I’ve been wondering how exactly I’m going to manage a newborn with a 23-month old running around. Specifically, nursing. I know with “the Diva,” she nursed for like 45 minutes in the beginning, and then I had to start all over in 30-45 minutes. I was a constant feeding machine. How am I going to run around and chase my daughter and make sure she’s not getting into trouble while trying to nurse the newborn? I’m also trying to figure out the “gear” now. I think I’m going to use my daughter’s current crib for the baby (after a few months in a bassinet), and then I’ll have to move my daughter into a twin bed with rails. I didn’t want to do it at 23 months, but it just makes the most sense. And then potty training will probably have to start around then also. I really hate having all these changes for my daughter at once: new baby, new room, new bed, potty training. I worry that she’s going to feel like she was kicked out into the cold. She has sooo much attention from me now, and she’s definitely a “mama’s girl.”

As for music, my daughter LOVES it. She dances and claps whenever she hears music. Today I was playing a dvd of Jimmy Gnecco’s video “Mystery,” on the computer and she noticed and started swaying back and forth. Speaking of Jimmy/Ours, his new record label, Bright Antenna, has been streaming chat sessions with Jimmy, and they’re awesome! In fact, right now I’m watching a live concert of him playing at the Brooklyn Bowl show. I’m really loving the things this small label has been doing for him. It’s really a shame that the large labels he was with in the past didn’t give him the advertising or backing that he’s worth. At least he’s doing everything on his own terms now. And I mean everything- vocals, guitar, bass, drums, keyboard, producing, etc. I’m loving his solo album, “The Heart.” A big portion of the album was dedicated and/or influenced by the passing of his mom from lung cancer last year. I think the reason the album hits me so hard is because my dad was going through lung cancer the same time as his mom was, and they both died in November 2009. In a live recording from a past show, he talks about the meaning of the song “Bring You Home,” and how part of it is about putting his mom in the hospital even though she didn’t want to go. And how he wish he could bring her home, regardless of what the right thing to do is. I understand that struggle 100%. Before my dad was home on hospice, he was in a rehabilitation center for 2 or 3 months where nurses cared for him and tried to get him up and walking because he was so weak from cancer. He hated it there and once said to my mom, “I’m gonna die here aren’t I? They’re never gonna let me go home.” That was so hard to here. So whenever I hear Jimmy’s song, it hits a note. A deep, harmonic minor note.

Lately I’ve been going through major music/concert withdrawal. One of my best friends who moved away temporarily, will be going to a Jimmy Gnecco show next week in Austin, Texas and I wish I was with her. I’m dying for some live Jimmy right now. I’ve read his most recent diary post on his website (www.jimmygnecco.com) and he said he’s been dealing with a lot of stuff recently, and listed one of those items as his mom passing away. I knew about it already, but him saying it out loud made me think of how I’ve been really thinking about my dad a lot lately also. I really wish he could have seen my daughter (”The Diva”) crawl, cruise, & babble away like she does now. Both my dad and Jimmy’s mom died from lung cancer in November 2009. He did a benefit show awhile back to raise money for her health bills, and at a show before that, we talked a little about dealing with seeing our parents with cancer, and how much is sucks. Anyway, all that makes me feel closer to his music right now, so I’ve been listening to a lot of his solo music and Ours. I also have been addicted to a song from Lukas Rossi’s “Unreleased Demos” album, “Wherever You’re Going.” That song hits me like a brick wall and feels like he wrote it through my eyes, or hand rather. It deals with cancer, so don’t listen to it unless you want to bawl or are into that sort of thing. I’m drawn to dark, depressing stuff, so I love it. I’d love to know who inspired that song for him.

I can’t believe my daughter is already 13 months old. Craziness. At 12 months she started cruising, and can now walk “along the wall” by pressing up against it, kind of like a cop in a movie who goes outside the window of a 20-story building to try and talk a “jumper” out of jumping. You know how he presses against the wall for dear life? Yeah, that’s what she does. As for feeding, I was nursing her 3x a day, and planned to stop breastfeeding when she turned 12 months, but we’re a little delayed, which is fine. The trouble was that she would not drink cow’s milk. She spit it out and refused to open her mouth for the cup. Finally this week, after a suggestion from a friend, I mixed in some yogurt or Gerber Yogurt-Juice with the whole milk and now she drinks it. I’m thrilled because I was able to cut out her mid-day nursing and replace it with cow’s milk. So now I just nurse her when she wakes up, and right before bed. I hear these last 2 can be a pain to wean children from, so we’ll see how that goes. Once she’s off of breast milk/nursing for good, I can’t wait to drop her off at her grandma’s house to spend the night! Haha..does that sound horrible? I can’t imagine being able to sleep in, but it sounds wonderful. Today I was playing the piano and she cruised right over and started hitting the keys, so I put her on my lap and we played together. She lasted a good 5 minutes before she kept trying to tear down my sheet music. Oh well. She has a longer attention span for guitar. She loves to pluck the strings and she hasn’t broke any yet, so that’s a plus. I still think she’ll wind up a drummer though. It’s always hard to find a drummer, so we’d be thrilled.

Once things finally started to slow down a little bit and my baby was actually taking a few naps, I had time to reflect on what was going on around me and in my life. My daughter was almost 7 months old already, I became a stay-at-home mom when she was born, and my past life was history. And I missed it. I had a B.A. and was very successful in college, I finally had a career going at a great company, and I was a concert loving girl who would go out and party with friends at shows throughout most of the North East part of the country…and Ohio once. (I once road-tripped from NJ to Cleveland to see a Live concert, and went back to NJ that same night because I had to go to a housewarming party by 4pm the next day.) I loved the adrenaline I would get from live rock shows and the feeling of truly living life and having fun. Now, I haven’t been to a show since I was around 8 months pregnant, and I miss it. Instead, I sneak in a few moments on the computer where I can catch someone’s YouTube video of clips of a show here and there. I try to pretend I’m there, but it doesn’t really work–especially when my baby starts crying to let me know she’s up from her nap. And -SNAP- back to reality I come. I do love and appreciate my new life, and I’ve also accepted it. It’s just every now and then I’ll hear something about a band or artist I love and then it makes me wish I could just go to a show. The reason I can’t is because I’m breastfeeding so I’m literally connected on a chain to my daughter who wants to eat like every 3 hours. I could pump a few days before and leave a bottle for my husband, but I am not bringing a breast pump to a show for when I get “full” from missing a feeding. I don’t think so. Can you picture me going to a show at Maxwells in Hoboken, NJ or the North Star Bar in Philly and trying to use their single-person bathroom for 20 minutes trying to pump? Oh and then carrying around a bag of breast milk during the show? Now that’s classy. haha. Plus, my husband would freak out if I left him with “the Diva” for that long, and unfortunately no one we know would babysit and stay overnight for it.

Since I can’t go to shows for the time being, I fill that void by singing to my daughter the songs I’d like to hear at a show again. Of course I don’t do them justice, but she doesn’t know that. She laughs and “sings” along with her deep sounding, off-key “ahhhhhhhh.” She always does that every time my husband or I sing. Our little harmonizer. As for milestones, she’s finally starting to sit up on her own a little bit, but we have to do the pillow thing where there’s a sea of pillows 360 degrees around her, for when she falls back or does a face plant. She is no where near crawling yet, but I read that only 50% of babies can crawl at 6 months and by 11 months 90% of babies can crawl, if they do at all. She’s a really big baby (95th percentile in height & weight) so I think she needs a lot more muscle to carry around all that extra weight. The one issue I can’t seem to find a solution for is her eczema and cradle cap. The eczema is really bad behind her knees and it looks painful and red, but the doctor says it’s not bad enough to give her medicine for it yet and to continue using the Eucerin Aquaphor ointment. As for the cradle cap, I keep putting the Aquaphor on her head, combing out the flakes, and washing her hair with gentle shampoo, but it’s still there. I’d love some suggestions if anyone knows of how to combat the cradle cap. I thought cradle cap was only a newborn baby issue, but apparently not since my daughter is just about 7 months old.

To think that about 9 months ago I was at an Ours show dancing and rocking out to “Live Again” and now I’m talking about combing out cradle cap flakes. Times do change, huh?

We didn’t waste any time introducing our daughter to live music. On her 2ndday home from the hospital, my husband treated her to her first living room concert, which consisted of him playing acoustic guitar and singing, with me harmonizing. He played a variety of alternative rock covers and a few originals, and I think it was the most captive audience he ever had. While in her bouncy seat, she didn’t take her little eyes off of him or the guitar. She seemed to enjoy the show, which for an infant basically meant that she didn’t cry. Haha. That evening I played her cds which included some of the same songs I used to play her on my mp3 player when she was in my belly. I figured it would be calming to her since it would be something familiar. Yes, who knew that Nine Inch Nails could be associated with calming a baby.  “The Frail” off of “The Fragile” album, anyone?

Over the next few weeks, my husband continued to perform little concerts for our daughter and she actually seemed to develop preferences. Besides liking the songs she was familiar with from hearing them in utero, she liked Guns N Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine,” which is kind of funny because I hate that song. I have no respect for Axl Rose or his behavior, I don’t like his voice, his dancing, or his songs. So it’s a little amusing, and annoying, that my “musically groomed” child not only likes “Sweet Child of Mine”, but also “Patience,” and”November Rain” by GNR. My husband likes those songs, so he continues to play them for her. I think the only reason she likes “Sweet Child of Mine” is because of the guitar intro in the song. I guess it kind of resembles the sound of a nursery lullaby. Speaking of lullabies, she absolutely LOVES the song “Meet Me in the Tower,” off the album “Distorted Lullabies,” by the band Ours. Because of that, I haven’t lost faith that she will develop a good taste in music, like her mom. In a future blog post I’ll explain more in how that song saved my sanity for the first 3 months of her life.

The outcome of having two musical parents is that they tend to write a lot of songs about their life, which includes their children. So my daughter already has about 5 songs about her. But they aren’t real songs. They are jingles. Really corny, kid-friendly jingles. The kind that you don’t really want other people to hear you sing, but you know that it makes your child smile or laugh, so you sing them anyway.  I’ll embarrass myself by singing to her in public about her belly button or her Love Bug toy just to get a squeal. Maybe the true test of being a parent is being willing to make a fool out of yourself to make your baby happy. If so, I passed with flying colors.

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!

It was time for my appointment at the fertility specialist to see what they could do about my blocked fallopian tubes. I was nervous, but excited because I read a lot about this specialist and how he does non-surgical clearing of the tubes. Plus, I was going to a concert in Hoboken that night, so I was feeling pretty good. At the appointment they did more tests, blood work, ultrasounds, and he said that when my time of the month came (which was due in a week), I had to come in to get another Hysterosalpingogram (HSG). As I was leaving he said I was sitting in the “lucky chair,” aka the pregnancy chair, so that made me smile. I went to the concert that night and felt awesome. I had good vibes about this doctor, the vocals at the show were amazing, and I had my two best friends with me which put me in even a better mood.

And then the waiting game began. Why is it that when you’re trying to get pregnant you always hope that your time of the month never comes, and when you’re anxiously awaiting for it to come, it takes its sweet old time? I was hoping for it to show up quickly because I wanted to get this HSG and start the process of fixing me. (If this were a movie, I’d totally put in Coldplay’s “Fix You” right here.) I was now 2 weeks overdue, but that didn’t concern me because for the past year my cycle was totally messed up. You see, from using ovulation tests the past 6 months, I discovered that I ovulate late (around Day 20 instead of Day 14) and I even totally skipped a period 2 months before this time.  So I’m thinking, “Great..I’m anxious to try to get pregnant, and my cycle decides to skip another month NOW. Right when I’m trying to get this HSG done. Just wonderful.”  Some of my coworkers were planning on going out for Happy Hour one Friday after work, and I couldn’t wait to go and get hammered because I was so stressed from all the stuff going on. That Friday morning when I was getting ready for work, I thought that since I was planning on drinking a lot, maybe I’ll just take a quick pregnancy test so that I didn’t feel the slightest bit hesitant or guilty for getting wasted (nice, right?). Besides, I had plenty of tests laying around, so I might as well waste one for peace of mind.  So I took the test, jumped into the shower, totally forgot about the test (this happens when you’re used to taking tests just about every month for almost a year), got dressed, and then remembered about the test. I glanced at the test quickly, about to throw it out, and literally gasped out loud, because it was positive!  What the??? I remember thinking HOW is this possible?? I have TWO blocked fallopian tubes!! I was excited and happy, yet also doubtful and wary because the last time I had a positive test telling me I was pregnant, I soon had a miscarriage.

A week later, the specialist confirmed I was pregnant and everything looked good, and said that I could go back to my regular OBGYN because I didn’t need him since he didn’t do anything. I had later found out that the HSG itself can sometimes clear blockages, even if it doesn’t clear during the procedure. I guess for me the tubes cleared a few days later on their own. Or I like to think it was a combo of the HSG, my massages, my music, and my positive thinking. I was ecstatic to find out that I really was pregnant, and one of my first thoughts was how my unborn baby already went to its first concert, even if it was only 3 weeks old at the time.  Hey, they say you’re never too young for music.

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.

I’m a 31 year old married woman who recently became a mom. When I was in my early 20’s I swore that I never wanted to have kids, even though I was dating my current husband and knew I would marry him. I was going to be that hot, young career woman who is independent and self-sufficient, and would spend my free time doing what I love most: going to concerts. Music is not just an interest of mine–it’s a passion. Specifically, I love alternative rock music, if that term is even still around. Whereas most people leave a show feeling pretty happy that they got their money’s worth and start thinking about their drive home, traffic, work the next day…I feel a great sense of sadness, even if the show was amazing. It’s a feeling of loss because what I love most has now ended. For those 2 hours or so it’s like I’m put in a different world and become part of something huge, and everyone in the crowd is along for the ride with me. Being a Scorpio, when I find something I like I become very loyal to it (ahem-obsessed), and that goes for bands also. No, I’m not a groupie, but people like to call me that when they want to annoy me. I guess you can say I’ve formed a few acquaintances with some of the musicians I admire, but that’s it, and that’s how it’s gonna stay. It’s honestly all about the music and nothing else. People who aren’t music lovers can’t understand that. I could do a whole separate blog about my experiences backstage, but for now I’m going to try to focus more on how the music and bands I love have influenced my pregnancy and my daughter, who is now 3 months old.