Richness part 3
Went to the Toronto Islands with a friend and her friend and their husbands (Carl could not go) and our assorted kids today.
It was glorious; there was enough shade and breeze to keep it from being awful (we are in a humid heat wave thing) and we went early enough to leave before both the crowds and heat would have wrecked it.
Noah was a trooper although I do notice that at 5 some of his current developmentally appropriate traits are not…charming. Mostly he was polite and fun. Occasionally he came out with things like “Look at my CARS bag” which I find wince-worthy because we are so not like that, but for him it’s a big deal. But worst I think was when he told one of the moms quite seriously “I’m really fast, so you’d better keep your baby [toddler] out of my way.” Whoa boy.
Noah and I had both ferry rides to ourselves to bond and enjoy each other’s company though and that was nice. The one thing I miss most about working full-time is having LOTS of adventures together. We try for one every other weekend but it’s rather hit or miss, and lately, with feeling icky, it’s been more miss. Also, I’m enjoying this last summer of parenting just Noah. I have tons of plans to maintain some just us time, but I know a hurricane is about to wreck the best of intentions.
Also that whiny post I made - we are working through stuff and that is cosy and nice. I guess after 8 years you have to trust that you can.
Richness part 2
Today: Noah and Carl played Meccano for a bit and now Noah is playing Lego while I work on sorting out our (ahem) “backwater room” - the place outgrown possession wash up in the flow of our home. The purpose is twofold: Get the baby stuff a bit more organized, although it’s already boxed by size (but the small sizes are on the bottom!) is one. But the big one is that this room will eventually become my office so that Noah and the baby each have a room. We know the babe will be in our room for quite some time, so right now the simple installation of a change table and comfy chair in my office would do it. BUT long-term that will be where I will end up and I’d like to make it nice.
And it’s not nice. It’s a kitchen, although it doesn’t have a fridge or stove as they weren’t in our purchase agreement when we bought the house. For some reason people put the kitchen in the furthest corner of the basement - you either have to go through Carl’s office (the ‘bedroom’ of the bsmt apartment) to get there, or through the furnace room. It has a wall of cupboards and a sink and fluorescent lighting and a god-awful backsplash and hardly any natural light, just a small basement window.
So this is going to be a challenge. On the plus side, it was supposed to be a craft/art room all along (despite the bad lighting; we had Ott light plans) and I think even though it’s a bit small we can probably make it kind-of-both which will be good for my writing.
Meanwhile Carl’s playing WoW. And you know what? It doesn’t bother me. Partly ’cause it’s the start of vacation. But partly because this is kind of how our flow has developed; I do in fact do the organizing and I know I’m going to do it and I won’t say I never, even resent it but overall - it’s okay with me.
Also, he’s going to have to build a wall of shelves in there so he may as well rest now. Ha.
Richness of things
I have so much to tell about here and at my other blog (other blog: birthday party; here: work). But I’ve been busy and I threw my back out so have been moaning on the floor some. Ah, pregnancy.
But I had to tell about yesterday. Yesterday was Carl’s and my 16th wedding anniversary. However he was scheduled to work and so I went ahead and hosted this new thing I’m involved in (new to me): Wine Night. A bunch of moms from the neighbourhood, that I used to hang out with but lost touch with in the fuss of going back to work, meet up on Friday nights after the kids are asleep for wine and whine. Or iced tea for the pregnant and nursing. I hosted, which was brave of me as our house is not in fabulous shape.
It was a lot of fun. I just felt very - well - blessed all day. It might be pregnancy hormones too, I don’t know. But I went to work, had lunch with a colleague, chatted with Ell (Idaho), had dinner with my family, and hung out with friends.
I’d sort of put out to myself to be more social and it is working. It’s nice.
I’m off work this week and we’re hanging out here - going on a few day trips and dealing with some disorganization in the house in a calm slow way.
Nice end to the summer!
Shocker
It’s so weird when one’s (former?) BFF/girlfriend comes out with how much she thinks you suck since becoming a parent.
Parsing that kind of thing is hard. There has been tension for a while - the glamorous single life vs. the unglamorous drudgery of parenting. Plus a pregnancy. But I didn’t realize it went that deep.
There’s probably some truth that there’s been minor suckage, but you know - I kind of thought I was worth it. Also, with some friends I’ve been glacial about responding to things so if they came out with it I’d get it. But with this friend it’s like instant messenger every day. Except apparently on her side, half those days sucked.
Why is it people always hit you with this after you’ve spent 6 weeks nauseated and one with a thrown back - and after a kid’s birthday party for 20 kids + parents?
(The party went off fine.)
I’m definitely joining the wine/whine night with my neighbourhood posse this Fri. I think I’ll host.
Oh. my. god.
…there is a BABY in there.
12 week ultrasound:
- no twins (PHEW)
- NT measurement a healthy 1.6 mm although we await the bloodwork
- good heart beat
- wriggly swimming baby with the CUTEST LITTLE HANDS AND FACE
I think…this is happening!!!
Yes, I cried.
Threats of violence I can get into
“I know I have to work all day today, but I checked the weather and I can mow the lawn tomorrow. If you mow it, I will shake you.”
(He wouldn’t, but hey. It’s true; I was eyeing the lawn but it is HOT and I am TIRED. Plus we have a lot of cleaning to do inside where it’s cooler anyway.)
Me = boring
I covered a nightclub event last night for work, which was sort of an energy stretch. (See doctor, get blood test, have early dinner to avoid the nightime “morning” sickness, go ROCK THE CLUBS. Sober.)
Anyways I discovered I am officially extremely boring. (Not that it was about me.)
I had fun going around interviewing people and because it was a *cough* specialized event most of the music was precisely out of my era or a little older, so I even enjoyed it and I danced some because no one can interview people for 5 hours straight in a nightclub and not end up on the floor at some point. (That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.) I learned that I have actually gotten pushy enough to walk up to people and interview them. It helped that media outnumbered guests for the first two hours, because my competitive streak propelled me to do what everyone else is doing. Or rather my boring fit-in streak.
But I discovered I’ve become really boring. Part of my interviews were with hot young guys (< 30) and some of them devolved into “true confessions of young guys” and a few asked me questions like how did I meet my husband and what do I like to do normally, if I cannot be met on the dance floor at a club. On the Internet and generally I can be found at home writing, messing around on the Internet, cooking, or sleeping.
I also discovered that although theoretically I find 28-year-old buff guys (and there were plenty) hot, whether it’s the hormones or some sea change in my personality, when any of them hit on me (and a good dozen did which was disconcerting, although given the nature of the event and the dearth of non-press women at it somewhat understandable; also, I need a hat with a “press” card in it) my first reaction was not: mnnn but OH MY GOD SPARE MY SON THIS HUMILIATION 22 YEARS INTO THE FUTURE. May he find a lovely girl his own age and not be at specialized events named for predatorial large cats seeking out the attentions of older women.
Not that it was really humiliating I guess. But seriously, I have a first trimester pooch, I was dressed sort of intentionally to ward off advances with granny shoes on, and I’m an old married woman.
I suppose I grew up in a still sexist enough society, or perhaps it was my own geeky dating adventures, but I pretty much have in my mind that the guys are more in control of their dating lives. But after last night, what I feel I learned is that there are a lot of lonely guys out there - with nothing initially/visibly wrong with them: nicely dressed, nice bods, jobs and degrees. And they are brave enough to go out of their comfort zone for a lark on a Friday night to suck up to older women.
So what the hell, young women of Toronto?
Independence Day
Well it wasn’t precisely on the 4th but Noah did spend the entire night in his own bed tonight - for the first time since he had appendicitis. Go him! Although one of us (*cough*) kept waking up after 2 am wondering if he was okay, since that’s when he would normally decamp for the big bed.
Also I did have my first baby dream. In it I had delivered the baby and then been sent home to rest as a new study showed that was best practice (with the baby still in hospital). In my dream I got home, realized the policy was idiotic, and stormed back into the hospital demanding that they turn over my baby to me right now.
Carl and I have been sort of not-talking yet communicating about what extraordinary measures we would or would not take in the 10% chance that this baby gets this blood thing. I suspect my subconscious just determined my position for me, which is, probably unsurprisingly, pugilistic in favour of the baby.
No antibodies - sigh
My blood test from last week finally came back - and at that time I had no antibodies. This means that so far, I didn’t get Fifth from Noah. But it also means I could have (none of those nice lifelong antibodies), and I will be retested tomorrow, and if the short-term antibodies do not appear, I’ll be tested again. They are most likely to appear in this next test if I did get it.
This does not make me happy. If the short-term antibodies appear (followed by the long-term ones) we will be on a sort of death/damage watch for the rest of the pregnancy.
Emotionally I’ve just stepped back from the baby idea. I’ll take my prenatals, avoid all the stuff you have to avoid, and just wait to see what the next few tests show.
Labour
This started as an answer to J’s (love you J!) comment but it got long. I imagine there will be a labour channel on for the next 7 months. In fact I’ll add a tag.
I went into the OB when pregnant with Noah dead. set. on a c-section, for obvious reasons. My OB was a crusty old white guy who also happens to be a top teaching OB (I didn’t know this for a while, until a friend-of-a-friend who is Harvard educated clued me in). He listened to me and assured me that a scheduled c-section would be entirely possible. But he also asked me to consider what it would take to make me comfortable with a vaginal delivery.
Since I had spent Emily’s pregnancy hearing about the Evil OBs Who Make You Have C-Sections I was a bit surprised at this deviation from the script. But we agreed to set an appointment around the 26-week mark to think about it, and I got him the chart from Emily’s labour so he could see what I meant.
(Aside: No one at Mt. Sinai ever believed me about Emily’s labour the first time. My nurse apologized after reading the chart. But at Mt. Sinai they assumed I had misunderstood something because it was simply impossible for so many points of failure to occur.)
Anyways, by 26 weeks I had developed relationships with him and with the nurse. And I had come to understand a few things - one, that this OB is pretty into vaginal deliveries (I once waited for him while he finished up a discussion on turning breech babies). But second, that he had reasons for whatever he asked me to do. So I listened. And he very slowly and calmly, giving me his time and attention, went over research and his experience.
He did not sugar coat things. He said that while cord accidents are rare, they are badly understood. And no one knows why, but women who have had them do have a slightly higher risk of having them again. And that monitoring is generally pretty good despite the failure of it at Emily’s labour and what they would do about that for me (belly monitor, scalp monitor as soon as possible, manual checks with a stethoscope). He explained the difference between “okay” decels and “bad” decels.
Then he went over risks of vaginal delivery and risks of c-sections. He was really really clear. A c-section is major abdominal surgery and has risks - in the same statistical realm as cord deaths, some of them. He was perfectly happy to order and perform one, but only if I understood the list of risks.
And then we discussed comfort. He agreed that he would write orders that if Noah had two - two - decels of any kind that we would proceed to a c-section. Or if I asked. He also set it up so that I would have an appointment with every OB in the practice so that I would have met everyone (except one - the one I got - but that was a fluke). And then he encouraged me to try it. It took me a few weeks to come around to it but I did.
When we got into L&D triage the night Noah was born (early) for my miniscule ‘regular Braxton-Hicks’ contractions that had managed to get me pretty dilated (oy - I didn’t even really think I was in labour) everyone looked cross-eyed at his orders. The nurse said I’d better get an epidural so I could be awake for the c-section that was surely coming.
It was during the epidural placement that I had my one and only ‘real’ contraction with Noah, which made me throw up. And Noah’s heart deceled, because he was coming down the canal and also (I’m convinced) because I was sort of sitting on him. The labour team was in grand annoyance, because labour was going so well and yet they were bound to move to a c-section at the next decel.
So the one OB I hadn’t met asked me why I was freaking out (I was freaking out) and I stammered out something like that I was afraid the baby would get stuck and die. And she of the hadn’t-seen-Emily’s-chart looked at me with complete confusion and said “well that won’t happen!” (I think she was a little offended that I had so little faith in her powers.) And then who knows how many decels Noah had because as soon as they let me back onto my back he was born - two pushes. No time for a scalp monitor either. The epidural never got turned on. Carl says he thinks he had three, but the third was just as his head was coming out. We don’t really remember though, but I suspect the orders were abandoned - for good reason.
I think what I learned from that is that fear can be addressed in a lot of ways. I really did feel throughout my pregnancy that my OB and my nurse were completely committed to me as a patient. But they also were not really into unnecessary interventions if there was a more — dare I say it — holistic way of supporting me.
I found that really mind bending, because this was the high-tech group and all the natural childbirth literature would have you believe hospitals and OBs are all pushing c-sections on you like mad. And here I hadn’t had one when I needed one, and I’d been talked out of one when I didn’t.
Whatever it is, I was glad for being able to go vaginal with Noah. The first 6 weeks were hard enough without having to recover from surgery. Plus, it was healing for my relationship with my body.
But his labour was really unusually pain and fuss-free; he was also a small baby (although not for being so early). It would be nice if there were a guarantee that this one would be the same (much faster and it would probably be a roadside delivery).
And it’s not like the good labour overwrites the bad labour; 2 minutes of pushing vs. 4 hours does not train one’s body out of the bad body-memories. It’s more fraught than I thought in a way; in theory, I assumed that I would feel better if I got to this point, having had Noah just fine. But I am discovering that no, it’s Emily’s labour that comes to mind over and over. It makes sense; I’d just not given myself that much room.
So I will discuss a c-section, especially if the pregnancy goes to term. (None of mine have, yet.) I think I would like to go for vaginal as a first wish. But I know it will all be difficult. The nice thing is that this will almost certainly be the last one.
And yes, I’m trying to get back in with the same OB but he’s pretty booked. Plus I’m waiting for this blood test to see if I’m getting transferred to an OB who specializes in blood disorders anyway (sigh).