Belly letters - pregnancy after loss

New digs, new approaches

2005-11-07T12:06:00.000-05:00

I think it's time to reintegrate parenting stuff into every day stuff, blogging wise - it's simpler and I am not fearing so much to have it there.

So I moved two (at least) blogs into one new one over here:

http://www.multiplicity.ca/blog

Hope to see you there! I know, I know - too many blogs this year. This one should be permanent.

We'll still be reading over here too!

And wonderful comments on the babysitting thing - thank you!! More thoughts on that to come in the new digs, for sure.

Oh and Dy I finally found that cream and it is superior, although he hasn't had too many rashes - he did spring one on Sat and it's all cleared up. :)

Shandra

Sitters

2005-11-03T13:35:00.000-05:00

So, we're at 10.5 weeks and man, do I have a gorgeous baby. I hate to disrupt his life. I find myself this week trying to have the perfect loving skin touching, playmat exploring, tummy-time rolling, cuddling routine-but-not-scheduled experience, because I feel guilty - still - from the Costco Experience on Saturday.

At the same time Carl celebrated his 39th birthday yesterday and we - had dinner. Oh it was a lovely dinner, ribs for him, chicken for me (I confess, finally, that I do not like ribs much), and potato-bacon-cheddar soup, and baby peas, and chocolate cake for dessert. Noah was in an expansive mood for the first bit and inundated Carl with glee, and then dropped off for a sleep and we had some adult time.

And yet, we never left the house. That's fine. But eventually we are going to want and need to leave the house together without child and have a little date. Not perhaps this month. But eventually.

And I've hit a wall of trust issues. Oh I have had plans for this for a while. One has been to have a responsible older teen come in after school and watch Noah with me here while I write, for a few months and then see if I think s/he can be left alone for an hour or two. Another has been to start a parent co-op, but since I haven't been doing much parent networking other than with parents who don't live that close via the potlucks, hmmm, not so great. I could possibly prevail upon friends but that seems like a recipe for friend disaster to me - I recognize that our society is stupid about this, but I live in our society and my current society says that friends come over for dinner but they don't babysit. Because what if they do it wrong or something happens - neither of which is likely, but still. It seems cleaner to have a professional relationship or something instead.

This is where my mother would come in handy, except - yeah. No dice there.

In other words, I am eliminating all my options before they begin, because I am scared to leave my baby with anyone but Carl, and I confess even with Carl was hard when I was dealing with dental stuff (and that's just insane). I cannot honestly believe anything good will come of it. It terrifies me. A small bit of this is Emily stuff, some of it is abuse stuff (okay, a fair chunk), and some of it is remembering being a pretty darn responsible babysitter and still not really being - loving. You know?

Breastfeeding is such a good excuse that way; if he never transitions to bottles at all then I can stay in for the next 6 months at least.

So, how does one get over the neurosis and move forward? A question for my therapist maybe or maybe that mum's group...

Shandra

Corruption

2005-11-01T21:24:00.000-05:00

I think last week corrupted me.

Noah's reached some new phase where Something Bothers Him But We Can't Tell What and so after the offering of food/changing of diaper and clothing/checking of temperature/for wounds and sore spots/rocking and cooing we just walk around with him singing. Today's bout was at 11:30 am, after a playmat session.

My theory is that his brain is growing and the new input hurts. Because it's all related to genius of course!

Anyways, he calmed down around noon and I decided he was in need of hard-core attachment parenting, mnn hmm. So around 1:45, after a nutritious meal for him and one for me, I took a pile of Hallowe'en candy and a Homicide DVD and laid on the futon and ate crap while he slept on me.

Mnnnn.

Tomorrow we return to our granola ways, with sling.

Shandra

Candy overload

2005-11-01T09:07:00.000-05:00

Well we only got about 20 families here for Hallowe'en - an all-time life low, I think (and I thought our old house was in a kid-unfriendly neighbourhood!). Maybe there was a party for the kids instead, or maybe parents in our neighbourhood only let their kids go to homes where they know people... whatever the reason it was slow and we didn't meet too many people. Totally unlike our last neighbourhood. We did meet two dads and that's a good thing - slow but steady start to things.

Still, I was rather floored. We may yet have to go to delivering cookies door to door. Or leftover candy. We have tons. Come to my door if you want some spiff stuff. :)

Noah seemed to enjoy being trucked out on the porch and back in, Mr. Pumpkin Boy. I have a dragon costume for him too, but it can wait for some gloomy November/December days. It may have been the trucking, or it may be a new phase, but he was again totally hyped up all evening (not fussy, just super-alert) and hard to get to sleep.

He was also up smiling and chatting from 1 am to 3 am. So much for that circadian rhythm! I was really tired, but it's hard to be too upset. He's developing a wide range of cries/coos/grunts/sighs/burbles. The new cry ("attention! now!") is particularly awe-inspiring: it sounds like a much larger child and is kind of throaty.

I'm not sure he's acquiring language in the evolutionarily approved manner. When I say "hiiiiii" to him, he says "hhhhh." Honestly, 'e's got 'is 'aitches, already, sort of. I find it bizarre and overwhelmingly cute. But I wonder at a child who has to get his consonants first.

He also goes wild if I say "ba ba ba ba ba." Apparently that's speaking his language.

We have all our thrush stuff, but the doctor said it wasn't a particularly bad case and that many parents would just let it go. I'm not sure whether that was a hint or not but we have anti-thrush drops for Noah's tongue and cream for my tits and hopefully that will end this little saga. I'm ready to feel human and normal again any time now! I missed the mum group again. Bah, humbug. But this week's another potluck.

Shandra

Happy Hallowe'en!

2005-10-31T10:47:00.000-05:00

So is orange his colour? :)

Dispatches

2005-10-30T17:45:00.000-05:00

I'm still tired out so in summary:

- do not "pop out" to one last store, no matter how popular the candy there will make you, with baby in tow for the meltdown will make you regret it.

- Noah does have thrush, which so far has just manifested as thrush on his tongue and no pain yet... but this clears up what our plans for tomorrow might be, since we'll be at the doctor's.

- my tooth infection appears to be outlasting antibiotics, so we'll deal with that then too

- I'm in need of a week off in some tropical paradise! Except I can't imagine time off away from Noah and there goes the time off... :)

Baby's growing up

2005-10-28T14:09:00.000-04:00

I am recovering from the infection debacle, but slowly. And I lost 4 lbs! This is not good, at this point - not that I am underweight, but the losing during breastfeeding just can't be optimal.

I nested in with Noah the last two days, although Wednesday I was so nauseated from the painkillers and woozy that Carl had to be hovering a fair amount. Yesterday I was back firmly in the saddle and just put everything within reach in the rec room and we had a one-room (plus bathroom) day, Noah and I.

It was blissful, watching DVDs while playing with him and cuddling and dancing a bit in a cautious way. I eased up on my "don't spend your days in front of DVDs" rule and didn't do a lick of housework or anything. Not what I want, overall, but now and then I think it's fine. Noah didn't seem to mind that my attention was sometimes focused on the boob tube. Changing locales and using only the playmat also brought some changes out with him.

First, he's just way more alert and interactive every day. He's starting to settle into a vague routine, although his feeds during the day are still a bit all over the map. He plays for up to an hour, as long as there's someone to play with the last while. Play is stretching, kicking, waving his arms, watching, smiling, and making sounds. Oh and staring.

Not much rolling though, and I'm starting to - not worry, but keep an eye on his lack of interest in his hands. He is only at 9 and a half weeks, but he really rarely notices them, although he is stretching them towards things more. (He's developed the strangely disconcerting habit of patting my breast while he feeds too.) Somehow all this comes across sometimes as a little passive - another word would be content. He isn't yet motivated to go greet the world with touch and motion, too much. He's observing. And I hope that's all okay - I think it is, but I am sometimes a born worrier.

(I know I should enjoy that it's so safe, right now.)

Second, he likes to fall asleep more on his own. I should celebrate this because it bodes well for future sleep and in fact, he is sleeping 5-6 hrs through now about 4 nights a week (including last night! yay!). But I'm a little sad too in that selfish way... he's bigger, he likes to stretch out, and as much as he loves to be held and comforted and gets grumpy if he doesn't have cuddle time, he's also growing up and doesn't need to feel like he's in the womb listening to my heart to fall asleep. It's a tiny step to independence. And that's what we're into, for the next 18 years - the long slow path to it. But boy, there's a little bitty bit of missing there about the newborn that fussed if you dared set one inch of his body off mine or Carl's.

Third, I improvised a kick gym by holding rattles at his feet, and he kicked at them. So maybe I shouldn't worry so much, if he's doing that with his feet. Hmmmm. Writing this out is good. :)

Fourth he is starting to like his tummy, even if it looks rather uncomfortable when he runs out of energy and plants his face down on the quilt. He fell asleep on his tummy yesterday, after 15 minutes of happy lifting and shifting and smiling and a bit of movement scootching up. I left him that way since I was right next to him to keep an eye out for SIDS and he slept well for over an hour.

Of course then when he woke up he was shocked to find the world upside down!

This weekend we need to do some baby shopping - something other people's generosity has made so unusual. We don't have anything like a snowsuit that goes in the carseat well - nothing with slits for a 5-pt harness, in other words - and I want to see what there is on the market. I think he could use some sleepers, although last night out of desperation (see above about not doing laundry :)) I tried the next size up and it wasn't ridiculous after all and people gave us a few in that size. And a kick gym, since I haven't been successful on eBay.

And maybe a few more clothes, if Value Village has cute ones in. Yes, it's all about the second-hand stuff when it comes to baby outfits, as much as I admit I actually like the clothes at Baby Gap (the cottons are just nicer; I'm sorry but they are). With luck maybe there'll be some used Baby Gap there. :)

Shandra

Parenting through pain - ugh

2005-10-26T14:13:00.000-04:00

So I had this root canal and I delayed taking the antibiotics 'cause Noah had had his immunizations and in case he suddenly went off the milk or something I thought it would be good to give him a couple of days. My dentist said she thought it would be okay.

Were we ever wrong. Sunday night I got the searing pain and swelling that only come with a root/bone infection gone wildly wrong, and despite starting the penicillin then it has been raging out of control. We doubled the antibiotics. I took ibuprofin and it didn't work and after consulting Motherisk (which is a fabulous resource for Canadians, esp. Torontonians) we determined I could take Tylenol 3 (with codeine in it). For Sunday, Monday, Monday night, and Tuesday until about 4 pm, the painkillers made very little dent in it - about 20 minutes out of a 4 to 6 hr dose. Finally, finally it is starting to recede - swelling and pain alike.

But man, it sucks. For a bit there I thought we might have to put Noah on formula. I thought I was going to go insane with pain, and Carl really had to step in and take care of the baby here and there while I laid on the floor and sobbed (literally; it was worse than labour in many ways due to the unremittingness of it). I didn't sleep from Sunday at midnight to last night at 7. It was crazy.

I felt vulnerable in a way I never have before. It's one thing to get sick on one's own, but having a baby, if you get sick you're messing up their days too, and in this case putting breastfeeding at risk, not only from the drugs one might have to take, but also milk production. (My body is a trooper because it has continued to produce milk despite lack of calories and all this stress and pain and infection, although frankly I felt more like my body let me down with the infection in the first place.) It really hit home that I have to take a bit more care with me, too.

Lynn was brilliant. She really is able to dissociate out of a lot more physical pain than anyone else, or maybe she just has a higher tolerance. In any case, although I wouldn't count on being able to do it again - and having backup is really important - she was the most able to still change diapers and croon, rock the baby, and keep calm around him. Not a hundred percent, as the aforementioned breaks showed, but man. Occasionally past trauma comes in handy, although I think probably non-traumatized parents also rise to the occasion each and every day.

Of course Noah slept 6 hrs every night, while I could not take advantage of it. :) He also discovered he can grab onto my lip, in a weird sort of not-really-paying-attention way that he is batting and and grasping things these days. That was - painful, but I managed to be gentle disengaging him. I have a tiny baby fingernail scratch and I'm oddly proud of it. Being a mum is occasionally so weird!

I did get thinking about us growing up. When my mum was sick it was often a major crisis, at least where I remember it (when admittedly we were older enough to handle it). She would get (understandably) stressed and yell and stuff. Maybe my dad didn't help enough; my memory is foggy on that. And lord, with this pain I could see that a toddler or a defiant 5 year old or a bitchy pre-teen would be really really hard to cope with. At least a baby is clearly just doing baby things.

But I renew my commitment to try to handle things differently - get a sitter, get relatives in, whatever, rather than getting so stressed that every illness becomes a battlefield. Because that is what it felt like, growing up. And I so don't want to do that.

When the painkillers really actually started working yesterday I took Noah in my arms and danced for joy and he almost laughed. I would say it was probably an accident of sound but ooohh am I looking forward to baby laughs.

Now of course my concern is thrush because massive antibiotics can certainly do that. I am popping acidophilus pills and being ultra-hygienic and everything. But Noah's tongue is a bit white. Cross your fingers for us. :)

Spaced out on codeine,
Shandra

2 months / eyes nose and toes

2005-10-24T07:16:00.000-04:00

Dear Noah,

You are amazingly two months old. You had your shots right on the very day and you hated that. You cried for about 5 minutes in the doctor's office, slept, and then had about a 20 minute crying jag at home - pain, I bet, but maybe also working off those feelings.

We spent a lot of time this weekend just holding you, skin to skin. You popped a fever, so we gave you Tempra and you weren't too sure about the taste but you let it go down.

You're 22 inches long and 11.5 lbs - right on the 50th percentile. Your eyelashes and eyebrows have been coming in again darker, and the eyelashes in particular frame those stormy blues magnificently. If your eyes stay the colour they are now they will be a steely blue limned with grey, the blue like your dad and the grey eerily like someone Lyria knows. And you use them constantly: you love to look and your attention span is amazing, spending up to 45 minutes watching a mobile or on your playmat.

Alley asked in the comments about your features and maybe you would like to know, too. You have the feet from your dad's side of the family: broad and thick and solid, like weights at the end of your legs. They're made to be used, as long as you can find shoes for them. And we will, when it's time. That's one of the differences between you and your sister: she had my narrow feet.

Your hands are really your own: I fancy that you have your dad's palms, strong and broad, but the long fingers are more like mine. We have never seen hands quite like yours, and that's where the joke that you will be a concert pianist comes from - strength and reach. But of course what you do with these hands will be up to you. Again, even accounting for baby fat, your sister's hands were narrower. You'r starting to use them a bit more, flailing them the way you're looking, sucking on your fingers. But you are still more the observer.

Your shoulders seem wide to me: man-sized already. But I may be projecting there, since I see you on your dad's so often. You are using your muscles to really work at holding up that head, although it's still a big struggle. At tummy-time you lift it up too and once or twice you've even braced with your arms.

Your chin and lips are mine: that set of the mouth that comes right down my maternal line, my mum's, her mum's, her mum's mum's. You're using it well already with so many expressions, but unlike the rest of us you don't chatter incessantly yet. You make some noises, but you save them up for when you really are excited. Your sister had it too, and when you sleep sometimes you fall into the open-mouthed position she had that last night and it catches at my heart, even as yours gets bigger.

Your nose identifies you with your dad's family again, and your sister: a pug-like nose right now, and I think it's adorable. The blonde hair is like both my mum's side and your dad's dad's side of the family, but I can't tell if it's really growing or destined to fall out. The crazy spikes are yours, although something like my sister's hair was around then too.

Your ears are funny. Your sister had both ears like your dad: a little pointy bit at the top giving an elven cast to them. You have one ear like that, and one like mine, rounded, so they don't really match at all. But they certainly work, and you love music - and jump at odd sounds.

When we saw the doctor you were gassy and grunting, which she pronounced as colic based on how often you do that. Now I thought colic was crying, so I thought it a bit silly, but if it is you manage it with tremendous good humour. I know your smiling is somewhat instinctive, but you do it a whole lot and it's gorgeous, like you. The doctor also thinks you're feeding too often - every 4 hours or so at night, timed start to start, and every 1.5 - 2 hours during the day. But I am not in a rush to try to change what your body seems to know. You have become a lot faster, which really helps me feel less chained to the rocking chair. But thanks to some over-active let down a few of those feeds have been a bit rough lately! We're working it out still, mostly using gravity or pumping a bit.

You've taught me a lot this last bit: I actually manage to sit still to play with you, and you need that. You're not a newborn anymore that way, and I'm learning to both let you be and play and play with you. You've also taken so much delight in doing things with me that I've started a bit of exercise alongside you, and been wearing you while I do a few chores, and even had you in the swing while I cooked. It's really nice to be able to do those things and chat to you. It's like learning them all over.

You are still the most beautiful boy in the universe.

Spice woes / Bottles

2005-10-20T17:50:00.000-04:00

We were up aaalll night dealing with a number of things, most especially a nursing strike. I was having a stressed-out day yesterday for abuse-anniversary and dentist reasons, and so in the interest of self-care and general laziness, I ordered pizza. With pepperoni, which we almost never get.

And apparently Noah hates it (this is my best guess) because he hunger-cried, drank, shrieked in indignation, slept 20 minutes - etc. - all night long. I pumped (and dumped) a bit in between to get the nastymilk out, and by 6 this morning it was sorted out. But in the meantime it was horrid. It's somehow deeply distressing to have a hungry baby and have him treat the breasts like poison. I admit that, on top of the rest of things, it pushed me to sit in the rocking chair and cry a little.

And you know, Noah went to sleep while I was. I was feeling guilty that perhaps his upset was not just the pepperoni but that I was having a somewhat-hard day underneath the calming routine of playtime and naps and feedings and such. But I think it really was the milk. This may be one of those cases where the expectations on mothers to be calm and sainted and never upset is a bit of a crock. I certainly believe that a totally stressed mum will affect her kids, and that's one reason I went for pizza. But I also saw that it's not the complete end of the world to be human, too. Yay.

This morning my mother dropped by unexpectedly with a friend of hers at about 10 am and I was in my pyjamas and my hair was a wreck. But you know what? It was okay. Another yay. I'm glad I have decent pyjamas that are more like "loungewear" though. And she brought a gift from a godmother-type individual (to me, not Noah): a Pack 'n Go! Oh my god! Spiff baby gear!

This afternoon I had a root canal. Readers of my other journal may remember that we used to have a severe dental phobia, because of childhood shit and threats, that we have been working on with the help of a really good caring dentist. And generally speaking we're fine with routine dental stuff now. But this was our first root canal, and the whole idea was a little freaky, especially since we'd had no pain or anything to make it look appealing by comparison. So that was the stress. It went fine, so far. The freezing is still wearing off. :) I have revowed to make sure Noah grows up flossing, which (besides brushing, which is a given) is the number one way to prevent all this kind of nastiness.

On Noah's end, he had to do without Mummy and tits for 2 hours, but I had pumped some milk (before the pizza, thank god, and believe me I thought about using it in the night but decided we needed to work out how to work the spice issue out) and put it in a bottle.

Carl tried when Noah got fussy, but he didn't get the hang of it yet (although Carl said he got the taste of some milk and calmed down, he just didn't keep going). He wasn't all that starved by the time they picked me up, anyway. But it was a first step towards being able to take a class in January, which I am really hoping to do - one class. One night a week, for me and my adult brain. If I can manage to tear myself away. After the root canal I felt like I'd been away from my baby forever. Which may inspire a post later on, but right now it's time to go dance around and kiss some baby toes. :)

"some of my best friends are..."

2005-10-18T09:47:00.000-04:00

Conversation this morning:

Me, holding Noah on my legs and making the appropriate gestures and rocking him merrily, to the CD: It's fun to stay at the YMCA /They have everything for young men to enjoy / You can hang out with all the boys
Carl: something I don't remember verbatim about dance clubs
Me: I'm just getting him ready for Pride!
Carl: What if he's not gay?
Me, ignoring that Pride is not just about that: I've done my best! When I ran out of onesies in the middle of the night a few weeks ago I put him in a flowered onesie and watched three episodes of The L-Word!
Carl: ... the L-word is not going to turn* any boys gay
Me: ....

(I keep forgetting that. Cough.)

Noah's favourite dance hits thus far - you be the judge:
Willaby wallaby woo - Raffi
Like a Prayer - Madonna
Cecilia - Simon and Garfunkle
Dancing Queen - Abba
I'm too sexy - Right Said Fred
YMCA - Village People
The grand old Duke of York - us (You know, The grand old Duke of York, he had ten thousand men, he marched them up to the top of the hill...)

*No, of course you can't "turn" someone gay and of course we aren't trying to turn anyone gay, or straight, or anything. No worries. :-)

Chicken'd

2005-10-17T20:01:00.000-04:00

I chickened out of the mums' group today. My excuse is that Noah gets his shots Friday so he should go play with all the polio carriers after and not before.

The reality is I had a dream about writing and I woke up thinking that I have to be writing so as not to be a mum who says she's finishing her first novel but a writer who has finished her first novel who is also a mum. Yes, it was some last minute identity crisis. Perhaps I am not ready to go out and interact as a parent as opposed to a political activist or a creative individual or a student or an editor. Or maybe I'm just lazy and the computer is closer than the rec hall.

And in any case I wrote during one of Noah's naps and then took him to Costco because, you know, going to Costco helps me meet all my personal goals. Were it not for my 45 minutes of writing (after the web journalling, email reading, and tea-making. Oh yes and note gathering), I would have to say that I had truly fallen to the dark side. But that ounce of redemption is there. And it was a nice 45 minutes. I spent last year being jealous of my character because her baby lived, and now we are somewhat on the same page again that way.

And... it is fun to take a baby to Costco, if said baby is my beautiful Noah and looks around at everything pleasantly with big eyes and approves of my buying pine nuts as if I were going to have time to make pesto. He really did. I held up the pine nuts and he smiled. Obviously the trip was necessary.

I also invented a new favourite game, which is inventively called Laundry: the folding. It works like this. Noah and I go down to the rec room and I place him gently on the folded-down futon, safely in the middle. Then I grab the clean laundry out of the dryer quick, quick, and bring it over. Then I swoop each piece of laundry in front of his face and say, "wheee, mummy's blue underwear" or "whee, daddy's black sock" and he watches them sweep by and wriggles and smiles. Then, when the stakes are raised, I actually rub the texture of something on his cheek or his hand like this: "ooooh, this sock is fuzzy!" See, whee for looking, oooh for feeling.

It's a great game. Really. I'm thinking of publishing the rule book for a fortune.

We had very frustrating nursing today: overactive letdown was us, although I cannot blame a long sleep on my poor over-endowed breasts, because Noah nursed every 2 hours all night. Maybe it's a growth spurt or maybe he'll never sleep again! In any case I tried pumping a bit out at the start of the nurse, and it didn't help. I tried applying a towel at letdown and it didn't help. I had to resort to lying on my back and having Noah nurse against gravity, which you apparently can only do so many times before mastitis sets in, but it worked. Thank god. The poor guy was very unhappy when milk was squirting in his mouth and up and out his nose. So was I.

And hmm. That was pretty much the day!

Shandra

Big Boy Sleep

2005-10-15T09:19:00.000-04:00

The face of joy. (Oct. 7) I'm adding pictures into past entries. Two in Oct and a few in Sept. :)

Wow. Noah was up at 5 am (and 1:30 am, so much for the big sleep) and then at 7:15 without much sleep in between. While preparing to go out to a fundraiser for parents of multiples (that would be twins, triplets, etc.) that involves used baby clothes (!) I put him in his co-sleeper to watch the mobile, which he did until it stopped.

And then while I watched him he put himself to sleep. In his co-sleeper. All on his very own.

Guess who's not rushing out to the fundraiser? As much as it pains me (and it does) to not go find ultra-inexpensive clothing (and the 3-6 month stuff seems hardly worn when you do find it and he's close enough to fitting it; and I know it will be picked over by the time he wakes up and nurses and is changed and then we get in the car... etc.) this is a moment of much celebration. For lo, the baby has hated the wide expanse of the co-sleeper and also wanted to be rocked and soothed to sleep. And today he put himself down.

~~~

We took Noah over to M's on Thursday for coffee and it was a lot of fun, although not as much fun as it would have been if he hadn't been a bit grunty/fussy. Gas combined with hunger, and when I nursed him there he was distracted and wriggly. But oh, getting out was nice. This week has been especially confining: a lot of rain, I still don't have my own car which I could rant about but really comes down to not quite being ready to lock into payments for a new one or put the effort into finding a good used one. And oh yes, one-hour nurse on demand.

~~~

I have compromised on y'all's excellent cookie giving out suggestion. And it is a good one. And I should do it. But I have this strange quirk in my personality that I keep stumbling over that makes it hard to go trade cookies for friends... yes I know that's not the point and not what it's about. Truly, I do. And if only Lyria would take charge of it, we'd be well on our way. But she won't, because I stressed her out this year ignoring the fact that she was practically dying living at my parents' every month and she's completely gun-shy right now about things. (At least I think she won't.)

And I have this - mnn - chip on my shoulder? Expectation? Whatever it is, it still feels to me like trading cookies for friends. It comes from lousy elementary school experiences involving being at the nadir of class popularity combined with ill-conceived hippy carob cupcakes. A party would be easier, except I really should have done that before Noah 'cause the idea of having a full-scale party here right now is scary. So I came up with two solutions. The first is that I'm organizing a cookie exchange. See? I can handle cookies (and snacks and drinks and festivities at my house) as long as they're reciprocal.

Your first Thanksgiving

2005-10-11T12:23:00.000-04:00

So Noah, yesterday was your first Thanksgiving, and you were 7 weeks and 1 day old.

It was extremely low-key. Our family Thanksgiving was cancelled because your grandparents are both sick, and no one wants to pass any germs to you or to me right now. I called around to see if anyone else wanted to come spend it with us, but everyone I called had plans already which was to be expected, and so I gave up ('cause probably if I'd kept going I'd've found someone!). Your dad and I decided not to make a production of it.

So we hung out and you did your things. Here's what you did: you played in your swing for about an hour, you laid in your sling - thank goodness you like your sling again - for lots of contact time. You played in your playmat for a stunning 40 minutes, and made all kinds of sounds, practicing your voice again. You smiled a lot, all day. You have finally started touching your hands to each other and feeling your fingers and it's very cute.

In the afternoon we were going for a walk, but it was raining. So we went for a drive instead. I didn't know Guildwood was so close to country-ish roads, but we are, and we made it up to Stouffville and went through a drive-through and got doughnuts. The fall colours were great, and we saw miniature horses, and cows. I also discovered a riding school just 25 minutes away. I kind of hope you want to learn to ride 'cause I do, and I was thinking when you're old enough maybe we could take lessons together one year (at the same time I mean; I hope they would have a class for kids your age), if they're not crazy-expensive.

But your parents made their first major parenting error: halfway through the drive I noticed that when we switched from the plan to go for a walk to the plan to put you in the car we didn't fasten your straps properly. So you were riding in your carseat unsafely. I thought I was going to throw up and I bet you'll have me triple checking from now on. I hope all our errors come to such a good end.

What to be thankful for was really easy, besides the usual: you, your health, and oh yes - you.

Happiness & Thanksgiving

2005-10-11T09:58:00.000-04:00

I posted a truncated version of this in my other journal but I wanted to expand on it a bit.

(I'm not sure when I'll go back to one journal, or what I'll do with them, but a topic for another time.)

I've always been a bit wary of people who talk about their children giving them purpose or who believe they were born to be parents or anything like that. I personally believe in the many-optioned universe (I could be this, or that, or that, or this and that) and that joy and happiness are to be found in many more places than we give them credit for. I also, because of issues in my family and I suppose observation of a few others, have sometimes found that the parents who are the most sure of themselves are the ones that I consider might be doing damage to their kids.

Because having a child in one's family is about the child, not the adult, at least that's my airbrushed theory. In fact it's both, but I think it's always, always, always critical to remember that you raise a child for the child; that it's not about bringing you glory or even happiness but about the sacred (in the vague sense, not a particular religion) responsibility of protecting and teaching and supporting a vulnerable human being. So that they can become who they are, and not who you wanted or what you ordered up in your mind when you were drawing up the blueprints of your life.

Since I really believe this it makes me a bit sheepish to admit that I feel - so right, and I dare say rather replete with rightness - to be spending my day singing kid songs and dancing around with a baby in my arms and figuring out how to tell when Noah's had enough of the swing. Some of it's hard. Sometimes I really would like say, a couple of days at work with shopping at lunch time and dinner out afterwards and a break. It was a long weekend here and although that meant Carl had more time with us, it didn't change a whole lot. No sleeping in for the holiday! No expanse of time to clean out all my drawers! (My traditional Thanksgiving activity.)

It seems quite scary to say this because of course Noah will now die, or some other tragedy will occur, because we can't have happy. But I'm happy. I'm happy in the way I was when I found the right job, the way I feel when I've met the right people. It's disgustingly stereotypical but so true. Noah, you are what I was waiting for. And Emily - god, I miss you.

Circadian rhythms

2005-10-08T14:59:00.000-04:00

Noah slept almost 7 hrs last night. It would have been more restful if I hadn't kept waking up sure he was dead. But man. I don't intend to expect this kind of - amazing event - each night but it is great. My body hardly knows what to do with itself, except demand more. That's not skillful parenting; it's just luck.

I had to sort through Noah's things too because he'd outgrown his three tiniest onesies and is on the verge of outgrowing a bunch of others. Also, I no longer really knew what was around in what size. People have been so generous with Emily and Noah that I can go shopping in his closet and dresser and pull out things in almost every size to about 1 years old. I found some really cute things he's about to grow into. Also as it's starting to get cooler some warmer things, although really I don't know that we won't just keep the thermostat reasonably high for one year. Gas is hugely expensive this year, of course, but this is the one year to do it.

Yesterday and this morning he played and played, where "play" is defined as looking, kicking, stretching, smiling, and sometimes rolling onto one's side. I think I need to set up the play pen, with different hanging toys in each corner, so I can kind of rotate him around. A kick gym is probably in our future too, especially if I can find one second hand or on eBay-local (shipping makes it so not worth it.)

He also is smiling more and more and gave Carl a huge cheek stretcher this morning that I personally think was totally recognition.

For me - well, it's Saturday and I had a nice lazy morning, but there is a bit of a cognitive thing where I wish a little bit for a bit more free time because, you know, Saturday should be a break. Carl's working again, but at the kitchen table, so he could at least watch him while I did some laundry and cleaning. More needs to be done but I decided to sit down with a tea for a bit. The house is actually not doing too badly, although the backyard is a bit of a disaster. FlyLady strikes again because it's true: you can do things in 5 or 15 minute bits, and keep the main areas afloat.

What I really need - and I say this mildly because actually, I'm really happy and thinking of writing a post on happiness in my other journal and possibly copying it over here - is some way to have family fun other than baby watching. We need to work out new fun since old fun was going out to things that aren't necessarily that easy now. And so far it's been hard to do that. So that's my secondary goal, after the 'socialize more' - have more fun.

Gosh. :-)

On the social front we had lots of good intentions this week and little actual face to face socializing. I did spend more time on the phone and I also invited people over for dinner, but no one could come yet. I need to invite more in advance! And not this Monday because it's Canadian Thanksgiving but next Monday I'm joining a mum-baby-toddler group.

So things continue apace!

Shandra

10 pounds!

2005-10-07T11:30:00.000-04:00

Here's Noah smiling at Noah

Well we have a real little growing guy here. Noah's official weight this morning: 10 lbs. He's on the 50th percentile for everything - not bad for a guy who, at his 2 week checkup, was in the 6th percentile.

That's my little eating guy.

It's been a whirlwind week in some ways. On Wed night he freaked me out totally by sleeping 6 straight hours - I woke up and thought he was dead, despite his grunting having woken me up (I know, I know, crazy) and then spent the next 3 hours of sleep time dreaming that I'd left him behind somewhere. Part of that is guilt that he slept the 6 hours in his car seat; Carl got tired of waiting for him to wake up and just put the car seat in the cosleeper. That's a bit of a risk, and I don't think we'll do it again.

But oh, was it bliss. A little preview. Last night he revered to his usual trying-to-play time at 2 am. What I learned though is that it will happen. We can help him or hinder him but he will do it on his own time when he's ready.

He's socially smiling, mostly at me, his mum. I have this favoured position that I feel is partly really unfair - after all, I have the tits, so I automatically get loved. I try not to get too into it, and remind myself that this kind of love is hardwired and that it's natural and beautiful and still something to be very careful with and not start thinking it means that I'm doing everything right. And yet, when he smiles at me when I pick him up, it does in fact feel like I won an Oscar, a Nobel Prize, and a brand new car, all at once.

He's loving all his toys too, at least the ones that are visually oriented. He's not using his hands much, not touching them each to each. I find that interesting; it's almost a personality thing, like he's more into observation than experimentation.

Yesterday I walked to the library and he got hungry before we got back (it's about a 40 min walk). So I popped into the Guild park and breastfed him on a bench on a beautiful sunny day that wasn't too hot and wasn't too cold. It was a lot of fun. And yes I covered up so no one would be shocked... but in Toronto it's my right by by-law to breastfeed in public and I was really glad because boy, he would have been a mess if he'd had to wait. I'm glad to have gotten confident enough to have had at least one session looking out over the flowers at the lake. It felt very earth-goddessy. (In fact Lyr was around and beside herself with glee, speaking of - not earth goddesses but something like.)

I have pictures but am still a dolt about this half-installed software. But this is a three day weekend (Canadian Thanksgiving) so hopefully Carl will have time to fix it for me. (Yes, I know, I know. It is pathetic. But I'm frustrated with it.)

Hope everyone's Friday is going well. :-)

Shandra

Swing along, sweet chariot

2005-10-03T11:42:00.000-04:00

Noah's passed out in his swing, and he is so cute. At least twenty zillion times a day I look at him and my heart feels like it will implode from the - cuteness? joy? love? some combination anyway.

Normally I'm not a huge fan of using the swing as a soothe-all, but he's been gassy again since about 3 am, and the motions and uprightness of it really seems to help. I tried the Snugli and it went okay for a bit, but then he got fussy. So swing it is, even if it means less contact with my body.

We'll have to see about the walk this afternoon; I really would like to have one, but that's more 'sit in seat' time. What's a way to gauge that anyway? I've sort of kept it to one in-seat activity a day, but I really have no clue what I'm doing there. Except he likes it and is sooo cute and hey, another baby gift well in use. It will do for now.

Oops he's waking up now and he looks so serious. He's figuring out where he is and chatting to make sure I'm here. And here I am chatting back, but I'd better go.

Shandra

6 weeks

2005-10-02T20:15:00.000-04:00

Hey Noah,

So you've hit that 6-week milestone and are no longer a new-newborn. We'll find out on Friday how much weight you've gained but I can tell you you have chubby thighs and a double chin and you're definitely longer. We had to pack away the two teensy-tiny newborn outfits because they didn't fit (mostly they wouldn't go over your head). It looks like the next outfit to go will be your pirate outfit from the Gap, the outfit I bought after the ultrasound that showed your sex. Now that one will be hard to let go of.

This week you made some leaps and bounds out of my arms. You fit your swing, all of a sudden, and you love it: you coo and smile and fall asleep in it, although what seems to please you most is watching the post go by and ignoring all the toys that attach to it. You like your mobile a lot too. You don't object to a bit of tummy time. And of course you still love your playmat the most, cosy as it is. You have an amazing attention span: you play by yourself for 15 or 20 minutes, as long as you've had plenty of contact time before the play session. Then you get tense and start waving your arm and finally you'll make those grunting sounds to get my attention.

You really are starting to smile now and then and it's a delight. You have the most radiant self: when you're happy it's all through you, and when you're not that comes out too. Yesterday you were gassy (I think I am going to limit my dairy because it seemed related to a bunch of milk I drank, and you know I was allergic to milk at your age until I was 9) and whenever you were awake you had a discombobulated, unhappy look as well as grunts and twists and farts and spit ups and burps. You didn't cry much though: as long as someone responded to your grunts and rubbed your tummy or held you upright, that was good enough for you. Today is much better and you could enjoy your toys more.

You spent some time this weekend in your paternal grandmother's arms, because she came down spontaneously just to see you. You looked really cosy there and I felt both kind of glad for a bit of additional freedom (except for Saturday's cluster feeding in the morning) and a bit empty armed. We took you for your first trip to the library, which is a 30 min walk away. You slept through it.

Sleeping wise you haven't changed your habits much. You still have a period between 1 and 4 am where you tend to nurse lightly and sleep for short periods, and that is really continuing to tire me out. But you're still too little to change it much: the No-Cry Sleep Solution says to wait until 4 months to try anything more proactive than keeping night feedings dim and silent and helping you sleep places other than our arms. On that front you're doing well: last night I even put you down in your box/bassinet at 4:30 when you weren't all that deeply asleep, and as long as my hand was on you you were fine. I woke up with quite the cramp, but that was okay.

Despite the tiredness I really am treasuring the quiet time with you in the middle of the night, watching dim dvds or surfing the 'net or just holding you and looking you over. It may be the hormones but it's hugely unusual for your mum to sit still and peaceful like that and enjoy it. That's one of the gifts I think you have brought along with you into this world: a lot of peace and a peculiar kind of patience. It makes me really sad for mums in countries that would have to be going back to work at this point; I can afford to sit with you and be tired and all those things because the only thing I have to do is take care of you. No 10 am meetings.

This week you also gave me a huge amount of laughter and a few tears. You keep grabbing onto your hair and holding it in the fist of doom. Then it pulls and you startle and scream, and - you guessed it - clench your fist tighter and try to wave your arm. Those pain shrieks are sounds I hope I don't hear too much. But after you're free I have to laugh because you really don't know whose hands those are or what they're doing. You make goofy faces. Your farts and poos are *loud*. And you just make me smile.

I've learned to leave for a walk when you've finished feeding and not procrastinate. I'm just learning now that really I should sleep when you sleep a lot of the time. And I am learning patience, as you start to develop your own agenda. Where you used to fall asleep really easily now you need a bit of coaxing during the day, because you're so busy looking around, and I'm learning that too.

Your dad has been awfully busy, and paged in the night and up at 4 am to fix things, but he finds time each and every day to hold you, most often the hours before work and after dinner even if he's working at the time. (He types one handed too.) He talks about you a bit on conference calls, when asked, and he sounds really proud and happy. Today he laid with you on his chest while you slept and I slept and it was cosy and warm.

Your honourary aunt L, who for various complicated reasons I might tell you when you're over 20 has had mixed feelings about you, spent a lot of time and energy this week supporting our love for you. I felt this web of love that holds you up, some of the strands of it almost invisible but very strong nonetheless. In a few more weeks my goal is to venture out a bit more into our shared community and connect us both up to it a little better.

Shandra

Outings (some tmi)

2005-10-01T04:44:00.000-04:00

Thank you all for the great advice and comments, by the way. I'm looking for that cream, even though this rash cleared up in a day.

(Here is the TMI paragraph) And I am a little more reassured about the bleeding, even if I still think the ob was not listening to me properly. The bleeding is wearing me down a bit, because it's heavy and bright red. It may be that it hits low level triggers. And my own ob is a good listener, so I'm spoilt. :)

-----

Friday my mum and I took Noah on his first trip along the yuppie madness that is Queen Street in the Beaches. It was lunchtime on a sunny, albeit it fall-cool, day and so all the strollers, most of them vastly more expensive than my eBay scored Evenflo travel system, were out in full force. Seriously, the two essential accessories in the Beaches are a baby and a dog.

I say that with a fondness for it though because I grew up in the area, taught in the area, and I cannot go there without running into people I know. It's my hometown, as a subset of Toronto. Sure enough we ran into two people I know and an additional one my mum knew.

(Sometimes I wish we had been able to agree on/afford a house in the Beaches. But in our price range we were really squished to the bottom of the market and Carl needed space and I needed not to live in a disaster of a fixer-upper, so that's why we're off in technically-Toronto-really-suburbia land.)

It went really well: we timed it between feeds and he was mostly asleep. I poked in some baby stores, but mostly I people-watched. The only thing I found that was remotely appealing was the Cuddle Wrap, which was pretty much like a combination of these: http://www.cottoncradles.com/stretchywraps.htm. Clearly I am obsessed with carriers. I refrained from buying one, because we have the sling and the Snugli, but I may yet change my mind.

I keep wondering when I'm going to want to shop for clothes for Noah. We don't need any at all: people have been so overwhelmingly generous with gifts and hand me downs that we've been well stocked. But I still find it strange for me that I haven't wanted to add my own stamp. I wonder if it's still burnout from the way I shopped like mad for Emily. But it may just be lack of energy and opportunity. Well that and I want to get clothes I love when he's a size that will last for a bit.

There has been one exception: one of Noah's honourary aunts sent me a link to a baby costume website I am too lazy to copy and paste (except by request) and if they weren't so expensive I would buy a bunch. Although my sister took care of that too: he has a pumpkin costume all set to go. Not my actual first choice but see, now I feel obligated (in a reasonably good way) that he wear that one, since it was given in love.

Always a good thing, that love.

Getting out and about did a lot for my mood and tunnel vision that was developing. Today we are probably heading over to M's (did I mention? No - the potluck was moved to next Tues 'cause of her kid having a fever) for a visit, which should be really nice too.

Shandra

Doctors, grief, growth

2005-09-28T17:50:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-27T18:58:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-27T05:39:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-23T10:55:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-22T19:30:00.001-04:00

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

2005-09-22T18:15:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-22T11:19:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-19T14:27:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-18T11:33:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-17T20:46:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-15T09:05:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-14T19:42:00.000-04:00

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?

2005-09-14T10:43:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-13T12:50:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-12T10:37:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-11T21:46:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-10T10:31:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-06T14:12:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-05T17:21:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-03T12:36:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-01T21:03:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-01T15:48:00.000-04:00

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.

3 am adoration

2005-08-31T03:34:00.000-04:00

Yes, he pooed at last. Quite a normal soft poo and not stinky like the last one; real breast milk poo. I sort of hope he starts on a more normal cycle now, but this may be his normal cycle.

Today was a bit crazy due to lack of sleep, on the adult side, but on the Noah side it was mostly a day of delights. He's looking around more and lifting his legs up off of surfaces and occasionally finding his hands with each other. I lose time in a new way now - staring at Noah and realizing 10, 15, 20 minutes have gone by. He's a whole person, as Lyria said, and I cheerfully take on the next 20+ years in getting to know him.

I wore him in the sling today; I don't really trust his wee head and neck to it yet so I just let it carry some of the weight while holding him in my arm. He seemed to take to it, which I hope continues.

He started in on the fussy/pre-colicky behaviour right on schedule at about 10 pm, after an attempt at an extra-long feed that we gently pre-empted, since he seemed to be sucking more for comfort than anything (quite frantic comfort at that). Lyr put him in a cross-cradle hold across our bare belly and let him take a few more sucks at the nipple before adjusting him a bit so he was against the breast but not really in a position to actually feed. Then we rocked and sang and he quieted down and sort-of slept: he didn't relax completely and his breathing was still pretty rushed.

Once he seemed to go into a deep sleep we tried to put him down in the co-sleeper but despite making it a ten minute transition, he woke up abruptly and wailing. So we repeated the cross-cradle hold move, and he went to sleep again. I held him on the couch until I was really afraid I'd fall asleep that way (and pretty much did), at which point Carl took over and held him until 1 am, while I slept a bit. Then he woke up for a feed, and his poo, and some playtime, and some adoration and love, and now it's 3:40 am and I shall slip back into bed.

I enabled non-blogger comments and welcome to people commenting! I definitely won't take Noah just anywhere while he's dependent on breast milk for his immunities. It's a really hard balance between having little moments of sanity and connection to our community, and taking the time to establish our nest and keep him really safe, for sure.

Not colic yet, but...

2005-08-30T08:50:00.000-04:00

I had a celebratory dinner that Noah's gaining and thriving and happy and healthy, and looked forward to getting if not more sleep, better, less anxious sleep.

Until he started power-nursing with real fussiness at the breast and I finally figured out he wasn't hungry, he was sucking to try to... get rid of gas? deal with his hard day? escape from an over-anxious mum? Whatever it was it quickly escalated into full-blown crying at length - like 3 hours. My mother in law took him away and sent me to bed, since I'd gotten maybe a half hour the night before plus a brief nap in the afternoon. She used to be a maternity nurse and knew some tricks to at least halfway calm him down, which I want to learn today, hopefully in theory.

The cats were quite disgusted with me: do something! they meowed.

I learned a lot about myself and the system, at least this first (hopefully not the first of many many, but certainly there will be more) night of long long crying. There wasn't any anger at Noah, which was something I'd worried a bit about, especially in myself, who am quick to anger. It is hard to feel helpless, though, and I had to do a lot of deep breathing to not tense up and make quicker motions (or clumsier, since I was really the walking dead at that point).

I think the worst of it for me is that any feeling of helplessness tends to lead to Dark Thoughts - that he's dying, that letting him cry the night before utterly broke any parent-baby bond and he'll be unhappy the rest of his life. Attachment parenting contends that a truly loved and bonded child is unlikely to develop colic (which again, this is not yet, but I wonder - both Carl and I were colicky babes).

My mind says that if you say colic only occurs in unloved babies of course when you ask parents if their babies have colic they'll say no. But my new, fragile parent-self that wanders the kitchen in the night wondering about poo and wet diapers and whether I will totally fuck my kid up and whether I would notice if he were really sick, says if you'd only left him on the breast last night he'd never have any need to cry ever, forever. And then it says and you're ruining him having these negative thoughts in his presence! (Grr attachment parenting for all the guilt. Nevertheless I am baby-wearing today.)

I wonder why parenting brings back a lot of magical thinking. Maybe it's because I'm so desperate to have it come out okay. It's not that I don't think negative thoughts have some power - they do - but I don't think they have immediate power in that way. They make me tense, and that communicates to Noah.

And I did anyway - get tense, that is. I actually willfully stepped back out of the front at one point because I was all in adrenaline-protector mode. That's hard to do while in protector mode, but other members of the system were just waiting for me to do it, so there was a push to get me to hand the baby over to them. Even so, he didn't stop crying.

It was hard to hand him over to his grandma when she offered, but not as hard as maybe I would have liked - at that point we could recognize that we needed to put our oxygen mask on first, or so the rationalization goes, but it still felt like a failure. The bleeding had gotten heavy again, and my feet were swollen, and my eyes were dry and I was really clumsy - really massive sleep deprivation, tempered a bit by worry. If I'd been on my own I'd've coped, but I didn't have to.

It was really hard on Lyria to hand him over though and she cried before we fell asleep for that blessed hour and a half. Somehow it's really not the same as handing him over to Carl. (Carl was asleep, as we'd agreed that he might need to be a backup for later in the night.)

I had the thought if we hadn't messed her up by living at my parents' some this year that Noah wouldn't have had this upset, but that's unfair. Lyr may represent an earth-godessy type to us, but she's just a person, and it's unrealistic to think that just because she often is the one with the right gentle touches that she can somehow create a charmed babyhood out of nowhere.

Magdalynn is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the best at handling Noah when he's frantic like that. She takes it as a sort of badge of honour that he's fierce and strong, where the rest of us are more in the realm of: are his bowels exploding as we speak? Is he in pain? what about his diaper? She just laughs and sings folk songs to him. The only hard part there is she has no relationship to Carl at all, and so she has a tendency to vanish as soon as he comes to check up.

In any case we made it through. He did calm down some and got to sleep around 2, although he woke often and didn't go back down easily for his 3:30 and 5 am feeds. Right now I'm wearing him in the sling and he's passed out. I should sleep, but it's daytime and it's so hard to sleep in the daytime (that's another post).

Still no poo either, but we're not to worry about that yet. If I go ahead with taking him down to work I presume he'll have a huge blownout right in front of everyone.

And I will just laugh.

Shandra

door #1...

2005-08-29T14:31:00.000-04:00

he's fine, yay. The little porker's gained 2 oz, no bad for a breastfed baby at 8 days, and some babies don't poo as much, said crusty dr. n. who was actually very good and calm and soothing and handled noah gently, which gets points from me.

Soft breasts are fine if they have milk & mine do.

if i could drink i would be sloshed in the margueritas right now!

Happy days.

Shandra

Medical progress

2005-08-29T10:27:00.000-04:00

There seems to be enough milk going on, at least. That's a good thing.

The lactation clinic called back this morning (promptly! wow!) and said it sounds like everything is happening all right and maybe he's just slow to get to - err - full poo production, but that his weight is really important (duh) and get him weighed. Since I already had an appointment at the dr's office for 12:15 today to do that, we're in business. If he's not gaining I'll call them back, and if he is gaining we're clear for another few days at least.

I'm a little tired and strung out, but with an appointment in hand and having talked to the clinic I feel a bit better. The only lousy thing is the dr we're seeing is Dr. N., the one doctor in the family group I try to avoid. But surely he can use a scale.

Shandra

Breastfeeding woes

2005-08-29T05:21:00.000-04:00

One really has to wonder how babies ever used to survive. Of course some of them didn't.

Breastfeeding is going not so incredibly hot of late: we had a really good early start, loads of transitional milk, and a happy baby. But then (okay, deep breath: mother discusses baby poop!) Noah stopped pooing a lot. Which is one of those signs of concern. After calling Telehealth and all that he produced a couple of poos, and then went on a little one-day strike. Then he pooed. Yes he is going to the doctor today, despite it not being my family doctor but her backup. But we didn't consider it enough of an emergency again to expose him to the germs at the walk-in clinic, since a cold would bugger his nursing but good too.

I was consoling myself that all the other factors seem fine (weight being measured on our kitchen scale, he's nearly back to his birth weight, but I'm not sure how reliable it is; we will find out at the doctor's today) when he started nursing about every hour and 15 minutes, with occasional 2-3 hr gaps. Maybe a little growth spurt?

But then last night he moved to about every 45 minutes and my breasts didn't entirely keep up, leaving him at one point wailing in distress at the nipple. There is nothing more upsetting to me, I discovered, than having my baby hungry and not having any milk. Of course being stressed interferes with milk production.

Carl took him for half an hour, wailing, while I laid in bed with my hands over my ears and went through every relaxation technique in the book and visualized earth goddess and milk and honey flowing. No really. (Although I think Lyr was pushing me to. One would think Lyria's breasts would never give out, but apparently it doesn't work that way.) It did help and we had a good nurse, and have all night... at hour and a half intervals... but my breasts have not come back to "rock solid and dripping" as they were before. In fact they're mushy. But as long as he's satisfied at the end of the feed (and he has been) I guess it's okay.

I find that all the information out there about any of this is contradictory and unhelpful, by the way. I have three parenting books and they don't agree; add in the immediacy of the Internet and it's enough to make you crazy. Which maybe interferes with milk production.

Still, I think I have narrowed down the possibilities:

1) He's fine, he just had a growth spurt, and his intestines are unusually mature, hence the lack of tons of poos. The only reason I think that might be a possibility is that his development is really good: he opens his eyes, responds to smiles and faces, can sometimes track a finger moving for a while, can roll on his side, and climb up a sitting body to perch on the shoulder. No really. He's definitely not lethargic or anything like that. And if I ever wondered if he would kick up a fuss if he weren't getting fed, well, tonight solves -that- question. Can the child ever wail.

But the no-poo is still a bad sign.

2) We have a bad latch which is causing all kinds of lack of -quality- milk intake. (Quantity, to judge from pee production, is okay, despite the inability to go at a 45-minute interval schedule. he's definitely not dehydrated.) This is probably the most likely, although *I* can't tell where the latch is bad. Next stop, breastfeeding clinic.

Weight gain is probably the determining factor between these two.

3) The continued bleeding I'm having, which is not insignificant, means there are little placental bits still in the uterus, which is also known to interfere with milk production. In which case it would be a D&C and hopefully work it out after. The obstetrician is therefore on today's list of people to call as well. I think this one's a quick bloodtest to find out.

4) The mysterious weight problems we've had continue in some nebulous way. At my end: I am having trouble holding onto any weight at all, and am one lb away from my pre-pregnancy weight, despite eating as much good food as regularly as I can while feeding at 1.5 hr intervals (and occasionally clearing my head by eating at the computer, like right now). I'm also trying to stay in bed a lot and not burn calories, although that is harder going. At Noah's end: no poo. 'Nuff said.

I'm amazed at how hard this stuff is. I really see why people go to formula and for all I know we will too, although I would much much much rather not - I'd probably try pumping first. But it feels so personal and also, so scary, to be in this supply and demand dance that may not be working. I wish I could relax, because that would likely help, but I can't. And I am finding it hard to deal with the medical system, whatever the reasons. I really wish my family doctor were not away this week.

Sometimes when Noah's at a particular angle he looks a lot like Emily - he has the same chin and lips and neck - and I get this wave of hopelessness, that he will be sick or die too. I think any mother would be just as concerned as I am about the feeding, but I think I am maybe more aware of the actual possibilities of things going wrong and that puts me into a slightly higher mode of anxiety. For all I know that may be the only problem. Not sure how I would solve that one.

Shandra

Day seven

2005-08-27T07:58:00.000-04:00

(This post brought to you courtesy of Noah who had a good sleep at night, nursed for an hour and a half, and went back down painlessly, and his dad, who set him up for the good sleep playing with him and holding him between 11 and 1 am.)

It's a week now since I went into labour at 4:30 am and already I can hardly remember being pregnant. My body feels sore still, and tired, and I'm still bleeding enough that if it isn't slowing more by Monday I'll have to go in again - sigh. There are still funky hormones around, prolactin (the milk maker) being an especially cool one - after a feed I can actually feel a bit giddy, if I'm not exhausted. The difference in labours is amazing, especially considering that they were both vaginal. Last time I felt like someone had ripped up my insides and this time I feel - light and also whole.

All of that is still dwarfed by Noah. I live mostly in ten minute increments, which seem to stretch on forever, and then suddenly it's Friday. I haven't made any phone calls or done any of the social things I Ought To Do because I find it hard to stop staring at Noah, holding Noah, checking that Noah is breathing, or eating/drinking/sleeping mostly so as to keep Noah supplied with breast milk. Yesterday I set a goal though of making two calls (done!) and today it is two calls and a walk... somewhere, probably just to the bluffs down the street. Possibly to Toys R Us.

Noah himself is thriving. If parents get the children they can handle, apparently Carl and I can't handle very much. He eats at 2-3 hour intervals, but last night he made it between a feed that ended at 1:45 to 6 am this morning, with one wake-up - I held him on my chest until he settled back down and then boom, it was 6 am. I feel drunk on sleep, since that's the longest bout I've had in a week. I try to sleep when the baby sleeps and remind myself that it's a marathon, not a sprint, but as usual I find sleeping in the day almost impossible.

He cries some, but so far only for a reason - hiccups are scary, the diaper is wet, the belly is empty. I know that the screaming for no reason bouts will come, but so far we're still in the newborn honeymoon period. He's been called a fairy baby for more than one reason, except his farts decidedly do not smell like roses.

The obsession with diapers is full-on, since it's about the only way besides a general impression that one can tell that Noah's ok. We had a bit of a panic Thursday - between the meconium and the breast milk stools there was about a 36 hour gap, and the hospital had said if he went 24 without a soiled diaper there was a problem. We went down to the lactation clinic but they were fully booked with appointments (we'd called, too, but they hadn't called back fast enough for me).

Carl and I had that moment where the medical system dropped out from under us at that point - it was nearly 4 pm, my doctor's on holiday with only a walk-in clinic backing her up (effectively; there is another doctor in her practice but I have a 25 year history of conflict with him), and we weren't sure whether we should take him in there or what to do next. We have so little faith now in any doctor we don't know - something to think about if we decide to move to a pediatrician (if we can find any taking patients).

I was having a breakdown in the car - the night before of course Noah had cluster fed all night so I was on one hour's sleep - when I decided to call Telehealth Ontario. That's what they're for after all - help you decide if you need to go into an emerg or a clinic or whatever. They were really good on the phone, although of course they depended on my powers of observation, and the answer came back that he would be okay for another 12 hours and *then* panic.

When we got home the lactation consultant had called and said the same.

And then a few hours later he had a poo. I am sure no parent was more proud.

I'm not sure I like medicine by call centre, but Telehealth's number is now at the top of my speed dial.

Noah's also developing by leaps and bounds. He keeps his eyes open longer now and really seems to be looking at things, although in an unfocused way. He likes to suck on his fingers, even if his hands seem to flail completely beyond his control. It's funny to watch him chasing them down. He seems to be gaining weight; his cheeks have filled out a bit more and his belly is getting that rounded look. He has a long neck for a baby, but it still has those folds.

He lifts his head a lot and works his legs and arms whenever he can. He turns his head towards sounds he likes, like my voice or Carl's. Sometimes he gets fussy from looking, and then if I put him on the breast for a comfort suck he sucks and looks around some more as if suddenly safe with it.

For me parenthood has taken over so completely that I sometimes feel like I'm falling. It's a pleasant fall, but I am not always sure how to access my old self, the one that wasn't obsessed with poo. Part of that too may be that Lyria is so much more around, enjoying baby time. Magdalynn contributes parenting tricks which often, oddly enough, turn out to be right (and if that's not the weirdest turn around in a system person ever, I'm not sure what would be). The kids are happy, but sometimes hushed like they're scared to hurt the baby. Lynn plays music, which I take to be a good sign, and everyone else seems to just take a turn.

Now he's fussy so I'll go get him and enter the ten-minute world again.

Shandra

Finally, a picture of Noah

2005-08-26T18:00:00.000-04:00

This is one of my favourites from the hospital. Here he's about 20 hours old.

day four

2005-08-24T07:22:00.000-04:00

(today's & the backdated birthstory post on the 21st brought to you courtesy of noah, who had a good sleep on my arm at my desk)

dear noah,

today is your fourth day of life! i'm typing this one handed because you're snuggled into my left arm, your hand spread across your face as if you're saying moooooooooommmm why are you making me listen to raffi. (because. although if asked i will claim i'm trying to teach you about mornings vs. nights.) you're sound asleep after a 6:45 feed, but it was short so i know already that chances are you'll wake up in 45 minutes for another. you do long feeds now, but not every time.

we're still getting the hang of this feeding thing, you and i. the boobs are cooperating madly, already puffed up with transitional milk. but we still miss our latches sometimes and i have a bruise from the time i coughed when you clamped down in the wrong spot on the nipple. my boobs seem twice as big as your head, sometimes.

you've changed so much already. you work on lifting your head already and can throw yourself on your side - although you did that in the delivery room after they weighed you on that nasty scale. when you're sleeping or drowsy you cycle through your faces - smiles, frowns, and right when you're full and warm and deep asleep, a drunk sailor look. you've learned to grip with your thumb too, in your fist - that was new yesterday. you climbed up your father's body to see if his earlobe might not be a boob in disguise.

i've learned a lot too. i was surprised at how clumsy i was and still sometimes am, learning to hold you and my boob, or passing you around, or getting you into the carseat. it's physical learning for me, too. i got stuck on the bed in a bad feeding position two nights ago, but you had such a perfect latch and were so hungry that i held it as long as i could, my body getting all shaky because those stretched out abs just couldn't do it. then i was tired out myself and cranky at your next feed, just the way you are when you lift your head too much. i learned to slow down & get comfy, myself.

you've started to open those blue eyes of yours more and more. at first you couldn't coordinate nursing and looking, but now you sometimes do both. you look confused and overwhelmed when you look around and it tires you out. but to me sometimes i fancy there *you* are, beyond the instincts, and i love to be one of the fuzzy things you see.

what amazes me about you is how strong and healthy you are. i was braced for something awful to happen, esp. with your low birth weight. at the very least i thought you would be colicky or deaf or have some mysterious rash, but so far you are even more than fine. you like the deep nighttime for new things, maybe because you were born then. in the mornings you sleep more and in the evening you gradually get fussy.

lying skin to skin with you is the best drug ever.

Arrival

2005-08-22T17:20:00.000-04:00

We're home - we having expanded by the arrival of Noah Benjamin, born at 38 weeks and weighing 6 lbs 2 oz - so a small baby, but not dangerously small. He had Apgar scores of 9 and 9, which means he was in really good shape, and he is currently learning about opening his eyes, feeding, and the taste of his own hands without amniotic fluid. And diaper changes. And clothes. And that the world moves if the person holding you walks around. All kinds of confusing sensory information.

As far as I am concerned he's tied for most beautiful baby ever with Emily. But you knew I would think so.

He has sandy blond hair.

Birth story soon to come.

Breastfeeding is surprisingly hard.

noah's birth story

2005-08-21T07:56:00.000-04:00

so we got down to the hospital, after having to come back because i left my wallet with hospital, health cards, and all id, at home. but i had my ipod with my labour songs playlist the whole time!

the contractions weren't much worse, but they hooked me up to the monitor anyway. it was really reassuring to hear the baby's heartbeat. the contractions were weak little blips & the resident pretty much said we'd be going home, but she'd do an internal first to check it out. all that took 'til about 9:15.

then when she did she got a funny look and said cheerfully: you're 3 cm dialated and i could break your membranes right now! (i think i flinched:)). so we were admitted and in a delivery room by 10 & back on a monitor. we had the option to walk around in the lobby instead but i said no.

we were assigned a nurse and she went over dr. seaward's instructions with me and also over all the history. she, like most ppl at mt. sinai, didn't really believe me about what happened in the labour but she humoured carl & i. she also pointed out that dr. seaward had said that we could only have *one* variable decel (up until pushing) before we'd have a c-section, and she said it would be good to be mentally prepared for a c-section, given both that and my weak contractions, which were barely showing on the tape. it sort of hit me that things were really happening, then, and that we wouldn't just be going home. it took that long.

we were getting a little freaked out at that point, that tensing feeling as people brace for disaster.

the resident came in & checked the tape a lot, for about an hour. like every 20 min. there were scarcely any contractions at all and around 11 she brought an intern in to rupture the membranes. to everyone's surprise i was at 4 cm. they had a terrible time - both of them, by turns - apparently the sac was really tough, which for some reason struck me & amber as a badge of honour (we were in that deadpan humour phase I get into when i feel really threatened) . But they managed, and, whoosh, the waters flooded out. the resident said 'wow, you just went to 5 cm.'

noah hadn't dropped yet, and the resident did a really funky (if painful) thing; she and the nurse worked to push him down with the water to a lower station, trying to make sure no hand got caught. i got the idea they weren't fooling around, like they intended to actually get the baby out. unlike east general where they kept leaving us be for an hour at a time.

then the real transition contractions hit, hard, 2-3 minutes apart. the nurse asked me right away if i wanted an epidural. i said i wasn't sure - i was scared it would slow labour down. then she said she would suggest having one right then, because she had already seen one variable decel (which i missed) and then the c-section could be an awake one rather than under general. so i said ok, do it.

then the monitor lost the baby's heartbeat for a few seconds and i had a huge flashback, full body, to emily's labour. when i got with it enough to say anything, the resident was already in the room to put a scalp monitor on. when she did noah's heart rate went up to 180 and i really thought he would just die then - i was in that traumatized reactionary state where all of life is one big repetition of the original.

(it was actually a good reaction to the pinch, but a little unusual. he came back down to 135.)

the first anesthesiologist came in (now about midnight) and did all the med history questions, which i was having a lot of trouble answering in the midst of transition, & gave us the warnings about side effects and rare complications. i knew all that but it freaked me out anyway, esp. after the monitor incident - i really felt that trust abyss where emily died of 'rare' things, in a hospital, & i almost said no but the pain was adding to my incentive to say yes, so we went ahead.

i was fully dialated 20 min after they broke the sac, and the speed of it made me nauseous.

then we hit the dark night of labour: i had to sit on the edge of the bed & not move during contractions while she (for those of you who don't know) first froze the site & then stuck a huge needle & catheter down my spine. they were so hard it was hard not to push. she couldn't get into my epidural space & had to call in the other anesthesiologist & i just *flipped* that i was going to get one of these complications, in between hard contractions where i still could not move. carl was amazing at talking me & us down, by focusing on breathing & his hand, which i was bruising.

in hindsight i am *so* glad to have been at a hospital where the anesthesiologist just called for backup rather than getting into an ego thing. but at the moment she did, i panicked.

it took two more tries for the second anesthesiologist to get it in, and my poor back remains all bruised up, but it went. the pain came down and i got on my back & the obstetrician came in and said 'let's have a baby.' i was on one level just completely floored that anyone was actyally *there* to like, help. but i was still freaked & said i wasn't sure i could push. the ob asked me why & i said because i was remembering strangling my daughter. again the blank mt. sinai reaction - what and odd idea, nevermind that it -happened-. so she explained that was impossible.

ok, whatever, but i was on my back by then so there was no time to get into it. the ob went down to the business end and said 'push into my fingers on the next contraction'. i could feel fine to push, and i guess and gotten good at it with emily. the first pushing and noah was past the spot where emily got stuck, and i was euphoric and told carl about 3 times that i *could* do it. 4 more and he was right out - took about 5 minutes. yay second deliveries. no episiotomy, just a little tear - no stitches.

he coughed and didn't cry and i said 'what's wrong?' and then he shrieked & it was the best. sound. ever. they delivered him to my belly and he calmed right down & started rooting, the little breast man. the nurse latched him on for me & he nursed for about an hour - they weighed him & stuff but my memory of when is a little fuzzy. he was -mad- about being weighed & actually flipped himself onto his side in a rage at which point the nurse said 'this is why you don't let go of them on the change table.'

it was both heartbreaking, the difference, and incredibly -right- to hold him and see him pink and breathing and, my god, sucking. we all cried loads. i am now thinking about it.

it was a good entry into the world.

Heading down

2005-08-20T17:37:00.000-04:00

Well - 6 minutes apart, still not really painful or anything, but triage says to come in and get checked out at this point (baby too) - so off we go.

This is a note to myself to remember to post about the woman at the ultrasound, too, sometime, 'cause I was going to today. :)

Updates as we manage them, but no worries. Hold your thumbs tho!!

Still...

2005-08-20T13:15:00.000-04:00

Still every 15 minutes ish; still not getting harder or longer. We even slept through a few with a nap.

This is a more traditional labour I guess. :)

ugh

2005-08-20T08:20:00.000-04:00

I have a feeling this is the kind of labour that can go on for 3 days. And here I thought we'd be going so fast. But nothing's really getting more intense, just painful and between 6-15 minutes apart, now.

Contractions

2005-08-20T06:09:00.000-04:00

Ow. These are serious ones, about 15 minutes apart but not quite evened out to an actual schedule yet. Still, Carl got up and showered. I half hope they stop again and half hope they don't.

You would think the second time around it would be easier to be sure. I know we'll hit a point where we are, but we're not yet. Sigh. I worry too that we'll dissociate ourselves out of them until we end up delivering in the car... but that may be arrogant thinking. :)

Shandra

Still not in labour

2005-08-19T12:33:00.000-04:00

We are only at 38 weeks, so. It's just after the weekend and Monday's excitement I thought for sure something would have happened by now.

Yesterday's ultrasound went okay; it seems to have mostly been for my benefit, and to check the cord position. No measurements for weight, etc. Noah was turned with his butt on my left side, so from the right we got a good look at his face, at least as good as one can get in ultrasound. Already I think he is the cutest boy around, at least the cutest one in black and white.

Today is my first day...

2005-08-18T09:53:00.000-04:00

... on maternity leave, although since I have been working Mon-Wed for a while now, it won't really be a new schedule 'til Monday, assuming we make it that far. Everything labour-related seems to have just halted in its tracks; I barely have even had Braxton-Hicks. I have an ultrasound this afternoon though, so that might show something.

My obstetrician is on call at the hospital today and then away for a week. I was sort of hoping to go into labour last night, to be honest: show up on his shift and the day after work ended and everything. It would be perfect! Apparently baby-timing doesn't work that way though. Quel surprise!

I admit that although we're only at almost-38-weeks, I am ready. It would probably be good for Noah to stay in and gain some more weight, and I'm at peace with that to some extent. I'm appreciating the feel of him moving inside me, something I will miss later on. I'm appreciating my DINK lifestyle for the last little bit: today after the ultrasound I'm hopefully getting that dinner out that Carl had to cancel on Tuesday. I'm taking child and infant CPR tonight without having to get a babysitter. I can go shop easily any time. I slept hours and hours last night, perhaps most preciously.

But the tension between memories of Emily's birth and death and this pregnancy is getting higher and higher. I will be glad to move to the next phase. Although physically I actually do feel better than I have for most of the pregnancy, emotionally I'm running out of steam a bit. I know that it won't be the end of fear; it will probably be the beginning of fear in a lot of ways. No - I want to know what happens, I think. That's very me. I would like to know which way to jump.

My original plan for if this baby didn't make it wasn't a very good plan. I know it's awful to make contingency plans for these things in one's mind; I don't believe it affects bonding or creates negativity that isn't already there, or anything like that. I do think it demonstrates a lack of faith, and a lack of faith is definitely a loss.

But anyways, my news contingency plan is that if this baby dies I'll get a Vespa. I know how ridiculous and bad that sounds; bad mother! How could a Vespa substitute for a baby! It sounds horrible and materialistic. Well from personal experience I already know there is no substitution. Nope. None. So, chers readers, it's not about a substitution. It's about an image of me that could possibly come through that fire again, alive.

And a few weeks back I saw a young 20-something woman, a beautiful brunette, dressed in a very nice stylish suit, and a cute helmet, sitting on her Vespa waiting for the light. It was around 5:30 and most people downtown look a bit downtrodden by then, but she looked radiant, in the summer evening glinting light. She was smiling and healthy looking, somehow. And free: if you could capture an image of free that includes corporate attire, this would have been it. And just briefly, I was envious of her, or at least what she represented to me in that moment. I felt the opposite: exhausted, dressed in worn maternity clothes, tired, stretch-mark covered underneath, and burdened with worry about Noah's weight.

There is nowhere for a baby seat on the Vespa.

I said a few times last summer I think that what was saving me from complete disaster was finding that part of myself that is totally unconnected to parenthood (and I mean that for myself, not in the multiple sense of the word; everyone in our system had to do that for themselves). And this time, this pregnancy, I have occasionally felt like that portion of my spirit that rose up last time just well, wouldn't if something happened this time. But the Vespa incident, that flash of envy and desire/respect for freedom, made me feel it again. So that's why the plan.

I have a birth plan this time, and a death plan. I am sad that I need both, but I have both in hand. So I guess I'm ready.

Shandra

Not in labour

2005-08-16T11:44:00.000-04:00

We're not in labour yet! I mean I knew that but the internal confirmed that it's not likely to be happening today or even tomorrow (after that, anyone's guess). Somewhat effaced, but nothing to write home about.

So tonight I will eat out in a very baby-unfriendly restaurant, now that Carl's not on call from 5-10 pm as he has been for the past 3 weeks. :)

Shandra

Progressions

2005-08-15T15:18:00.000-04:00

Annnnd as I hit return and go to the bathroom - zowie! A mucus plug, or at least a piece of it, with much goopey fanfare.

(Hey, I presume if you're reading this blog, you know the risks involved.)

Last time this happened 2+ weeks before labour, so, not impressed entirely. But still. Things progress.

If this is the energy surge, yay nature

2005-08-15T14:20:00.000-04:00

I feel *so* good today. Energetic, cheerful, giddy, even. Maybe manic would be a closer single-word description. This could be the much-rumoured energy rush before labour, or it could just be me. I feel like I'm remembering who me is; this is me, having energy, not feeling nauseous or tired or like a beached whale. Except of course I am me then too. But this is what I consider "normal" to be. My biggest problem is not doing too much and hurting myself.

That and not rushing out to get smoked salmon and prosciutto. I miss the smoked & cured meats, man.

I'm working though, from home, and that keeps me sedentary, so go work. Otherwise I think I would scrub the kitchen floor. It's tempting. Replacing this floor is definitely on the priority list: it looks sort of dingy and it picks up dirt like there's no tomorrow, because the tiles have grooves in them. And the grout is old.

I also feel hugely loved and cared for. Friends, family of the heart, family. It's just been that kind of week really. The kind where maybe you get an inkling that this is everything you hang in there for. Some things I control (my behaviour and choices in the relationships of my life) and some things I don't (death, illness, other people's behaviour). But this week I feel the village around me and today I feel that all's right in the world. There is a part of me, always, waiting for the other shoe to drop. But I can say: hello part, you go on watching for that shoe which will or won't fall anyway, meanwhile I am going to go trim the basil so that it doesn't all go to seed and inhale the scent of summer.

So, things to appreciate: the house is not Done but it is really liveable at this point. Carl did the switches upstairs so we don't have holes in the walls and the living room is cleaned out and the rooms on the main floor and most of the rooms downstairs are pretty much in what's likely to be their final-but-changing state. Things are in logical places. There are still Things To Do but they're mostly getting new things or minor improvements, not just unpacking or whatever.

In other words, this is sort of - what normal is like. Stuff to do, but not overwhelming amounts.

I like it. Especially just right now.

XX.

I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.

When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove's door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!

Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!

- Emily Dickinson

Okay Noah, I think we're as ready as we'll ever be. But you come when you're ready (up to 40 weeks and then you're out, kiddo!) Staying like this would be okay for a little while too.

Exit signs

2005-08-15T09:24:00.000-04:00

So, Saturday I had about 10 hours of mildly painful contractions about 20-30 minutes apart, although they faded at the end. We'd been engaging in ah, activity, prior to that so I blame Carl doubly of course.

That time I felt calm and relaxed. Partly because, you know, no real pain. But also I was sort of relieved like maybe we could just get it all over with? That would be nice. I did put the car seat cover back on in a rush and finish packing my bag.

Then last night from about 10:30 - 2 am I had more painful contractions, but with no real pattern to them - 10 minutes apart to 40 minutes apart. I didn't do so well with those; I started getting tense and freaked out. I also cleaned up the dinner dishes, which I'd uncharacteristically abandoned earlier in the evening. Almost like the opposite reaction. But those stopped too. I didn't go into work today, although I'm going to do some work from here. I'm supposed to have the hospital tour of the maternity ward tonight, which could end up awfully convenient.

So far this second labour is not shorter at all! But I think because I had the flu last time I could easily have missed all this. Or it's just progressing differently. I have an appointment tomorrow so perhaps if nothing's happened we'll find out then if my cervix's effaced/dilated.

Eeee.

Shandra

Sleep in, preparations, guilt, and other miscellanea

2005-08-13T09:15:00.000-04:00

I slept in until 9 am this morning, which for me is pretty late - if I'm really out late I can sleep in longer, but generally I'm a morning person. Carl's not, so we're hoping this will make for really good tradeoffs in baby duty. It felt luxurious but also gave me a headache, because I think I spent most of those hours in the same position and my back got a bit cramped.

On Thursday I bought the Baby Signs book as well as the aforementioned nursing outfit. I felt oddly guilty because we fully intended to buy it for Emily and, you know, didn't get around to it. Of course you can't really use baby signs until 6 months anyway, so it's not like we didn't have time, but it's still this odd feeling like being more optimistic about Noah is somehow wrong, or something. I wonder if parents whose children are living feel odd about buying the second child things the first didn't have. Maybe I should ask some. Then there's the reverse guilt that Noah doesn't get enough of "his own" although I have to admit that unpacking and the selection of a few things have gone a long way to mitigate that.

I don't love the new nursery as much as the old, probably because it's just a bit smaller and more traditional of a room - at our old house the rooms were quirky, but we liked that. But it may just be that I haven't sat in it a lot. It needs a new blind and then I think we'll be in business.

I'm daring to think towards being an actual parent again, in this burst of weight-inspired optimism, nesting hormones, and work winding down (next week is my last, eek). I read up on how to put a newborn-ish baby in the sling (I think we'll wait a little bit for that neck control, but we'll see). So yes, I believe in baby signs - anything that helps with communicating the child's thoughts and feelings is a big bonus to me: hopefully as a parent one's tuned in as well, but there is (especially with boys) that long stage between "grunting/pointing/wailing" and being able to say "owie!"

I was reading a study about how early babies come to recognize symbols - at around 5 months, a baby will try to grab an object in a picture as if it were an object, because to them there's not really a difference (or they'll just try to rip the page and stick it in their mouth :)) but a few months later, they'll point and wait for the word. If you think about it that's a huge cognitive leap, one which for example a cat or a dog will never make. And it happens that soon for a lot of kids. That's the whole theory of baby signs - although that's even more abstract; you're not just signing "cat" (although you can) but also something like "hungry" which is a feeling, not an object. This from a child that had no sense of object permanence a few months earlier. It's just insane, infant development.

Parenting that process seems like a huge responsibility, although the theory is that parents kind of muddle through it for the most part with equal instinct and ease.

Occasionally I worry about Noah's development. He's gotten the shorter end of the nutritional stick - a closely spaced pregnancy; I was nauseous; I was travelling and moving and generally more susceptible to chaos so some days didn't do as well at the healthy food thing (although probably ate higher quality food at the points where we weren't moving, etc.); and of course there's the question of why his weight gain stalled and what he wasn't absorbing during that time. Also, I know a family where they lost a baby (also an Emily) to stillbirth and then their next child was developmentally delayed and for some reason that seems like a forecast, to me.

But then I think of how utterly much I did not care, those two days when I didn't realize Emily was dying but I did realize (gradually) we were probably looking at wheelchairs and grunting and having to work out how to have someone wipe her bum for the rest of her life. I mean, of course I would have cared, eventually, and shed bitter tears, but there was also an odd peace down somewhere which is that - it's not about achievement and it's not even about being able to share the joys of Alligator Pie or William Carlos Williams, as much as I kind of wish for those things.

Having a child is a total wildcard, and at its deepest level it's just about meeting that child. Because of my history and my family and the pushy, coach-like person I can occasionally be, and the way I get highs off being able to "get" things and be smart and move fast and achieve, I worried before that I wouldn't be able to be there for a kid who was different. And although I'm sure I will always have to police myself a bit for the soccer mom thing (although here being multiple is good 'cause other people won't, plus Carl is sort of the polar opposite to that) I did learn about myself that there is a much deeper me below that that really does not give a fuck if my kid will never bring home a single written word, never mind an A.

Because I had this moment in the hospital where I could have disconnected from Emily and I didn't. It was a strange moment, but it was so there - where I could have taken her on as a responsibility and a burden and done the right things on the surface, but where my heart would have closed off to the reality of her. And I/we didn't. It's nothing you can measure or believe from the outside, but I do believe that's one of the differences between a real parent and someone who is merely biologically the parent.

It's hard to explain, and it's all theoretical anyway really. But it mitigates the fear a lot. I really hope that Noah is okay, because it's a different and harder road, especially in our society, for anyone who isn't. But it's not the main thing. And before Emily was born, I worried a lot more about it.

... actually, you know, I've been telling myself that but as I write this I see that it may in fact work both ways at once. Maybe I worry less about how I'll react, like if I would be rejecting or something, because now I know I wouldn't. But maybe the worry is more concrete because - it happened, to my baby. I literally watched her brain (through tests) swell and more of it die than already had.

Well, whatever the reason, I see why parents get obsessed with milestones and charts and the latest research. I lean more that way than any other way, I guess. Baby Signs is my casting a lure into the waters of hope. But I know that if it's doesn't work out that way, that's okay.

It's funny to think/hope that in a few more weeks I will be more obsessed with sleep, poo, and breast milk than anything else and won't have time or energy to worry about these things.

Nesting instincts

2005-08-12T10:43:00.000-04:00

This morning Noah woke me up at 5:30, grinding on my cervix and kicking with glee. Whee.

I actually had energy so I got up and did laundry - ours, and the car seat cover and the stroller cover; set up the co-sleeper; finished up the nursery except what Carl has to do (hang a picture and move the crib mattress up to newborn level); cleaned the kitchen; took out the trash; and tidied miscellaneous things.

It's now 10:45. I love days like this. Although there is more to be done, I'm going to spend the rest of my physical energy (unless this sunburst of it continues and I have some left) with a trip to the mall to get my eyebrows etc waxed and some nail polish for my toes and a couple miscellaneous items. And lunch.

I do realize this could be the nesting energy before labour, hence the waxing and nail polish. Have to make the most of this time while it exists, plus I am *really* hoping for some actual pictures this time that don't involve tubes and stuff. And in those I looked like shit but - you know, that was okay, given the circumstances. It's just my vanity at work right now and as I say - why not? I'm hopefully going to be covered in spitup for the next year anyway, and mashed things after that.

(TMI) Something is changing, deep in my body. I'm at the stage where with Emily I kept thinking "is this the mucus plug?" when no, it wasn't, but it was a thicker kind of stuff coming out (aren't you glad for these details) that probably does signal some kind of cervical change moving towards starting to lose the plug and efface and all that. Mind you, with Emily, this was a good 4 weeks before anything spectacular happened, if I remember right. Still, it's a sign: onwards, onwards we go.

So my bag is mostly packed and so's Noah's! And although the car seat cover is drying, at least it's pristinely clean. People could be dispatched to bring it.

Too-fucking-cute nesting

2005-08-11T16:05:00.000-04:00

Okay.

I admit I have somehow become a crazed hormonal individual. It must still be relief at this massive weight gain.

Because today I bought - oh I shudder to admit this - okay - Today I Bought, My Confessional

A nursing t-shirt (it has a double layer at the front, the bottom one of which has holes cut out over the boobs, in case you were wondering) that says: Supply.

And a matching onesie that says: Demand!

and they are both powder blue

i have fallen to the dark side

i only meant to buy a nursing bra

Bruiser

2005-08-10T19:10:00.000-04:00

My baby is a hurting-me!

He's elbowing and kneeing, I would bet. Whatever it is, he keeps pushing around my navel, really hard. I push him back and he withdraws. Then at some random interval of seconds later, he pushes again. Hello, boy-child, the exit is down...

... except please don't start this there!

Now that I know he's fundamentally okay, this is amusing again and not causing me to worry he's burning too many calories or something.

Having a child is so intimate. I don't understand sexually abusing kids - I really don't, because although I can appreciate the beauty of children and even marvel at the way, at some ages, they flirt and preen and test their skills out on you, I never really find it hits any of my lust buttons - and it is always a profound relief to me that I don't. But I can see why there is a sort of physical bond between parent and child, particularly I guess, mother and child. This kid is inside me, all of him, and then he will come out and nurse, and we will spend hours skin to skin and I'll learn every inch of him. And for years it will be that way.

And then he'll withdraw, get more independent - and it will be my job (shared with his father) to back off and teach him boundaries. Good ones. Respecting women's privacy ones, and all kinds. Eventually he will hide from me in his own adolescent shame and the idea of me having sex with his father (or anyone) will revolt him and although I hope I will remember to wish for him an amazing sex life (that is respectful and loving as well) I imagine that the idea of him having sex will on some level disturb me as well. And his body will be a mystery again, because I won't have seen the changes in the same way.

And for now he plays with the insides of me. And apparently, the scent of our shared amniotic fluid on his hands will act as a guide for him coming out, reminding him of the scent of me and helping him to root for my breast (although we are not planning to make him make the journey all on his own, oh no). And then we'll start the dance of food and comfort, combined with separation and exploration.

It's mindbending.

Little porker

2005-08-10T10:05:00.000-04:00

That's what we're calling Noah now despite his being in the 30th percentile, because that was an impressive weight gain. I suppose I can lay off the protein powder a bit now. It'll be nice to taste milk and not milk/soy/weird again. :)

I think I'd underestimated how braced we all were for Something Awful to occur, because most of yesterday I felt almost high on the prospect of not having to go through a NICU experience. Today I'm crashing slightly and I'm rather glad that tomorrow is not a work day (at least not officially; I'd better do a few things from home or next week will be awful).

Of course now the panic over labour can begin. I mostly packed my bag last night - all the necessities, but none of the kind of accessories like the iPod and that kind of thing. I called to register for a hospital tour, which we should have done already but hey. I had to leave a voicemail, so we'll see what happens there. We know where to show up anyway, which is the important part. :-)

I also called to see if we could register for an infant & child CPR class on Aug. 18. Why not? It's been years since I was certified in anything and although I brushed up on it before having Emily by rereading my old stuff, I am sure things have changed. I was sure then too but never actually got into a class. Once again I got voicemail so we'll see if the trend of full classes continues. It may be a bad idea to go into a class about how to preserve breath, but we'll see.

Carl replaced light switches and outlets galore and we're both fussing about the house now. I'd say that subdued panic is about the right phrase. 3 weeks! 3 weeks! When did that happen?? I was so focused on eating that I seem to have missed how close we are to due. And I don't think they'll let us go past due (if we made it; no female in my family has ever made it past the due date). This panic was not eased by a series of Braxton-Hicks last night that lasted almost 3 hours. The nice thing about having been through labour once though is not having to worry if they're "real" contractions. Real contractions hurt. A lot. :)

The bad part is knowing what's coming. I really do wonder how we'll manage. Sometimes you know you're going to be triggered and tramatized all to fuck and none of the tricks are going to work in the slightest. This is one of those times. Pain is increased by stress (oh joy); we're kind of waffling on the epidural that really helped with the physical-trauma aspects of the last time. Both those things probably mean that this time, it will hurt more. Which is making me wince.

The epidural thing is a hard one. It did really help us, as people who've been badly raped, to calm down and be present. But it slowed labour down and may have been a factor in our being able to continue *too* long.

All the predictions (except for Noah's head measurements) are that our second labour should be fast, and so why have the epidural and slow things down (says my granola-leaning nurse)? And aren't we going to be a wreck anyway, and a fast wreck might be better than a slower less-painful wreck? And, you know, maybe it will be the magical change that makes Noah come out okay. Plus real women don't use epidurals.

On the other hand, I may have forgotten some of the specifics of the pain but I very clearly remember how overwhelming it was - and we were actually in a pretty good headspace. In the headspace we'll be in remembering Emily's labour, I dunno.

So we'll decide along with Carl at the time, I guess. But I'm sort of stumped in a catch-22 on this one. At least the c-section decision is made: yes, if there's a medical reason or if pushing isn't going that well. No otherwise.

Lyria went to therapy yesterday (last session before the baby I would guess, since Anna's on holidays for the next few weeks) and cried the whole time. That was a pretty major breakthrough on the grief front. Everyone grieves at his or her own pace is true enough and when it comes to Lyria, she's been sort of in the same place for a long time. We all have our up and down times but she's felt kind of stuck. So movement is good. It's something that is a big loss in our system, that Lyr hasn't been quite as involved in this pregnancy. And once we're on baby time it would be really nice to have her around: she isn't as scheduled as many of us and that I think is a boon in those days when you just have to go with the flow.

But mostly it's being glad she's getting some support, for her own self. But this is the baby blog!

The baby is squirming today, not so many kicks. A lot of what I interpret as hand movements down low, feeling his way around. Oh kid, there's so much great stuff out here to handle and kick, and you're almost ready to come see. Hope you're not too squashed in there.

Shandra

Good news day

2005-08-09T13:23:00.000-04:00

Well. Perhaps it was the meditation, after all.

Noah made it to the 30th percentile with a lovely weight of 2580 grams or - drum roll - 5 lbs 11 oz! I'd gained 3 lbs in the last week (!!!) 2 of which could conceivably pretty much belong to him. He's pretty much in the clear now, whenever he's born. He may never see the inside of a NICU. Let's hope not.

That's only one lb less than Emily was at birth.

Score!

As usual heartbeat, breathing, movements, blood flow through cord, all fine fine fine. The technician, who sort of knows me now, showed me Noah's neck from all perspectives she could get to demonstrate how there is no cord anywhere about it in any direction at all. That was really thoughtful, esp. as she had a full roster. I felt very cared for. And it did make a huge difference.

I feel high on the news. Or I did. Until my obstetrician gave me a form and said "well, you could go into labour any time now, so carry this with you wherever you go."

ERK. That's a bit too real!

Shandra

More of a real entry

2005-08-08T20:36:00.000-04:00

Or not, depending how long my momentarily energized mood lasts. I'm trying to keep sitting upright for an hour after finishing dinner, because that helps with heartburn. Oh yes, pregnancy is such a physical process.

So Noah and I have been playing the Kegel game for much of the day! When I do the Kegel pelvic floor muscle exercises, it squeezes him, because he's riding low today, and then he squirms and kicks me while I try to continue to do the Kegels. Perhaps when he is 21 I'll bring this up, but until then I'm afraid it might impact on his sexual development. :)

It is kind of mind bending to have a boy inside me. I mean obviously that's where boys come from, but for some reason it seemed to make more sense to have a girl inside. I don't know why. Some strange little prejudice lurking back in there. But I've come to enjoy the whole idea of it, somehow. Tomorrow we see him on the ultrasound tv again and hopefully get some good weight numbers. If they're pitiful then life may change rather quickly. At least I got some laundry done.

I've also been having more and more Braxton-Hicks and there are other signs we're moving towards labour, slowly. If I remember right, with Emily, this is where I started to worry a lot about mucus plugs and amniotic fluid. Now I sort of think we have that bit down - not only have I seen a mucus plug but I know that amniotic fluid is not the same as being a bit wet. It's funny to be informed and still completely flipped out. One thing I think about a lot is that we never really had the early labour stage with Emily - either I slept through it or it was confused with the stomach flu I had or I just didn't have it. So might I have it this time? How stressful would that be?

I don't think too hard about the end of labour. First because in order to continue to propagate the species I think it's important to forget. But also because that inevitably leads to that fresh grief about Emily. It's entirely predictable, but still a lot to experience, that all this just makes that fresher and worse. It will be interesting to be stuck between that and the baby blues and, hopefully, the joy and terror of a live child, all at once. Maybe it's not such a bad thing to be forced to slow down and rest now.

For now, it's just hard not to talk about Emily a lot. A lot. I'm sure if I gave in all the time I would start to sound really - repetitive, with a touch of drama. But not only am I - are we - still spinning to process a lot of that, especially as feelings come through our body that are so similar, but there's this determination underneath that she not be forgotten. A lot of people have been playing along with - for? - us, that this is a normal sort-of first pregnancy. And that is a gift of its own kind: the gift of space. But sometimes it oppresses me and I insert Emily's name into the conversation or I talk about the last time. Don't forget her, my baby girl.

Then my guilt goes the other way and I think I should be thinking about Noah! What if all this grief and stress is what's affecting our weight gain?

I even resorted to meditation on the theme of "grow, my child, grow." Since I don't meditate much, it was fairly pathetic, but perhaps the trying counts.

I've also begun re-reading parent books like mad - the Mother of All Baby Books and Dr. Spock and I have flipped through "What to Expect in the First Year." Hope, I suppose, or sheer fear. I only bathed Emily after she was gone; how do you manage it when they're wriggling? How will I know everything's okay? I'd like all the answers please, preferably with a cheat sheet and some bullet points.

I get the feeling that it will be like this for - oh - ever: please let the things I can't control be okay followed by please let me be good enough at the things I can and help me out here 'cause I sure can't always fucking tell the difference.

Energy

2005-08-08T12:01:00.000-04:00

This isn't nursery part two, oh no. I did in fact do a few minor things in the nursery yesterday but mostly I laid in bed.

Because I had no energy. Going to the grocery store exhausted me. This was a downward trend from Thursday and made me Very Grumpy. Today I'm trying work but I'm not convinced I'll be able to walk down to the train and up the stairs and onto it - yesterday felt that extreme. But if it's too rotten Carl will come get me, so that's a good.

Let this be a lesson to you all: space your pregnancies out. That's the consensus on why the low energy levels this pregnancy, at least so far (I'll bring this last spate up tomorrow). That and/or stress.

Noah's been quite active, though: reassuring and good.

Shandra

Nursery part one

2005-08-07T08:52:00.000-04:00

So yesterday we started in on the nursery. Carl took the first swing at it, setting up the crib and moving furniture around until he found an arrangement he thought would work, which includes room for the change table once we retrieve it.

Afterwards he played a video game for over an hour and said to me he didn't know how I managed to pack everything up. Well my trick was pretty simple: I had big rubbermaid-type chests and I just placed things in quickly while loud music played in the background. But - yeah.

I took the second shift and started with the aforementioned big chests: one for clothes and one for blankets and towels and crib sheets, as we were given large quantities of all of the above (thanks to a set of twins in the family, I actually have *20* crib sheets. I would give some away but the parents of the twins are pregnant again, so I'll be giving some back anyways).

I also took a smaller container to sort out anything too girly (to save on stranger/acquaintance confusion), or anything that I felt was special to Emily. As it turned out I'd done a good special-to-Emily sort already and so really there was only the pink consideration. After some discussion within the system flowers were deemed okay for anything under 6 months.

It turns out (and I really couldn't remember) that the vast majority of baby things we have are white or yellow and so will do fine. It was hard, touching all the clothes again, smelling them to be sure they weren't musty, seeing how I'd cut a lot of the tags out so they wouldn't itch. It felt at times like I was dooming Noah to Emily's fate, by allowing preparations to take place. I understand cultures that don't do that, now, although I really hope those cultures also help new mothers cope with bringing in a layette while they're post-partum.

I felt caught between past and future, which I guess would have made it the present. I only held one outfit up to my belly though, and that was enough. Right now they're mostly just *stuff*.

An odd thing is because Emily was born in March and her shower was in January, most of her things ended up being heavier, except the ubiquitous diaper shirts. I remember that at the time I thought "hmm, probably we'll end up buying 3-6 month old outfits because we'll want summer weight." But now because Noah's due Sept 1, it's entirely possible that he will fit those when it's fall and be in the right season.

I have to say again that the generosity of our friends and family was simply overwhelming. I mean here we are completely stocked for our baby and when I looked through what I had specifically bought myself, it came to about three outfits. It's amazing.

Today I intend to get the bookshelves on the bookcase and the other stuff - books, toys, manuals, nail clippers, etc - arranged. Then we'll see what it looks like. The nursery at our old house was a little bigger and airier, but then it was kind of deathly still for so many months. This one so far feels a bit crowded (but that may be the continued presence of boxes &c.) but it's still got a kind of sense that there have been children there.

One thing that bothers me and I want to change is that the family before us put a knob with a lock lock on the closet door - facing out, so you could lock your child into the closet. The fact that the inside of the door has kicked-in dent marks in it supports the thesis that this actually happened. I hate that; I can't believe someone went out and got a knob with a lock on it and installed it just to lock their kid in a closet - fuckers. That knob has to go. That is not how things work in our house, and this is our house now.

Shandra

Maternity in the age of retail

2005-08-04T18:04:00.000-04:00

Finances are tight here at the Lemarath household: nothing overly horrendous - an overtime slip not turned in on time, a bank error, and the aftermath of moving in. We're moving swifty to our tighter budget, and for the most part it doesn't feel like chains but more like a comfortable old pair of jeans that's just a little bit tight and rather stiff.

Except a little, this week. I had this list from the hospital of everything that needs to be packed into a bag for rushing down to Labour & Delivery (and now I know how important those things are and everyone, when they say heavy-duty pads, do believe them. And treat yourself to a new fresh toothbrush and some mouthwash, trust me.) I also had a list of three things for the baby, and I was in a mood where I had to ensure all these things were available just in case, you know, I went into labour.

(Last night I woke up and my breasts were burning hot and tingling and my genital region was hot and swollen and I felt like I could feel my cervix. Definitely some kind of hormone cocktail was being delivered. I wondered, as I peed, if this was the start of labour, since I never really had that stage last time. And then - this is the sign of a veteran - I rushed back to bed to get as much sleep as possible, in case it was.) (Obviously it was not.)

So the baby's list was:

a) a nasal aspirator, something we somehow never acquired for Emily
b) an Angelcare monitor that goes under the crib mattress (and will hopefully work under the cosleeper mattress pad) and goes off if the breathing movements stop. I thought this was overkill the first time, until I held my baby until she stopped breathing, forever. This time I really don't care if it goes off on false alarms, as long as it goes off for anything real
c) two change pads, the curved kind with belts on them. I decided to get one for each floor and set up a change station on each, in case of extreme sleep deprivation or totally intriguing DVD. We had one for Emily but we used it for her coffin

I started at Sears and the Bay, pricing things out. The monitor I bought at Sears: they were having a 30% off sale on everything safety-related. The woman there asked me if I would like to start a baby registry. "No - no," I said, trying to make it clear that this was not some minor hesitation. Last time I registered at the Bay, and gifts kept arriving after Emily died due to some internal shipping thing, and worse, they kept calling to let us know we could complete our registry on sale for months afterwards and I never did find a way to call them back and say look: she died, she doesn't fucking need your crap all right?. I cannot possibly face another baby registry ever.

Besides, my list only had three things on it.

All that flashing before me, and the woman kept arguing with me "it's really great, and you're entered to win everything on your registry and blah blah blah." I contemplated dropping my baby registry story on her to just shut her up, but I have vowed not to use real pain that way - plus she was just doing her job - so I just kept saying NO.

It made me glad we're so well equipped. I can't imagine having to shop for everything this way.

But then I crossed to the dark side. Everything was so expensive everywhere. And lurking down at the end of the mall was the great evil eye: Wal-Mart. I knew that it had everything else on my list and at low to reasonable prices.

So I went. And there I got the change pads and the aspirator and all the post-partum stuff for me. And it was cheap. And it was simple. And I enjoyed it.

It's a slippery slope, but I'm not even sorry.

Shandra

Horoscopes & drive bys

2005-08-03T10:22:00.000-04:00

The universe is sending me messages.

First, on the GO train this morning I was consuming a decaff coffee as a treat for making it out the door at all, and I had a mummy drive by! This woman said to me "caffeine is not good for your baby!" and I said "that's why this is decaff, thanks."

Not a very appreciated message.

Second, this, from Free Will Astrology:

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): You've probably heard tales about
people who buy an old desk at a thrift store or a used jacket at a yard sale,
then find a big stash of money in it when they get it home. You may also know
the story of author Byron Katie, who was wallowing in depression on the floor of
a halfway house when she had the epiphany that ultimately transformed her
into a brilliant, rich, successful teacher. I believe your fate in the
coming weeks will have elements of both of those motifs.

I really hope this is about the babe being okay, although as with most horoscopes, who knows. I mean if this baby dies perhaps I'll finish my novel before slitting my wrists. If you attack Persia you will destroy a great empire, indeed.

That's mostly a joke, but I'm not sure how I would make it through another late-term loss. I know infertile couples go through multiple losses even at late terms but I'm just not sure how they do and I'm very sure I don't want to know. Grief at a first-trimester miscarriage is definitely strong and valid, but I admit they never felt to me at all like losing Emily did, or at this point losing Noah would. I am not dicksizing pain; if you've miscarried it sucks.

It's just that for me the loss of Emily is in a different category, somehow. And I imagine that losing a child later on in that child's life is also in a different category.

So since yesterday I have been a little stressed out, because it seems like things aren't improving, at least not in the practical day to day details. Weight is still a problem; it still could be the placenta and if so that's not good; the way to avoid stillbirth is to track movement. I do feel a bit like I'm on the floor wallowing in anxiety. I feel that rather useless why me? why can't this one be easy? in the back of my mind. And yet, as problems go, this one is not huge, especially not at this point. This is not MRI results at Sick Kids. It's not ultrasounds showing big problems.

It's just something to keep watch on.

But the watching is hard. I'm worn out, really, from everything. And scared, of course.

I had a long labour dream two nights ago where I was pushing. God, my body remembers everything that's ever happened to it. I had the sensations of pushing again; I could feel those muscles again, and Emily's head. You'd think that I'd've learned this lesson in therapy as a survivor, with 20+ year old pain coming up and shooting through our body, but it still catches me - as it evolutionarily probably should - by surprise. In the dream though, there was no baby afterwards. Instead the hospital tried to send my home with a cat. And when I woke up there was all that loss of Emily again; my breasts ached.

I'd like them to ache for different reasons this time, that's all. If that's the gold in all this dross, hey. I'll have nothing - well little - to complain about.

Appointments

2005-08-02T10:28:00.000-04:00

So the birth plan is a-ok, which is good. One document down; a zillion to go. Maternity leave paperwork, baby paperwork, insurance paperwork (for the semi-priv room), whee.

Bad news: despite consuming 3000+ calories a day most days in the last 14 I have gained 1 lb. ONE POUND. I have another ultrasound next Tuesday and there is a fair amount of concern going on, but not to panic levels yet. I do have to be extra-vigilant still about activity (maybe that is burning the calories). Noah was clearly active yesterday and some this morning, so I'm not too worried at the moment, for a change.

Other than that it was business as usual.

Nesting kicks in

2005-07-30T21:24:00.000-04:00

Well with that good news and a modicrum of hope, there was space today for nesting to kick in big time. Still don't have the nursery together; Carl and I both need to do that and he was trapped in his workaholic hell for most of the day. But I did manage to make a plan for food to feed us all (or at least, a plan for some food to feed us all) post-partum. Let's hear it for freezers (and my mum has offered space in hers, as we only have the one fridge now).

The trick is to start picking freezable recipes now and doubling or tripling them up, I think. And the really tricky part is we don't know what Noah will and won't eat in his breast milk, so there needs to be a good range of recipes.

With Emily I actually spent a couple of weekends on it, but I also had less time as the kitchen floor was being replaced, etc. I also had a number of pasta-heavy dishes which weren't a bad idea and yes I have read how pasta isn't as terrible as white bread because of the exact flour, but we still have moved away from that. So today I thought "well, what's reasonable to get done in a hot week like the one coming up, and also can fit into this week's food budget." (Monday is a holiday, which helps.)

So this is my plan. I bought a pork roast, stewing beef, and two chickens. I also hydrated some beans, or at least they are soaking now. I bought many of the other ingredients although some we had already. Here at some boring length is my plan - meal sizes are for two + a bit, in case of a visitor or excess hunger or something.

Tomorrow we're in Kingston but I will put on the crockpot and cook the two chickens (my spiff X-mas present crockpot should hold both) while we're gone. That chicken will become the base for my Cooking Light recipe for Brunswick stew, which is fabulous and takes chicken, a tiny bit of bacon, beans, corn, and a few other various things (a very small amount of tomato) and actually is supposed to be made with already cooked chicken. We'll probably actually eat some on Monday, but the majority of it will be frozen for: 2-3 dinners

It will also be the basis for a very shameful casserole I pulled off the internet this morning that has "bland" written all over it, as well as "American comfort food" - a blast from my childhood, as you mix the cooked chicken with canned soup (!!) and layer it with potatoes and peas and top with grated cheese. There's no garlic or spice or tomato or vegetables other than peas in it. I was embarassed to buy the canned soup. I have enough ingredients for at least two casseroles (maybe three - I have three aluminum pans, since unlike stew, this cannot be frozen in a Ziploc bag). Kind of minus several points for nutritional value, but compared to a lot of takeout, not bad. And easy, I must say, except maybe for grating the cheese. 2-3 dinners.

So that's the chicken. Then on Tuesday I'll put the pork roast in the crockpot. We'll have that Tuesday dinner and then the leftover pork will go back in the crockpot overnight with beans and tomatoes and vinegar and sugar and spices - to make, you know, barbeque pork, except with beans to stretch it and make it more fiberlicious and nutritious. That'll be frozen in small batches, and eventually defrosted and served over buns for a fast meal or over rice for a slightly more complicated meal (that is, involving a pot to cook the rice in). Preferably with salad, although I have some extra carrots and zucchini I may hide in there (they will go with the roast on Tuesday). I'm not sure how much we'll have until I see how much roast is left. But with creative addition of beans, it should do Wednesday dinner, plus 3 more. (For bonus points I could freeze this with biscuits attached, or something... once my time & money budget frees up for some baking stuff.)

Then the beef. Thursday I'll make a big beef stew in the crockpot, wine-based and not tomato based, but it will likely have garlic in it. That should do one meal Thursday and then 2 frozen meals. And no beans, in case there's some breastfeeding issue with them.

So, something like 9 or 10 frozen meals plus almost a week's worth of dinners, plus (if I manage) some chicken stock for soups. And all those ingredients are here in my fridge right now, squee. And it still only means really the effort for one dinner each day (thanks to the crockpot, not such a big deal), plus not having the leftovers for lunches.

Having that planned and shopped for made me feel a bit better about getting ready to take care of this baby. I mean I realize that the food is for us adults, but that should give us time and energy to throw at the baby. And it was a kind of a mental hurdle, since all those frozen things kind of felt heavy last time. They seemed somehow like food tainted with false hope, even though I knew that was - kind of dumb. This time, if we do lose Noah, I'll just donate it to someone else rather than trying to work through it.

Nest, nest, nest.

Having Lyria around more helps too, although of course we had the usual conflict over how much meat there is. But we can have vegetarian lunches you see!

Shandra

Good news day

2005-07-29T11:30:00.000-04:00

It was a good news day. Noah's fine. He's growing (they didn't give me numbers but weren't concerned) and he's moving and his heart and lungs are just fine and the placenta is just fine and we're all just fine here now... how are you?

I feel relieved, for as long as the good feelings about it last.

I took the day off work in celebration, because it's a gorgeous day, and because I got ultrasound goop all down my shirt, which was a clear sign from the universe to go home.

Shandra

Why is it

2005-07-28T09:41:00.000-04:00

That 3 minutes after I left a message for my nurse that went like "well I don't think this constitutes *no* activity, so I'm not calling triage, but I was wondering if you could call me back to talk about when not-much-movement-compared-to-usual becomes not-enough-movement" -- Noah started kicking more?

Is it possible to have a sense of timing inside the womb? :)

Anyways my message stands because he really has slowed down the last few days, despite occasional spurts. I'm in for the ultrasound tomorrow, and I figure she'll likely say just to wait for that. But I couldn't not call any more.

Last night was all dreams of death, which doesn't help. I can see these last few weeks will be nailbiters.

If we get there. If the weight situation is bad tomorrow (i.e., he's lost weight) then we might be onto a whole other train track at that point.

Three fig newtons and a mug of hot chocolate later

2005-07-27T11:33:00.000-04:00

There he goes boys and girls, put some sugar in there and the kid kicks.

Yay.

Argh

2005-07-27T10:38:00.000-04:00

Quiet morning this morning with Noah, which does not thrill me. He has made his requisite 10 movements during the activity check, but they seem less thrusty. I'll give it a bit longer before I decide whether to panic and go in, or panic and call, or whatever. I mean he may just have his back to my front or something.

It's slowly sinking in that if he hasn't gained weight, or has lost any, we might have a baby on Friday. Or on Tuesday. That's a rather big deal, but I'm not sure I want to go announcing it. There are people to whom it should be mentioned though. I think I've become reconciled to the *idea* of the NICU. I was remembering how it felt to hold Emily that first time at Sick Kids and how nothing really could touch that goodness right at that moment, even if my mind was working hard on denial at the time that the nurses' willingness to go through the 15 minute procedure to move her might not be because they thought she would need the bonding, later.

Oh lord, that started the tear ducts. I think I'll save that line of thought for later.

The good thing is that work has been on the lousy side this week, so mat leave is looking better and better. :)

Shandra

Grow baby grow

2005-07-26T13:31:00.000-04:00

Your pregnancy at 34 weeks (Babycenter, of course)

How your baby's growing: Your baby now weighs about 4 3/4 pounds and is probably almost 18 inches long. Her fat layers — which she'll need to regulate her body temperature once she's born — are filling her out, making her rounder. Her central nervous system is still maturing and her lungs are well developed by now. If you've been nervous about going into preterm labor, you'll be happy to know that 99 percent of babies this age can survive outside the womb — and most have no major long-term problems related to prematurity.

Except, of course, that Noah doesn't yet weigh 4 and 3/4 lbs. Poor Noah. I am really waiting for that ultrasound Friday. He's clearly active right now; in fact he's kneeing me in the ribs and pressing his knee against the desk whenever I get too close. He likes, I think, to push against things. I'll have to see if that's true once he's out here (and adjusted).

Hopefully, hopefully.

Today is the last day of Eating Constantly. I never thought I would say this but I am glad. I'm sure later when I'm trying to get back in shape I'll think I was insane, but I've had it with trying to find so many healthy calories when my stomach is not at its full size. I'm sure I can manage the 2500-2800 fine now, which is a pile unto itself.

White linen things

2005-07-25T14:27:00.000-04:00

Today I saw a woman dressed in a beautiful white linen shift. She had a nice hourglass figure and white shoes.

She was pushing a stroller with 8 month-ish old twins in it.

Okay, I'm guessing this woman is either a) some random person pushing a stroller for someone else, b) endowed with supernatural anti-stain powers of the mind, or c) married to a drycleaner.

I have my white linen ideas too. Our house is coming together and yet - many things are within reach of little hands. I know we will have to change them around at some point. I just wasn't ready to think about it that hard yet. I am scared to rearrange my life again, only to have Noah not make it. I contingency plan for my life with and without baby, with sick baby, with learning difficulty baby. Then I breathe and try to go experience life, because I don't want to live in the future or the past, thanks; I'll take the present.

This weekend was good for that: I took time to walk by the bluffs and for snuggles, for fruit salad and reading. I read some of the Mother of All Baby Books, which is the Canadian sort of bible on baby things. It did bring up memories of reading it in bed while pregnant with Emily, and how it was utterly useless in the end, but I feel soft about it in part (ah the travels of the heart) because its author later had a pregnancy loss and wrote a book on trying again. It has a list of ten things to do before the baby arrives like - see a movie, have a fancy dinner, go out with your girlfriends, have spontaneous sex, etc. and I think I've knocked three off (I am not telling which three!).

I also read up on IUGR (http://www.chclibrary.org/micromed/00053290.html). Scary stuff. I have not been drinking, smoking, or taking any drugs and as far as any of us can tell my nutrition is a-ok. No high blood pressure either. So who knows? Noah doesn't officially have IUGR yet, being in the 20th percentile, but I am finding it a little freaky. Friday is the ultrasound. He's active, though, so all is well on that front.

Neither Carl nor I could face putting the nursery together though, again. We did joke about the lack of time to do it in.

Squirmy boy, are we ready for you?

2005-07-22T11:58:00.000-04:00

Noah's activity is fine. Quite fine. Right now my interpretation of his movements is that he's got his hands around at the front where I can really feel them and he's playing with the uterine wall. Who knows, but it feels like squirmy flutters, punctuated by the occasional (higher) kick.

Yesterday whenever I laid down to do the checks he hit ten movements in under 5 minutes (20 minutes is how long you wait).

Maybe he's just burning the calories? I certainly am not. I never thought I would say this but I am tired of eating. Because he was up high yesterday it was hard to eat anything in a large quantity so I ended up having to eat a lot of the time. It was good food - scrambled eggs, whole wheat bread with hummus, fruit/yoghurt/milk smoothie, chickpea salad (with peppers and onions and olives), halibut (in the approved quantity), cheese, mixed veggie salad, and vanilla ice cream. Today I have a potato-lentil-carrot curry on that, depending on the schedule, I may serve with some dead animal bits, and I think I'll have an omlette for lunch.

It is remarkably harder to hit 3,000+ calories on the contents of my larder and fridge than it was earlier in the week when walking past restaurants. But we'll shop for some high calorie things today too, for the last 3 day push of it. I'm determined that they be high-quality food though: no point stuffing garbage in, or one trip through the McDonald's drive through would do it.

I also had 3 Braxton Hicks today, one of which actually *stopped* me in my tracks. Not quite down in the cervix, but a really good hard clench. Looks like the muscles are just raring to go.

Ah, but his nursery is still a disaster par excellence. It's full of stuff - mostly baby stuff, but some odds and ends we threw in there when the painters were here like, oh, computer monitors. I'm not yet in a huge rush, but I think maybe we should tackle that this weekend, for my peace of mind. Because let's hypothetically say that on August 2 my obstetrician decides that he has to come out to be fed out here. Noah'd be in the NICU of course, but I would be recovering from whatever method of getting him out we chose and probably *not* in any shape to be unpacking. So perhaps we should look at that as a target date for not having to climb through to get the diapers.

It's going to be hard to open all that stuff again - open literally and open emotionally.

People's reactions to this latest not-really-a-crisis have been really interesting - I mean inside/system people. Magdalynn, surprisingly, did two of the activity checks herself yesterday, in a laconic kind of non-panicked way. Lyria's been reading to him and made all the food yesterday taste *really good*. And JJ's read up on babies not gaining in utero. It's almost like the parenting team decided that we had better encourage him, which - I don't know; I don't think it really makes a difference, but it's connection, rather than withdrawal.

It's a good feeling, despite the reasons.

Houston, we have a slight problem

2005-07-19T13:21:00.000-04:00

Ultrasound and ob appointment today - neither my regular nurse nor my regular ob were in (one was on vacation, one was dealing with an emergency) so I didn't get to present the birth plan, but that's okay.

My blood pressure and protein - fine. Noah's heartbeat - great. Movement - excellent. Pockets of fluid - just dandy. Umbilical cord flow? Just great. Breathing motions (they practice on amniotic fluid!)? You betcha.

Just one thing. Weight. I have not gained much in the last two weeks. My belly has not grown. And Noah, while he has gained and now weighs 3 lbs 9 oz, did not gain enough in the 4 weeks since his ultrasound (my total gain in that time: 3 lbs) and slipped from the 50th percentile to the 20th percentile.

This is not an immediate crisis, but it is not a good thing. I asked about my diet, and they said yes, they'd like me to eat more and more precisely, perhaps some fattier things (given I have eaten pizza a couple of times in the last two weeks I'm not sure where the fats were missing) but really it's not about that. This was made pretty clear to me: yes, eating is important, but this is not a simple cause/effect thing. Even if I were experiencing famine, the baby should be growing (and he is, just not ideally enough) and sucking it out of my body.

So, as the fill-in ob said (but to me it's an Idahoian phrase) "it is as it is." Noah didn't gain the weight 'cause he didn't, not 'cause I was hauling books around my house or should have eaten more pizza or steak or something. It may be a problem with the placenta. It may be that he has some kind of wonky metabolism. It may be that he kicks around too much. And it may be, and probably is, that he's just going to be a 6 lb something totally healthy baby and there's nothing to worry about.

What it does mean is that we have to have ultrasounds every two weeks, and if he's not gaining right at the next one, they may want to get him out early and feed him out here, in the NICU. Which - urgh. That would be hard. But not as hard as some things, like one's kid not making it to the NICU. If we have to go through being NICU parents again, then we will, and that's it.

When my belly wasn't growing with Emily and my other ob had concerns she said "well, that's a concern. See you next time." This staff organizes ultrasounds and puts me on high calorie warning and has me commit to three times a day activity checks and tells me the plan for how they will handle it if the trend continues. I'm not really knocking my previous ob here (well, maybe a little) because the wait and see message is still pretty much the same. But I am more comfortable this time to have all the extra tests, etc.

So, it wasn't a totally happy morning.

On the ultrasound though, I saw feet. Feet, feet, feet, that kicked the monitor and that had really quite lovely kissable toes, I thought. I saw how this kid punches. I saw his spine and his skull and the inside of his heart, things I won't see once he's out (I hope). And he had his belly measured so I saw that too. He's the most adorable kid in 2-d black and white.

So suck that nutrition back Noah. :)

Birth plan, draft one

2005-07-18T13:09:00.000-04:00

Tips for your birth plan
Keep it simple and short!
Keep it positive in tone. Let those around you know how to help you.
Be flexible. Remember that you're not always going to get everything on your birth plan.

Birth plan for J., C., and Baby G.

Background & philosophy: Our first baby, Emily, died 4 days after her birth due to a 2X nuchal cord combined with monitoring failure in March 2004.

The pushing stage of labour was almost 3 hours, although early labour was fast (first contraction was at 6:30 am, at 9:30 am J. was 7 cm dilated; pushing started at 3:30 after the membranes were ruptured by the obstetrician). An epidural was used and an episiotomy performed.

We did not see an obstetrician at any point between membrane rupture and delivery. We both feel that our trust in the delivery team and the medical system was strained if not violated and anticipate that we'll need extra information, reassurance, and definitely as much monitoring as possible.

We strongly want whatever is medically best and most cautious for the baby's health at all points during labour, delivery, and post-partum care.

Labour & delivery:

support: C. to be present at all times; J2 is also authorized to be present at our request
monitoring: we would like belly monitoring throughout (with the possible exception of periods of walking, in the earliest stages of labour) and, during the pushing stage, a scalp or other internal monitor. And any other new monitoring methods, or old ones, are okay with us. Vaginal exams are fine.
information: we would like as many updates and explanations as possible. Both J. and C. tend to be outwardly calm under stress; it would be really helpful to us if staff took extra care to check in on how we are doing
comfort measures: the elective medication we prefer is an epidural, but we prefer to make that decision as labour progresses. Otherwise visualization, massage, music (we didn't have time to use water therapies or a birthing ball or anything like that last time, so not sure)
pushing: because of the lengthy pushing and results last time, we would like to request a c-section after 40 minutes of pushing, if delivery is not imminent at that time
shaving: no, unless there is a safety reason
episiotomy: if necessary; local (or other) anesthetic would be nice if stitching is happening
c-section: would prefer spinal or epidural anesthesia to general; C. to be present and to hold the baby as soon as possible; J. to touch the baby as much as possible
would like baby delivered onto belly; nursing as soon as possible, and as much holding as possible; if tests, eye medication, etc. can safely be delayed for a little while that would be great

Postpartum:

we plan to breastfeed exclusively and would like to avoid bottles, pacifiers, glucose water, etc., unless there is a medical need
we prefer rooming in unless the baby needs to be in a nursery
no circumcision
we would like as much screening as is available to newborns at Mt. Sinai

Thank you staff, in advance, for helping us through this next, fearful delivery.

Was I worried about activity?

2005-07-17T09:22:00.000-04:00

Whoops, the gremlins ate my post. :)

The long and the short of it is - Noah kicked so hard that my desk, against which my belly was pressed, shook. It is a very light desk with only a notebook on it, but still.

He's been consistently active since!

Quiet day

2005-07-15T20:47:00.000-04:00

Noah's quiet today - some moving around, but not as much as usual. It makes me nervous. If he doesn't move around more tomorrow I think we'll go down and get checked out - on a weekend no less.

(He just moved but it wasn't a kick, more of a swoosh. Being pregnant can be so weird.)

My physical energy today was pretty low, but I still got about 5 boxes unpacked, mostly objets d'art or more properly, knick knacks, in the living room. I find myself oddly reluctant to move all the breakables to the top shelves, as if I'm courting disaster that way - surely Noah will be born paralysed or dead if I start to suggest that he might one day walk around and pull breakable things down.

Thoughts like that sometimes lead to odd ones. How will I handle him driving around, or going to parties? It seems impossible to manage all the points in his life that he'll be at risk. I realize this is worrying 16 years into the future: probably another way of protecting myself in the present. It's so similar to us renovating before Emily arrived, and the way I would sit on the rug and think - yeah, Emily will know this rug the way you only do when you're a kid; each little dimple. But she didn't. And my heart is so much a once-bitten-twice-shy kind of place.

Lynn's more extreme, generally: she won't invest at all, except in a kind of practical way - eating properly, etc. It's interesting how different that is from last time, when she was hugely vocal - and largely unhappy at the idea of having a child. Now she's not bothered, but not hopeful.

Magdalynn, though, is already thinking whether he'll be like her (astral) kid Ahren, and how it'll impact on him. Magdalynn's risking hope, I think, in some form. She and Lynn are still connected, but Magdalynn seems to have more range. Lyria's remarkably quiet about the whole thing, and babies are really her thing. I don't think she's removed, just - interior about it. But she's had a lot go on this year. Of everyone, she was the most at risk to go under with grief, and I think just being present is harder for her than it has been in a long time. When she's really around, I feel the burnt edges of her. Dominic's just freaked about labour: that was the worst experience for him ever, I think, feeling a head come through body parts he shouldn't have. But he was there. Everyone was.

Ugh, I don't even want to think about labour again. There's time. Even if there isn't, it doesn't matter. Once it goes, it goes.

Shandra

Much, much better

2005-07-12T08:59:00.000-04:00

It's amazing what a more sedentary day-at-work, a pizza, and a long night of really deep sleep will do for you. I feel much better today. Noah kicked the shit out of me yesterday for hours, which kept me at "tired out" but was also really reassuring. Today he has not moved around too much yet, but I figure he tired himself out, and I will start worrying at eleven if he hasn't bestirred himself.

So, maybe I was too quick to whine.

I took the bus to the GO this morning, to avoid the 25 min walk, but I got a 5 minute walk to the bus stop right along the lake and mnn it was gorgeous. Maybe there is some water in that well after all.

Tired out

2005-07-11T09:42:00.000-04:00

This is another one of those posts that has to be deleted before Noah can read.

Today I am really not sure I want to have a baby at all. I know I don't want to be pregnant.

I'm tired. My body aches, especially the hip that was pushed around so much in labour. I wake up in the night because it hurts. I'm heavier than I've ever been in my life ever by many lbs. My life remains in chaos with belongings everywhere, and if I weren't so fucking tired all the time, it would be so much better. I forgot both my keys and my lunch today. I forgot an appointment on Friday. I tried to appreciate grass and sky and trees this morning while watering the front flower bed and I just didn't. Because this pregnancy really sucks. I feel drained. And yes I have been taking my vitamins.

From what I understand, this only gets worse for a while. And today, that worries me.

My nurse says that once I get a live healthy baby in my arms it will all be worth it, but I don't believe her on either count. I hate it when medical people try to reassure me, because I know they're lying. Even if they did do everything right, out of 100 pregnancies, 98 people bring a baby home. Them's the cold, hard facts.

It's whiny-assed but I want my life back, meaning really my almost-indominable zest for it, and I'm kind of scared I'm not getting it back, ever, either way. I don't think I would survive another loss like Emily's and if I don't, then I'm a mum and we all know that means massive change and sleep deprivation and all those things.

Last time I felt ready to deal with that. Today I don't, because this last year - thanks to grief, Carl's job, and real estate - has been nothing like my life. And that was okay when I wasn't drained and tired out, but now I am. And I'm not anyone I recognize right now: tired and cranky and doing most things at the last minute and not particularly well. I organized the move, but the rest of my life turned to mush while I was doing it; living at my parents' was particularly bad. I'm coping more than I am living. And I resent it, today. And a lot of it has to do with sheer physical energy, or lack thereof.

I know that this happens when our collective well runs dry: when there haven't been enough grounding, happy things to fill it up. But there should have been - sitting on the porch, and looking at the lake, and nesting. I've been resolutely focusing on that and I've felt the moments of peace and waited for them to ease the overall fatigue. But it just hasn't happened. And I'm stuck on what to do next. I really think it is physical, and I don't think there's a cure for months ahead.

Of course it may be that once we're really settled in, it will improve. But I'm not holding my breath.

I feel really stuck, in this moment.

Fears and TMI (really.)

2005-07-10T08:17:00.000-04:00

I need to write in here more often; part of it is all the emphasis on the new house, but a lot of it is that I'm still dealing with this numbness about the pregnancy.

Yesterday evening was a lot about Emily; my friend lost her dad and that touched on that death-grief a bit, and then there was music on the radio and it just went wobbly. But also (here's the TMI bit) Carl and I had sex for the first time in a couple of weeks, since we'd been at my parents' and I have a Thing about that, and something went on with my cervix that was painful and somewhat contraction-like, although not really.

And I just had that feeling that I couldn't deal with labour, again. I mean by that as well that I sat in a chair and wept for my losses and in fear of going through that loss again and wondering how to give birth in the midst of terror, because now I know, you see, how hard it can actually be. Although I'm assured it won't be so bad, I don't believe it.

Some times I can barely deal with checking on activity with Noah, although when he does move - and he does - I love to feel it. I love to see my belly move, life, motion, the opposite of being hooked up to machines and deathly still. But then it scares me and I walk away and shelve more dishes. The one exception yesterday was out on the lawn, dancing on the grass in my backyard.

Maybe I'll try listening to Raffi today and singing a bit; I want to do that with Noah; I want to dance and sing more. I vowed I would. It's just that sometimes the fear makes me forget. Yes, if something happens it will be another album I can't listen to anymore but would not having that association make it any better?

No, it wouldn't. So onwards.

It's not long now. 8 weeks at the outside.

Expansions of space and contractions of time

2005-07-04T10:31:00.000-04:00

My belly continues to grow and is now far bigger than I ever got with Emily. I still can mostly breathe, though, although Noah has figured out how to get his little feet pressed up against my ribcage, or what feels like it anyway. From the way it feels now I'd guess he's kind of got his legs splayed like a little frog, but it could be knees. I mean who really knows?

I'm so in denial about labour. I have forms for the hospital I was supposed to fill out & fax over and haven't; I also haven't taken a tour yet at all. For me these are signs that I'm not really dealing with it. Maybe I'll put those things on today/tonight's to-do list. At 31 weeks it's really past time to be doing these things.

31 weeks!!

Some TMI stuff: my breasts were leaky last night so this morning I had to seriously consider whether I needed to go get the nursing pads. Yeesh. My back is starting to protest at the equal work it's been having to do, and I'm getting to where I can only eat small meals because things just feel so full. But, I have lots more energy than I often have this pregnancy - still less than usual, but it's way better. It may partly be back at work around colleagues, which for extrovert-me is a good thing, and partly excitement about the house.

The house is starting to come together. We had some crises this weekend - the cats took down the ceiling in the basement kitchen by getting up under the dropped ceiling tiles and bending the rails they were suspended upon. Then Carl went Sunday morning hugely early - like 7 am - to get tools out of the storage unit and the key snapped off in the lock. He'd been really upset about the ceiling (I wasn't, but I for once just said "yeah it sucks" and let him rant), and I think he was freaked about the key, especially telling me. But we had another key and he'd fished the bit out of the lock; we went and made copies of it before we tried it again, and managed to get the lock open.

We put a less secure but easier to open lock on, just to avoid problems on Wednesday when the movers are there. It really was a good thing it snapped yesterday and not then!

I was kind of glad because driving around to do all that we had a really good conversation on the phrase "meant to be" in the sort of religious-goodwill sense. He was telling his aunt a bit about our new house and she kept saying it was "meant to be" that we found it, in a fairly serious religious-sense way.

Neither of us is much into pre-destination in that sense. Just on a very surface level, it seems hugely and wholely arrogant to think that God would care what kind of a house we own in North America consuming more than our share of the resources. While, apparently, not caring what kind of a tin room people live in in slums around the world. I'm sorry: I try to do things as well as I can, but there is no way to explain that difference between my home and someone else's.

But also, if you deserve the good things, it kind of implies that you deserve the bad things. And I think that is the struggle that people who have gone through something fairly life-altering in an internal way really engage in. Carl left his religious vocation; I've been through both the multiple stuff and the abuse stuff.

And then of course there is the loss of Emily. Neither of us would like to live in a world where she deserved that, nor where we did. None of the logic around it, though, works. Inside there's still that question, quite often: why our family? And although we kept the discussion pretty broad, I felt like Carl was coming up against that wall again a bit. It sort of goes with the whole setting up house thing: here we are again making this nest for a baby.

But it's not the same. And Emily's missing it.

Stretching and managing

2005-06-29T08:45:00.000-04:00

There have only really been very normal things going on. Noah (still not entirely convinced about that name, but it's in use for now) is quite active - enough that he was kicking around on the GO train the other day and I looked up and 3 people were smiling at my belly.

So I did too.

This morning I had a bit of a first. I woke up just before the alarm and stretched out, and then I felt and watched as Noah had *his* stretch, sticking what was clearly a foot way out through my midriff; higher up than I really thought my uterus would be right now. And then, for good measure, he gave a couple of thumps with his foot while I tried to poke it, and then we had a game of poke the foot while I was talking to him.

This is one of those good memories already, but I really hope this time it does not turn out to be one of the most significant interactions. It's weird how now I know to pay close attention to these things and store up the experiences, just in case.

It amazes me how different babies are in utero. Emily was active and we had some games like that too, but not in the morning, and not perhaps quite so overwhelmingly wriggly. Noah's activity is not quite like clockwork, but close. When I start moving around in the morning, he moves around in the morning. After meals he has playtime (energy rush!) His other favourite playtime is 2 in the morning, for no reason I know of. If I roll partly onto my stomach or get on my hands and knees he tends to go into a flurry; my interpretation is that he hates it if gravity is coming from that side.

The house is slowly coming together - more at my other journal, really - but I am finding it hugely frustrating to be so limited in what I can do. Last appointment my obstetrician gave me a really firm talking to about it (totally different from my last ob, who was joking about how she took a bathroom wall down 4 weeks before her twins were born). He explained that he deals a lot in pregnancies where people are fighting to keep their babies from being born too early, and that it frustrates him hugely if someone who's having a relatively healthy pregnancy (mine is relatively 'cause of the weight and the bleeding earlier) goes and puts themselves into labour early because they "just have to" lift something or reach for something.

Normally I might dismiss that as slightly overcautious, but this pregnancy my focus is not on being fit or proving some point about resilience: it's just on producing a healthy breathing baby. So, I am not hauling around lots of cans of paint or moving the previous owners' crap myself, and I'm kind of at peace with that in the sense that when it comes to doing something that I perceive as being for my child, it's not hard to do.

At the same time it's a daily exercise in frustration.

Starving to death

2005-06-24T10:45:00.000-04:00

... not really but my body apparently thinks so. Today I'm hungry all the time: woke up hungry, ate tons, was still hungry an hour later, ate, repeat.

I'm trying to make good choices, but not really get in the way of what my body wants. I presume there's a good reason for it, as long as it's not craving chips - and it's not like that. Just non-specific hunger.

Warlock babe, or Noah as we are trying out calling him, is quite active and I think has gotten himself around to front-facing again. This is good because yesterday he kicked me in the kidney or something like it (okay, I don't know, but it was in my back and it hurt). I don't want to stereotype my kid before he's even born but man! He never slows down, this kid. It's like he wants out. But noooo, about 10 more weeks kiddo.

10 weeks!

We get the house today and I'm really excited. I'm going to have to go to the mall to burn some energy off (it's hot out, so indoors is probably better). It'll be that overwhelming visit to the house when you see all the little flaws and things are dirty and there are holes in the walls where shelves have been taken down and all that stuff. But I'm so glad to be able to make a nest now.

Shandra

My son. Son. Son!

2005-06-23T07:20:00.000-04:00

You know, I'm not super into strict gender roles. Being multiple, the idea that the body is destiny was broken down into itty pieces a long time ago. I know guys in girl bodies, girls in guy bodies, gay boys, lesbian girls, bisexual everyones; warm and gentle men, violent and harsh women.

At the same time, I'm 34, and when I was growing up, a lot of the words above effectively didn't exist (bi-what???). And although I don't believe sex is destiny, I do believe that gender roles exist - either as something to embrace or rebel against or both.

Some things, I think are good to conform to. I wouldn't send my son to daycare in a dress to prove a point. (On the other hand, if he insisted, I wouldn't peel it off him either.) Others, not so much. Any child of ours will get both dolls and facsimile power tools both (as well as, I bet, a tiny motorcycle), and the child can work out which toys are better. The same books will be read at bedtime. Carl will change diapers and do laundry while I mow the lawn, at times, because that's how we operate already, and I'll expect my kids to learn the same.

So why am I grieving the loss of girly things? I don't feel the loss of "mummy's little helper" (ugh). I don't believe sons are less bonded to their mothers. And ultimately a healthy breathing child is just fine with me.

I think I'm grieving my expertise as a woman. After a painful and clueless childhood and adolescence with a mum who didn't help a lot with dressing appropriately or learning to apply deodorant, I have set out to learn about women. I've read Our Bodies, Our Selves and Raising Ophelia; I've learned to navigate girl friendships, at least enough.

And when I was pregnant with Emily and we found out she was a girl, that was surprisingly exciting me for and cosy to imagine, in some distant future. Because I had to work so hard at figuring out girl mores, I felt like I could probably - you know - help in some way that maybe Carl couldn't and I felt special. Sad, but true.

And now I'm having a son. And that is great. I genuinely like boys, I've often been better friends with boys (me, Shandra), and in fact a lot of how I like to relate to people is kind of - boyish, to use traditional definitions. Being able to portage a canoe on my own is one of my favourite secret skills. Meeting at the gym to work out together still makes more sense to me than shopping in groups. The stuff mums complain about with boys - the pee spread around the bathroom - doesn't phase me much.

But I'm not an expert in being one. I'll be educating my son on the other sex, not his own.

So I'm kind of mourning that. At the same time I see Carl, a little, having the moments of realization that he is going to be the expert in these fine points of sex. This came up right away around circumcision, because I said I'd prefer that he call that one, since I have no idea what it is like to manage a penis and reading about it is not the same.

And again, it drives home the point that my daughter is dead.

And that my son is alive, so far. And that is the really cool part. Now when I imagine a naked baby, I know which parts to sketch in. I can picture my nephews and imagine some of the same mannerisms. I can start experimenting with Noah to see if that's really the right name.

It's very cool.

Warlock baby

2005-06-21T12:35:00.000-04:00

The important bits of the ultrasound were really good. The blood flow through the cord is fine, and the cord is not around anyone's neck yet. Heart, fine. Body parts, fine. Measurement of the femur bone, fine. Placenta in the right place. Skull looks good. Weight: 3 lbs 2 oz. (50th percentile, so not too big, not too small.) Active healthy baby. He kicked me in the stomach many times while we watched.

Yup, he. We saw great big boy parts between warlock baby's legs: scrotum first and then a penis. Squee! He groped himself too, which cracked me up and made the ultrasound jiggle.

He's definitely his own kid. Magdalynn seems to think he'll have a lot in common with Ahren (her astral child... don't ask :)).

It's a bit of a mind bender, even though I thought I'd made such a good adjustment in my thinking to a new baby and a new experience. I'm glad, but it also made me miss Emily the more, or at least my ideas about doing girl things with her. Then I was kind of glad to be starting over with a new kid. My son. I've gotten used to saying my daughter, but saying my son is a new one.

My son.

Of course in my consumeristic way I went and bought a coming-home outfit that's very boy-y, and to have and hold and look at and imagine the possibility that will actually happen. An oufit for my boy.

Showers

2005-06-20T17:02:00.000-04:00

A total of 5 people have now asked me if I would like a baby shower thrown for me.

I keep saying (and I really think) that second babies don't traditionally get showers. At least I can't recall ever being invited to a baby-number-two shower. I have tried to be mild about it and not make it sound like "remember Emily, remember her shower?"

'Cause that would be ungrateful. And really it isn't about that - for anyone but me.

We had a kickass baby shower - tons of people at a pub with good food and we received a heck of a lot of gifts and many many hugs. I'd been uncertain about it from the start - I hate being that kind of centre of attention, I am uncomfortable with getting loot on that scale, and I had arguments with my family about the guest list and other details. But in the end it was the best thing ever, to look out over that group of people and realize that this was the love, man; this was our community.

Then Emily died, and those people, and more, came to her funeral. And it was great to be supported; it really was. I never realized why attending a funeral was such a big deal until that day; somehow the presence of other people props you up a bit and gives you a road back to life after standing at the grave.

But it also hurt that all this was waiting for her and she didn't get to experience it. Love doesn't regrow brain cells; love is not enough. Love may conquer existentialism but it doesn't conquer death.

I am touched that people seem to want to recreate that for me, but I'm not ready to deal with it right now, even if we had a strict no-gifts policy. Even if I could get over myself, so to speak.

However, there is hope in my heart: we might just have to throw the most kickass first birthday party ever for this still-much-anticipated witch baby. I think I'll start saving.

The very active child, and music

2005-06-17T12:47:00.000-04:00

Witch baby continues on the activity streak; getting his/her muscles all toned. Or maybe just uncomfortable.

I looked at pictures of 3D ultrasounds online, with the idea that I might just one day go nuts and go have one despite the exorbitant cost and silliness of not just waiting. But all the babies in them seemed so horribly squashed, and swallowing amniotic fluid, which I realize is what babies do but seems kind of icky to think about and to see. We say the womb is soft and warm and gentle, but does anyone remember it?

Uncomfortable would describe me, these days, and there's still weeks to go. Last night I got so fed up with being kicked (particularly in painful places) that I finally just went to bed at 9, because when I'm asleep I don't feel it as much. I also am starting to get that strange baby-falling-out sensation that I had with Emily at the very end; I think that's when the baby gets lower down in the pelvis. I haven't had a lot of breathing problems yet, so that's a goodness; the bigger belly may actually help with that.

On Tuesday we'll get to see what the baby's position is and all those things, so perhaps much will be revealed. It's definitely different than the last pregnancy. I do remember being exhausted at the end of the day, and uncomfortable, but it didn't seem quite so hard. Maybe hope is a kind of a soothing balm and ours is occasionally in short supply.

I talked to Carl this morning about iTunes and how I want to burn the baby CDs and then I remember why I can't listen to the Lion King soundtrack any more (the Broadway one) or Into the West from Return of the King and I just started bawling. I miss Emily so intensely still in those moments where I remember things we shared and it cuts through at odd moments.

I still can't believe that she ended up deaf after the way she used to respond to sound, and how fragile that all was. And it scares me a lot that this baby is equally vulnerable. And I feel this vaguely selfish, vaguely self-protective streak in me to not give up any more music to loss; I don't have a soundtrack for this baby because I don't want to have any series of songs that break my heart.

And then I go off the other end thinking I should get out the mix CD from Emily's funeral and listen to it over and over until I'm immune to this need for self protection, or perhaps dead, because I don't know which would happen first (not in the suicidal sense; in the time sense).

And then I feel like a bad mom 'cause I can't just make my kid a damn mix tape! I mean who would care if I couldn't listen to some more songs, if this baby died too.

But it seems I do. I realize there is plenty of time for CDs in the future, if all goes well. But I guess since Emily's life was so short, and mostly was in the womb, it seems like that's the more likely spot.

I said to Carl that this baby has had fewer experiences than Emily did and it's true. With her we were at the cottage and we went to a lot of classical concerts and this time it's been trains and cars and moving, but very few activities like those. Although we did go to the Briars at around the same stage that we were at the cottage with Em, so that's something. And I hope to take this kid to the Pride parade, despite the whole house thing: I want to paint my belly with the Pride rainbow and go get pictures and dance on the sidewalk.

It didn't seem to bother Carl, the lack of events, but it bothers me. I can't imagine how much the reverse is going to bother me: this child getting to cry, nurse, be wrapped up. I hope. I really hope.

I think it's that kind of day, a grief day. At least at this moment it is.

Our nest is coming together: everything is falling into place for the closing a week today. That's a big something. But it's rather boring, in utero.

Drownings

2005-06-13T10:33:00.000-04:00

The Toronto Star reports today on a mum who took her three kids - 9, 8, 7 - swimming over the weekend. One child was pulled from the lake drowned, and she of course went hysterical, and about 200 people watched as they pulled him out and tried to revive him. He couldn't be revived.

Then she noticed her other two were missing. They too were pulled from the lake, and may or may not survive. They would have been underwater at least 10 minutes.

I cannot imagine. I feel so bad for her. And yes, possibly she wasn't watching them closely enough, but it's not mine to judge - and even if one were judging, that's a pretty terrible penalty for a half hour of sloppiness.

I read a long time ago that to be a parent is never to live without fear again. I believed that, but I am learning it over and over... and seeing that it never ends. I love watersports and the water and I hope to be able to enjoy swimming and boating and windsurfing and sailing with kids. One of the hard things about being at the cottage last year was all that fresh "stuff" that Emily wouldn't ever get to do. It would be terrible to be so fearful as to not let that happen.

But reading that I want to keep witch baby away from anything but a washcloth.

Once of course s/he comes out of the amniotic fluid environment and starts breathing air.

Hiccups

2005-06-12T09:29:00.000-04:00

Witch baby had a big fit of the hiccups in the night; a good 30 little bounces. I found myself rubbing my belly in sympathy.

And also freaking out: during my frenetic research on cord compression and cord accidents at birth I found there is almost no way whatsoever to predict whether a cord will be around a neck or not, except for one study that found a mild correlation between fetal hiccuping and cord accidents.

I will be bringing this up with my nurse.

Once again if I were in Toronto I would do something sooner, but here I feel just uncomfortable enough to talk myself out of it, which isn't necessarily a good thing. (Although witch baby is fine in all other respects, that is, moving around quite strongly in there.)

This is my last week in Ottawa and I'm glad for that reason, although getting a little stressed for other reasons. I don't always make transitions gracefully and this one is going to be awkward: moving in with my parents for a couple of weeks while the house closes and painting occurs, getting moved, etc. And house closings are often scary: it's not clear how we know it's going okay until the day of.

And then moving into our new house sort of marks this transition in my life.

I feel like I went from expectant mother in a bang to bereaved mother/writer, and from there I got my job back but on a part time basis, and then I slid even further back in my life to 20-something, partying harder than usual and dumping responsibilities like our house left right and centre. Then I got knocked up and have been living a strange life back and forth from apartment that's not mine to parental home, and expecting but not expecting, and my work being stable yet unstable, and soon we come to a kind of halt to that kind of thing: wham, landowners again. Shortly after that I'll wrap up my job and go on leave and very shortly after that I will possibly have this baby in my arms.

Which is at least an 18 year commitment every day to being a parent.

I am glad to be getting settled again, and I am glad every day for the house that we found. But I have this other reaction too, which is that the gates are closing on me and either something will go horribly wrong, and I'll have to adjust again, or nothing will but I'll end up an unhappy surburban housewife.

It's hard to say how much of this is quote-unquote normal and how much of it stems from both multiplicity (what do you mean, things happen in my life and I am not aware of them! How did I end up here anyway and whose clothes are these in the closet?!) and how much of it stems from just plain old normal mother-woman roles.

It's affecting my writing too: I don't want to let go of this book because while I'm working on it I don't have to face it ending. So I procrastinate. Of course the heat and all the stress contribute too.

Eh, it's that kind of Sunday morning!

Mum friends

2005-06-11T07:42:00.000-04:00

You want to know something? Being stuck in an apartment while it's hot and humid and with no air conditioning although they promised to install it on Thurs (and trust me, when one is staying in a corporate-priced-and-paid apartment they really ought to do what they say because the rent is just a shade over what I personally make in a month) sucks, especially pregnant. Perhaps I will try to time any future children for different times of year.

And today after hanging with Lohr & co perhaps I will finally get my ass up to the National Gallery to see the Renaissance exhibit, which is gloriously air conditioned as well as being beautiful.

I was thinking about mum friends today - you know, friends you make that have kids the same age. One of my bestest friends was pregnant when I was and had her daughter a few months before Emily and we had Plans, I tell you, for when we were going to be on EI together. What's more, she had formed a little potluck dinner parents' group which Carl and I cheerfully joined as junior members.

Once Emily died the group part fell apart; we didn't really want to go to the potluck dinners with everyone else's babies and toddlers, and I kind of think they didn't want to see us. New parents are especially afraid of people like us, because we represent their worse fears, or at least that's what I told myself (really, it was not wanting to sit with their kids). Now M. my friend and I stuck together - if anything we're closer, actually, and I adore her daughter despite having shed tears over her little head here and there. And some of my far-flung friends have children - N. is raising her children outside of Geneva, U. currently is posted to Ryahd.

But I'm going to have to make local - Guildwood local! - mum friends. After, of course, my kid comes out breathing. The nice thing is that lots of ways of doing this are kind of created for everyone - La Leche leagues and groups and blah blah blah.

The bad thing is that parenting politics come into it. The earliest divide seems to be attachment parenting vs. everything else, although there is an 'everything else' that's off the other extreme; I don't even know the name of it, but it's the one that insists that babies have to be on a schedule and that they cry to manipulate you.

Personally, I think we're liable to fall in the middle somewhere. Lyria certainly will be an attachment parent and in fact Magdalynn leans that way too (and without obvious Oedipal leanings, either). But I draw the line at co-sleeping, sort of. I have a co-sleeper, the kind that attaches to the side of the bed (not the kind that fits in between the spouses). And we'll use it until witch baby learns to turn over.

(Although I know that will come when it comes from yesterday's contortions it seems impossible that this won't be a pre-mastered skill from the womb. In fact it would not surprise me, after yesterday, if this child sprang from my uterus and went on immediately to an international rugby career. Soccer seems not violent enough.)

And then we'll use a crib, possibly even in - *gasp* - the nursery. Actually come to think of my new master bedroom which is lots smaller than the one we had, almost definitely in the nursery. Because I honestly do believe that it is best for children and parents to sleep in their own beds, except if someone has a nightmare or whatever. I realize this is attachment parenting heresy and I realize I may also eat my own words some day. But I think learning - in a mild way - to settle down on one's own, greet the dark, and doze off is a skill that may end, at 17, in not running away with one's boyfriend because the fear of loneliness is great. Well, okay, not that extreme... but something like.

Buuuut I don't believe in letting one's kid scream for 4 hours, and I don't believe that any babies under 6-8 months cry to manipulate parents. Hello? They're still working on object permanence. Manipulation is a little bit beyond them. And after that I think there are gentle, nicer ways to gradually transition to falling asleep in a crib, including standing there for 4 hours patting the baby's back now and then or whatever it takes. I may be overly optimistic, but I am into transitions rather than abrupt change.

Slings and carriers - I'm all for them and so is everyone. For one thing, this frees up hands for other things and you can move around, go out, walk around tidying, whatever. For another it seems to make sense to me that someone who just spent months inside a person would like the sensations of warmth and movement hanging off the outside. And also then you can check so easily that the baby is breathing! So on the topic of baby wearing, although again I'm not a fanatic, I think I'm very in the attachment camp.

Breastfeeding - well, I am totally for it, to the point that it's one small consideration about the c-section (you can't let the baby latch on right away). But again, I'm not fanatical. If there were a reason that formula had to be introduced, I would deal with it, despite it being so. much. easier. to wipe off a breast than to sterilize bottles and nipples and get lumps out of formula.

And after seeing some of the things around fatherhood more clearly lately and over this last year, I've also decided that once breastfeeding is totally established (assuming we as a team achieve that) it will be good to introduce a couple of pumped bottles a week. Both as a backup - say something happened to me? that would be a shitty time to be trying to convince the baby that really s/he wants to nurse from a bottle - and also as feeding time for Carl and witch baby.

(And also, if things go really well I want to take a class in the fall, but it's more likely I'll start in the winter, since at 2-ish weeks I'm not sure I'll know how well they went. But I would like to do that: get a night out a week keeping a hand in the publishing business by finishing that certificate I started and also get some adult time.)

I also think weaning on some gradual schedule sometime around one year is good (and solids before that), but it depends on the kid, their allergies, etc. Did I mention I had a milk allergy until I was 9? Many of my parents' stories involve the frantic search for soy formula in the 70s.

So I'm not sure I'm La Leche league material, you know? I know it will work out, but when I read the acerbic discussions on the 'net and hear drive-by parenting stories, I really wonder how one finds the parenting moderates.

We'll work it out.

Optimism

2005-06-10T11:40:00.000-04:00

Witch baby is very active today, lots of kicks and rolls and pokes. The pokes seem like fingers, somehow, and are down where one expects hands to be given that we think s/he's head down. So I have projected that today is figure out hands day. For all I know it's wriggle your ass day in there, but part of the fun of pregnancy is thinking that you have a clue what's going on.

Yesterday I ended up leaving the apartment to seek a couple of hours in air conditioning. I didn't find walking comfortable; I felt awkward and heavy and out of step. It very much was not a dancing day; it was a peer in reflections in mirrors and sigh day. So this morning I spent time on body care and now I feel at least more human than whale. When Carl and I were at Mt. Sinai I had to note that many many women are much bigger than me - the special pregnancy unit in particular, thanks to all the multiple-baby pregnancies, tends to be full of people where you wonder how they are still walking - but I feel massive.

Because I started this pregnancy heavier than the last one, I pretty much weigh more than I ever in my life have before, and I think not only do I feel it, but my bones and feet (poor feet!) and back are all flipping out. I find myself fantasizing about all the things I will do at the gym later, and then I realize that it's unlikely that I'll be having time for that. So then I fantasize about pushing a stroller all through Guildwood and up and down the hill. Really all that is to offset the anxiety that I will feel tired and heavy forever.

If any people thinking of getting pregnant are reading this, I strongly suggest getting to a strong, healthy, normal to low-normal weight before you do, if you can. (This obviously means no crash-dieting.) It's actually not perhaps so much the weight but the fitness level; although I was well on my way back to fitter this time, last time I was really almost at the top of my game when I got pregnant, and I find it made a huge difference. Of course this time I have been less active in pregnancy too (and more stressed) and I don't really recommend that either unless like me you have bleeding and Concerns.

I do fine myself being increasingly optimistic about the possibility of having a child this time. I'm not sure what the source of this sudden hope and faith is. It's certainly not about labour. It may be witch baby him/herself, squirming around in there with a zest for motion. It may be the happy hormones. It may be summer. It may just be that I am by nature a forward-looking person and it's too hard to hedge my emotional bets forever. But whatever it is I find myself going through the thought-experiments I did before: baby and me classes, slings, clapping games, Raffi.

Then comes the crash, the lack of Emily and the anger that neither of us (but especially she) got to do that. But it's separate now somehow and both grief and hope exist and not a kind of - reproductive nihilism. at least not much. Occasionally I do end up in that magical thinking place that if I hope for it, it will not come. But the fact is that not hoping fails to prevent bad things.