I Was Told There Would Be No Math

Changes

2011-09-06T21:10:00.004-04:00

I realized this weekend that I need to raise the seat on Caetlin's bicycle. And that she doesn't need the stepstool to brush her teeth anymore.

She was a really good girl today at school, so I let her stay up a few extra minutes and watch a little bit of "Curious George 2: Follow That Monkey!" which she proclaims is "hilarious." She sounds just like me when she says it. So there we were, me folding laundry, her watching TV, and I started asking her about her day at school. It's been chilly and rainy and I asked what they did for recess when it rained. She said, "You mean for PE? We went with Coach Jackson to the gym because none of the other coaches were there yet."

This is my public-school big kid. She's not my baby anymore except in my mind, when I remember how tiny she used to be when she would sleep on my chest. She's not my toddler anymore except in my mind, when I remember her learning to talk and asking to be read "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" for the eleventy-millionth time. She's not my preschooler anymore except in my mind, when I remember her more or less teaching herself how to read and write and learning how to be real friends with other kids. She's the kid she's going to be for a long time, and I know that she's going to keep growing and changing and becoming ever bigger, and while I can't wait to see how she turns out, my heart almost can't take the thought of her not being exactly how she is. It's not that I want to hold her back. It's more that I regret the haze that falls over my memories, the clarity of every detail about her that I think I will retain forever that creeps away when I'm not paying attention. I remember her as a baby because I see the pictures; I remember her as a toddler because I can read my old blog posts. I remember her as a preschooler because that was just last year, but how she was then is already blurring and shifting in my memory, into the kid she is now.

So after we talked about her day and the extra reading instruction that she has in the library once a week, and after we talked about how they learned about the color purple and the fact that the daily temperature chart had been in the blue, we just hung out, her watching her movie and me folding clothes. We hung out the way I do with grownups with whom I'm comfortable, together but not talking. She's big enough to be my hangout friend.

And then she broke the spell when I told her it was time for bed and she pleaded for more time. She tried to argue that it wasn't actually late at all, and became again my 5-year-old who doesn't like to go to bed. After we brushed teeth and went potty ("But Mommy, I don't have to go potty. Oh, I guess I actually did."), when I tucked her in, she asked me to sing to her. She has always liked me to sing to her; when she was a baby I'd sing the songs from the TV shows she watched, or pop songs that I liked, or really whatever was in my head. She loved Ingrid Michaelson's "The Way I Am" and it was her lullaby for a long time- I'd sing it to her every night.

She asked for Katy Perry's "Friday Night" (which, !!!) and I told her I didn't know the words (even though I totally do, and I feel a little embarrassed admitting that), and she asked for suggestions. So I turned out the light and in the deep dusky darkness sang Paul Simon's "St. Judy's Comet" to her, which was Phoebe's lullaby for a long time. She told me her favorite part was the part about the comet sparkling in her eyes, and I had to admit it was my favorite part too.

"Mommy, I wish I were a comet."

"I don't, baby. Then you wouldn't be my big girl."

"But I'd spray diamonds! That would be awesome."

"I know, but you wouldn't be my big girl. I'm not a comet, so if you were, you wouldn't be my Caetlin."

"But comets have mommies."

"Maybe so, but it wouldn't be me."

"Mommy, if there were a bigger comet than me, and then a bigger comet than that, and then a teeny tiny comet, it would be a comet family!"

"Maybe so, sweet girl. Time for sleep. I love you. Sweet dreams."

"Mommy, maybe I'll be a girl who turns into a comet just to spray diamonds and sparkle, and then be a girl again."

"You sparkle for me just like you are, sweetheart. Night night."

"Night, Mommy. I love you."

"I love you too, sugarplum."

Things are always changing. I guess that's all we can count on out of life, that it changes and changes. She's growing up, I'm getting older, autumn approaches, literally and figuratively. I don't mean to be all Fleetwood Mac doing "Landslide" on you here, but sometimes it strikes straight to the heart of me that I'm failing to remember every single second of my children's brilliant lives. I get so caught up in the day to day, managing clothing and signed behavior sheets and healthy snacks and being Room Mom and making sure she doesn't watch too much TV and brushes her teeth and learns to be polite and good-hearted. I fail sometimes to just notice who she is. She's my beautiful comet, flying away from me every second of every day. At least I get to watch her sparkle as she goes.

Overcoming

2010-03-07T22:59:00.004-05:00

I sang my first solo at church tonight with the choir. It went okay; I was generally on beat and on pitch, though there were a couple croaky notes and the musicality left a lot to be desired. There is definitely room for improvement, but it wasn't a disaster. Not as good as I hoped but better than I feared, so I suppose that's something.

I sang it for Caetlin, though she wasn't even there. Not because she particularly likes my singing (I suspect she does, but she's in a controlling phase right now and always orders me to stop singing unless she has specifically requested something). Not because it was a song I thought she might like, especially.

A recent Facebook status update of mine went like this: "Patricia is always sad and disappointed to see the things I like least about myself reflected in my children." My least favorite characteristic of mine, the part of myself that I most actively dislike and am dismayed by more or less on a daily basis, is my fear of not being perfect. I'm not talking about OCD-style perfectionism, but more like I'm afraid to screw up. I don't want to look stupid. It's maybe my biggest fear, and it is pathological. I don't want to appear lacking in any way, whether to friends, family or complete strangers.

Let me give you an example from when I was a kid. I started playing the trumpet when I was 12, in 6th grade. I had remembered my sister practicing her flute in her room when I was younger and she was in high school; I had this fantasy that I would do the same with my trumpet. Not long after I began learning, I was practicing one evening and hit a bum note, and my dad said something from the other room about me "hitting a raw one" or something equally innocuous about my wrong note. For the first time, it dawned on me- my family could hear me! In the small home in which I grew up, it would have been impossible not to, but for whatever reason, it had never crossed my mind to think they could. And they could hear me make mistakes!

I almost never practiced at home after that. For a long time I blamed my dad, for commenting about my screw-up, or for making me self-conscious. But the real problem was not his comment; it was me. My home was where the people who loved me best lived; if anyone was going to tolerate bum notes, it would be them. This went deeper than one offhand teasing comment by my dad.

If I could have ever found a place where no one could hear me, I would have practiced. I grew up in the middle of nowhere, on the outskirts of the back 40, and I couldn't get comfortable practicing even in the middle of the woods that surrounded my little neighborhood. Because someone might hear me make a mistake. I wish I could have gotten over it. It weakened me as a musician, this failure to practice at home. I look back now and realize that I squandered some real talent. I would never have been a professional; I never wanted to be. But I performed at a truly high level, particularly for a high school student, on the basis only of whatever class time and after school rehearsals I might have had. My band program was of high quality, so that meant probably 8 or 9 hours a week, but still. Nothing on weekends unless there was a performance. Nothing over the summer.

It haunts me. I could have been so much better even than I was. My senior year I lost my first chair (yes, I was first freaking chair and I never practiced) to a kid who wanted it so bad. He was so good, and he clearly put a lot of time into his music. Then I lost second chair to another kid, and then I lost third chair because I didn't care at all. I didn't practice my scales for the challenges, see, so it almost wasn't even worth showing up to them. In one case I didn't.

The main criticism of me was always, play out. More volume. I was afraid to let anyone hear me. I was afraid to fail, to sound anything less than perfect.

A more recent example is that I am afraid to live in country where I don't speak the language. I'm afraid to sound dumb. Not just by not knowing the vocabulary, but even by getting the accent wrong. I realize how ridiculous this is by seeing my own behavior with a non-native English speaker- do I laugh when they struggle for a word or don't get the grammar quite right? Nope, of course not. But the fear is petrifying. And I hate it in myself.

You can imagine how dismayed I was when I realized I was seeing some of the same things in Caetlin. She may not have that fear to the same degree I do, but I see it in her. She won't try to do things I know she can, preferring to say, "I can't do it." She won't guess at questions- if she doesn't absolutely know the answer, she'll say, "I don't know." Even when she does know, and I know she knows. She just doesn't want to be wrong, I think.

This makes me so incredibly sad. Of everything that is who I am, I wish I could have not passed that part on to her. I hope I didn't pass it on to Phoebe, and I pray I will not pass it to any future children I may be blessed with. Because if Caetlin is anything like me, she will live parts of her life in paralyzing fear. She will miss out on opportunities to have fun, to improve herself, and to experience wonderful things because of this trait, this issue, this shackle that weighs me down.

I can't let that happen to her, not if I can help it. I realized recently that I have the chance to try to combat it now, while she's young, and that I must do everything I can to counteract this in her. So I try to push her, gently, to try new things, or to answer questions of which she is unsure. I hope her teachers at school do the same. I try to make home a welcoming environment, making it explicit that she can screw up without fear of failure or judgment. She's too young to get all this, of course, but I hope it will sink in over repeated interactions.

But one other thing I must do is model for her the behavior I want to encourage. And that means facing my fears and doing things that scare the shit out of me. And making myself do them even when my whole being is screaming to stop, I'm going to look like a fool, everyone will laugh at me or worse they will just smile and say nice things to my face and then behind my back will talk about how terrible I was (something I'm working to convince myself my choir-mates aren't doing even as I type this...).

So, tonight I sang mediocrely in front of my church congregation. I could have asked the women to sing my part, or asked someone else to take the solo. The pianist could have sung it beautifully on no preparation whatsoever, and knowing that I have those kinds of alternatives makes it easy for me to consider running away again. But I did it. I did it for my daughter. In doing it for her, I ended up doing it for myself far more than I could have ever imagined. My choir-mates (whom I respect so tremendously and I'd hate for them to think I'm not a good musician, oh, God, they all think I suck now) all said nice things because they knew how ridiculously nervous I was. I pooh-poohed them a little, because it really objectively wasn't that awesome, but a part of me didn't want to soft pedal the praise at all, because it is such a HUGE deal that I did it at all. My choir-mates don't know me well enough to know that, so it would have come out wrong.

But I did it. Croaky, trembling, shaking almost uncontrollably. I sang into a microphone in front of a few hundred people, and if I looked stupid, or sounded terrible, well, that matters less than that I did it at all. I did it for Caetlin. Maybe, in trying to be a good role model for her, I can make the tiniest of starts on fixing the thing I like least about myself. Maybe we can help each other that way.

Love Song at One Year

2010-03-06T11:20:00.004-05:00

She burst into our lives precipitously, without waiting for the doctor. I guess I should have known then that she waits for no one. Her determination and fearlessness amaze and terrify me daily.

She has, from the moment of her entry into the world, been her own person. She does things in her own time, whether fast or slow. I don't remember her as an infant much, though I know she didn't crawl until almost 6 months. Somehow in my memory she is always the active force of nature that she has become. I look at pictures of her early days and I don't remember her being that small or that helpless.

She has my features, or so I'm told. Why can't I see myself in her like other people can? I want to see myself in her personality too, not just in her physical features. I admire her persistence, her insistence on getting what she wants. I wish I could be more like that.

This might make her sound difficult, but she's not. She's a sunny, happy girl. She gets this look on her face when she's interested in something that delights my heart; she looks with naked curiosity at whatever catches her eye, and a certainty that she will investigate. Baby isn't the right word for her, anymore, even though she's not quite walking (unassisted) yet. She's a bright light, the sunshine of my day.

March 6, 2009, 7:10 p.m. I can't believe it's been a whole year. It's gone so fast! Happy birthday, my dearest Phoebe.

Gah!

2010-03-06T11:16:00.003-05:00

So, I blogged at the end of January, completely intending to resume writing a couple of times a week. And it just...didn't happen. For some reason, blogging is not something I feel compelled to make time for. Part of the problem surely is that time for blogging is relatively limited, once you subtract work, sleep, boot camp, eating, church obligations, and hanging out with the family. But the other issue is that I haven't felt moved to write. It feels almost like a muscle that has atrophied; as my body has gotten stronger, so my writing muscles have weakened.

So, this time, no promises, but I hope to resume posting a couple times a week again. Starting with today, of course, and not just this mea culpa.

So...Pumping

2010-01-30T20:14:00.000-05:00

To the staggering news that Phoebe is almost an entire year old, I also add that I continue to nurse her. I am so proud of that! I struggled with Caetlin, for a variety of reasons, and I was hopeful of it being easier this time.

Caetlin essentially stopped nursing from me when I went back to work when she was 12 weeks old; I pumped for another three months or so, but I nearly made myself crazy in the process. I couldn't seem to make enough milk pumping, no matter how often I pumped, no matter what I ate or drank, no matter what I tried. I at some points was pumping something crazy like 8 times a day. During a work day. In a place where I had to leave my office to go to a different office to pump (because I had a glass door that didn't lock or even latch). Can we say completely unproductive, of either work or milk?

And I agonized over stopping. I really thought I was a bad mom for considering it, for hating pumping so much, for falling short of my goal of 12 months. Even though I was only making maybe 40% of her daily nutritional needs of milk (the rest was formula), I felt like I would be depriving her of something significant by stopping, something she needed that only I could provide. I'm sure there was more than a little insecurity there over having gone back to work, over not feeling like I was around her enough to truly parent her. And too- I think most new moms (maybe new dads too, though I can only speak for the female half) go crazy for awhile. Like, certifiable. Worrying over the smallest things that mean, in the grand scheme of things, absolutely nothing. There is a sense of perspective that comes with time, that perfectly well-adjusted adults might have in every other aspect of their lives, that goes out the window when faced with one's first child. And I think that perspective only comes back gradually. I am sure that I still don't have the sense of proportion that I need regarding Caetlin, but I'm better about it than I used to be. And I'm miles more relaxed with Phoebe.

When Caetlin was 6 months old, she had her first seizure. I randomly had her in daycare that day, instead of with her nanny, and happened to actually be there when it happened. It was the most frightening thing I've ever seen- this tiny baby convulsing, with blue lips and staring eyes. She turned out to have pneumonia and a penchant for seizures when she has a fever. For weeks, I had been pissing and moaning in my journal about pumping and breastfeeding and how can I be a good mom if I stop and how is this impacting my work and I want to do right by the baby and on and on and oh my God STOP THE NAVEL GAZING. The seizure and the hours in the ER gave me a good healthy dose of that perspective I had been missing, and I quit pumping that very day.

So, with all that background, I will say that I was determined to try a little more intelligently with Phoebe. I would give it a good shot, spend a little time getting established at the beginning, and if it didn't work, it didn't work. Luckily, it did work, and here we are, nearly a year later.

And I am SO OVER pumping.

I nurse Phoebe first thing in the morning and right before I go to bed every evening. Otherwise, I pump, because she's so distractable and I prefer not to have her leaving my boobs hanging out in public when she decides to crawl away from me mid-feed. I pump on the weekends, for this reason, not just during the week when I'm at work. I'm down to pumping twice a day, which is a recent development, down from three times a day. And I'm so over it. So, so tired of the pump parts and making sure they are washed when I need them. Of lugging the bag around. It's not heavy, but then again, it kind of is, weighing me down with more than just its mass. I'm sick of the lost productivity, how it seems like every time I really start to focus on something at work, I realize it's time to pump. And while I love all the time I spend with my beloved internet, some days I really do need to get work done. I'm tired of the bottles, the fretting over supply, the physical challenge of getting half naked twice a day, in my office during the week and where ever I happen to be during the weekend (yes, I have pumped in the car, and no, I'm pretty sure no one noticed).

Most of all, I'm ready to have my body back. Once Phoebe turns a year and can have cow's milk, I'll keep nursing her in the mornings and evenings as long as we both can and want to, but the pumping will stop immediately, as well as the feeling that I don't quite have ownership of my breasts. They've been hers for almost a year, will have been hers for over a year at that point, and while that's a sacrifice I'm thrilled to have made for her, it's one I'm ready to let go.

I've been bitching about it to my girlfriends for a couple weeks, mostly to let off steam, and one of my friends is incredulous that I even bother to stick with it when it annoys me so much. The main thing about it now is that I set a goal. It makes zero sense to me to stop when I am five weeks short of the goal I set myself. I'm pretty sure- not 100%, but pretty sure- that I don't care about the whole good-mommy bad-mommy thing this time. I've made it far enough that I know I've done right by Phoebe, and I'd like to hope that if it hadn't gone so smoothly, I would have seen that not nursing her wouldn't have been not doing right by her in any case. But it would just kill me to have set a 12 month goal for myself and to quit with 5 weeks to go. I know myself well enough. I will regret it, no matter how much of a pain in the ass I find it right now.

Plus, my inner miser can't bear to have to buy a can or two of formula. That stuff is expensive! We've saved thousands of dollars feeding Phoebe over what we spent on formula for Caetlin.

So, here I am. 35 more days. Nothing in the grand scheme of things.

I remain so over it, as noted. The day I leave the house without the pump is the first day of my freedom. But, for the next 5 weeks, if you need me and can't find me, I'm probably the one behind a closed office door doing unspeakably weird things to my boobs (and not enjoying it, heh. I can't speak for what my colleagues might be doing). It's only 5 more weeks after all.

Unblocked

2010-01-30T12:32:00.000-05:00

Uh, hi. Soooo...how are you? Glad to hear it. Me? I'm good, I guess. What? Oh, yeah, I'm really sorry about that. I meant to call, and then I thought you might be busy, and then I got really busy. And then I lost your number. But I meant to call! Really!

Okay, so it's been awhile. I'm not sure why. For whatever reason, I just didn't feel moved to write. And it turns out that writing is kind of like exercise- the more you do it, the more you want to do it, and the easier it is. Part of the lethargy is a result of spending so much time on Facebook, with its immediacy. Part of it is just life rolling on.

I think the main thing was that the last 5 months (eep!) have really been a trough for my family. 2009 was Annus Horribilis anyway, and this fall was really the low point. Bruce's severance ran out from the firm and while he started to have interviews, they never seemed to pan out. Caetlin started preschool in October, and as a result all of her behavioral issues seemed magnified. When the teacher meets you at the door in the morning talking about how Caetlin has a problem with listening, you feel like about the worst parent ever. You can tell yourself that she's the youngest person in the class, and that the teacher seems to have a stick up her nether regions, but when it's time for those little chats, all you hear from the teacher is, "You suck as a parent." I went back to work after maternity leave and had a hard time adjusting- the idea that going to work was somehow permanent seemed like an unbelievably heavy burden. Added to that was the fact that I had no work at all, many days billing nothing or 0.25 hours or on a good day 1.0. That's not a situation that makes one feel comfortable and secure. With Bruce being unemployed and me feeling uncertain and both of us dealing with major changes in our roles in the family, we went through a rough time together. It's just been a hard few months.

But then it all started to change. The beginning was when Bruce accepted an offer to teach at a local law school. He's going to be a law professor next year! I can't tell you how proud of him and excited for him I am. He was never happy in his profession, openly admitting that he did it for the money and security; this offers him a chance to really change gears. I think he's going to be a great teacher, and I envy the flexibility, the ability to do the research that he'll be able to do, the chance to study for a living, essentially, that the job brings with it. It's quite a step down financially, but it is higher pay than I expected, and we certainly will not starve, especially since my job seems a bit more secure at this point.

However, in the "When it rains, it pours" category, Bruce has also applied for and been accepted into the Foreign Service. While he still has to pass his medical and security clearances, and has to wait until they call him for a post, which would probably be at the end of this year at the earliest, it's a huge success to have made it this far into the process. If and when they call him, he and we will have a decision to make. Should he stay with his teaching career or embark on a completely new and different career as a diplomat?

The other comforting news is that we're planning to put our house in Charlotte on the market next month, at a price to make it move quickly. We are both ready to rid ourselves of the albatross that is that house. While it's been rented until this month, and that has defrayed the carrying costs, the time when the tenant was going to move out loomed large over us. Rather than trying to rent it again, we're ready to just sell it and move on, unencumbered. When it's sold, it won't matter what Bruce's salary at the law school is; we'll do fine on just my income, and his is just gravy- or more accurately, savings.

My job seems pretty secure at this point, at least as long as the firm remains committed to a real estate department here. We had an associate leave to go in-house at the end of the year, and that takes our numbers down to critical levels. We only have 3 associates to 2 partners; two big deals staff us up completely. So unless they plan to eliminate my department (and they have repeatedly indicated that they actually want to GROW my department), I think my job is safe for now. That's comforting, though of course I don't take that for granted. Stranger things can and have happened, and the upper workings of the firm are as mysterious to me as particle physics.

I've taken my health in hand and joined a boot camp at the beginning of December. You can see the program here. It's pretty intense and I'm pretty out of shape, but after two months, I can see real improvements, in my wind, my strength, and my body. I've lost inches off my waist, my tummy is starting to flatten back out, and most entertaining of all, I've got guns! I saw almost immediate definition in my biceps and shoulders. It's hilarious and encouraging. Most of all, it's something I feel like I can stick with. And, inspired by my rapid improvements, I had a few moments of temporary insanity a few weeks ago and signed up for a triathlon in late June. 600M swim, 14.2 mile bike, 5K run. Seriously crazy, but a fabulous and motivating goal to have. I've always wanted to be a triathlete (as opposed to doing a triathlon), but, alas, the only way to be a triathlete is to do the work. I'm at a place now where doing the work doesn't seem so incredibly impossible.

The other thing is that I joined a choir at church, here. I have always loved to sing, but have never had any training and the last time I sang with a group was 4th grade chorus (5th grade, as I recall, was the year they split us into advanced and not-advanced chorus, and when I didn't make the advanced chorus, I dropped out). Anyway, it's a wonderful group of seriously talented people, and I'm being a complete poser by joining them every week. So far they haven't caught on that I don't belong with them, so I'll keep going as long as they'll let me. I have so much fun being with a performing group again, and being a musician again (though in my case, I use that term somewhat more loosely than as it pertains to everyone else) is so uplifting for me. I missed making music (I was a band nerd for many years in high school but mostly put it down after that- I wanted to define myself as something else, and that has been a big regret of mine, that I didn't somehow continue to play even if I didn't throw myself into it completely), and to make music with a different instrument, my voice, brings so much joy to my life. I've also started singing lessons too, to learn some technique, so one day maybe I'll be worthy of my choir-mates.

The girls are great, growing as ever. Phoebe is nearly a year old- she turns a year in 5 weeks. How is that possible? She's showing no signs of being interested in walking, but knowing her personality, I have no doubt that as soon as she decides to walk, she'll be doing it within a few days. She is the most determined baby I have ever seen. When she wants something, she will stop at nothing to get it. Where Caetlin was and is easygoing and pliable, Phoebe is decidedly carving her own path. Because my own passivity, reflected in Caetlin, is something that I really dislike about myself (and by extension, about my daughter, I'm sorry to say), I'm delighted to see Phoebe's drive and determination. It makes her a challenge to care for, though, as she will inevitably beeline straight for the most choking hazard/nasty thing/dangerous thing in any room and immediately put it in her mouth. And she's fast! She's hard to keep up with as a crawler. She's got one word, cat. She says other things that we think might be words, but it's so hard to tell right now. I really look forward to her talking more, though.

Caetlin is also doing really well. We had kind of a rough start to 3- it was like the minute she turned 3, she went from being my sweet girl to this cranky, whiny, testing child that I didn't know- and really didn't like very much. I understood that it is totally developmentally normal, but holy cow was it a challenge! She seems to have mostly come through to the other side by now, though. And while we still have our tough days and tough afternoons and tough moments, she seems to have emerged as a fun and funny kid who is eager to please. She started preschool, as I mentioned, and that seems to be going much better lately too. She's deep into a princess/ballerina phase, and is the most girly-girl ever. I bought her one of these more or less on a whim, and we can barely pry her out of it. We've ended up buying her 3 of them, because she's going to wear it out soon and we better have replacements before Old Navy stops carrying them.

So, that's basically what's happened since Caetlin's birthday. It's only been five months, but somehow it feels like it went by in an eyeblink, and also that it was a long time ago. It's hard to remember when being back at work felt strange, when it was hot outside, before the rains came, before the snow and ice came, before the holidays were behind us. Before Halloween was distant on the horizon and everything was all "Back to School." So much has happened in 5 months and yet things have been strangely static. I feel like things have been moving in slow motion, and suddenly they have started back at normal speed lately.

There have been other things too, of course, but these were the highlights. I'll try to fill in more details in the future, of things like Christmas, and Caetlin giving up her pacifier, and the issues I have with Caetlin's preschool director, and the amusing things Phoebe does every day, and the Sunday School class I teach. I also am committed to posting again regularly. Like music, this has been missing from my life for too long. I miss sharing my thoughts and stories here, complaining and commenting and basically dumping my head onto the screen. It's the cheapest therapy around, and I miss sharing some of the details of my life with my friends and family, in more depth than I can accomplish through Facebook status updates. Basically, I'm unblocked, and ready to roll through 2010.

Roundup

2009-08-19T22:33:00.003-04:00

Here are just a few things that have been on my mind lately:

1. I figured out the way to clean my closet. It turns out it is more or less like anything else; you have to do it one thing at a time. It took me an hour and a half and there is still a small pile of stuff I don't know what to do with, but my clothes are folded and organized and I can see my entire wardrobe again.

2. Phoebe is, I think, growing again. She's been sleeping more than usual lately. I've also noticed that her feet are flat against the bottom of her Exersaucer, and when we put her in it for the first time a month ago, her toes were just brushing the bottom.

3. Though things are starting to pick up a tiny bit at work, I am incredibly bored most of the time and have been for awhile. It leaves me in the soul-crushing position of hating every second I am there and wanting to quit on the one hand, and being terrified that they will fire me on the other.

4. I am tired all the time. I am tired when I wake up in the morning, and tired when I go to sleep at night, and tired every minute in between. I feel like I shouldn't be this tired; after all, I barely do anything besides sit on my butt and surf the internet and play Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook all day. Occasionally I'll make or receive a phone call. Not exactly expending large amounts of energy.

5. Caetlin is so adorable when she plays costumes (dress-up) with the variety of dresses and costumes we have for her. She puts her fairy wings on and "flies" around the house. Thank you, "Alice the Fairy." ("I have wings so I can fly! I can't fly very high yet, but I can fly really fast!")

6. I finally dragged my father-in-law onto Facebook, so he can see all the pictures of the girls that I post there.

7. I often wish I were 21 and in college again. I wish I hadn't sped through my college years. I was petrified of not finishing. Neither of my folks finished college, though they both made several stabs at it over my lifetime (and prior to my lifetime). Somehow I absorbed that to put off or even slow down school was to fail to finish at all; this despite my sister's model, who by the time I went to college had completed two undergraduate degrees. The same reasoning led me to law school immediately after college, when I could have probably used some time working in between. I really wish I hadn't completed college in essentially three years. I wish I had taken more time. Even though I am only 32, I begin to understand the cynical phrase, "Youth is wasted on the young."

I could go on like this all night, but see point 4 above.

Three

2009-08-16T22:33:00.004-04:00

Yesterday at the indoor playground, her little voice calling, "Mommy!" rang through my ears, and I marveled that she meant me.

She made me laugh, too, being silly, a fake har-har-har that cracks me up every time. And then we jumped in the bounce house and collapsed in a pile of giggles.

Later she ate pizza and peaches like a big kid, went potty like a big kid, put her shoes on like a big kid. She is a big kid.

She is so competent, so mindful of herself. When did she become a complete person, entirely separate, with her own wants and preferences and destiny?

She amazes me daily, with everything she is and does and wants to be. She is more like me than not, these days, and by that I mean that at three years old, she is closer to being a grown up than she is a baby. I know that sounds hyperbolic, and I know she has a lot to learn still, but she's fundamentally her own person. She doesn't need me, not like Phoebe needs me.

I am so lucky to be her mom. Happy birthday, my wonderful amazing girl. Who is growing up far too fast. I can't wait to see what the next year brings.

Pack Rat

2009-08-13T21:53:00.005-04:00

Tonight, I hated myself.

I have a closet in the bedroom that I share with Bruce. About 3/4 of the closet is my stuff, but there isn't enough room for my stuff even with that much space. What I really need are (big enough) shelves or drawers, because there is plenty of room for the hanging clothes, but the folded stuff- T-shirts, yoga pants, jeans- that's usually a crazy mess. Over the last couple of months, however, the crazy mess has gotten out of control. The closet may technically be a walk-in- even completely empty there's room to take about one step in- but lately, all I can do is peer in from the closet doorway and hope I can find what I need. There is a pile of clothes mixed with other things that is about as high as my hip on the floor in the closet, and it makes the closet almost entirely unusable.

This condition was born of good intentions. I had wanted to sift through my closet, reorganize and weed out and make everything pretty and accessible. I wanted to remove my maternity clothes and bring back my old wardrobe, and I wanted to be able to find everything. That required pulling a large amount of stuff out, off the shelves, off the floor, off the hangers. I got halfway through and got tired, so I shoved it all back in with the intention of finishing up another day.

And I never did.

I have hated the way my closet looks. I hate the lack of functionality. I hate that I wear the same five outfits every week, because it's what I can reach and find. I hate that there are things buried in there that I have forgotten I own, things I would find useful.

Last week I was determined to fix it, to clean it up for good. Bruce has been on a kick of reducing our stuff lately, and fixing the house up in general, hanging pictures and packing up books we've read and giving stuff to Goodwill. Inspired by his example and feeling continually ashamed of my closet, I pulled everything out of the closet and into a pile on my bedroom floor, thinking that if I could see it, I could make a plan of how to deal with it.

It sat on my bedroom floor for a week and a half, untouched, just getting in the way of my scale and dirty clothes hamper.

The ladies who come clean the house every two weeks are coming tomorrow, and it was unthinkable to leave it there for them. We don't pay them to organize my clothing; we pay them to clean the floors and bathrooms.

Rather than face the pile, I threw it all back into the closet.

I hated myself when I was doing it. Every armful of clothes I dumped into the shadows of my closet floor whispered my failure, my inability to take care of even the smallest things at home. My inability to hold it together when I am working and the rest of my family carries on without me, my failure to be useful for my family beyond my paycheck.

It was especially reproachful in considering the hour and a half my wonderful husband had just spent cleaning his parts of the room, while I sat and looked at a computer screen. As if I don't do enough of that at work, but somehow it was the only thing I could make myself do this evening, even as my daughters were bathed and dressed for bed and had stories read to them and fell asleep. If there were a time-lapse video of my evening, it would be Bruce and the girls swirling around me, while I sit on my bed behind a laptop, barely moving.

I barely move a lot these days, metaphorically speaking.

I don't know when I'll be able to deal with the closet. It seemed so symbolic, the packing away of mess behind a door, leaving a tidy exterior. I look like I have it together. I look like a good parent, like a provider, like someone "having it all" in the parlance of the feminism I was raised on.

I know the mess waits for me, even as the door is closed, though. It's not just that I don't know when I'll get to it. It's more that I don't know how to deal with it. In some ways, it's just about folding the clothes and finding a place for them. But the the folding overwhelms me. The finding the place for them overwhelms me. I just don't know how to manage it. I don't know how to unpack it, organize it, make it useful again. I just don't know how.

I'm Not Gone

2009-08-08T23:08:00.003-04:00

Honey, I'm home! Did you miss me?

Seriously, I have not abandoned the blog. Funnily enough, I often think of things I'd like to write about, but by the end of the day, my writing time, all my thoughts and desires to put any of it to metaphorical paper have bled away. Part of it is Farm Town, the damnably addictive game on Facebook. I'm obsessed with planting my crops and growing my coins so I can buy stuff to make my farm pretty. Within the last week I've realized that the real money is to be made harvesting for others, so I've been trolling the chat rooms for jobs, like almost everyone else who plays the game (that makes it sound so seedy. See what I did there- seedy?? I crack myself up). This takes up enormous amounts of time, so it seems.

Part of my lack of motivation is that I am almost always tired, and for the last week I've been battling a nasty cold. It's been hanging on for over a week now, and it's knocked both kids flat on their cute little behinds. Phoebe has been hacking periodically, and Caetlin wakes up every night at least once crying because she can't breathe because her nose is so stuffed. I hadn't taken anything for my cold, because decongestants tend to dry up milk a bit, and I'm ultra-paranoid about keeping my production up. So it's been hot showers and the neti pot and lots of tissue. I finally gave in last night so I could get some sleep, and the medicine helped quite a bit. I haven't had a cold this bad for a very long time, and I have to say, I don't recommend it. Bruce has been lucky enough to avoid it, though he's clearly been fighting it off, as he's been extremely tired all week.

Anyway, you may note that the last post was dated July 24. That was when I started the post, and it's been sitting three-quarters finished since then. I'm not sure why I couldn't finish it, or why I finally did, but I hope I'm back on the blogging bandwagon.

The First Week Back

2009-07-24T22:16:00.007-04:00

It felt strange to walk in after all these weeks, and see that everything was how I left it.

My big desk calendar was still on February. My cartoon-a-day calendar was on March 3. The chill of those days was long forgotten as I could feel the summer morning sun through the window, already hot. My last two-liter of Publix diet ginger ale, the soda that I was obsessed with in the last days, sits half drunk and probably mostly flat where I left it, and the large plastic green cup I used to sip it from still next to it on my rubber coaster. My pens still in the same place, unused legal pads stacked neatly on one corner of my desk.

I have been back since I had Phoebe, of course. I was in to visit Bruce, and take advantage of the printer (mine is kaput at home right now). I checked my mail and worked with Bruce and his secretary to submit our applications for admission to the Georgia bar. It's not as though I haven't darkened the door here in 4 months.

And yet it all felt strange, like an item of clothing that has shrunk in the wash and no longer fits quite right. It was different, for sure. The same- my same stuff, arranged in my same way- but I had grown out of it, or beyond it, or just different and away from it.

And there was the new stuff too- the new black bag that at a passing glance could look like a large tote bag, and its accompanying square-ish cooler bag. You wouldn't know what those were for. You'd think it was a tote for books, or files, or even a large handbag. You'd think the cooler bag was a lunch. Instead, I lock the door three times a day and bottle up motherhood, using the horribly undignified machinery from the black-bag-that-is-not-a-tote. I pack it in little bottles and ice them in the cooler bag and hope they are enough for tomorrow and worry when it seems like less than yesterday, less than this morning, less than.

Bruce doesn't call often when he has the kids. I assume they are busy; I assume they are having fun. I surf the internet. I check Facebook, annoyed when there are no new status updates from the previous ten minutes when I checked it last. I surf through my favorite blogs, news sites, parenting sites. I get sleepy and think how ridiculous I must look to anyone walking by, my eyes closed, face dipping forward when microsleep overtakes me. If any of my plants had been bodysnatchers, I would have been a goner.

I count down till lunch. Then I count down until I can leave. I don't talk to anyone unless I get up to make yet another unwanted cup of coffee. It helps me get out of my office, anyway.

Economic conditions mean that I have very little to do, and likely won’t have much for awhile. I set myself tasks to do every day, which I sometimes finish. Mostly these are personal tasks, like making Caetlin’s doctor’s appointment or calling the bank about a disputed charge on my debit card. Sometimes there is a tiny smidge of work, that I usually procrastinate. When I only have one thing to do, it’s hard, for me anyway, to make myself do that one thing, even though my conscience would be clear about all the web surfing if I just went ahead and did it.

Phoebe seems completely fine with me being gone most of the time. It turns out she is a very flexible baby, able to roll with just about anything, boob, bottle, mom, dad, nanny. In some ways that makes it easier, and in some ways that makes it harder. I wish she would seem to need me a little more, but I am glad for Bruce and the nanny that she is still happy. I miss her face, her ready smiles, her faux-hawk hair. Her little voice cooing and squealing at me. I drink in when Bruce tells me about something new she has done that day, like starting to enjoy playing in her Exersaucer or getting up on hands and knees like she's almost ready to crawl. But I also hate it, hate missing it, feel like a fraud for not being there.

It would be better if I had something to do. What's that old saying? "Idle hands are the devil's workshop?" For me, they are depression and inadequacy's workshop. I am not conflicted about being at work. If I had a choice before, when I went back to work with Caetlin, I most assuredly do not now. Plus I have made my peace with the fact that I like to work and don't really want to stay home with the kids, unless Bruce could do it too and we could have lots of help. (I need us to be independently wealthy, apparently.) I'm not in the same place at all that had me gaining 20 pounds because I was so unhappy about leaving my kid when I went back after Caetlin. Three years have taught me that my kids will be smart, happy and healthy even as I go off to work every day. That helps a lot.

So I go, and I sit behind my desk and surf the internet, visiting the same sites over and over, feeling like my behind is growing into my chair. I smile at people in the hall, and field well-meaning inquiries about the baby. I collect my paycheck.

Here's hoping things pick up soon, for the sake of my hours (because the pressure to work hasn't abated and in fact has grown stronger since Bruce's layoff), but mostly for my sake. Because I need something to help me grow back into this role of a working mom. Emphasis on the working.

Tomorrow Is the Day

2009-07-19T19:48:00.004-04:00

So...I go back to work tomorrow. I wish I had another month. Or 6. Or 12. It's been especially nice that Bruce has been home with us lately, though unfortunately it was a result of his being laid off.

Phoebe and I are not really separate beings at this point. I mean, of course I see and understand that we are two people, but she doesn't get that yet. And I haven't worked at all to emphasize it. Anytime she cries and I can't soothe her any other way, she gets the breast. My body is hers; I'm sure she sees me as a large extension of herself. I am her hands, her feet, her eyes, her food. I have had to do everything, be everything for her. This was true for Caetlin as well, but less so, in part because I went back to work when she was so much younger than Phoebe, and in part because Phoebe is so much more enamored of me. Caetlin loved me, but Phoebe loooooves me. I calm her more easily than Bruce when she cries (and not just with my boobs!), and she just generally usually seems happier with me.

So, tomorrow will be traumatic for her. And for me. It's not that I think she won't be cared for- she totally will. She'll be with our nanny and Bruce, and she'll be perfectly fine. But she'll miss me. And I will miss her. Every time I am away from her for any period of time, I miss her, like she's a fifth appendage. Even though sometimes I resent being so tied to her, and her to me, when I'm untethered from her I also feel unmoored. I worry for her. I worry that she won't understand that Mommy is coming back, and will only know that she wants me and I'm not there.

And then there is the breastfeeding and pumping thing. I am so nervous that she won't continue to nurse. That is what Caetlin did when I went back to work, and though the circumstances are somewhat different here (Caetlin never nursed without a nipple shield and therefore a bottle was much easier for her, plus she was never an avid nurser like Phoebe anyway), I worry. I want to nurse in the mornings and evenings and pump during the day, rather than pumping everything. Down that road lies madness, as I well know; I pumped for 3 more months with Caetlin after she stopped nursing. Despite my frantic efforts, I never pumped enough for Caetlin to have only breast milk, so after my store of frozen milk went away, I was only able to pump about 40% of the milk she needed as she grew. And to eke out that 40%, I was pumping up to 8 times a day, wrecking my productivity and my emotional state.

My big concern about Phoebe is that she has grown so aware, so interested in the world around her, that she will prefer the bottle because it will be easier to look around while she eats. I know I just need to relax and accept what comes, but it feels like such a personal rejection when the babe refuses to nurse. Such a referendum on my mothering. Or on my decision to keep working (not like I have a choice now, but I have had in the past). At times like those, the internet criticisms of "Why did you have kids if you aren't going to raise them yourself?" haunt me the most.

Anyway, going back is not just about these big things, of worrying that I won't be able to continue nursing Phoebe and fearing the pain of separation from her. It's the small things too- having to get up with an alarm in the morning, instead of waking up with the kids. Not being able to wear my comfortable, machine washable clothing, and generally putting less effort into my appearance (I'm always clean, but I don't remember the last time I put on full makeup, and I stress far less about a spot on my shirt). Having to plan my days more carefully, thinking about kids' mealtimes and pumping and getting to the gym and what deadlines will I have at work, when the past four-plus months have just been one unbroken, underscheduled stretch.

And then there is the frustration of work, of trying to scratch out a place for myself in a department that is indifferent to my efforts. The worry about Bruce, and whether and when and where he will find something. Tomorrow will be the first day in over 4 years that Bruce and I have not worked together (barring my maternity leave with Caetlin, when one of us is sick, etc.). And there is the added pressure of being the breadwinner. Though Bruce is continuing to receive a paycheck, that will run out faster than I can even think about it. It makes me scared for my job, scared for us, even though the numbers crunch just fine on only my salary. I don't like the pressure of carrying the family, not in this economy, in my line of work.

Anyway, I can't stop tomorrow from coming, and it will bring what it will bring. I know from experience that Phoebe will be just fine in the long run. I went back to work much sooner with Caetlin than I have with Phoebe (and can I say just how incomprehensibly short 12 weeks seemed with Phoebe, to the point that I have no idea how I went back when Caetlin was so incredibly young? My hat is off to anyone who can or must go back to work any sooner than that, as I know many women are required to do), and she's a perfectly fine and happy and well-adjusted almost-three-year-old. And she was a perfectly fine and happy and well-adjusted baby after I went back. We will all get used to our new normal, probably pretty quickly. If I keep things in perspective, I know it is not the end of the world, not the end of our relationship, not a sign of poor parenting. It's just...different. Different is not bad. Just different.

So off we go into the great unknown. How will we cope with the changes? I hope better than I did when I went back to work when Caetlin was a baby. At least this time there is not a convenient chocolate-filled holiday nearby, so I hopefully won't put on 20 pounds as a result of being so depressed about going back. That time it was a poorly timed trip to Target- a few weeks before I went back to work, I bought a huge amount of half priced candy that consoled me through the first couple months back at work. Consoled me right into larger sized clothing, too. I didn't lose that weight until about a year ago. Let's hope I can avoid that this time!

In other news, we have spent the last two weeks at the beach, and had a fantastic time. Caetlin, especially, had a wonderful time in the pool and the ocean (Gulf of Mexico, really). She started the vacation in my grandmother's pool with floaties on both arms and a pink inflatable ring around her middle, and she had to be coaxed away from the steps into Bruce's arms. By the end of the two weeks, she was going completely underwater while holding her breath, without her ring (her floaties had been long since discarded). Seeing her gain so much confidence in the water has been really great. I think if we had been there another week, she would have been swimming, as often as she was in the pool. The kid was more or less in her swimsuit from morning until night; we had to pry her out of it. And she's been pretending to be swimming all day today, and asking to go to the pool as well. Bruce and I are both fans of the water (something I remembered about myself when I spent so much time in the pool with Caetlin), so it's no surprise that Caetlin loved swimming so much. I can't wait to get her some lessons so she can really get moving.

Also, Phoebe had rice cereal for the first time today, and loved it. She sucked down spoonful after spoonful and consumed in the neighborhood of a quarter of a cup. She quickly got into the groove of opening her mouth for the spoon. Though she sucked on the spoon, which made a big mess, she clearly loved the whole eating experience. She even started crying and fussing between spoonfuls, because I wasn't pouring it into her fast enough. It was hilarious and awesome and so much fun. When we were done, her little belly was all pooched out and full, and she was basically ready to pass out. After a bath and a short nursing session, she crashed hard (this was after a 2 and a half hour nap this afternoon, which might be the longest nap she's ever taken- girl is sleep deprived and then some from our vacation). I'll look forward to giving it to her again tomorrow. It's something to look forward to about tomorrow anyway.

Reality Comes Crashing In

2009-07-08T21:31:00.004-04:00

I go back to work in less than two weeks. That's scary to contemplate. We're at the beach right now, and will be until the Saturday before I go back, so this is my maternity leave swan song. And because we're on vacation, I haven't got the time to really think about going back, to really imagine myself at work all day, pumping a few times, and not seeing Phoebe except in the mornings and evenings. At least, it's easy to avoid that reality, though it is getting harder and harder to ignore.

I thought I was ready to go back. I had a great time at the conference that was held at the end of May, and I really was happy to be back in that professional world for a few days. But now that it's not just a short break from my leave, now that my four and a half months has evaporated like dew on the grass in the hot summer sun, I'm panicking. I thought I would be ready. I've been telling everyone that I am ready. But I'm not ready.

I am more ready to go back than I was with Caetlin, that's for sure. I went back after just 12 weeks, and I couldn't imagine going back at that point with Phoebe. More time is certainly better time.

But she's going to miss me so much. And then she won't. Which is worse?

Maybe not thinking about it is the better way to go. Maybe just confronting it when it's time to set the alarm clock and put on heels and pack the pump is less painful. I really don't know. I'm trying to enjoy the beach while I'm here. We're having a great time. Caetlin loves the pool. Phoebe likes it okay too. We're here with a bunch of my extended family, which is nice. They all love the girls. There is nothing to be sad about when we're here in this tropical paradise.

Yet it is lurking, growing more prominent in my psyche. I'm dealing with some administrative crap already, that needs to be done by the time I go back, so it's sort of more in the forefront than I wish it were. And it's looming large anyway. I can't deny that less than two weeks is not a lot of time.

I thought I was ready. I'm so not.

Milestone: Rolling Over

2009-06-09T22:47:00.003-04:00

So today, Phoebe rolled over for the first time.

We both missed it.

I was in my room, getting dressed after a shower. Bruce was in the kitchen getting something to eat. He had put Phoebe on the floor on her back in her play gym. When he came back into the living room- so I'm told- she was on her tummy.

I wasn't surprised when he told me, because it has seemed to me like she was working herself up to roll for awhile now. I don't call her my "Get Up and Go Girl" for no reason, after all- she is going to be much happier when she can move around by herself. She's way more motivated to move than Caetlin ever was. Caetlin rolled over like once when she was two months old and then didn't do it again until 4 going on 5 months.

Phoebe hasn't done it again, yet, though I am sure she will soon. Still, I am sorry to have missed it. I think those kinds of milestones become less important with baby #2, so long as it's clear there is no delay, which there isn't in this case. But it's step one toward a mobile Phoebe, who will be a happier Phoebe.

Yeah, It's Been Awhile

2009-06-02T21:49:00.004-04:00

Life on maternity leave tends to kind of smooth out the edges of things. Days flow into each other, the weekdays versus the weekends stop having any particular meaning, and I only remembered what day of the week it was by what was on TV that particular night (made more difficult by the end of the regular TV programming). There was me, and Phoebe, and a steady stream of lunch dates with girlfriends, trips to the gym and the mall, and diapers and nursing and spit up and crying and napping. My left bicep is extremely buff from hauling her around in her carrier. Really, for awhile, that was the most notable thing going on. So it's been awhile since I've posted.

Yet time and life both march on, and Stuff has Happened around here that finally moved me to write.

First there was Memorial Day weekend, which started, memorably enough, with Bruce being laid off. Happy three day weekend!

Seriously, if you've been reading here for any length of time, you know we knew it was coming. All options have been exhausted, and there really is just no room for him. He is a man without a department, with a specialty that no one else in the firm does (any more), and almost non-existent billable hours for the year. It made zero economic sense to keep him, and the firm is a business. It really was no surprise. The separation details are pretty generous, though we will have to address circumstances with our nanny (more on that in a bit).

Saturday we took Caetlin to the Y, where we have recently become members. We have found that having kids makes a Y membership entirely more appealing, as they offer a ton of programs for the kid, plus babysitting that Phoebe is now old enough to start using as well as Caetlin. Also, the Buckhead Y has a kick-ass outdoor pool. We haven't been there yet, since we regularly go to the Ashford-Dunwoody Y, but I foresee some summertime fun there. Caetlin loves going to the babysitting there; she "has a good time with teachers and plays with new toys" as she puts it. (The having a good time with teachers part comes from us, to remind her how much she tends to like day care teachers.) She apparently tells the teachers how "Mommy and Daddy be riiiiight back." I'm glad to know she's confident in that fact.

After the Y was the park, since it wasn't raining yet, and then home for lunch and nap. Then a trip to an indoor playground for a very short visit and then to the mall for a "smoovie." Caetlin is a smoothie addict and then some, and often we need to get her the 20 ounce size, rather than the 12 ounce kids' size. Because otherwise she ends up drinking mine, and I don't like to share.

Anyway, it was a good day, the news from the day before notwithstanding. We've both been pretty calm regarding the layoff, mostly I think because we've been expecting it for so long. When the meeting was set earlier in the week, I kind of had a freaking out, hyperventilating "OMG OMG What are we gonna do???" kind of evening, but I was over it by the next day. There are some really good things coming out of it, I think, and frankly, it was time for that shoe to drop so we could deal with the reality rather than worrying about it.

Sunday, we set off for a new indoor playground, where we were meeting two ladies I work with and their respective children, plus a niece who was visiting. We broke out like this: one colleague and her husband brought their 6 year old daughter and their 3 year old son; one colleague brought her 8 month old daughter and 7 year old niece; and we had Phoebe and Caetlin. So everyone had someone to play with, and the babies sort of lumped together (kidding, actually, as the 8 month old had a good time in the crawlers area). We chatted and followed the kids around; we snacked on goldfish and pretzels and juice and water; and we discussed the relative bravery and/or gross motor development of each of the walking kids. Afterward we adjoined to Five Guys for burgers and fries, and watched the kids running around the plaza outside the restaurant. Spencer (the 3 year old) and Caetlin were super fast friends, clamoring to sit next to each other at lunch and hugging goodbye (seriously, is anything cuter than toddlers hugging? I think not). We all had such a great time that we decided to get together for bowling the next day.

I had a small misadventure, though, prior to all this idyll. We left without me getting any breakfast, in order to be on time. We had time to pull into a McDonald's, which we passed on the way, and waited behind a man in line who may never have encountered this weird thing called the McDonald's breakfast menu before. Or perhaps had never been in a drive-through before. Either way, there was dialogue between him and the drive-through worker. Impatient, I told Bruce to drive around and I would go in, figuring the line inside would be shorter as it often is. I walked into a madhouse. Let's say the line was not shorter inside, and when I walked out, the drive-through line had backed up too. Frustrated, pissed off at myself for having made a bad call, I got back in and told Bruce to drive on, since we were going to be late.

We drove to the place, and no one was there yet, so we decided to do our best to find a breakfast place (too bad we didn't see the Starbucks across the street until we went to that complex for lunch). After driving for a couple minutes, we found an Atlanta Bread Company, where we were headed until I saw the Burger King. BK will be faster, I reasoned. We got my food, Bruce got his large coffee, and we were on our way again, Caetlin and I happily sharing hash browns (actually, she got her own small order; remember what I said about not liking to share?). To get back the way we needed to be going, as we really were running late by now, Bruce had to make an illegal left turn. In so doing, and in swinging sharply around the median that tried to force us right, his too-tall-for-the-cupholder coffee overturned and spilled. All over the diaper bag. All over a lot of the junk on the floor of the car. All over me.

I started screaming and trying to hold my jeans leg away from my skin. That coffee was hot. As in scorching hot. As in heated by the interior of the sun hot. As in lawsuit hot.

Bruce pulled over as I sobbed my pain and unhappiness over being soaked in coffee. By the time he stopped the car and I hopped out, my jeans had cooled enough that I didn't need to strip down to my underwear on the side of the road. We moved on to the play place, me smelling like coffee. I headed for the bathroom to soak some of it out, but I smelled like everyone's favorite breakfast beverage all freaking day. My leg was slightly singed, on the order of a very slight sunburn, and it cleared up by the next day. (One of the moms was pretty late to the playground and when I told her that story, she was all, "You win. Your morning has been worse than mine.")

Anyway, we all met up again for bowling, and the kids had another awesome time. Caetlin and Spencer pushed their balls off one of those racks for kids (I had never seen them before and they are great!) and we all were grateful for the bumpers. When C and Spence got tired of bowling they ran around and around and around. Fortunately, early on Memorial Day, the alley was reasonably empty so they didn't annoy anyone. Anyone not related to them, anyway.

Afterward we all went to Willy's for burritos and quesadillas. We were a small pocket of chaos in the back of the restaurant, as we took over two booths plus all the surrounding area. The kids hugged goodbye again, and I heard from Spencer's mom that he told her his favorite part of the weekend was "playing with [his] new friend Caetlin!" Your heart could just melt.

This week was pretty quiet, but we did reach a milestone: we cleaned both cars out entirely and had them super-duper-detailed. The coffee incident caused an irritant that had only been slightly itching me to flare into a full-blown rash of need for clean vehicles. It took us several hours to clear all the junk and trash from the cars, and it took the detail folks several hours to clean them. They remain clean today, and I am determined to keep them that way.

I had a really great and interesting work conference this past weekend, and we've had many discussions about what to do regarding the nanny, but that will all have to wait, since I'm tired and need to pump (ugh) and sleep now. More later.

News and Notes

2009-05-05T20:25:00.003-04:00

A scattering of random facts and anecdotes from the No Math house:

- My thrush appears to have cleared up, thank goodness. I'm still on medication for it, as is Phoebe, but it's kind of how you take antibiotics long after you stop being sick- it's still working even though the symptoms are all gone. And frankly the symptoms were what I really cared about. That shit hurt. NOT recommended.

- Phoebe turns two whole months old tomorrow. How is that possible?? And she's started outgrowing some of her 0-3 month clothes. Scary. She otherwise remains the smiling-est baby on the planet. I will have to try to take some pictures so you can see the gorgeousness that is her smile. She's also sleeping really well at night. Last night she slept for 5 hours, had a feeding, and then slept another 5 hours. We're starting to lose that haggard look that comes from too many interruptions in sleep for too many nights in a row.

-We all seem to be healthy around here for right now; everyone please say a little prayer that we can stay that way for awhile. I love all my care providers, but I am really ready to not see the inside of a hospital for as long as possible.

- Caetlin has decided that she loves pretty dresses, and it's been mostly warm enough to let her wear them. It is with some small embarrassment that I admit that I think she has basically every style of dress that my local Target sells for toddlers. What?? I'm trying to make sure she has enough to rotate through the week. Really! Anyway, it's awesome to see her twirl around in front of the full-length mirror in our bedroom. She looks at herself, dances around a bit, looks at herself again, and tells me, "It's a pretty dress, Mommy!" I love making her that happy with something so simple as a dress.

- Caetlin has also exploded musically lately, and will often sing herself to sleep. Favorites include "Itsy Bitsy Spider," and "Pop Goes the Weasel" (which is "Hop Goes the Weasel" if she's not paying attention), "London Bridge is Falling Down", "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean" and the always-popular ABCs song. It also leads to some interesting displays of personality. Her nanny told us about one day last week when Caetlin was singing Itsy Bitsy Spider and her ABCs at the park, and getting all the "Awww"s and smiles from the assembled grownups. Her little friend Mary, who turned three in January, chimed in as well, and started getting her share of attention. Caetlin apparently decided she was not going to be shown up, and launched into an operatic "Baa Baa, Black Sheep," which Mary didn't know. Caetlin's nanny said Caetlin was clearly all, "Top that, amateur."

- We have started a hard core push on potty training. She's pretty good on pee, though we have to make her go when she's in the middle of something. The poop, however, is a different story. She has pooped in the potty in the past, but for whatever reason, refuses to try these days. We'll be putting her in underwear soon, so she can feel the mess she's making when she goes in her pants, pee or poop. It's going to be a long summer, I think, filled with bodily fluids. Y-A-Y.

- Speaking of summer, we joined the Atlanta Metro YMCA this week, and got Caetlin signed up for parent-tot swim classes that start at the end of this month. I am hoping to spend a few days at the beach with the girls this summer, and I want Caetlin to be at least comfortable if her head should go under or something like that. Plus as much as she loves the water, she needs to learn how to swim, pronto. I'm excited about taking her to the classes; I think it will be fun time for us together.

- Bruce and I both took advantage of the wellness programs at the Y as well, starting a 6-month series with a wellness coordinator who set us up on the weight machines and showed us how to use the FitLinxx system. I walked on the treadmill for the first time today. It's Day 1 in my quest to lose weight, firm up, and make my heart healthier. My diet is better than it has been in a long time, and I feel like it's a diet I can maintain, so the next thing is to add in the exercise while I have the time to get hooked on it. Wish me luck.

- On the work front, Tokyo appears to be officially dead, so that's a decision we at least don't have to face. We have informed the nanny that Bruce could be laid off at any time, and things don't look great for him, and she should probably search for another job, given the economic climate. I think she doesn't want to hear it, and has stuck her head in the sand and refused to look for anything else, but that is not a decision we can make for her. I think we have acted in good conscience in this situation. We have given her all the information we can, and she can choose to act- or not- on that info.

- Completely as a lark, Bruce and I have both registered for the Foreign Service Officer Test to be given in June. It's a lark because the odds of either of us becoming foreign service officers are pretty small, and the process takes a really long time, at least a year. I'm actually enjoying the process of studying for it- test taking is something that I am good at, and I'm enjoying feeling mental muscles stretching out that I haven't used in awhile. It would be a huge deal if one or both of us made it, but I'm not even thinking that way at this point. It's much more about the fun of taking the test and seeing how I do. I've needed an intellectual goal for awhile now, since I'm on leave now and before I left work there wasn't much for me to do anyway.

- Finally, Caetlin was super adorable when she came in from the park this afternoon. I had just finished feeding Phoebe, who was asleep in my arms in the same position she had nursed in. Caetlin picked up Cheer Bear (I think I have written about Cheer Bear before, how she's completely annoying but Caetlin loves her so I love her) and said, "I'm feeding Cheer Bear, Mommy," and held the little pink bear's face to her chest. She sat like that as long as Phoebe stayed in my arms in that position, occasionally telling me how she was feeding Cheer Bear. It was adorable to watch her "nurse" her bear.

So, that's about all there is from here. Life rolls on, more or less uneventfully these days. We like uneventful. Uneventful is good.

Make It Stop

2009-04-25T22:39:00.003-04:00

I think I have developed thrush on my nipples. Thrush is a yeast infection, the same kind of yeast infection that the boys snicker about, only on my nipples instead of in my lady parts. Yeast is a naturally occurring organism; everyone has some amount of it in his or her system, men and women. A yeast infection, or thrush, occurs when the yeast gets out of balance and too much is able to grow. The yeast loves the sugars in milk, so nursing moms are often susceptible. Particularly nursing moms who have recently completed a course of antibiotics. Which I have.

Where a yeast infection as people are familiar with it is more annoying than anything- itchy, mostly- thrush on my nipples and in my milk ducts is turning out to be extremely painful. I have actually stopped nursing Phoebe again so I can take some prescription painkillers for a day or two, until the medication starts to work and I can stand her to nurse from me. On Monday I will have to get treatment for Phoebe as well, since the likelihood is that she has thrush in her mouth that is not yet developed, but will be painful for her if it progresses.

So I'm pumping- as much as I can stand to, anyway- and dumping again. Yippee. Did I mention this is extremely painful? As in, extremely painful?

I hope this clears up soon. Jeez. I wish we could catch a break!

Getting Back to Normal

2009-04-22T08:55:00.002-04:00

Morning smiles:

Caetlin offers a good morning kiss:

These days it's really hard to get good pictures of the two of them because Phoebe is so stationary and Caetlin is so...not.

I'm Going Home!

2009-04-20T18:22:00.002-04:00

Well, I didn't have the CT scan today. There is still too much barium contrast in my intestines to get a good picture. I have been given more magnesium citrate to get everything moving (not that it wasn't already), as well as some prune juice just for good measure. However, my surgeon felt that, having delayed surgery already, and given how well I'm doing, everything else can be done on an outpatient basis, especially since it is likely to take the contrast 3 or 4 more days to really work itself out. The last test was seeing if solid food made any difference, a test I passed with flying colors. My continued lack of pain plus good tolerance of food means no reason to keep running up hospital charges with me.

So, they are discharging me tonight, within the next couple of hours. I follow up with the surgeon on Thursday; he will arrange for the CT to be done next Monday (sooner if I show less improvement), and I'm to follow up with my GI doctor late next week.

I have also been prescribed antibiotics that are incompatible with breastfeeding, which means I'll need to pump and dump for the next 11 days. In a few ways it will be easier to pump at home, since I can rig that up to be truly hands free, and I won't have random people walking in on me at any moment. However, it more sucks than anything, because pumping isn't something I can do in public (like breastfeeding), and pumping as often as I need to in order to keep my supply and caring for Phoebe by myself is going to be a challenge. By the time I'm done, I'll have pumped and dumped for over two weeks. It will be worth it when I can feed Phoebe again, though.

I can't wait to go home, eat some good food, sleep in my own bed, be there when Caetlin wakes up in the morning. Wear my own clothes and not be attached to an IV. This has all been like a very bad dream. Thank goodness I get to wake up!

Quick Status

2009-04-19T21:36:00.002-04:00

Everyone on my treatment team (!) appears to be on board with the current plan now; my surgeon was skeptical yesterday, though he agreed with my GI that it wasn't quite time to cut yet. He endorses the plan entirely at this point, since my continued improvement can't be ignored. I was pain free today, completely. And I look great and feel great. I am essentially a healthy person walking around these halls.

Now, if the pictures of my insides will back that up! Hopefully all the barium I had to drink on Friday has cleared my system, so they can get good clear pictures. There is talk of an X-ray tomorrow morning, to make sure the barium is all gone. If it isn't, they will give me more of the laxative that I had yesterday and today. That's not as scary as it sounds; I haven't had anything solid to eat since late Wednesday evening. My last solid elimination was Friday. A laxative doesn't do anything impressive at this point. I hope that the barium is all gone, though, because the sooner we can get a good CT scan, the sooner I can go home.

If the barium is all gone, the CT will show the mass either looking better (more defined, more organized, smaller, whatever the doctors decide is better), or not. If it is better, which I have to assume, since I am feeling so incredibly improved, they will make/let me eat something solid, to make sure that actual food isn't a problem or an aggravating factor. I don't know if they are going to require that the solids come out the other end, though I guess in a system as empty as mine is, that probably wouldn't take too long. But in any event, once they are satisfied that solid food doesn't seem to be a problem, I think they will let me go home. Dare I hope that might even be as early as Tuesday? Probably not, since everything takes longer than I think it's going to here in the hospital, but I can maybe realistically hope for Wednesday, I think.

If the scans aren't positive, that's a different story, of course. I would expect that surgery would be on the table again. I have a hard time believing that it's going to go this way, though. My body couldn't possibly be telling me so aggressively that things are getting better if they weren't. I mean, I guess it could, but I think it is more likely that I actually am getting better at this point.

So that's where we are. Hope for clear scans and solid food.

Should I Stay or Should I Go Now? (With Apologies to the Clash)

2009-04-18T10:16:00.004-04:00

So, there is disagreement among my doctors. (Per Bruce's recent Facebook status, I really am living in my own personal episode of House. Why couldn't I have been Dr. Cameron in that episode, rather than the Patient of the Week? Shoot, I would even settle for being Cuddy.) Anyway, the surgeon wants to operate. There is a mass (a point on which I don't think I have been clear before, because I wasn't clear until this morning), and he wants to take it out. The GI doctor wants to keep me on antibiotics, because I actually am doing better today. It's a classic surgeon/non-surgeon treatment dichotomy- the surgeon wants to cut, and the non-surgeon doesn't, not yet.

Here are the hypotheses: the surgeon sees a mass in my abdomen, probably in the mesentery, which is the supporting tissues of the abdominal organs, and which also contains the arteries that supply the blood flow to most of the organs. He wants to cut it out, figure out what it is, and proceed from there. It's a pretty big mass, from his description maybe three inches long by an inch or so wide. His take is- this didn't grow overnight, it's probably been there for awhile, let's go ahead and get it out because taking it out will likely alleviate my pain, and if it requires further treatment, then we can go ahead and get started on that.

The GI doctor also sees a mass in my abdomen, but he thinks it might be an infarct in the mesentery. An infarct is basically an area of dead tissue caused by lack of blood flow to that tissue. Most people are familiar with it in the sense of a heart attack- a myocardial infarction. But an infarct can happen anywhere blood flow is cut off. In this case, the GI doctor thinks the mass may be a blood clot and/or dead or infected mesentery tissue, which would resolve itself with time and more antibiotics. He actually has a decent case for this, because I'm getting better. I feel better; my pain is significantly less. My labs look better- my white count is down to normal today.

So, the plan is no surgery tomorrow. I am going to continue on the antibiotics for another day and then on Monday have the CT scan that my surgeon wanted yesterday (radiology gave me injected contrast instead of drinkable contrast, which didn't give as clear a picture as my surgeon would like). If the CT shows improvement, we know how to treat. If it doesn't, well, I may still give it another day or two before agreeing to surgery, unless my GI doctor thinks I should have the operation.

Such good news, to be given hope that I might not need to have major abdominal surgery. That I might not need to have a good chunk of my maternity leave recovering, plus to have the fear that the mass might be cancer or something else really horrible. Plus I feel better, so that's an excellent combination.

Thanks to all who keep me in their thoughts and prayers. I appreciate it more than I can say.

I'm Scared

2009-04-17T21:58:00.004-04:00

I spoke with both the GI doctor and the surgeon this evening. They both remain puzzled by what's wrong with me. Basically, the CT scan showed a large area of inflammation in my bowel, but it wasn't clear exactly where or what was causing it. I'm clearly not obstructed, as things are moving along well. It's definitely hinky, though, and the surgeon has concluded that the best option is to open me up to take a look, cut the offending area out, send it to a pathologist and "hope it's benign." Those were his words. If I'm being rational, I don't think he meant to imply that I have cancer, or that he thinks I have cancer- the bottom line is that he doesn't know what's wrong with me, and can't really know until he can actually look at it and feel it. The GI doc thought there was some foreign object that wasn't showing up on the scans- a chicken bone or something- but the surgeon and I both discounted that possibility. I don't chew toothpicks or really even eat chicken or fish with bones, and no way have I swallowed a piece of plastic utensil without knowing it.

Anyway, the surgeon also consulted with another surgeon, who was also flummoxed. This guy is apparently highly regarded, trained at MD Anderson and is a cancer specialist. My surgeon hustled to say, "Not that it's cancer, but he's just a really good surgeon." Somehow that alleviated my fears not at all, though again, if I'm being rational, there are a ton more things that it could be, that it probably is, than cancer, given my age and relatively good health. Anyway, both surgeons happen to be on this weekend, and my surgeon has roped him in because of his experience and skill, and because I am such a mystery.

(I always wanted to be mysterious to someone. This wasn't quite what I had in mind.)

Bottom line is: if I am worse tomorrow, particularly if my white count goes up (which has stayed steady over the past day), they will operate tomorrow. If I hold steady tomorrow, they will operate on Sunday morning. The surgeon will need to convince the GI that there is nothing more to gain by taking more pictures, but he really thinks this is the best course, and I trust him.

I'm scared. We're not talking about minor laprascopic surgery like a gallbladder removal. This will be major, open abdominal surgery. And that scares me. The whole thing- the anesthesia, the opening of my stomach, the unknown wonkiness in my bowel. I'm scared that it is cancer and I'm going to die in 2 months. I'm scared that I'll die on the table. There's no reason to be scared of that- I'm in a great hospital in great hands. But I'm scared just the same, and it's times like now, when I'm all alone because Bruce is with the kids, when it's as quiet as it ever gets in the hospital, that I can't stop imagining wildly out-there worst case scenarios.

I'm going to try to get some sleep.

No Rest for the...Sick

2009-04-17T12:43:00.004-04:00

So, my optimism about getting more rest in the hospital was sorely misplaced. I went to sleep at about midnight and threw in the towel on getting any rest at all at about 5 a.m. During that 5 hours, I was awakened no fewer than three times. And this is not just a tech creeping in to take vitals; that I understand and can mostly sleep through anyway.

No, at 1 a.m., someone came in, flipped on the lights and asked me why I was here. I was so groggy and disoriented that I didn't remember where I was, much less why. I struggled to wake up enough to answer her, then spent ten minutes giving a medical history. She was doing the admission questionnaire! I wonder if that could have been done sooner than 1 a.m., given that I had been admitted sometime around 7 p.m.? Or, I wonder if someone might have used some common sense, and said to themselves, "It's 1 a.m. Most people are asleep at this time. Maybe this ought to wait until something approximating normal waking hours, since no one has died because we don't have this information." The tech was quite nice about it, and was apologetic about waking me up, and I wanted to say to her, "What do you expect? I'm sick, I'm in pain, and it's 1 freaking a.m.!!"

I got back to sleep after that, and then was awakened by the tech at 3:30, who was coming in to take vitals. Easy, right? No, the nice lady wanted to know if I wanted a shower or sponge bath and clean linens. "Maybe not...right...now..?" I said, squinting (yes, she had also turned on the lights). Oh, no, she explained, maybe around like 5:30? Still too early for my taste, but more reasonable. And I get that she was trying to map out the rest of her day, but isn't there any consideration of the patient's needs? Doesn't it seem like maybe my need for sleep, you know, the sick one, might trump her need to map out the rest of her shift? Because really, I appreciated her attentions, but I had plenty of time after shift change to take a shower. She was also super apologetic about waking me up. Why apologize? I mean, really.

Finally, at 10 minutes to 5, my nurse came in, flipped on the lights, and started yammering at me about a piece of paper I needed to fill out "just in case I was going to have surgery later." It was a pre-anesthesia questionnaire, that ended up not being collected by anyone until after shift change. Maybe it could have waited? Especially since it wasn't clear whether I would have surgery today anyway? And she asked whether I had given a urine sample in the ER. I hadn't; the ER nurse mentioned it once, I couldn't go at the time, she said it could wait, and it was never mentioned again. I figured it had been dropped as a requirement, since no one asked me about it in the intervening 12 hours. But no, it was apparently a "stat" sample, needed immediately. Right. Immediately. Maybe someone should have followed up on that particular loose end sometime in the 7 hours I was awake, between the ER and being admitted? Maybe given that no one had, and no one was apparently looking for it, it could have waited?

I had had trouble going back to sleep after the 3:30 wakeup, despite my exhaustion, because my breasts were becoming uncomfortably engorged and were leaking everywhere. I still could have slept through it, in a wet gown and wet sheets with painful breasts, if I could have, you know, slept. When I was awakened at 5, I threw in the towel. My boobs hurt, they were leaking all over the place, the tech was coming in half an hour anyway, might as well stay up. The tech was surprised to see me awake when she came in. I thought that was funny.

I've been awake ever since, with the exception of a few short catnaps. Inevitably I go long stretches during which I am told to prepare for some test or that the doctor will be coming in, and so I don't sleep. When I finally do sleep, they come for me 10 minutes later. I get far better sleep with my newborn, I have to say.

What infuriates me most is that there is zero consideration for patient care there. Other than the vitals, none of what I was awakened for needed to be done then. I could have probably forgiven the urine sample if I hadn't been awakened for so much other nonsense so many times before. I'm sick, I hurt, and I'm tired. Maybe better patient care might suggest that personnel think about whether something is truly necessary before waking someone up? And I'm generous- tie up these kinds of loose ends by midnight, then let me sleep until after shift change. I realize these folks have a job to do, but it really feels like no one stops to think whether these decisions are the best for the patient. More like, this is something that needs to be done; must do it now. Maybe night shift workers really lose a sense that normal people are asleep in the small hours of the morning, but if so, someone really needs to remind them.

Anyway, the update on my health: they still don't know what's wrong with me. I had a CT scan this morning that apparently did not show anything out of the ordinary. Confronted with two normal gallbladder images, I guess the doctor had to move on to a different part of the GI system, and has ordered an upper GI, a test that involves me drinking barium contrast and having X-rays of it taken while it's on the way down. I'm not having surgery today; they don't know what to operate on. I'm still in a good bit of pain, and they are just working to figure out what it might be.

It's unclear how long I will be here, and each day they give me more things that are incompatible with breastfeeding. I've dumped something in the neighborhood of 25 ounces of milk just this morning. That's like a two day supply for Phoebe, wasted. I cry every time I empty the bottles, and I hate pumping so much that I am really afraid I will flag in my determination to get through this period. I'm already putting off pumping because I hate it. It's hard to make myself do it when I'm already feeling so cruddy.

I miss my girls- Phoebe is here with me but it hurts to hold her, and I haven't seen Caetlin in almost a whole day by now. I'm hungry- I haven't had anything solid to eat since 11 p.m. on Wednesday. It's rumored I'll be back on clear liquids after the upper GI. I'll take anything at this point. Jell-o and Italian ice can approximate something solid, anyway.

More updates as news comes in.

Because We Couldn't Go A Week Without Some Luna in Some Hospital

2009-04-16T22:52:00.003-04:00

I mentioned that last night I was having some abdominal pain. Well, it got progressively worse over the course of the night, and this morning Bruce persuaded me to call our primary care doctor (who I don't much like and I'm trying to find a new one). He saw me and did some lab work, which suggested slightly that I might have a kidney infection, but all my presentation suggested a gallbladder issue. He recommended that I see a gastroenterologist tomorrow, but it was either this afternoon or mid-May, so I went in this afternoon. The doctor took about a five minute look at me and told me I had classic cholecystitis, gallbladder inflammation, and that it was probably infected, as I was running a temperature at that point. He suggested I head down to the emergency room, where he was going to call the GI surgeon and let him know I was coming.

I got to the emergency room and met the surgeon and the surgical resident. It turns out that pregnant women and women who have recently been pregnant are at increased risk for gallstones. Who knew?? So the surgeon was all, "I'm 90% sure that you have gallstones and that your gallbladder is infected, and I wouldn't even do the diagnostic tests if your insurance company wouldn't flip out about it. I would just take your gallbladder out right now." I'm not sure I would have gone along with the "no diagnostics" thing, but luckily I didn't have to. He ordered some (more) labs and an abdominal ultrasound.

The nurse who came to draw my blood first gave me a stick in the back of my hand, and missed the vein, leading to her moving the catheter around in my hand for a second. That hurt! It still hurts, and is already making pretty, pretty bruising. The crappy thing was, it also closed down really fast, so she had to re-stick me in my elbow after just one vial. I don't know why she rejected my elbow the first time, but it hurt a lot less and filled up the vials really fast.

I had the ultrasound done, and was admitted to the hospital and moved to a room upstairs. I was more or less prepped for surgery tomorrow afternoon- not allowed to eat or drink, IV in place with fluids being given, as well as some IV antibiotics ordered, as my labs showed an increased white count, a marker for infection. Then the doctor came in again.

"Amazingly, the ultrasound showed NO gallstones," he said. He went on to talk about how flummoxed he was by this, since I am so exhibiting such classic gallbladder symptoms. He had to (reluctantly) admit that he can't operate, since he doesn't have a diagnosis at this time. His plan is to evaluate my overnight vital signs, my morning labs, and possibly order a CAT scan in the morning as well. He was baffled but seemed confident he would be able to figure it out. Something would point the way to the correct diagnosis, he was sure.

So, that's where I am- in the hospital. Hooked up to an IV that makes using the toilet a challenge and showering impossible. Taking IV antibiotics that mean I will have to pump and dump for at least a day after receiving my last dose. That is on top of whatever they give me in the event of surgery and any pain meds I should need. I hate that part. Just in time for Phoebe's 6 week growth spurt, which I was counting on to boost my supply. It's not like I have any supply problems, but I was hoping I could boost it so I could easily pump some for later. Now I'm just hoping I come through still nursing her at all. I still have no idea what is wrong with me, and I'm still in pain. Not a lot, but I'm uncomfortable.

Silver lining- I'm going to sleep more or less uninterrupted tonight, at least not by baby. Vitals and labs will not take long, unlike feeding the baby. I'm going to wake up in some pain, and have to pump immediately on getting up, I'm sure, but to sleep- that sounds wonderful.

I'm feeling a little sorry for myself, all alone in this lonely hospital room. I'm worried about my innards; I'm worried about being able to continue nursing Phoebe; I'm sad I didn't get to see Caetlin hardly at all today. I'm hot, possibly because of my elevated temperature and possibly because of the temperature in the room. I'm hungry- I was at least able to have clear liquids until midnight, so I "indulged" in two helpings of beef broth, some Jell-o and some Italian ices. It wasn't the most satisfying dinner I've ever had. All the food commercials on TV taunt me.

Anyway, more updates tomorrow as they decide what's wrong with me and what to do about it.

Atlanta Tea Party

2009-04-16T21:55:00.003-04:00

So, we headed downtown to join the Atlanta Tea Party protest. I describe myself as libertarian/fiscally conservative, and libertarian/socially liberal. I'm also a huge capitalist and free market champion. Thus, the incredible deficits run up by the Bush and Obama administrations, the eviscerating of the AIG employment contracts, the refusal to let the car companies declare bankruptcy, the "too big to fail" mentality, the "firing" of the head of GM- these are all reasons to protest, in my mind. Add in the tax increases, which almost inevitably will affect my family (we paid a ridiculous amount of money in income taxes last year, plus Social Security, which I would opt out of if I could because no way am I seeing any of that money back, sucked dry by the ever longer-living Baby Boomer generation), and I was moved to add my body to the crowd. I'm not a chanter. I'm not a sign maker. But I wanted to be there and be counted. Both parties disgust me right now. There is no one in the political landscape who represents me, and hasn't been for a very long time.

Am I skeptical about the effects of the various protests yesterday? Yes, but mostly because I am convinced that nothing less than voting politicians out of office gets them to pay attention to the people they supposedly represent. And then it's sort of too late, right? Because you only swap one bum for another.

Cynical? Maybe just a little.

Anyway, we got there at about 7:30, and this was the scene in the little area we were in:

We were crushed between a fence and a fire truck, so we backed out of that mob pretty quickly and went to the other side of the Capitol. There was plenty of room on that side, though we couldn't see the Jumbotron because of all the signage in the way. We listened to the speakers and people watched. At one point we went to the picnic area behind the church that was across the street from the Capitol so I could feed Phoebe. My only real complaint about the whole night was that it was pretty darn cold. I had Phoebe in the Bjorn strapped to me, so she was pretty warm, and she helped keep me warm, but the wind was still quite biting.

Anyway, despite the enormous crowd (someone on the stage estimated 20,000 people- I have no idea if that is right and haven't seen any other estimates today, though I could easily believe it- I could also easily believe that it was far, far smaller than that as well), everyone was very well behaved, even the few folks I saw wearing lots of Obama gear (while I personally am furious at both parties, there is no doubt that the movement as a whole is more generally conservative, so assuming someone with an Obama T-shirt, hat and buttons is a counterprotester is a safe one, I think) or heard espousing different viewpoints.

We stayed through the first segment of Sean Hannity's show (I cannot stand that man-such a blowhard!) and then walked back to MARTA to go home. Our feet were killing us, and I was fortunate that a whole bunch of people got off at the first stop and I was able to get a seat. It was during the course of the evening that I noticed that I had abdominal pain that was getting worse and not going away. More on that in the next post.

So that was my first protest experience- pretty low key. If you didn't see the signs, you would have thought you were at any other large festival. It was definitely a party sort of atmosphere. I'm not sure I'll continue to protest (see above re: cynicism), but it felt good to be doing something, no matter how ultimately ineffective. It felt like being an active political citizen, which was cool. I mean, I've always voted, but this went beyond just voting. Corny as it sounds, I felt like a patriot.

Conversation with Caetlin

2009-04-11T20:41:00.006-04:00

Bruce told me he had the following exchange with Caetlin in the car this afternoon:

Caetlin rubs the bruise on her head. From the back seat, Bruce hears:
"Ow! Hurts!"

Bruce: "Don't touch it, silly!"

From the back seat:
"Hurts!"

Bruce: "Don't touch it, Caetlin!"

"Hurts!"

I think he gave up after a couple iterations.**

The offending goose egg, two days post-trauma.

**It wouldn't be funny if she wasn't doing so much better. Her fever was down to a low grade temp this morning and gone entirely this afternoon. She's tired, but seems to be recovering well. Therefore I feel I can safely laugh at her silliness.

At Least Life with Her Is Never Boring

2009-04-10T19:56:00.003-04:00

So, Caetlin decided to make life interesting again by having another seizure yesterday. It was in some ways the scariest one she's had, at least to me.

She went to the zoo in the morning, and spent the afternoon after her nap coloring Easter eggs and having an egg hunt at the park with her play group. She came home happy and talking about having high-fived the panda at the zoo (a guy in a panda suit), and about having collected the pink egg as her special one. She had chocolate smeared on her face.

We were all in the living room, and she was standing at the coffee table, when she started to make a strange noise. She often makes strange noises, so I didn't think anything of it. A second later, though, she fell backward, dead weight, her head cracking sickeningly on the hardwood floor. I ran over to her, calling her name, and picked her up as she was simultaneously limp and jerky in my arms. I said to Bruce, "She's having a seizure," and put her down. I stayed over her, watching her lips turn an alarming shade of blue and her face turn a scary grey, though I could see that she was breathing. When strings of saliva started to bubble out of her mouth, I turned her head to the side so she didn't aspirate any of it.

After maybe a minute- or a year, depending on your perspective- she stopped jerking and started to cry a little bit. She was so hot! We scooped her up and gathered Phoebe and some things and headed to the hospital. We've done this enough that I thought to bring Caetlin's blankies and pacifier and pajamas and some diapers.

Bruce lead-footed it to the emergency room and they saw us pretty quickly. She threw up on the way, all over herself and her car seat. When the nurse first took her vitals, she took her temperature under Caetlin's arm, which gave a reading of 98.9, which seemed awfully cool based on how she felt in my arms. When we were admitted to a triage room, the pediatrician saw us fairly quickly. Her ears and throat looked clear, so he wanted to take a urine sample to rule out UTI. We also discussed whether a CT was necessary, since she had hit her head so hard. His thought was that she was alert and talking, and had only thrown up the once, so it probably wasn't necessary, but if we wanted it for peace of mind, we could certainly justify having one done.

Bruce tried to get Caetlin to give a urine sample by making water in the potty, which would have been more pleasant for all of us, but stressed as she was, she refused, so we had to ask the nurse to take a sample with a catheter. The nurse was awesome; she only cleaned the relevant area of Caetlin's girl parts, rather than scrubbing them all over with the antiseptic, which can't feel good, and she got the catheter in on the first try, which is not always the case. While we had her diaper off, we asked them to take another temperature reading, because they were not going to give her any fever reducer based on the earlier reading. We could see she didn't feel good, even as the effects of the seizure wore off. The anal temperature came to 102.2, so she was dosed with Tylenol.

As the Tylenol took effect, she clearly started to feel better. We had the CT done, for our own peace of mind (Natasha Richardson was to the forefront of my mind). The CT was clear for head injury, but did show some fluid on her middle ear and around her jawbone. The urine was clean on the microscope (though we won't be clear on that front until the culture hopefully comes back negative as well), and the pediatrician's best guess is a middle ear infection. That or some random virus, which is always a possibility. He prescribed antibiotics and sent us home.

So, we trooped home, four hours after we left the house. Her fever was down and she fell asleep right away, after having a perfunctory dinner. When she woke up this morning her fever was back up again, so we've kept her dosed with fever-reducer all day, alternating Tylenol and Motrin every three hours. If her fever is still up tomorrow, we'll be taking her to her regular pediatrician for further evaluation.

So that's where we are. Odds are, she'll be fine. As I maintain, kids get random fevers all the time. Caetlin is just more dramatic about it. More updates as events warrant.

My Girls

2009-04-10T19:53:00.004-04:00

As I mentioned over on Facebook, this is the best picture I have managed to take of my girls. It kind of captures their relationship at this point pretty well, I think. Caetlin is enthusiastic about Phoebe...maybe a little too enthusiastic for Phoebe's taste. The visible hand holding Phoebe's head is just a nice touch.

Phoebe at 1 Month- The Stats

2009-04-07T17:35:00.004-04:00

We went to the pediatrician today for Phoebe's one month checkup (for those of you keeping score, she turned 1 month old yesterday). Here are her vitals:

Weight- 10 pounds, 7 ounces, a growth of 2 pounds, 10 ounces since birth (and over three pounds since her post-birth weight loss). This is right at the 90th percentile for baby girls, per the CDC's growth charts.

Length- 22 inches, a growth of 1.5 inches since birth. This is also at the 90th percentile.

Head circumference- 14.5 centimeters, which is at the 50th percentile. She has her daddy's small head, apparently.

So, she's growing great. The doctor was also impressed with her alertness, and seemed pleased when we mentioned she was starting to smile a bit- mostly around the eyes, but also with her mouth, in her sleep sometimes. She looks perfect, and is healthy as can be. We still had some concerns regarding the amount she spits up, as I mentioned before, but the diagnosis is still overfeeding. Not on my part, on her part. She just doesn't quite get when to stop sometimes. The doctor basically said if it happens every time she eats or starts to really bother her, then we might have an issue, but otherwise, keep feeding on demand and not worry about the spit up.

I also discussed the vaccination schedule with the pediatrician. Because Caetlin has such a history of febrile seizures, at least two of which have occurred on the same day as her shots, I wanted to space the shots out a tiny bit, just so as to not stress Phoebe's system in the event she is prone to seizures as well. At least once with Caetlin, she had an undiagnosed infection the day of her shots that contributed to the fever, but the fact remains that her fever may have been driven up by the shots. The doctor agreed with me that there was ample evidence to space out the shots a bit, so we're going to be doing two at a time, rather than a whole bunch at a time. It means a few more visits, but I'm okay with that, if it reduces the chance of Phoebe having a seizure from a vaccination-induced fever. Maybe it won't; maybe the shots have not had anything to do with Caetlin's fevers and subsequent seizures. But it's worth the extra time. I'm a big proponent of vaccines and will not be the parent that skips them or fails to bring the baby in for the extra visits.

All in all, a good visit. Phoebe is growing like crazy!

Happy Easter! (Early)

2009-03-29T21:13:00.005-04:00

Today after Mass the Marrieds Group at church had its annual Easter egg hunt. After the eggs were all found (within minutes, of course), everyone adjourned to the playground across the street for cupcakes and juice boxes.

Caetlin had a red cupcake.

She enjoyed the frosting first.

With the spoils of the egg hunt.

Then smiled at me after finishing.

It's awesome watching her eat a cupcake.

Three Funny Stories

2009-03-29T19:02:00.004-04:00

Okay, enough with the depressing for a minute. I have three different, funny, true stories from my life the past few days.

1. The Footwear Incident
Friday, I met Bruce and a good friend with whom I work for lunch. It was nice to get out of the house and see my friend, with whom I had lunched pretty regularly before I went on leave. She drove Bruce to the restaurant and I met them there, but I ended up driving Bruce back to the office afterward, just for a few more minutes with my hubby.

In the car, Bruce looked at me and said, "Did you know that when I left the house this morning, I was wearing a hiking boot on one foot and a dress shoe on the other??"

When I caught my breath from laughing, I looked down and saw that he had put on white sneakers that had been in the car. With black pants and a polo shirt. It made me laugh all over again. At least they matched, I guess. Each other, anyway. After I stopped laughing again I had to assure him that I had most definitely not been aware when he left that morning of his, um, shoe situation.

2. The Full Moon
I have mentioned over on Facebook that Caetlin is going through a phase where she's taking off her clothes and diaper in her crib. Partly it is a potty training thing- we're deep into it now, with her regularly going on the potty, if not terribly reliably. And part of it is a sleep-delay tactic. She's giving us and her nanny fits, requiring three sheets changes per nap, and covering all her sleeping accouterments- Elmo, Flat Bear, her two blankies, her pillows, and her covers, plus whatever other stuffed animal may be sleeping with her at the time- in the waste product of the day. This is an awesome stage, I must confess.

So last night, we put her down, and while we normally watch her on the video monitor to make sure she's not taking her clothes off, the monitor battery was dead, and neither of us felt like getting the charger for it. We didn't hear much from her room anyway, and we knew she was really tired, so we assumed she fell asleep pretty quickly and left it at that, attending to the details of feeding Phoebe, feeding ourselves, watching TV, relaxing from the day, etc.

A couple of hours later, we're trooping back to the bedroom to try and get some sleep, where we finally plugged in the monitor. I turned it on and peered at the picture, checking on Caetlin. What confronted me was startling and hilarious: my daughter's bare bottom, a full moon, glowing into the night vision camera. She had passed out face down, completely naked, a result of taking off her one piece pajamas in order to take her diaper off.

We went in and changed her and changed her sheets, which were sopping wet. Caetlin had to have been cold- we keep it cool in the house and I have no idea how she was sleeping so deeply on cold wet bedding, naked. She went back to sleep immediately, and I was left to continue chuckling over the picture of her bare ass that greeted me when I turned the monitor on.

3. The Church Do-Si-Do
I took both the girls to church with me this morning, to give Bruce some kid-free time and for me to get holy. I had intended to put Caetlin into the nursery, but I was running late and I wasn't sure where the nursery was, as we've never taken her there, and so I just took her with me. How bad could it be? I thought.

(Aside: never, as a parent, think, "How bad can it be?" and then continue to do whatever you're thinking about. If you think, "How bad can it be?" the answer is, invariably, much, much worse than what you're prepared for. Just stop if you think those 5 little words. Really. Not worth it, ever.)

I wasn't dumb enough to try to take both girls to the cathedral Mass, so we instead went to the Mass held in the parish hall, which has a higher than average proportion of children and is easier to get in and out of. I had Phoebe in a sling at my hip, and Caetlin motored under her own power. Everything was great at first. Caetlin was glad to be hanging out with me, no matter how many times I asked her to use her whisper voice, and she was really, really good, staying confined to our little two-chair area, playing with things she found in the diaper bag, etc.

Then the homily ran long. I knew we were in for it when I looked at my watch, and 50 minutes had gone by, and we were only at the beginning of the Eucharist. Of course I hadn't been able to pay much attention to the homily because of wrangling Caetlin, but I figured I could still take Communion, which has always been central to me. Caetlin had started to melt down a little, starting when I took my lipstick from her that she found in my purse. I had let her play with it for a long time, actually, since she wasn't hurting anything, and it would cause more of a scene to take it from her, but when I realized she was getting it all in her hair (at least it was a good color for her), I just grabbed it. That, predictably, didn't go over well.

Then they called our row with no advance warning, sending us up the center aisle instead of down the side as expected. I had to usher Caetlin, who was feeling contrary, out and into the procession. She decided that she wasn't going to go, and laid flat down on the floor.

I tried to get out of the way of those behind me, Phoebe swinging loose in her sling from my hip as I bent over Caetlin with murder in my eyes (not very Godly, I admit). I ultimately had to pick Caetlin up and carry her to the priest so I could receive Communion. I had 9.5 pounds of Phoebe on my right hip, 30 pounds of Caetlin on my left hip, and I was on a mission; I was going to take Communion if it killed us all. Caetlin smacked me all the way up the aisle, too, on my arm and on my face, over and over and over. I marched grimly on.

I reached the priest, finally, and he blessed Caetlin and gave me my piece of the host. I tried to direct his attention to my hip, where Phoebe slept in the sling, pulling the sling open with my non-Caetlin-holding hand, trying to mumble around my mouthful of dry host, "Can you bless her please?" Meanwhile, Caetlin's hands are reaching out for the piece of host that the clueless priest is holding out, and he was about to hand it to her, and I realized at that minute that Phoebe wasn't getting blessed today. I whisked Caetlin away, her grasping fingers closing on empty air instead of the proffered piece of bread, seeing the bewilderment and confusion in the priest's eyes at just how weird that little interlude was.

I reached our seats with something like gratitude smothered in murderous rage at my brat daughter. I picked up our things and took us out, before the end of the service, needing to get out, feeling as though everyone had witnessed my strange little Communion shuffle (of course, they hadn't). What had I been thinking, taking both kids and not insisting that Caetlin go to the nursery? How bad could it be? Worse than I imagined. At least Caetlin didn't start screaming. That would have been much worse. She did, however, decide to lie flat again in the middle of the hallway outside. I saw a nice man stoop to try and help me, before he realized that no, she wasn't hurt, just being obnoxious. He backed away like she had the plague. I couldn't really blame him. I wanted to do the same thing, myself.

Update

2009-03-27T21:46:00.002-04:00

We're not moving. When we told our landlord we were considering it, he dropped $250 off the monthly rent. That's not something we could pass up.

I am sad about the house. It was kind of an important emotional thing, since it seems like we haven't had much good going on around here lately, and in fact mostly have been horribly stressed and worried for the last 4 months or so. I had latched onto the new house as a place to spread out a little, mentally as well as physically. But moving wouldn't be the prudent thing, not when we have a much lower rent combined with none of the costs of moving- hiring someone to help with the furniture, the security deposit, etc.

So we're not moving. In more ways than one, it seems sometimes.

Professional Phoebe and Caetlin Pics

2009-03-25T23:26:00.004-04:00

We took Phoebe and Caetlin to a wonderful photographer today, Paul Wendl in Alpharetta. The session was mostly to focus on Phoebe, but he took a few of the whole family, a few of Caetlin and Phoebe together, and a few of Caetlin by herself. He has published a few of the many wonderful pictures on his blog. Go here to see what I believe to be some unretouched shots from today's session.

A Couple of Notes

2009-03-25T22:59:00.002-04:00

Something I meant to mention awhile ago: a week after Phoebe was born, Bruce ended up in the emergency room with excruciating abdominal pain. After a number of tests that ruled out the big things like cancer and a heart attack, the emergency room sent him home with a referral to a GI specialist and prescriptions for Vicodin and Nexium, which more or less controlled the pain. While the pain faded after a couple of days, and we were pretty convinced that he had just had a really bad case of food poisoning, he had an ultrasound of his gall bladder done last Friday. The results came back yesterday: gall stones. His GI doctor is recommending removal. He's having a surgical consult to investigate his options, as the potential side effects of removal worry him greatly.

We took Phoebe to the doctor this morning. She worried us with several episodes of vomiting, which my crack internet searching revealed might be a symptom of pyloric stenosis. The nurse at the pediatrician's office wanted to see her for at least a weight check; if she had pyloric stenosis, she wouldn't be gaining weight appropriately. Our concerns were quickly alleviated at the doctor's office, as the scale showed she weighed 9 pounds even. She's gained 22 ounces in 13 days. As my friend Kelley says, I am a milk machine! The doctor looked her over, and she looks perfectly healthy, so the diagnosis is overfeeding. She isn't terribly good at telling me when she's finished, and I have so much milk that she overeats and then occasionally vomits it back up. The doctor is of the opinion that she will learn when to stop, plus the sphincter at the top of her stomach will also get stronger soon, so we should see a decrease in vomit soon. Thank goodness. I don't know if I could take it if another family member needed surgery.

Finally, we may be moving in the very near future. Our lease is up at the end of this month, and we recently saw another house for rent that we both liked very much. The new house is in the same neighborhood, and is essentially the same price, but is much bigger. We haven't entirely decided whether to take it or not, but we are leaning that way. It's really a perfect house for us, head and shoulders above our current place. Our main calculus is whether we should look for something cheaper, or try to negotiate a lower rent on our current house. The main drawback of this house is that it is the same price as our current rent, so we aren't exactly cutting costs, which would seem to be important at this time. Anyway, more details as decisions get made.

Sorry for the headline-news feeling of the last couple of posts. That's kind of the way life is for me right now.

Phoebe at 18 Days

2009-03-24T12:13:00.004-04:00

She sleeps.

And begins to wake.

News

2009-03-24T10:36:00.003-04:00

Some few pieces of news from the No Math household:

1. Caetlin has become ever more adept at using the potty! She has both urinated and pooped on the potty in recent days, some days more than once. We've been inadvertently helped by a really bad case of diaper rash, caused by the antibiotic that is treating her ear infection. (Yeah, she had an ear infection, diagnosed about a week ago. We can't seem to keep the child healthy.) Anyway, she's had a really terrible time with the diaper rash, and it has made her reluctant to urinate in her diaper, because it stings on the rash. So she holds it and goes in the potty. Voila! Toilet training through pain! I should write a book.*

It's been interesting to see Caetlin's response to the diaper rash. She's had it this bad before- the girl has a sensitive bottom. But she has never put up this much of a fight about changing her diaper before, where she wriggles and screams before anyone even touches her. Beyond being heartbreaking, it is also evidence, I think, that she is anticipating the pain, meaning she is starting to think about the future. With previous diaper rash incidents, the pain was immediate and then she forgot about it. This time she remembers that it hurts and anticipates that pain when it's time for a change. Very interesting to me.

2. Caetlin can also read a couple of words. This isn't actually new, so I might have posted about it before, but she can read her name and a couple of other words. They are sight words; she isn't quite ready for phonics and sounding words out yet, mostly because I don't think she grasps the concept of being able to read by herself. When she gets that and wants to read, it will be a snap to teach her, I think. She knows all her letters and the sounds that many of them make already. Anyway, Bruce was skeptical when I called it "reading" that she can recognize her name and a couple other words, but as I pointed out to him, reading is nothing but pattern recognition, and she recognizes and puts meaning to the pattern that is "Caetlin." Just because she can't sound words out doesn't mean she isn't reading these two or three sight words. I think it's pretty cool, regardless. And I'm reasonably confident that she'll be reading before 4.

3. Japan news- things appear to have stalled on the part of the client company. We do not think the position is dead in the water yet; as soon as the firm becomes convinced of that, we think Bruce will be laid off, which hasn't happened yet. However, as the economy continues to go south, both here and in Japan, the prospects for Bruce remaining employed, whether here or there, are looking grimmer every day. I just try to take things one day at a time and not focus on the insecurity. I especially try not to worry about my own job and try to have faith that I add enough value and that the firm wouldn't be so cruel as to lay us both off. I'm also hopeful that maybe when I return from leave, things will have picked up a bit. Fingers crossed.

4. Phoebe's hair is falling out. It remains to be seen whether it all falls out or just some of it. We're having pictures made tomorrow, so we can at least memorialize her birth hair, in the event that she turns into a bald baby. She is otherwise fine, growing like crazy and still an easygoing girl.

That's about all the news fit to print around here. Other than job and economic worries, we are all fine. Bruce and I are a little tired, but otherwise all is well.

I hope to have more pictures of Phoebe soon.

*I hope I don't have to clarify this, but making light of my daughter's painful diaper rash and the unintended (good) consequences thereof don't mean I'm glad for it. I fervently wish it had never happened, as I can't stand to see my big girl in so much pain. But sometimes one needs to find the funny where one can, you know?

Settling In

2009-03-17T20:23:00.004-04:00

I have to say that so far, managing two kids has not been as challenging as I thought it would be. *Frantically knocks all wood in immediate vicinity* Seriously, though, I am kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop with Phoebe. She is so far a tremendously easygoing baby. She sometimes cries when we change her diaper, and she cries when she's hungry. Very occasionally, like once in 11 days, she's cried for a minute or two because she had gas. If I can get to her before she's melting down with hunger (not too hard at this point), she might cry once per day. So far, there have been none of the random newborn freakouts. Caetlin was an easy child, but nothing like this. I'm sure the fact that my anxiety level is way, way down helps a lot.

Anyway, we'll keep our fingers crossed that Phoebe maintains this even temperament as she grows. And now, some random observations from chez No Math:

- As I mentioned, our anxiety level is way down regarding care and feeding of a newborn. I have none of the worry that we won't be able to keep Phoebe alive, like I did with Caetlin. That makes spending time with her and the rest of the family far more fun and less scary than I ever imagined it could be.

- As a corollary to the lowered anxiety, I don't have Mom Ears tuned quite as sensitively as they were with Caetlin, which is actually a good thing. Phoebe sleeps kind of loudly, making all kinds of grunts, snores, and squeaks in the night. I manage to sleep through most of that. With Caetlin, I woke up with every little noise. Now, I'm getting more sleep than I had hoped for.

- Nursing is going so much better than I ever expected, thanks to some timely intervention by a lactation consultant that I was smart enough to go see the day after we left the hospital. I was quite sore, and she helped me learn how to get Phoebe latched on well, so as to not hurt nearly as much. The initial first days caused a bit of soreness that is mostly healed now, which is a good thing because Phoebe is a nursing fool. She cluster feeds during most days, so by the end of the day I'm a little sore again, but it also means she sleeps for decent stretches at night- 5 or 6 hours- and I recover then. I nursed Caetlin, but I used nipple shields with her and she and I never learned to latch on correctly. I am convinced that is part of why Caetlin stopped nursing when I went back to work. I am hopeful that will not happen with Phoebe.

- Because of her voracious appetite, Phoebe is visibly growing. She's also pooing about every 30 seconds or so, often mid-diaper change. Awesome. Thankfully, breastmilk poop doesn't smell bad, a fact that I am grateful for when it comes bubbling out of her as I'm trying to clean her tiny bottom.

- Caetlin is apparently enchanted with "Baby Phoebe." She loves looking at her, and touching her occasionally. She talks about her all the time. She's also clearly thrilled that I am up and about and interacting with her more. She's a joy to be around (beyond being a typical 2.5 year old pain in the booty).

- Caetlin started just today calling me Mom and Bruce Dad. Where did she get this? I have no idea. Not from us; we've always referred to ourselves as Mommy and Daddy. She hasn't dropped Mommy and Daddy, but Mom and Dad have started to work their way in, and it makes her sound older than she is.

- I had my first post-partum alcoholic beverage tonight, a beer, and it tasted like nectar of the gods. So incredibly yummy.

- I feel wonderful. Really, really good. I have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating, because I just feel that good. I am happy that I can hang out with Caetlin without worrying about her hurting me, or that I'm doing too much. I am happy that I am sleeping better. I am happy that I can eat a turkey sandwich without worrying about listeria, that I can drink that aforementioned beer, that I can imagine going out to a restaurant and having a great glass of wine that completely complements the meal. I no longer have heartburn. I don't hurt from giving birth, haven't had a single pain pill. And there's this other thing. I'm a little embarrassed to say this, because I am so happy about it, but it's so atypical and I had nothing to do with it, but I still remain really happy about it.

Okay, I'll whisper it:

I'm back into non-maternity clothes. And I'm only 9 pounds off my pre-pregnant weight.

I don't mean to throw that into anyone's face. Again, I had nothing to do with it. I'm just lucky this time. And I'm so happy about it, no looking a gift horse in the mouth for me. It helps me feel better all over to feel like I look good physically.

Anyway, that's what's happening around here these days. It's your average brand new baby, second child, toddler parenting situation, and we're happy. I'm happy. Things are good.

Isn't She Lovely, Made of Love

2009-03-15T08:41:00.000-04:00

Early Friday morning, March 6, seems like so long ago.

Bruce and I woke a little late, showered, finished packing the bag and headed off for a light breakfast. We were both moving slowly, worn out and exhausted in the early morning sun. We got to the hospital a little late, but they checked us in right away and set me up in a labor and delivery room. The monitors were set, the IV was inserted, the Pitocin was started, and all we had to do was wait.

The contractions started coming regularly some time after the Pitocin was begun. It took some fairly high dose to get them regular, but once they started regularly, we were on our way. My wonderful friend Kelley came in at some point in the mid-afternoon; she had driven all the way up from her home in south Georgia to be with me for the weekend. She's my oldest friend, and is in school with ambitions to be a labor and delivery or nursery nurse, so besides being greatly supportive for me, it was a matter of professional interest for her. I was thrilled to have her there. Anyway, it took a number of hours before the contractions started to be painful; I watched TV on the computer with Bruce and chatted with Kelley while I waited for things to happen. The nurses kept offering me pain medication, but it honestly didn't hurt any more than the Braxton-Hicks contractions I'd been having for the last two months. The doctor came in and broke my water around midday. That was an experience; since he was having trouble snagging the bag with the hook, it felt like he was rooting around somewhere near my sternum for an extended period of time.

The contractions got painful, but bearable, sometime after my water was broken. I hung in there as long as I possibly could, but asked for IV pain medicine around 4 p.m. I was only 3-4 centimeters dilated at that point, and I really wanted to wait until 5 centimeters before I asked for the epidural. I remain convinced that the epidural slowed my labor with Caetlin, and I was determined to hang in there as long as possible to prevent that from happening here. The IV pain medicine took the edge off for another hour or so, and I breathed through another handful of stronger contractions and then asked for the anesthesiologist.

The nurse sprang into action, apparently having been waiting for something to do for me. She ushered my wonderful friend Kelley out of the room, turned up my IV fluids, and started setting up for the epidural. The doctor came in and performed the procedure; it went pretty well, as these things go. I was laid back down on the bed and watched for side effects and complications. Unfortunately, I was laid down flat, and became really uncomfortable. Then the nurse indicated that they were having a hard time tracking Phoebe's heart rate because mine was so high, they couldn't tell whether they were monitoring hers or mine. Tachycardia is not a common side effect of an epidural, and soon I had several nurses, the anesthesiologist and my doctor in the room trying to determine what, if anything, was wrong with me. The nurses were having trouble placing the internal scalp monitor on Phoebe's head and getting it to read consistently. I was uncomfortable, and a little scared, although I understood at that point that nothing was wrong with Phoebe. I honestly thought, not that I am suggesting I know more medicine than the personnel in the room, but I truly believed that if they had let me sit up or turn on my side to get more comfortable, and then left me alone for 10 minutes, I could relax and my heart rate would go down. That didn't happen, of course.

I tried relaxing as much as I could, given the frantic atmosphere in the room. I will say that from the two doctors, I got a vibe that they were more interested in understanding what was happening as a matter of professional curiosity, rather than that this was something to get worked up over. The nurses gave the vibe of an emergency, which was somewhat disconcerting. An EKG was performed, which was normal. My heart began to slow a bit. Then they lost Phoebe's monitor, and my nurse called for backup, "I need some help here!" The other nurse came in at a sprint, and my heart rate went way back up again. The anesthesiologist happened to be standing near me right then, and asked me how I was feeling. I noted that I had been starting to relax until all of this started, waving my hands around vaguely at the nurses.

I need to digress briefly here to say that my nurse, Claire, was lovely all day. Her backup, Heather, was, ah, lacking in the bedside manner department. Heather was the nurse who came in at a sprint when Claire called for help in monitoring Phoebe. When I made the comment to the anesthesiologist about all the activity in the room having made my heart rate go back up, Heather heard me and said, "Oh, sometimes we just move a little fast, that's all."

Now, I am not stupid. I realize Heather had not been caring for me all day, and maybe could be forgiven for not realizing that I am not stupid, but I did not appreciate being patronized at that particular moment. I could easily perceive that she and Claire, at least, thought there was something wrong that required quick action, and even though I tried to take my cue from the doctors that nothing was wrong, my increasing heartbeat betrayed me.

Finally, though, they got Phoebe monitored well, and the ping pong of her heartbeat, strong and steady, filled the room. They all left me, Kelley came back in, and I was able to get comfortable and really relax.

Except I wasn't. The epidural was wonderful, in that I remained able to wiggle my toes and move my legs and retain some sensation in my lower body. When I had Caetlin, I was completely numb from the waist down, until I laid on one side and the medication drained out of the other. I was actually grateful for that, even though it meant some of the pain was back, because at least I could feel something. Here was a much nicer experience, where I had a good amount of feeling, and even a little pain with the contractions, but it was completely bearable. Anyway, by the time everything calmed down, I had started to feel really uncomfortable pressure, like I needed a toilet immediately. I mentioned this to Claire, and she said, that's great, you're close to being able to push, I bet. Call me when it feels constant, not just pressure with the contraction.

I waited. I chatted with Kelley and Bruce, and I waited, and I grew more uncomfortable. I probably waited longer than strictly necessary, because when I called for the nurse, the doctor came in and checked me and said, "You're completely dilated. Looks like it's time to push." He left the room, promising to be back for delivery, and the nurse (a different nurse, as the shift had changed) and Bruce helped me hold my legs to push. I pushed through one contraction- and it felt so wonderful to give in to the urge to try and relieve that pressure!- and then another, and maybe one more, and then I felt the pain that meant that Phoebe's head was crowning. The nurse had realized that I was not going to be pushing for very long, and had already paged the doctor, mere moments after he left the room, but he hadn't shown back up yet. The nurse told me to breathe through the contraction, to try and wait for the doctor to arrive, and that may have been the hardest thing I've ever done. I did it through a second contraction, and marveled between the pains that the doctor hadn't shown up yet. I could feel the urgency, the immediacy of birth, and not pushing took superhuman effort. (Kelley later told me that at that point, maybe an inch or so of Phoebe's head was already out, meaning I wasn't going to be able to hold her back for long.)

When the third contraction came, I tried to breathe again as it ramped up, and I whimpered, "It hurts," to no one in particular, and the nurse said, "Just do what you have to do, sweetie." With the largest relief I can ever remember feeling, and gratefulness, I gave one long, hard push, and felt Phoebe's head pop out- like a champagne cork, like I remember Caetlin's doing as well. I gave a long groan, a product of the release of that awful pressure more than of pain, and the rest of Phoebe's body slithered out with no extra effort from me. She was born on the bed between my legs, delivered by the nurse.

I heard her cry immediately, and looked down and there she wriggled, covered in blood and goop. They wiped her off a little and handed her to me, and I tried to put her to breast but she was too angry at the disruption of her warm, dark home, at having been thrust into this cold, bright place. She cried non-stop for the first 20 minutes of her life, only stopping after she had been wrapped up, clean and warm and brought back to me. So I held her and looked at her in wonder, she with her mouth screaming open, and watched Bruce cut her umbilical cord, and saw her large amounts of dark hair (the old wives' tale about heartburn was right in this case). She was clearly perfect, healthy and strong.

The doctor finally came in at some point during all this, having never received his page. He apologized so profusely; I felt worse for him than for myself for his having missed Phoebe's big entrance. He found out later the cell service had a nearby tower that was down, so pages didn't come through. He was appalled and clearly very upset, but the hard work was upon him anyway. The delivery was easy; getting me together afterward was a little more challenging. I apparently bled pretty freely, and lost more blood than was strictly good for me. I didn't need a transfusion, thankfully, but I did stay hooked up to the IV for another day, so I could continue to receive Pitocin to help my uterus contract sufficiently to stop the bleeding. He also stitched me up- I had two really small tears, minor skid marks, really, that required a couple of stitches each. When all was finished, I was horribly woozy from blood loss, and when the nurse brought me apple juice, it was the best thing I ever tasted, raising my blood sugar to a level where I could think clearly. After I was moved to my post-partum room, I was able to order food, which also helped.

Phoebe started nursing at some point after all the ministrations were done, and she suckled for an hour without stopping. I took that as a good sign that our breastfeeding journey might go well together. They took her off to the nursery for her various tests and examinations, and wheeled me down the hall to my room, where I was unable to sleep because of hormones and adrenaline (I remember that from Caetlin too, only because she was born in the morning, that energy was expended during the day. This time I just lay awake looking at the ceiling and trying to get comfortable).

The rest is denoument. My IV came out Saturday afternoon, as my bleeding was well under control and my uterus was in great shape. I was up and walking around within a few hours of Phoebe's birth, and I was in very little pain. Kelley stayed with me most of the day on Saturday, so Bruce could be with Caetlin and his folks, and then I was discharged on Sunday (Caetlin was suffering from a little cold, so we didn't bring her to visit me in the hospital). I filled the pain medication prescriptions I was given, but I haven't taken any of the pills- haven't needed so much as an Advil. My blood pressure trended down while I was in the hospital, and though I haven't checked it since I've been home, I feel so much better, I have to believe it's lower. I feel so incredibly good- even though I am dealing with the whiplash psychological strangeness of being Not Pregnant instead of Pregnant, I am just so happy to feel physically well. No more heartburn, I'm sleeping better (not quantity, but definitely quality), no more being stuck in bed.

When they discharged us from the hospital, I felt the sun and warm breeze on my face as I climbed into the car. I looked with wonder up at the beautiful blue sky. Phoebe slept peacefully in the car seat. I blinked, having not been outside in two days, having been pregnant the last time I breathed fresh air, now having a new life in my care. It was only two days, but- in all respects, in every way- it was a lifetime.

New Moon

2009-03-08T08:31:00.004-04:00

Happy Birthday, La Segunda!

2009-03-07T01:14:00.004-05:00

It is my awed and overjoyed pleasure to announce the birth of one Phoebe Elizabeth, formerly known as La Segunda, this evening, March 6, at 7:10 p.m. She weighs 7 pounds, 13 ounces, is approximately 20.5 inches long, has a ton of dark hair and is already a champion nurser. I will post pics as soon as I can.

Yes, it is late. No, I can't sleep. I blame an under-air conditioned room, hormones, an uncomfortable sinus stuffiness, etc. The baby will be here to eat in another 10 minutes anyway, so I figured I would take the opportunity to make the announcement here, even though I don't have pics downloaded yet.

Anyway, I hereby retire the "La Segunda" tags, and use a new one for the very first time: "Phoebe." Sorry for my ramblings but I thought you might like to know that she's here and we're both fine. Pictures and a comprehensive birth story will follow later.

Happy birthday, Miss Phoebe!

Things to Look Forward To

2009-03-04T16:50:00.003-05:00

Here are the things that I am dreaming about, knowing that they will immediately get better upon delivery of Segunda:

- No more heartburn. It's pretty rare that I suffer from heartburn in a non-pregnant state, so it's not something I'm used to coping with in normal life. And this pregnancy has been killer on the heartburn, consistent, persistent, always there. Around 30 weeks or so, I started startling awake in the middle of the night, having burped a large amount of bile into my mouth in my sleep. Not only was this gross and uncomfortable, but it was also scary, as I kept flailing awake, convinced I was about to drown in my sleep. A couch cushion has propped me more or less upright ever since then. I hate this stupid couch cushion. It's all only gotten worse since being more or less confined to bed. I hate heartburn. I positively loathe the taste of the various antacids I've been taking more or less constantly. I well know from Caetlin that heartburn stops almost immediately. Can. Not. Wait.

- Being able to breathe deeply. You never realize how much you take that one for granted until you can't any more. I routinely gasp for air, especially since my nose doesn't work as well as I wish I did in the aftermath of my cold. I try to clear my passages of the nasty infernal post-nasal drip and halfway through I realize my available oxygen has run out and I better breathe in quick. My lungs, located as they currently are somewhere around my collarbones, just don't have the capacity I think they do right now. Halfway through a big bite of food or something, I have to stop and open my mouth to breathe. Yeah, that's lovely. For me and my dining companions. This too, as I well know, will improve almost immediately on delivery.

- Being able to move around more freely. I might not want to get up and take a stroll right after delivery, but I will be able to turn over without the aid of heavy machinery. And though the belly will still be there, I'll be able to actually elbow it out of the way in order to get comfortable. A related bonus: I'll be able to lie comfortably on my back for longer than about a minute. When I am ready to get out of bed and move around, it will be minus 15 pounds, give or take, all from my immediate abdomen, so my center of gravity goes back to normal right away. I can bend over without danger of falling. Heck, I can bend. That will be a big improvement.

- Better sleep. Stay with me here- I know what sleep with a newborn means. But all I am able to do right now, even with Ambien's help, is to doze often, rarely sinking down into the depths of a dream-filled sleep. I was sleeping so well this morning, and the City of Atlanta decided to start some road maintenance right outside our window at precisely 7:00 a.m. this morning. I still slept through half of it; that's how tired I am. I drowse all afternoon unless I am sitting up. I get sleepy in front of the TV at night. But it never leads to deep, refreshing sleep. It's not that I am counting on the quantity of sleep to get better, but I am pretty sure the quality of the sleep will improve, especially minus all the other things I have mentioned above.

Did I mention no more heartburn? That's a big one for me. Though we'll see if the old wives' tale about excessive heartburn meaning the baby has lots of hair is true in my case.

Anyway, I'm reduced to dreaming about these things right now as diversion for the last day and half or so. I go back to the doctor tomorrow morning to see if I should check into the hospital tomorrow evening for some preparatory measures that ought to help Friday's induction, specifically Cervidil (a drug suppository that stays in overnight that helps ripen the cervix and make it more amenable to labor) and possibly a stripping of the membranes. If I haven't made any progress since Tuesday, my doc will likely suggest I meet him back at the hospital tomorrow afternoon to take these measures, with the actual induction scheduled for 7:30 Friday morning. I actually want to be in the hospital, for a change of scenery, for being able to forget about anything happening to my kid or house as being out of my hands, for feeling like we're getting somewhere, finally.

Not much longer now. Thank goodness.

Still...Pregnant

2009-03-02T16:20:00.003-05:00

I have very little to add to the title except a couple of late pregnancy/bed rest observations:

1. I was all (kind of, anyway) excited about passing "all or part of my mucous plug upon my arrival at the hospital" yesterday. Progress! Stuff happening! Even though I know it has no bearing on when labor will actually start! Yeah, that excitement has worn off now, as it has become evident that what passed yesterday afternoon was only part of the plug, and as for the remainder...ew. I know, I know, even saying that much is kind of gross and too much information, but please bear with the lonely bedridden lady slowly going crazy from lack of human contact. And now suffering from the indignities of the mucous plug on top of it. Ew. Just...ew. That can really stop any time.

2. The Ambien made me a new person this morning. I won't say it was the best sleep I've ever gotten; it's not like the drug can also expand my bladder to three times its capacity just so I don't have to get up in the middle of the night. But it was deep sleep, for hours (plural!) at a time. It actually took two pills, one at 9 and one at midnight, to really put me down for the count. That's how ridiculously tired I was, how ingrained the insomnia cycle. I am probably going to head there again tonight, just to really try to be well tomorrow. I've been sleeping a good bit today as well. I will say the Ambien was a pleasant surprise for me- I could get up and move around and take care of my needs while on it, when I had been expecting to be completely knocked out.

3. As much as I contract when I move around, I wonder if bed rest is actually prolonging the pregnancy.

4. Bed rest is making me feel like a slug. Like I am becoming one with my bed, and not in a good way. Like I will at some point become an object of curiosity and ridicule: "Look, mommy! Why does that lady need that man's help to turn over? She hasn't left her bed in 10 years? And she's 15 years pregnant? WOW. Look at the BIG lady."

That is all from the House of the Hugely Pregnant. Back to the doctor first thing tomorrow morning.

Back In The Hospital Again

2009-03-01T18:41:00.002-05:00

I spent several hours in the hospital today for extended monitoring, since my own checks of my blood pressure had shown that it was up quite a bit higher than I wanted to see. It came down almost immediately in the hospital, the monitoring of the baby shows that she's still doing great, and the blood work that they drew was fine, so they sent me home. I expected that, assuming that the pressure came down. I'm sure it was up in part because I'm still not sleeping. My doctor prescribed a few pills of Ambien for me, but I haven't taken them, in part reacting to her ambivalence about prescribing sleeping pills. The nurse who cared for me today gave me a very persuasive pitch for breaking the cycle of insomnia, getting myself rested and healthy, and noted that the baby will metabolize quite a bit less of the drug than I will (and it's not a high dose anyway). I was and am so grateful for her kind and informative words- I am nearly in tears right now contemplating a good night's sleep.

In other news, I passed all or part of my mucous plug upon my arrival at the hospital. Sorry if that is TMI. That doesn't really mean much but I'm trying to be optimistic that it means labor is near. I didn't have that with Caetlin, as labor was not in any way close to being started when I was induced.

Also: I missed the snow, mostly. It had just started when I headed to the hospital; I watched it fall outside my room window all afternoon, big fluffy flakes that accumulated on the grass and bushes. It changed to rain more or less right when we pulled out of the parking garage on the way home, though it still remains on lawns and sidewalks, probably to freeze into ice tonight and make tomorrow's commute wonderful. At least I don't have to deal with that bit.

Insomnia

2009-02-27T04:56:00.004-05:00

It's nearly 5 a.m. I've slept maybe an hour or 45 minutes between 2 and 3 a.m. And maybe another 30 minutes between 12:30 and 1 a.m.? Hard to tell. It hasn't been much, or good or deep sleep, though, that I can attest.

It's been like this, to one degree or another, for about 2 weeks. Some nights I get 4 hours. That hasn't actually happened for awhile, and I would be so incredibly grateful to get 4 hours at this point. Lately it's been more like what I described above: an hour here, half an hour there, plus lots of sleepy dozing and looking at the clock in between. There may be, in fact probably is, sleep happening there, but it's not the good and restful kind, the kind that assuages tired. It's the kind where you don't realize you've slept at all. And the tired just hangs on.

And I am tired. I can feel it in my bones, how tired I am. And I am sleepy too- at some point every night I nod off in front of the TV or computer or whatever book I am reading. And then wake up an hour later, ready to begin my horrible now-routine of doze, toss, turn, arrange pillows, try for change of scenery, doze on guest bed, doze over book or computer, drink the water I habitually keep next to the bed, and pee. I probably go to the toilet every 45 minutes these nights. I drink because I am bored and thirsty, the result of pregnancy and Sudafed. I get up to pee more or less for the same reasons. It gives me something to do.

I just somehow seem to have lost the knack for falling asleep and staying that way.

Google "pregnancy insomnia" and you get lots of burbling advice about managing heartburn, leg cramps, needing to go to the bathroom, and physical discomfort because of the baby belly. Sometimes they might also mention the anxiety of having a baby as a factor. But it doesn't seem like they mean what I'm going through when they talk about "taking a warm bath before bed" as a way to help ease into sleep.

Plus, it doesn't feel like those things are the problem. I'm not hugely uncomfortable- I mean, I am, but I have lived, and slept, with it before. I have thankfully been spared the leg cramps. And if I treated the heartburn before I went to sleep- back when I was actually getting sleep- it didn't bother me most nights, and most others a second swig of Maalox would take care of it. When I was able to sleep, I got up to go to the bathroom maybe twice a night. And I don't feel particularly anxious about things. I mean, yes, there is a huge amount of stressful things happening in my life right now, no question. But it's not as though I lie awake worrying about whether to fire the nanny (still a question) or what's happening with Bruce and Tokyo (answer: nothing, right now, which drives me crazy). I almost never think of these things in the middle of the night. Mostly I try to clear my head and think of nothing, trying to relax, though lately I have been tormented with various Wiggles songs that get stuck in my head.

I will say there is one source of anxiety that rears its scary, ugly head in the dark times before dawn. What if I will never sleep again? What if I have the baby but I don't ever get to dream again, or wake feeling rested, or even unrested but knowing I had been sleeping deeply before Segunda's cries woke me? What if this is my life from now on? Because I am reasonably convinced that this is pregnancy related in some form or fashion, most days I can shrug it off with a "this too shall pass" kind of resignation. Certainly it's not that hard to function during my activity limited days, though occasionally I worry about being sleepy on the drive to or from the doctor's office. But mostly I doze my way through the days more or less the same as I do the nights, never really falling asleep, usually being awakened by the phone ringing or email buzzing or children in the house or leaf blowers outside my window.

But at night, that's when I worry that things will never be "back to normal" in the sleep department. And I wonder how long I can be functional, how long can I be sane, under these circumstances. It's not a nice thing to contemplate.

I try all the tricks I've ever used: progressive relaxation, focusing on my breathing, clearing my head. Just lying still and keeping my eyes closed used to work at least half the time. Now I just drowse in a strange combination of bored and sleepy combined with a compulsion to look at the clock every five minutes. I've never not been able to sleep and I almost don't know how to behave.

I might have mentioned I'm off to the doctor again this morning, and I'm going to ask for something prescription to help me sleep. I have no idea what might be safe, but I need a good night's sleep, in the way that I need air and food right now. And I will try- assuming that regular sleep comes back into my life- never to take it for granted ever again.

Please pray for me. If you don't pray, please think good sleep filled thoughts for me. I need them. I need something, anyway.

Segunda Update: Still Pregnant

2009-02-26T22:52:00.003-05:00

I'm still pregnant. Today was 39 weeks. My blood pressure is still high, though still high-normal, so not requiring immediate induction. At my appointment on Tuesday, my regular OB indicated that there is no cervical change; everything was still closed up tight. That can change quickly, of course, but given that my due date is a week from today, it was a little disheartening. We set a definite induction date of next Friday, March 6, if baby hasn't made her appearance by then.

I have a cold that has so far *knock wood* been pretty mild, and I hope to be sufficiently over it when it's time to have the baby, whatever time that is. It's been annoying at worst, but it's also making it tough for me to sleep. I think the bed rest is also interrupting my sleep, in that I suspect I am not active enough for me to sleep at night. I'm getting 1-3 hours of uninterrupted sleep a night, and the rest of the time I am awake every 20 minutes or so. I'm not ever getting into a deep sleep. I can feel that I am tired and sleepy, and yet I can't slip over the edge to sleep. It is so much worse than the sleep deprivation was with newborn Caetlin. I am resolved to ask my doctor tomorrow about some kind of sleeping pill. I need to rest to get better, to keep my blood pressure down, to rest up for labor and delivery.

So, I see the doctor again tomorrow morning. Hopefully there will be progress. But not too much! I have some stuff to do Saturday that I would very much like to accomplish. After that- well, any time, Segunda. Any time.

One Thing Down

2009-02-23T19:12:00.003-05:00

Well, we got Caetlin's surgery behind us today. It was a very quick procedure, as promised, and the surgery center was actually running ahead of schedule, so we went home at 1:30 this afternoon, after having arrived at 10:30 that morning.

She woke up early purely by chance this morning, though we needed to get her up early anyway so she could have some Jello and juice for breakfast (no solids allowed), which she had to finish by 8:30. We had talked about going to the doctor, and how they would help her have a nap and when she woke up Mommy and Daddy would be there, and maybe her girl parts might be a little sore, but I'm not sure how much of it sunk in. She was super cooperative at the surgery center, though, especially in taking the vitals. When the nurse pulled out the blood pressure cuff, she stuck out her ankle and pulled up her pants leg (they mostly took her blood pressure in her leg when she was in the hospital, as that was usually more accessible). The nurse was amazed at how good she was, and we had to admit that it was because of her recent hospital stay.

They only let one person back with her when they put her under the anesthesia, which by default was Bruce. They said there may be gases in the room that would be problematic for the baby, so I was not allowed back. He described it as a typical operating room, brightly lit and with four or five people in there. He laid her down on the bed and she started getting really scared, and crying a little, especially when they put the mask on, of which I guess she had little warning. Then to watch her go under was kind of freaky, as her eyes rolled back in her head and she was gone.

We were led to a small post-op room to wait. The procedure itself only took 10-15 minutes, and when the urologist came to see us after, he told us that her right ureter was pretty badly misplaced, possibly worse than the tests have so far indicated. They corrected it with the injection of the Deflux material, and now it is a waiting game to see if the material stays put and holds fast over time.

After another 15 or 20 minutes, they brought her in on a bed. She was crying, clearly scared and upset, almost hysterical, which I had expected. Her condition was actually better than I expected it to be, post-anesthesia, frankly. The nurse helped untangle her IV and got her to me; she was basically standing on the bed climbing me to get away from the nurse, so the hardest thing was making sure the IV wasn't going to be pulled. Her gown had fallen off mostly, and she just sat on my lap, her head on my shoulder, covered by a blanket to keep her warm. We had the foresight to bring her blankets and paci and her stuffed tiger, and these things gave her comfort too. Eventually her sobs trailed off, and she fell asleep on me.

She slept that way for a good half an hour, while the nurse came in and discussed discharge instructions and mentioned that she wanted to see Caetlin drink some juice and keep it down before we could go home. At 1:15 we woke her up, and she drank half the sippy of juice we brought with us. She kept it down just fine, and besides being a tiny bit scratchy-voiced from the breathing tube, was basically herself again. The first thing she asked for was that the IV be taken off (completely understandable!), and when the nurse came to let us go home she was completely compliant in letting her pull the tape off, even going so far as to point out the remaining tape to the nurse.

Other than being a slight bit cranky, she's entirely herself, though it's unclear whether the cranky is because she's tired or a lingering effect of the anesthetic. She even went to the park with Bruce this afternoon and had a great time. She went down early and immediately- there weren't even any bedtime stories because she was just too tired. We were told there may be some slight burning on urination for the first couple of times, and we've witnessed that a couple of times this afternoon, so hopefully that's all behind her. There's a small risk of ureter obstruction over the next couple of days, but otherwise she should be completely fine. Diet and activity levels are all allowed to be normal.

We go back to the urologist in one month, to check her via ultrasound, and then will follow up with another of the dreaded VCUG exams in 2 or 3 months. Hopefully that will show that the abnormality (check out the photo at the link for a good picture of the problem) has been corrected by this procedure. As I may have mentioned, it won't stop her from getting UTIs, to the extent that she is susceptible to them. It should, however, stop them from getting to her kidneys. Assuming a normal VCUG, we can also stop giving her the prophylactic antibiotic, which we've all come to hate at this point (the new one tastes terrible, and we've had to resort to giving it to her in a small amount of ice cream every day).

Anyway, that's one thing down before Segunda. I see my regular OB tomorrow, at which point we'll nail down an induction date. I have something to do every day this week, so it is a busy week at this point. Saturday I am registered for a breastfeeding class that I am really hoping I can attend, so knock on wood that my health stays good and Segunda stays inside until Saturday afternoon.

In other news, I believe I've caught the cold that made its way between Bruce and Caetlin, despite not touching either one of them and having basically worn away the skin on my hands washing or alcohol-sanitizing them for the last 4 days. I'm so freaking annoyed at this, and worried about what it means for labor and delivery, and tired because I'm not sleeping enough, and generally cranky and tired of being stuck in my house, that I'm really not in a good place about everything right now. So it's nice to have one less thing to worry about, for once.

Segunda Update

2009-02-21T08:50:00.004-05:00

I had yet another doctor's appointment yesterday, at which my blood pressure was (surprise!) elevated, though not any more so than it has been. They also did another non-stress test, which I appear to be getting twice a week now.

Digression: very quick lay person's understanding of the non-stress test: the monitor measures baby's heart rate and uterine contractions. The baby's heart rate should increase, from an appropriate baseline, a certain number of beats per minute a certain number of times within a certain amount of time. It makes little "mountains" on the graph charting the heartbeat. Assuming baby's heart rate does the right thing, this is a sign that the baby is not in any distress from my high blood pressure- a "happy baby" as I have heard from the various nurses who have hooked me up to the monitors.

Anyway, yesterday, the baby started off swinging from my ribcage, as the nurse said, with a really high activity level and heart rate. Her heart rate never really went down enough to get a good baseline, plus my pressure didn't really come down as much as it has done in the past by resting in the office, so they sent me off to the hospital for additional monitoring.

Basically the monitoring in the hospital showed that everything was perfect, the baby was really happy, and my pressure was down as well. I think lying in a more comfortable bed as opposed to a hard exam table may have had something to do with it. I also think there was a slight bit of operator error in the setup of the monitors; for the last 15 minutes in the doctor's office I was holding the sensor in place with my hands and pressing down to keep it reading the baby's heartbeat. They are too nice in my doctor's office; the nurses don't want to strap the sensors down tightly enough for my comfort. In the hospital, the nurse had no problems strapping me in really tightly, which made me more relaxed and comfortable and helped get a more accurate reading.

So after that exciting but time consuming exercise that ultimately didn't change anything, we were sent home with rather more restrictive bed rest instructions and a direction to come back to the doctor Monday morning for a pressure check. I'm still pregnant, just not really able to leave the bed or couch much this weekend.

As Caetlin's surgery is currently scheduled for Monday, I am hoping and praying to keep the baby inside until that is over, though I am concerned they will postpone the surgery because she has a very slight cold. (Bruce has the cold as well, which means I am surrounded by people streaming infectious secretions from their noses and mouths and desperately trying not to touch anything they might have touched. I am reaching OCD levels of hand sanitizing and washing. I DO NOT want to have to go through labor and delivery with a head cold.)

So, all remains as well as possible, Segunda still on the inside. I'm set up for a long weekend in bed/on the couch. It's all a game of chicken right now. I see my regular doctor on Tuesday, and will likely then get a definite induction date. More updates to follow as more news develops.

OH! Also at yesterday's cervix check, I am 1 centimeter dilated, and still "thick" (meaning little or no effacement). By reaching for my tonsils, the doctor was able to touch Segunda's head, which was uncomfortable and strange. But encouraging! Stuff is happening! Considering I was closed up tight when I was induced with Caetlin (leading, I think, to my long- 26 hours- labor), this is huge news for me! Woo-hoo!

Of the Short Term and Longer Term Issues

2009-02-17T22:43:00.004-05:00

So, in order according to the issue that will impact us soonest: Caetlin, Segunda, and Tokyo.

Caetlin had to go back to the doctor today, for a catheterization to give the doctor a urine sample to make sure that the infection has been vanquished prior to her surgery next Monday. How I wish she were potty trained, so we didn't have to go through the catheterization process! She hates it, and fights it, and I have to help hold her down, and even though I know it is the right and necessary thing to do, it makes me feel like such a horrible Mommy. I'm supposed to keep her safe from everything that hurts her, and here I am facilitating pain in my dearest girl. I could have taken the easy way out and not gone to the doctor today, but I felt like I had to be there for her. Through her tears and screams, she had her eyes open and she was looking at me. Did I offer her comfort by being there, even though I was holding her down for the torture? I hope so. I really wanted to offer her comfort and make her less afraid. Anyway, the minute it was over, she was fine, of course. I hope she forgives me.

On the practical side, she has her surgery next Monday, assuming her urine is clear (it was immediately clear under the microscope, but they are also going to culture it too). It is, as I may have mentioned, outpatient, though she will have to be under general anesthesia. I asked her pediatrician about whether I should be freaked out by her being under a general, and she said absolutely not, the anesthesiologist is a pediatric anesthesiologist and does nothing but dose children all day long. She said the hardest thing will be seeing her come out of it, which wasn't terribly comforting. Here again, I could take the easy way out- it's probably not good for my blood pressure to be anxiously waiting for my daughter to come out of surgery- but I won't. I'll be there for her to hopefully help ease her through whatever terrible transition awakening from the drugs will mean for her.

On the Segunda front, I visited the doctor again today, and things appear to be the same. My blood pressure is still up, but comes down with rest almost immediately. If I really could do nothing but spend time on my left side, I would be golden. Unfortunately, of course, that is not feasible, so we are playing a game of chance. Can my pressure be sufficiently controlled with rest, to the point where it is not more harmful to me or the baby to leave her inside? It appears that it can, at least as of now. I am probably not taking my bed rest seriously enough, especially not during a three-day weekend where it was important to me to attend a good friend's daughter's baptism (I am her godmother, for crying out loud!), where I felt guilty and lazy for allowing Bruce to do all the Caetlin wrangling, where I felt I didn't see Caetlin enough as it is anyway, and where I simply couldn't bear to let my messy house and unwashed clothes remain messy and unwashed any longer (nor could I let Bruce do it all; see above for guilt).

My doctor remains out of town until early next week, and then is out of town again at the end of next week, so it looks like my probable induction date is March 4, if I haven't gone into labor spontaneously by then or if something hasn't happened to suggest that I should be induced even though my doctor isn't around to deliver. I said March 2 a few days ago, but apparently the call schedule has been rearranged. Anyway, when I see my doctor again next Tuesday, we will discuss it. I go back on Friday to see the other doctor I've been seeing while my doc is out of town.

We spoke a bit about my particular circumstances, and how they will affect my labor and delivery, and even if I start labor spontaneously, there is no possible way I will not be hooked immediately and continuously to the fetal monitor. That being the case, I will be confined to bed immediately on my arrival to the hospital. I had hoped to attempt a drug-free labor and delivery this time, and being more or less immobile is going to make that difficult. I know that, because I was monitored continuously with Caetlin too, and even though I was not attempting anything drug free at that time, I still felt confined and unable to really get comfortable. Anyway, it feels to me like I shouldn't even go in with any expectation of a drug-free birth, because it is just going to be too hard to try it under these circumstances. No walking around to labor, no changing positions to labor, no hot showers...it just seems like so many options are going to be taken away from me. And while I am no crunchy, Rikki Lake-style believer that an unmedicated birth is the only true way to have a baby, I had wanted to give it a try. At least a shot, to see if I could do it. And the odds are now pretty stacked against me being able to do it, which I'm not really surprised by. But I am still kind of disappointed.

That is all if labor actually starts spontaneously, which I'm not so sure that it will. If I am induced, that will be even one more thing keeping me immobile (the IV for the Pitocin), and one more thing making drug-free even harder (the Pitocin makes contractions come more closely together and more painful). I am hopeful that if I am induced, they won't break the amniotic sac right away, which they did with Caetlin, which also makes it more painful. Anyway, the reason I am not confident of spontaneous labor is because at today's cervix check, there is nothing happening. No change. Zip. Zilch. Nada. For all that I feel like I could go into labor at any minute, nothing is happening to actually make that a reality.

And finally, Tokyo. Here's the rundown on Tokyo, about which I haven't written much. Late last year, in the October-November time frame, Bruce was approached about a secondment with a Tokyo client. A secondment is a job at the company for a specific time frame or assignment, arranged in concert with the law firm. The firm gets a strengthened client relationship (assuming the lawyer does a good job) and the lawyer gets another professional avenue to explore. It's like trying on an in-house counsel job without having to actually switch jobs. And in this case, the job would be in Tokyo.

Bruce went through several rounds of interviews with partners in the firm, making sure he was a good fit for the firm to recommend to any potential client who might want a secondee. We were led to believe that there were several clients who had a need for someone. There were also discussions about me, and finding a secondment for me as well, for the whole family relocating to Tokyo. We researched typical ex-patriate packages, and it looked good, like a potential raise. It looked like a way out, a way to revitalize Bruce's career that is fading as a result of the market mess we find ourselves in.

I didn't write about it at the time, because I wanted to wait until it was a done deal, until we were leasing an apartment in Roppongi and looking for day care for Caetlin. But it looked good. It looked really, really promising.

And then the market continued to slide, and the emails grew more non-committal, talking about whether- not when- any client actually had a need to be filled, suggesting that the opportunities were drying up. There was also a problem with what to do after, as the Tokyo office wasn't making any promises to take either of us on, which may have required us to come back to the Atlanta office and fit back in somehow (when he has never managed to fit in here to begin with?). And as time went on, it looked like it was a dead issue. It had been exciting to contemplate, and scary, but ultimately it went nowhere.

Then, Bruce was told, unofficially but not rumor, that he was being laid off. And then it didn't happen, and we've been left to wonder why. There is a new department that has been formed, a department that Bruce could possibly join, has asked to join, but he hasn't been formally reassigned, even now, nearly two months after discussing it with the head of the office. I know things work slowly in the firm, but it has been a source of anxiety trying to figure out what Bruce's place is in all this. Is he on the brink of being laid off, and that is why he hasn't been reassigned?

And so, a couple of weeks ago, the answer appeared to have presented itself. He has been offered a secondment, for a year, in Tokyo. At a significantly reduced salary than we originally expected, courtesy of the freefalling market and a huge number of laid off American lawyers flooding Asia looking for work. There is no discussion of me, except to say that there is no room for me in the Tokyo office. There is no guarantee of any office for Bruce to return to, after his position. The bottom line, though it hasn't been spelled out in so many words, is that his choice is Tokyo or be laid off. We both think this is why he hasn't been reassigned. And they are going to be offering the client a real deal, an experienced attorney who is so much cheaper than anyone in Japan would ever expect. The firm has little or no incentive to try to work with the client to increase the comp offered (which includes $0 for cost of living, because apparently it's comparable to live in Tokyo versus Atlanta), since Bruce is more or less disposable to the firm at this point. If he says no, no harm done. He'll just be fired. This is our reasoning, anyway, though it has not been confirmed to us.

We don't feel as though we have any choice but to take it. I will have to stay here, because I can't give up my salary, since his salary will not be enough to support the family in Tokyo and I have no job in Japan. And given the current market, it just feels irresponsible for Bruce to give up on his law career when we still have a house in Charlotte that we can't sell, and no way of knowing what the financial outlook is. It is us basically operating on a premise that things are still going to get worse for us, and we can't afford to give any ground in the event that things really do get worse. If that Unknown Something Terrible happens, we will be in better shape if Bruce continues working, even at a reduced salary (reduced because it will have to be maintaining him in Tokyo on the same amount of money. He's also getting paid in dollars, which is even worse since the dollar is so weak against the yen right now), than if he were not working at all.

So...I'm likely going to be a single mom for a year. It seems like it should be workable- after all, tons of parents do it every day. My mother-in-law has offered to move up to help, which will be a huge thing, and I love her so incredibly much for it. I think, given the financial squeeze, that we may let the nanny go, though the flexibility that we have with her is a huge benefit.

I...can't write about this any more now. You may guess from the tone here that I am kind of down; it's been a bit of a tough day. The process is going to take a few months, so I'll have time to fill in the details later.

Full Term

2009-02-15T17:00:00.003-05:00

So, this is what 37 weeks and three days looks like. I'm- we're- technically full term now, though it is likely that she'll stay in there another week or two, continuing to grow. She is bigger, I think, than Caetlin was. I feel like the belly part of me is bigger (though the rest of me has mercifully not grown much, as I've somehow managed to keep my weight gain to a healthy 30 pounds or so right now), and sometimes when she's stretching, I feel her moving both at the top of my belly and down on my pelvic floor (yeah, that's a treat). I don't remember feeling that with Caetlin. And Segunda actually hurts me when she moves sometimes, stretching my muscles and uterus and skin beyond where I think it ought to be able to be stretched.

I'm ready for her. Actually, no, I'm not. I have no bag packed for the hospital; her clothes are washed, at least, but in a tangled mess in a laundry bag in her room; her car seat is installed, but needs an experienced hand and eye to look at it. I finally finished my labor prep book last night, and don't feel much more prepared for a drug-free birth, which I hope to attempt, than I did before I started reading it. I am overwhelmed by the amount of stuff it feels like there is still to do.

And yet...you see these pictures below? There is nothing comfortable about that. Not a thing. I've had diarrhea for the last few nights, which I read is a fairly normal late pregnancy thing, and I can't sleep because of the heartburn, and also because I need a crane to turn over. I'm having many contractions per day, which are annoying and uncomfortable, and I fully expect any day now to see my mucous plug in the bowl during one of my many trips to the toilet. None of my maternity clothes fit (hence the pajama pants in the pics). We aren't really ready, but I feel like we could wing it if we have to. This isn't our first rodeo, so to speak.

So, for selfish reasons, I'm ready (even if I'm not, even if I desperately want to make it to my scheduled breastfeeding class on the 28th, even if I worry about her coming out at this time, even if I worry about how to be mentally ready to have a second baby in the house).

Bring it, baby.

Brief Thoughts on a Second Child

2009-02-15T14:46:00.006-05:00

Going...

Going...

Going away from me...

She's my independent little girl. She's still my sweet baby, though:

I guess she always will be that. How will Segunda change my relationship with Caetlin? It is something I worry about, and have had far too much time to contemplate lately. How is it possible that I could love any other child as much as I love her? Is that fair to Segunda, who didn't have any choice in coming second? And yet, what happens if I somehow love Segunda more than I do Caetlin? How would that be possible?

I read that one doesn't love one of one's children any more or less than the others, only differently. They are different people, after all, so it makes sense. I worry, though, about my capacity for differentiation, for expanding my heart to bring them both inside as Caetlin is already inside, where she has nested.

I suppose it's a little late to do anything about it now, and I'm more or less at the point where I just want to not be pregnant anymore and hang the consequences. But the slight little worry is always there.

Caetlin-isms

2009-02-13T11:00:00.003-05:00

A few random things that Caetlin says or does that I think are adorable:

- She says that people with bare feet "have toes on" instead of having shoes on.

- She has picked up a new verbal construction of "Isn't it?" So yesterday when we were on the way to the park for a little pre-dinner exercise (for her, not me, of course), we had a large green truck in the lane next to us, and she looked and said, "That's a big green truck, isn't it?" So incredibly cute in her baby voice.

- I might have mentioned that she's gotten really affectionate lately. She has decided that her favorite game at the park is running back and forth between Mommy and Daddy, crashing into us to give us hugs. It's awesome and wonderful, and if I don't squat or bend down to hug her, it's also unintentionally hilarious, because her head fits exactly underneath my belly.

- She has a talking, singing Care Bear named Cheer Bear that she adores, and every time she turns it on, almost regardless of what part of the house she's in, I can hear, "Hi! My name is Cheer Bear! I like rainbows and sunshine! What's your name?" And then I hear Caetlin say, intently, "Caetlin!" It cracks me up every time (despite how annoying I otherwise find Cheer Bear).

- She also has a pull string Woody doll (from Toy Story) and it says a bunch of different things, but the one she likes the best is, "Yee-haw, cowboy!" She usually will repeat that, more or less at full volume.

- If she wants me to sing to her, she asks me to sing: "Mommy sing it?" And if she wants me to stop, she'll say, "Mommy turn off?" I find this hilarious (and humbling).

Some Good News, For A Refreshing Change

2009-02-12T16:17:00.003-05:00

My doctor's appointment went very well today, extremely well, one might even say. My blood pressure is down. Not as low as we would all prefer it to be, but down where neither my nor the baby's health is currently in jeopardy. And after a few quiet minutes on my left side (where blood flow is the best), it was even down as low as we all would wish it to be. Unfortunately, I physically can't lie on my left side all the time (how ever would I type??), but it is so nice to see that the bed rest is working.

They gave us another fetal non-stress test as well today, and Segunda looks lovely, a happy baby, according to the doctor. I always like the Hi-C they give me to drink when the test starts, both because I like it (I know it is 90% sugar water but I have a sweet tooth. Sue me), and because the sugar really gets Segunda moving. It's always nice and reassuring to feel her moving around.

Digression: last night I woke in the early morning hours convinced that I hadn't felt her moving for hours, even into the previous evening and afternoon. Now I didn't have those thoughts actually during the evening or afternoon, only in the middle of the night, so I'm pretty sure I felt her moving during the day yesterday, but it was so hard to shake my anxiety in a dark and quiet house. I tried to poke her to get her moving (there are places in my belly where her body parts are readily apparent to the touch), but that didn't work. I started nearly hyperventilating, imagining going to the doctor and listening to the ultrasound technician say, "I'm so sorry. There's no heartbeat." I wondered if I should drive myself to the emergency room, working myself up by searching "decreased fetal movement" on WebMD and Babycenter.com. I didn't want to wake Bruce, because in some small part of my mind I knew I was not being entirely rational, but I was getting more and more freaked out. Still, remembering how quickly she responded to the sugary drink at the doctor's, I decided to have some apple juice and call the doctor first thing in the morning.

The apple juice, of course, did the trick, reminding Segunda that her job is to kick me often so I don't freak out like that. I eventually went back to bed, resolved not to call the doctor in the morning, since I was seeing them this afternoon, and woke up, fuzzy headed and sleepy, 2 and a half hours later to Caetlin yelling for me and singing the ABC song.

Anyway, there was also no protein in my urine again, which, in concert with the blood work, suggests that I still have not developed pre-eclampsia, and that the protein in Monday's results was an outlier for whatever reason. My reflexes are still okay, though I have some swelling in my hands and feet, and I don't have the headaches, dizziness, or abdominal pain that characterizes pre-eclampsia.

So, it was a great day at the doctor's office. I go back again on Tuesday, and then again either Thursday or Friday, at which point they will check my cervix for changes showing that my body is prepping to have the baby. I suspect my doctor will induce me on March 2, if there hasn't been any reason to induce sooner than that; he is on call that day, and then isn't on call again until like March 13, and he's already said they won't be letting me go longer than my due date. I would frankly be thrilled if I make it until March 2, so I start the official countdown now: 18 days and counting.

In a random Segunda observation, it is strange and wonderful to see her practice breathing through my stomach. The top center of my belly is where the layers are the thinnest, the abdominal muscles the most stretched, and there appears to be no placenta up there either. Occasionally, if she is turned right, I can see- but not really feel- that part of my belly moving up and down, rhythmically, quickly. It's not my heartbeat, and it's not something so crude as a limb moving around. This is more delicate, and far more regular. She's been practicing breathing for at least 5 weeks or so, as we saw on the last ultrasound, so it's not a surprise, but so odd and encouraging to see it from the outside.

Caetlin continues to grow by leaps and bounds, and has really gotten into music and singing and dancing lately. She has quite a repertoire for a 2.5 year old, and she picks up songs so quickly. She sings the ABC song (a current favorite), the clean up song ("Clean up, clean up, everybody, everywhere, clean up, clean up"), "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and in a last minute addition from Mommy, the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" (what? she has an actual yellow submarine bath toy). She also sings bits of some of the songs from the TV shows we watch with her. And she dances all the time. If there is any music anywhere in the vicinity that catches her fancy, she dances, sometimes saying, "I dancing, Mommy," to be sure I am watching.

She is my joyful spirit, my dancer girl. She reminds me why all the annoying bed rest, all the discomfort (my pelvis is killing me), the heartburn, everything related to Segunda, is going to be worth it. She reminds me to actually dwell on all the good news we received today, rather than thinking about all the cruddy circumstances we've been facing lately.

Yet More Medical Developments

2009-02-09T17:20:00.004-05:00

In Caetlin news, her surgery is scheduled for February 23. Hopefully I will still be pregnant at that point.

In news regarding my own health, I visited the doctor again today, and I'm officially ordered out of work, since my blood pressure remains high. In (even) less encouraging news, I had protein in my urine again today, which leads the doctor to suspect pre-eclampsia again, without the excuse that my daughter is in the hospital this time. I had blood drawn and we'll see what that tells us tomorrow. I am at home now, but it is not out of the question that I would be hospitalized for the remainder of my pregnancy, if it is pre-eclampsia.

I am desperately trying to make it to the end of the month with Segunda, for her sake and mine. I am 37 weeks this Thursday, which is technically full term, but everything I read suggests that longer is better for babies, even beyond this 37 week threshold. Lungs are better developed, sucking reflex is better developed, babies just have better outcomes if they hang in there until 39 or 40 weeks. I am sure Segunda would be fine, but after all we've been through this last few months, is it really so much to ask that the baby stay inside until she's really all the way done?

Anyway, I'm not exactly on bed rest, but it is suggested that I basically be a couch potato. I am going to keep working remotely for the time being, just to give me something to do, and I suspect my bed and I will become even better acquainted than we are already. I haven't spent large amounts of time doing more or less nothing in many years, so it will be interesting to see how I cope, even connected as I am by internet, cell phone, etc. It's not quite the same as fresh air and human interaction.

To sum up: I'm to be spending large chunks of my remaining pregnant days in bed; hopefully those remaining pregnant days will number at least 20 or so; and please keep your fingers crossed that the blood work comes back okay and there is no pre-eclampsia.

I'm not terribly sure when we're going to catch a break. Maybe soon.

My Health, Caetlin's Health...The Saga Continues

2009-02-08T20:04:00.004-05:00

So, my blood pressure is up and looks to remain that way for the remainder of my pregnancy. At my last doctor visit last Thursday, my doctor clearly didn't want to push me to take some time off work, but he also pretty clearly wanted to recommend it. I told him I wanted to take the weekend and decide, and given how low my pressure gets when I literally do nothing- lay around in bed and watch TV or read or surf the internet- it seems a good move to go ahead and take the leave. It will be covered as short term disability, which will continue my pay at 100% of my salary until I have the baby and start maternity leave. I go back tomorrow morning and will likely go ahead and ask for the recommendation. I don't have much happening at work, but the little that I do have can certainly be done remotely. I cleaned my office last week and did filing and labeled the stacks of stuff remaining. I need to find someone who can take custody of the plants I have in my office, or at least ask my secretary to calendar watering them into her schedule, but mostly, all is set for me to be away for a number of months. There is no reason, other than personal, that I should continue to show up to surf the firm's internet when it would be better for my health and that of Segunda's if I spent more time at home. (The personal reason is just because I envision being cooped up at home most of the time, and I would miss the personal interaction at work.)

Caetlin started her new prophylactic antibiotic on Thursday, and by Saturday afternoon it appeared that her innards were reacting very badly. She spent all day Saturday having the worst diarrhea I have ever seen from her, and she clearly wasn't feeling well, though she remained happy and energetic. It was more that her bottom and possibly her tummy was troubling her. We got diaper cream on her as soon as we could, and have laced her baths with baking soda, but she's still a little rashy. Anyway, we called the pediatrician last night, more because I worried about the diarrhea being a side effect of the drug than that I was specifically worried about the diarrhea itself. She was not acting cranky or lethargic and she was drinking a lot, though the pediatrician was concerned about her output and suggested that if it kept up in volume the way it had been (she was putting out more than she was taking in, for awhile yesterday afternoon), we might need to take her- where else?- back to the hospital for some IV fluids. It didn't get to that, though, as she didn't have a bad diaper all night last night, and her poop has firmed up a bit over the course of today.

We did not give her the new antibiotic today; we're going to leave off for another day or two and then start her back to see if it is just bad timing with an intestinal bug of some kind, or if it really is a reaction to her antibiotic. My money is on the drug, but we'll see. It is yet another reason to schedule the procedure soon, if she can't tolerate this new drug.

She's otherwise really good and really happy. She's also gotten really snuggly and affectionate over the last few days, which is of course my Kryptonite for trying to enforce any sort of order. I went in to her room this afternoon not long after Bruce put her down for her nap, with the goal of trying to get her to lay down so I could cover her with her blanket and hopefully help her get to sleep. She stood up and just started hugging me, holding me in her arms and nuzzling her face into my chest. We stayed like that for 15 minutes, because I couldn't bear to end it. Sap that I am.

Anyway, we're getting back on the phone with Caetlin's pediatrician tomorrow, and I'm back at the doctor's office tomorrow morning as well. We're all tired of being at the doctor's, I think, even as much as we love them.

Caetlin Urology Update

2009-02-04T21:12:00.004-05:00

We saw Caetlin's urologist today, and after discussing the options (which are essentially: 1. continue with a prophylactic antibiotic, only a different drug that may have better effectiveness against a wider variety of bacteria; 2. have a Deflux procedure done, which is the simple procedure I mentioned in my last post; or 3. have an open abdominal surgery done, in which the ureters are physically repositioned), we decided to have the Deflux procedure done. You can see a little more about it here. Basically, an endoscope is run up Caetlin's urethra to her bladder, and used to locate the ureters from the kidneys. When the ureters are located, an injection of the Deflux material is done to help with ureter positioning and one-way control of urine into the bladder. No incisions are necessary. She will have to be under general anesthesia, because of her age, but the procedure itself should not be any more painful than a typical catheterization. She'll be able to go home the same day.

Both the treating pediatrician at the hospital and Caetlin's usual pediatrician are very enthusiastic about this procedure, which gives me some comfort that it is the right choice. It is definitely less invasive than open abdominal surgery. This procedure is somewhat less successful overall than open abdominal surgery, but for reflux of Caetlin's grade (II on one side and III on the other), the success rates are comparable. (The Deflux is less successful at the higher grades, grade IV and V.) It seems a good compromise procedure, though the thought of general anaesthesia scares me.

It will not stop her from getting UTIs, to the extent that she is susceptible to them. It will stop those infections from spreading to her kidneys, which is a much more serious kind of infection than a simple bladder infection. It will allow us to stop the prophylactic antibiotics, which I have never really liked much; beyond the hassle of giving her a daily medicine, I am always concerned about drug-resistant bacteria and I don't want to do my part in creating them.

Anyway, I'm waiting to hear from the surgery scheduler to get it set up. Wish me luck that we can have it done prior to Segunda's arrival (which may or may not be timely).

Update on My Health and Other Matters

2009-02-03T21:05:00.004-05:00

So, I may have mentioned that my pregnancy induced high blood pressure appears to be back. It was elevated, for the first time in my pregnancy, when I saw the doctor on Thursday before Caetlin got sick, and I ended up having to go back twice last week while Caetlin was in the hospital. Without rehashing details I've already written about, suffice to say my pressure has stayed elevated. No pre-eclampsia, thank goodness, but definitely high blood pressure.

I saw the doctor yesterday and had a fetal non-stress test- basically, they hooked me up to a fetal heart monitor, which also measured contractions, and gave me a Jeopardy! style handheld clicker that I was to push every time I felt Segunda move. I stayed strapped up to the machine for maybe 20 minutes or so, at which time the doctor came in and looked at the readout and pronounced the baby, "Perfect." So Segunda is in no distress at all from my condition.

My pressure wasn't high enough yesterday to make my doctor order me out of work, but he did recommend that I buy a blood pressure cuff and start charting my pressure through the day. He also said he is going to see me twice a week from now on. The point right now is to monitor me for any dangerously high spikes, and see if it is trending upward or if it appears to be higher during the work day, at which point he will certify that I need to stop working.

The doctor said the baby would be completely fine if we delivered her right now, though she would probably have to stay in the hospital an extra week or ten days. I would personally prefer that she stay in until the end of the month as she is supposed to, for her sake, for my sake (I'm not ready yet!) and for leave purposes. For a variety of boring reasons, I really want to have her as late as possible, so I can stretch out my leave for 4 months, until the beginning of July.

Anyway, today was the first day of monitoring, and so far it does seem as though my pressure is higher during the work day. I don't really want to be certified as short-term disabled, but I'd rather that than having to deliver the baby right now.

Anyway, that's all there is on that front. I go back to the doctor on Thursday.

Caetlin is doing marvelously well. You'd never know, looking at her today, that she was so sick a week ago. For example, I was standing in the laundry nook off the kitchen tonight, putting a load into the washer, and she was running around and around the circle between kitchen, dining room and living room, yelling, "I run and go fast, Mommy!" every time she made the circuit. She saw her pediatrician today, who thought she looked great, and is happy with our treatment plan. We are seeing her urologist tomorrow, to discuss having the outpatient procedure done that will more than likely fix her reflux and stop any future UTIs from infecting her kidneys. Hopefully we can have it done before Segunda comes. The procedure is a complete snap as I understand it, involving more or less a large needle and an ultrasound machine, I think, so I hope it won't be too hard to schedule.

(Adorable non-sequitur: the firm sent a lovely basket of books and toys and a balloon, and one of the things in the basket was a Mickey Mouse activity book, including Caetlin's beloved stickers. She's been asking for Mickey Mouse stickers, and I have to indulge her as much as I possibly can, since she calls him, "Wickey Mouse." Which I think is seriously the cutest thing ever and I make her say it as much as I can.)

I pulled all of Caetlin's newborn size clothing out of storage today, so it can be washed and made ready for Segunda. I cannot comprehend how those clothes ever fit Caetlin, how they were even a little big for her.

Finally, Bruce has received an offer from the firm's Tokyo office to go work for a year for one of their Japanese investment bank clients. I think the weird limbo that we've been in regarding his job status has something to do with this offer, like it's this or being laid off. The compensation isn't exactly what we would like, and Bruce has asked if anything can be done in that regard, though our hopes aren't high. Plus there is the whole Bruce-living-in-Tokyo-for-a-year thing, the whole single parenthood thing, from my perspective. It's not ideal, but if Bruce wants to continue being a lawyer, he basically needs to take it. At the current offer, we'll lose money over what we're making now, but not nearly as much as if Bruce loses his job altogether. It's unclear when they will want him to start, if he accepts it; most likely sometime in early summer.

Anyway, I can't write much more about that, in part because I don't know where my thinking is. It's just one more area of upheaval and stress. Awesome.

Caetlin Released from Hospital! These Stories, and Your Morning Weather, Just Ahead

2009-01-29T08:32:00.005-05:00

[UPDATE, 5:30 p.m.- We're home. They let us go around 1 this afternoon, and after dropping off her prescriptions, we came straight home to major relief on all our parts and a couple of psycho lonely kitties. Caetlin, who remains exhausted because of the complete lack of routine and always-interrupted sleep, played for maybe an hour and then we put her down for a nap. She seemed so grateful to be in her own bed, she fell asleep almost immediately. I have somehow managed to stay awake-ish all afternoon; I'm trying to make it to a reasonable bedtime, but I am struggling. I hope I can get the good night's sleep I need so badly tonight.

My doctor's appointment this morning was sort of inconclusive. I do not apparently have pre-eclampsia; the protein in my urine was a result of me not eating enough that day. My pressure is still high, though, and I'm to go back on Monday for a re-check. My doctor suggests that our treatment course be that he see me twice a week, and if my pressure holds steady or goes down, great, but if it keeps trending up, he'll order me to bed.

Also, in good news, he confirmed that Segunda has turned head down, so that at least is off my plate. I really would love to be able to have labor start spontaneously, but even if I have to be induced as a result of my blood pressure, at least I can presumably deliver the usual way and won't necessarily need surgery. So that's good.

We are all so grateful to be home. This week has been so surreal. Thanks to all for your kind wishes and comments and prayers. They have meant a lot.]

So, Caetlin's labs showed enough improvement today, and they are sending us home. I can't tell you how grateful I am to be going home. No more IV, no more horrid non-schedule, no more saving diapers to have them weighed. Normal hygiene. My own bed where it's actually mostly dark and no one comes in eleventy hundred times a night.

But most of all what I am grateful for is that Caetlin is well, and can go home and run and play like she wants to. I have to offer my sincere thanks to everyone who treated her at Scottish Rite Hospital. Everyone was wonderful.

In other news, I'm off to the doctor again this morning. I'm still a complete wreck, so I have no idea what they are going to recommend or how they will deal with me. Fingers crossed I at least get the weekend to try to rest up before they send me to bedrest.

Caetlin Improves! Film at Eleven

2009-01-28T07:58:00.003-05:00

Well, the labs drawn yesterday were not as good as the doctors would have liked, but she herself is improving tremendously. Her fever has been gone for more than 24 hours, and she's starting to be much more energetic, like her old self. We had to get her out of the room yesterday, as she was going completely stir crazy, so we walked her around the halls of the unit and into the playroom on this floor, one of us maneuvering the blasted IV pole around behind her. She understands that she needs to slow down and be mindful of the cord, but she forgets sometimes and it is exhausting trying to keep her untangled.

She's not as well as she thinks she is, though, because it was easy to see her getting tired out fairly quickly. That didn't stop her, of course, but we can really see the toll the illness and the lack of sleep and disrupted routine has taken on her.

Anyway, they drew more blood this morning to confirm that the lab numbers are going down appropriately, which they hadn't as of yesterday. They know from their tests that this bug is susceptible to the antibiotics they are giving her, so it is just a matter of time before her bloodwork starts to improve. They won't discharge Caetlin until certain values have gone below particular levels, which could possibly mean going home today, but most likely means tomorrow or even Friday, depending on how tenacious the infection.

She had a pretty good day yesterday except for being bored. The highlight was probably the couple of hours that she got to spend without her IV last night. The old one had worked loose and so they had to start a new one, and they wanted to wait for a particular person with lots of experience. And let me say, Miss Becky at Scottish Rite, you are a miracle worker. It was the least amount of tears for any procedure, except possibly for the ones that they do when she's sound asleep, much less one that involves needles. The really cruddy part, though, is the new IV is in her hand, which is strapped to a padded board, which means she is essentially one-handed until the IV comes out. Poor baby.

The hours of freedom were awesome, though! She ran and ran and ran. We got to give her a bath, which she desperately needed, as she was becoming quite funky at that point. I also got to change her sheets, which were also in dire straits. It did my heart good to see her so much like her old self as she played and ran and said hello to everyone we passed.

In other, not-so-positive news, I went back to the doctor yesterday as well, and my blood pressure hasn't gone down (shocker!). The really discouraging part is that there was also protein in my urine, which is the main diagnostic symptom of preeclampsia. This is a serious condition that will almost certainly result in immediate bedrest, if not hospitalization, for the remainder of my pregnancy, if it turns out I have it. However, there is a better-than-average chance that the protein was a false positive, since I'm basically a physical wreck at this point. I haven't slept more than a couple of hours in a row since Sunday morning, I'm not eating enough, I know I'm dehydrated, partly because I forget to drink my water in this environment and partly because of the stomach bug that I have a touch of. And I do have a mild case, thank goodness- I'm not barfing up all my food; only a couple of times at night have I felt the call of the porcelain god. The real danger is out the other end, where all the water I'm consuming, plus a good amount of the nutrients from my food, are making a premature exit.

Anyway, they drew some blood yesterday and will have results today, so I may be going back to the doctor today or tomorrow as well. The one other positive bit of news is that my blood pressure came right down with about 10 minutes of quiet time in the doctor's office, so that suggests it is not a chronic condition and with proper management (assuming no preeclampsia), I can remain out of bed. Let's hope that is where we end up.

Current Update

2009-01-27T04:18:00.004-05:00

Well, the good news is that Caetlin did not have to have a CT scan in connection with her seizures. The neurologist did an EEG, which showed some expected lingering effects of her having had seizures, but nothing that would indicate that she would have seizures except in connection with a fever, which is really great news. They gave us a prescription for a diazepam suppository, which we're to have on hand in the event that she ever has a long lasting seizure or a second seizure, as was the case here, to prevent a seizure cluster. That's pretty uncommon with febrile seizures, so let's hope she doesn't continue to defy the odds and have another cluster anytime soon...or ever. The neurologist seemed to suspect that she might, though, since she still has a couple of years before we can expect her to grow out of the seizures.

The other good news is that they have mostly figured out what is wrong with her. It was a UTI that had spread to her kidneys, and possibly to her blood as well- they are doing labs to confirm that this morning. Even if it hasn't spread, it's still a pretty nasty infection. Fortunately, they have her on a good and effective antibiotic, and it looks to knock it out fairly quickly. "Fairly quickly" unfortunately still means that she will be in the hospital for at least 3 more days, possibly more like 5 if the disease doesn't respond quickly.

Life in the hospital kind of sucks, especially on the sleep front. Caetlin has no kind of schedule, so she was awake until almost midnight tonight, and they are going to come draw blood at around 5 a.m. I hope she can go back to sleep after that, though I am not optimistic. [UPDATE: she completely shocked me by going back to sleep immediately. Woo-hoo!] She's also feeling better enough that, though she is clearly not 100% (query how much of that is because she just can't get any sleep?), she is super bored, tired of sitting in bed, tired of TV. We're going to try some long walks today to wear her out a bit.

We also saw the infectious disease specialist, who spoke to us about her infection and how much it had spread, and he suggested we follow up with the urologist, which I had already planned to do. This is her first (and if I can help it, only) breakthrough infection, since she's been taking the prophylactic antibiotic, but the fact that she's had one, more or less regardless of the severity, would seem to tip the scales toward going ahead and having the corrective surgery for her urinary reflux. The question now is when; obviously not until she is fully recovered from this illness, but then when? Before Segunda? After? My preference would be for before, but that may not be possible. I would then prefer it to be a couple of months after Segunda, if possible, but I guess we'll just have to see.

So that's where we are. More updates as we receive news.

In other minor news, I appear to have the stomach flu, or at least some intestinal bug. Yippee.

New Caetlin Update

2009-01-26T08:04:00.003-05:00

We didn't get moved to a regular room until sometime around 4:30 a.m. or so, which is so far the only complaint I have about Scottish Rite. That meant I was dozing in the uncomfortable chair and Bruce was snoring on the floor until then. Caetlin actually slept really well until it was time to move upstairs.

When they moved us upstairs to a significantly more comfortable room, they took Caetlin's vitals and we tried for a good hour plus to get her back to sleep. First, she hates the pulse oximeter on her toe, and kept trying to take it off, which meant the alarm kept going off. Then, just as we got her calmed somewhat and maybe thinking about sleep, the nurse came in with her first dose of IV antibiotics, which are apparently uncomfortable when they are injected, because Caetlin started screaming and crying. Then we actually got her almost all the way asleep, but she had something that was given more gradually (I think- I was really starting to fall asleep at this point) and when it finished its dose, that pump alarm started going off too.

It is so true that hospitals are terrible places to rest, even though now that she's asleep, she's pretty much stayed asleep through the shift change vitals and the tech coming in to ask us if we need linens.

On her medical condition, not much has changed except that her fever broke in the night sometime and is normal this morning. Yay! I am hopeful that she will be interested in eating and drinking this morning, because she didn't have much at all yesterday.

So, to recap what's been going on and what we expect to happen in the next couple of days: she has a UTI. They aren't sure which bug is causing the infection, though they have a probable guess, and if their guess is correct, it's a slightly unusual bug to cause a UTI and is resistant to oral antibiotics. They have started her on 2 different IV antibiotics, and when the culture finishes growing, which should be today, they can be definitive regarding the proper medicine to give to kill the thing. Because of her urinary reflux, they really want to stay ahead of the bug, since she is so much more susceptible to kidney infection.

While she is here, the number of seizures she had this weekend have worried the neurologist, who had initially recommended an EEG on an outpatient basis, but since the third seizure last night now wants to look at a CT of her head. I expect we will see the neurologist sometime today and get more details on what the concern is (other than the fact that she had three seizures in 36 hours) and the proposed course of diagnosis.

I think we will be left to follow up with the urologist on our own when we get out of here, which we will do with all deliberate speed. It is time to take care of this reflux problem before she has any more infections.

Anyway, that's where we are, without having seen any doctor since maybe 3 a.m. I will post more as we know more, but it looks like we'll get out of here in a day or two, depending on how the infection responds to the antibiotics.

I actually have work to do; thank goodness for hospital wireless. I'm also exhausted, and we'll just say that spending the night on various chairs and, for a couple of hours, a hard fold-out sofa, does not seem conducive to resting and getting my blood pressure down. Hopefully when I see her tomorrow, my doc will give me a do-over based on extraordinary circumstances before putting me on bedrest.

Caetlin Update

2009-01-26T00:40:00.001-05:00

I'm posting this from my Blackberry; we're in the hospital again, and it looks like they will be admitting Caetlin, at least overnight. Her urine culture is growing something, and though the lab is not entirely clear what, the doctor is afraid that it is a bug that is resistant to most oral antibiotics, and so wants to admit her to make sure she gets the IV antibiotics she will likely need. Also, while we were here, she just had her third seizure in 36 hours, so we will be seeing a neurologist in the coming days, just to make sure there isn't anything more than febrile seizures going on. We will also see her urologist regarding her urinary reflux; since she has a UTI now, the prophylactic antibiotics are clearly not working, so we'll likely need to go ahead and have the surgery to fix it.

Anyway, that's all we have for now. Caetlin is sleeping comfortably, after having yet another dose of Motrin. We're still in the ER for now but I expect they will move us upstairs to a room shortly.

More news as events develop.

Maybe Life Wants Me on Bedrest

2009-01-25T05:35:00.004-05:00

So, after yesterday's excitement, I think I'll be generally staying in bed most of the day today.

Wait, I guess a lot has happened since I posted yesterday afternoon. Yesterday when I posted, I was getting ready to meet Bruce and Caetlin out for lunch at the local Chik-Fil-A, which is newly remodeled and has an indoor playground. I was going to go into the office at that point (you'll notice none of this is exactly close to bed rest) and then maybe go have my nails done. Caetlin was going home to take her nap, and if all went well, I would get home right as she woke up.

At Chik-Fil-A, Bruce and I kind of discussed that Caetlin seemed a little under the weather, a little not herself, and while I was there, she seemed to get more and more out of it. We dosed her with Tylenol there in the restaurant, as she felt a little warm, and Bruce ended up taking her home early.

I had only been at work maybe 30 minutes when Bruce called me. "She's had a seizure," he said. "The paramedics are on their way." I told him I would be right there, and they were on their way heading out the door when I got home, ready to ride to the hospital. Caetlin attached herself to me when I got there, having apparently just thrown up much of her lunch.

Most reading here will know that we've had these kind of issues before. Caetlin has a history of febrile seizures, brought on by a quickly spiking fever, lasting a very short time and doing no neurological damage. So we're kind of used to this, and I even sort of expected that we might not go to the hospital this time, but the vomiting sealed the deal. So I hopped into the ambulance with her, the paramedic strapped me onto the gurney with Caetlin falling asleep in my arms, and away we went.

A few hours later and a dose of Zofran for the nausea and Motrin for the (now 103.5 degree) fever, and we were on our way. They took a urine sample to rule out a UTI as the underlying cause of the fever, but it was clear under the microscope. They will culture it, but all of us expect that Caetlin has a pretty virulent strain of the stomach bug that is going around. (The urine sample sucked, as the nurse had to try three times to catheterize the poor baby. Even though the cath is tiny, it was really, really unpleasant for Caetlin, who spent the evening screaming and holding her crotch whenever she urinated.)

Anyway, we know the drill- alternate Tylenol and Motrin every three hours. With the hospital Motrin in her, she seemed like a different child, running and talking and playing around the house completely normally. We gave her a pretty bland dinner of bananas and Jello and put her to bed early, since she was sick and had no nap.

She fell asleep easily, and rested comfortably for awhile. But after a few hours she was breathing a little huffily, a little bit like panting, in her sleep. She didn't sound congested, exactly- more like she just didn't feel well. We dosed her with Motrin, and all of us slept badly until about 2 a.m., when we gave her Tylenol again. At about 2:45, Bruce was watching her on the monitor and said to me, "She's having another seizure."

I got dressed and told him, "We're going to the hospital." He asked me if we should call 911, and I said I thought we could get her there faster ourselves. We packed a few things in the diaper bag and took off down the highway. Caetlin was in her post-seizure passed-out phase, which to me is almost scarier than the seizure itself.

So, 12 hours later we found ourselves in the same ER, in the very same room, as a matter of fact. They took her temperature and gave her Motrin, and we waited long enough to see the doctor that it had kicked in by then and she almost didn't even look sick when she was seen. She was talking, awake, laughing and smiling, cooperative, everything. We were sent home with the exact same discharge instructions, after the exact same drugs and examination results. I had been hoping for something else to do to control her fever, besides just the Tylenol and Motrin, but the doctor said anti-seizure medication isn't really called for here, and that was about all he could do. We asked if we should even bring her in if she has another seizure, and the nurse said to call the emergency department directly. 9 times out of 10 they will say to come in, but we might be number 10, if by some horrible chance she has a third one over the next few hours.

She has never had two with the same illness. That's new.

Anyway, we're all at home, I'm about to pass out, and Caetlin appears to be resting comfortably for the time being. She's due for Tylenol at 7 a.m., but hopefully she will sleep through it. The Tylenol seems to be doing nothing for the fever anyway.

To top it all off, carrying her around this afternoon meant I strained some of the muscles in my groin, and so I'm walking around like an old lady, groaning when I have to get into bed or try to turn over. I forgot the pain when it was time to get her to the hospital the second time, but it's back now with a vengeance.

I still have work to do today. This has not been an ideal way to get my blood pressure down, I must say.

Anyway, must sleep now.

34 Weeks

2009-01-24T13:07:00.003-05:00

So, I went back to the doctor yesterday for my 34 week checkup, and things weren't all positive. Near the end of my pregnancy with Caetlin, I suffered from pregnancy-induced high blood pressure. Not pre-ecclampsia, thank goodness, but just plain old high blood pressure. The blood pressure is what required induced labor with Caetlin; at 5 days before my due date, they were like, let's just get this show on the road and the baby in the world.

Now, though, it's too early to deliver Segunda. While the pressure went down to an acceptable level after about 20 minutes lying quietly, suggesting that the condition is very mild, I can't exactly order my life around lying quietly all the time, so I'm not sure if or how it will progress. The doctor suggested I stop working, but that would be a third of my leave wasted before Segunda gets here, so I won't be stopping work until my doctor orders bed rest.

Unfortunately, that could happen as early as Tuesday, which is when I go back. If my pressure remains elevated at that time, they could order bed rest for me. Which I sincerely don't want.

I'm supposed to be taking it easy this weekend, but of course over the last week I've actually gotten busy with work, and I'm thrilled about it- it's good work, with people I've been begging to work with for the last almost 2 years. Unfortunately, it's all on a very short deadline, which means I'm headed into the office this afternoon. I don't want to blow this shot I have to really cultivate some good relationships. The timing really could not be worse.

The news wasn't all bad, though- the doctor said he thought Segunda was head down, and though that's not 100% certain without an ultrasound, I'll take it. At least that may mean I won't have to have a C-section after all, which I really, really want to avoid.

And, finally, to add insult to injury, I have these huge disgusting zits all over my chin. I'm 32 years old- that just seems like too much to bear. Even in the service of growing a Segunda. *sigh*

Anyway, I'll post more after my appointment on Tuesday. Wish me luck and relaxation!

Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself: I'm Chopped Liver, Nice to Meet You

2009-01-20T20:33:00.004-05:00

It's fascinating how quickly children can deflate one's ego.

Tonight when we walked in from work, Caetlin came running to the door yelling, "Hi Daddy! Hi Daddy! Hi Daddy!" Not that unusual by itself- Bruce was through the door before I was, and Caetlin has been very Daddy-centric lately. Usually I get second billing, though, in the shouted greetings from the under-3 set. Tonight, however, Caetlin's next observation was, "It's dark outside. It's dark outside," as she looked out of the open door to the deepening twilight.

I stood there in the foyer looking at her, waiting to be acknowledged. Caetlin ran into the living room away from me, and then the nanny's grandson decided to swirl around me and down the hall, so she wheeled around and followed him, doing her little toddler run that she uses to get anywhere. As she passed by where I was still standing in the foyer, without even looking at me and in her best flat teenager voice she said, "Hi."

I wish I could convey the complete nonchalance that was contained in that syllable; it was so clear that I was a total afterthought. The nanny, Bruce and I all burst out laughing.

Clearly minced organ meat is my fate tonight.

Awwww

2009-01-19T18:38:00.003-05:00

This afternoon Bruce and I are hanging out with Caetlin in the den that is basically Caetlin's playroom. Minimal furniture, lots of toys- you get the idea. Bruce is playing some game or other on the desktop computer and I'm on my laptop monitoring work emails, while Caetlin is basically her usual whirling dervish of activity, playing with one thing or another, having stories read to her by Mommy or Daddy, carrying on a running conversation with us.

She points out that she's wearing socks and Daddy is wearing socks and Mommy is wearing...she cranes her neck to see that I have nothing on my feet. She rushes off, disappearing into the other room, and resurfaces a minute later, carrying my shoes.

"Here, Mommy," she says, handing them to me.

I thank her but don't put them on right away. She goes to play and comes back after a minute.

"Mommy put shoes on?" she asks. I put the one shoe on, and as if to ensure my full compliance, she says, "Mommy put the other one on too?"

When I comply, she looks at me and says, "Mommy has shoes on. And they are so pretty."

Am I more flattered that she thinks my shoes are pretty, or more happy that she appears to be shaping up to be as into shoes as me? It's one identifiable way that she is like me. Mommy is so proud.

Bittersweet

2009-01-19T16:10:00.004-05:00

So, the estrangement from my extended family that I have alluded to a few times continues apace. I'm starting to feel better about it; certainly time is doing it's legendary healing of all wounds. I won't say I'm happy about it, or that I don't wonder whether we'll ever speak again or be close again, but it's not taking up huge chunks of my brain power any more, and for that I am grateful. I'm learning to fill those holes in my life with other things, and I think on balance it is a good change that I've had to make.

It doesn't change the fact, though, that sometimes things are a little poignant. This afternoon, Bruce, Caetlin and I went to lunch at a casual restaurant that we usually have visited with my sister and brother-in-law. On the way inside from the car, Caetlin says, clearly remembering the times we've been there with them, "Aunt [Sister] gone bye-bye."

Bruce just said, yes, baby, you really don't know how true that is. Aunt [Sister] is gone bye-bye in so many more ways than one.

And then a minute later she followed it up with, "And Uncle [Brother-In-Law] gone bye-bye too."

And Bruce said, yes, sweetie, he was truly unfortunate collateral damage and he's gone bye-bye too. Bruce had thought of Brother-In-Law as a friend, and has been terribly disappointed that in the turmoil between my sister and me, Brother-In-Law seems to have written Bruce off as well.

We moved on, swinging Caetlin between us ("One...Two...THREE!"), and into the restaurant for lunch, even as we moved on in our conversation and our thoughts. But the short exchange stayed with me, funny and sad, wisdom from the mouths of babes, etc. We are- I am- moving on. I'm still sad that I have to, but yes- my family is gone bye-bye.

A Good Day's Work

2009-01-18T17:29:00.003-05:00

Bruce and I spent the day working to get ready for Segunda today. My hormones have not left me alone lately, urging me to nest, whispering that we're not ready. If I'm honest and realistic, the car seat is the only truly necessary piece of equipment; if we had to bring Segunda home yesterday, it would suck for Bruce because he would have to do all the work that we did today by himself, as well as all that still remains, but it would have been okay. Yet the car seat still required a bit of work; it's been stored in our yucky basement, along with the cats and the various vermin, for the last nearly two years. It had cobwebs on it. It needed some TLC.

And that goes for all the other various baby gear that we still own but which has been relegated to basement, attic, various closets, etc. Not to mention the small things- clothes, bibs, bottles- that Caetlin no longer has any use for but that we'll need for Segunda. Also not to mention the various furniture that needed to be shifted around. You can maybe begin to see why my hormones have been prodding me.

So, we sent Caetlin with a babysitter today for most of the day (after going out to breakfast with her, at which she ate a truly prodigious amount of food. Girl loves her breakfast), and set to work getting these things done.

Here are the things we accomplished today:
- We moved the glider and footrest into Segunda's room. This was harder than it sounds, since the doors in this house are pretty narrow. It meant taking the glider apart and putting it back together.

- We moved one of our big comfy chairs and ottoman into Caetlin's room. We still read to her in the chair, but the rocker was essential for nursing purposes with Caetlin, and Caetlin isn't exactly sitting still to be rocked these days. A stationary chair that is big enough for us to sit side by side really fits her style much better nowadays.

- We finished packing up all the stuff in Segunda's room, which had formerly been the guest bedroom/junk room. There's almost nothing in there now except baby stuff and the guest bed. Bruce heroically lugged a number of boxes of stuff down to the basement.

- We brought up a couple of plastic boxes of baby stuff. Thank goodness I have packed away Caetlin's old things in plastic instead of vermin-susceptible cardboard.

- We also brought up from the basement or down from the attic the following items:
- Bassinet
- Car seat and base
- Bumpo baby seat
- Portable swing
- Full-size swing
- Baby bjorn
- Baby sling
- Nursing pillow
- Bouncy seat
- Snap n go stroller

All of these items need their covers washed and their non-washable parts wiped down.

- We washed all covers that we could remove (the bassinet is stupid and the cover can't be removed, so we're going to try to Woolite it) and wiped down almost all the gear.

- We trekked to Babies R Us for nursery gear for Segunda. We originally agreed on a pink and brown and green set with butterflies on it, but we ended up going with a gender neutral farm animals set that was on clearance for less than half the cost. I now need to see if I can order any of the other accessories online, most specifically the adorable cow-shaped rug that goes with it.

- We set up Segunda's room in terms of placement of crib, guest bed, glider, etc. We also unwrapped the new mattress for Segunda and put it in the crib, ready to be made up with sheets, bumper, etc.

That was a lot of work! Still to do is a substantially shorter list that involves putting various covers back on various pieces of baby gear, getting the car seat installed, and shifting some baby things like receiving blankets, etc. into Segunda's room from Caetlin's. We are at a place where Bruce could conceivably take care of everything that still remains while I'm in the hospital (note to Segunda: this is NOT an invitation to make your appearance at this time Another 6.5 weeks or so, please).

Anyway, the little voice in my head, driven by hormones and my own anal nature, is much quieter now. I'm tired, but incredibly pleased at how much we got done today and how little truly remains to be done. And it being a long weekend, I don't even have to go to work tomorrow! It's win-win all over the place.

Now to settle in and watch the game. Go Steelers!

Joining My Own Generation

2009-01-15T21:24:00.005-05:00

Okay, so I finally joined Facebook. Apparently I had actually joined some time ago without really realizing it, in response to a friend request a long time ago. But I'm now ready to actually be a part of it.

I know, I know, I'm seriously the last person under 40 who is not already on it. And for a long time I've talked about how I really just wanted to avoid the time suck of it all. Bruce joined not too long ago, though, and every few days he's all, "Sweetie, you have to do this!" Making me feel like the world's oldest, fogiest young(ish) person to continue holding out.

So all of you who are on Facebook (which would be basically everyone who reads this, who is under 40), please bear with me as I find you and send friend requests. It strikes me a little like approaching the popular table in the middle school cafeteria and timidly asking to sit down, all hopeful that people will shove down and let me eat with them.

So shove down, okay? Okay??

Whew. Thanks!

(Or you guys can send me friend requests, if you happen to be on at any particular time and I haven't managed to find you yet.)

Belated: In Memoriam

2009-01-14T22:37:00.005-05:00

Something I completely failed to write about at the time it happened this past fall needs not to go unheeded. In October, our wonderful kitty Kabuki went on to the great litter box in the sky. In retrospect, it seemed like we should have seen the signs. He wasn't sick for very long- whatever killed him, did so quickly- but in hindsight we could definitely put some of the strange behavior puzzle pieces together.

It all started, at least when we really started paying attention, when he didn't come home for a few days. And then he did, and we thought he was just having a long jaunt away. He was always more comfortable as an outside kitty, and we indulged him that here. He was a smart cat. He rarely left the yard, and he was extra cautious around cars. Of our three cats, he was the one best equipped for any outside adventures.

Not long after the three-day absence, he just didn't come home again one night. We felt sure he would turn up, as he always had, though even the three-day hiatus was extremely unusual for him. When he didn't show, we called for him, and listened for his cry, and dashed to the door whenever one of us imagined his plaintive wailing outside. He always sounded so full of ennui. Bruce always made me smile when he responded to a seemingly-despondent cat cry with, "Live, Kabuki! Live!"

About a week after he had last been seen, we had started trying to come to grips with the idea that he was probably gone, though Bruce was making a half-hearted attempt at searching local animal shelters. Then I happened to see a notice on the telephone pole immediately across the street from our house: "Found: black Persian cat. Please call" and it listed a number. Bruce called and concluded from his brief conversation with the woman on the other end that the cat in question was not Kabuki, but as the days went on with no sign, something about it didn't feel right to me. I asked him to call her again, and on the second call he elicited the relevant information.

The woman lives across the street from us, apparently. (I told you he wasn't a wanderer!) Early Sunday morning she found Kabuki lying in her driveway, clearly ill but purring when she picked him up. She tried to call emergency vets, but couldn't find any that were open, and as she held him, he had some kind of seizure or spasm and died in her arms.

We didn't reach her in time before she had disposed of his body, so we don't have 100% confirmation, but she gave enough details, particularly of his white undercoat that was so distinctive, that we are pretty sure it was him. And once we learned he had been so sick, a few other pieces fell into place. Like the times over the last few weeks that Kabuki had not eaten when food was put in front of him- very unusual. And the time we exited the front door to find a large pile of newly-regurgitated food hanging out on the front stoop. Also not like Kabuki, who (unlike Hobbes, our orange kitty with the nervous stomach) had never been a puker. And the general standoffishness he had been displaying, coupled with some unusual neediness. I know that sounds contradictory. I can't explain it any better than that.

I feel I failed him, not seeing these subtle signs of his illness for what they were. I failed him, and I let him be with a stranger at the end, not with us who cared about him so much. At least he wasn't alone. I take some small comfort in that.

It took a long time before I stopped looking for him when I drove up, or listening for him to come running when I walked up the steps to the house. And for a long time I didn't write about it because I just felt too bad about it. Not in the weeping, grieving sense, though I did mourn his loss. But just feeling bad about how he died, how we missed his sickness, how we failed him. He deserved better from us, though I don't know how we could have given it. Even in hindsight, the signs were subtle. I'm so sorry, Wookiee.

Anyway, Bruce asked me to update my year end post to make sure his passing didn't go unmarked, and I realized he needed a full post. He was a good kitty, the sweetest boy ever who would have been the perfect cat if he would just have used a litter box. He had a big head that was just right for scritching between his ears, and lovely big paws that were adorable. He was all black, but he turned rust colored as he aged. It was his way of going gray, I guess. And he had that white undercoat that made him turn mostly white when he got wet. He was always good for a really good, loud purr- he always purred loud as a kitten, and he loved to sit on Bruce's belly and be petted. He always greatly appreciated any pets anyone might give him, but he wasn't as insistent as some other cats can be. Petting him was always its own reward, because of how good it clearly made him feel. He had bad back hips for years, but he never complained.

RIP, Kabuki. I hope we meet again someday.

Reprieve, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Uncertainty

2009-01-12T21:33:00.003-05:00

Okay, my post title lies: I can't love the uncertainty.

The meeting at which the laid off one was to officially be axed happened today. I can tell you finally that it is Bruce who is affected by this, not me. What I can't tell you, though, is anything about the details of the impending separation.

Against all odds and expectations, it appears- preliminarily- that the Hail Mary I referenced a couple of times may have worked. The office head actually appears to be interested in helping Bruce find a new department, now that his industry has collapsed, rather than just firing him.

It's not a done deal yet; they are set to meet again on Friday to confirm the details. But it looks like the firm doesn't want to lay Bruce off. Like they may be actively looking for some way to keep him employed. At the meeting today, nothing was spoken about severance, or a soft landing, or anything like that.

If I sound amazed, it is because I am. I admit, I had very little faith that the firm cared anything at all about working with Bruce. And I still don't think that the firm does care, in the sense of concern for Bruce personally, but the fact that the management has enough foresight to try to find a fit for him, rather than simply cutting the "dead wood" and moving on, is simply befuddling to me at this point. This is not how law firm management typically works. Maybe it is not just propaganda that this firm is different.

Anyway, after the weeks of buildup, I have no idea what to think about all this. I had gotten myself into certain patterns of thinking, about the ways our life was going to change, about some things we need to do to make it work, and now those patterns maybe aren't terribly relevant and there is nothing to take their place, since we don't have complete assurance that Bruce still has a job and on what terms. After weeks and weeks of stress, it almost feels like a reprieve, but I'm not sure we can go back exactly the way we were. We've been giving a lot of thought to our future, and where we want to go and what we want to do with ourselves from here, and some of the changes in our thinking will be permanent, I think.

And still hovering over us is the uncertainty. The new group could decide not to take him on, and that will leave us in the same spot. Almost certainly a pay cut is in the works (though don't think I am complaining: any lesser cut is better than the 100% pay cut he was facing). He could still be out of a job in a few months, if the new group doesn't find work or if somehow politics comes into play in a way that we can't foresee right now.

What if, what if, what if. My head is spinning and it doesn't help that I didn't sleep well last night. Bruce says he is relieved. I'm not; I'm just confused and not counting our chickens before they hatch.

I think the tentative plan, if Bruce remains employed by the firm, is to still let the nanny go and put Caetlin in day care. That is a more than $2,000 per month savings, just on child care, and we have been thinking that day care would be good for her. But it will allow us to help her land a bit more softly, give her a longer notice and a larger severance. We want to pack away the savings and hammer at Bruce's student loans, which we can pay off within a year. We could pay mine off a year after that. And we must sell the Charlotte house. Once we sell that house, we can go anywhere we want, and just about do anything we want.

We need that kind of freedom, right now.

Anyway, reprieve! Kind of.

32 Weeks

2009-01-08T20:20:00.004-05:00

We had another ultrasound this afternoon. The good news is that the placenta has moved plenty far away from the cervix. The even better news is that Segunda appears perfectly healthy. No cleft lip, all 4 chambers of the heart showing up and beating, diaphragm, stomach and kidneys all in the correct places and appearing normal and working. We saw her practice breathing, a sign of a happy baby according to the ultrasound tech. We saw her little face, her eyes and mouth opening and closing, and according to the tech, she has hair (I couldn't see it myself). She's a little over 4 pounds, which is exactly as big as she should be for her gestational age, not that there was much question about when she was conceived.

The so-so news is that she is breech. I thought she had turned head down, and maybe she had, but she's back to head up. My little contortionist has one foot up by her head and one foot under her bottom, and is lying on her left side.

It's not a huge problem if I have to have a C-section because she's breech, but I really would prefer not to have a C-section if I can help it. I really want to try to have labor start naturally this time, instead of being induced as I was with Caetlin, and I even want to try an unmedicated delivery. I am not one of those crunchy natural birth people like Riki Lake- I want to have my baby in the hospital, and I am not opposed to medication if it turns out that I can't handle the pain, and I won't be crushed if I end up having to have a C-section. That said, I really do want to try it nature's way if I can this time. I think I would feel seriously empowered if I could have this baby without pain medication.

Anyway, the current breech baby in my ever-growing belly is not helping with that. Turn, kiddo! The OB didn't seem remotely worried about the positioning at this point, so that was comforting. She seemed to feel like we had plenty of time, she has plenty of room, and all will likely sort itself out. Fingers crossed.

And that's where we are at 32 weeks.

In unrelated-to-Segunda news, we actually rented the Charlotte house! That is hugely good news, since it helps us financially a lot. It takes a little of the pressure off the laid off one to find a new job at a certain salary right away. So, yay renter!

Stay of Execution

2009-01-08T20:11:00.003-05:00

So, the meeting at which the laid off one of us was to discover the terms of the impending "separation" from the firm was to have taken place this past Tuesday. That morning, less than half an hour before the appointed time, it was rescheduled to today. ("How rude!" I fumed at Bruce. "As rude as firing one of us?" he asked. I had to concede he had a point.) Then yesterday, it was rescheduled to next Monday.

The practical upshot of all this is that we remain in a constant state of stress and worry, since we can't plan for details that we don't know. Our nanny remains completely unaware that anything is wrong, since we don't want to break the bad news while we aren't sure of things ourselves (there is still that one last Hail Mary the laid off one has, though neither of us have much hope that will amount to anything). The laid off one hasn't started job searching in real earnest yet, since again we have no idea of what the firm may be planning.

It's been like being marched up the gallows steps several times, and each time being told, "Oh, no, sorry, it's not your turn. Yet."

But...Some Good News!

2009-01-01T17:39:00.003-05:00

Here is hopefully the first sign that 2009 may be a better year. We received word that our house in Charlotte is under application to be rented. Assuming the renter checks out and is okay with paying our pet deposit, we will soon be able to recoup some of the monthly expenses for that property. The rent is not enough to cover the management fees, mortgage, taxes, insurance, etc., but it will help a lot with defraying those costs.

With the house presumably rented, the laid off half of this partnership is considering staying home with the children instead of finding another job. We'll have to see what the terms are of the layoff and how the job search ends up progressing. We've run the numbers- we could do it, though it may be tighter than we would like. Still, we'd be paying more attention to expenses, daycare would cost nothing, we'd be cooking almost every meal at home, etc. It's not likely that we would be able to put away the same amount for savings, but we may not feel the same lifestyle hit as we would expect.

I should clarify that we don't live extravagantly. I know some family members who think we have a "big city lifestyle" but the truth is that we drive two paid for cars. We have no debt besides student loans and our mortgage. Our two TVs are both 5 years old or more (no flat screens or big screens), and we really don't spend a lot on clothes for ourselves or the baby, electronics, jewelry, toys for the kid, etc. Our mortgage was modest as compared to our income when we bought the house. We put a lot away each month for retirement, the kids' college, and just general savings. Where we tended to spend money is on food, as we eat out a lot or have delivery. And we spend a frightening amount for the nanny's salary.

I think where the pinch would be felt is in our thoughts and attitudes about money. Right now we don't really think about it on a day to day basis. We can go to a bookstore and spend $150 at one time without really giving it a lot of thought. We can order takeout if we want it and don't feel like cooking, without really worrying about it. It's in the little things like that- a Starbucks in the morning, a breakfast out on the weekend, Caetlin's Kindermusik classes and the zoo membership and Children's Museum membership- that we would feel the pinch. Not to say that we couldn't still do those things, but only that they would require thought. And we certainly don't shop for bargains habitually. I'm sure that will change as well.

It could definitely be a good thing for us. It will certainly make us more mindful of our finances, which can only be a good thing. I'm trying to maintain the optimism that presumably renting the house has brought. It's a new year! It's a new life for us, a new reality. I have no idea what that's going to look like, but I'm trying so hard to believe that it will be a better one than we have now.

2009 Begins with Blah

2009-01-01T17:29:00.003-05:00

So, Happy New Year! I rang in the new year by dozing through an old episode of Entourage with Bruce. Hope yours was as exciting or not as you wanted it to be.

I'm sick. Caetlin is sick. We both have colds that started pretty mild and quickly morphed into something ugly and hacking and snotty. It's not been pretty. Blah.

We got to see Devon and her adorable son this morning, but it was for far too short a time- only the length of brunch. And because Caetlin is sick, she was a complete pain in the booty and Bruce had to inhale his breakfast so he could take her outside (he was wonderful enough to let me try to enjoy the little time we had to visit). And then they were off to Charleston to visit her family, and I'm left to miss them once again. Blah.

Georgia won its bowl game in spectacularly blah fashion. It's been a tale of two different Bulldog teams all season, and the bad team showed up in the first half and the good team showed up for most of the second half. The game should not have been as close as it was. And so, Georgia football ends until late August. A mediocre team playing a mediocre season ends with a mediocre win. Blah.

So 2009 rings in with...blah. *snortle*

2008 - The Year In Review

2008-12-29T21:30:00.006-05:00

Seeing all the best-of lists and retrospectives inspired me to make one of my year. It's not going to be pretty; it's been Not A Good Year around here. But I am compelled to make the list anyway, to reflect, see how things went wrong, and fervently hope for a better 2009.

January

We started the year off with a trip to Texas, during which I was reminded why one does not take vacations the first week of the new year. I ended up working an annoying amount during the week. I also watched Georgia be insulted by being matched up against Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl- a great bowl, lousy matchup, as Georgia mopped the floor with the Rainbow Warriors.

The end of the month found me in New York, where I helped close a deal and pitched the idea of a transfer to the firm's NYC office. The idea was met with great enthusiasm by the NY personnel, with whom I had a great relationship. There was nothing to do but wait for the transfer to be approved.

February

In early February, the firm told me It's Just Not That Into Me, as the department denied my transfer. I still don't really understand the reasoning, though I have been told several things and have my own suspicions. I took it hard, like a romantic breakup, and embarrassed myself in June when I saw my NY colleagues again, had a drink or two too many, and spent too long going on about how unfair it was.

March

We had been kicking the second baby question around for awhile, and in the wake of the disappointment from the denied transfer, we decided to go ahead and go for it. I was hoping to take a longer maternity leave this time, and with no career speedbumps in the way, now seemed as good a time as any.

April

We spent a week in the Outer Banks for the second year in a row. The house we rented was great, except for that whole porch swing incident that caused my mother-in-law's already fragile back to go out again. The weather was awful, gray and cold, but it was nice to get away. Except that I couldn't get away, and once again, ended up working on vacation. I also started actively losing weight with Weight Watchers in April, and ended up dumping 15 pounds before getting pregnant.

May

May might have been the best month of the year for us. Reading back over the blog posts, all I see are good times at the Renaissance Festival, out of town in the mountains, hiking and gardening and watching the baby grow into a little kid. We did a lot of walking for errands; it soon after that got too hot to walk around in the evenings. Bruce also had a birthday at the end of May, turning a respectable 36.

June

June found me in NY again on business (where I embarrassed myself as I mentioned above) and pregnant! Woo-hoo, El Segundo! June was also the last time I had a busy month at work.

July

July saw us at the top of the world in Alaska. We had a wonderful vacation with Caetlin, despite the distance and the time change and everything. She did great, we had a great time, my occasional morning sickness notwithstanding (it made some parts of our wildlife cruise pretty miserable), we saw some amazing things like a glacier and whales and the Arctic Ocean. We also saw my good friend Devon (now blogging here), whom I had not laid eyes on in nearly ten years. How's that for crazy? She was my best friend in college and we lost touch when she moved out west, and I Google stalked her for years before tracking her down (thank goodness her current employer posts pictures on its website!). I can't tell you how much it meant to me that we got to reunite, and it was wonderful, and her husband is great, and her baby is adorable, and she's having another baby the same time as me! She's hilarious as ever, and the main thing I hate is that she's in Alaska which is a seriously great place but much too far away for convenient visits.

August

In August, Caetlin turned the big 2, and my family made their semi-annual visit to our house. My in-laws came along as well, from Texas. There was cookie cake and burgers on the grill, and I think we all had fun.

Also, it was hot, and I had nothing to do at work.

September

In September, I turned the big 3-2, which my sister forgot for the second year in a row. We also had a scare with our first trimester screen of El Segundo, which showed a 20% chance that Segundo could have Down Syndrome. We underwent an invasive CVS, which is a procedure in which a small amount of tissue is taken from the placenta to be tested. The results showed that Segundo was normal and also that El Segundo was actually La Segunda- we are having our second girl. Bruce immediately began practicing calling his ladies to him: "Wimmenfolk! Come here!"

October

In October, I resorted to writing blog posts at work to keep myself awake, and we discovered I had a low-lying placenta after I had some second-trimester spotting. This turned out to be less serious than first imagined, and probably will clear itself up in time for a normal delivery. October was also the month that Bruce was approached about a possible position with one of our firm's Japanese clients. For awhile, it looked like a done deal; we would be moving to Tokyo. Then the economy collapsed there as well as here, and the need for people like Bruce apparently collapsed with it. It was yet another professional disappointment.

Also, Caetlin was a lion for Halloween. And the Georgia Bulldogs broke my heart, not just losing but embarrassing themselves against the Florida Gators. They would go on to match up against Michigan State in the Capital One Bowl on January 1, 2009.

November

In November Bruce and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary, and I actually had work to do for once! I kept myself pretty busy working and being pregnant, and November is when the Tokyo thing really fell apart. For Thanksgiving, we visited my friend Kelley in the town I grew up in, and Caetlin vomited for perhaps the second time ever. Bruce was involved in maybe the worst deal ever at work, which maybe should have been a harbinger or something. I entered the 3rd trimester of my pregnancy.

December

Well, in December, I worked my pregnant tuchus off, and we tried getting ready for Christmas. I got into a (still-running) feud with my sister and dad. I spoke about some things I've been angry about for years, and my dad's response was to be angry and deny that I have a right to feel the way I do, and my sister's response was to be hurt and deny that I have a right to feel the way I do. Also, she blamed my anger on my pregnancy, for which I may never forgive her. Now I've apparently been downgraded to a High Holy Day Relative, in which they do not contact me except on Christmas. Presumably that will also include the usual holidays- Thanksgiving, Easter. Not sure about second tier holidays like Memorial Day or July 4th. It may or may not include birthdays (see September of this year). Who knows? It's a brave new world of family relationships for me.

And finally, the crowning glory of the year- the job loss. As I mentioned before, the details are unclear. Also unclear is what the laid-off one will do instead. They are considering an industry change entirely. There is one last Hail Mary to be had at the firm, and we will be trying that next week, as well as getting the likely separation details.

And there was Christmas. I cooked, and we had a lovely quiet four days with Caetlin. This week is shaping up to be similarly quiet.

So there you have it. The 2008 year in review. It's kind of depressing, but all we can do is look to the future. We kick off 2009 with a far-too-short visit from Devon and her son, and a longer visit from Bruce's newly-retired parents. Also an ultrasound next week, and a baby girl in March. And most likely firing the nanny, starting Caetlin in day care, and a job search. More frugality, less security. The Steelers in the playoffs. A little bad, a little good. Hopefully the good will outweigh the bad this year. It's hard to see how it couldn't be an improvement on 2008.

Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!

2008-12-22T18:44:00.003-05:00

As of yesterday afternoon, we had a mostly-undecorated Christmas tree sitting in our living room. Bruce had gone out and gotten it two weeks ago, and it's lovely, a blue spruce from North Carolina. We put lights on it fairly quickly, but have been putting off adding the other decorations. I've been working a lot, so I'm usually tired, and I had it in my head that it would be easier to decorate without Caetlin around to break stuff and generally get underfoot. When we put her to bed in the evenings or for a nap, if I didn't have to work, I wanted to just sit down. And stay seated. And then lately we haven't exactly been feeling the Christmas spirit anyway.

So the tree remained undecorated, looking a little sad in the corner of the living room as it quietly shed needles and was plugged in every so often. We even mulled some wine a few days ago, in anticipation of drinking it while decorating the tree, and the mulled wine sat in our refrigerator. It just hasn't been happening, for a variety of reasons, most of which I'm sure you can guess at fairly accurately.

Yesterday while Caetlin napped, I worked, and I managed to get all my work done for the day while she was down. I was so excited about having the evening free that I was up for it when Bruce said, "Hey, let's get the rest of the egg nog and decorate the tree with Caetlin this afternoon."

Caetlin, who is a girl after her mommy's own heart, will down a quart of (non-alcoholic, pasteurized) egg nog all by herself if we let her. We didn't have much left, but she drank her share and Mommy's share too. She's super cute when she asks for more because she pronounces egg nog very carefully: "More egggg nnoggg please." She was fascinated with a wooden Santa we have that I think ultimately didn't make it on the tree because she was playing with it. She played with the glass balls and the green and amber beads that we have, and she even put a couple on the tree with us. We have an inordinate number of birds for our tree, and she helped put a couple of those on as well.

We had Christmas carols playing on the TV, and cookies in the oven, and Bruce and I talked to Caetlin about Santa, and presents, and where our ornaments came from, and how glad we were to be decorating the tree together right then. Bruce made the comment that he had not felt like Christmas until that afternoon, and I wholeheartedly agreed with him. Maybe we weren't meant to decorate the tree sooner, because we needed a boost right then. Because we wouldn't have been able to feel that boost before Sunday afternoon, three days after finding out that one of us will be losing our job.

All I can say is that we loaded up the tree with all the cheap Target ornaments that we have, and the many that we have received from his parents, and the ones we have bought for each other. I tried to make sure the back of the tree wasn't neglected. Bruce worked to make sure Caetlin didn't break anything or get ahold of any hooks or anything that might hurt her. She was surprisingly very good about everything, and it wasn't onerous to watch her. And for a few minutes, I was able to stop worrying about our finances, about the job search for the laid off one, about the things from our lives before the job loss that I am grieving about losing. About the growing rift between myself and my family (will we ever speak again? Unclear at this point). About what we will do when Segunda comes. About work undone and finishing Christmas errands and everything else that has weighed us down for the last couple of weeks.

For a few minutes, we were able to be a family and be happy together, and our hearts were light. That might be the best Christmas present I could have received.

AWKwaaard

2008-12-20T06:42:00.003-05:00

So, the laid-off among us went to work yesterday as normal, because they still actually have work to do, and was on the phone discussing said work with the partner who had unofficially spilled the beans about the impending axe, when the partner made some idle chit chat and asked how the laid-off one was doing.

"Oh, I'm okay, I guess. Have to go home and fire a nanny."

"Why, is she doing a bad job?"

*facepalm*

"No, it's because soon I will be unable to afford her."

*Crickets chirping*

Some people are so clueless. And if you can't laugh at a time like this, you have to cry. So I laugh at you, Clueless Partner. Ha ha ha.

"Aaaand the Hits Just Keep On Coming...

2008-12-18T20:09:00.004-05:00

...so keep that dial tuned to WATL and our sister station WSUX! Next up, all the headlines that matter!"

So, I should have known I was tempting fate. When you write things like this, "We're both employed at a good salary, and look to continue being so employed for the time being" and post them in public, you really are leaving yourself open to a great cosmic beat down.

It's not official. Yet. That won't happen until shortly after the new year, and the terms aren't entirely clear at this point. But the unofficial word is that one of us will not be employed for too terribly much longer. I don't want to say more, because if there is severance offered, I don't want to jeopardize it by being too blabby now. But that's the word from above. The way it appears to be working is that the let-go person is going to be staying on for some period of time, during which time they'll be encouraged to find other employment.

I guess my nanny dilemma has been solved, hasn't it? I didn't even have to get your weigh-in on whether to keep her on or not (bottom line: we didn't feel we were getting the value for the large amount of money we were paying, and we thought Caetlin would do well and be more challenged in a day care setting, but we didn't want to let the nanny go in such a crappy economy, knowing what we know about how her job sustains her family). I just hate to cut her loose into this economy, but that choice is completely out of my hands at this point.

We don't have a huge amount of fat in our budget to cut, though the largest expense that we can cut back is food, mostly because we eat out or takeout way too often. We'll be cooking much more very soon. We already have Caetlin into a day care, though it's not terribly convenient- it's a number of miles in the wrong direction. They at least have room for her. And if other employment isn't found, maybe we won't need day care at all. Being a stay at home parent has been discussed often around here lately, as one possible contingency plan.

Anyway, pray for us that the Charlotte house rents. If it rents even at a lower price than we might like, we'll still probably be okay on one income.

I'm scared. I wanted change, and I can see a lot of ways that this will be for the better for us, and I will be able to look to the future and those positive changes soon, but right now I'm just scared of what will happen to us. There is no market. For anything, really, but certainly not for what we do. I'm scared to make a go of it on one income, mostly because we have the Charlotte house to worry about. If I'm honest, we still have a lot of ways to cut back (cable, we could move someplace cheaper, etc.) without really sacrificing our quality of life all that much. And we have lots and lots of ways to cut back by sacrificing our quality of life, if it comes to that. Our credit will be fine, we will have food on the table and a roof over our heads.

It's just a lot to take in, combined with the emotions that come with this kind of news. Change is being foisted upon us, which is never preferred. I would have liked to have change come on my terms, thank you very much.

It's kind of like that old video game, Punch Out. Did anyone play that, or see/hear it in an arcade? I remember the announcer, when someone got on a particularly good streak, "Body blow! Body blow! Body blow!"

Yeah, it's kind of like that around here lately.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

2008-12-16T22:57:00.003-05:00

...is where I would like to be going at about this point. Or Los Angeles. Or Texas. Or New York, or Tokyo. Or heck, even the frozen wastelands of Anchorage or Minneapolis.

It's been a rough couple of days. Work has sucked both in quantity and quality. There has been family drama, and I'm ever more convinced that the way out of being perpetually angry with my family is to move far, far away. I haven't seen enough of Caetlin, and she manages to stab me in the heart with a butter knife every morning when she cries after me, that she wants to go with me. She's also been working on her manipulation, and just today she broke out the trusty, "Why Mommy left?" with the pooched out lower lip and pitiful voice. That's lemon and salt in the butter-knife wound, let me tell you, even when I know she's not serious.

The Animals had it right, I think. We've got to get out of this place/if it's the last thing we ever do/We've got to get out of this place/Girl there's a better life for me and you. I know it's a protest song, but work with me here.

I have to post the obligatory disclaimer: my problems are peanuts compared to everyone else's. We're both employed at a good salary, and look to continue being so employed for the time being. We have our health, and can afford good child care for our healthy daughter. We don't have to worry about transportation or housing or insurance or food or clothing. We've got those basics covered.

In a way, that's almost the problem. My problems will never be serious, because in the grand scheme of things, we have so many other things going our way. It's tough to be a working mom with a small child and another on the way, but it would be tougher if I had to work for minimum wage, so what am I complaining about? It's challenging and exhausting raising a toddler, but it's not like we have to worry about or try to parent a drug-addicted teenager or severely disabled child, so what's my problem? I work long hours, but at least I have a very small commute, so suck it up! I have just as much need to cram my whole life into those two weekend days each week as everyone else, but because we can afford to have someone come in and clean the toilets twice a month and because we have advanced our nanny ridiculous sums of money that she's working off by babysitting at every opportunity, I need to shut up. So many others have it so much harder.

Yes, they do. No doubt about it. But I really resent the "Poor little rich girl" mentality. Money can't buy community. Money can't buy supportive, helpful friends and family. Money can't buy respectful colleagues. And money can't buy time.

You know what else I resent? Having any of this discontent blamed on my pregnancy. I hated this place long before I was pregnant. I'll probably continue hating it long after Segunda is born. I've been lonely, and alienated, and disappointed in the way the great ATL experiment has worked out, for much longer than the 29 weeks I've been gestating.

I don't know if I have a point here. I can say that we remain frantic in our desire and search for getting out of here. The market seems to be keeping us here for the time being, however. Can I bring a false imprisonment charge against the economy? Because I am surely being held here against my will.

From the Mouths of Babes

2008-12-14T15:21:00.002-05:00

This morning we were all having a snuggle in bed before breakfast, watching a tiny bit of TV. Caetlin is half watching, half just chatting with Mommy and Daddy, and out of nowhere she turns to us and proclaims, "Mommy's crazy. Daddy's not."

Whatever you say, kid.

For Those Who Don't Want to Wade Through All That Angst to Get to the Pictures

2008-12-12T22:25:00.003-05:00

A Follow Up Post

2008-12-12T21:14:00.005-05:00

After reading and re-reading my last post, and reading mkpt's comment to it, I thought I needed to post a little more on the issue of our nanny's grandson. Both because I'm not sure I was clear enough and because the act of writing about and reading about him has made me think about him and the way I feel about him even more over these last few days.

First, I want to clarify that I feel really guilty for not liking him. My whole point in including the bit about how his family doesn't appear to talk to him much was not to illustrate that I think the behaviors that annoy me are caused by that. It was to illustrate that I feel bad for him. I think he craves adult attention. And to grown ups, he is a very sweet little boy. (Less so to Caetlin, as I mentioned, with the toy swiping, etc.)

Maybe the behaviors that both perplex and annoy me do so because I don't understand them. I mean, at all. This morning I was sitting in the den watching him and Caetlin play, and he was sitting on top of this little music table that we have. Both kids have kind of outgrown it, but they both still play with it, so we haven't put it away yet. Anyway, it's not really meant to be sat on, and it's a measure of how big they both are that they can both basically sit down on it without much trouble. So he was sitting on it, and our nanny told him to get off of it. She had to bodily lift him off, and when she did, he went straight to throwing the thing over. In anger at not being able to sit on it, I guess? She told him no, at the same time I asked him not to turn it over as well, and she had a standoff with him, where he was clearly waiting until her back was turned to promptly turn the table over, and she wasn't going to take her eyes off him until he was doing something else. It eventually ended with him trying anyway, and she physically blocking him from doing so and moving the table across the room.

I have to admit, this entire exchange baffles me. It is so outside my experience in dealing with Caetlin. Immediately after this little incident, Caetlin went over to the table and started to sit on it, in imitation. I said, "Caetlin, no ma'am. We don't sit on the table," in my Mom Voice, and she got up and went back to what she had been doing. She clearly wasn't that invested in sitting on the table, but even if she had been, me telling her no likely wouldn't have meant that she tried to inflict violence on the toy.

Maybe most of the difference is due, as mkpt suggests, to the difference between girl and boy toddlers. Maybe that is part of it, and some of it is upbringing and some of it is developmental. I don't know (hence my last post). All I do know is that I don't understand him. And I'm not around enough boy toddlers to recognize whether he is a developmentally normal 3 year old boy or a horrible brat or something in between. I also know that not every boy toddler is like that (I can't speak for mkpt's Luke, since they moved to the Frozen Tundra of Minneapolis, but I remember her Noah as a three-year-old and he was a delightful boy), but that doesn't necessarily make our nanny's grandson a problem child.

The one thing I can say for sure is that I don't much care for him. And that makes me sad and ashamed of myself. I wish I could like him. I wish he didn't make me want to stay huddled in my room every morning when I hear him come in, yelling, playing with every toy in our house that makes noise, jumping around. I wish he didn't feel like such an intrusion. But he does.

And I've been thinking about why that is. I think it has to do with a couple things. First, he's in our house a lot. I don't think I can name a child other than my own that I really want to see as much as I see this kid. I think we're all tired of each other, frankly. And he's always in our house, so he's always breaking our stuff, and tearing our books, and making a mess on our floors. It starts to feel a bit invasive, which has only to do with the circumstances, and not him at all.

I think the invasive feeling also may have something to do with my hormones. I'm nesting, and I do wonder if those feelings aren't partially responsible for wanting to circle the wagons around the family unit, and keep out those who my monkey brain doesn't recognize as pack. That's also not his fault, but oh my God, most mornings I am just screaming "GET OUT!" in my head to both our nanny and her grandson. I feel like I can't move around freely in my own house, like I'm intruding if I end up in the kitchen in the morning, like I'm an interloper if I want to eat breakfast at the dining room table at the same time as the kids are having breakfast. I feel like I'm in the way and cluttering things up. And I hate that feeling. I hate feeling like I have no control over what goes on in my own home.

That actually leads me to another reason I believe I've developed this intense dislike for this child. I have absolutely no say in what he does or does not do in my house. It's not like I can enforce the house rules or otherwise discipline the boy without stepping on my nanny's toes. And that even extends to when he's mean or physical with Caetlin, since I always feel like if the nanny is there, that I'm not allowed to discipline or otherwise really care for my daughter, lest I undermine her authority. But as it relates to Caetlin and her grandson, I think the line is especially blurry about what role, if any, I have, since he's, you know, related to her and all, the fact that they are in my house notwithstanding. I hate this feeling of helplessness. I'm sure it's mostly my own fault; I need to grow some balls and interact with my kid the way I want to, and with her kid too, and if she doesn't like it, she can find different day care for him.

But I just feel powerless to affect anything when it comes to him, even when it negatively affects my daughter. Now let's be clear- if he were hitting her, or doing anything to hurt her at all, I would take steps. These are minor things we're talking about. And generally when the nanny sees her grandson act up, she reprimands him the same way I would have anyway. It's mostly the powerlessness, I think, not necessarily the ultimate outcome, that makes it so hard for me to deal with the kid. It sort of feeds into that feeling of being intruded upon.

Anyway, I don't have any answers. I try to be patient with him. I still hug and kiss him every day. I talk to him when he's around. I do my best not to hear it when he's screaming for the umpteenth time that day. Or to see it when he breaks something that belongs to Caetlin. I also continue to feel guilty for not liking him and wish I did.

As so much of my dilemma about whether to continue to employ our nanny is wrapped up in this boy, I find he remains in my thoughts a lot. We have decided to ask our nanny to find alternate care arrangements for him after the first of the year. Mostly it has to do with Segunda, since the room he naps in will be her room, and frankly, I don't really want him around so much when she's born. Logistically, it will be unmanageable for him to be here with her, beyond potential safety and germ issues. Yes, I know Caetlin will bring in many germs and trying to keep Segunda healthy is a losing battle, but I see no reason why I should stack the deck against her right at the beginning.

So maybe he won't prey on my mind so much soon. In the meantime, I'm trying to keep my emotions in check around him, and grin and bear it and continue being nice to him. Wish me luck.

Help Me Out Here

2008-12-10T19:43:00.005-05:00

Okay, I have a confession to make: I don't like my nanny's grandson.

He'll be three in January, and he's been coming to "day care" with Caetlin for about 6 months or so. We offered it to our nanny in lieu of a raise, back when we wanted to give her a raise and couldn't afford it, especially with a required raise coming when Segunda is born (if she's still employed with us by then, which is a whole other post. I'm struggling with my conscience about what to do with her, and I'll post my back and forth soon on that and solicit advice).

Anyway, we thought a companion for Caetlin would be a good thing, and it is a significant monetary benefit to her and her family, with almost nothing out of our pockets. I say almost because we pay for him to attend the same classes as Caetlin, and we pay his admission to whatever other activities they do, as well as Caetlin's. We often feed him, and the boy will eat us out of house and home if house and home consisted entirely of bananas. He's also mostly potty trained, which means we go through toilet paper like there is no tomorrow. But these are small expenses compared to what an hourly raise would cost us.

Unfortunately, six months on, both Bruce and I really can't stand this kid.

He is seriously grabby and will try to take what ever Caetlin is playing with, just because she's playing with it. She's a pretty easygoing kid and will often give him what he's asking for, and immediately when she picks something else up, he starts crying for that thing. Frequently he'll try to just rip it out of her hands, if he can get away with that without a grown up heading him off at the pass. He's also terribly destructive. I know that kids generally are destructive, mostly (at this age) without meaning to be, but good gracious, we have exponentially more broken toys and books with torn pages now than we did before he came along.

He is ridiculously stubborn- both Bruce and I have stubborn streaks, but this kid takes the cake. He's going through a phase right now where he will put food in his mouth and just hold it, sometimes for a really long time (>30 minutes). He won't swallow. He won't chew. If he's allowed to run around with it in his mouth, eventually he will spit it out at some random time and place.

He is the world's worst crybaby (okay, maybe that's hyperbole, but he cries a lot). Any time he doesn't get his way, which, being almost-three, happens all the time, he cries. And not just a little whining either- we're talking full on tantrum, sometimes complete with collapsing flat on the floor. Big tears. Snot. Sobbing. And it's not quiet, as you may imagine. (Nothing the child does is quiet.) Over the smallest thing- putting his hood up on his jacket. Having his orange (that he won't eat but will merely hold in his mouth) taken away. Having to give back whatever item he's swiped from Caetlin. Screams of agony. Stamping feet on the floor. You get the (unpleasant) picture. This happens multiple times per day. And I only see him for half an hour or so in the morning and maybe 15 minutes in the evening. I cannot imagine what his day is like if those times are representative.

Beyond the fact that he makes both of us have to hold onto our patience with both hands, there are some other unpleasant side effects of Caetlin hanging out with him (some of which make up the dilemma surrounding whether to continue to employ our nanny). Like, he is somewhat speech delayed, and she has picked up some of his bad articulation habits. I feel like such a neurotic mom when it bugs me that she will often say "hee" or "tee" instead of "please," especially when she articulated most of the sounds in the word please very well before he came along. I know that she will grow out of these bad habits. I know that she will not go to kindergarten saying "tee" for "please." She is far too verbal, and we model it for her correctly constantly, and kids grow out of that stuff anyway. But it puts my teeth on edge every time I hear it come out of her mouth. That's not the only lazy verbal habit she's picked up either. I might be able to relax about it if it were, but it's not.

The sad thing is that he clearly doesn't get enough attention at home. He comes running to me every single morning when he hears me moving around, so I will give him a hug and kiss. He's a very affectionate child. It's clear to me that the adults in his life don't talk to him much, if at all, certainly not at all the way we talk to Caetlin as a matter of course. For example, we have tons of animal toys around, and it's part of what I do to ask Caetlin what the animal she happens to be holding is, and what sound does it make. Caetlin has been able to identify that cows moo for a very long time now, I would venture almost a year, and that pigs oink almost as long. Her nanny's grandson either doesn't know this information, or isn't used to conversational give and take and doesn't answer the question. Either way, it seems to me that people don't talk to him enough (maybe the source of some or all of his speech delay?). It's been interesting from a sociological standpoint to see the differences in the way we are raising Caetlin in terms of enrichment, versus the way our nanny and her daughter are raising this boy.

Aaanyway, here's what I need help with. I don't mean to make us out as super parents (viz. my Thanksgiving meltdown right along with my daughter). We're just people trying to do the best we can for our daughter and ourselves. That said, it seems like we rarely see these kinds of behaviors out of Caetlin. She's pretty easygoing, as I mentioned, and she can be redirected fairly easily. Not that she forgets whatever it was she wanted, but she will often accept a substitute. She can also be bargained with. She gets the concept of the deal. We'll ask her to make choices, like between night night and stories, when she's really insistent that she be allowed to play when it's time for bed. That seems to work pretty well. And I can say, "Eat this tomato and then you can have goldfish," and she gets it and will eat the tomato first. I don't want to jinx us, but we rarely have the kinds of meltdowns with her that we see with her nanny's grandson on a daily basis. (Usually with Caetlin they come when she's tired or, ironically, when we're in public and can't control her environment as well, i.e., she really likes that street musician and they have to take a break.)

So my question is this: is our nanny's grandson what Three is like? So far with Caetlin, Two hasn't been nearly as Terrible as I'd been led to believe. Is it lying in wait for us? Is she going to morph over the next 8 months into a screaming, grabbing, just plain bratty child? How much of these behaviors is developmental and how much is temperamental? How much does upbringing factor into it? Caetlin has always been an easy child (*frantically looks for wood to knock*); is that doomed to disappear over the next months?

And how much of our dislike for this boy is misplaced in dislike for him and/or the way his mother and grandmother and great-grandmother (they all live together) raise him, and instead should be directed at his developmental phase and "This too shall pass"? Because I've been saying that about him for 6 months, but maybe I haven't given it long enough?

Friends and family who have or have been exposed to older toddlers: what say you? Are this kid's annoying behaviors developmental, environmental, temperamental, or some other -mental that I haven't thought of?

Picture Dump

2008-12-06T08:02:00.011-05:00

I've been entirely remiss in posting pictures of Caetlin. I realized recently that I have a ton of pictures on my camera that I needed to port over to the computer, and in doing so, I discovered a number of really great pics of Caetlin that I wanted to share. I'll be doing this over the next little while. These are random pictures from late summer and fall.

For instance, we spent a weekend with my grandmother and extended family in August. This is Caetlin and her great grandmother. I can't tell you how pleased I am to have these pictures.

And we spent a beautiful day in October at the duck pond near our house. In among several apartment buildings and corporate campuses, there is a large park with a pond filled with ducks and geese. Lots of green space, tables, walking trails- it's just lovely. I took lots of pictures that day, so you'll see a bunch from this series in the coming days (weeks? Don't want to overpromise).

Caetlin and Daddy.

She's my big girl.

With the ducks.

How could you resist that face?

Okay, that should be enough red meat for the base for now. More later.

27 Weeks

2008-12-06T07:48:00.004-05:00

I had my 27 week appointment this week, where they did my glucose screening test, which I passed easily. I also got my Rhogam shot, which is something to do with the Rh factor- I am A negative blood type, and if Bruce has a positive blood type, Segunda could possibly be positive as well, which could cause problems between her body and mine. We've not bothered to find out Bruce's blood type to rule out whether we need the shot or not. It's just one shot at 27 weeks, and I'll need more after delivery if Segunda is positive. Caetlin was not positive, so I didn't have it after delivery with her.

I'm told that is the last bloodwork to be done for the rest of the pregnancy- woo-hoo! I don't mind needles but one does feel a bit like a pincushion after awhile. Segunda is measuring right on schedule, maybe a day or two behind, but nothing that would call my due date, which is an approximation anyway, into question. She's also apparently turned head down, which makes me happy happy happy. Not because she should be head down, which she should at some point, but because she- well, she had a tendency to kick me along my pelvic floor. Which is exactly what it sounds like. Ladies, think of the parts that are in your pelvic floor. Now imagine being kicked in them- from the inside. Yep, not fun. Extremely uncomfortable. Now I have her hooking her feet around my ribs. I'll take the ribs.

13 weeks to go. That feels simultaneously really long and really short. Anyway, I thought I'd try my hand at a belly picture or two. You can see that my belly button is almost flat by now. I have enough of an innie that it never pops out, but it does flatten out.

Thanksgiving - A Mixed Bag

2008-11-30T13:14:00.011-05:00

Well, we went out of town for Thanksgiving, to my oldest friend's house in the town I grew up in, located in deepest, flattest, sandiest south Georgia. I'll write more about that later (last year at Thanksgiving was the first time I had been back to that town in right about 10 years, and it raises a welter of thoughts and emotions for me to go back there. My relationship with that town is a strange and troubled one). But I wanted to observe first that traveling around the Thanksgiving holiday sucks the big one. Always. It's impossible to have a smooth travel experience at Thanksgiving, at least for my family.

We left early on Thursday morning. I had to work all day Wednesday, and we have long learned that Wednesday traffic is rarely, if ever, worth the extra time at one's destination, so we decided to go on Thursday. We thought we would leave super early on Thursday, hoping that spending time on the road while it was still dark would allow Caetlin to go back to sleep in the car- she hasn't slept in the car in many months. We didn't get up early enough, so the sun was just starting to come up as we got on the road. Caetlin stayed pretty mellow, though not asleep, through the first few hours of the trip, including when we stopped for breakfast.

It was the last hour that really tried my- our- patience. She was bored, tired of riding in the car, ready to be moving around. We didn't want to stop, as we were so close to being there and on a deadline, since dinner was scheduled for 1. She started throwing things around the car and asking for them, and as I am always the passenger, it's my job to fetch the things she throws and otherwise keep her happy. I hate this job. It's frustrating, and uncomfortable, as often the seat belt cuts into my neck, and sometimes I get car sick from having to turn around and find things, and she cries when I can't find the exact thing she wants. Unfortunately, about 25 minutes away (yes, seriously, only 25 minutes), she lost it, and I lost it with her. She started crying, tears rolling down her face, and throwing some of the what seemed like dozens of toys that she had in her car seat. I was so frustrated, with my inability to make her happy, with her inability to just relax for another 25 minutes, with her inability to allow me to just sit and face forward for a few ever-loving minutes, that I started throwing toys too. (Not at her, of course.) Yes, it was tough to distinguish the adult from the two-year-old at that point. No, it was not my finest parenting moment.

Anyway, things did get better. We all managed to pull ourselves together and pulled up to our friends' house and had some Thanksgiving. We had a lovely time at Thanksgiving dinner and though Caetlin didn't nap, she still had a good time. The next day we were kind of on our own, so Caetlin spent a good amount of time at the playground. I had to leave her and Bruce there and work back at the hotel. She cried when I drove away. Yeah, THAT sucked.

I picked them back up after a couple of hours of work and we went to one of the two casual dining chains in town for lunch. Waiting for our drinks, Caetlin started crying and screaming to change her diaper, which is not like her at all, and before we could do anything like get her out of the highchair and out to the car to change her diaper, all of her breakfast started pouring out of her. She vomited, four huge spews all over the table, the highchair, herself, the floor.

Apparently, it's not Thanksgiving unless Caetlin is sick.

The wonderful waitstaff (minus our pansy waiter, who told us he has a weak stomach and had to hand us off to someone else) cleaned up the mess, while Bruce cleaned up Caetlin. Caetlin managed rally enough to have a couple of crackers and then we took her back to the hotel for a nap. She was off her feed and running a slight temperature the whole rest of the weekend, and still appears to be fighting off the bug, whatever it is. It didn't help that we'd jacked with her schedule so badly, though she's coming out of it by now.

We whiled away another day (we went over to the beach, and a couple pics from that day will be posted shortly), and decided to leave Saturday night to miss the Sunday traffic and hopefully have Caetlin sleep in the car most of the way home. A long, late nap and heavy rain foiled our plans; she stayed awake and cranky for the first two hours or so of the 4 hour trip. My heartburn started up about the time she fell asleep, cutting off any possibility of pulling over to find my antacids. The rain continued unabated, heavy, scary, big trucks roaring by splashing big sheets of water onto the windshield. Every so often I could feel the car shimmy over deep standing water in the road. I tried to sleep and couldn't really, because I was cold and because of my stomach. But I couldn't really stay awake either.

We pulled into home at about 1:30 a.m., and Caetlin went back down without too much fuss. I climbed into bed, exhausted, but had a hard time falling asleep. Thinking about how tired I was, and how I had to work Sunday and how I'm tired of working (I logged in all 4 days this holiday weekend, even though it hasn't been for very long each time).

In short, the time with our friends was wonderful, but the travel and the barfing and the working- not so much. It wasn't as restful a trip as I hoped it would be. It's funny- it's like the more I need a particular time to be restful, the more guaranteed it is that I won't be allowed to relax.

Anyway, home again, home again, as the old nursery rhyme goes. On the downhill slope to Christmas.

Also Amusing

2008-11-24T07:35:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, Caetlin ended up going down for her "nap" at 5:00 p.m., and because she hadn't had a nap the day before and because she had eaten like a champ all day and would therefore be okay without dinner, we let her sleep through into the night. She woke us up chattering at about midnight, so we got up with her to change her diaper, put her into jammies, and at her demand, read her a story or two.

What I thought was really funny about the situation was what she was babbling about into the monitor when she woke me up. She was saying over and over, "Pretty Caetlin. Cute Caetlin. Yeah. Cute Caetlin. Pretty Caetlin."

Maybe we tell her how adorable she is a little too often. But she is!

Feet From Beyond the Grave

2008-11-24T06:51:00.002-05:00

Bear with me; this is probably going to be a "You had to be there" story, but I wanted to share in case any of you get a chuckle out of it.

The other evening I had been working late, and came home from the office and basically went straight to bed. Bruce was still up so we decided to watch a little TV before sleeping. I should mention that it's been pretty chilly here this week, and despite being pregnant enough to be warmer than I otherwise would be, my feet remain cold most of the time. So that evening, I climbed into bed with small ice blocks attached to my ankles, and moved them near - but not touching- my husband.

After a few (unsuccessful) minutes of trying to warm my feet up like that, I mentioned oh-so-casually to Bruce that I had a foot temperature problem, and would he be a wonderful husband who loves me so much and help me with it? He knows what that means, too- my own personal Antarctica placed carefully on or under the global warming zone of his legs.

He grumbled but assented, and when I attacked him with my feet-cicles, he cried out. "Aaagghh! Are your feet undead? Is this the cold of the grave?? Are your feet vampire feet?"

I started giggling, and burrowed my toes ever further under him.

"Aaaggh! Back, Nosfera-TOES!"

I lost it. He continued to incant against my otherworldly feet, but Nosferatoes will probably live on in the family lore for awhile.

My husband still makes me laugh.

Conversations with Caetlin

2008-11-18T20:42:00.004-05:00

Tonight, while I was changing her diaper before stories and bedtime:

[I unzip her sleeper and pull it off her feet. She frantically gropes for her belly button, missing it by a couple of inches.]

C: Uhh, uhh, belly button! [Whine.]
Me: It's right here, silly! [I guide her hand to her belly button.]
C: Hee, belly button. [Self-satisfied smile.]
Me: [Unsure what else to say] Yes, that's your belly button.
C: Big belly button.
Me: It's not a big belly button! It's a little belly button.
C: Daddy's big belly button.
Me: Yes, Daddy has a big belly button.
C: Daddy's big belly button. Caetlin's little belly button.
Me: That's right. Mommy's belly button is somewhere in between.
C: Baby [Segunda] grow behind Mommy's belly button.
Me: [delighted, because she might be starting to understand Segunda a little] That's right! Baby [Segunda] is growing in Mommy's belly!
C: Clean hands, please! [In a complete non sequitur to alert me to the fact that she's been picking her nose and is grossed out by the results.]

I envision Conversations with Caetlin to be a regular feature of the blog. It's so random talking to a toddler. Very free form. But I loved the bit about the belly buttons.

Halloween Pics

2008-11-13T21:14:00.005-05:00

I've been slack about pictures lately, so please let me remedy that with a couple from Halloween. Caetlin was our little lion, complete with roaring (she's roaring, not crying in the first pic below, as befits the cutest lion ever).

Sorry about the annoying bad date- the pics were taken with our old point and shoot, and I'm the only one who remembers to re-set the date after changing the batteries. I didn't take these, therefore, 2003 dating.

(She's a lion with a lollipop. Dr. Seuss fans among you will recognize this allusion. And isn't she the cutest lion ever??)

Of All the Law Schools In All the World...

2008-11-13T20:38:00.003-05:00

Eight and a half years ago (how can that be right??) I had a message on my answering machine in my apartment. Some guy, wanting my help with some law school thing. I called him back.

And that was how it started.

Somehow, after the first date, which came sometime after the law school thing, after the party where we realized we wanted to know each other better, we ended up inseparable. I remember the afternoon I was on the floor in his living room, listening with sharpened ears as he referred to me as his girlfriend on the phone with his mom.

Then it was long distance in Los Angeles, then very long distance in Scotland, then just long distance again in Los Angeles. Then cohabitation, in the cute apartment in the cute LA neighborhood. Our first house, in the bad neighborhood that wasn't as bad as it could have been because it was a cul-de-sac and the gangbangers went elsewhere to make their mischief.

I knew we were meant to be long before he sat with me outside our brand new house, in the park overlooking the lights of the downtown highrises and asked me to marry him.

We've been through job changes and job loss, cross-country moves, career left turns, bought three houses, rented two apartments and a house, taken 2 bar exams, moved twice to cities where we knew almost no one. We've had four cats and two dogs (now down to only 2 cats). In August 2006, we managed to join ourselves together far more permanently than we could have ever believed, and made a baby. We're working on another one of those right now. Basically, we've been through thick and thin (physically and metaphorically). It hasn't always been fun, but it has always been better because we were together. No matter what comes in our lives, we can get through it because we will be together. I have absolute faith in that.

November 13, 2004 is only the halfway point of our story from when we met until now. But in some ways, it was just the beginning.

Four whole years! (Feels like forever.) Love you, sweetie. You were, are and always will be the best thing that's ever happened to me.

23 Weeks

2008-11-07T03:21:00.004-05:00

I know I haven't posted much, and I do actually have plenty of unimportant drivel to throw out there. But as I mentioned to a friend recently, nothing much has been happening, and that's been keeping me away from the computer. Like, I'd rather read, as I've been into some good books lately, or watch fall TV (Bruce and I are horrible TV junkies and our fall schedule this year is actually manageable, so I'm thrilled we're actually keeping up with our TiVo). Or sleep. Or hang out with Caetlin. Work has also gotten in the way, in the sense that it is always feast or famine, and when it's feast, it's not exactly respectful of the whole leaving-at-6-p.m. thing.

But! I went to the doctor on Wednesday, and I'm off light duty and can resume normal activities! Yay! I can pick Caetlin up again, although that's starting to get tough anyway, hauling her around with my belly. The doctor told me that I should avoid violent sports, so that football league I was planning to join is out. But, you know, we all make sacrifices, right?

Apparently my placenta will only grow one way, which is away from the cervix, so it will either get sufficiently out of the way in time for Segunda to be delivered the usual way, or it won't and I'll have to have a C-section. But it is VERY likely that it will get out of the way, as there is still quite a bit of time to go until that becomes an issue. And there is no chance that it will grow back over the cervix. He'll look at it again some time in the third trimester, but for now all systems are go. Segunda's heartbeat is strong, and I can feel her moving around pretty much constantly now. I've also apparently only gained 11 pounds so far, which is a shock to me and a pleasant surprise.

I go back in 4 weeks and have the blood sugar test where they make me drink the nasty orange sugar water and wait an hour, and then after that I'll start seeing the doctor every 2 weeks. Which would be appropriate because I'll be in my third trimester at that point. It seems very strange to think that this pregnancy is going by so quickly. It makes me kind of panic because there is only a very small amount of work to be done to prepare for Segunda's arrival, at least as compared to Caetlin, but we pretty much haven't done any of it. My nesting instinct is starting to nag at me. I was too busy to really nest when I was pregnant with Caetlin, so I have to nest double this time.

Anyway, 23 weeks and all is well.

Noticed While Waiting for the Shower to Heat Up This Afternoon

2008-10-25T15:48:00.004-04:00

(Yes, I did write "this afternoon" in relationship to my shower today. When you have nowhere to go and no one around to talk to or who really cares how you smell, motivation does tend to go out the window. Don't judge. I showered eventually.)

I saw my first stretch marks of this pregnancy. I'm kind of surprised by them, since I didn't see any with Caetlin until 7 months or so. These happened to catch the light when I was standing in profile to the mirror. I can't see them head on. They are small, located above my flattening belly button (as it gets shallower, Caetlin still pokes it but it hurts quite a bit, since she's poking the relatively more exposed bottom with the same vigor). They are invisible from the front, but a delicate lavender color from the side.

After I saw those new ones, I looked the rest of my belly over. I saw the faint white lines from Caetlin but no other new purple ones yet.

These might dismay some people, but not me, though I do remember going to some lengths to try to ward off stretch marks with Caetlin- maybe that's why I've got them sooner this time. (It makes me laugh to think of having that kind of time, now.) I've never had the flattest tummy and I stopped wearing bikinis maybe 6 or 7 years ago. Maybe even longer ago than that. It's no hardship for me to have stretch marks. They remind me of Segunda (as if I could ever forget her!) and what is (hopefully) to come over the next months.