Silly tit weekend
I spent the weekend mostly nursing my poor tit, which clogged again Fri night and then got worse from there. After several consultations with telehealth nurses, and doctors, and begging off going to the ER on the theory that sitting in the ER - on Saturday night - after welfare cheques came out - would take literally all night, this morning I went to the walk-in associated with my own family doctor and ended up on serious antibiotics for mastitis. As I said to Sassy, sometimes a philosophy of doing the lowest possible intervention (not just mine, also my MD’s) sucks ass. Although I’m not sure I said it that directly.
I’m popping acidophilus like candy, but I presume thrush is next.
I’m glad I got to the auto show for some fun between health issues, but - grrr.
Nothing got done this weekend but baby and tit care and this is not helping the slump I feel in. I feel hopeless in a way I rarely have, about Emily I think although it sometimes gets hooked on present-day stupidities, like getting freaked out about baby proofing, or annoyed at mastitis, or angry at myself for not getting birth announcements out yet (I feel like if I send them, something will happen to Noah. And I know that’s crazy, but I feel it… it’s in part because the last night before I went into labour with Emily, I was working on the address labels for hers. And yes. It’s just irrational. I wish the birth announcement fairy would do it. :)).
I’m really glad we booked for the Briars. Because it is remarkably hard to make space for grief while Carl’s working and all the baby things have to happen, etc. etc. And then it turns into a kind of depressive response.
I know it’s not disloyal to Noah to miss Emily but it does sometimes make me feel like I’m not grateful enough for him. I am hugely grateful. I adore him. He’s such a joy and at 6 months he’s so - great - and I still have a post in drafts all about that. I am down about some things, but not about him.
But I still miss my baby girl. And this time of year is just very hard, this year. And my body is not cooperating!
Diary-X foo
Wow. All the data for the diary-x site was lost through a combination of a failed drive and human failure to back up the stuff. My condolences to everyone who maintained their journals there. We did for several years, and fortunately I have backups of everything (although mine is so big *cough* it’s proven hard to import it into this one).
I certainly feel for the d-x creator/maintainer, Stephen, who must feel like utter shit. I think we’ve all fucked up in our lives and most of us are lucky that our fuckups weren’t that bad - or at least not that public. Of course then there are doctors and such whose fuckups result in death, so - a little perspective is good, here.
At the same time I feel really fortunate to have worked on PernMUSH with people who simply didn’t make mistakes like that; they would have noticed the backup file was Really Small In Size, or something. They respected (and still, I am sure, respect - hi Dy :)) the time and effort that other people were putting in to create things enough to share the responsibility with other people and - well - be careful.
I think that was a pivotal experience in my 20s that taught me that even if a thing is free in money, it’s never really free in time. And you should, ideally, respect other people’s time and effort even if they are not paying you in cash. It doesn’t mean you will always do what they want - particularly in running something Internetish - but you can give them warnings if things are going to disappear, etc. You can remind yourself, in that moment that you’re angry and frustrated, that destroying their shit is plain old wrong.
I think it says a lot about our society that the response of a lot of people has been: well, Stephen did it for free, so what do you expect?! And there’s a certain truth in that: I don’t think there would be much sense in suing or villifying Stephen. At the same time, I think he did have a moral/ethical responsibility to those who were pouring their creative efforts into the site. I imagine that, like most of us, his life changed, his priorities changed, and he was not able to take as much care with it. And having burned out and witnessed burnout on similar things, it’s entirely understandable that he made a mistake.
But it was a grave one and I feel really sorry for those people whose work was lost to it.
Like Hemmingway and his famous lost manuscripts, I hope that they just get writing again. And I hope I can find some of them ’cause I will miss ‘em. Many if not most of them have no idea I was reading their stuff and I don’t have their email addresses, so I hope we bump up on the small world of the Internet again.
If you had a diary-x and have a new journal you want people to read comment here with its url and your old d-x username, and I’ll stick a link up, in the hopes that people will all link to each other and eventually we all find each other again.
FUN wow
Just a quick post - I had so much fun today which was sorely needed (should post on that) - I went down to the auto show and sat in tons of sports cars and also sussed out cars I might look at and found the super-cute Honda FIT subcompact which is hitting dealers here in April and I might actually buy one of those and people complimented my stroller. Which does look built for speed. And my baby. Who was ultra-cute.
Also, all these teenage boys were around and that’s a whole other post, the concept that this baby will one day be a Teenage Boy, but these boys were having incredible fun sitting in the Viper and ‘vette and all those things and basically dreaming “one day I will own this car” and piling into cars with their friends and messaging people with phone pictures of themselves with Mazda and Nissan concept sports cars and it gave me great joy that one day perhaps Noah will do this too. And that will not be a mystery to me, unlike many thing about Teenage Boys.
And yes. Just a very excellent day. I have been hiding and down, a little, as March approaches, but this turned it around for a few hours. And yes. You can take a baby to a trade show and have fun. It’s just a long way between washrooms and breastfeeding spots.
(I thought about doing it in the RX-8 but that seemed a little excessively in your face. :))
Mum angst rambles
All kinds of motherish thoughts today.
Changes
Yesterday Carl and I acquired a high chair, and packed away the bouncy chair and the swing, because neither entertains Noah any more. It’s safe to say we no longer have an infant, but a baby. And - it’s really fun. Those of you who told me so, I now believe you.
I still mourn the infant, a little: the closeness, the way we were still to some extent one, even with him outside the womb. But Noah’s taking steps now that clearly lead away - food that doesn’t come from my body; wriggly shrieking happy interaction with other babies and our cats; rolling away from me to get to a toy. And that is the goal, and I’m glad. When I spent those few days when we thought there was hope that Emily would survive, but knew she would never walk or read or any of those things, I tasted the reality of what a perennially dependent life would be.
But I still feel the passing of time, and it does seem to have been fleeting indeed. Half a year is so short. I said to Carl that I’m glad to be a mother in my mid thirties and not my twenties, because I’m a better mother than I would have been. But in my twenties the time would have been longer. Of course I would have appreciated it less.
I think babies like things relatively predictable. So I’m now working on re-jigging our routine and making some part of it more rigid. Lunch now includes rice cereal, so I’d like that to happen at about noonish, and bedtime already is set at about 7, 7:30 for the start of the routine, which works almost all the time. Breastfeeding is on-demand as ever, but that is reasonably predictable (but still, on demand).
He seems to be consolidating naps around 10:30 and 2-2:30 much of the time, although today he didn’t go down until 3:30 despite all the tricks. The third nap is pretty much gone, although now and then he takes a catnap around 4:30 or 5. I tend to want to go out in the early afternoon (when it’s not Hugely Cold like today) and he actually is okay with that, napping in his stroller. But does anyone have any suggestions for how else to structure days for 6 month olds? Given that we may have activities some mornings and afternoons?
And how, dear readers, do you handle weekends? Because around here, weekends are really crazy - sometimes Carl’s working, like this weekend he worked noon - 7 pm on Saturday, sometimes he’s not, and sometimes one of us tries to sleep in and sometimes not, and there’s shopping (or not) and social stuff (or not) and it seems that although we hit the major points - lunch, bedtime, naps - okay, it really does shake up Noah’s day.
Is that a good thing? I mean it seems to me in the long run it probably is to some extent, that he learn to handle different things. And he’s a pretty affable guy. But should I try to get Carl to follow my Mon-Fri routine or should I just let it fall where it does? Don’t they need space to work it out together? But if that results in a Sunday night meltdown is that an okay price to pay?
(This weekend it did not: in fact Noah slept 11 hours last night, with a very brief nurse at the 5 hr mark.)
Philosophies
I am shocking myself lately with how far I’ve gone in the attachment parenting direction. Not in an “everyone should do this” kind of way; just with what I’m comfortable with for Noah and us. (It may be Lyria’s influence; she’s much more around these days and that is really nice.)
Regardless of source though, I really am believing in keeping Noah close to me physically (even as he explores), especially at night, and as I posted earlier, I find that I’m really glad to have stuck with the breastfeeding. I’m not upset that we can’t take our kid to some hugely adult venue, but I am finding that I’m just - not going those places. I’m okay with being attached at the hip, right now.
I’ve gotten some vague flak from momgroup mums about often letting him nurse to sleep (nothing aggressive, just sort of surprise that I would allow the ‘bad’ habit) but for him and me, it hasn’t been a problem. I may regret it when he’s two, or something, but right now it works okay. And when he recently had that bout of waking in the night (which we may still be in, despite the last couple of nights) I didn’t think it was time to get all hard assed about sleep.
And I feel right about it for the most part: in my gut where I make intuitive decisions, I do think that I’m making the right choices for this child at this time, to the best of my ability, at least.
But it is that time bit that I wonder about a bit: in the end I would like to foster those traits in Noah that lead towards an ethical, disciplined (in the positive, adult sense of the word), socialized, independent child also capable of deep attachment and caring. I hope that this is the right way: making choices that seem right as we go along. But as Noah starts to demonstrate that he has a memory, I start to worry that we’re going to be too granola.
And I’m making my own baby food to boot.
Emily time
Despite the overtime drama not having resolved, I booked us into the Briars for March 12-16.
I think it’ll be ok financially, especially since I’m still carless (and lowering my expectations daily, although with Carl at work lately and it being cold I have felt a little house bound). It’s definitely not a vacation on the cheap, but last year I found it was a huge amount of luxury for the price - amazing food three times a day that you don’t have to have the “where shall we eat?” conversation to enjoy; pool, whirlpool, and tons of games like billiards indoors, and libraries of books in rooms with fireplaces and views and tea and coffee, and grounds and a lake for walks when it’s too much and we need to go out. And that’s without getting in the car.
(And a spa, but that’s extra.)
Last year it was such a nice place to fall, and they were pretty kid friendly (March Break inspired I’m sure). But also I think we really, really need to get away and breathe and all that. I’m really glad that we can do it.
It was also good I booked today ’cause the Toronto Star ran an article on East General and how the obstetrical department saved a mother and baby and rah rah rah them and it made me so mad and so upset and just - so - grr. And I need to make good safe space for that kind of anger. Every day, but also I think having that kind of family time will give a little more room.
Yummy memage
| Tough guy You scored 55% masculine, 82% athletic, 27% exotic, and 50% refined! |
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My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:
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| Link: The What type of MAN turns you on Test written by thinkandcome on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test |
And a few writing things
I have been doing more futzing than writing this week, but some bits of said futzing:
If you want to get away from it all, the Gibraltar Point residency programme looks so cool. I won’t be applying, plus the deadline is over, but it warms my heart to read that one could get a month of rent, food, and optional social programmes paid for. Amazing.
Places for writers is dangerous, because I keep thinking of projects for nearly every thing they put up. How about finishing the ones I’ve started, hmm?
I adore my friend TE, who is as terrible at keeping in touch as I am I think (although really I suck the most). Because whenever we get back in touch she always asks about my writing and book. For the last 15 years.
Magdalynn is contemplating writing a dark fantasy story just to take Anne Bishop’s workshop that’s coming up in March here as a part of some sf convention we are attending just for that reason. (We don’t FanGirl often, but when we do, we do!) Sassy’s response was that she could write Mary Sue San fanfic. But wait, isn’t she /actually/ the love interest?
… and the dark piece of that is that in thinking about an Anne Bishop workshop, I don’t think there is anything I have to learn from her. I mean I think her world and characters are cool, exceeding my imagination for sure, and yay she published and makes money and all those professional things I don’t. There’s no question she’s a better pro. But the actual writing? No, I egoistically think I actually write the same or better as far as that goes. I just may not have other things you can’t learn, like something to say and capacity to finish the damn thing.
Carl just told me to stop getting my pinched look, so I will, and go to bed now so I have energy to actually write tomorrow.
5 parenting things
As we approach 6 months (Tuesday!) here are some lists:
5 things I have found myself saying, that never occured to me I might ever say:
- Mummy’s just going to put you in the bathtub while she goes pee
- before guests arrive) Oh can you hide the breast pump for me?
- Let’s wipe the poo off your heel.
- handing over a page from The New Yorker) Here’s a crinkly!
- (to a tune vaguely like the theme song of Pinky and the Brain) It’s Mr. Schmoo! It’s Mr. Schmoo! He’s just a baby, he doesn’t know what to do. He’s hungry but he won’t eat, he’s tired but he won’t sleep, he’s Mr. Schmoo, and I love him truly true!
5 things I could not live without, that I never really thought of before having a baby:
- breast pump
- Raffi
- wheelchair accessible buses
- those little stain-treater sticks where you can leave it a day or two
- crockpot (okay, I did think about it, but one million times more so!)
Gear I am glad I acquired
- My funky stroller, as ridiculous as it is
- sling
- rocking chair
- bouncy chair (’tho ’tis outgrown *sniff*)
- the co-sleeper
Stuff I did not need much at all, that I or other people thought I would
- baby towels
- crib toy with music and flashing lights
- What to Expect the First Year (Dr. Spock rulz!)
- breast pads (lo, I am fortunate, and rarely leak)
- baby mitts (the indoor kind)
Five amazing things I am so glad I have gotten to experience
- baby laughter
- rooting
- that first realization that he could grab something
- the camraderie of mothers & parents
- trust enough in the future again
Saints and sinners: Generosity and the abuse survivor
My SIL has recently blended her family with her boyfriend’s, M and his kids, bringing their household to 5 kids, 3 adults.
It sounds really tough. Right now, everyone seems to be involved in a turf war - who does which chores, who eats which food, whose rules, whose dining room table, whose career and daycare and all those things. It’s a sea change in life, and it fascinates me not only because I care about the people involved, but because I’m engaged in the process of reorganizing my self image and life to include Noah, and the choices I make are becoming startlingly far-reaching. Or so it seems sometimes.
Both my SIL and her boyfriend are coming out of previous marriages. I can’t speak for him, but for her I can say that she was clearly the over-functioner in her marriage. She ran the home, hired the nanny, and ran their joint business. He showed up for work, smoked pot, and hung out on the Internet (at least at the end). When they separated, she got the kids, the car, and about two thirds less in support each year than groceries cost, pretty much, never mind rent and car payments and running shoes. He went back to being a single person and sees his kids once or twice a year.
Now that she’s entering into a live-in relationship, she is fiercely determined not to take on more than her share. And shouldn’t we, as feminist-leaning individuals, support her in that desire and quest? Even if it means duking it out and a certain amount of chaos?
Isn’t reciprocity a good thing? Well yes, I think so.
… and yet, I don’t know. I admit that my first reaction was, a la FlyLady, rather than fighting with another two adults and 5 kids about who does what for the dishes, why not just have them clear their own plates and then do the dishes as a gift to your new family. At least for the first year, when the kids are going through so much already. But is that really right? And is it maybe coloured by the fact that I have chosen to take on management of our house as part and parcel of my year’s maternity leave?
I find myself thinking that relationships don’t last without generosity. Reciprocity is really important - the idea that people will share their gifts in return for yours. But there are times, I think, when someone may need to give something that can’t be returned.
With kids, it’s really a given.
I already wrote (and will link, if/when d-x comes back or I install entries elsewhere) about the need for goodwill in a relationship - the willingness to assume that people close to me, when they mess up, are just messing up and not out to get me, or evil personified.
To that I add the concept of generosity. To give without expectation of return, ever.
People in a close relationship (particularly one where you live together) need to be willing, at times, to be generous. To do something they don’t want to do, or stop doing something they want to keep doing - for no other reason than making things better for someone else. At least in my opinion - even people with 50-50 divisions of chores and earning money will have to be generous with time, or in not bitching, or something.
It seems to me today that the trick is to balance having, or developing, the generous spirit without getting into a position of giving so much that you lose your own balance. Certainly there are people who have given very selflessly and whom our culture would have us mimic - Jesus comes to mind as a hugely extreme example. Of course we never got to see how many relationships he fucked up before he gave up trying to date and have a family and wandered about telling parables instead.
But let’s assume that we can’t all be Christ or Buddha or whomever, and that we are ordinary people, who need to receive as well as to give, and who struggle with the balance between their needs and other people’s. (Particularly in our society, which preaches fulfilment quite strongly.) Where do you start?
The problem for survivors of abuse - when they start- is, once again, their boundaries and concepts have been messed up beyond the ordinary.
In our past, we were told that we were being good, where “good” was a code word for “silent about bad things.” We were told we were helpful, where “helpful” was code for having inappropriate responsibilities. And the penalties for not being good and helpful were unusually high. This may well have been because our parents and their parents and their parents were also paying unusually high prices for things.
Like most people, though, we still wanted to be good and helpful. But the results of that craziness is sometimes like a middle ear infection that affects our ability to balance our needs with the needs of others. (And I am not saying it’s easy for anyone.) The world gets very black and white; givers and takers, and not a lot of room in between.
The problem with most therapy (I must leave mine out because I have a therapist who supports very strongly the need to take other people into account) is that it doesn’t actually help people learn a balance very well. It shores up one side - the abusive side - and helps people to see where in their past they were used. Sometimes it is very excellent in addressing current, actually abusive situations.
But it doesn’t often go the next step to helping people determine how to be generous and how not to resent people once they’ve been generous with them. In fact, I personally think some therapeutic processes completely undermine the generous streak in the human spirit. It deals with an important piece - how have people hurt me and manipulated me via my generous streak, and how can I take care of myself? But it utterly fails to take the next step towards then being generous as appropriately as possible.
How many times have I found myself (or seen in other survivors) being eager to care and to love and to give (all good things) - but then getting tired out and collapsing in a pile of goo? Or worse, villifying the other person, who clearly is a user and abusive and all kinds of things? Or worse still, creating a false sense of balance by giving a lot to a few people and then beating up others for not filling the gaps all that giving creates?
And how dangerous is that with kids around? Very. I mean, to quote Anna Quindlen, “There’s the problem with turning motherhood into martyrdom. There’s no way to do it and have a good time. If we create a never-ending spin cycle of have-tos because we’re trying to expiate senseless guilt about working or not working, trying to keep up with the woman at school whose kid gets A’s because she writes the papers herself, the message we send our children is terrible. By our actions we tell them that being a mom—being their mom—is a drag, powered by fear, self-doubt and conformity, all the things we are supposed to teach them to overcome.”
(Which is most certainly not the only reason it’s on my mind, but I do think the choices I make around parenting and my career this year will be somewhat far reaching.)
This year I think I’ve appreciated a lot watching Idaho-people, particuarly Sassy, learn to say “no, I need my downtime/something nice for me” before getting completely stressed out, which then frees her to be the generous person she is more consistently. And on the other side I have watched Carl struggle hugely with how much to give to his team or a project in a work context, and to fill his own well.
And me? Well I’m not sure I can evaluate how well I’ve toed the line between saint and sinner when it comes to generosity, finding those shades of grey, but I do know I’m trying to at least keep an eye on where that is. For now it’ll have to do.
How do you spell relief?
TMI.
No really. More about the lactating tit than you want to know.
So…
… this clog cleared quite spectacularly. Normally each of my breasts holds something like 3 and 4 oz of milk, guessing from the times I’ve pumped. So 6-8 oz total for a feed. Now this morning Noah was nursing on that side, so he cleared most of the breast. Except the duct that was clogged.
About a half hour ago I laid down with him to try it again, after a good soak where the famous “white dot” (i.e., the clog at the tip) appeared. And sure enough, the clog cleared with an audible gurgle. He pulled off the breast in self-preservation as milk sprayed everywhere. I grabbed the pump, determined to get everything out.
5 ounces of milk. From one duct (like, 1/6 of one breast).
Now that’s relief.
Don’t be scared off breastfeeding, by the way, if you’re reading this. I think my breasts are unusually prone to clogging for a few reasons - mostly their shape; the ducts go pretty far towards the side of my body, so sleeping on my side or even holding my arm funny can inhibit the flow of milk. Also after Noah nursed like mad over the weekend they were in hyper production. I am not a breastfeeding nazi - I think the primary responsibility of parents is to ensure their children are nourished, whatever the means. I’m a formula babe myself.
Having said that, I personally love breastfeeding, clogs and all. It’s hard to start but easy afterwards, always there, snuggly, inexpensive, and for me it has been empowering to watch Noah grow on shit that comes out of my body!
Even if it occasionally has gotten - spectacular.
Shorts
I have been fighting another Badly Clogged Milk Duct that is my own fault ’cause I ran out of lecithin, but is painful regardless and lasting way too long. So, in brief:
- My mother in law’s visit was great on a lot of fronts, but not the writing one. Which is ok, but I really do need to get back on a schedule there. Through info about other people, I have been reminded of the role generosity plays in relationships. May do a post on this later.
- My new stroller is a really fun toy. Of course it’s been mostly snowy and yucky, but the days it hasn’t been, whee!
- Valentine’s Day was a big reminder in how much love I have in my life, but I posted all that earlier. I give good chocolate and… other things.
- Noah’s 6 mo checkup (a week early) plotted him on the 25th percentile in weight and height, which my doctor says is not a concern but I worry a little nonetheless just ’cause he was on the 50th. She also said she thought the murmur was quite loud & we may check it out again.
- We’re going ahead with solids! I did give him his first taste of (organic, brown) rice cereal. He liked playing around with it in his mouth. Next time I’ll get pics. I also gave him a rice num num on the theory that he would just masticate it. Nope, he got a big chunk off and swallowed it. Ergh. So much for the num nums. :)
- New favourite game: Noah uses the wall to walk his feet along, to turn himself around on his back (he rolls onto his side, ‘walks’ along the wall, and then flips over onto his back again). It’s very cute, but who knew I was going to have to put blankets down along the walls? :)
- I have the best therapist ever, who emails me back right away and says if I want I can bring Noah, even though it’s distracting and not optimal. This just increased my options quite a lot if I want to go back into therapy, which I do, if only to make sure issues are not going to blindside me. But the babysitting issue was a concern.