Doctors, grief, growth

No D&C. In fact I saw an obstetrician not my own who decided no intervention is necessary. Well, I could have stayed home for that. My nurse said it's probably very small bits of placenta left that will be reabsorbed. Great.

I felt a little hopeless trying to talk to him about it - no, look, not only was my first pregnancy not like this but I feel that the life is being drained out of me and I just think this is Something Wrong as opposed to just a road bump. What I actually said was "this bleeding is really heavy and makes me very nervous."

At which point he recommended birth control, the next item on his agenda. Fucker. Then he examined me and was surprised at how much blood there was. Gosh! But he maintained that although it was a lot, not to worry.

But I take responsibility for not having demanded more - I just was so annoyed I wanted out of there. If I'm still bleeding at this rate (loads, more than the day I left the hospital) on Monday I will go see my real obstetrician. And rant.

It's different to be contemplating illness, or a D&C, or any of those things, with Noah around. I feel obligated to take fewer risks, which can only be a good thing. The problem is I feel a little pedantic about it, especially with Carl. I want him to exercise more, get a physical, etc. And that's just not good; he doesn't need me riding him out of vague anxiety. But I can see I won't be as cavalier about medical stuff again for a long time, even when it's my body.

---

Birth control is really key: I desperately do not want to be pregnant again, after the nine months of ickiness and with all the energy and work that Noah needs right now, not to mention wanting what's left over for other things. The thing about having first wanted kids, then being infertile as far as I could tell, and then being pregnant, and doing the odd 'oh gosh Emily wasn't a fluke!' gyrations with Noah, and then being pregnant, is that I realize I haven't taken birth control all that seriously since I got married. And out of the last three years I've been pregnant for 18 months, so no birth control issues at all.

And suddenly, I totally care. I feel like I should buy truckloads of our barrier methods of choice. Maybe even get out of the 1980s (when I chose my poison) and see what else is around, although hormonal stuff is out due to family history. Don't tell me about the Mirena coil or whatever it is, 'cause heavier periods are out. But. It's time to delve back into these things.

---

We saw newborns down there and Noah is SO BIG in comparison. Wow. He's grown! Seeing him every day you kind of lose track. It's mostly his head that's bigger. I'm rather glad I don't have to push it out in its current incarnation.

---

I was watching Babylon 5 in the middle of the night a few nights ago; I find an episode of DVD-tv is perfect for nursing and keeps me from obsessing about the sleep I'm missing. I prefer Homicide but zip.ca in its infinite and unguided (I hadn't updated my list) wisdom sent one dvd of Homicide and three of Babylon 5. I'd enjoyed the show the few times I'd caught it when it was on, but because I never followed it a lot of it went over my head. Well, season one seems a bit rough - the guy who plays Sinclair seems like parody of a super-hero - but it has a lot of interesting themes.

The show that hit me was one where an alien family arrives at Babylon 5 with their son who is dying. But the human doctor can fix him with a simple operation! Problem is, the alien family believes if you cut a person open they lose their soul. Moral Issues Ensue. That all was fine and I thought it was handled rather well - in the light of developments in the US since perhaps remarkably well. But what got to me were the bedside scenes with the child. The people playing the aliens did a good job of that weird headspace: trying to make the right decision, trying to fix things, trying to accept things, being really sad and angry.

So I ended up crying. And crying. I think on the internet or even among people who've not lost kids (or similar) it all comes across as repetitive, and for the most part these days I have my social mask back in place in person and anywhere but here. I know, from having done it, that from the outside it starts to seem self-indulgent and stuck, if someone keeps referencing a death like that.

But at night and in private, I can say that it just comes back fresh. Emotionally the kick is still there, and so even though I have travelled through a lot of the Kubler-Ross stages of grief, and my life is not on hold, scratch the surface a little bit and wham: there it is. I think it probably always will, just maybe not quite as often. Emily deserves all these things too, the mobiles and playmats and growing. And too, I am feeling what I lost - the chance to be her mother - over again.

I still have to call that teacher who lost her kid at East General. Carl and I agreed now that we are going ahead with some kind of action, but we haven't gotten it together to take any yet.

Quick update

Whee life is busy and good, overall. Except my body. I started bleeding again fairly spectacularly on Sunday and it's continued through to today. Tomorrow I'm going in for what will probably turn into a D&C - gross. I'm pumping to try to be sure Noah has some supply, just in case. With a hand pump (Avent Isis). Pity me. Actually things with our body have been a bit hard - we've continued to lose weight too fast and are now 5 lbs under our pre-pregnancy weight. But it's slowed, this loss, so I think we may have hit on the right amount of food. The trick seems to be to eat each time we nurse.

Noah is growing by leaps and bounds. He's awake more each day, cheerful and looking around for the most part - although he has been fussy on and off. I think it's because he stays up and then he's tired and it's a hard transition into sleep without some milk and sucking. But we walk around and sing to him, and then he settles in pretty well, so far. I'm crossing my fingers! He is practicing his voice regularly, although I wouldn't quite say the sounds are vowels or consonants (more vowelish though). He likes to talk to the hanging toys in his playmat, go figure.

He also accidentally reached up and touched one of the mobile pieces, just brushed it, and then startled. I know he doesn't yet know those are his hands, never mind reaching, but it was like watching a little spark go off. It was so cool. It's hard to stop watching him.

He and Carl both stretch the same way, waking up. It's bizarre: how can that be genetic? This morning I brought him into bed to wake up (watching him, watching him) and the two of them went at it. Much laughing and giggling ensued.

Shandra & many

Genesis

They say, these parenting manuals, to help
your newborn learn the difference between day and night
keep the lights low,
do not speak or make eye contact,
feed and then soothe,
so the child will learn to sleep.

What power this is, my son, to decide for you
what is the night and what is the day.

I know my responsibilities: I would not have you
Saddled with sleep-addled parents,
Nor would I wish to put you at odds with
This schoolbell world: black marks if you are late
Or absent.

And yet I love the eclipse:
The sky, so cold and blue in day
Opens to reveal how large it is, this universe.
The rousing of senses
When sight is dulled: scent, touch, sound.
The shiver of intuition along the spine.

I have been your midnight.
Not only the belly that housed you
But the lust that made you:
Sexual, demanding, arrogant.
Grasping for immortality,
The expanse of time beyond my
Short day.

I teach you now to sleep through
These hours.
I capitulate to the role of light.
But now and then I may wake you
To show you the stars

A little preview before that woman,
Whoever she may be,
Draws you again into her dark.

- Lynn

What a day looks like

1:10 am Carl, on holding-Noah duty (he's a night owl anyway) wakes me up for a feed, after a diaper change (I went to bed at 11); feed is good but burping is really slow. Carl goes down for the night.
2:20 Noah is in light post-feed sleep when hiccoughs wake him up.
2:20 much walking aroung, back rubbing, singing
2:35 diaper change (still hiccoughing)
2:40 more walking until hiccoughs stop
2:50 feed on demand
3:30 Noah asleep; move to bedroom & bassinet in co-sleeper
4:00 Noah wakes up halfway with grunts (passing gas); I rub his tummy in the bassinet - miraculously he goes back to sleep. Me too; I wake up a bit later with my hand asleep and pull it back into my bed
5:15 Noah wakes up with hungry babble; I get up in time to avoid real crying - feed & diaper change
6:15 Noah is looking around; I wake Carl up (he asked!). We both remember it's garbage day so he takes the cans out and I play with Noah, who more or less falls asleep
7:00 I go back to bed
8:30 I wake up to Noah fussing while Carl changes his diaper pre-feed; I feed & Carl gets to work
9:40 feed ends; Noah has spent some of it looking while keeping mouth on breast, and vocalizing; he seems to like to learn this way
9:40 we try out the bouncy chair; Noah seems to do okay so I start to make some eggs with veggies (I don't like to hold him when using our gas oven 'cause of the open flame)
9:50 Noah's tolerance for the chair runs out so I put him in the playmat and buy more time for tea too
10:00 I sit down to eat & start up the laptop.
10:05 Noah's tolerance for solo time runs out & I pick him up
10:10 My eggs are cold but I've gotten used to it
10:12 Noah is rubbing at his face and tired but is too worked up to sleep, so I get up and glide around with him to music
10:30 Noah is just about asleep and I risk sitting down and rocking him
10:35 He's asleep so I have time to start this & Mags chats with San & pick at my eggs. Much egg falls to the floor. Carl decides he has to go into the office & goes.
11:30-ish His diaper leaked on me and him; my finding this out wakes him up. I change him & me & we have a feed. It's hard to get the gas up burping him; that bothers him; the feed stretches on & on.
12:50 He's asleep and I fill this in.
1:05 I decide to put him in his car seat to sleep
1:10 Success: I start to clean up the kitchen
1:20 Nope, he wakes up. Now I make my Big Mistake. Rather than just going with cuddling him, I now want to finish the kitchen. So I decide that he might like the sling again and put him in. He does not like it and squalls. I take him out and walk around with him. Just as he is relaxing, one of the cats appears, stuck with her belly through the handle of a plastic bag and very upset. I put Noah in his playmat in order to free the cat and wash my hands. Noah decides he has been abandoned to be raised by wolves, but this interferes with his plan to become a symphony conductor, so he shrieks and cries. This being an eon in babytime there is now no way he can handle anything but full contact with a feed, although I try walking around.
1:30 feed, diaper, more feed, the feed never ends. No way he is letting go of the boob. He will learn to conduct around me. I will have to go on tour. He will also be very fat.
2:40 no more feeding, but one wiiide awake baby. We play, him watching the mobile and me rubbing his belly. Another diaper change. I feel a bit overwhelmed.
2:55 I flee on a walk, thinking the motion will help Noah sleep
4:10 We get back, and he hasn't really slept much. Looked. Squawked if I didn't touch him now and then. But not much sleep.
4:15 Feed/diaper
4:45 He dozes; I chat on the phone & send one email
5:20 He wakes up, passing a poo with much fanfare (as I have failed to note but he has done already 4 times, usually while feeding); changing him I notice a red spot on his bottom and put him on a towel to see if he would be amenable to airing out, on the bed next to me
5:30 Nope, not amenable, although he does wet the towel. I liberally apply zinc cream (Desitin) and re diaper and cuddle
5:45 Noah decides he has been starved to death. At this point it may be true; poor boobs. We nurse again.
6:30 He sleeps. I move. He starts to wake up. I sit down again and read, trapped in the rocking chair
7:15 he wakes up ravenous. Feed.
7:45 he sleeps; 8:10 I dare move (to let Carl in; he's home at last) and here I am catching up. I may get dinner.
8:45 I got dinner and a lovely fruit/custard dessert too; now it's feed time.
10:00 After two clustered feeds I go to sleep
11:45 Time for another feed & here we go again!

The universe answers

Was I talking about socialization? My phone just rang and I'm invited to a parent-potluck on Tues night.

Merci universe, and my friend M., whose psychic powers amaze and delight.

Yours in this many-post day,
Shandra

P.S. Okay commenters, if you want to comment. How do you make new friends? Especially in your neighbourhood? Your wisdom &/or favourite story is appreciated.

Promenade

Walk pic one - the park - Lake Ontario, 6 doors down.

We had a great walk today (eek! I still have to post pics from the one where I took the camera). I almost missed it 'cause of rain, but we managed to squeek in before any actually came down, even if it meant sticking around the house and only going for half an hour. My eventual goal is the local library: should be about an hour and a half, round trip. Less once I'm not still under restrictions and can go briskly.

But this walk was great because for the first time Noah stayed awake for it, and watched things go by all wide eyed. We stopped occasionally to say "that's a tree" and "that's a bush" - not that he can get it yet, but it's habit forming for me. I'm trying to learn to slow down to baby speed (see walk, brisk, above :)). Insert all the clichees here about seeing the world through a child's eyes - it is occasionally true and today was one of those days. He probably sees mostly blurs, but he's so intent on them. It's quite something.

Walk pic two - my old favourite view from the park.

Also the lake was getting churny and the smell in the air was that damp/fresh smell that comes before the rains. Down here there is weather, whereas sometimes in the rest of Toronto it seems like there's only inconvenience. And am I ever glad, because it's something that changes, outside the house. Going for that walk every day is sanity preserving that way, even if I get home and -then- notice the spit up on my shoulder (another true clichee).

And walk pic three - my new favourite view. Well, tilt your head!

Shandra

Days and days

Wow, it's hard to believe it's Thursday already.

This week has been an attempt to settle into some kind of normal: Carl's back at work, experimenting with working from his home office, and that's left me in charge of Noah for 10-12 hours a day, which are, yes, the hours Carl often works right now. Although with him home I've been able to occasionally sneak off for a shower, or hand him over in the evening while programming things run and Carl doesn't have to be available on the phone.

4 weeks

Noah and his one-month cake.

Hi Noah,

You are so many things at four weeks! You are a wriggly robin! You open your mouth wide wide for milk and you rise up and latch on with your getting-very-strong neck and back muscles! Lynn calls you vampire baby (for her that is not a bad thing) but she is silly, you are just a hungry bird. I call you Noah-bird and Noah-B, b for bird and b for Benjamin.

You are learning to make all kinds of sounds from a happy ah-ah-ah- to a peep and a squawk and all your cries too. In your sleep you sigh and chirp. You are a cacophony all your own sometimes, and then you find something to look at and you go silent, still and listening. So you are a summer day outside, sometimes all the birds and bugs breaking out, and then sometimes the still grass with a bit of breeze.

You are getting a nice wide belly and your thighs have some chubby bits. You are not yet a buddha-baby but you are definitely doing your main job very well which is eating and growing. You are solid and strong and you lift your legs up high, high, and wave your arms fast, fast. You punched me with your fist, when your body was all wriggly coming up to the breast for some milk, and it hurt! It made my heart sing, how strong that punch was.

You met your aunt and uncle this weekend and your uncle was scared to hold you, but that is okay. You looked and looked at your aunt and missed your nap! I think your brain is working so hard that now it keeps you awake instead of just letting you sleep. But oh my goodness don't forget to sleep! We will help with that now that we know you can miss naps. And now we know you are still a busy bee.

When you look and look like that there is a light in your eyes, my beautiful baby, and it comes all from you. So soon! I am so scared sometimes that I will do something that will make that light a little dimmer. But you don't care how scared I am. You just lie there and sleep and wake up and let us know you are hungry or wet or tired and you trust that someone will fix these things. And we do. So you are a sponge, you soak in love and you let it squish out.

I think after not being able to stop bad things happening from your sister I forgot that even though I can't stop a lot of things, there are things that I can stop from happening to you. I can feed you which is oh, so very big, all those big words like nurture. I can change you and make sure you have blankets and help you to sleep and hold you close and warm. And oh, I like doing all those things very much.

Happy one-month birthday Noah. I am glad to get to know you! We had a little party for you, just you and us and your dad, and there were pictures and later there will be one here!

Truly,
Lyria, but you will just call me mummy and that is just as true!

P.S. I put a comment about names back at that entry. Or I am about to!

Serenity

Today has been a wonderful languid day so far. Noah's been in a sparkling mood and had a bath, much needed as last night he outdid himself on the pooing and spitting up front, I got 3 consecutive hours of sleep between 6 and 9 am, and the weather is gorgeous. I even was able to take a few minutes on the front porch to breathe and appreciate life. And I fixed my toenails.

I looked in my email box, not just at the people I know (Hotmail sorts this out, which makes me lazy at times), and there were some really nice remarks there, to which I haven't responded yet. Thank you people. I feel an odd sense of community there. Well maybe not so odd, for the 'net.

In that spirit I'm re-enabling comments and I think this time, I'm prepared for whatever comes. Here are the rules. This is my blog, not a discussion list. If there are comments I don't like I may delete them. And I may leave the spam, because for whatever reasons, I like the surreality of them. :)

Shandra

Family ties

I've had quite a week and my head is still spinning - aided by sleep deprivation. It's been a month now where I haven't had more than 3 hours consecutively (and that rarely). I find that any sleep I do have is more intense - I still seem to have that extra sense that listens for Noah's breathing, but the dreams are so deep it sometimes seems, waking up and picking him up, that both are happening at once - being asleep and awake.

Which is trippy, but something to be really careful of. I bet those are the moments where people have done idiotic things and nearly hurt their kids.

And I'm clumsy and stupid-tired, some of the time. And not much of an end in sight - although now Noah does sleep in his cosy bassinet thing, he still wakes up about every two hours. But at least there are those hours in between. And I know he needs to do that, because he's still so little. He's gaining, but he started off small.

He's also started spitting up a little bit. The breast feeding seems to be going really well apart from that, and I think that is probably just normal and maybe even a little that he tends to nurse past full (that's just a guess, but I feel it as a strong guess). I think he's learning pleasure as well as food. So am I in a way: I feel relaxed enough to just enjoy the feeds.

This morning we tried nursing in bed lying down for the first time and it was cosy, although I wouldn't want to do it if I weren't fully awake. It'd be too easy to doze off.

Every day he spends longer and longer watching things. I think he's starting to anticipate too, just a little - which means he's associating. He calms down from his rooting before the boob hits his lips - usually when he's put into a nursing position. He looks for his mirror on his change table. And boy does he like the mirror. I'm glad, although that particular baby toy is something I bought for Emily and it sat in the crib afterwards, when we put the plaster casts of her hands and feet and her clothes from the hospital there. I used to go into her room - at our old house - and smell those clothes and cry because I knew they'd loose the scent, and that mirror reflected it all back.

But now it reflects the vibrant eyes and wriggles of my son, and his wailing if we don't warm the wipes in our hands enough.

My sister and her husband travelled 7 hours to get here just for a weekend to see him, and due to complex things I won't go into to get back she is leaving on a bus that leaves at 1 am which goes to show what kinds of relations Noah is blessed with. My sister was a nanny for a newborn and it really showed as she handled him with ease and delight. He seemed to be puzzling over her a bit, and he didn't take a nap between feeds while she was here. I think she seemed a bit like me - person who feeds him - but she clearly wasn't feeding him, and that was what was puzzling him. It's all about the boob, man. :)

Her husband sits and pretends to hate all kids, which I think he partly does, in that way that other people's misbehaving kids really irritate. But he watches him pretty intently and I suspect that some male bonding will happen pretty easily once Noah's old enough to know that he's - well - male. But we'll see. I do know my brother in law would probably have trouble relating to a fae male child (fae as an adjective! Not a race! And not a sexual orientation either!). And that'll take some years to know.

I felt complete embarassment to note only once people were here that my toenails are in totally lousy shape: flaked polish, overgrown. I just haven't been looking down much lately. However I figure a day without poo smeared anywhere is really a good one.

And in a way, it was a distraction from the whole sibling thing. I grieve that Noah won't know his sister either, when I am so glad to know mine. Which is odd because he wouldn't be here if she had lived. And yet they both seem so intensely made to be our family. It's weird.

My mother's been over about every other day this week. I'm glad because I want her and Noah to bond, especially now when it's easy for my mum to relate to him. I suspect that she will have a really hard time later for various reasons. But oh, it's hard because things are rubbed so raw between her and us/me right now. And because of stuff in our childhood, we have a lot of rules drawn up to protect Noah that my mum is not aware of... and we have no idea how that will go down, if they become more clear to her. I admit that I'm sort of counting on her capacity for denial to kick in and protect us all, that way.

If not then I suspect I'll lose my mum over it, and my dad with her, since my dad has ever sacrificed us kids to their shared reality. I really don't want to do that; for all the bad stuff and her flaws there is still a lot of good and we are family. But if it comes down between her and protecting my kid (overkill or not), kid wins. Our system kids are incredibly fierce on this point too, and that's - really good.

Speaking of system kids, we bought Free to Be, You and Me for Noah, at least supposedly for Noah. God I'd forgotten how cheesy it is, but also so reflective of a desire to change things - feminist change. Something in me wants to go create the updated version with songs about being gay and lesbian and transsexual and all kinds of things. But for our system kids it was just bliss. I realize that some of those songs are ingrained into some of the - hope? selves-created ethical world view? - fabric of the system. (And some, like "Parents are People" are treated with a bit of scorn... and what's with the scary "Toyland" song???)

But in particular the title song:

There's a land that I see where the children are free

And I say it ain't far to this land from where we are

Take my hand, come with me, where the children are free

Come with me, take my hand, and we'll live

In a land where the river runs free

In a land through the green country

In a land to a shining sea

And you and me are free to be you and me

I see a land bright and clear, and the time's comin' near

When we'll live in this land, you and me, hand in hand

Take my hand, come along, lend your voice to my song

Come along, take my hand, sing a song

For a land where the river runs free

For a land through the green country

For a land to a shining sea

For a land where the horses run free

And you and me are free to be you and me

Every boy in this land grows to be his own man

In this land, every girl grows to be her own woman

Take my hand, come with me where the children are free

Come with me, take my hand, and we'll run

To a land where the river runs free

To a land through the green country

To a land to a shining sea

To a land where the horses run free

To a land where the children are free

And you and me are free to be you and me

Kids of all kinds make you hokey. They do. Otherwise I cannot explain why so many silly songs are made up to sing to Noah. (I've worked my way through my old camp songbook too, which has both silly and schmaltzy and serious songs, and I would blush to relate how much of my own personal honour code can be found between some of the lines there. Camp was always sort of my place, that way. Both the wholesome aspects of it and the summer experimentation aspects once I was a CIT and a counsellor... mnn hmm.)

When this CD arrived, it was put on for the next nursing with great glee and there was much singing coming out of that nursery. So much that Carl stuck his head in to tease gently that it sounded like the 70s in there.

Well, I wouldn't mind providing a land for Noah that worked that way. Except, I tell you, for the creepy toyland song.

Shandra

Sunshine and apple pie

Okay, no literal apple pie. Hmmmmm it is apple season though.

We had just a gorgeous walk today: it's the perfect early fall day - warm, sunny, with a cool breeze off the lake. The water sparkled and the breeze was enough to have a bit of a surf, so lots of sounds from the water at the park. The trees are still full - although I found one maple that was turning and shedding already - so Guildwood Parkway was shady and really nice to walk along.

I actually took some pictures & will download 'em soon. I met two neighbours and got the phone number for the local hair stylist who I may let have a crack at my hair, and generally started to settle into the neighbourhood as a stay-at-home mum. Which so far involves dropping dvds at the mailbox. :) Time to start getting on the mum-group thing.

Carl and I had a really good talk last night, after I'd shed my indignant and sleep-deprived tears at having someone treat my parenting journal as if it were a scrum on Dark Personalities, stomping into my virtual living room to hurl stupidity. Having a newborn really makes me vulnerable: all the dangers of the world seem magnified, as the reality of responsibility for an entire separate human being, young and helpless, sinks in.

I said I don't know what to do about my various forms of writing and of us in the system choosing to be and express who we are, given that it may leave our family and Noah open to attack. I mean, a dipshit comment on teh intarweb is not a huge deal, overall, but it is a kind of a whiff of the storms of indignation that break over people who are different - especially those who are different without shame or apology. And I felt that ruthless, parenting thing kick in. if there were anyone for whom I would bury it it would be my kid. So I said, should I?

Carl said with rather some heat that he thought being real was what we were all about. And when I said well, what do we do to protect our kid, he said that we form a strong family.

... okay!

I mean it's not entirely that simple and yet - it is, too.

And that, is the apple pie.

Shandra

Stigmas & comments

You know, it is interesting. I've been reading in a particular segment of the infertility/parenting blog world for a while, with some additions in the writing mommy world. A lot of those blogs can be found right here on Julie's fantastic blog and great blog list.

In reading and participating in that community, I've never really seen anyone say that they were sorry for someone's kid, not on their blog (I have seen it a few times in parenting forums, where it's not someone's, you know, journal space). There is a kind of understanding that when people talk about parenting angst, anger issues, former abuse issues, codependent ex-alcoholic issues, that they will be granted a little bit of space and dignity and yes - goodwill. Because it's just so big, being a parent and a flawed human being - or several - all at once.

Reading all that has probably shaped me into a slightly better person, and I'm grateful for it.

I guess I'd forgotten that either a) multiples are just treated that shittily or b) multiples treat each other that shittily. I have a short memory for that kind of bullshit, which I also at one time delivered. I feel a renewal of shame to have participated at one time in something similar. Sometimes, we deserve the stereotypes. But I'm not going to argue about my parenting or turn it into drama, and that is why I am choosing just to close comments right now. and back off the kind of explanatory posts and go back to recording simple experience for a while.

As ever you can communicate with me directly - with your email address on it - at shandra_lemarath@hotmail.com.

Shandra

What do we tell the kids?

So yeah, thoughts on what you tell your kids about being multiple.

I should preface this with what I believe about being open about multiplicity (and this blog is a part of that). I think it's important, in the grand scheme of things, for people to be able to be authentic. And I think that if more multiples were able to be out, it would lessen the hysteria around multiplicity that comes from film and some of the massive surge of talk-show dramatics in the 1980s. I've been relatively out at work and to friends for years, now, and although I sometimes tire of the uphill battle it is to be believed, and the pressure at times to be "more sane than the sane" once I'm out, overall I want to interact with the world from who I really am (or perceive myself to be) enough that it's worth the costs to me.

Having said that, we are largely in the beyond after the "listen to me! this is who I am!" stage of selves-awareness. Lynn's gotten up on stage and read as Lynn. Lyria's been to SARK lectures as Lyria. And I won't get into all the things I've had to do to assert myself. It's not that I don't still want to be acknowledged and appreciated as me. But I no longer have a 30 year backlog of need about it. In the same way that I might not talk about writing in a parenting social circle, I don't feel the need to point out my multiplicity when it's not important to the relationship/context so much, any more.

Here at home, we all pretty much (with a few exceptions that we are working on) feel free to be ourselves, without the need to trumpet our presence all the time.

And I'm glad we are at that stage. Because I'm reasonably convinced that for me as a parent I believe it's not a great idea to really lay out explicit multiplicity to any young children, unless there's a specific need or reason (like they ask, or get challenged on the playground or by family, or something).

Despite the benefit to society of out multiples.

I think most kids tend to be very literal and not be able to think abstractly. I think the idea of a changing parent/parents has the potential to be too scary and unstable for a young kid. I'm not sure there are good ways to bridge the adult/child thinking gap to be able to properly reassure one's kid about it. And I think up to a certain age - after 9, and possibly after 19 - the need of the child for security may well trump the need of both individuals for explicit discussion of who mum is.

It's not about keeping a secret per se. It's about just being, and not explaining more than we need to. It's a fine line: I don't want Noah to grow up, find out, and be angry he never knew. On the other hand I don't want him struggling with too much information, too soon.

(Now this is a personal choice: I don't think there are any rules about it or overriding moral considerations. I'm not judging anyone else on their decisions past, present, or future. And I have no idea how things will shake down for us in the future.)

I sort of see it like this. It's important for kids to know that their parents love each other and to watch them deal with conflict and connection and all those things. But they don't need to know about their parents' sex lives, and they don't need to know that mummy spent two years thinking she might have to leave daddy because he was having a nasty mid-life crisis. Until they start to struggle with some of the same things and then maybe a few conversations about "how our relationship was, too, besides what you saw" are really good. (Although the sex life... anyway. :))

So for me, it will be important to maintain a space where we are who we are. It's important to me and us for a lot of reasons, one of which is that I want to be able to genuinely say we /all/ cared about him and we were /all/ there. Which means actually doing that. Which means things like Magdalynn writing whatever she wants to write, which may or may not ever be shared (but she'll have been connected.) *

But it won't be as important to explain it all.

I also think it depends on kid. And the circumstances.

For circumstances - if we continue to get phone calls for Lynn, there will have to be an explanation that is both truthful and limited. I haven't come up with that yet, although luckily being a writer provides a lot of room for eccentricity and noms de plume. If we end up on Imprint (assuming it's revived) talking about being multiple and a writer, and therefore Noah gets told his mother is crazy on the schoolyard, then we'll have to deal with those things. Or if his maternal grandparents flip out. And it will have to be something we think about before going on Imprint and outing ourselves. And about blogging, too. All those things.

For the child, only Noah can answer that. No one knows yet if he will be the kind of child who reads Descartes at 14 and pours over our published works and asks about them, or if he will be into soccer and girls at 14 and barely notice our presence. (I kind of hope for Descartes and soccer, myself, with the odd girl and glance at our fiction. :)) Maybe he'll be sensitive to our switches and demand explanations. Maybe he will be oblivious.

No matter what though, he will be loved and important and believed in. 'Cause in parenting, that sort of goes one way. He doesn't have to believe in us.

So that's where I am on it, today.

----------------

* My reason for this is direct experience: I know really well an adult child of a multiple, who has siblings. None of the siblings reacted the same to their mother's coming out/discovery experience, which happened as they were all adults. But they all (from what I've heard, which is direct in some cases and from reliable sources in others) had one particular concern in common which was "well who's my mother" and when it was revealed, due to circumstances that were hard for everyone, that not everyone in that multiple system wanted kids or was happy with them, it was very hard for the kids. I do think that possibly the one thing a parent should never admit to is not wanting a child, even if said child is now 45.

And it's one reason everyone being on the parenting wagon to some extent is really important to me. So that if/when it does come up, the child can look back and see we were really there, just not waving flags about who was out when.

You may see a remarkable degree of unity among us on this one: that's because we all spent months hashing it out while pregnant with Emily.

Solutions, protections

Right now Noah is asleep - not in anyone's arms. He's in a shopping bin, the plastic kind you buy at No Frills rather than paying 5 cents a bag, which has been lined with a soft quilt and a receiving blanket. It's just a bit shorter than him, which means his legs have something to push against, and it's about 18 inches wide.

Total cost: $4.99 for the bin. $1.99 for the clips that are holding the quilt snug around the edges. The quilt and receiving blankets were gifts.

And yes, it's about the size of a dresser drawer, but taller. And apparently it's snuggly and safe and warm. And if this works, I have oddly mixed feelings: elation that maybe we can get some sleep, both Carl and I, possibly at the same time. And a bit of sadness because although sleep is really important to us, it is one of those first steps to independence. Not that we can't stick it in the middle of our bed to keep Noah right near us, which we might.

But my gut tells me that if he likes it - that is, if it's not a matter of him crying until he gets used to it, which he has not done - then he's ready for it. I think I'm an IP - instinct parent. Intuitive parent? Something like that, with a lot of reading mixed in.

And man it might be nice not to have to agree on who takes the 2-to-4 am shift and who takes the 5-to-7 (4-5 being the boobs' and therefore my shift) and so on and so forth.

The next burning question is: will Movie Babies or any local equivalent be playing The Exorcism of Emily Rose as a baby feature in about a month? Because I don't know if they show scary shit like that at those things, and if so, probably they won't wait until Noah's old enough to take will they? Damn. As someone who gets offered an exorcism (via email! The offer, at least) by fundamentalist Christians at least once a month you know I have to see this one. I guess it'll have to go on the zip list.

I am really liking having DVDs around to watch during the aforementioned sleep shifts, and rarely while nursing (right now I am still too infatuated to pay attention, except when I'm so tired I'm worried I'll drift off). But last night I watched Bastard out of Carolina, which I had read some of and then returned to the library and vaguely remembered as a "growing up poor and abused in the south" story. The film did nothing to make me wish I had finished the book in the first place, although I think it was very real and fairly layered as these things go.

But oh, looking at my son I had this fierce, fierce reaction to the movie.

First was that he shouldn't be hearing such things in his background, which is probably overkill (see desire to see film, above) - but it soon won't be; soon I will have to make sure that when I watch disturbing things that he is safely asleep in another room. Or at playgroup. Or something. I have never really bought into the "it's just a movie/book/tv show" thing for kids: things I have seen/read/watched have affected me profoundly as a human being, at times, and I am going to presume the same is true for my kid. And while he's little - a toddler, a small boy, a boy - I intend to try to filter things. He'll eventually go to a friend's house and see trash, but there it is.

(Not to keep them all innocent and rosy; quite the opposite, as a lot of what I think of as quality kid lit is actually quite scary in many ways - orphans, pirates, ogres. I have never approved of the version of A Little Princess where her father is actually alive, either. But designed for children, yes - adult films where a little girl is raped, no. The difference is hard to express but I think reasonably easily grasped.)

But second, I just felt this new pocket of fierceness, that could easily turn to rage. If any adult ever beat Noah I would be hard pressed not to kill them, including Carl, my parents, Lohr, my friends. And I mean that utterly, even if I would hope I wouldn't actually kill anyone. It's the same scorched-earth rage that I have even thinking about being in the same room with the nurse that attended Emily's labour. And although it's a little extreme, I'm glad it's there.

And a note to you lovely readers: I think Magdalynn will probably respond to her own comments, but I am working on some thoughts about what one says - and doesn't say - about multiplicity to one's kids. But that's a complicated thing that will take some time - keep watching here though. :)

Shandra

Working towards routines

This week's goal is to try to work on routines a little. Not schedules: that would imply things happen at a particular time, and we are so far from that. But routines: the rhythm and order in which things generally flow.

So, this morning after what turned out to be an 8 am feed (I was up from the 4 am feed, but see, that was "night") I put Noah in his playmat for his 20 minutes of staring wonder time and talked to him while I threw a sausage/lentil/potato/zucchini/red pepper/NO garlic or onion soup in the crock pot. That worked so well I felt full of energy, so I threw on some clothes and put Noah in his car seat and went outside in a state of mild dishelvement for a 20 minute walk with him in the stroller-travel-system. It was a toss up between that and the Snugli, since I don't feel uber-confident with the sling and his neck muscles yet, and the Snugli was not readily found.

He fell asleep happily enough and I got some sunshine and a DVD into the mail. And a start on a post-partum exercise something-or-other. Then I read a few things online and ate some more breakfast (yoghurt and fruit at 6 seemed far away) and now he's about to wake up for the next feed.

Yay!

Shandra

3 weeks

Ah, my son, it is three weeks now since you were thrust outside this body.

I think you have a curious nature for you extend your periods of watching daily. You watch without anticipation, fear, suspicion. What comes, comes. What goes, goes. This, I suppose, is what is called innocence.

It is different, here, to have a son. I have a son of my lands and now you, a son of this flesh. He is fiercer than you, more of me and less of these other mothers, and the heart of his father which seizes upon things deeply. You are more at ease as long as your belly is not empty. You like to sleep where he has always fought it, waking with abrupt cries. You wake slowly, stretching and making these faces, and you do not like to be rushed.

It is odd for there, there is always time. Here, it flows and you take up much of it, to eat, to be soothed, to be gazed upon. Yet you are the calmer of the two. I am glad to have learned comfort for you require much of it, not in wails and cries but in the way you startle or look pained if you do not receive it. You do not like abrupt change and need to have the ways smoothed for you. It requires long days and much attention.

You have the look of your sister. It strikes me in the night and then I check that you breathe. You are good at this breathing. May it continue.

I notice that your hair has grown and the plates of your head seem more knitted together, except for these fontanels. Your fingers are long, and your palms squat: hands for the doing of things. I flatter myself perhaps you will play the piano, and well. You like music, I think, for it lulls you to sleep in the night and rouses you to wider eyes in the morning. But perhaps it is the passing fancy of childhood.

We will see, for I will be here. It surprises me a little, that you join the brother you will likely scarcely know in my heart. One of many revelations to come, I think.

ML

Whole lot of living

It's still fairly crazy here in 24 hr living land. Yesterday afternoon was something else: cluster feeding from noon - 6 pm and a bout of fussing, possibly due to gas from the crazy cluster. My boobs were empty-feeling and sore.

I felt overwhelmed, since it was the first day Carl and I had without mother-in-law backup, and since there was so much feeding it mostly fell to me, and I realized that in another week I'll be flying solo and the reality of that was sort of leaden, at that point. How do you pee if your kid wants to nurse for 3 hrs?

I also went out on a single errand on - Wed? Thurs? - while Carl pushed the stroller around outside and it was insane, trying to fit the whole trip in between feedings (didn't work) and organize all the gear. I know it gets easier - and germs become less of an issue - but I had this dreadful feeling of being trapped. I am a person who likes to be out and about, and in the idealized parenthood in my brain I have always pictured mobility: baby sling, stroller, diaper bag, and all of Toronto to explore. The reality was shockingly bad. Carl wandered off and I panicked when I couldn't see my baby anywhere on the horizon, for the first time... ever. There was a poopy diaper (he is pooing just fine now; maybe it's the massages! TY) to change in a public washroom (on our mat but still!).

Noah of course wanted a feed after rousing for the bowel event; the breastfeeding lounge was great to have, but again - germ concern. I was torn between fear of disease and not wanting to make him wait; his crying won out but I went through a lot of contortions so as not to have my hands connect with any of the armchair. Despite all the hand sanitizer I was packing. I have found tiny babies turn me into a neurotic creature. Which, at this point in Noah's development, is not a bad thing.

I had to laugh at previous visions of subtlely breastfeeding in front of art down at the AGO... except I still want to get there. God do I. I like my house and my street and the lake, thank god, the lake - but I. need. to. get. out. sometimes. It's not desperate yet, which is good, but give it another couple of months and it will be. But man. That trip showed it's not easy to get there.

But even with all these bumps on the road the predominant mood was still quite a bit of gladness about just having these problems at all. Not to mention the sheer joy of watching him look at things, or hold onto a finger, or breathe. It's amazing that he has our fingers and Carl's feet. It's amazing, this person who is now our family too. It doesn't seem to end, this wonder and delight and sense that the universe has gifted us incredibly with getting to know this kid.

Okay, I am about to cringe at myself because I don't believe, at all, that anyone needs a child to complete them. But having Noah around is on some level darning a hole in my and our particular psyche. I think this hole was ripped open by losing Emily, but the worn patch had been there for a long time. First infertility we never investigated, and then by the whole multiple/therapy exploration which made it seem like we'd never feel whole or stable enough to parent.

I think we all, except Lyria, put a damper on how much under all that garbage we wanted to. (Okay, not one hundred percent all, but a majority all.) I'm hyperventilating right now even typing that I want to be a parent: it seems selfish, somehow, and wrong, and like it will condemn Noah to death. Sometimes I think growing up we learned to bury desire so deep that even we can't find aspects of it any more. And losing this desire was making us less whole. Most of us, anyway.

And now here we are trading off cluster feeds with each other. A secret strength in the middle of the strangeness of being multiple: when one of us is getting impatient, sometimes - sometimes - someone else can step in. If we are all paying attention.

And occasionally we just cry together; yesterday Lyria had a bit of a meltdown, over the feeding, and I was a close second over that feeling of being trapped. For her not being able to get Noah fed at the start of these (what I presume are) growth spurts is really triggering: I think it has to do with my mum withholding food and some strange feedback loop there. For me mobility has always meant safety; the idea of not being able to get away is equally triggering, although I was mostly through it by the time Noah had his rough afternoon.

She has entirely impossibly high standards for herself; mine are just a little unrealistic. (Ha.) But she talked to Lian a bit online, and cried in our body a little, and was comforted and Carl went and got a pre-cooked chicken at the grocery store for dinner as a Friday treat along with cake, and told her she was doing fine.

And you know, your baby does not really care if you are shedding a few tears over his head, as long as he is warm and has a breast in his mouth. It's a good thing since I suspect most mothers do shed a few at points like that.

Fear, frustration, joy, awe. All together. It's awesome.

Other people may start posting here; I just let you all know. We'll sign things if they are person-specific.

Shandra

6 lbs 3 oz

6 lbs 3 oz! He passed his birth weight!

I would say that's outstanding - more than 1 oz a day since his last visit. Yay. A very good-news day. The boobs and I are proud.

Still thinking about the sleep situation. I appreciate the thoughts on the family bed.

I suppose my thinking is influenced in this by a few things. Having had a cousin who had SIDS - luckily he was found and revived the first time, although he may have sustained some damage. After that my aunt and uncle lived for two years with an alarm going off once every week or so if he stopped breathing, or moved off the monitor. It's made me sensitive to the conventional wisdom of SIDS information pamphlets, even if it may be suspect.

Our bed is also a pillow-top, so it might be a bit squishy for a baby to lie on. Carl and I tend to be deep sleepers, even with Noah in his attached-to-the-bed co-sleeper. And being multiple, you never really know who is sleeping exactly in the body anyway. All those things tend to make me, personally, wary of the family bed without training wheels as a choice for us at this time. I may well change my mind down the road.

What I am thinking about is the co-sleeper that goes into the bed, the one you put between you. A family bed with a harder surface and a few walls, so to speak. Lyria approves. It'd be about a $60 experiment. We are truly starting to drown in baby gear around here, but some of it is shaking down what works for us.

Two weeks

Dear Noah-bird,

Yesterday you turned two weeks old. It's amazingly long and short of a time.

You've changed a lot already. You seem longer, probably more because your back and neck muscles are stronger and so you don't get hunched up as much - maybe you've adjusted to all the space out here. You love to stretch. When you are waking up, you go through what I call your boot sequence - you make tons of faces: smiling, grumpy, rounded mouth, pouting mouth, eyebrows raised, eyebrows narrowed. I watch them and think of what might in future have you make them deliberately. Then you stretch out your limbs and do what Carl calls baby tai-chi, flinging out your arms and hands and legs and feet, and arching your back and rolling your head. Finally you start to grunt and sometimes coo, and suck on your hands when they happen to come by your mouth. And if no one pays attention eventually you let out a yell.

You dream too, eyes working behind your eyelids. I wonder what you dream of.

You have at least two play periods a day now, where you lie in your playmat bed and stare and stare at the patterns. You can turn on your side by yourself and you roll from side to side, entranced by the colours and black just the right space from your eyes. You also examine the clothes over my breasts whenever you feed, and look at your dad and I if we get the right distance from you. You like your dad's black and white and red Chicago Bulls t-shirt a lot.

This week I learned about fear and how your sister's death carved deep channels in my parenting landscape. You haven't been gaining as fast as we would have liked and for a couple of days there, your mum was whacked out, convinced that something awful was going to happen. I missed some of your feeds and kicks and lookings around, because I was too scared to be really present with you. Finally I took to bed to recover and get my head on straight. I hope in the future when that happens I'll centre faster.

This week you had more baths and went for two walks down the street in the stroller, little ten minute fresh air jaunts, and had an ultrasound and breastfed in public and got a swing and a playmat. You're really too small for the swing still though.

Your dad and I have also discovered that trusting our instincts puts us closer to extreme attachment parenting than we thought. Since feeding you has been the top priority, and not having you burn calories on fussing, we have indulged you shamelessly in your need and desire to be held, to the point of pretty much giving up on the co-sleeper and just arranging our schedules so that you can sleep in our arms or laps around the clock if you like. And you do, especially your dad's arms. In mine you always seem to have a nose out for the breast, and you wake up to suck here and there.

Right now you feed for about an hour, every two hours. You like to linger over your milk, moving from a productive constant sucking for the first half hour to longer rest periods with little sucks in between. But woe to she who removes the breast before you're done. You shriek in protest with your little tongue purple in the middle of your mouth.

While your grandma Judy is here holding you so much has worked okay. She leaves late this week, and then in two weeks your dad goes back to work, so we may have to work on that a bit. But first, gaining weight. Once you are over 8 lbs you're likely to sleep better and longer anyway. With luck that is a little over a month away.

You are extremely loved.

Chugging along

Just a short entry to update y'all - we've been on the sleep/eat/sleep plan trying to be sure my body can keep up with milk production and everything, so not a whole lot of blogging energy, yet.

The ultrasound went fine, although being at East General was really hard. Also, the ultrasound dept didn't know how to handle Noah's temporary health card and sent us to patient accounts. The last time I was there was paying for Emily's and my charts. Patient accounts laughed at ultrasound and gave us a hall pass (almost literally; a piece of paper saying it was fine to go ahead with the scan). And yes of course Carl was right there too, looking equally strained.

The results go to our family dr., so we may hear Tues am. I am not really worried at this point: it's more about his weight to me than some nebulous possible hip problem, but I am glad to follow up on it.

I breastfed in public, in the waiting room, and Noah did great. He's still looking kind of scrawny to me though and combined with being in Emily's birth/trauma place, the system had a kind of meltdown at night that he's starving to death and it will all be death, death, dead, dead, dead. Predictable, but a lousy reaction, and when you add serious sleep deprivation in, it becomes overwhelming.

He's feeding at regular two hour intervals, which means no more than 1.5 hrs sleep, much of it nightmares. The feeds are good, he sucks and swallows and seems contented afterwards. But we remain unconvinced, because a) his weight wasn't going up on Thurs and b) the pooing thing. It's really frustrating not to know. I thought I could make it to Tuesday to find out, until about 9 pm at night, and then all of a sudden he looked on the verge of death. Today I may see if the clinic would weigh him, but thanks to the whole "ancient scales at dr's office" thing, it really has to be *her* scale. And of course it's Labour Day weekend.

It's a bad loop, emotionally, and of course there's no short-term solution. Carl and my mother in law took turns putting Noah back down after feeds though so all I had to do was get up, offer breast, and go back to bed. I got more sleep than I have a few nights, anyway - probably 6 hrs total. Have I mentioned we can't sleep in the daytime? It's old trauma, that one, but it is complicating things a bit. If we're really tired enough sometimes we can, but people wake up freaked out.

But. Noah's been developing by leaps and bounds. He likes to spend time in a sort of pseudo-bed playmat thing my work colleagues gave us, staring at the newborn-friendly bright patterns and cooing. He is discovering the visual world and he is *interested*. He stares at my shirt, the wall, the couch - anything he can focus on. He can turn over, I may have mentioned, onto either side, seemingly at will. He's awake more between feeds and he seems to actually get bored and cranky if one does not provide adequate things to look at. We're buying a mobile today.

But he's still hanging onto his poo. What *is* that about anyway?

I find I like hard data (weight) over soft data (he seems like a very happy and contented baby).

Shandra

Cycles

Augh in my head today it's a mess. The previous post sort of displays this in its lack of coherence, and here's a companion random collection of thoughts.

There is something so disturbing about this weight thing. I think it's because I keep flashing back to The Meeting which was when the Sick Kids team brought all the reports and scans and experience they had to the table with Carl and I and talked about Emily and her state and the way things might shake out for her future. That was when they recommended that we take her off the ventilator.

And they also suggested that, down the road, we might want to withhold feeding, and at that my gut truly clenched. As I've written in my other journal, when you make these life and death decisions you never ever get to achieve certainty, in my view. A lack of certainty about your decision is kind of the moral price you have to pay in exchange for that kind of power: you'll never know if you were right; you can only know you did the best you could at the time. But I remember how, sitting there with engorged breasts and a post-partum body, there was some kind of bottom line instinct that said no to that (thank god we never got there). Removing machines was one thing; withholding sustenance was another. It was turning the natural order upside down.

Right now I'm questioning whether the natural order is producing the right kind of breast milk or latch or something.

The more superstitious bits of me, and members of the system, see Noah's lack of weight gain as somehow tied into that: the harbringer of doom that if that was the only thing we couldn't do last time, this time it will be the end. It's really awful sometimes how our life has conspired at times to lead us to that kind of fear and lack of belief in a benevolent universe.

My mother-in-law in her gentle way pointed out that there are about a million things not going wrong, which was good. And it's true. Today Noah turned himself on his side several times and he was awake and looking around quite a bit. He's reaching out more, probably randomly, but his fingers are splayed, not those newborn fists, and he stared at my black and cream striped t-shirt for quite a long while. He's definitely working to come online with the world around him, and he seems strong and healthy. It's just that the numbers on the scale are not right.

I'm really starting to feel the effects of lack of sleep. A pouch equipped with tits would be awfully handy around now. Last night I brought Noah into our bed to lie on me for "just a minute" before getting up to nurse and actually fell back asleep with him on me - now that's scary dangerous. When I woke up about 15 minutes later he had rooted around to my breast and was, shall we say, really blissed out on getting to nurse his own way. But I was sore. And horrified at myself.

Anxieties

I'm typing this sitting on the hardwood in our living room, with Noah on his new playmat next to me sleeping and soaking in the sun for his vitamin D and just to help with the last of his minorly jaudiced look. He really passed out - not surprising since neither of us got a whole lot of sleep last night, and this morning we were at the doctor's, although he slept in the car.

The news was mixed. Not a lot of weight gain since Monday, although there's some question about scales and whether that means anything... the bottom line is he probably won't quite make his birth weight for Sunday, which would be the ideal. I see why people give up on the breastfeeding, now - not only are we still working out supply and demand so my breasts are alternately full and sore or empty and sore from loads of nursing - but I would give a *lot* to be able to *see* the intake. And the quality of milk.

I feel scared and hopeless and dream during my catnaps that he's starving, and in Emily's grave.

But he's still okay at this point and we go back Tuesday. it seems far away. Damn long weekend.

Noah's hip is still an issue: it's clicking and my family doctor decided we should get an ultrasound. Unfortunately Sick Kids was booked for a month and guess where we ended up? East General. Sigh. But an ultrasound's pretty non-invasive and so tomorrow we'll go down for it. I suspect it will be a really hard day, but it was pretty easy decision to just take the appointment - if Noah needs it, it's doable. And it's good to know now if something's wrong, both for fixing it and so he doesn't have to go through dislocating it or anything like that, if it turns out that's a possibility.