Oops, overdid

Yesterday I had to call the hospital because I was stupid.

Carl was supposed to be driving down to Toronto last night, although as it turned out he ended up working until 2 am and wisely decided not to then get on the road. So it was a good chance to send a few things down Toronto-wards and I started to pack a couple of boxes, mostly books. (Despite my best efforts, our books have multiplied since we got here - mostly Carl is to blame but I have contributed, as did Christmas.) I thought I was being careful, taking only a few books off the shelves at a time but the last batch on the bottom shelf I grabbed what was left and moved kinda fast.

Ow! Abdominal pain! I was pretty sure it was nothing serious - witch baby was moving, no blood, etc. etc., but eventually the anxiety overcame reasonableness and I called and said "I think I just need reassurance," got a long list of things to check out, and ended up with a list of warning signs and an okay. And a scolding, in a nice way.

Moving into our house isn't going to be any fun, is it? Well, some fun. But not the usual fun!

I'm really bad at this light activity stuff.

~~~

From babycenter.com (27 weeks): Your baby now weighs a little under 2 pounds and measures about 14 inches, from head to heel. The nerve pathways in her ears are developing, which means her response to sounds is growing more consistent. Her lungs are developing now, too, as she continues to take small breaths of amniotic fluid — good practice for when she's born and takes that first breath of air. If you're having a boy, his testicles are beginning to descend into his scrotum — a trip that will take about two to three days.

After the next couple of weeks we'll be in the "if born prematurely could survive" territory. We may actually already be there, although I know from my aunt that despite all the wonderful survival tales of 27 weeks on, there are a number you don't hear about (kind of like that 98 in 100 births stat no one clues you in about). I don't know whether to feel glad - I mean of course it's a good thing! Yay survival! - or petrified.

Up until now when I've wondered if the baby is moving enough, I've also kind of known that it might not really matter. But from here on in, if there were a problem and I caught it early, there would be options. (Ow. The baby just kicked me hard.) So monitoring gets important. I'm thinking again of renting a doppler.

~~

Compliment of the day: one of the apartment staff said to me in the hall today: "you're doing so well! You look perfect! Some people gain so much." A part of me winced, because, well, a) it hasn't been my doing and in fact I needed to gain more! and b) I need to walk more and most importantly c) how much weight someone gains is not all that completely relevant if what she meant is "you're not a big porker" - like at any weight, someone can be heavy and healthy or a QUOTE UNQUOTE normal weight and really unhealthy.

But it was still a nice compliment. I'll take it. She obviously has kids, because most people don't think to compliment pregnant women on their slender build. :-)

Words to likely regret

This article on Salon really annoyed and bothered me. (You have to watch an ad to read the full text for free.) It's written by the parent of a 2 year old who's been expelled from preschool for biting - what sounds like fairly disturbed biting to me... and although my experience with two year olds is mainly confined to babysitting, so what do I really know about it, I did work in special ed and witnessed the disturbed older kids.

It's a bit unclear what the actual point of the article is (it quotes some stats on preschool expulsions without really framing the context), except that he and his wife have no money and are completely stressed out at the prospect of having to care for their two year old over the summer. They both work from home, which he says makes it harder - she paints in the garage; he writes in the living room.

I don't mean just "oh boy this will be stressful." Some quotes:

Even if we hired an inexperienced nanny on the cheap, the kid would still be underfoot most of the day, screeching....

On the drive home, Regina and I could barely keep from weeping. Our respective families were 1,000 miles away in either direction. We were terrified at the prospect of a summer without help....

"I feel like a bad mother!" she said. "I don't want to spend all summer with him! He's difficult! He's a difficult child! He wants too much from me. And you're going to go crazy if he's around all the time. Our marriage always suffers when he's home!"

Now I pretty much believe that we too will experience these moments of feeling - I guess imposed on is the phrase. But it's hard, at this stage, to imagine feeling like there is no possible way for Carl and I to care for our kid. I think I would see it the other way: oh boy how are we going to sort out our work-at-home shifts so that we can work while we parent our kid.

Because resenting your kid, while some of that is inevitable and okay, is not a good atmosphere in which to raise him or her. When you decide to have a child, that's what you're committing to for 18 years - not just the good stuff, but the bad stuff. It doesn't mean you don't look for help and support; it means you look for those things because everyone in the family needs them. But if for some reason it's not there for a while - you've got to step in. What's more, I believe you have to step in as generously as is humanly possible. That's what love is in those moments.

Being a parent to a child who's dead involves a lot of idealizing in some ways. Emily never screamed or shouted that she hated us or bit anyone or refused to go to bed, which makes her rather angelic in my imagination - I might imagine taking her to baby & me workouts, but I rarely imagine her making my life hard.

Although we spent two days realizing that if she lived our lives would never, ever be anything approaching normal again - they would revolve around bed sores and seizures and feeding tubes and wheelchairs - we never lived that reality. We just faced it down theoretically, standing over tubes and ventilators and watching the monitor show seizures going on in Emily's brain but not getting as far as her body. The shock and horror of being told that's what life would be like was awful, but it was nothing like the awfulness of thinking how it would be for Emily. The kind of fear that Carl and I had (or at least in his case that he expressed to me) was that we wouldn't be able to provide for her, not that this would wreck our lives. Of course it would wreck my career and Carl's career and our finances. Comparatively that was a small thing.

In theory, but also - oh, I don't know. I believe and feel right down to the bottom of me that I would trade it all in for her to be back, provided that her quality of life wasn't "pain is about all she will experience." It was one of those moments where you just experience something that is bigger than all that. There just wasn't any question. If it meant going on welfare and never sleeping a whole night again, so be it.

It might not have stayed that way - in fact I'm sure on a daily basis we would have gone through a lot of awful thoughts and stuff. In fact I'm sure I'd have a blog about it now with the ups and downs and there would be plenty of downs. But I hope that we would have held onto - I hope we do hold onto, in parenting our next child - that appreciating and loving your child simply as they are, alive, screaming, wounded, difficult - is where it's at. Doesn't mean you want to be interrupted while you're on the phone. But you can treat it like "this is a problem" rather than "you are the problem."

And this article heavily read like "my child is the problem."

It may be unfair to say that these people have no fucking idea what a real problem is.

But, these people have no fucking idea what a real problem is. And they need to grow up.

So bring him home, work when he's sleeping, take turns walking him to the park so the other person can work (and get the working person earplugs), give up television and your social life for the summer, and figure out why he's biting and how to socialize him. And love him. And put that in your article, too. Because it was really missing, and that makes me scared for your kid.

And the finalists are...

We always reserve the right to change our minds but our finalists for names are:

Boy: Noah Benjamin (comfort, son of the right hand)
Girl: Amy Alexandra (beloved, defender of mankind)

Now that was a hard day's work!

Nightmares

I had a dream last night that we had a baby girl (! both Carl and I have referred to the baby as "she" lately by accident, although we are both aware this may be habit). She didn't cry, ever, and I was for some reason obsessed with getting proper snack food (homemade trail mix bars, etc.) made. Then I put her in a knapsack - not a baby one, a regular one - and took her out. Only at that point, in my dream, did I realize she hadn't been changed in a very long time. So I went to a drugstore and bought changing supplies and went to change her in the washroom.

And she was limp, like Emily was the night we changed her, and pale and grey-tinged, the way Emily was becoming. Essentially she was dying of neglect. I woke up feeling horrible. Obviously that would never happen, but it tied into that helplessness that we had at the hospital, unable to protect Emily from anything, and all the viceral memories were right there at the surface. I'm not sure there's nothing worse than watching your baby die in front of you and knowing the only thing you can do is call in the team to hook her up to machines for the rest of her life, but it certainly ranks up there.

And witch baby wasn't moving. But I got up and went to the bathroom and chatted until witch baby did. Phew.

I remember having dreams during Emily's pregnancy that were, if not quite so graphic, similar - I lost the baby, I left the baby - and I do think they actually serve a purpose. Like, an evolutionary one, where the human brain gets involved in the need to care for the underdeveloped human baby, sort of marshalling the resources of the subconscious. But with Emily when I woke up I could sort of dismiss them more easily - I can dismiss the idea that we would ever do anything like that dream, but I can't dismiss that things happen to babies to make them that way.

I see why my ob nurse said the third trimester might be the hardest.

Dear witch baby

I love how you wriggle and squirm at the sound of my voice. In the night I woke up and you weren't moving and I went into the bathroom and talked to you and you kicked me right away. You've turned another way again, though, and some of those kicks are landing in the vicinity of my cervix, and that hurts. But not as much as labour, I now know, so I'll deal.

Keep moving and squirming and growing, okay? And rest too.

Love, mummy.
P.S. That weird occasional movement around you is called a Braxton-Hicks contraction. It's just basically the uterus working out for later stuff. If you're a girl, you may choose to get pregnant (hopefully all your bits will be okay) and then you'll know all about them; probably like me you will start to mistake them for labour as they get worse, until you really have labour and then you realize there's a huge difference between lifting a weight, and dropping it on your foot. If you're a boy you'll learn that "Braxton-Hicks" means "no I don't have to get my partner to the hospital yet."

~~

I'm achy and sore today, which I think is related to sleeping in one position for so long that I stiff when I woke up to my bladder's super-urgent wail, but could also be related to the crummy chair I sit in to type in the apartment, or to general weather, which is damp and rainy. My hip in particular is not grumbly and I'm really regretting that I didn't pursue that before I got knocked up again, although when I'm not knocked up it's not so bad.

I also got on the scale and although our scale here is somewhat crummy, I think the lack of weight gain is over - in fact I think I've gained 4-5 lbs in 3 weeks, which is a bit err - fast. (I also think you can see it in my face, this gain... sigh.)

But it's good. The nutritionist couldn't see any obvious reason I wasn't gaining weight so I think it really was the 'flu that caused issues, and maybe not quite hitting the caloric highs we should be. (She suggested a bit more protein, which I added in. I secretly thought that was overkill, but you know, despite food obsessions and reading nutritional stuff at work and at home, I am so not a pre-natal nutrition expert.)

I can slow down now - I've been eating *quite* a lot, really almost 4 meals a day, plus dessert at least once a day (okay, not the recommended way to gain weight but, you know, I am weak - someone says 'gain weight' and my first thought is gelato!) - enough that I haven't really wanted to create a permanent record anywhere 'cause it just looked ew, and I think if I just get back to normal we'll have clear sailing. Go us.

Emotionally I feel a little strange today. In working on my novel I had a spike of irrational jealousy that my character's daughter is still alive and okay, something I hadn't felt since oh, last May or so when I was working on it for the first time since Emily died. So I tried thinking "well, that will never change for Emily, but soon there will be witch baby to hold and watch grow." But no, I don't really believe that. I feel increasingly connected to witch baby, but only as long as s/he is inside me.

I guess that makes sense, given the history. But it's weird. I also wonder if it will change once we get past the magic 30-32 week span. Probably not.

Support

My sister and I were talking about her recent move to the US. She has an excellent job with great benefits. And yet if she were having a baby, her maximum maternity leave - without risking her job - is 12 weeks, some of that without pay, unless she has a c-section or something. That was a bit of a surprise to her.

When I go on maternity leave I'll get 55% of my salary (to a max of $413/week) for 15 weeks. That's maternity leave, and every woman in Canada who is Employment Insurance eligible (basically, who works for someone else) is eligible.

(I think the idea behind this being a mother-only thing is that it's for recovery and also probably is politically motivated somewhat around breastfeeding. As I may have mentioned a few times, breastfeeding is a political issue around here - there are posters in the subway promoting it. )
Sounds nice, but that's just the start.

Then there are 35 weeks of parental leave. Either my husband or I can claim parental leave, or we can split it. So as long as we could live on the premiums (that max of $413/week), we could both be home for a while, or alternate, or one of us can take the whole time. This leave is also available to adoptive parents.

During this time, as long as my company doesn't go out of business, my job is required to be held for me. (One reason employers grudgingly like the year-long maternity/parental leave is that they can offer a one-year contract to someone else, which is long enough to be worth the effort. It's also a keen way for someone to get experience, being willing to take a one-year maternity leave contract.)

While I'm home (in our case I will be taking the 50 weeks, unless something happens to change our plan) I will most likely be taking my kid to the Early Years Centre, which is a province of Ontario thing. These centres are set up pretty much all over, and they have different things but they are all along the lines of: parenting classes, toy lending library, drop-in playroom times, art and music and movement classes for toddlers, etc. The one closest to our new house offers a lot of classes in Tamil, which isn't useful to me but I think is kind of cool. As far as I know, all the programmes are free. The idea is to give frazzled parents somewhere to go.

Also, having the baby will cost me about $100. The rest is covered by OHIP. This is for a phone line in our room, and we are supposed to supply the diapers and pads and those kinds of things ourselves (although we didn't, with Emily; she was in NICU diapers all the way, including the one we changed, that last night). I'll have breastfeeding clinics available for free, drop in any time.

Day care - not so great yet. Right now it's provincial and although Quebec offers $6/day daycare to all - yes all, at least that's my understanding - parents in the province, Ontario only has subsidies for people who are below a certain level of income - which, if you have to make a choice between funding some or none, seems like a good way to go to me. A federal programme is coming along though. It won't be $6/day, that's for sure, but it may be an improvement. (For what things are like currently - one of the people from whom we bought the house said that her kids are in a daycare she really likes at the local school and it's $155/week for a 2 year old. I've heard of prices up to $300.)

I pay high taxes all right, and no system is perfect, but I am kind of glad not to be having to make the decision about *no* income and *no* path back to a job at this point. Makes me glad to be having this kid on this side of the border.

Gifts, child to mother

I need a girl's name that means "wriggly squirmy kicker" to suit this baby, since we still have not agreed on any girl-baby names.

I think s/he's positioned head up with his/her spine more or less aligned with mine, and that's why we can actually see her kicks (knees?) come up through my abdomen and occasionally connect with something like - oh, the edge of the table. Ow. But also I continue to be really reassured by all the activity. It's nice.

It's especially nice because I had a dream last night where I was putting on sweaters and in the dream I wasn't pregnant, and I woke up panicked that something bad was going on. Well. It wasn't just that. In my dream I was putting on my sweater and watching in the mirror as Emily, at about the age she would be, was playing at my feet and I didn't want to turn around because she wouldn't be there.

And -then- I woke up panicked.

When I was about 16 I did a CPR certification class with my mum. When she saw the demonstration of the baby CPR, she went white and got the shakes - after the class she told me that she realized only just then that my sister (who at that point was 11 yrs old) had been revived that way after delivery. At the time I thought she was just nuts, but I have sympathy now - that would create a flashback to that moment for sure.

Every time I wake up in the early morning with a spike of anxiety, I remember waking up with that first painful contraction. I never had an early labour with Emily: I went straight to cervix-opening contractions. I'm starting to wonder what it will be like this time. I don't know yet - won't know, since it depends a lot on baby-growth - if we'll go for an induction at 38 weeks or not.

Sometimes I worry if the last one went so fast, that I'll end up giving birth at the side of the road. But frankly, that worries me less in some ways than that we'll get stuck again. We. Me and the baby. It's a two-person process, labour.

I like the idea of getting this baby out safe, but I am generally a little suspicious of induction. My body has its own wisdom and overriding it seems like a bad idea, especially hormonally. It's so complex, birth - the baby has to get head down, drop down, and rotate; the cervix has to thin out and dilate.

On the other hand the natural way didn't work out so well last time. My nurse said that although there's nothing scientific to back it up, she herself has seen a lot of times that when the labour's gone really quickly it's been because there was a problem. Enough that she might slap extra monitors on anyone who came in 7 cm dialated after 2 hours from the first contraction. So that makes me wonder too.

Yes, it's the endless labour worries. I should worry about sufficient calcium and exercise and circulation and gestational diabetes. And packing and moving and painting and everything!

Anyways, after I woke up panicked and then crying, this baby kicked me good, and when I exposed my belly to the daylight, the baby started the morning dance, kick kick kick all in big motions. So I ended up laughing and singing along with with radio.

That's a gift from my child to me, already.

Carl's getting another cold and I hope he doesn't give it to me. He's really run down from the crazy work schedule. There's a wee little worry for me. :)

Shandra

Alien!

This morning the baby was positioned so that all the kicking and stretching was going on right at the front, across my belly. (Witch baby celebrates each morning with about an hour of activity; as soon as voices and light start happening, whee, it's playtime. It's a very reassuring way to start each day.)

It may be that this kid has more room, or position, or it may be that my abs are more shot, but it was amazing how visible the moves were, at 25 weeks. My whole belly was rippling and jumping and at one point both Carl and I could see a knee or a foot or something, sticking right out.

Spooky. I also noticed my stretchmarks have stretchmarks. Ah well, I wasn't planning to wear a bikini ever again.

It's funny how babies seem to come with personalities so early, even in the womb. I know intellectually that how much a baby moves inside doesn't relate to how s/he will be on the outside, but *despite* that I still end up thinking things like "oh this baby seems pretty sensitive to light and sound, how will we make it cosy for him/her?" or "wow this kid is a bugger" when I get kicked incessantly for 2 hours between 9 and 11 and it's bothering me.

And I'm glad this baby's so active because it reassures me constantly that things are okay in there, at least as okay as anyone can tell from out here. So I admit to thinking from time to time "phew, thank you."

(We definitely need a bouncy chair. We hadn't gotten one yet, at least I don't remember that we had one. And/or maybe a swing. We'll see.)

The hard part though is that I miss Emily. I suppose I'm glad I am, too. But her movements were so different: swoopy rolls, different patterns. And oddly I project a personality onto her from that too, a sleepy, quiet baby. Well that may be because she was, her poor body wrecked and drugged out. (oooooh that makes me lose it) Except the ventilator: she fought that thing enough that alarms went off all the time, because she wanted to breath her own breaths.

I accept, at times, that this missing piece will always be there. But each little nuance of it comes as a surprise.

Our families are interesting too: they are all holding back preparations for this baby. No one really wants to invest their heart completely, until things are okay. I understand that, but it is a big difference. A more muted celebration for now: I suspect things will burst out all over later. I hope so.

Conversations

Me: This kid is like a future soccer star! I don't remember Emily kicking this hard.
Carl: Me either
Me: ... but you aren't feeling it.
Carl: I felt it last night for quite a while - you were up against me and I could feel it against my butt.
Me: Oh - yeah and with Emily you had to pay attention if you wanted to feel it on the outside, see.
System kid: HA! Our baby kicked your ass already! *much giggling and variations on butt-kicking*

:-)

Aww

My therapist wrote me back.

On her holiday.

From the airport.

In Rome.

Warm therapy fuzzies. Which is maybe a bit silly but... I almost never email her and I guess she caught the note of aaaauuuggghh in it.

Still, in my defense as a sane person, I didn't think she would be checking it until she got back!!

Shandra

What does your magic crystal ball say?

I actually emailed the question in the title to my therapist today, which goes to show what a rough day it is 'cause a) I don't email her much except to coordinate appointments during this crazy bi-urban time and b) I really actually emotionally sort of want her to be able to say.

The issue at hand is seeing the psychiatrist (Dr. Y.) on June 7. When I first set up this plan with my nurse and ob I was all about the birth-plan-team-yay-go-team aspects of it. But after some thought and perhaps more to the point dealing with Dr. Y's office, which is a very bureaucratic sounding place, now I've gotten into the headspace of the closeted multiple. Which I'm not, really - my parents are not informed but most everyone else in my life is about whom I care, including my boss.

Still I don't want my hospital file red-flagged with Dissociative all over it, because I am prejudiced beyond all get-out. First of all, psychiatry was a threat held over pretty well all of us as children by various people - as explicitly as "if you ever told anyone that, they would /know/ you are crazy and lock you up!" And frankly, that is true enough in my experience, that kids who act out often (or were often, when we were growing up) end up drugged and in restraints.

And even in my adult brain, I believe that many (no, not all, but many) psychiatrists became doctors because they like labels (diagnoses) and pills and solutions more than listening and questioning. Otherwise they would have become something else entirely.

Now in this context - sort of pregnancy loss/difficulty/infertility, which is what this floor specializes in - there are some mitigating factors, like they probably deal with grief a lot and there isn't really a grief pill, etc. etc. But the fear switch has been flipped and I am questioning how to handle this and even if we should handle it. My fear, at the root, is that we will get a red flag all over our file - crazy person - and then we won't be listened to or respected or something like that.

(For those of you who read this blog who aren't multiple, suffice it to say that most people (maybe you) who hear that, even within the therapeutic industry never mind just your garden-variety obstetrician, tend to liken it to someone saying "oh and I'm concerned about my prior alien abduction and the reptilian child I bore at that time, too." It can bring everything else to a halt.)

I had some of the same concerns going into our first delivery. It was a big question with our obstetrician - do we disclose our history of childhood sexual abuse, and beyond that, do we disclose that we're multiple.

In that previous case we compromised: I put on our forms that we have a history of childhood sexual abuse and that we had some post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms that we had received treatment for. That, I figured, was enough of a flag that if we, or Carl, had to say during labour that it was just too difficult, we would have given enough information for people to react appropriately. I thought it was an excellent compromise.

That was before we went through labour, of course. Now that we have I have to say that I am one hundred times more concerned - both with people being aware of the dissociation so that they can ask the right questions, but also with what the consequences of providing that information could be. (Which probably means I'll end up saying the same thing, but doesn't prevent me from worrying about it.)

And that's the thing. We weren't tv-style-spectacularliciously crazy. No one abreacted a rape (that's where someone thinks they are being raped regardless of what's really going on, a flashback on acid). But looking back I think we probably were too calm and too compliant and too shut down (that's the less spectacular, probably more common form of dissociation: gee, as a 6 year old we could be quiet during all kind of shit). I know we were when we started to ask for a c-section. I know what came out of my mouth was a teary voiced "I really want a c-section now" rather than "get the fucking doctor in here to do a c-section because I am not fucking pushing anymore!!"

And part* of that was because, to be blunt with you all my dear audience, some of us have been carefully trained over years to be calm and compliant in very awful situations particularly physical pain in the genital region. And those people were around. And where staff might expect the person they'd been talking to a few hours before about an epidural to be able to say "hey this is not going well," they weren't precisely speaking to the exact same person.

Too calm, that is, up until Emily's heart monitor went dead, which is when all fucking hell broke loose in almost every way and probably completely appropriately. I tend to focus in my memory on the consequences of that, but in fact it was just 15 minutes of hell all around because that was when the adrenaline got us to where we stretched the umbilical cord out enough to get her out, and that last 'out' is really fucking painful. Really. And eerily like certain forms of abuse as a kid, if you think about it (but don't).

So the thing is, if you get people who understand what it really is to be dissociated or multiple, they could really use that information in a very good way. Like that the harder things get, the more calm and detached we tend to get, or that abrupt silences are not necessarily concentration, or that just reminding us that we're having a baby is a good thing.

But if you get people who don't, they tend to wait for the screaming and wailing and bouncing off the walls to begin, and completely miss what's really going on - even more so than perhaps an uninformed person might. They assume that if you've been raped you'll go bugfuck, not go quiet. A little cultural mythology at work.

Add to this that the really lousy, shitty, fucking hospital staff at East General in fact followed through on the worst nightmare - my baby was dying, her tracing showed she was dying, and they did nothing, the big zero, zippo, nada, just kept telling us to push and stay with the pain and that we shouldn't be tired out or freaked out or anything. Don't even get me started on how like the abuse aspects of our childhood this is.

Remind me why I'm going for a vaginal birth again? Oh right, it's nominally better than major surgery.

Anyways so if we're going to discuss what the reality is in order to make a helpful birth plan, all this is our reality. Well that plus what you would guess from just looking at the outside of our labour experience - that we were pushing and that was killing our daughter, that we had bad advice and negligent care, that the small wee person who came out was grey and blue and it was all needles and resuscitation and monitors and trauma from there.

It doesn't seem to me to make a whole lot of sense to make a birth plan that doesn't at least mildly touch on some of this stuff.

On the other hand, it's an option. We already know what some of the hard core elements will be. Fetal heart variability? C-section, regardless of whether it's the good or the bad kind. Any failure of the baby to descent at a decent rate? C-section. Pushing for more than a half hour? C-section. Parents decide they can't handle it? C-section. Parents decide the day before they can't handle it? C-section. If the default in so many ways is c-section, is it worth opening up the can o'worms of dissociation, or should we just go with the flow?

That's what I need advice on & since I'm not seeing my therapist before the appointment I had to *gasp* email her.

But really I just want to know that it'll be okay, hence the magic crystal ball.

Shandra

* The other part is the natural birth movement, and this is the part that may be interesting to more normal people so why I've moved it down here is beyond me, except that I've mentioned it before.

But here it is: I took weeks of pre-natal classes and read tons of stuff about labour, pain management, and it was heavily propagandized towards natural delivery, or at least vaginal delivery. I had tons of information about birthing balls, music, jacuzzi tubs, colostrum, and narcotics.

In all that time no one ever mentioned the very real risks of vaginal delivery - that cerebral palsy is often caused by a lack of oxygen at birth, and that c-sections are pretty much the big tool in the toolbox to prevent that kind of damage to your child. Because it was never really about the child that much. It was about the birth experience.

There are arguments for the child, and some of these convince me that a vaginal birth is worth going for: the way the lungs are massaged, the faster recovery meaning better post-natal care by the mother, etc. etc. But these were blown way the fuck out of proportion, and I mean totally. Not just in the pre-labour propaganda, either. During the labour. I was discouraged from getting an epidural; I was encouraged to keep pushing long, long after there should have been an intervention.

The very strong message was that A Real Woman will recognize that millions and billions of children have been born through force of will, basically lying in the dirt biting on a piece of leather, and that her essential womanhood will see her through the rite of passage of this natural process. And that doctors who want to go for more sterile, medical solutions, are really a part of the patriarchy that fails to recognize the power of woman.

And frankly, I bought into that to a large extent, despite also knowing about infant (and mother) mortality rates, etc. I truly believe that if I had been better informed I would have been more forceful earlier about getting a doctor in the room. And I read so much information that I really believe there was a prejudice in the information itself.

Natural does not equal safe.

Meltdown

It was such a great morning - I wrote, I had a decaff latte, I was invited to chat with some young mums (question of the day: are you going to be an attachment parent? -- well I'm going to be an attached parent...).

I decided to talk a walk to Mrs. Tigglewinkles (cool toystore) to pick out a book for witch baby. I did this with Emily: it was Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I read that to Emily most days the last trimester, and I read it to her at Sick Kids, punctuated by alarms going off from her ventilator. (Yes, it was ironic that it was a transformation story.)

Gah I'm getting teary again.

Anyways, I wanted to do the same thing for this baby but for obvious reasons pick a different book. I am not in fact sure that I will ever get through reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar again, ever. And today I thought would be a good day for that - we know witch baby can hear, we're entering the third trimester, blah blah blah.

I didn't expect to have a complete breakdown in the toy store, but I did. It wasn't that I looked at Eric Carle books; in fact I was pretty careful not to. But it didn't matter, it just welled up in me, remembering reading to Emily when she was safe, and when she was dying and drugged out and fucking deaf, just because I believed that she might in some mysterious way know I was there reading to her. I just started crying and left.

God I want my baby back so bad. She'd be almost a toddler really, but it's the her I held I want back for now. And I hate, hate hate that it keeps me from picking out a goddamned board book to read to this new baby, which isn't fair - not that the baby cares, but it's still unfair. I couldn't hack it. So I left. I'll go back, but it sucks for today.

Shandra

Randomness

Pregnancy, tiredness, and work have taken over my brain but I share a few snippets.

- witch baby is a future soccer champion, I swear. I have a bruise from when I was up against the counter and the baby kicked me right where the counter was on the outside.

- all the good girls' names have been taken by the system or our first daughter or some very close relative. Okay not really, but we are thinking of relaxing the 'no system names' rule slightly, at least enough to allow variants. Let the arguing begin! I vote Alexandra already. :-)

- I have been praised for my vegetable and legume consumption, to which I responded maturity and evenly and with chips and dip.

- the joint-loosening hormone has definitely kicked in; I have to work not to waddle. My hip, which got injured last time and then was almost dislocated during the labour when a nurse put her whole weight into pushing it up and back, is really starting to bother me.

- I don't think I ever blogged this one: another baby died at East General, from the second-hand account I got in the same fucking way as Emily did, long labour, bad monitoring, no c-section. This happened last week. Each day I feel more guilty for not having sued them yet, although we agreed to wait 'til this baby's out so as not to put more stress on me (but the guilt is starting to qualify). Oddly enough I only have one degree of separation between me and the mother: she works with the teacher I used to work with eons ago, and that's how I heard about it. Maybe she and I can put our resources together, but I'm not sure how or when to approach her.

And it makes me so angry and I can't work out to burn it off, and then I try to breathe and file this to "October." It's wrong, I know, to strive to be less present about anything but sometimes it's time to cut some slack.

(P.S. I suppose it's also, in a lesser way, wrong to be inordinately proud of my bruise and show it (and stretchmarks) off all the time. But I am. Look what my kid did!)

Food goodness

Last night we ate mexican and I had high-calorie chicken enchiladas, rice, and beans. Oh and fried ice cream, which I am now embarassed to have to report to my nurse. But mnn yummy.

Last night I had strange, fragmented dreams and had to go to the bathroom way too many times, so I'm now getting to feeling a bit tired out. In most of the dreams I was looking for a baby, but it wasn't clear which one - just that I'd lost it. But in the last dream I wasn't pregnant any more, and I woke up panicked that the baby had died. I got a few swift kicks as a definite no.

One of the best things about having to eat and living in this neighbourhood is that it's so easy to get good stuff. This morning I went down and got a loaf of sunflower seed bread and two muffins hot out of the oven (mine was lemon cranberry). There is a reportedly very good bakery in Guildwood, but it is probably a 25 minute walk there and then 25 minutes back. Not quite the same as nipping out at 7:25 for a muffin. Although this will be a good thing for my weight at that time, so there you go.

(My dreams of getting my own car are hitting financial reality and I doubt that will happen too soon, unless something changes like an unexpected bonus somewhere for a solid down payment. Part of that is that I'm picky: I want, if possible, a Jetta TDI wagon, so that I can use biodiesel later and diesel now (although I may look at other things). We have a Civic sedan that's almost 5 yrs old now; it works fine, but it's a standard, which I hate to drive. I've never adjusted to the standard which is - pathetic, but true. I can drive it if I have to but I feel stressed all the way wherever. It doesn't help that Carl mostly drives it to work anyway. So much for the cool sports car driver; I wouldn't like the stick!)

Then for dinner I needed tomatoes for a tomato-chickpea salad. When I got to the store I was suddenly inspired and also got artichoke hearts, olives, and green onion. Well more accurately Lyria did. So now I have a decadent chickpea salad, to go with our pork souvlaki skewers. Yummy.

Shandra

Sound of music

Carl and I went out for dinner at the second-closest pub last night. I was agitating for Mexican but that would have involved getting the car out so we compromised. (BTW, dear non-Ontario readers, no pubs allow smoking here, so no second-hand smoke.)

They know us there, sort of - enough to get waved to and smiled at - and it's a relaxed atmosphere - all kind of people 'til about 9 and then older gay men after that for the most part. You can watch the lineup at the club across the street, which is often entertaining.

But it being Saturday they had a band playing, and their equipment was set - loud. It's the kind of place where the band is local and middle-aged and one member has a flat a-string for a long time, and this band played stuff like "Some Kind of Wonderful." Loudly.

Witch baby went wild, kicking and (perhaps) pounding: let me out of here! After having read that amniotic fluid actually conducts sound better than air I felt obliged to wear my jacket around my waist to try to muffle the sound a little, but we weren't quite ready to go and maybe the movements were paroxyms of delight? We stayed 4 songs, and then decided that was enough "learning about electric guitars" for the baby. And enough of that kind of music for the rest of us.

When Emily did that in Return of the King I thought it was great, and went to see the movie again. I assumed she was delighted. But this time, I'm not so sure. Maybe it's disturbing. And you can't get in there and give the baby a hug.

Once we got home I think baby was tired out 'cause s/he settled down for about an hour. In the night and this morning we're back to experiencing soccer practice.

Now Lynn says we have to make sure to play good music (to her taste) loudly enough that the baby doesn't get the idea that that band is what music's all about. I guess we know her opinion.

Considering weight

Okay, the weight thing has been bothering me - not gaining weight for the baby - because it is something I can control somewhat and although we're not really to five-alarm levels or anything, it's important for the rest of the pregnancy to gain.

I was told not to worry too much about it other than to work more closely with the team on what I'm eating exactly, but that didn't work.

I'm a bit stumped on it 'cause as far as I can see, I'm eating plenty - certainly, given the limited quantity of exercise I've been doing, enough that I would normally have gained weight visibly. That's in strict calories: it's true that mostly what I crave is fruit, which isn't vastly caloric, but I have been eating plenty of proteins and carbs and nuts and actually quite a lot of ice cream/fro-yo/hot milk, plus legumes and veggies and all that.

This enhanced food journal I'm keeping should help with that but seriously - it's a metabolic mystery to me. I don't really have a benchmark for how many calories I ate in a typical pre-pregnancy day, but I'm well over 2000 on a pregnancy day, usually more like 2300.

What's more I don't feel like eating more, and I consider that an important signal to listen to. Carl says it was probably being sick that caused the loss and that's probably true enough, especially since I was at my parents', but it was only one week out of 4.

I wonder if it's that I'm losing muscle tone, although to go by inch measurements that is not happening, except around my arms (note to self: there is no reason whatsoever not to do some arm work).

Food issues, food issues.

I feel guilty because coming into this pregnancy I was emotionally bothered by the idea that I was still carrying baby weight to start, and what if that quiet wish somehow translates into loss? (This is stupid because sitting and wishing to lose weight never works, but there it is.) I feel more guilty because after the weigh-in I stopped to check over my body and in fact some of my weight did re-distribute (like my thigh measurement is a little smaller) and of course my first thought was: oh yay! When in fact it's really /not good/ to have the baby relying on fat stores from my thigh. (Plus, if these are fall fat stores, they were grown on scotch and chocolate... okay that's not relevant but it still runs through my head!)

*eats another slice of whole wheat baguette with hummus slathered on it*

And if I'm being very frank I have to say that I'm also worried that I'll go off the deep end the other way and gain 60 lbs overnight and have that uphill battle to face next year. I mean despite years of working to eat better, the first thought through my mind when someone says "gain weight" is not "oh get thee to a health store!" but rather "does this mean I can justify a fully loaded burger at The Works? followed by coconut and cinnamon gelato?"

(and probably will do that very thing this weekend)

So, argh.

Meanwhile my kid is kicking the shit out of me, demonstrating his or her very aliveness, at least. Emily was not quite so - poky, in terms of how she hit my innards - and this one hurts - already. At just over 1 lb, and 23 weeks. Aie.

Appointments and plans

Today was our 23rd week appointment at the obstetrician's and now things are starting to get interesting.

First, the health news: I'm fine, the baby's fine, with a nice good heartbeat going on down there. Belly growth is great. My weight is low - I'd actually lost a pound since the last time (although I attribute this to a smaller breakfast), when I should have gained about 3 lbs. I only seem to have trouble gaining weight when I'm pregnant! I wish I could have this problem at other points in my life. (In 6-7 months would be great!) Now I have to keep a more detailed food journal, but that's never really a bad thing.

On the planning front we started to talk nitty-gritty around the delivery. Carl & I are to meet with a new team, including a psychiatrist, to develop the birth plan in case we go vaginally, because as my ob said, they can pull a c-section out of their hats at any time, but if there's any chance we would like to try for a vaginal delivery, an essential part of that would be a really solid plan detailing our wishes and setting an "extremely low threshhold for any distress." Doing it now is also supposed to help lower anxiety although I was warned that I'll probably get increasingly anxious from here on in - and that goes with how I'm feeling, so I think that's probably pretty accurate.

I suspect they also want to evaluate me & Carl and that's fine with me; that counts as care in my book, and I admire the low-key subtlety of it ("this might be helpful for you, I really recommend it, and oh yes it also helps us to provide you with any support you might need beyond straight obstetrical care") although I will have to think about what we want to say about dissociation and multiplicity and all that.

When we were talking about my current fears (standard appointment question) I mentioned a few things and everyone looked relieved and my nurse said that they would be concerned if we didn't have any fears. Well duh, but it's always interesting to hear that out loud.

My nurse also recommended that we hire a doula as a part of the team, and Carl and I had already decided that was probably a good idea so I was enthusiastic, and then the coordinator of the clinic offered in a very nice, no-pressure way, to serve in that role for us if we would like. Carl wasn't there this time so I set up a meeting with her around our next appointment, June 7, because it will be important that we both like her. But I hope he does like her, 'cause she's sort of been holding my hand through the process already starting with my first phone call to Mt. Sinai, so I already am thinking "Yay!"

I felt like people were engaged with me and that they are anticipating my needs, and that was a really good feeling. And I'm drinking a large steamed milk that has fat in it. :)

Mother's Day

Today's mother's day which is such a haunting day for me, except when my brain kicks in and rants endlessly about Hallmark manufactured holidays and unrealistic expectations of motherhood and all these things.

Regardless of my attempts at skepticism, all the flowers and cakes and shots of mothers online and stories of mothers get through. Sometimes I can revert to the me of 2003 and think about my own mother, how she's rather messed up but tried anyway and be sad for the things she did that were not good and glad for the things that were good. Sometimes I can think of Carl's mum and marvel at how she can be a great mother in law in many ways but sometimes the way she was a mum in the past peeps through and that isn't all rosegardeny either.

But then it filters down that I'm a mother, but my daughter died and my new baby isn't born yet.

And I feel that really dark place, the one where my own body strangled my baby. That moment that I saw them carrying her over to the crib, limp and grey. The morning of the EEG. I hear her last breaths. I remember what it was like watching her coffin go down into the ground forever.

And I feel that hopeful place where I might have this second child with us soon, living in our bungalow by the lake and being rocked in our rocking chair and, already, being read to in the womb, moving and prodding and changing me and us already.

I'm in a strange place this mother's day, with two children neither of which is actually on the living side of life: one in a grave and the other in a womb. I feel stretched out between them with a foot on either side.

Don't drop the monkey

I slept in today, under the "still a little sick, definitely still pregnant" banner. I just thought of another reason too: not likely to happen much after mid-August.

For the last couple of hours, the sunny ones from 6:30-9, I had vivid baby dreams. I was holding a baby in a snowsuit and taking her (I think she was meant to be Emily) on the streetcar and in cars and I was trying to figure out how to work with the baby and once I left the baby in a supermarket for a half an hour and all kinds of odd things. And each time I picked the baby up I was surprised to find her still alive.

I woke up having to point out to myself that I would never forget my baby in a supermarket, but some piece of me is not convinced. I feel guilty, which may drive a harder writing session which would not be a bad thing.

I'm starting to lean towards a c-section, which is surprising the hell out of me. Normally I'm more the kind of person that would accept the physical challenge and figure that we should just push through it (pun somewhat intended). And surgery scares me. But I'm just not sure I want to risk it - any of it, risk freaking out; risk the stress on the system of being back in the exact, traumatic position we were in with the exact, traumatic sensations; risk being in charge of pushing again; risk cord accidents and shoulder dislocations and all those things for the baby. Maybe all that coping energy should go into the after-the-birth...

... the problem of course being that the recovery of a c-section is quite different and longer, and breastfeeding may be harder to establish, and all that. There is some slight pressure from our medical team towards a vaginal delivery and I'll ask about that again next week.

I feel like I'm reacting a year and a half too late. I still feel responsible for continuing with Emily's labour, even though that's what we were told to do. Not wanting to press through labour is coming too late for her, and is that guilt affecting my judgment? It probably is. It's hard to know what to do.

I just know that when I am watching anything to do with childbirth on tv and people are saying "I don't want a c-section" to meet some ideal of natural parenthood, I feel like freaking out at them. Don't be stupid.

I'm just not sure which way is stupid.

Irrational

Sometimes I have this weird feeling like this time, I'll be the one who dies. It's just an irrational thought; birth and death are so knotted up together for me and sometimes in pulling at one end of the thread the other comes along. Today I keep thinking about what affairs I should get in order, at strangely inappropriate moments.

This too shall pass.

Kicking around

Witch baby has gotten around into a different position, or something, because the last 18 hours or so have been really quite active. Carl even felt the kicks through my abdomen last night, over and over, cheering the future soccer player on all the while.

We talked about girls' names but we didn't get very far and mostly were being silly. I think I might have to actually get a book out of the library. I think it's partly this kind of bad feeling: but we have a little girl and we named her Emily Hope, and that was perfect. Poor witch baby. We discussed Amelia but it's the same name, fundamentally, and that's not nice; witch baby is his or her own person. As a middle name it might be okay, but I think we have one of those chosen.

I'm craving fish, but this has to be balanced against mercury and PCB concerns (I wonder if the Omega eggs would be a decent substitute?). What I would really like is smoked salmon but that's bad, bad, bad. I'll read up on fish today and do something tomorrow, maybe a chowder (last week's fish was halibut). Tonight's dinner is chili 'cause that's the plan, and the beans are all cooked nicely and we have mushrooms and peppers and carrots aching to be included. Really. They jump up and down whenever I open the fridge.

Yesterday I ended up at the grocery store twice (I didn't realize we needed cat food the first time; they sell Iams there which isn't awful) and each time I really wanted salami, another pregnancy no-no. I think I'm suffering a little from a sense of restriction: feta, blue cheese, salami, real coffee, a glass of wine, prosciutto, pate - I seem to miss them all, more than I did the first time. Some of those can be consumed during breastfeeding and some not so much, but if we get to breast feeding this time I will just be glad for that.

I'm glad the spring produce will soon be coming in because there *are* so many yummy things that we can eat. Today's yummy thing is not seasonal: avocado.

I am definitely in the second/third trimester obsession with food stage. Normally food is a big part of our day anyway, but I do remember this: a kind of biological engine idling constantly rumbling about fattening up both maternal stores and the baby. This is where a little calorie counting goes a long way towards not gaining Way Too Much weight, although that doesn't seem to be one of my problems thus far. Portion awareness is good, because it's all too easy to hit the bottom of the frozen yoghurt container!

Later, in the video store there was a little girl running around who was probably just a bit older than Emily would be, and for some reason she struck me as being like Emily although I don't really know what the criteria was, except that she was running around behind me. I sort of found it disturbing; I was sad but also had this sense of shock like a horror flick where the child ghost appears or something. That was new and strange, and I wonder if it was actually a kinderlynn reaction or something.

You know you're pregnant when...

You find yourself /giggling/ at a Huggies disposable washcloth ad.

(and I think we will use regular washcloths, thank you - after all we have 30 of them!)

Shandra

22 weeks

Your baby now looks like a miniature newborn, checking in at 10.9 inches and almost 1 pound. Her skin will continue to appear wrinkled until she gains enough weight to fill it out, and the fine hair (lanugo) that covers her head and body is now visible. Her lips are becoming more distinct, and the first signs of teeth are appearing as buds beneath her gum line. Her eyes are developed, though the iris (the colored part of the eye) still lacks pigment. Eyelids and eyebrows are in place, and her pancreas, essential for hormone production, is developing steadily.

I *think* witch baby is facing left into my body, because of the weird shape/heaviness of my belly today and where all the motions are. It's a strange sensation and odd to be trying to figure out the position. But I'd like to know, because s/he seems less energetic, and if it were just the position, that would make me a bit more relieved.

I look really very pregnant now; as pregnant as I was at Emily's shower for sure, and I am wondering when the expansion will actually end (the correct answer is never, as the baby is supposed to put on a ton of fat at the end). I'm vain enough that I'm already plotting how to get my body back afterwards, although after this coughing flu and with the way things are expanding I'm thinking I may never have a nice abdomen again. I think I can live with that, but there's still this part of me that sniffles about it and wonders why, if we were going to have kids, we didn't just adopt from China or somewhere.

This is what happens when after resigning yourself to infertility, you get pregnant twice in two years. It's not that I feel ambivalent entirely; I wanted Emily after the initial shock, and having made that decision, this one was easier that way - not that this child is a substitute, but in terms of putting us back on the parent track s/he is less of a shock; we already had made a place there in our life plan.

But there are still these moments where I can't actually believe my body is doing this, and I sometimes wonder if I would have fewer moments of dissonance with it if it had been something we had pursued. But then, even decisions are so often fluid, emotionally. So probably not.

Speaking of fluidity, I read that amniotic fluid is actually an excellent sound conductor. So much for the peace of the womb, especially this kid's coughing & hacking womb. I went to see a movie in the theatre yesterday and was worried that I would have a repeat of our Return of the King experience. But there was no frenzy of activity, just the usual little jabs and pokes. Cecily said in her blog that when she saw her baby in the ultrasound (just to avoid confusion, I'll say here she is using a surrogate) he looked like a cranky airline passenger, stretching and fidgeting. I keep thinking of that and grinning.

(Cecily also called the second trimester "this long stretch before viability" and do I ever know what she means.)

I am so glad we found a house and now I can picture what it might look like, the nursery, the high chair, the toys in the living room. I kind of like the idea of a toddler toddling around the bungalow - they seem like toddler-friendly houses to me - and a playroom in the basement, and a sandbox in the backyard. And at the same time it strikes fear into me that in a couple of months we will actually be setting ourselves up like that again; every corner of Emily's empty nursery seems to be imprinted on my brain, and what it was like to go in there after we came home without her, forever. It seems impossible to put the co-sleeper back together again or to get out the rocking chair or to launder the baby clothes and fold into their drawers.

I'm sure we will, but it seems remote. Maybe my brain is stuck on toddler because that's what Emily would be now. It seems unfair to witch baby. It seems unfair that we don't know witch baby's sex so we haven't been able to at least tentatively name witch baby (which may also be a good thing as we are having trouble with girl-child names). Mostly I guess it just seems unfair that Emily died and now this child gets that baggage.

On the other hand, that cranky passenger image still makes me giggle.