Anyone who is in even semi-regular contact with me knows this: Susanna is a terrible sleeper. In fact, that's my number one chit-chat-with-strangers line of small talk, after they (inevitably) say "Look at that smile," (because she is not at all shy about doling out the friendliest grin you've ever seen): "Yep," I'll say, "she's such a happy baby, but she doesn't sleep!"
I'm not sure why I always share that-- maybe because chances are good the next question is going to be "Does she sleep through the night?" anyway. Or maybe it's because I feel like I need to excuse my beyond-exhausted face. I don't know. But people nod sympathetically and then go back to flirting with my kid. And friends hear me gripe about it and nod sympathetically too. And I'm a broken record on the phone with my mother, who has heard all about the not-at-all-fun game of musical beds that goes on in my house (the newest option is a futon mattress on the floor of the girls' room, which gets a lot of use).
Nobody is sleeping well in my house. And, in all honesty, the last month has been really ugly as a result. I haven't been proud of the way I've handled my temper, and the lack of patience with which I've been responding to Lea being the very young child she is. I have been No Fun at best, and probably a little bit scary at my worst. Worse yet, I think there have been times when Lea has even started to worry about me, which she should not have to be doing. Period.
I borrowed a really good, helpful discipline book from a friend, and more than anything, it's helped me adjust my expectations of Lea, and really slammed home for me that no, she is not actually TRYING to be a jerk. She's just trying to cope with the world, and with her ideas being greater than her fine motor skills, and with her sister getting to the age where she can actively ruin a game. That's a lot to contend with, and she's going to behave in ways that annoy the crap out of me as a result. But the best thing I can do, I think, is just try try try to understand her-- and that doesn't just mean saying "I understand," but really wanting to actually understand, even if I can't do anything about it.
The other thing I've been resolving to do is recognize when the absolute most I can ask of myself is to simply not yell. When I have to throw every discipline system or process or technique aside, and not strive for teachable moments or even consistent consequences, but just: stay. as. calm. as. possible. And that's it. And on the days when that's difficult, I should be able to congratulate myself for achieving it, because it takes more strength of wills than I, honestly, have ever had to muster in my life.
This is part of a larger picture of self-care that I've been trying to pay more attention to. I think the main reason it's easy for me to give up on that is because really, if I had it my way, self-care would mean one thing, and that's more sleep. Since that's just not possible most of the time, I kind of throw up my hands and say, screw it, and grit my teeth through most days. But, that's dumb. And on Saturday morning when it was 4:45 and I had a restless baby in my arms, and I realized that I was so stressed by the sleeplessness that my heart and thoughts were racing to the extent that I couldn't even fall asleep if I wanted to, even if the child passed out right that second, I started to think-- and I don't know why this is-- about a quotation about prayer, which had been a favorite of ASP staffers and often ended up on the walls of summer centers.
"To say prayer changes things," says Oswald Chambers, "is not as close to the truth as saying prayer changes me, and then I change things."
I always liked that, but never had such an appropriate moment to put it into action. I knew that I felt foolish praying for Susanna to go to sleep, or for me to be able to sleep. It just never felt like the right kind of thing to be praying about, I don't know. So I thought to myself-- why do I want to go to sleep so bad? And the answer was, because I want to feel good in the morning. OK, fine, came the answer. Do something right now that might help you have a better morning. Take action.
I took a shower. Susanna usually plays happily on the bathroom floor for as long as it takes me to do that, and this time, I took an even longer, hotter one than usual. I washed my hair and shaved my legs and did some deep stretching, willing my body to feel more ready for the day. I got dressed, made the bed, folded clothes that had been in a heap, dried my hair, put on lip gloss, and went downstairs.
Yeah, I was still exhausted by the end of the day. I'm not going to pretend that I felt so rejuvenated I bounded through my activities and forgot all about how far in the red I really am when it comes to physical rest. But I would've been exhausted anyway, and at least I had shiny hair and lips. And it made me realize that I can take care of myself in non-sleep ways way better than I've been doing.
One of those ways is to cut myself some slack if the highest parenting standard I can attain is merely to not scream at my kid.
It's to be a little less of a tightwad, and realize that a few bucks spent frivolously on something that makes me feel good today is not going to make or break our financial security. (Hello, James Taylor at Christmas! You have already put many smiles on my face!)
It's to quit it with the weighing myself, at least for a while. I'm eating as healthfully as I can figure out how to, and no, I'm not exercising, but really. That's not what I need to freaking worry about right now.
It's to investigate a computer of my own, a NEW computer, even if it's a sub-$300 netbook, as a Christmas gift to myself. And to use it to write, and to blog even when I'm foggy-headed (as now?), and to put stuff out there even if it's not up to my normal standards.
It's to try to have some perspective about the fact that treasuring Susanna is not going to scar Lea forever, or, if it is, it's a scar she will share with countless other firstborn kids, so tough. And to TREASURE this baby because she is an AMAZING baby and OH MY GOD I LOVE HER TO PIECES. She is so snuggly, and so affectionate, and so peaceful (mostly, in daylight), and such a total joy. Really. She is an AMAZING baby and I am so lucky to get to hang out with her all the time. She is pulling up on furniture, scooting around all over the place, still sucks her thumb-- and sometimes tries to keep sucking it while smiling, which is hard to do and unbearably cute, says Dada (even when she means me), loves to splash in the tub, and lights up like a Christmas tree when her sister decides to play with her. Apart from the sleeping, she is pretty much 100% happy. So-- I need to allow myself to enjoy that, no guilt attached.
Since I am indeed foggy-headed, I have no suitable ending for this blog, but that's ok, right? Right.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Threesday
Lea loves school. She has loved school for over two full years now, ever since we started sending her one morning a week, then two, to the infant/toddler room at her preschool. She has made so many friends (as have we) through this school, that even if it weren't for the excellent teachers, perfect schedule, and short (and lovely) walk from our house, I'd still consider it a great part of all of our lives. It's just been awesome.
I was talking to my friend Lindsay (mother of Rylan, Lea's best buddy, met at school), as I have many times before, about how much my mental health was suffering during the summer of 2007, when Lea was 7-9 months old and we knew NOBODY in town and a two-minute chat with a barista every now and then was all that was passing for my social life. I say that flippantly, but really: I was in some serious trouble that summer.
And then, I took a leap and invited myself to lunch with an acquaintance of Brian's who had young kids, whom I'd met once for about 15 seconds. She graciously fed me vegetable orzo and handed me a flier for the preschool open house that evening. She also gave me the phone number of the preschool director. I could not wait until that evening. I could not even wait to get home to place a phone call; I actually drove straight from Marybell's house to the church, where I frantically introduced myself and my need NEED NEED for this preschool to the first person I found (who turned out to be the spouse of a custodian, but she pointed me in the right direction). Within 15 minutes, the deposit was paid and Lea was signed up for school.
Since then, Lea's school time each week has increased. She first started going four mornings a week when I had just gotten pregnant with Susanna and was dealing with round-the-clock sickness. She still goes four days, plus now she has the option to stay for lunch, which she does once or twice a week. She gets so excited about "lunch bunch," and I get to do that age-old Mom think where I write her name with a little heart or a flower on her little Tupperware lunch container. Overall, it makes her seem about six and a half years old and it's almost too much to bear. The kid really is growing up.
Except, she's still only two. Two! I cannot believe sometimes that this child who talks in paragraphs and has favorite songs and picks out her own library books is still only two years old. Which brings me to the title of this post.
The preschool director decided to be a stickler this year, and so, even though every single other member of her class from last year has moved up to the three-year-old class, Lea is still down with her old teacher from last year with the current crop of two year olds. She does great there, actually-- I'm so proud of her. There's always somebody screaming and crying, and there's lots of pacifiers and non-verbalness but she gets right in there and plays with them and helps her teachers and it's wonderful. But on Tuesdays, oh, glorious Tuesdays, the three-year-old class is small, so the teachers arranged for Lea and two other 2006-born kids to spend the morning upstairs. The big kid class.
Every morning, Lea asks if it's Tuesday. She loooooves Tuesdays. She gets to see her best buddies, and do very grown-up things like carry her own paint and learn a new song every week and make crafts all-by-herself. She still loves school every day, but on Tuesday she comes home with a twinkle in her eye.
And I start to feel the wheels turning in my head, fast-forwarding to kindergarten and grade school and wondering: will she be challenged enough? Will she get to do things that excite her, that make her proud to be growing up? And this isn't even an age-related worry, although I do kind of wish we'd at least have the option of sending her to kindergarten at almost-5 instead of almost-6. I think it's just the first time I've really been faced with the concept of my children's academic lives, and how much control I will really want or be able to exert on them. And it starts a whole slew of other lines of thinking about the public schools in this region (not too great) and in Virginia in general (way too ruled by state Standards of Learning, as far as I can tell). I know people who homeschool for that reason, and I know people who just go with the flow and hope for the best, and I also know people who choose public school but very intentionally supplement that education with family reading projects and educational trips and real-world learning in the form of planning and planting gardens, or building things, or extra art classes.
It's a lot to figure out, but it's three years away, so I know that the best thing to do right now is just nurture Lea's love of learning whether it's a Threesday or a Twosday or not a school day at all. And soon enough, Susanna will start to go to school too (although she's ten times more stranger-phobic and cling-to-parent than Lea ever was, so we'll see how that goes). I hope very much that I can send them off to school with confidence, and that they both come home most days with twinkles in their eyes.
*
While I'm here, I should also mention that Susanna is crawling all over the place, pulling up on furniture, eating some solid food, babbling away ("Dada" might be intentional-- it's hard to tell), but still not sleeping any better than when she was about 5 days old. We switched our bedrooms around so all the girls furniture, and theoretically both girls, are up in the big room on the top floor, and Brian and I in the smaller room that used to be Lea's. It's working out really well in terms of space usage and storage, and it looks GREAT, if I do say so myself. And Susanna does start the night out in the top room, and typically has one early wake-up that can be dealt with quickly, allowing a swift returning to the crib in that room, but. Invariably, there is a freak-out sometime between 1 and 4am during which the child is so enraged and so unbelievable loud, we're way too afraid to try to deal with it in the room where Lea is still sleeping. So, down to our room Susanna comes, where she snuggles in contentedly and drifts off, clearly very satisfied with herself for getting exactly what she wanted all along. Not sure how to deal with that.
She's wonderful, though. I love this stage of babyhood, the way she's soaking up everything and interacting more and generally being very happy and bubbly. I will miss it when she's big. But there's a lot to look forward to there, too, as I see glimpses of what it will be like to have two kids (rather than a kid and a baby) who can actually play together and have similar experiences and enjoy each others company instead of just regarding one another with amused tolerance.
And now Susanna is awake from her nap and I didn't do any of the things I meant to get done during that (short) kid-free time. Oh well. Maybe I'll post again before a month passes.
I was talking to my friend Lindsay (mother of Rylan, Lea's best buddy, met at school), as I have many times before, about how much my mental health was suffering during the summer of 2007, when Lea was 7-9 months old and we knew NOBODY in town and a two-minute chat with a barista every now and then was all that was passing for my social life. I say that flippantly, but really: I was in some serious trouble that summer.
And then, I took a leap and invited myself to lunch with an acquaintance of Brian's who had young kids, whom I'd met once for about 15 seconds. She graciously fed me vegetable orzo and handed me a flier for the preschool open house that evening. She also gave me the phone number of the preschool director. I could not wait until that evening. I could not even wait to get home to place a phone call; I actually drove straight from Marybell's house to the church, where I frantically introduced myself and my need NEED NEED for this preschool to the first person I found (who turned out to be the spouse of a custodian, but she pointed me in the right direction). Within 15 minutes, the deposit was paid and Lea was signed up for school.
Since then, Lea's school time each week has increased. She first started going four mornings a week when I had just gotten pregnant with Susanna and was dealing with round-the-clock sickness. She still goes four days, plus now she has the option to stay for lunch, which she does once or twice a week. She gets so excited about "lunch bunch," and I get to do that age-old Mom think where I write her name with a little heart or a flower on her little Tupperware lunch container. Overall, it makes her seem about six and a half years old and it's almost too much to bear. The kid really is growing up.
Except, she's still only two. Two! I cannot believe sometimes that this child who talks in paragraphs and has favorite songs and picks out her own library books is still only two years old. Which brings me to the title of this post.
The preschool director decided to be a stickler this year, and so, even though every single other member of her class from last year has moved up to the three-year-old class, Lea is still down with her old teacher from last year with the current crop of two year olds. She does great there, actually-- I'm so proud of her. There's always somebody screaming and crying, and there's lots of pacifiers and non-verbalness but she gets right in there and plays with them and helps her teachers and it's wonderful. But on Tuesdays, oh, glorious Tuesdays, the three-year-old class is small, so the teachers arranged for Lea and two other 2006-born kids to spend the morning upstairs. The big kid class.
Every morning, Lea asks if it's Tuesday. She loooooves Tuesdays. She gets to see her best buddies, and do very grown-up things like carry her own paint and learn a new song every week and make crafts all-by-herself. She still loves school every day, but on Tuesday she comes home with a twinkle in her eye.
And I start to feel the wheels turning in my head, fast-forwarding to kindergarten and grade school and wondering: will she be challenged enough? Will she get to do things that excite her, that make her proud to be growing up? And this isn't even an age-related worry, although I do kind of wish we'd at least have the option of sending her to kindergarten at almost-5 instead of almost-6. I think it's just the first time I've really been faced with the concept of my children's academic lives, and how much control I will really want or be able to exert on them. And it starts a whole slew of other lines of thinking about the public schools in this region (not too great) and in Virginia in general (way too ruled by state Standards of Learning, as far as I can tell). I know people who homeschool for that reason, and I know people who just go with the flow and hope for the best, and I also know people who choose public school but very intentionally supplement that education with family reading projects and educational trips and real-world learning in the form of planning and planting gardens, or building things, or extra art classes.
It's a lot to figure out, but it's three years away, so I know that the best thing to do right now is just nurture Lea's love of learning whether it's a Threesday or a Twosday or not a school day at all. And soon enough, Susanna will start to go to school too (although she's ten times more stranger-phobic and cling-to-parent than Lea ever was, so we'll see how that goes). I hope very much that I can send them off to school with confidence, and that they both come home most days with twinkles in their eyes.
*
While I'm here, I should also mention that Susanna is crawling all over the place, pulling up on furniture, eating some solid food, babbling away ("Dada" might be intentional-- it's hard to tell), but still not sleeping any better than when she was about 5 days old. We switched our bedrooms around so all the girls furniture, and theoretically both girls, are up in the big room on the top floor, and Brian and I in the smaller room that used to be Lea's. It's working out really well in terms of space usage and storage, and it looks GREAT, if I do say so myself. And Susanna does start the night out in the top room, and typically has one early wake-up that can be dealt with quickly, allowing a swift returning to the crib in that room, but. Invariably, there is a freak-out sometime between 1 and 4am during which the child is so enraged and so unbelievable loud, we're way too afraid to try to deal with it in the room where Lea is still sleeping. So, down to our room Susanna comes, where she snuggles in contentedly and drifts off, clearly very satisfied with herself for getting exactly what she wanted all along. Not sure how to deal with that.
She's wonderful, though. I love this stage of babyhood, the way she's soaking up everything and interacting more and generally being very happy and bubbly. I will miss it when she's big. But there's a lot to look forward to there, too, as I see glimpses of what it will be like to have two kids (rather than a kid and a baby) who can actually play together and have similar experiences and enjoy each others company instead of just regarding one another with amused tolerance.
And now Susanna is awake from her nap and I didn't do any of the things I meant to get done during that (short) kid-free time. Oh well. Maybe I'll post again before a month passes.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Life updates
Since this blog is serving as my only (lame) attempt at a babybook-type chronicle of the first years of my kids' lives, I know I'll really regret it if I look back in a few years and see it trail off to nothing, so I'm resolving to pick up the pace a little bit, even if it's just totally un-literary lists of what's going on.
Susanna is 6 months old. She has seemed about 5 seconds away from crawling for about a month now; she does the downward facing dog back-and-forth rocking that I can remember Lea doing just before she crawled. She honestly seems puzzled as to why that motion doesn't get her anywhere. The key is to figure out the pairing of the right hand with the left leg, and vice versa, moving together. Once that clicks, she'll be all over the place.
On a related note, I keep hoping that what I hear about impending developmental milestones interfering with sleep is true, because otherwise I have no explanation for the fact that Susanna is such a bad nighttime sleeper. Last week I would've told you that she just gets lonely, but for the last 3 nights, she just moans and fusses whether she's in her crib, in one of our arms, in the bed between us, anywhere. It's exhausting. She's not sick, and in the daytime hours she is perfectly pleasant and content, and even a very reliable napper. It's weird. Especially because she is just so, so different from her sister. By 5 months, Lea was on a rock-solid and totally predictable schedule: bed at 7. Nurse at 11 and go right back to sleep. Nurse at 3 and go right back to sleep. Awake at 7. Period. I think that Susanna's longest stretches of sleep these days are about 2.5 hours. Just writing that makes me deliriously tired.
What's funny, though, is that I'm actually handling the tiredness so much better than I did when Lea was a baby. I napped when Lea did almost every day until Susanna was born. Now, it's not possible to nap at all because Lea doesn't take one anymore-- but it's actually FINE, and I almost never feel like I'm about to crumble to the floor with exhaustion, which is how I felt for most of Lea's first year.
Part of it, I think, is that when it was just Lea, I was kind of socially exhausted, if that makes sense. Because with a young baby, you give and give and give from your social-energy reserves, and get almost nothing back the way you do when you have a conversation with an adult or even an older child. Which is why I have told myself so many times, and told so many other struggling new parents, that I think being alone with a baby can be lonelier than being alone. You can't just get lost in your own thoughts-- you have to direct your mental and emotional and social and physical EVERYTHING at this other person, and let's be honest-- the payoff, at least in terms of recharging yourself, is kind of minimal for most of the first year.
But this time around, even though Susanna is in that stage, Lea is around too, and she is social. We have conversations, and she's funny. She's infuriating at times, and every day she tests me, and yes, still, it's sometimes pretty lonely to be on my own with the girls. But it's so different. I am in such a better mental-health situation than I was two years ago. And I thank God for this time with my kids, hard as it may be on a day-to-day basis. I look at Susanna and I KNOW this time how fast it goes, because I have evidence of how fast it goes-- Lea, the not-at-all-a-baby-anymore-- right there in the room with me.
Of course, the other big difference is that they are different kids. Obviously. But I still find myself surprised and amused when Susanna shows signs of having a very different personality than Lea does. From day one, Lea was Miss Independent, and didn't much like to be held, slept best on her own, wanted to be down on the floor or next to you, but never in your lap. I remember going to a breastfeeding group meeting in Bryn Mawr when she was a newborn, and noticing with some sadness that when other babies cried, their mothers' first response was to pick them up and hold them close, but that I had already learned to do the opposite. When Lea cried, it meant she wanted to be put down.
Depending on my mood, I describe Susanna as alternately very snuggly or very clingy. She loves to be held, and she always cries out if I leave her line of sight. Overall, it's pretty easy to keep her happy during her wakeful hours; just hold her in a lap and let her observe the world. I do suspect that her snuggly/clingy nature has at least something to do with her lack of consistent nighttime sleep though, so that's definitely the downside to an otherwise pretty mellow personality.
I find myself thinking about birth order a lot too. It suddenly makes all kinds of sense that there would be some pretty consistent and pretty fundamental differences between oldest children and everybody else. Of course the stimuli a baby with a toddler in her house is exposed to will be vastly different than those of a firstborn. I have no idea exactly what that does to a little developing psyche, but I'm sure it's something. Susanna's routine, and what she sees and hears and does all day long, are so different from Lea's. It will be interesting to see how their personalities develop from here on out.
My girls are also physically very different. I think I've said on here before that at birth, they looked like different species. Such different faces. And also, Susanna was so skinny in comparison, which is hilarious because as of yesterday, she weighs more than Lea did at 13 months. She also has bigger legs-- they wear the same size diaper, and it fits snugger on Susanna than on Lea. Strangers routinely come up to comment on her ankle rolls. She's a chunk. I love it.
Life is pretty good right now. Abingdon is the perfect place for our family at this point, except for the fact that it's so far away from family, which is a drag. But in all other ways, I can see us staying here forever. We've made some wonderful friends, and fill our days with low-key activities that I feel so good about shaping a child's life around: walks on a trail, rocks thrown in creek, horses observed from the roadside, vegetable gardens tended and explored, bluegrass on the radio, good friends and a circle of acquaintances ranging from authors and artists to activist ex-nuns. Very cool.
In other news, I take the first step in my should-I-be-a-midwife journey this fall: Anatomy and Physiology I, one of three prerequisites to nursing school. If it goes well and feels right, I'll take the other two (A&P II and Microbiology) in the spring, and begin the official nursing program the following fall. Which makes me an RN by Spring 2012 and a midwife two years later at the absolute earliest. Whew. It's still a huge question mark in my mind, but I figure the only way to really evaluate if this is a path I'd like to travel is to take the first concrete step instead of just wondering. Besides, it will be fun to use that part of my brain again, and for the couple hundred bucks of community college tuition, there's really no downside.
So. The summer's been a blur of travelling, first to PA/NJ and then most recently to the Smokies. Brian has had a really busy time with work, working on issues that have resulted in one big victory on the local level (keeping a truck stop from being built right next door to an elementary school) and a long, drawn-out fight on the national level (fighting for health care reform). Both issues have drawn some pretty ugly attacks. It's no fun to be harrassed at the farmer's market by a guy you thought you were friends with.
But. Our sidewalk is being built and a mountain autumn is just around the corner. My kids are healthy and gorgeous and make each other laugh. No complaints here.
Susanna is 6 months old. She has seemed about 5 seconds away from crawling for about a month now; she does the downward facing dog back-and-forth rocking that I can remember Lea doing just before she crawled. She honestly seems puzzled as to why that motion doesn't get her anywhere. The key is to figure out the pairing of the right hand with the left leg, and vice versa, moving together. Once that clicks, she'll be all over the place.
On a related note, I keep hoping that what I hear about impending developmental milestones interfering with sleep is true, because otherwise I have no explanation for the fact that Susanna is such a bad nighttime sleeper. Last week I would've told you that she just gets lonely, but for the last 3 nights, she just moans and fusses whether she's in her crib, in one of our arms, in the bed between us, anywhere. It's exhausting. She's not sick, and in the daytime hours she is perfectly pleasant and content, and even a very reliable napper. It's weird. Especially because she is just so, so different from her sister. By 5 months, Lea was on a rock-solid and totally predictable schedule: bed at 7. Nurse at 11 and go right back to sleep. Nurse at 3 and go right back to sleep. Awake at 7. Period. I think that Susanna's longest stretches of sleep these days are about 2.5 hours. Just writing that makes me deliriously tired.
What's funny, though, is that I'm actually handling the tiredness so much better than I did when Lea was a baby. I napped when Lea did almost every day until Susanna was born. Now, it's not possible to nap at all because Lea doesn't take one anymore-- but it's actually FINE, and I almost never feel like I'm about to crumble to the floor with exhaustion, which is how I felt for most of Lea's first year.
Part of it, I think, is that when it was just Lea, I was kind of socially exhausted, if that makes sense. Because with a young baby, you give and give and give from your social-energy reserves, and get almost nothing back the way you do when you have a conversation with an adult or even an older child. Which is why I have told myself so many times, and told so many other struggling new parents, that I think being alone with a baby can be lonelier than being alone. You can't just get lost in your own thoughts-- you have to direct your mental and emotional and social and physical EVERYTHING at this other person, and let's be honest-- the payoff, at least in terms of recharging yourself, is kind of minimal for most of the first year.
But this time around, even though Susanna is in that stage, Lea is around too, and she is social. We have conversations, and she's funny. She's infuriating at times, and every day she tests me, and yes, still, it's sometimes pretty lonely to be on my own with the girls. But it's so different. I am in such a better mental-health situation than I was two years ago. And I thank God for this time with my kids, hard as it may be on a day-to-day basis. I look at Susanna and I KNOW this time how fast it goes, because I have evidence of how fast it goes-- Lea, the not-at-all-a-baby-anymore-- right there in the room with me.
Of course, the other big difference is that they are different kids. Obviously. But I still find myself surprised and amused when Susanna shows signs of having a very different personality than Lea does. From day one, Lea was Miss Independent, and didn't much like to be held, slept best on her own, wanted to be down on the floor or next to you, but never in your lap. I remember going to a breastfeeding group meeting in Bryn Mawr when she was a newborn, and noticing with some sadness that when other babies cried, their mothers' first response was to pick them up and hold them close, but that I had already learned to do the opposite. When Lea cried, it meant she wanted to be put down.
Depending on my mood, I describe Susanna as alternately very snuggly or very clingy. She loves to be held, and she always cries out if I leave her line of sight. Overall, it's pretty easy to keep her happy during her wakeful hours; just hold her in a lap and let her observe the world. I do suspect that her snuggly/clingy nature has at least something to do with her lack of consistent nighttime sleep though, so that's definitely the downside to an otherwise pretty mellow personality.
I find myself thinking about birth order a lot too. It suddenly makes all kinds of sense that there would be some pretty consistent and pretty fundamental differences between oldest children and everybody else. Of course the stimuli a baby with a toddler in her house is exposed to will be vastly different than those of a firstborn. I have no idea exactly what that does to a little developing psyche, but I'm sure it's something. Susanna's routine, and what she sees and hears and does all day long, are so different from Lea's. It will be interesting to see how their personalities develop from here on out.
My girls are also physically very different. I think I've said on here before that at birth, they looked like different species. Such different faces. And also, Susanna was so skinny in comparison, which is hilarious because as of yesterday, she weighs more than Lea did at 13 months. She also has bigger legs-- they wear the same size diaper, and it fits snugger on Susanna than on Lea. Strangers routinely come up to comment on her ankle rolls. She's a chunk. I love it.
Life is pretty good right now. Abingdon is the perfect place for our family at this point, except for the fact that it's so far away from family, which is a drag. But in all other ways, I can see us staying here forever. We've made some wonderful friends, and fill our days with low-key activities that I feel so good about shaping a child's life around: walks on a trail, rocks thrown in creek, horses observed from the roadside, vegetable gardens tended and explored, bluegrass on the radio, good friends and a circle of acquaintances ranging from authors and artists to activist ex-nuns. Very cool.
In other news, I take the first step in my should-I-be-a-midwife journey this fall: Anatomy and Physiology I, one of three prerequisites to nursing school. If it goes well and feels right, I'll take the other two (A&P II and Microbiology) in the spring, and begin the official nursing program the following fall. Which makes me an RN by Spring 2012 and a midwife two years later at the absolute earliest. Whew. It's still a huge question mark in my mind, but I figure the only way to really evaluate if this is a path I'd like to travel is to take the first concrete step instead of just wondering. Besides, it will be fun to use that part of my brain again, and for the couple hundred bucks of community college tuition, there's really no downside.
So. The summer's been a blur of travelling, first to PA/NJ and then most recently to the Smokies. Brian has had a really busy time with work, working on issues that have resulted in one big victory on the local level (keeping a truck stop from being built right next door to an elementary school) and a long, drawn-out fight on the national level (fighting for health care reform). Both issues have drawn some pretty ugly attacks. It's no fun to be harrassed at the farmer's market by a guy you thought you were friends with.
But. Our sidewalk is being built and a mountain autumn is just around the corner. My kids are healthy and gorgeous and make each other laugh. No complaints here.
Friday, June 12, 2009
The babymoon ends
I'll start by sharing something that's a bit difficult to admit, though I suspect I'm not at all alone in my feelings.
Susanna's birth was emotionally very complicated for me, and very, very different from Lea's birth in terms of the psychological journey it took me on. Here's the most truthful truth I can muster: one of the first things that popped into my head when I saw her was "Who is this impostor? I already have a baby!"
Yep. That's what I thought. Luckily, I am a self-examiner by nature, and I had already considered the possibility that I'd have some weird stuff happen in the brain department at that moment, so my reaction to my own thought was not horror and fling-myself-out-the-window guilt, as I imagine it might be for some. I was able to kind of roll my eyes at myself, recognize the thought for what it was-- a totally human response to the sudden shake-up in my mothering world-- take another look at the wriggling slippery mess on my chest, and see, my god, how beautiful she was and how much I really did already love her.
And I have loved her, and loved her, and loved her ever since. But. It's been such a different bonding process, and it seems that every moment of falling in love with her is matched with a corresponding pang of torment that I've abandoned Lea. And that I miss my first baby sometimes, so, so much. So that's hard. Really hard. Especially in the earliest days, when Susanna's needs were so impossible to anticipate, and all I could really do was be physically available to her, we'd often find ourselves doing the old divide-and-conquer trick, with Brian taking over almost all of Lea's care, and me nursing and nursing and nursing and that's about it. As much as I love to cuddle a tiny baby, I could hear Lea's laughter and hilarious two-year-old way of talking (and occasionally, her confused and sober inquiries as to where Mama was), and it would kill me that I could not un-latch the baby and go scoop up my firstborn and blow raspberries on her belly and make her smile, and just be with her. And then, on the other hand, when I was on my own with both girls, I'd find myself in situations where I was trying to tend to Susanna, and Lea would be her typical toddler self and just get in my way, and get in her sister's face, and be noisy and disrupt feedings and whine and make a mess and I would resent her. I'd resent her on behalf of me, and on behalf of the brand-new baby who didn't deserve such chaos. I'd think about how peaceful Lea's world was as a newborn, and how unfair it was that Susanna didn't get to have the universe revolve around her, even for just a little bit.
Which brings me to today, Lea's last day of school before it closes for the summer. First of all, I cannot say enough good things about how this school has improved our lives in general. (Among other things, it's how we've met literally all of our friends. Somehow, a whole bunch of very like-minded parents ended up with kids in the same class. Awesome.) But I honestly cannot say where I would be now, in terms of mental health, if I had not had four mornings per week with just my baby, for nearly the first five months of her life. Oh, lordy. There has been nothing sweeter than those three hours, taking our time getting going for the day, making googly eyes at one another for long stretches before even getting dressed. Listening to her perfect baby laugh. Letting her nurse for luxuriously long stretches with absolutely no interruptions. It's been beautiful.
And now, it's ok that it's coming to an end, because we're right on the brink where I can tell Susanna is not going to tolerate lounging in bed for much longer. She is crazy ambitious about wanting to crawl, and she sort of demands entertainment in a way that she didn't use to, so it will be fine to switch up our routine and have more active mornings. I think she's ready for that, and I'm ready for it too. I feel so fortunate to have had this chance to focus exclusively on her, to learn all the things that make her who she is, already quite different from her big sister, and already very charming on her own. Not that I wouldn't know her if Lea wasn't in school, but I really do feel like for me and my needs and style as a parent, this has been critical. So I will never feel bad about sending Lea out into the world each morning, young as she is. She loves school, anyway; she's so social and confident, it slays me, so I don't have any doubts that school is a fun and comfortable place for her to be.
I'm lucky, by all accounts. It's going so fast this time around, so I'm trying my best to soak it up and not wish away the hard parts, because even they will be a sweet memory not too far down the road. So as much as my self-examining ways can be a hindrance in certain areas, here's another where they're useful:
"This." I say to myself, every day. "This is worth imprinting on my soul. Memorize it. Now."
Susanna's birth was emotionally very complicated for me, and very, very different from Lea's birth in terms of the psychological journey it took me on. Here's the most truthful truth I can muster: one of the first things that popped into my head when I saw her was "Who is this impostor? I already have a baby!"
Yep. That's what I thought. Luckily, I am a self-examiner by nature, and I had already considered the possibility that I'd have some weird stuff happen in the brain department at that moment, so my reaction to my own thought was not horror and fling-myself-out-the-window guilt, as I imagine it might be for some. I was able to kind of roll my eyes at myself, recognize the thought for what it was-- a totally human response to the sudden shake-up in my mothering world-- take another look at the wriggling slippery mess on my chest, and see, my god, how beautiful she was and how much I really did already love her.
And I have loved her, and loved her, and loved her ever since. But. It's been such a different bonding process, and it seems that every moment of falling in love with her is matched with a corresponding pang of torment that I've abandoned Lea. And that I miss my first baby sometimes, so, so much. So that's hard. Really hard. Especially in the earliest days, when Susanna's needs were so impossible to anticipate, and all I could really do was be physically available to her, we'd often find ourselves doing the old divide-and-conquer trick, with Brian taking over almost all of Lea's care, and me nursing and nursing and nursing and that's about it. As much as I love to cuddle a tiny baby, I could hear Lea's laughter and hilarious two-year-old way of talking (and occasionally, her confused and sober inquiries as to where Mama was), and it would kill me that I could not un-latch the baby and go scoop up my firstborn and blow raspberries on her belly and make her smile, and just be with her. And then, on the other hand, when I was on my own with both girls, I'd find myself in situations where I was trying to tend to Susanna, and Lea would be her typical toddler self and just get in my way, and get in her sister's face, and be noisy and disrupt feedings and whine and make a mess and I would resent her. I'd resent her on behalf of me, and on behalf of the brand-new baby who didn't deserve such chaos. I'd think about how peaceful Lea's world was as a newborn, and how unfair it was that Susanna didn't get to have the universe revolve around her, even for just a little bit.
Which brings me to today, Lea's last day of school before it closes for the summer. First of all, I cannot say enough good things about how this school has improved our lives in general. (Among other things, it's how we've met literally all of our friends. Somehow, a whole bunch of very like-minded parents ended up with kids in the same class. Awesome.) But I honestly cannot say where I would be now, in terms of mental health, if I had not had four mornings per week with just my baby, for nearly the first five months of her life. Oh, lordy. There has been nothing sweeter than those three hours, taking our time getting going for the day, making googly eyes at one another for long stretches before even getting dressed. Listening to her perfect baby laugh. Letting her nurse for luxuriously long stretches with absolutely no interruptions. It's been beautiful.
And now, it's ok that it's coming to an end, because we're right on the brink where I can tell Susanna is not going to tolerate lounging in bed for much longer. She is crazy ambitious about wanting to crawl, and she sort of demands entertainment in a way that she didn't use to, so it will be fine to switch up our routine and have more active mornings. I think she's ready for that, and I'm ready for it too. I feel so fortunate to have had this chance to focus exclusively on her, to learn all the things that make her who she is, already quite different from her big sister, and already very charming on her own. Not that I wouldn't know her if Lea wasn't in school, but I really do feel like for me and my needs and style as a parent, this has been critical. So I will never feel bad about sending Lea out into the world each morning, young as she is. She loves school, anyway; she's so social and confident, it slays me, so I don't have any doubts that school is a fun and comfortable place for her to be.
I'm lucky, by all accounts. It's going so fast this time around, so I'm trying my best to soak it up and not wish away the hard parts, because even they will be a sweet memory not too far down the road. So as much as my self-examining ways can be a hindrance in certain areas, here's another where they're useful:
"This." I say to myself, every day. "This is worth imprinting on my soul. Memorize it. Now."
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Another Harry Kalas blog
For a very convoluted reason, listening to Harry Kalas call Phillies games often reminded me of my grandmother, my Mom-mom, who died in the spring of 1993. Here's how it goes:
Once, in college-- it must have been Labor Day weekend because I was doing ASP staff in the summers-- I left a Phillies game with my family a little early. We got in the car to head to the shore, and, as always, turned the radio to 1210AM to hear the final inning or so and the post-game. One thing about sports broadcasting that I really love is when the announcers will actually read ads themselves. It's such a throwback, so unselfconsciously corny. I can remember Richie Ashburn doing the same MAB Paints spot for years. But that particular night, the ad the struck me was for a cancer research non-profit that was doing a benefit of some kind. I don't remember the details at all, but I can still conjure up the sound of Harry's voice saying "the fight against cancer continues."
The fight against cancer continues. It sounded so odd to me, and in such contrast to the light-hearted and often celebratory things said at the close of a game. And right then, I thought about how those words might sting so bad for somebody who had just lost someone to cancer. Like we had lost Mom-mom, to a brain tumor. I'm not sure why my mind leaped to her like that. Maybe because we were going to the shore, and because I had and will always have a perfectly preserved emotional memory (not a cognitive memory, really-- not one precise event) that links these things together: summertime. The shore house. Baseball. Listening to baseball games on a clock radio in the back bedroom at the shore house. My Mom-mom. Her voice. Harry's voice. The sound of occcasional amateur fireworks, way off in the distance every night from July 1st to the 6th or so. Walking barefoot in the alley. My family. Coming in from the ocean and seeing the horseshoe of beach chairs where my family sat, and Mom-mom always, always, always there. Summertime- my childhood- Mom-mom is laughing. It's warm, and everybody is talking about the Phillies.
That's the connection, and today I'm so sad, because I know how much I am going to miss the way Harry K's voice took me back to that place. Since moving to Abingdon, I haven't been as totally removed from Phillies baseball as I thought, because weirdly, I can still get 1210AM out of Philadelphia at nighttime, all the way down the Blue Ridge, 500 miles away. Last summer, my little personal ritual was to listen on the way home from Wednesday night choir practice. I would be alone, and I would let the sounds coming from the radio-- including the particular flavor of AM static-- transport me to childhood, to the shore, with the Phillies, with my family.
It's not a secret that I don't have the steel-trap focus on baseball itself that my brother does. I never pretended to. What I've been thinking a lot over the last 24 hours is that I'm mostly a fan of baseball season, and the way it brings a city together, and the way baseball sounds and smells and feels. I don't remember a lot of specific calls Harry Kalas made, and I didn't even realize until last night that the phrasing of "this ball is OUTTA HERE" was Harry's thing. I just thought that's how everybody called homeruns. And, for real: I'm just as sentimental about the way he said the words "station identification" and "Tastycake" as anything actually related to baseball.
But, my god. I'm going to miss him.
Once, in college-- it must have been Labor Day weekend because I was doing ASP staff in the summers-- I left a Phillies game with my family a little early. We got in the car to head to the shore, and, as always, turned the radio to 1210AM to hear the final inning or so and the post-game. One thing about sports broadcasting that I really love is when the announcers will actually read ads themselves. It's such a throwback, so unselfconsciously corny. I can remember Richie Ashburn doing the same MAB Paints spot for years. But that particular night, the ad the struck me was for a cancer research non-profit that was doing a benefit of some kind. I don't remember the details at all, but I can still conjure up the sound of Harry's voice saying "the fight against cancer continues."
The fight against cancer continues. It sounded so odd to me, and in such contrast to the light-hearted and often celebratory things said at the close of a game. And right then, I thought about how those words might sting so bad for somebody who had just lost someone to cancer. Like we had lost Mom-mom, to a brain tumor. I'm not sure why my mind leaped to her like that. Maybe because we were going to the shore, and because I had and will always have a perfectly preserved emotional memory (not a cognitive memory, really-- not one precise event) that links these things together: summertime. The shore house. Baseball. Listening to baseball games on a clock radio in the back bedroom at the shore house. My Mom-mom. Her voice. Harry's voice. The sound of occcasional amateur fireworks, way off in the distance every night from July 1st to the 6th or so. Walking barefoot in the alley. My family. Coming in from the ocean and seeing the horseshoe of beach chairs where my family sat, and Mom-mom always, always, always there. Summertime- my childhood- Mom-mom is laughing. It's warm, and everybody is talking about the Phillies.
That's the connection, and today I'm so sad, because I know how much I am going to miss the way Harry K's voice took me back to that place. Since moving to Abingdon, I haven't been as totally removed from Phillies baseball as I thought, because weirdly, I can still get 1210AM out of Philadelphia at nighttime, all the way down the Blue Ridge, 500 miles away. Last summer, my little personal ritual was to listen on the way home from Wednesday night choir practice. I would be alone, and I would let the sounds coming from the radio-- including the particular flavor of AM static-- transport me to childhood, to the shore, with the Phillies, with my family.
It's not a secret that I don't have the steel-trap focus on baseball itself that my brother does. I never pretended to. What I've been thinking a lot over the last 24 hours is that I'm mostly a fan of baseball season, and the way it brings a city together, and the way baseball sounds and smells and feels. I don't remember a lot of specific calls Harry Kalas made, and I didn't even realize until last night that the phrasing of "this ball is OUTTA HERE" was Harry's thing. I just thought that's how everybody called homeruns. And, for real: I'm just as sentimental about the way he said the words "station identification" and "Tastycake" as anything actually related to baseball.
But, my god. I'm going to miss him.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
More language development
I've been struck lately at Lea's newfound ability to put words together on her own to convey her own concepts, instead of just repeating phrases she has heard (of course she still does quite a lot of that, too). Sometimes it comes out so fluently, I forget she's two, but other times, the results are amusing.
For instance:
Lea has a little squirt bottle that she plays with in the bathtub, and one night she was trying to get the lid screwed on, but couldn't. "It's stuck!" she said, which is how she often describes the state of something not happening the way she wants it to. I put the lid on the bottle as Lea watched, and then she commented with a nod, "It's not mama stuck. It's just Lea stuck." Which really, is a totally logical way for her to have processed the situation.
Another time recently, she was eating her breakfast and I asked her if she was finished with her yogurt. "No," she said. "I have still left of it."
She also has been drinking a lot of V8. The very first time she saw it, she proclaimed it "soup juice" (she's a fan of tomato soup, so you can see where she was coming from).
So it's cool, really, to see how she figures out her own way to explain things using her own sense of how the language works. Every day, I wish I could go back and take more college linguistics classes because this process is just so fascinating to me.
Other stuff is more in the adorable category. Today, Lea's been randomly saying "Let's play team!" When we ask her how you play team, she says, "Like this: TEEEEEEAAM!!!!" and starts running back and forth from our front door to the back corner of our kitchen, pretty much the longest straight line it's possible to run in our house. This has come out of the blue, and this afternoon while watching basketball, as we've been doing a lot of for the last weeks, it occurred to me that maybe that's what she's imitating. Who knows? In any case, it's hilarious.
Susanna's language development lately consists of "Ohhhhh" and "Hoooohhhhh" and "Gooooo." Which, still, thrills me. The first non-crying vocalizations are so welcome.
For instance:
Lea has a little squirt bottle that she plays with in the bathtub, and one night she was trying to get the lid screwed on, but couldn't. "It's stuck!" she said, which is how she often describes the state of something not happening the way she wants it to. I put the lid on the bottle as Lea watched, and then she commented with a nod, "It's not mama stuck. It's just Lea stuck." Which really, is a totally logical way for her to have processed the situation.
Another time recently, she was eating her breakfast and I asked her if she was finished with her yogurt. "No," she said. "I have still left of it."
She also has been drinking a lot of V8. The very first time she saw it, she proclaimed it "soup juice" (she's a fan of tomato soup, so you can see where she was coming from).
So it's cool, really, to see how she figures out her own way to explain things using her own sense of how the language works. Every day, I wish I could go back and take more college linguistics classes because this process is just so fascinating to me.
Other stuff is more in the adorable category. Today, Lea's been randomly saying "Let's play team!" When we ask her how you play team, she says, "Like this: TEEEEEEAAM!!!!" and starts running back and forth from our front door to the back corner of our kitchen, pretty much the longest straight line it's possible to run in our house. This has come out of the blue, and this afternoon while watching basketball, as we've been doing a lot of for the last weeks, it occurred to me that maybe that's what she's imitating. Who knows? In any case, it's hilarious.
Susanna's language development lately consists of "Ohhhhh" and "Hoooohhhhh" and "Gooooo." Which, still, thrills me. The first non-crying vocalizations are so welcome.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
Susanna's Birth Story, Part V
“Oh, Paige!” I heard Brian say. “Oh Paige, it’s a girl!” and this tiny purple mess of limbs was placed flailing in all her sliminess on my chest. “You’re here!” I wept. “You came, you came just when I needed you to!” Donna put a warm towel over the baby and me, and then a heating pad behind that, as I rubbed the towel and patted the baby’s back, staring at her face while she gurgled and sputtered, all squinty-shut eyes and wide, wide open mouth. Her gurgles slowly changed to a lusty cry and she turned from purple to pink, her limbs slowing to occasional jerks, settling, calming. We kept her at my chest for a long time, as she became aware of my nipple and gradually figured out what to do with it. When she finally latched on, we rested, and told her her name—Susanna.
Soon after that, I delivered the placenta—no big deal—and Donna realized that the baby had passed a huge amount of meconium all over me and our bed. This was the first of quite a few indications that even though she was only two days “late,” Susanna showed evidence of some degree of postmaturity. Besides the meconium, she also had very dry, wrinkled skin (particularly her feet, which had deep cracks), long fingernails, and the appearance that she had sort of shrunken back in her own skin. Still, everything appeared to be perfectly fine, and after she had been latched on for a while, we got up so that I could shower, cleanup could begin, and the baby could be given a more thorough examination.
Once showered, I climbed back into my freshly made bed and held Susanna so that her big sister (who had slept through the entire delivery and only recently woke up) could meet her. We had prepared Lea as much as possible, and although she seemed somewhat bewildered by the whole thing, she greeted Susanna with a smile and a kiss on the head. Then she got to help give Susanna a bath while I sipped juice, listening to my sweet daughters get to know each other. “She needs fishies,” Lea offered, pointing out her collection of bath toys. When Donna told her that Susanna wasn’t quite ready for bath toys, Lea said, “Oh. Next time, she takes a bath with me!”
Lea also helped get Susanna dressed, and after Susanna was weighed and measured (8lbs 1oz, 20.5 inches long), we all climbed into bed for a family picture. I consider it to be a very good sign that Lea quickly got bored, acting more interested in the bottle of lotion next to my bed than either me or the baby. Since then, the pattern has held: alternating fascination with the baby and preference for doing her own thing. She’s an amazing big sister. I love watching them together, and I love our new family of four.
I am so grateful to my husband, who read extensively about being a good birth partner, and to my caregivers, who never missed a beat—who encouraged me with their kindness and confidence, and who instilled confidence in me through their professionalism and expertise. I could not have asked for better care, from anyone. I am proud of myself, too, but mostly I consider myself very blessed that Susanna’s entrance into the world was so peaceful, an act of creation, an act of life—uncomplicated, but beyond any words I can muster.
Soon after that, I delivered the placenta—no big deal—and Donna realized that the baby had passed a huge amount of meconium all over me and our bed. This was the first of quite a few indications that even though she was only two days “late,” Susanna showed evidence of some degree of postmaturity. Besides the meconium, she also had very dry, wrinkled skin (particularly her feet, which had deep cracks), long fingernails, and the appearance that she had sort of shrunken back in her own skin. Still, everything appeared to be perfectly fine, and after she had been latched on for a while, we got up so that I could shower, cleanup could begin, and the baby could be given a more thorough examination.
Once showered, I climbed back into my freshly made bed and held Susanna so that her big sister (who had slept through the entire delivery and only recently woke up) could meet her. We had prepared Lea as much as possible, and although she seemed somewhat bewildered by the whole thing, she greeted Susanna with a smile and a kiss on the head. Then she got to help give Susanna a bath while I sipped juice, listening to my sweet daughters get to know each other. “She needs fishies,” Lea offered, pointing out her collection of bath toys. When Donna told her that Susanna wasn’t quite ready for bath toys, Lea said, “Oh. Next time, she takes a bath with me!”
Lea also helped get Susanna dressed, and after Susanna was weighed and measured (8lbs 1oz, 20.5 inches long), we all climbed into bed for a family picture. I consider it to be a very good sign that Lea quickly got bored, acting more interested in the bottle of lotion next to my bed than either me or the baby. Since then, the pattern has held: alternating fascination with the baby and preference for doing her own thing. She’s an amazing big sister. I love watching them together, and I love our new family of four.
I am so grateful to my husband, who read extensively about being a good birth partner, and to my caregivers, who never missed a beat—who encouraged me with their kindness and confidence, and who instilled confidence in me through their professionalism and expertise. I could not have asked for better care, from anyone. I am proud of myself, too, but mostly I consider myself very blessed that Susanna’s entrance into the world was so peaceful, an act of creation, an act of life—uncomplicated, but beyond any words I can muster.
Susanna's Birth Story, Part IV
By 3am I was 9cm and starting to lose my cool. Mostly, I was scared, scared, scared of the actual delivery, but even so, I remember commenting that the fact I could even conceive of a tangible emotion like “fear” represented a big difference from my first labor. I had so far refrained from making much noise, which would have been an absolute impossibility with Lea.
I started to sing a descending 5-note scale in as low an octave as I possibly could. The idea behind that one is that singing low prevents you from basically screeching, which is a huge waste of air and energy. I was getting tired, and tired of laboring. I wanted to be done. DeEtte recommends only pushing when you have an urge; in other words, 10cm does not magically mean it’s time to push, and she doesn’t typically direct her patients to push to a certain count or anything else. In her experience, pushing works best when you absolutely can’t help it. But I was getting impatient, and I told DeEtte—“I need to move on, I just want to be at the point where I can push.”
She checked me again—9cm still, no! I think I pouted a little, and a huge contraction hit me like a brick while I was still lying down. This was the first big one I’d experienced while reclined, and felt so grateful that I’d been encouraged to labor upright all this time. Contracting while horizontal was NOT a good recipe for me. This is when I started to get loud, but DeEtte convinced me to let her check me during a contraction to see if I got to 10 in the midst of one. I did, with the exception of a lip of cervix that remained. She suggested that she try to move it away during the next contraction. This was excruciating, and the beginning of the screaming. I’m not proud of the amount of screaming, actually. I wish I was one of those people who could surrender control, but I am not. It was bad.
But, DeEtte was able to massage that lip of cervix away, and said that if I wanted to, I could start to try to push, urge or no. So yes, I would push. I wanted to be in charge. (At this point, it was about 3:45 and I felt very strongly that we should call Lindsay because I felt so sure I was going to wake up Lea. Brian called her and she arrived, waiting downstairs in our living room, ready to respond if Lea awoke.)
I tried to push on a birthing chair (a c-shaped stool that some people actually deliver while sitting on), but it felt all wrong. I remembered that with Lea, pushing felt automatic. I didn’t have an urge then either, but pushing brought great relief and felt enormously productive. I loved it. This was different. Something about bearing down felt like the opposite of what my body wanted to do, and for the first time in the whole labor, I went completely tense and practically refused to let myself even breathe or move during a contraction. It was, needless to say, not a productive way to approach the situation.
DeEtte wanted to check me one more time to make sure the lip of cervix was totally gone, because she thought that might be what was feeling so off. She confirmed that it was gone, and decided that it would be best at that point to break my water, because even though no cervix remained, it seemed like the baby’s head would not descend any further. Very little water even came out, but I found myself remembering stories of second labors in which the baby is out within literally seconds of the bag of waters breaking. I decided to continue pushing right there on the bed.
Like I said, with Lea, I suffered through the labor but thrived while I pushed. This would prove to be the opposite. With the beginning of every contraction, I tried to push. I wanted to push, and in some ways, my body really was giving me the signal to push. But each push brought an extra jolt of pain, grinding, mind-erasing pain. (I found out later that the baby would be born with hand pressed to face, which is probably what caused this mixed signal, as the descending head encouraged the pushing instinct, but the totally-in-the-way hand encouraged the freakout instinct.) I refused to push at all a few times. Other times, I could only muster up the strength to push for 2 or 3 seconds. “I can’t do this!” I kept saying. Brian and Donna and DeEtte were firm: “You ARE doing it.” “NO!” I yelled. “Something is WRONG, something is DIFFERENT, this is not WORKING.” DeEtte insisted, “it IS working, Paige, you’re bringing the baby down, it’s hard work but it’s happening.” I shook my head. “No. I just need to FIGURE OUT a way to PUSH in a way that WORKS!” Anyone who has been through a birth knows that this is not the optimal time for “figuring out” anything. It’s not like you’re at your most logical. But, that’s me. I needed to figure it all out.
In the end, I didn’t. I had what I think of as an Exorcist-style contraction because I think I actually spit on the bed and spoke in tongues, and when it was over, something happened. In fact, I remember saying “something is happening,” and as the tail end of the contraction faded, I felt the most primal, animal NEED (not urge) to push, and I pushed and I pushed through two more contractions, the first of which DeEtte announced that the baby was crowning, and the second of which the head actually emerged. In between those two was what I now know is the infamous “ring of fire,” which I never experienced when I pushed Lea out. This is when the fullest part of the baby’s head fills the cervix, and women report feeling like their entire body is going to tear in half. I felt my eyes roll back and I heard myself half groan/ half scream until the next contraction hit, when it changed to all scream and I finally felt the head emerge. DeEtte firmly reminded me to keep pushing, and I felt her helping the baby rotate as I puuuuuuuuushed and then pop! Out came the rest of the body, and a huge gush of fluid, and a sweeping sense of relief and ecstasy.
I started to sing a descending 5-note scale in as low an octave as I possibly could. The idea behind that one is that singing low prevents you from basically screeching, which is a huge waste of air and energy. I was getting tired, and tired of laboring. I wanted to be done. DeEtte recommends only pushing when you have an urge; in other words, 10cm does not magically mean it’s time to push, and she doesn’t typically direct her patients to push to a certain count or anything else. In her experience, pushing works best when you absolutely can’t help it. But I was getting impatient, and I told DeEtte—“I need to move on, I just want to be at the point where I can push.”
She checked me again—9cm still, no! I think I pouted a little, and a huge contraction hit me like a brick while I was still lying down. This was the first big one I’d experienced while reclined, and felt so grateful that I’d been encouraged to labor upright all this time. Contracting while horizontal was NOT a good recipe for me. This is when I started to get loud, but DeEtte convinced me to let her check me during a contraction to see if I got to 10 in the midst of one. I did, with the exception of a lip of cervix that remained. She suggested that she try to move it away during the next contraction. This was excruciating, and the beginning of the screaming. I’m not proud of the amount of screaming, actually. I wish I was one of those people who could surrender control, but I am not. It was bad.
But, DeEtte was able to massage that lip of cervix away, and said that if I wanted to, I could start to try to push, urge or no. So yes, I would push. I wanted to be in charge. (At this point, it was about 3:45 and I felt very strongly that we should call Lindsay because I felt so sure I was going to wake up Lea. Brian called her and she arrived, waiting downstairs in our living room, ready to respond if Lea awoke.)
I tried to push on a birthing chair (a c-shaped stool that some people actually deliver while sitting on), but it felt all wrong. I remembered that with Lea, pushing felt automatic. I didn’t have an urge then either, but pushing brought great relief and felt enormously productive. I loved it. This was different. Something about bearing down felt like the opposite of what my body wanted to do, and for the first time in the whole labor, I went completely tense and practically refused to let myself even breathe or move during a contraction. It was, needless to say, not a productive way to approach the situation.
DeEtte wanted to check me one more time to make sure the lip of cervix was totally gone, because she thought that might be what was feeling so off. She confirmed that it was gone, and decided that it would be best at that point to break my water, because even though no cervix remained, it seemed like the baby’s head would not descend any further. Very little water even came out, but I found myself remembering stories of second labors in which the baby is out within literally seconds of the bag of waters breaking. I decided to continue pushing right there on the bed.
Like I said, with Lea, I suffered through the labor but thrived while I pushed. This would prove to be the opposite. With the beginning of every contraction, I tried to push. I wanted to push, and in some ways, my body really was giving me the signal to push. But each push brought an extra jolt of pain, grinding, mind-erasing pain. (I found out later that the baby would be born with hand pressed to face, which is probably what caused this mixed signal, as the descending head encouraged the pushing instinct, but the totally-in-the-way hand encouraged the freakout instinct.) I refused to push at all a few times. Other times, I could only muster up the strength to push for 2 or 3 seconds. “I can’t do this!” I kept saying. Brian and Donna and DeEtte were firm: “You ARE doing it.” “NO!” I yelled. “Something is WRONG, something is DIFFERENT, this is not WORKING.” DeEtte insisted, “it IS working, Paige, you’re bringing the baby down, it’s hard work but it’s happening.” I shook my head. “No. I just need to FIGURE OUT a way to PUSH in a way that WORKS!” Anyone who has been through a birth knows that this is not the optimal time for “figuring out” anything. It’s not like you’re at your most logical. But, that’s me. I needed to figure it all out.
In the end, I didn’t. I had what I think of as an Exorcist-style contraction because I think I actually spit on the bed and spoke in tongues, and when it was over, something happened. In fact, I remember saying “something is happening,” and as the tail end of the contraction faded, I felt the most primal, animal NEED (not urge) to push, and I pushed and I pushed through two more contractions, the first of which DeEtte announced that the baby was crowning, and the second of which the head actually emerged. In between those two was what I now know is the infamous “ring of fire,” which I never experienced when I pushed Lea out. This is when the fullest part of the baby’s head fills the cervix, and women report feeling like their entire body is going to tear in half. I felt my eyes roll back and I heard myself half groan/ half scream until the next contraction hit, when it changed to all scream and I finally felt the head emerge. DeEtte firmly reminded me to keep pushing, and I felt her helping the baby rotate as I puuuuuuuuushed and then pop! Out came the rest of the body, and a huge gush of fluid, and a sweeping sense of relief and ecstasy.
Susanna's Birth Story, Part III
Here’s the other thing—I was coping. I was getting through the contractions without suffering, and this was new to me. I attribute this mostly to the fact that my first labor took place entirely without the cushioning of an intact bag of waters, as my membranes had ruptured at the start, leaving nothing between Lea’s skull and everything it was pressing against. This time, the pain was there and it was real but it wasn’t mind-altering. I was not the crazed beast of a creature I had become the last time. I could keep a conscious thought in my head. I wasn’t screaming my face off. Instead, I was very methodically creating rhythmic rituals for myself, draping my chest over the big blue exercise ball at the foot of my bed and slowly, slowly slowly lowering into a squat during each contraction. I found that if I started doing this the very second I felt a contraction coming, I could keep on top of things and generally do ok. I would also signal to Brian: “HIPS!”, which meant I wanted him to stand behind me and push inward on the bony part of each of my hips. I don’t know why, but this brought considerable relief, and he did it every time.
More good news: DeEtte was about to call her assistant, whose primary job was to help with the actual delivery and the baby itself. “Are you sure?” I asked. “I’m only 5 centimeters.” It had been just 45 minutes since she arrived, but DeEtte smiled and said, “Oh, I’m sure you’re more than that by now. These are really good contractions, I can tell by what you’re doing to get through them.” I think I actually shrugged my shoulders as this expert who’d delivered over 1500 babies dialed her assistant, and said to me while the phone rang, “Paige, I really don’t think she’s going to be here long.” I wanted, in some ways, to cover my ears and shut my eyes and say “LALALALA,” because I didn’t want to jinx it, and I didn’t want to labor with the assumption that things were moving along quickly, only to find out otherwise and be devastated.
We also talked about Lea. So far, she was sleeping soundly. We had a local friend expecting to be called if we needed her for childcare, and we debated whether to call her or just keep laboring as long as possible. It was 1:30 am, and I decided that if we got to 4am with Lea still sleeping, that would be ideal because she would’ve gotten enough sleep that there would be no expectation on Lindsay to try to get her to sleep more. In all her jinxiness, DeEtte said firmly, “I think we’ll be done by then.” No way.
Assistant Donna arrived, and DeEtte checked me again at just after 2am: 7 cm. OK. I started to believe that I was making very good progress, which seemed to turn a switch in my head that said I was now allowed to suffer a little more. I switched up my routine, climbing onto my knees in the bed (still draping over the ball), and just rocking around in circles, trying to breathe deeply. I also remembered a technique I’d read, to exhale “horse lips” style, allowing my lips to blow raspberries. The theory is that if you relax your mouth, you kind of can’t help but relax everything else. It really did work—I was amazed at how well.
More good news: DeEtte was about to call her assistant, whose primary job was to help with the actual delivery and the baby itself. “Are you sure?” I asked. “I’m only 5 centimeters.” It had been just 45 minutes since she arrived, but DeEtte smiled and said, “Oh, I’m sure you’re more than that by now. These are really good contractions, I can tell by what you’re doing to get through them.” I think I actually shrugged my shoulders as this expert who’d delivered over 1500 babies dialed her assistant, and said to me while the phone rang, “Paige, I really don’t think she’s going to be here long.” I wanted, in some ways, to cover my ears and shut my eyes and say “LALALALA,” because I didn’t want to jinx it, and I didn’t want to labor with the assumption that things were moving along quickly, only to find out otherwise and be devastated.
We also talked about Lea. So far, she was sleeping soundly. We had a local friend expecting to be called if we needed her for childcare, and we debated whether to call her or just keep laboring as long as possible. It was 1:30 am, and I decided that if we got to 4am with Lea still sleeping, that would be ideal because she would’ve gotten enough sleep that there would be no expectation on Lindsay to try to get her to sleep more. In all her jinxiness, DeEtte said firmly, “I think we’ll be done by then.” No way.
Assistant Donna arrived, and DeEtte checked me again at just after 2am: 7 cm. OK. I started to believe that I was making very good progress, which seemed to turn a switch in my head that said I was now allowed to suffer a little more. I switched up my routine, climbing onto my knees in the bed (still draping over the ball), and just rocking around in circles, trying to breathe deeply. I also remembered a technique I’d read, to exhale “horse lips” style, allowing my lips to blow raspberries. The theory is that if you relax your mouth, you kind of can’t help but relax everything else. It really did work—I was amazed at how well.
Susanna's Birth Story, Part II
I went ten days past my due date with Lea, but I tried not to panic this time when my due date came with no sign of progress anytime soon. I knew statistics were on my side, as second babies tend to cook a little less, and I tried to focus on enjoying my last few days as a mother of one (and my last few days of sufficient sleep for a while). Sure enough, just two days later I found myself unexpectedly awake at 4:45am with real, unmistakable labor contractions radiating from front to back. These went on for two hours, and although I tried my hardest to get back in bed to ride out early labor as restfully as possible, I found my heart racing, thinking that I would certainly have a baby before the end of the day.
I didn’t. My contractions petered out and the day was a normal one. Remembering that it’s not unusual for labor to start and stop several times, especially after the first pregnancy, I figured the best thing to do would be to return to my regular routine and expect nothing. I forced myself to take a nap that afternoon, and slept surprisingly soundly. This turned out to be a very good thing.
That night was the season premiere of LOST. If you’re reading this, you know me well enough to know the significance of this, so you’ll appreciate the fact that I started having contractions again at 7:30, just a half hour before the 3-hour extravaganza was to begin. But again, I reminded myself—this might not be it. Besides, there was LOST to watch, so I distracted myself as much as possible and tried to focus on the many intricacies of the Dharma Initiative and the Oceanic Six and the Widmore/Linus connection. But by the time Hurley got arrested, I’d been in quite a lot of pain for a while and knew that it was time to call DeEtte.
I gave her the stats: I was having contractions ranging from 3 to 6 minutes apart, and even though they were only lasting 15-35 seconds (much shorter than the full minute generally considered a good rule of thumb for active labor), they were intense enough that I had to stop everything I was doing, drop down to all fours and rock from side to side to get through them. DeEtte was confused by the short length of the contractions, but said she could tell by the sound of my voice that labor was moving quickly, so she said she’d pack up and be here in ninety minutes or so.
In the meantime, between contractions I reverted to the nervous people pleaser I can be, and worried that I’d look like a fool, that she’d get here and proclaim me to be Not in Labor At All, shake her head and drive home. Except, during contractions, it hurt. A lot. And I was SO glad that she would be there soon.
It was close to 1am when DeEtte arrived, and a quick check found that I was dilated 5 centimeters and “stretchy.” My relief at this news was only compounded when she asked me if I’d be ok for a few minutes while she enlisted Brian to help her bring her oxygen tank and other heavy equipment up from her car. Equipment? I thought. That’s so official—I’m actually going to have a baby and SOON. I was excited.
I didn’t. My contractions petered out and the day was a normal one. Remembering that it’s not unusual for labor to start and stop several times, especially after the first pregnancy, I figured the best thing to do would be to return to my regular routine and expect nothing. I forced myself to take a nap that afternoon, and slept surprisingly soundly. This turned out to be a very good thing.
That night was the season premiere of LOST. If you’re reading this, you know me well enough to know the significance of this, so you’ll appreciate the fact that I started having contractions again at 7:30, just a half hour before the 3-hour extravaganza was to begin. But again, I reminded myself—this might not be it. Besides, there was LOST to watch, so I distracted myself as much as possible and tried to focus on the many intricacies of the Dharma Initiative and the Oceanic Six and the Widmore/Linus connection. But by the time Hurley got arrested, I’d been in quite a lot of pain for a while and knew that it was time to call DeEtte.
I gave her the stats: I was having contractions ranging from 3 to 6 minutes apart, and even though they were only lasting 15-35 seconds (much shorter than the full minute generally considered a good rule of thumb for active labor), they were intense enough that I had to stop everything I was doing, drop down to all fours and rock from side to side to get through them. DeEtte was confused by the short length of the contractions, but said she could tell by the sound of my voice that labor was moving quickly, so she said she’d pack up and be here in ninety minutes or so.
In the meantime, between contractions I reverted to the nervous people pleaser I can be, and worried that I’d look like a fool, that she’d get here and proclaim me to be Not in Labor At All, shake her head and drive home. Except, during contractions, it hurt. A lot. And I was SO glad that she would be there soon.
It was close to 1am when DeEtte arrived, and a quick check found that I was dilated 5 centimeters and “stretchy.” My relief at this news was only compounded when she asked me if I’d be ok for a few minutes while she enlisted Brian to help her bring her oxygen tank and other heavy equipment up from her car. Equipment? I thought. That’s so official—I’m actually going to have a baby and SOON. I was excited.
Susanna's Birth Story, Part I
Susanna’s birth story really begins with Lea’s birth, when a kind and fiercely talented midwife with a long grey braid delivered my first baby in a quiet green room at a birth center near Philadelphia. It would be hard to overstate the transformative nature of that experience, and not only because it brought me my beautiful daughter and made me a mother; Lea’s birth also transformed my sense of what is possible when it comes to maternity care, as I enjoyed one-on-one attention and guidance from midwives with exactly the kind of expertise and demeanor I needed. Simply put, I fell in love with midwifery, and with the concept that until conditions indicate otherwise, pregnancy and birth are normal events, not medical ones.
Of course, I wanted medical expertise in the event that something did prove more complicated than normal, and that’s what I found from the Certified Nurse-Midwives on staff at the birth center. And that’s what I was looking for when I got pregnant again, this time 500 miles away in rural Virginia.
The options for maternity care are quite limited here in Appalachia, so the beginning of my pregnancy was spent searching for midwives while getting early prenatal care from an OB practice, one that came highly recommended but still felt hugely anonymous and would approach my pregnancy and birth in ways far removed from what I was used to and preferred. Still, they were perfectly nice, delivered high quality care, and would have been a fine option for me if my search had ended there.
I hadn’t really considered a homebirth until I heard about DeEtte, a CNM from Tennessee (about an hour away) who maintained a homebirth practice. She answered all my (many, many) questions about how she handled various complications and emergencies, and further reassured me as she ran through her resume: many years in a hospital setting as an obstetric nurse, and then working in a NICU; running a free-standing birth center of her own—much like the one where I’d had Lea—in another state, delivering 900 babies there before changes at her backup hospital forced her to close down; and finally, beginning her homebirth practice with the goal of operating like a traveling birth center, which meant maintaining solid, consistent working relationships with nearby backup physicians at all the local hospitals. As a CNM, she could prescribe and administer drugs if necessary, and traveled with all the medical equipment that had been available at the birth center. She and her assistant, an RN, had worked together at homebirths for 16 years.
Toward the end of our initial phone call, DeEtte promised me, upon my urging, that if I ever changed my mind or felt like a homebirth wasn’t a good fit for me, she could swiftly transfer my care to her backup and it would be fine. I told her that I needed to know that, that I needed an “out” if I panicked, that I planned to spend the rest of my pregnancy educating myself as much as possible about the risks presented in any setting, and that homebirth was a new concept for me that I needed to wrap my head around. “That’s good,” she said. “You absolutely need to do that. But you also need to know how confident I am. I know, that I know, that I know, that this works.” After all the medical technicalities and statistics we had discussed, that one statement made the biggest impression on me, and I realized what an experienced and professional caregiver I was dealing with. I ended the call feeling like I wouldn’t find a more qualified birth attendant anywhere.
Of course, I wanted medical expertise in the event that something did prove more complicated than normal, and that’s what I found from the Certified Nurse-Midwives on staff at the birth center. And that’s what I was looking for when I got pregnant again, this time 500 miles away in rural Virginia.
The options for maternity care are quite limited here in Appalachia, so the beginning of my pregnancy was spent searching for midwives while getting early prenatal care from an OB practice, one that came highly recommended but still felt hugely anonymous and would approach my pregnancy and birth in ways far removed from what I was used to and preferred. Still, they were perfectly nice, delivered high quality care, and would have been a fine option for me if my search had ended there.
I hadn’t really considered a homebirth until I heard about DeEtte, a CNM from Tennessee (about an hour away) who maintained a homebirth practice. She answered all my (many, many) questions about how she handled various complications and emergencies, and further reassured me as she ran through her resume: many years in a hospital setting as an obstetric nurse, and then working in a NICU; running a free-standing birth center of her own—much like the one where I’d had Lea—in another state, delivering 900 babies there before changes at her backup hospital forced her to close down; and finally, beginning her homebirth practice with the goal of operating like a traveling birth center, which meant maintaining solid, consistent working relationships with nearby backup physicians at all the local hospitals. As a CNM, she could prescribe and administer drugs if necessary, and traveled with all the medical equipment that had been available at the birth center. She and her assistant, an RN, had worked together at homebirths for 16 years.
Toward the end of our initial phone call, DeEtte promised me, upon my urging, that if I ever changed my mind or felt like a homebirth wasn’t a good fit for me, she could swiftly transfer my care to her backup and it would be fine. I told her that I needed to know that, that I needed an “out” if I panicked, that I planned to spend the rest of my pregnancy educating myself as much as possible about the risks presented in any setting, and that homebirth was a new concept for me that I needed to wrap my head around. “That’s good,” she said. “You absolutely need to do that. But you also need to know how confident I am. I know, that I know, that I know, that this works.” After all the medical technicalities and statistics we had discussed, that one statement made the biggest impression on me, and I realized what an experienced and professional caregiver I was dealing with. I ended the call feeling like I wouldn’t find a more qualified birth attendant anywhere.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Susanna is here!
I'm working on a full birth story, but for now:
Susanna Campbell Johns arrived at 4:36am on Thursday, January 22nd. At 8lbs 1oz, she's nearly a pound and a half lighter than her sister was, so she looks miniscule to us. (Before Thursday, 100% of my baby experience was Lea, so I'd never even held a baby that "small".) Labor and delivery were simple and straightforward; everything went as well as it possibly could have, and we're all doing great. Lea is adjusting well for the most part, a few psych-textbook moments notwithstanding ("Mama, hold me, like THIS, like a baby, because I'm Susanna!").
Thanks for all the well-wishes! It's a happy and hectic time and, with the exception of a frantic run to an appliance store today upon the long-expected demise of our washing machine, we're pretty hunkered down and removed from the rest of the world for a while, which is nice.
Some pictures:
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Lea right now
Every now and then, I startle myself by realizing that on some level, I go through each day with Lea as though assuming that her personality and her way of communicating today will be permanent. I think it's because she is communicating so well; she is able to express her needs pretty clearly, and we have conversations, so I no longer spend much time thinking "if only she could ____," the way I did before her leap in vocabulary, when we'd both be brought to tears at times by the frustration of not understanding each other. So we're at a sweet spot right now, and because of that, I often forget that it's temporary, that she'll progress even more with her language skills, and her personality will evolve and she will grow up. Wow.
In particular, I find myself smiling at the Lea-related memories of just about every second of this past Christmas, because over the month of December she caught on to enough about the season to get really, really excited, but still bewildered in some ways, which was insanely cute. For instance, she started to become familiar with Christmas songs, and developed her favorites: "Rudolph the Reindeer" (and now she calls every deer a reindeer), "Confern-en-joy song", "Crib for Bed," "Now you dear old man song." She would request these at bedtime and freak the heck out when she heard them on the all-Christmas radio station or at church.
A couple of times recently, she'll start to sing one of these songs out of the blue, weeks past Christmas, and screw up her forehead trying to remember the words. In the car the other day, she kept repeating, "Christmas eve is coming soon, now you dear old maaaaan." After about 5 repetitions of that line, she paused, and asked, "What's the next one, mama?" When I started to sing "Whisper what you'll-", she cut me off. "No mama, I sing." And then, memory jogged, continued: "Whisper what you'll bring to me, tell me if you caaaaaan."
We took her to the Bristol Motor Speedway light show. Twice. She would literally gasp with excitement, saying "Look at thaaaaat!" in a breathy, awed voice. "And look at thaaaaat! See? See, look! It's a snowmaaaaaaan. It's a-- It's a-- It's a penguin!!! Look at thaaaaaat!"
We also geared our bedtime stories to the season, flipping to the nativity stories in the little kids' Bible storybook we got for her a long time ago. Through this, I'm assuming, she got the idea that all babies could be identified as "Baby Jesus," and has since pointed out a little Willow Tree figurine of a mother, father, and baby, saying, "And there's Daddy, and there's Mama, and there's the Baby Jesus!" Those stories have also introduced words like "manger" and "stable" into her vocabulary, and she's been using them both to mean any sort of small space. I found her recently putting all her beloved stuffed animals in the bottom of the little Ikea wardrobe in her room. When I asked her what she was doing, she said, "Shhhh. Everybody's sleeeeeping. In the manger."
By the time we got a few days past Christmas, the Bible storybook had moved on to grown-up Jesus, and the little follow-up question to one of the stories (I forget which) was something like, "If you could spend the day with Jesus, what would you ask him?" Usually these questions are totally rhetorical, because Lea's just at the beginning of understanding open-ended questions like that, but she actually answered, and with feeling: "Hi Jesus. How are you doing? Are you feeling ok? OK!" We laughed, and Brian followed up: "That's a great thing to ask Jesus. What do you think he would ask you?" Again, we didn't expect a coherent answer, but: "He would ask... for a potato." By this point, I was really laughing. "Wow! Anything else?" Lea answered matter-of-factly. "A banana." Of course.
She also has started to compose her own bedtime prayers. Nine times out of ten, the result is, "Dear God. Jesus. Was born. In a stable. Amen."
(Coming back a day later, I remembered something else I wanted to add. Christmastime also coincided with a period of heightened confusion regarding subjects and objects when piecing together sentences. This resulted, most notably, in the often-repeated insistence that "A fire truck was on top of Santa, and he fwo chid-a-wen to the candy.")
As usual, I'm having a tough time letting go of the Christmas season, which, even though I don't get that sense of magic I did as a kid and young teenager, still gives me a very warm feeling that I tend to grieve for the rest of the winter. But Lea still sings Christmas carols on occasion, which is fun, not to mention a whole host of other songs. She asks frequently for "Hills lar-alive song" (the Sound of Music), and actually knows most of the words. Sometimes, when we've put her to bed for the night, we can hear her quietly singing to her animals "... for the thousand yeeeeeeears...."
Actually, listening to her over the monitor is often hilarious. Last night, she spent about 10 minutes taking body-part inventory: "What do you have, Caw? Do you have toes? Oh, you do have toes! OK! What do you have, Rufus? Do you have eyes? Oh, you do have eyes! OK! What do you have, Froggy? Do you have arms? Oh, you do have arms! OK!"
Those three animals-- Caw (so named because although he is apparently a duck, we thought he was a seagull and would have him go "Caw! Caw!"), Rufus (the little stuffed dog that we got as a shower gift and has been Lea's favorite animal since about 6 months old), Froggy (who came from my cousin Glen, weirdly enough, via my dad, when they ran into each other at a trade show and Glen had won this little frog at some booth with carnival games, and didn't know what to do with it), plus a stuffed owl known as "Owl Baby," comprise the A-team that Lea sleeps with every night and refers to as "Everybody." They are small enough that she can, when she's feeling particularly somber it seems, gather all four into her arms and clutch them to her chest to keep with her at all times.
You need to know this to understand another funny moment. You also need to know that her first McDonald's happy meal toy is a plastic Shrek that she, for some reason, started calling "Guy," and is very keen on at the moment.
The other day we were talking about having good friends, and I heard myself saying how some friends are extra-special. Feeling stupidly self-conscious about this, and wanting to make sure she is friendly with everyone, I said to Lea, "Everybody is special, you know." She paused, and added very soberly, "And Guy is special, too."
She has animated, and very brief, pretend phone conversations, using our old XM Radio remote as a prop. "Hi Uncle Eric, what are you doooooing? You feeling OK? OK! Bye Bye!" Pause. "Beep beep beep." Another pause. "Hi Aunt Megan, what are you doooooing? You feeling OK? OK! Bye Bye!" And then on down the list of relatives.
She calls credit cards "messages," fishing through our wallets with urgency, insisting, "I have to get my messages!" No idea where that came from. She also plays occasionally with the gigantic plastic orange wristwatch that Brian purchased at Rite-Aid to time contractions the first night I thought I might be in labor with Lea. She calls this "my match," and will frantically push all the buttons on it, announcing with a slightly panicked voice, "It's not working!" I'm not sure what she expects it to do. ("It's not working" is her go-to phrase when she's frustrated with something. Can't get her pants on? "It's not working!" Keeps dropping peas off her spoon? "It's not working!")
And oh, I was mistaken when I said that she calls all deer "reindeer." There's apparently one exception. When she and Brian were flipping through a coffee-table book about Smoky Mountain wildlife, they came across a picture of a bobcat. Evidently, that term really struck Lea's fancy, because when they turned the page and Brian pointed out a deer, then came the logical correction: "No, it's a bobdeer." Come to think of it, I rather like the sound of that, too.
I hope this all gives a glimpse, for those of you who are far away and haven't gotten a chance to see these developments in action, of the very entertaining phase we're in. I'm sure half of it is my aforementioned wistfulness about the ever-shortening "just Lea" time, but so far I have very few complaints about the so-called terrible twos. I know life is about to get crazy, crazy, crazy, and it will be perfectly understandable if our frustrating times ramp back up as we sort out how to continue to meet Lea's needs as best as we possibly can. Above all, I know it's going to suddenly become immensely more difficult to remember these times, so it is with some urgency that I try to record it all here. (I never did keep an official baby book, but every now and then it strikes me as something like an emergency that I create a textual snapshot of who my daughter is.)
I also, in the interest of full disclosure, remember something I was told when I crept further and further past my due date with Lea. I went for my first acupuncture treatment, which was designed not to induce contractions, but simply to help me get rid of tension. The practitioner said it would be helpful if I could spend time during the treatment thinking about ways in which I might be internalizing stress about the transition to parenthood, which could be counterproductive in terms of my ability to relax enough for the treatment to work (and ultimately, go into labor on my own). I've been thinking a lot about what's stressful about the upcoming transition from one child to two, and the main thing I fixate on is this: have I adequately celebrated and cherished the child I already have, the parenting I've already done? Will I remember this time as a mother to one? As a writer of sorts, or at least a writerly person, my compulsion is to sort through those worries by describing life the way it is, right now, so it doesn't slip away forever during the upcoming post-partum haze and subsequent ramping-up of stress.
I don't have an acupuncturist here, so my blog will have to do. So there, mind-body connection: I've written it all down, I've responded to my worry about losing the specialness of this time, I've preserved the pre-baby memories as best as I can. I'm free to go into labor now, correct?
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Christmastime!
I'm having this problem where, when I upload pictures to my blog on my Mac, I can't change the order in which the pictures show up (I can still do this on the PC, though). Because I am fundamentally lazy and would never get around to sharing any pictures, ever, if I had to deal with two computers to do one simple task, I am just going to put them up out of order and leave it at that. Enjoy!
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