Love and Fizzling

February is the month of love.  I’ve also found it’s the month of petering out or fizzling on all those lofty plans of the New Year.  Wow.  That was fast!

This month I’ve surely felt the love, from my family and friends and even career.  I’ve had some work – woohoo!  And I’ve also felt the fizzle…diet, blog and hutzpah.

SO, this is my pull yourself up from your bootstraps, get back to it before it’s March and you won’t even notice the impact of fizzling February!  It is easy to forget that each moment is a new opportunity to start.

I will leave you with this “get restarted” quote…

“A year from now you will wish you had started today.” ~ Karen Lamb

Two World’s Collide

So, it happened.  My world’s collided.

Okay, that’s a bit melodramatic, but hey I’m an actress!  For the first time since Junior, I had a live performance planned.  I’d been working hard and was enjoying ‘jumping back in.’  I secured a reliable babysitter well in advance of my show.  I was excited!  ”This is going to work,” I told myself at rehearsal’s.  I CAN be an actress and a mother.

All was going fine, until the week of the show.  Boom – babysitter cancelled, she was really sick and couldn’t do it.

Being far from family and having few friends available for babysitting (many reasons I’ll save for another time), this was not an “oh, well, I’ll find someone else” crisis.  It was an “oh, @#$!, do I need to step out of the show?” crisis!  A week before the performance is not ideal to do such a thing.  So the hard decision was made that my husband would miss my first on stage appearance in more than a year.  Boohoohoo!

We made it work.

 

You’ve Got to Have Friends…

One of the biggest aids in an acting career is good friends.  When you decide to start a family, I’ve found that friendships seem to fall into one of the following categories:

Near and Dearest

These are your bestie’s whom you depend on, love and love you back.  They are warm, supportive forever friends.  They support you as a parent and as an actor.   These are the friends who will bring you In-N-Out at the hospital, the friends that will tell you how great you look when you’ve had no sleep and weigh an extra 20 lbs.  It is my advice to have at least one of these.

Far and Dearest

These are your friends from your hometown or live beyond a car ride.  They know you and love you just the way you are.  You keep in touch mainly by Facebook and emails, they’re either parents themselves or know many parents where they are.  They think you are awesome for pursuing your acting dream and can commiserate as fellow parents.

Baby-Phobes

These are your friends that every time you hang out, complain about their “other friends” who have children.  They make it very clear that children are a distraction/annoyance/sucker-of-fun.  They either do not want to procreate or are unsure.  These are the friends that it is imperative for you to get a babysitter when hanging out, otherwise suffer their passive insults.

Lost Cause

These were the wishy-washy friends from the start.  They bail on plans, never show up at events, and seem disinterested by your new life in general.  They are flakey, seem to be ‘put off’ by your parenthood.  Who has time for this type of person with or without children?

Babe-arazzi

These friends LOVE babies!  They want to talk all baby all of the time.  They want all of the gory details of your pregnancy and birth.  They’ll come by whenever, and offer to babysit every time you chat.  It’s nice having a few of these peas in your pod.

Comrades

These are your fellow mommies.  They are right there with you in the trenches.  They are the ones eager to start a babysit exchange, and plan some playdates.  I have far too few of these friends.  Fellow mommies from all walks of life are a great asset and should be cherished.

Samey McSamerson

These friends are similar to Near and Dear.  They are Switzerland.  They’re even-keeled and very chill about you having a baby.  They are the same, they are a safe place to feel normal.  Yeah.

Divas

These are the actress friends that are secretly hoping that the baby means you leave acting, thus meaning less competition for them.  They are mostly concerned with appearance and constantly ask, “Omg, are you like all stretch marky?”  ”Does the baby like, really need this much attention?”

 

Yes, you’ve got to have friends, they make this path easier and much more colorful.

Headshots Postpartum

I had my first set of headshots post baby, three months afterward.  What was I thinking?

I was thinking “Come on, ActoMom! You’d better get back in the saddle! Go, go, go!”  When really I should have waited, waited, waited.

I mean it was nice having hair & makeup done, and pretty pictures at that time, but it was too soon.  My face was still very full, as I carried and extra 10 lbs (not too shabby), I was distracted and it showed, also I hadn’t slept more than 2 hours in a row in months and that showed.  I realized the pictures weren’t effective marketing tools.  Ho hum.

Take 2:  The point when I was really ready to jump back in to this business, and get serious new shots was a year later.  Now don’t let this scare you, I was able to use older pix before then.  I just kept everything scaled back, as I was so busy with Junior.

Now I have great current pictures.  I was prepared and ready for this shoot.

For me, it would’ve been wiser to acknowledge dipping my toe back into acting did not have to include a photo shoot, until I was ready.

Cheeseburgers & Yoga (Part II)

After Junior arrived, I was surprised by how much your body changes, and by how much is stays the same.

I was lucky to avoid too many stretch marks (they fade), and the extra weight fades too.  The first six weeks I was so consumed by motherhood, I hardly thought about nutrition/fitness for myself.  I remember drinking TONS of water and juice.  Still eating every 2 hours.

I took a similar approach to my diet & fitness as I did in pregnancy:

1. I did not workout at all

2. Eat healthy frequently

Wow.  I really need to start working out again.

Cheeseburgers & Yoga (Part I)

Fitness and nutrition are important for everyone, maybe especially so for actor’s (our body is our instrument), and even more so for pregnant women (our body is a facilitator of life).

When I first found out I was expecting, I planned on being a super-Yoga-Pilates-fitness-pregnant-Barbie.  That lasted exactly two weeks.  For the first two weeks, I kept up a running and weights schedule and tried to eat well.  Then the Overwhelming Tired struck.  I immediately stopped working out at all…for the rest of my pregnancy.  I still worked my day job and went for occasional walks.  That’s it.

I say listen to your body.  I rested, it was happy.

As far as food went during the pregnancy; I gave myself freedom to eat whatever, I trusted that I’m generally healthy and I’d make good choices.  I never “ate for two” and kept my usual serving size.  I’d say I just ate more times throughout the day, like every two hours!

Sometimes I’d want cheeseburgers for lunch everyday for a week, so I just went with it.

Yep, It’s A Life Changer.

 

Having the baby after 10 months of gestation (yes 10), is almost beyond words.  I’ll try…

It’s the most overwhelmingly, amazingly perfect moment of my life.  Period.  A truly wondrous thing happened to this actress concerned about stretch marks and baby weight – it stopped, all at once, being about ME.  Every cell in my body was consumed with this new perfect creature.

All the stars and planets connected and I got it.  I felt like I’d been let in on a huge secret.

I think it makes me a better actress, in that I see a perspective now that I could only guess at before.  I don’t think I feel any more deeply than before, but I feel deeply for different things.  The ache in my gut to tell stories and perform, has moved a bit.  I ache for new things, and actually feel lighter about my career.  That is nice.  I’m just as passionate toward my work, but in a new way.

And now the new work begins…

 

Toddlers & Tiaras…I don’t think so.

Another annoying thing we ActoMom’s have to deal with is people thinking, not just that you’re quitting acting yourself, but also that you’re just dying to become a stage parent.

“SO, are you going to get Junior into the biz?”  Whoa, they’re not even out of the womb yet.  Relax.

Acting has wonderful, joyful aspects, but it’s also one of the most difficult, thankless, frustrating, money-sucking, masochistic careers there are!  Do I want to subject my unborn child to all of this on purpose?  Nah, just me.

I had to come to this career with passion, ambition and hardwork.  I think all worthwhile pursuits should at least start with a strong desire.  I won’t know my child’s desires until they’re about 3-years-old and talking.  And I’m pretty sure they’ll be along the lines of Cheerios and Cookie Monster.

If Junior’s first word is Spielberg, well, then sue me.

So, You’re Quitting?

When some of my actor peers found out that I was with child, I was asked, “So, you’re quitting?”  Hells, no!  Just because I had decided to follow another part of my dream did not mean I was giving up this one.  In fact, I feel even more resolve to pursue acting.  I want to go for my dreams hard, to show little one, who we’ll call Junior, how important that is.

I will say, however, that I have encountered many obstacles along the way and I’m still working it out.

The thing is, of all the actor’s I know, even the ones who have left to pursue other things (sacrilege, oh my!), I know that they’ll always be actor’s.

I have this fantasy that we’re all in this weird brotherhood together.  We’re all in a scene from Fame, backstage stretching, practicing lines, cheering each other on.  No competition or ill will (note fantasy), just support.

I feel like there is room for all of us and our different desires within the same career.

Was I quitting?  No, I don’t think I’ll ever quit being and actor.  Even if I move to Peoria and become a goat farmer.  Wait…do they have goats in Peoria?

Does This Baby Bump Make Me Look Fat?

 

When I was preggers, I was still pursuing my acting career.  I had deluded myself into thinking that I could still book diaper commercials or ‘pregnant best friend’ of tv star.  The reality is that pregnancy isn’t always HD perfect, and most tv/film/comm’s hire normal skinny actresses to play prego, with a pad.

In real life, women’s faces are fuller, arms and legs too. Also, it can be very hard for your bump size to align with what casting is looking for (ex. they need a 6 mos. bump, your’s is 8 mos., etc.)  Hence, even though I was lucky enough to show late, carry small and look pretty good throughout, I only went on a few print auditions while pregnant.

I will say the one caveat to auditioning pregnant is not once did I feel the need to “suck it in” or check the mirror.  Pregnancy brought a sense of body confidence I couldn’t have imagined.  Score!