birthquake

I've never run a marathon. I am not a runner. So it's amusing to me that that's the go-to comparison for the physical and mental demands of labor: It's like running a marathon.

I suppose the metaphor is intended for people who have no way of conceptualizing the stamina and perseverance required to give birth, but who could, at least poetically, relate to running a marathon. Without actually being able to compare, I'd say it may be like running a marathon, except you have no idea how long it will take, there is no predictable route, and you haven't trained for it. 

Everyone was telling me, as my due date approached, that the third time around would go so much faster and be so much easier. I'd nod and humor them, but I just knew it wasn't going to be true for me... My body doesn't do fast labor.

(OK, technically speaking, at 22 hours, this labor was the shortest of the three, but that just sounds like I'm bragging, doesn't it?)

I had a couple of false starts two nights in a row, which got my hopes (and my nerves) up, but didn't go anywhere. When contractions started again the following afternoon, I was a little skeptical, but more than anything I was eager to go. And even though I knew I was facing another whole day of utterly unpredictable marathoning, I was still surprised that it took me ages to reach 'active' labor. 

It took AGES to reach active labor. I timed contractions obsessively, trying to will myself into some kind of productive rhythm, but they were all over the map. Unfortunately, they were formidable enough to keep me from sleeping, so from 1pm on Sunday until 7am on Monday, I paced and puffed and counted and cried. The time went bogglingly slow. The true challenge wasn't the physical pain, it was in psyching myself up for the real race, which I realized I wasn't anywhere close to starting each time I called the midwife for a pep talk and she assured me she'd come when I was in 'active' labor. I went through two midwives' 8-hour shifts this way. 

After pulling an all-nighter without having made any significant progress, I felt disheartened and desperate. The next midwife came on shift at 8am, and bless her, she called me at 7:45 to check in. Still nothing to report... The kids were up, the sun was up, and I was still on the couch moaning in pain and disbelief every 7 to 30 minutes. Not long after that, though, I lost the mucous plug, and instead of feeling completely dejected that it meant I'd gone through ALL THOSE HOURS to dilate one measly centimeter, I was thrilled and relieved that something new was happening. 

I caught a second wind composed entirely of anger, and determined to ramp up the labor by pacing the living room (our living room is not big enough to pace in). I forced myself to walk through the contractions, swatting away the kids' attempts to help me sit on the yoga ball, swatting away Jason's attempt to hold me and help me breathe. JUST FUCKING GO, went my mind, GO GO GO. 

The next time I called the midwife, she offered to come over and examine me and see how things were going. Yes, I told her, come now. Is time. 

She arrived and I was still pacing, at 9:30am. We moved upstairs where she checked my dilation, and reported that I'd made it to 7cm. This was heartening. Better than heartening: I felt like a total bad-ass. I'd gone from 0 to 60 in an hour and a half. Active labor, you are MINE.

Next I took a bath, both to take the edge off the contractions, and also just to have something to do. Afterwards, things slowed down again slightly, but I was grateful for the respite, and the midwife told me that it was OK to rest a little and take this part easy. 

My water still hadn't broken, so even though I knew I was close, the waiting, coupled with the sheer exhaustion, was almost intolerable. I was practically begging the midwife to just break the water for me -- but their guidelines are that they don't interfere unless absolutely necessary, so I leaned back against Jason and fantasized about quitting entirely. After a few more contractions, the midwife suggested getting up and letting gravity help a little more, so I struggled onto all fours on the bed. The very next contraction broke the water in a heaving gush, and brought with it a terrible and involuntary push which crescendoed in a wild animalistic growl.

There is this moment of reckoning; a crazed focus and a breathless and pointed understanding: there is no way around this volcano. You have to go through it.

On my hands and knees there, I faced this moment and then let it be known I really felt:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I screamed. NOOOOOOOO!!! NO!

The volcano was going to rip me in half if I stayed in that position.

I struggled again to get back to reclining, supported against Jason.

The midwife was encouraging me to push with the contractions, but I was caught up entertaining the notion that I'd do this one without any pushing... That's possible? Surely?

Finally I confessed: I'm afraid to push, I wailed.

Why? asked the midwife.

Which struck me as completely incomprehensible. Because it feels SO WRONG, I answered, since right at that moment it seemed nicer than saying BECAUSE IT FUCKING HURTS ARE YOU CRAZY.

I was so physically spent that I didn't even know how to muster the coordination to push -- to translate the concept of pushing into a muscular action with sufficient momentum to bring forth a baby. I made some attempts, against all better judgment, matter over mind; each time it felt weak and haphazard, but earned hearty praise from the midwives. 

I remained stubborn. I CAAAAANNNN'T, I cried with each brutal wave. Who wants to climb toward that excriciating summit?

And then: the pinching, searing, stinging burn, somehow high-pitched and sharp; the rim of the volcano, the molten earth.

That moment probably only lasted a minute, but had the acuity of a shard of glass, and it eclipsed everything and became The Only Moment, the only thing, the entire experience cleaved to this precipice of pain. 

But this is the deception of labor -- THE moment is actually the penultimate moment, because the next thing I knew, I could feel the head and could feel exactly how much more it was going to take to get it out. That was all I needed, to know I was just that close, and only had to manage one more massive push and then I could be done... this thought alone manifested the strength to bear it out, and, with a surging clenching screaming force, out she came, slippery and crying and whole, and I, wholly spent, holy made, gasping.

The pain and pressure vanished, and in their wake came overwhelming relief and gratitude, palpable as  gravity... everything else fell away and there she was, wriggling and human and A GIRL! Such a marvelous reward, such a terrible honor to be this doorway. 

Loïe, my new daughter, may you be as strong and determined as the labor that brought you. 

*

9 months

Home stretch... And I do mean stretch.

8 months

Also known as "The Wall."

As in: how am I possibly going to make it for 8 more weeks.

*

7 months

Because it's important to expose children to great art as early as possible:

(And also to wear a doily dress, just because you can.)


*

6 months

thirds

There have been some other interesting developments around here... 

That's five months of baby right there! We are all very excited, especially Auden & Isla, who, it's safe to say, have no idea what they're in for. Those of us who do know are tempering our excitment with denial and anxiety. 

I have been wanting a third baby since Isla was a toddler, even though I couldn't admit it at the time -- I would repeatedly talk myself out of an urge that seemed rooted in utter craziness. Since then, after three more moves -- two of which were international -- I'm starting to feel like craziness might actually be an asset, not a deterrent. 

So here we are! Looking forward to meeting the newest Danely in January.

*

as we go

The kids are back in school after their year-end break: Isla in a new class at kindergarten, and Auden, suddenly, impossibly, a First Grader. He barely made the cut-off date, starting just days after his 6th birthday. 

Now he walks to and from school with a group of other kids in the neighborhood. Even though we've been inching toward this kind of independence -- by sending him to the corner store for tea and snacks, and by not having heart attacks when he walks to the park by himself -- I am still finding it almost preposterous that we have reached this stage. I'm guessing the stomach roiling subsides after a while?

Isla likes to run around outside too, and hide in the narrow spaces between houses, in doorways, in the maze of narrow streets around our house. When I find her, she squeals with laughter, looking mischievous and triumphant. 

This is probably the safest place we could possible live, but I still have to fight a rising panic when I'm not entirely sure where they are. 

The other day they packed their carry-on suitcases full of toys and wheeled them out to the street, stopping at one friend's house, and then another, which I didn't discover until after I had gone full bore, riding my bicycle through the neighborhood, calling their names.

What kind of double-edged sword is this, anyway? The minute they stop needing me at their side every minute, I become freakishly masterful at conjuring catastrophic What-Ifs. 

Here they are, discussing their plans to travel to Bulgaria.

I want them to have this freedom, I want them to discover things on their own... Especially here, where they own what they find in a different way: words, connections, patterned pottery shards embedded in the concrete on the road to the park.

I suspect there's no other way to offer this except to practice as we go. So if you want me, kids, I'll be in the kitchen not having heart attacks.

*

generations

I always joke that Jason and I both got a mini-me... Auden looks just like him, and Isla looks just like me. But then I looked at these pictures of Jason's paternal grandmother, and the resemblance took my breath away.

             

She's Danely all the way. Thank you, Grandma Lois, for passing on these lovely genes.

*

dear you, dear me

Dear Auden,

You know what I just realized about blogging, after all these years? It's that I've been trying to hew to a formula and the formula is bullshit. The markers and milestones and cheesy "letters" are bullshit. The trying to record my relationship to you in a way that is lyrical, genuine, and also amusing... it's bullshit.

I realized that tonight as I went in to your bedroom to check on you, and you had fallen fast asleep, and I put my hand on your bare chest and felt your heart thumping, and I marveled at your slim shoulders and the curves of your nose, your cheeks, your perfect sleeping mouth.

I felt fiercely in love you with right then, and I realized I had been unknowingly assuming that that kind of fierce love was reserved for infants, or maybe just specifically YOU as an infant. It was as if I had been subconsciously telling myself that I could never have your infancy back, and with it, the raw and enormous and lucent love that sharpened those months.

Isn't that silly?

I still love you that way.

It's just easier now to get distracted by every-day logistics, new challenges, your healthy and infuriating defiance. And it's not your birthday or any other milestone, but right this very minute I am watching you grow, I am watching you sleep, I am watching you kick and tumble, I am watching you become yourself with the same amazement and pride that I felt four years ago.

This thing of being your mother is so huge. I am humbled and exhausted and pried open.

*

But all of this writing is really for me, so maybe the formula should be more like:

Dear Robin,

You know what you did today? You fed and dressed your children; you scrubbed poop out of a jute rug; you went to your two classes and bent your mind around the art of Dynastic Egypt and then around the mathematical rules of angles that compose a two-point perspective drawing.

You squabbled with Jason about discipline and consistency in dealing with tantrums and tearful snot-smearing bids for attention at the breakfast table, then you apologized, and Jason took the kids to school and you had a nice breakfast alone. You felt guilty about this transition to full-time day-care for Isla; you vowed to be more present and more patient.

You lost your patience about that whole poop-in-the-jute-rug thing.

You took the kids to a PawSox game, their first-ever baseball game in a real stadium, and watched as wide-eyed amazement gave way to sheer glee which then devolved into sugar-and-popcorn fueled shenanigans, but all of which was purely awesome to experience vicariously.

You got frustrated about painting; then you finally resolved the piece and rejoiced and called your dad.

You took a call from a friend who was struggling, and you gave her the very thoughtful and loving support that you yourself needed to hear.

You had a hard morning, and then a good afternoon; or maybe a good morning and a hard afternoon, where you couldn't quite put your finger on what made it hard, but you were distracted and let the kids tear up the house and draw on themselves with marker while you tried to talk yourself out of quietly falling apart.

Still, you managed to put together a healthful and delicious dinner, with all of the places set and silverware and drinks out and everything, and after dinner you took the kids to the park, where at first you felt like a lump of pity-clay because of that Hard Afternoon, but eventually you warmed up and played monster, chasing and tickling. You delighted in the crazy goofy dances Auden was doing to evade your grabbing monster hands; you threw your head back and laughed because he was laughing so hard -- and there is nothing at all in the world like the laughter of your son... that one particular laugh, the one when you tickle him just right, the fullest and realest and laughingest laugh, the one that rises like a wave, going up and up and up, until it crests and tumbles out over everything -- which of course was the perfect balm on your over-worked and worked-up thinker.

You will do anything for that laugh, even when it's no good getting Auden all riled up like that, and the fall-out is that you are done playing sooner than he is... But you realized today that you won't always be able to make him laugh that way, or to laugh at him doing his monkey dances in his little lithe four-year-old body, and how gorgeous is this one night, with its air so soft and your heart so tender.

*

101

I'm going back to school.

I'm turning 35 in two days.

I'm not sure yet how quickly I'll be able to do it, but I'm going to complete a BFA in painting... and I get to do it for free!

I saw my husband's name in the course catalog when I picked out my classes. (I'm not taking his class, though I secretly kind of want to: he's teaching one on MONSTERS.)

I went to the orientation for transfer students, and the Fashions of the Youth -- my god. The '80's are back.

I had to submit a portfolio for review, in order to waive the basics like Drawing 101, and to qualify for the BFA program. I had lots of work left over from figure-drawing classes of years past, and of course lots of my own personal work, and of course all of my portraits too. I enrolled in a design class, because I've never taken design, and I want to dork out on font styles and learn how to do, you know, hi-tek stuff on the computer. And I was absolutely certain I would not have to take Drawing 101.

But the professors who reviewed my work gave me credit for the design class. And credit for the figure-drawing class. And not for Drawing 101.

At first I felt righteously indignant, like, Do you know who I am? I am an Accomplished Artiste, and I shall not stoop down to your two-point perspectives and still lifes with plastic bottles painted gray! I voiced my indignation on Facebook, and got some responses from friends that really surprised me. One said, Don't Take It Personally, and the other said, I Think Everyone Should Take Drawing 101 Again and Again Forever.

And then I remembered something my high school physics teacher wrote in my senior yearbook: "Can you calculate the altitude of that attitude?"

So I promptly got over myself. I realized that school is only going to enrich me if I allow it to, and also that I have a lot to bring to a Drawing 101 class. And I also googled the professor, who is himself an accomplished artist and whose work is amazing, and suddenly it didn't seem so bad to be hunkered in a basement studio with a motley bunch of 18-year-old Art Education majors.

Stay tuned for some value studies of apples, people!

*

tunnel vision

Sometimes I feel like I've crash-landed into this parenting thing.

I lie in bed at night, a quivering mass of pulp where my brain should be, and wonder why I can't get things done. It's only when I'm lying there, perfectly still, that I think of the phone call I meant to make, the email I meant to write, the article I meant to read, the toenails I meant to clip. Then, of course, I'm too tired to even make a list.

During the day, I scramble to keep up. I flail two steps behind the mess-makers, trying to negotiate peace. I yell and cajole. I make deals, I bribe, I entertain, I build things and then wreck them. I wrestle. I prepare food and serve food and clean up food, ad infinitum. I stare into space by mid-afternoon and pray for dinnertime.

It takes so much creativity, this work, something I thought I had plenty of. But my talent is for arranging shapes and colors into pretty pictures, not in coming up with new and different and awesome ways to get toddlers to stop mauling each other.

I'm three years in, and I still can't remember to pack the diaper bag the night before.

I'll do better tomorrow, I resolve. I'll be more willing to play. I won't get so annoyed when they splash water out of the bath.

But tomorrow comes so quickly, usually after someone has woken me up at least twice during the night, and they hardly wait for me to have some coffee before they attach themselves to my legs and start needing things. Then we spend the morning becoming little wind-up toys, ticking the spring farther and farther back until the tension is too much and we must explode into forward motion or we will seriously malfunction. There is inevitably a potty accident involved.

*

Isla is obsessed with balls and dolls, is easily entertained with a set of keys or a serrated knife pilfered from the dishwasher. She's really a sweet and mild kid, but mischievous too, and has learned from Auden the finer points of how to avoid getting dressed, and how to keen backward dramatically when you really want someone to pick you up.

Auden usually wants nothing more than to assign roles and act out some story again and again, which sounds delightful until you've taken turns all day being Nausicaa and Lord Yupa and Super Why and Wonder Red and Pee-Wee and Little Richie and the Wonder Pets and R2-D2 and Luke Sykwalker (and sometimes Luke Skywalker's cousin, no lie), and Caillou... Caillou. CAILLOU. DAMN YOU, CAILLOU, AND YOUR INSUFFERABLE PLUCK.

It's my fault, though, I admit it. I rely heavily on TV when I want to, say, eat a meal, put Isla down for a nap, or indulge in a few minutes of sewing. I'm really good at justifying it -- He's fine! He's super smart! A little TV won't hurt! -- and I only feel guilty when he goes catatonic in front of the screen and throws epic tantrums when it's time to turn it off. Oh, wait, that's every time. Garr.

Isla is old enough to get into Auden's shit, and is lightning fast in grabbing his robots or toppling his lego masterpiece. She's also old enough to understand that I'll come running whenever she screeches about some injustice, whether she provoked it or not. Auden, for his part, is only too ready to be provoked, and no amount of stern talkings-to and stair time seem to disavow him of hitting and biting and tackling to get the toy he wants. Which, of course, is the toy he didn't know he wanted until Isla had it in her hand.

I get it. I do -- he doesn't get nearly as much attention as Isla, and spends a lot of time itching with jealousy. He even pretends to BE Isla sometimes, which has the unintended effect of annoying me even more. Poor kid. The ego blooms only to be totally hammered by wind and rain and little sisters.

So. I juggle their needs with mine, all day every day, and I'm an awkward juggler, tripping and grunting.

*

But there is light (you know, at the end of the tunnel): Jason just finished his semester of teaching, and today we breathed out a huge chugging sigh of relief. We're going to have TIME to do things TOGETHER. LIKE TALK.

And then I'm going to be all, Welcome to My World, Muaahhh haaaa!

Course then I'm going to have to give up the righteous mommy martyr thing. Huh.

*

While it's true that I'll have lots more time for myself in the coming months -- relief, sweet relief! -- it's also true that I've had a lot of help getting through the past few. Okay, eight. Annnnnd it's also true that I can polish any grievance to a high shine with my constant attention and verbosity, making all the normal growing pains into Mother's Lament: The Fugue.

I'm working on it, okay? I'm a stubborn perfectionist, a character flaw that doesn't jive at all with being a parent. As we have seen.

Recently a friend sent me a quote from Marshall Rosenberg, the "Nonviolent Communication" guy, that went something like,

"The goal is not to be a perfect parent... the goal is to be progressively less stupid every day."

Crash-landings notwithstanding.

*

a slice

Oh hey! Not much, what's up with you?
.
I've been hiding out, trying to force February to pass through sheer force of will, but the shortest month just takes its sweet time no matter what. There have been many colds! Some puking! Some snow falling and then melting! I know, it's pretty special.

It takes a crazy amount of energy to get out the door every morning, and I'm blaming it on winter. It's like herding cats, and then trying to force them into snowsuits and boots. And strapping them into carseats. And then they're crying and whining cats. I get my undies all in a bunch and invariably I am close to blowing a fuse before we even make it to the car. We're going somewhere that you LIKE, dammit, hup hup hup!

But more than I am sick of winter I am sick of hearing myself whine and complain. I'm worse of a toddler than both of 'em put together. So I'm going to highlight some of the better things that are happening around here:

Auden talks to toilets. At some point one of us must have called the automatic-sensor toilets "robots," so now that's what they are, and they should be properly thanked for their services. Yours truly provides the voices, and you can imagine how awesome it is to be a talking robot toilet in a public restroom. If it's the kind of toilet with a good old fashioned handle, it's a "manual robot." In fact, a lot of things are getting that descriptor lately: his phone is now his "manual phone," his step stool is a "manual stool," and the other day he even told me he was going to clean up a mess with his "manual teeth."

Isla is signing like crazy, but most of her gestures are basically variations on a finger to her mouth, which makes them kind of like the signing equivalent of homonyms. Kitty? Finger to the mouth. Horse? Finger slightly higher on the cheek. Water? Finger in the mouth. Mama? Palm to the mouth. Other signs, like fish and dog and giraffe, which have nothing to do with the vicinity of the mouth, she executes with dramatic exaggeration, the way they always tell you to MAKE THINGS BIGGER WHEN YOU'RE ON STAGE! BIGGER! EVEN BIGGER! It's hilarious and mind-blowingly cute.

She adores books, as long as they have animals in them. Preferably barnyard animals. She hasn't said any recognizable words yet, but she's trying her best to crow like a rooster: "cock-a!" she says. "Cock... cock-a!"

For a little while there was some confusion about head-shaking. If she wanted something she couldn't have, I'd shake my head and say no. She must have associated the head-shaking with her wanting of the forbidden object, so in another context if you asked her if she wanted something, she'd shake her head but actually mean yes. It was kind of like a "Who's On First" routine of befuddlement. But now she's figured out how to nod, and she does it with her whole body. It cracks me up every time, not least because it's awesome to communicate so directly. We can have whole conversations now!

Speaking of conversations, we had this one in the car the other day:

me: "Auden, is Isla asleep?"
Isla: "Daahhhhh!"
Auden: "She's awake!"
me: "I heard."
Auden: "What'd she say?"
me: "I don't know, what'd she say?"
Auden: "She said, 'cugger jugger' and then I laughed about that funny joke."

There's a lot of utter nonsense in Auden's vocabulary, probably because he watches too many Japanese movies or too much Spiderman or because he's almost three. He'll prattle on in Lewis Caroll stream-of-consciousness, describing what his characters do:

"And they fradelay with me, and they gauduban with me, and they listabye with me a little bit."

(And the mome raths outgrabe!)

Or he'll whip them out like insults:

"Come on, you nokker!"
"Move over, you slubber dugger!"

And my personal favorite, an exclamation that I've adopted for my own personal use:

"Cunger my nungers!"

It's surprisingly versatile.

You took EVERY SINGLE BOOK off your book shelf and piled them on your bed? Cunger my nungers!
It's almost March? Why, cunger my nungers!

Every so often, Auden and Isla will actually engage and play together. Mostly it's just toy-stealing and pushing, but then there will be moments like this:



I need to remember these particulars, otherwise I'm only going to look back on this winter and see my unending funk, accumulating and thawing and accumulating again. The things that seem so huge will not matter. The small things will be tilled into loam. And of course I'll marvel at how fast it all went.

Jason's friend, newly a father, summed it this way, "Each day lasts about 1,000 hours and is over in 45 minutes."

So, how about you?

*

the workout on the way to and from the workout

Today I take Auden to play outside in the snow, and work up a sweat shoveling paths in the backyard so we can run through the maze. Come in, make the obligatory cup of hot cocoa, and when Isla gets up, hustle to get snacks packed and kids suited up to go to the Kroc Center.

Auden runs all over the house when I tell him it's time to go. Isla wants to nurse again. I'm hungry already. The car seats need to be buckled in, and then the kids. Two bags. Brush snow off the car.

Get to the Kroc, wrangle them inside, Isla squirming and Auden dawdling, wrestle them out of coats and boots, deposit them in child care. Work out for exactly 24 minutes while watching lame TLC programming and letting my brain be mush. Hustle to take a shower and get dressed in order to pick up the kids by 12:30pm. Couple minutes late; the child care people give me looks.

Haul coats and bags and children to lobby, give Auden milkshake, Isla wants to nurse again. Try to give snacks, facilitate mess-making instead. Change Isla's poopy diaper. They take turns getting wet in the fountain. I squeeze Isla between my legs while I put Auden's coat on. Oh! Now he has to pee. And where are his boots? Fucking hell.

Kids and bags and boots all back out to the car, buckled in, songs requested, chubby hands full of crackers. Sweating again.

*

zen koan solved; sound of one hand clapping amazing, indescribable

I can't remember what I was going to write about. It was probably awesome, though.

I have not been able to listen to the news on the radio for some time now. All the stories are just jumbles of words that shoot in rapid-fire succession right past me. Or I'll catch every tenth word, plink, plink. My brain is as permeable as a tin roof.

News reaches me, if it does, through the fog, details fuzzed and dull. Meanwhile, I have plenty of attention for gofugyourself.com. I can't explain it. That shit is funny, man.

Simple things elude me. Jason asks me a question, and it hangs in the air while I wait for it to land on something solid in me, to become something solid itself that has a solid answer. But instead I am taffy -- pliable and impressionable, an unwitting philosopher gazing at the very question-ness of the question -- and the ensuing silence is perplexing rather than enchantingly mysterious, I'm sure.

I'm sorry you can't reach me. I have been unreachable.

I have been sleeping in little wisps for the past five months, and that is as much as I can handle.

My pre-baby self would have thought that sleep deprivation would make a person sleepy. Just, sleepy. Sleepy.
That's like calling the Mona Lisa cute.

Okay, it's true that at first sleep deprivation makes you sleepy. Then you get clumsy, then forgetful. Then you get spacey. Then you can't think of everyday words that you used to use, well, every day. Then you get punchy and cross and short-tempered.

Beyond that, even: I have felt trapped. I have wanted words like slouched, smudged, shredded, because SLEEPY cannot begin to address how coiled and raw and sour I am.

I haven't wanted to write about it. I wrote about it enough with Auden -- I fought good and hard against it then, wrung my hands over various sleep training methods and in the end he just figured it out on his own. I didn't want to fight this time. Mainly, I didn't want to let her cry because we're sharing a room, and the thought of EVEN LESS sleep than I have currently been getting, even if only for a few nights, triggered a severe bout of adrenal-coating denial. So I've been getting up with her three and four times a night and encouraging all kinds of bad habits.

I know! If I were reading, I'd say the same thing: You is crazy, woman! Put that baby in the basement where you can't hear her and take some Tylenol PM. Sheee-it.

I justified putting off that kind of dramatic action by blaming her wakings on the move, and colds, and teeth, and more colds, but to be totally honest, I was just hoping there was a gentler way.

I am telling you now that there was not. My Jeckyl-and-Hyde mood swings are exhausting, Auden is learning too many swear words, and I am desperate for the kind of normal brain functioning that allows me to be creative and to carry on conversations with my husband. And my cuticles are a disaster. So, something had to give.

We moved her to the basement a few nights ago, and the first night I slept for 7 HOURS IN A ROW.

This morning I even woke up before she did.

I have no way of knowing if she wakes up at night, or how many times, or for how long. I felt guilty about this at first, but that guilt was an illusion.

But the sleep, oh ho ho! The sleep is real.

*

deviant, part III

I promise, this is the last installment. The first two are here and here.


During the first couple of weeks after surgery, I carried handfuls of tissues with me everywhere, and held them constantly to my face, because my nose did not stop dripping. I taped them to my face at night so the snot wouldn't dry and form a crust on my upper lip. I'm not kidding.

I would blow and blow and blow and not reach the end of it. I could blow forcefully or softly, but it would just slowly drip drip drip.

Many weeks went by, many more neti pots of saline water were flushed through my noggin, many many impressive, formidable, enormous clot-like boogers were expelled, and still I could only breathe through the left nostril. It was kind of torturous, actually: to be so close to perfection, and yet so maddeningly short of the goal. It felt like when you suck on a mint, but forget to switch it to the other side of your mouth, so when you breathe in it's all cold on the one side and dark and loamy on the other. But, like, in your nose. Because, wow! Breathing through my nose! It was only 50%, but already I could tell I was going to like it. I just became a little neurotic in my fears that it was all I would get, and that the right nostril would be doomed to limp meekly forever behind it's more robust partner. Have I mentioned that I'm prone to exaggeration?

So, the other factor was that our fancy insurance, like Jason's position itself, had an expiration date. If I was going to do anything else, it had to be done quickly. This alone is what gave me the gumption to call the doctor back a second and third time and request more follow-ups. Because, you know, I'm a nice person and a nice patient and I don't want to be needy because that's not nice. (I guess I should have warned you that in addition to seeing inside my nose, you would also be seeing inside THE HEAD OF A CRAZY PERSON)

Back in I went, to say Great Job on Breaking My Nose! Can You Fix it Please? She offered to swab the inside of the right nostril with silver nitrate, essentially to burn back the tissue that was still blocking my airway. What do I know about silver nitrate? I just wanted to feel the cool breeze through that nostril, too. So I let her do it. She told me I may get a headache later, and that things would get worse before they got better. I should have known by this point how dramatically and diabolically this doctor underestimated the pain she causes.

Headache? It was like having a white-hot poker shoved into my face. For days. I didn't dare venture back into Percocet territory, so I game-faced it while seething and grimacing inside. It may have been worse than the first recovery. I don't know, it's too long ago at this point, and we forget pain so easily... but let me check: nope, not harder than birthing two babies. Okay, moving on.

On day four or five after the white-hot poker, I noticed a real humdinger of a scabrous booger way back in that right nostril. By this point, of course, I was no stranger to sticking petroleum-jelly covered q-tips halfway to my brain, so I went after it.

Friends, I wrenched that sucker clear, and angels shot out of my nose on cosmic mucous. The nostril was clear, and I could breathe.

A genuine and unedited grin of sheer foolish relief erupted on my face, and I'm just glad I was looking in the mirror at the time, because I SAW how ridiculously happy I was. I may have gone shouting through the house.

It took some more healing after that (and yet more amazing and substantial boogers), but I am now breathing through my nose like a normal person. Nevermind that I am also still swabbing that right nostril with a q-tip from time to time because no amount of blowing seems to get the junk past what I'm guessing is a little version of the Marianas Trench in there, carved out by silver nitrate. But hey! I am satisfied! I am now a nose breather! I'll take the quirks!

Now that you've been so patient and read all the blather, here are the photos.

Jason told me to spare you the graphic picture of my nose all packed and bloody and me looking like a ghost, so, you're welcome. Here are the before and after shots:

a side story: my pores! wow!

You can see it, right? How my nose points off to Lake Ontario in the first picture, and then more toward Superior in the second? Also notice how my right nostril (your left) is actually the bigger of the two. That rascal!

deviant, part II

If you think this story is unfolding at a glacial pace, I cannot tell you how long it is taking to write it. (The first part is here.) Without further ado:

The spring following my discovery that there could possibly be nose-breathing in my future, when Isla was barely six weeks old, I went to the ENT doc that my friend recommended. She peered up my nose with a little light and what looked like a tiny speculum, and, easy as you please, proclaimed that I had a deviated septum and overgrown turbinates. Would I like to schedule a septoplasty and turbinate reduction for next week?

Before I could even consider that I had something called turbinates inside my nose (I mean, my nose is big, but surely not big enough to support something that sounds like it could generate electrical power), I was in the scheduler's office going over the details of what to do before and after surgery, ie, don't eat, eat, don't blow, blow.

It was such a fast consultation and, well, such a whimsical decision to be operated upon, that I retained absolutely none of the finer points. They'll straighten the septum and then, um, something about turbines? And then I'll take some ibuprofen?

So of course I googled it when I got home, and foolishly followed a link to a youtube video of a similar surgery. It involved a hammer.

(Also, do not expect the internet to take you through recovery gently, either.)

I got nervous the night before surgery, and prayed that the doctor (and her hammer) would be deft and delicate and done quickly. And then, to be honest, I was actually kind of looking forward to being away from the children for a few hours.

The next morning, besides feeling completely out of place at the hospital -- look, these awful blue polyester slip-proof socks, on MY feet! -- and besides much checking of nurses to make sure I was the right patient getting the right surgery, and some bizarrely personal banter from the anesthesiologist, everything was unremarkable and then it was over. I awoke in a thick fog, feeling nauseous, trying to process the doctor's summary: surgery went fine, after-care instructions are mhrruupphh hlllggnnn urrrnngghhh. Blurrhghhhpphh. Mmmkay?

Then my gracious friend Anne brought me a smoothie and took me home.

Then there was THE PAIN.

Oh ho ho, the pain. And puking. And Jason calling the clinic at 9pm because should my wife be this sick? Still? And then Zofran to go with my Percocet. And frozen peas on my face. And changing of gauze masks, and trying not to sneeze, and breastfeeding a newborn while seriously compromised. For days. Until I figured out it was the Percocet making me so sick, and finally I could get by just on Tylenol. But I think the doctor seriously underestimated how much IT WOULD HURT.

I had to remove the packing myself, the day after the surgery, a event that made me feel like a grotesque clown, pulling out the handkerchiefs, you know? Because wow, that was a LOT of cotton up there.

After a week or so, I went back to the doctor for a follow-up visit. She used a little suction hose to remove the stalactites that had formed, and then deemed me fit and cured. By that time I had caught a whiff or two through my left nostril, but nothing through the right. She told me it was still healing, but it looked fine and should probably clear up.

It did not clear up.

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One more installment, here.

deviant, part I

I may have passed the statute of limitations on this story, but unless I tell it you're not going to appreciate what I mean when I say I haven't stopped blowing my nose since April.

Besides, April in baby-time is, like, yesterday.

So. Because I am totally changed and recovered, I can tell you my Confessions of a Mouth Breather:

I have never been able to breathe properly through my nose. Every so often, like on a cold day or, weirdly, on an airplane, both pathways would clear and I'd get a few minutes of uninhibited nasal breathing. But most of the time it was like sucking air through a straw that's been chewed and flattened. And knotted.

I thought maybe I just wasn't trying hard enough, like my nose was a lazy muscle and needed a stricter regimen of exercise. Before bed, lying flat on my back, I'd concentrate on long slow breaths through my nose. Inevitably I'd get that panicky feeling of NOT ENOUGH AIR in my lungs and would give up entirely, resigned to another night of dry mouth.

I was extremely self-conscious about it: ashamed of sounding perpetually nasal, chewing with my mouth slightly open, snoring. But I didn't think there was anything I could do about it, so it just got added to the list of Things That Make Me Different (below "hate onions" and "cry in front of the mirror").

Oh, the things you normal people take for granted! Keeping your lips gently pressed together at all times while you breathe!

And I probably would have gone on like this all my life, not knowing it was only structural and could be changed.

Then one day the lovely woman who facilitated the mama's group I went to in Milwaukee told us she'd be out for surgery & recovery the following week. When she got back she told us all about it: she had never been able to breathe through her nose, she said. She'd had sinus surgery; now it was fixed.

I tell you what, I know I'm prone to exaggerating, but damn. A light positively dawned on my head. Aimed at my nose.

Of course, right at that moment, I was very newly pregnant with Isla, so surgery for me would not be an option for another 81/2 months. BUT. Just knowing that there was the option of one day breathing through my nose, and not to mention the fact that we had health insurance through Jason's post-doc that would cover the procedure, was a light at the end of a very long nasal tunnel.

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(keep reading here)

mother's day

You know this is what you really feel like doing on mother's day:



But you don't, because your kid wouldn't make good turtle food, and the turtles are too cute, anyway.



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the way of Isla

Well before this labor began, I had been telling and re-telling myself the story of Auden's birth in a hundred different ways -- with all my hope and expectation and fear and and pride. I knew it would be different, and yet my poor rational brain struggled to gain footing by casting about in past experiences. It makes sense, right? But now that it's over, I am struck by how very different Isla's story is.

Here we go:

I woke up to contractions at 4:00 on Sunday morning. They came and went sporadically until 7:00, then stopped entirely. I was a bit miffed about the false start, but more annoyed that I hadn't been able to sleep at all. We got up and went about the day, though: brunch with some lovely friends (made possible by the fact that my mom was also there and could entertain Auden so that Jason and I could finish our sentences), a walk with Auden down to the river where it was sunny enough to stay a while and throw chunks of ice into the river, and home again for an attempt at napping.

As soon as I lay down, the contractions returned. They got regular by about 1pm, coming every ten minutes and lasting 45 seconds. Early stage. I was heartened to find that rhythm, though, and remembered to enjoy the part where you're excited for things to get going but not so tired and out of your mind with pain that it still can be enjoyable.

We brought Auden over to a friend's house by 3pm, and spent the rest of the afternoon reading the paper and watching movies. Aside from being just a tiny bit incredulous that it was taking so long -- like, where's my super short six-hour second labor? -- I thought it was a perfect way to spend the day. During this stage, Jason and my mom dutifully kept track of the intervals and duration of the contractions, which, after 12 hours or so, not only takes up several pages of legal pad but also starts to seem kind of beside the point. I called my awesome midwife to let her know it would probably still be a while.

Things picked up a bit by 1am, meaning the contractions were about five minutes apart and lasting a little longer. I didn't get any sleep that night, either; I think I took a bath at some point. Jason and my mom were right there with me all the while, same as when I was in labor with Auden. We employed the "horse lips" technique much earlier this time, THANK GOD, because it not only spared me my vocal cords, but it actually really helped. The contractions were becoming intense, but not crazy, and I felt strong and completely capable. Just make it through three breaths, and then it'll be over, I was telling myself every time, and instead of trying to get away from the pain, I stayed very focused on getting that much closer to meeting my baby.

We settled into a routine: when a contraction started, I'd reach for Jason's hands and clamp down while we locked eyes and horse-lipped at each other through the length of it. At first it felt kind of silly, like I was a spoof on every lamaze class and hee-hee-hoooooo-ing laboring lady in the movies, but it worked so well that it became necessary to do it the exact same way every time. I was surprised at how calm I felt, and how relaxed I stayed in the rest of my body.

I was starting to get antsy by 7am, though. I was pissed that I was taking so long, AGAIN, and that nothing had changed since the day before. I decided that walking around would surely ramp things up, so I paced furiously throughout the house. Which made the contractions stop. I lost my cool and went full-bore into whining IT'S NOT FAAAAAIRRRRR before I realized I needed a pep-talk from my midwife. I called her and kept whining about how discouraged I felt, and how tired and unhappy. As I was voicing my self-pity, I felt another contraction coming on, so I held the phone away and moaned through it. Afterward she said, "You've been having contractions like that since 1am? I'm coming over."

I was instantly relieved, and by the time she showed up and started getting everything ready my contractions were regular again and I was getting a second wind from the flurry of activity. We kept going in our hand-clench-eye-lock-horse-lip pattern for the next few hours, until I decided I wanted the midwife to check my dilation. I was worried that I hadn't made any progress and that I'd be looking at another 24 hours of THIS: AAAHHHRRGH. But she checked and announced that I'd made it to 5cm, at which I whooped and said THANK GOD. I rallied, and elected to take another bath.

Not much later, though, I started to hit the wall. The bath was good, but the contractions were getting harder and my energy was flagging. I'd made it to 7cm by the time I got out of the tub, and when I got settled again on the bed, I hit transition.

So, with Auden's birth, I'm not sure what magical force allowed me to coast through transition and pushing WITH NO PAIN WHATSOEVER, maybe it was a merciful god deciding I'd already worked hard enough. But this time? No such magical force.

When we decided to do a home birth, Jason and I joked about how we'd make a shirt for him that said, in a Barry White voice, "I'm Your Epidural, Baby." And I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but I think that ended up being true. Not in the way that his mere presence was a nerve-block obliterating all unpleasantness, but in the way that looking at his face, in his eyes, I saw the reflection of all the calm and encouragement and determination I'd been feeling up to that point. I saw I AM DOING THIS and I felt powerful. That confidence made it possible to ride out all the contractions with grace and focus. Until transition.

Let me just say it again: TRANSITION.

I was lying on my side and the contractions were one right after the other and the horse lips just weren't cutting it anymore. There was a new and raw and searing edge to those last contractions, and it was like I needed to convey to everyone just how painful they were, so my nice quiet calming horse lips unraveled into screaming. My perfect routine with Jason was coming undone and wasn't helping any more -- I started to pull away from him. Not physically but mentally. It was like I was pulling back into myself, into a dark tunnel.

My midwife and my mom were telling me how close I was, and that I would be able to start pushing soon. I would've thought at the outset that this would be great news, like with Auden, AT LONG LAST it's time to push! But as soon as I started involuntarily bearing down I thought, OH NO, no way, I'm not pushing. HELL NO. And suddenly it felt very wrong to be on my side like that, so I struggled to get upright into a semi-reclined position. Jason got behind me and supported me, which felt better, but really, there was no "feeling better." I felt panicked.

The steady rhythm we'd built was broken into jagged pieces and I felt unmoored and lost and I didn't know what to do. Was I supposed to push? Hold back? What did I do before? Shouldn't someone be telling me what to do? I think I remember the midwife saying something like, "Let her show you," meaning Isla, and meaning Easy Does It, Mama. But I was in this dark tunnel, this chasm, that I hadn't planned on, and couldn't fathom.

Then something huge took over -- a surge of animalistic power -- and suddenly I snapped out of that dark confusion and decided to charge like a bull at my target. I roared and screamed and spat fire; I thrashed like a frantic beast; I pushed into a burning pain so intense it felt like my legs were going through a shredder.

I was so oblivious of the outside world and so totally inside myself and inside the tunnel and inside the fire that I wasn't paying attention to what the midwife was saying. Then my mom was saying it too, and then Jason, and all their words were like a blur until Jason said it over and over in my ear: "Don't push, just wait. Don't push. Don't push. Just wait right there, and let her ease out."

I thought, you have got to be kidding me.

Actually, my first thought when he said that was, I thought you were on my side! I could not reconcile his instructions with the momentum of the train barreling through me at that moment, it seemed utterly ludicrous. Why and how would I STOP? I WAS CHARGING AT MY TARGET LIKE A BULL AND BULLS DO NOT STOP.

Somehow, though, I figured out how not to push, and the midwife pried my hands loose from where I was clutching at my thighs to bring my hand to the top of my daughter's head, which was crowning. It was soft and wet, pulpy and strange. It reminded me what was happening. And before I knew it that head was sliding all the way out, into my hand, and then the rest of her in a slippery gush.

Instantly all the pressure was gone. All the pain and the fire and the hours and the clenching and the counting -- in one delirious second she came rushing out, and my whole body went slack.

They lifted her to my chest and wrapped us in blankets, with me crying and Jason laughing and Isla, scrunched and tiny and perfect, finally born.

*

chronology of this little lifetime

Auden got sick first. Then I got sick. Then I went into labor.

Then a beautiful baby girl arrived, all scrunchy and tiny and perfect.

Then we entered that bleary realm of the 45-minute sleep cycle, and stumbled around the house attempting complete sentences and creative ways of burning off the natural energy of a cabin-fever-ed toddler. Who was also on food strike because of the sickness, and whining with every exhale because of the Mommy No Longer Available At All Times.

Then Isla, all of 10 days old, got sick too -- a harsh phlegm-y cough that sounded like she's already been smoking for 20 years.

Then our heat went out. And the oil-delivery people don't deliver after 1:30pm. So our landlady put us up in a hotel for the night. Which could have been like a fun winter stay-cation, except that it was a crappy business hotel with no frills and the fact that 3 out of four of us were sick and one of us was a 10-DAY-OLD BABY. Jason dubbed it Family Togetherness Night anyway, and we stayed up way too late eating bad pizza and watching junk-food TV. Ugh.

Then there were lots of episodes of projectile spitting-up, with multiple costume changes.

Then we got a nebulizer for Auden. At first I was sure it was going to take a baby straight-jacket and some wrestling holds to get him to hold this thing to his face for 6 - 8 breaths, but no, it turns out chocolate chips are a sufficient bribe.

Then Jason found out his book will not be published. At least not this year, and not by the folks he had hoped would publish it. And his job search continues... where will the Danelys be come July??? It's a cliffhanger for you AND for me!

Then, once, while clinging madly to my leg and screaming MOMMY MOMMY MOMMYMOMMYMOMMY for the jillionth time, Auden also inadvertently wiped his snot all over my leg. When I finally pried him loose he stepped back and saw his handiwork, correctly identifying it as "booger!" Which I had never heard him say before! What a big boy!

Then I found out Isla also has thrush.

Which I think brings us to today. I may have left out a few night wakings and some eating of peanut butter directly from the jar, but you get the drift.

These are your first two weeks, Isla! They have been nuts!

But oh, we love you to pieces and we promise things will get better. Because that was promised to us, by people who have Been There Before, and you can be sure I'll... give them... SOMETHING... BAD! if it's not true. As soon as I get at least two hours of sleep in a row. Ahem.

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